asset bubble

The first part of Extra History's animated miniseries on the South Sea Bubble. It explains how England's government debt led Robert Harley to turn to financier John Blunt, whose schemes began inflating artificial demand for shares.

Techmoan's beginner introduction to the compact cassette, testing metal tapes and Dolby S noise reduction on a Sony TC-S1 deck. He checks whether a cassette can sound close to a CD when good tape and equipment are used.

A cappella parody song by The Richter Scales, set to Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start the Fire', lampooning the Web 2.0 startup bubble. It won a Webby for viral video in 2007.

ADVChina tours Chinese ghost cities and discusses the housing bubble, with speculative buyers purchasing empty apartments as investments.

In a CNBC interview with Becky Quick, Warren Buffett explains why he sees bitcoin as an asset that produces nothing. He contrasts it with productive assets such as a farm.

An Asianometry documentary-style video on the rise and collapse of China's dockless bike-share boom. It covers the startups, the heavy subsidies and the price wars.

A short demo of Code Bubbles, an IDE interface built around editable code fragments in bubbles instead of files. It was a research prototype for Java development.

Eli Pariser's TED talk argues that personalized web services trap users in filter bubbles, limiting exposure to challenging information. He says this is bad for individuals and for democracy.

RethinkX summarizes its report arguing that mainstream LCOE estimates are inflating a bubble in coal, gas, nuclear and hydro assets. It claims solar, wind and batteries will strand conventional energy investments.

Marques Brownlee explains why iMessage's blue and green bubbles matter, covering the technical, commercial and social side of Apple's messaging lock-in. It also discusses RCS and what could be done about it.

Peter Schiff's November 2006 speech to the Western Regional Mortgage Bankers Conference, in which he warned an audience of mortgage bankers that the housing bubble would collapse. The clip runs about 73 minutes.

Michael Oswald's documentary, based on Richard Werner's book, argues that Japan's 1990s crash was engineered by the central bank and powerful interests. It focuses on the Bank of Japan's hidden influence over the economy.

A one-minute clip from Barack Obama's 2008 Google visit in which Eric Schmidt asks him the most efficient way to sort a million 32-bit integers. Obama answers that bubble sort would be the wrong choice.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on civil asset forfeiture, the process by which police can seize property they suspect is tied to crime. It explains how the property itself is put on trial and how departments profit.

A clip from the 2011 film Margin Call in which a firm's CEO, played by Jeremy Irons, tells a senior executive about the cycles of financial crashes. Kevin Spacey's character says he wants out, and the scene ends on the line that it is just money.

BobbyBroccoli documentary on the rise of Nortel Networks, once the dominant Canadian telecom giant, during the dot-com era. It is part one of a two-part story.

A 2006 television appearance in which Peter Schiff warns on Kudlow & Co about the housing bubble and an approaching US economic collapse.

PolyMatter explains China's housing bubble and why around 50 million homes sit empty. It covers cultural and economic reasons behind the overbuilding and the government's bind.

The ADVChina hosts tour a villa neighborhood in southern China that was built only three years earlier and is already empty and deteriorating. They use it to discuss ghost cities, building quality and the real estate bubble.

A clip from the 2015 film The Big Short in which FrontPoint Partners investigate mortgage lending in Florida and place their first trade. It shows brokers and a stripper-adjacent loan scene illustrating subprime lending to unverified borrowers.

Karl Jobst investigates the retro video game bubble, examining who caused it, who profits, and how graders and auction houses like Wata Games and Heritage inflate prices. It runs almost an hour.

Gary's Economics argues that the UK housing crisis stems from wealth inequality, treating housing as an asset like shares that rich people bid up. He contends that simply building more housing won't fix affordability.

A documentary about Riot Entertainment, a Finnish dot-com-era startup that raised millions in funding and then collapsed. It follows the hype-driven rise and implosion of the company.

In Ars Technica's War Stories, Naughty Dog co-founder Andy Gavin explains how the team squeezed Crash Bandicoot onto the original PlayStation. They overwrote Sony library code in RAM, built custom animation compression, and streamed assets around slow seek times.

An 11-minute guided Wim Hof breathing session built around an expanding and contracting bubble to pace the breath. Wim breathes along with the viewer over ambient sound.

A clip from the 2011 film Margin Call in which senior partners hold an emergency meeting and decide to sell off toxic assets immediately. It is set at the start of the 2008 financial crisis.

Technology Connections explains how the simple American drip coffee maker works, including the bimetal valve and bubble-pump heating, and compares the original Mr. Coffee with modern machines.

Ben Felix explains how central bank money creation and quantitative easing actually work, and what they do and do not imply for asset prices and currency. He addresses the common belief that the Fed prints unlimited money and props up markets.

A mini-documentary by a Canadian living in Japan explaining how an average family can afford a new detached house in Tokyo. It covers how houses are treated as depreciating assets and how Japanese zoning and building practices keep prices low.

A guided Wim Hof breathing session of three rounds at a slow pace, building from a 30 second to a 90 second breath hold. An on-screen bubble animation helps you keep the rhythm.

A short ProPublica video explaining the "Buy, Borrow, Die" strategy wealthy Americans use to cut taxes. They borrow against appreciating assets instead of selling, and the gains are never taxed at death.

A three-minute capture of SORTDEMO.BAS, the sorting visualization that shipped with QBasic. It animates insertion, bubble, heap, exchange, shell and quick sort with chiptune-like sound.

Wendover Productions explains counterintuitive riot control techniques based on research, showing that effective tactics tend to avoid violence.

Raw 1991 home footage of a working Etak Navigator, the 1985 in-car navigation system that predated consumer GPS. It shows the system's cassette-based map display and explains its augmented dead reckoning using wheel sensors.

A short clip of CNBC's Jim Cramer insisting Bear Stearns is fine in March 2008, days before the firm was sold to JP Morgan for $2 a share.

Barack Obama, then a presidential candidate, presents his innovation agenda at Google and takes questions from Eric Schmidt and employees in November 2007.

A four-minute clip of George Carlin arguing that voting is a way of keeping people in a distracted bubble, and that non-voters have as much right to complain as anyone.