british standards

A short stand-up clip from James Acaster's Netflix special about the British Empire and museums that display things taken from other countries in glass boxes.

A short clip of Stephen Fry explaining the differences between American and British comedy. He attributes them to cultural attitudes such as optimism versus pessimism.

The Map Men explain why British place names are so hard to pronounce, tracing it to layers of Viking, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Norman influence, with a pronunciation guide.

A Vox explainer on how many of the British Museum's treasures were taken during British imperial rule, focusing on the Benin Bronzes and requests for their return.

Tom Scott explains the design of the British BS 1363 plug and socket, including fuses, shutters and safety features, and why he thinks it beats other plugs.

An Engineering Giants documentary episode following a British Airways Boeing 747-400 through a D-check, the heaviest maintenance inspection, in Cardiff. The aircraft is stripped down and inspected nearly everywhere.

Tom Scott follows the ISO 3103 / BS 6008 standard to make an international standard cup of tea, using specialist tasting equipment. The video shows how precisely the standard is specified.

Archive footage from 1964 of Royal Marine Commando volunteers filmed on a field exercise after taking LSD at Porton Down. It documents a British military drug trial.

Short British Pathe newsreel footage of the 1940 collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge as it twisted and swayed in the wind. The only casualty was a dog left in a stalled car.

The pilot of the British comedy series Look Around You, a deadpan parody of 1970s and 80s school science programmes, in which the scientists examine calcium.

A short Yes Minister clip in which the civil servant explains why Britain joined the European Union, delivered as satire of British foreign policy.

Tom Scott plays the Royal Game of Ur against British Museum curator Irving Finkel, who deciphered its rules from a cuneiform tablet. Finkel teaches the game and explains its history as the oldest playable board game.

British Museum curator Irving Finkel teaches how to write cuneiform, with a colleague following along. It is a short, lively introduction to the script.

A short scene from the British sitcom Yes Prime Minister in which officials describe 'salami tactics' for invading a country slice by slice. Each small step is too minor to justify a major response.

Poul-Henning Kamp's FOSDEM 2014 talk is a hypothetical account of how an intelligence agency such as the NSA would sabotage open source software, standards and online discussion. It covers Skype's history, OpenSSL and psyops against standards.

Paul Taylor's first stand-up special, recorded in Paris in 2018, in which a British comedian living in France riffs on French culture, language and bureaucracy. It is the full 70-minute show.

Micro Men is a 2009 BBC comic drama about the early 1980s British home computer boom. It follows the rivalry between Clive Sinclair and Acorn founder Chris Curry over the BBC Micro contract and the ZX Spectrum.

A feature-length documentary on how the City of London and Britain's overseas territories built a global web of offshore secrecy jurisdictions after the empire declined. It traces how this network captured and hid wealth from around the world.

Shashi Tharoor's Oxford Union speech arguing that Britain owes reparations to its former colonies, focused on the effects of British rule in India. It lists economic and political damage done by colonialism.

Irving Finkel of the British Museum tells how a 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablet came to him for examination. It revealed the oldest known account of Noah's Ark and led to a book and a documentary.

The original trailer for Threads, the 1984 British TV film depicting the aftermath of a nuclear attack on Sheffield. The trailer hints at the film's bleak tone.

Ed March rides a Honda C90 through Iran on his journey from Malaysia to the UK, showing the country and its people. He argues Iran is far more welcoming than the press suggests.

Ricardo Signes' YAPC::Asia Tokyo 2011 talk on the legends and horrors of email: how messy the SMTP and email standards are in practice. The first few minutes are Perl-specific, but the rest applies to anyone handling email.

A nine-minute Stewart Lee stand-up routine about political correctness and the claim that it has gone mad. It is dry, layered British comedy that takes the complaint apart.

Part 1 of an episode of the British educational TV series The Secret Life of Machines, about how vacuum cleaners work and their history. It mixes humor with explanation of household technology.

A BBC documentary on Francis Bacon, the loud, hard-drinking British painter, drawing on people who knew him. It explores the haunted man behind the Roaring Boy persona.

Tom Scott explains why Ipley Cross in England's New Forest was one of Britain's most dangerous junctions. The angled crossroads lets a car's A-pillar hide approaching traffic and cyclists because there is no relative motion in the driver's view.

The first episode of Nathan Barley, Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker's British sitcom satirizing hip media and startup scenesters in mid-2000s Shoreditch. Cynical writer Dan Ashcroft finds himself idolized by the moronic Nathan Barley.

A comedy song by Dan and Dan that summarizes the British newspaper The Daily Mail using only its headlines. It satirizes the paper's habit of claiming everything causes or cures cancer.

Jake Thackray performs the folk song Molly Metcalfe, which opens with an explanation of the traditional northern English sheep-counting system (yan, tan, tethera). It is a short, witty piece of British folk songwriting.

12tone tells the story of pitch inflation and how concert A came to be standardized at 440 Hz, including attempts at legal standards. It is a short music history explainer.

A short clip from the BBC sitcom Yes, Prime Minister in which Jim Hacker explains which kind of person reads which British newspaper. It is a satirical take on press readership and bias.

The Brass Eye special 'Paedogeddon!' by Chris Morris, a black-comedy satire of British media moral panic that duped celebrities and politicians into endorsing nonsense. It is the final episode of the series.

FortNine argues that the US DOT motorcycle helmet standard (FMVSS 218) is badly outdated and weak. It compares it with Snell and ECE standards and points to where you can look up test reports for your own helmet.

A sketch from the British sitcom Yes, Prime Minister in which Jim Hacker and the chief scientific advisor discuss the logic of the nuclear deterrent.

Tom Scott visits the British Library, a UK legal deposit library that receives a copy of everything published, and discusses storing so much material, including the web archive.

A short clip from the 1980 British sitcom Yes Minister about why Britain is in the European Community, showing bureaucratic and diplomatic maneuvering.

A short That Mitchell and Webb Look sketch about the perils of working at home, with an adult-humor punchline. It is British TV comedy.

The classic Monty Python sketch 'The Ministry of Silly Walks', in which a civil servant applies for a grant to develop his silly walk. It is a short, absurdist British comedy clip.

A three-minute David Mitchell's Soapbox rant addressed to Americans about the phrase "could care less", arguing it means the opposite of what speakers intend. Delivered as dry British comic commentary on language usage.