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Tom Scott tells how John Reber's plan to dam San Francisco Bay was disproved by the Army Corps of Engineers' giant hydraulic Bay Model in Sausalito. The model showed the plan would have been dangerously wrong.

A short cartoon explaining how language models like ChatGPT work, from autocomplete and conditional probabilities to neural networks, gradient descent and backpropagation. It shows how networks act as universal function approximators.

An engineering explainer on why Tesla abandoned the induction motor for the Model 3 and used an IPM-SynRM design. It covers the reluctance torque and permanent magnet principles behind the choice.

Robert Miles explains reward modelling, in which an AI learns what humans want from their preference comparisons instead of a hand-written reward function. He walks through the 2017 paper on deep reinforcement learning from human preferences.

PBS Space Time explains the Standard Model Lagrangian, the single equation encapsulating the particle physics theory, and visualizes what its terms mean.

Dialect coach Erik Singer analyzes how accurate the accents are of 32 well-known actors, including Brad Pitt and Will Smith, in WIRED's breakdown.

Munro Live's Model Y episode 36 has Sandy Munro walk through the disassembled Tesla Octovalve and heat pump system. He explains how the components are made and what each one does.

Munro Live's team breaks down the thermal management system of the Ford Mustang Mach-E and compares it with the Tesla Model Y. They look at parts count, coolant loops and heating approaches.

A short Al Jazeera animation narrated by Amy Goodman presenting Noam Chomsky's five filters of the mass media: ownership, advertising, media elite sourcing, flak and a common enemy. It is part of the MediaTheorised series.

Vsauce explores math through card tricks and big numbers, including an animation of how enormous 52 factorial, the number of deck orderings, really is.

Sabine Hossenfelder explains how close nuclear fusion really is to break-even, and why headlines about ITER and lab milestones are misleading. She distinguishes plasma gain (Q plasma) from whole-system gain (Q total) and shows the latter is still far below one.

Cody's Lab builds a 200-billionth-scale model to show how far away the nearest stars are, using parallax and light speed. A short astronomy explainer on interstellar distances.

Ward Cunningham explains the history and intent of the debt metaphor, which he coined while refactoring the WyCash product. He says debt means code reflecting an incomplete understanding of the problem, not sloppy programming.

A short animated TED-Ed lesson in which two competing ice cream vendors on a beach illustrate why rival shops cluster together. It introduces game theory and the Nash equilibrium through the Hotelling model.

A Technology Connections video essay on how analog and digital clocks shape different mental models of time, with the minute hand acting as a progress indicator.

SuperfastMatt looks at how the Tesla Model S retracting door handles were redesigned over time, from many parts to a motor plus sensor, with a focus on engineering and reliability.

MinutePhysics explains Shor's algorithm, showing how a quantum computer factors large integers by finding the period of a number modulo N. It walks through the modular arithmetic and number theory that give the exponential speedup over classical factoring, and why this threatens encryption.

An episode of Journey to the Microcosmos, hosted by Hank Green, about diatoms, single-celled algae with glass shells. It covers their role in producing a large share of Earth's oxygen and their uses in beer filtering, paint and kitty litter.

ScienceClic gives a 15-minute animated introduction to quantum field theory, covering fields, spin, conserved quantities, the standard model and interactions.

A PBS Space Time episode explaining the Fermilab Muon g-2 results and why a discrepancy with the Standard Model prediction could point to new physics.

A Wendover Productions video on how dollar store chains expanded across America and why they displace grocery stores in small towns. It covers their business model and supplier leverage.

A four-minute minutephysics video arguing that causal models and causal networks let statistics infer causation from correlation. It touches on Reichenbach's principle, common causes, feedback and quantum causal discovery.

A 1936 Chevrolet-sponsored film that explains how a car transmission works by treating gears as spinning levers. It uses physical models to make the mechanism clear.

A CAD-based animation from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics showing how the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator is configured and what its fusion research aims to achieve. It runs about 11 minutes.

A PBS Space Time episode on how the Higgs mechanism gives particles mass, prompted by Fermilab's heavier-than-expected W boson measurement. It goes beyond the usual pop-science treatment without heavy math.

A Wendover Productions explainer arguing that major airlines make much of their profit from loyalty programs and co-branded credit cards rather than flying. It frames airlines as quasi-banks that sell points in bulk, using United's pandemic-era loan as a hook.

Primer simulates green beard altruism, where individuals recognize and help others carrying a shared marker, and shows how imposters affect its evolution. It is an animated evolution simulation based on published papers.

A Kurzgesagt video on the conditions in which most farm animals are raised. It argues that cruelty is for cheaper rather than better meat, and that a small price increase per meal could avoid most of the suffering.

A Kurzgesagt animated explainer on meat: why people love it and what it costs animals, the environment and health. It lays out the complicated trade-offs of meat production and consumption.

Real Engineering looks at why nuclear power plants are expensive and how their economics compare with fossil and renewable alternatives. It is based on a video from the Illinois Energy Professors.

Computerphile video in which Mike Pound explains a University of Maryland paper on watermarking LLM output. The method biases token choices so generated text can later be detected statistically.

Linus Tech Tips breaks down the company's income streams, including sponsors, YouTube Premium, merch and other products. It gives percentages for each revenue source.

A scene from The Big Short in which Jared Vennett pitches credit default swaps on mortgage bonds to a hedge fund team, using a Jenga tower to illustrate collateralized debt obligations.

Veritasium's Derek Muller argues that Facebook's business model works against pages and creators, because it charges them to reach the audiences they built. He explains how filtering and paid promotion undermine the value of likes.

A 10-minute 3Blue1Brown chapter explaining the determinant as the factor by which a linear transformation scales area or volume. It builds the idea geometrically with animations before any formulas.

Veritasium explains what a black hole should look like, using J.P. Luminet's 1979 work and a cardboard 3D model to show how light bends around it. It was made just as the first black hole image was released.

A 20-minute S3 episode touring Terraform Industries, a startup making synthetic natural gas from air and solar power. It walks through the reactor, injection system, direct air capture and electrolyzer, plus the company's cost goals and next milestone.

FortNine explains the economics of the dealership model, arguing that dealers absorb inventory risk and help manufacturers' finances. It looks at whether cars and motorcycles could be sold more cheaply without them.

A Computerphile video in which Dr Mike Pound and PhD student Lewis Stuart explain 3D Gaussian splatting, a quick technique that turns photos of a scene into a 3D model without much compute. It includes a demo and compares the approach to NeRFs.

Tom Scott visits the Swiss Military Museum to see the last surviving 1970s tank-driving simulator. It uses a real camera moving over a miniature model landscape rather than any computer graphics.