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Guitarist Jim Lill methodically tests what in an electric guitar affects its tone, swapping parts on a partscaster and even trying a 2x4 body. He finds that wood and construction matter far less than people assume.

A short video telling how Xerox PARC invented the graphical user interface and how Steve Jobs's 1979 visit influenced Apple's Lisa.

Jen Simmons explains the difference between CSS Flexbox and CSS Grid, and when to use each. She makes the case that Grid does not replace Flexbox and most sites use both.

Tom Scott, with linguists Gretchen McCulloch and Molly Ruhl, examines whether the language you speak changes how you think. The short answer is mostly no, with caveats about the weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Vox explains the Berlin and Kay research showing that languages around the world tend to invent color words in the same order. It walks through the hierarchy and the debate around it.

CGP Grey explains the City of London's unusual governance, including the Lord Mayor, guilds, and how it differs from the rest of London.

Linguist Simon Roper reconstructs how a London accent would have sounded from the 14th to the 21st centuries, reading passages in period pronunciation. It draws on the Cambridge History of the English Language.

Comedian Dominic Frisby gives a ten-minute explanation of land value tax. He argues it would fix problems of rent-seeking and the economics of land ownership.

Walt Disney Animation Studios' short introduction to path tracing, showing how rays are traced and bounced through a virtual scene to simulate light. It explains how this approach is used in animated films.

Dialect coach Erik Singer tours a range of accents across North America with linguists in Part 2 of WIRED's accent series. It covers regional distinctions such as Southern Mississippi, Miami and Utah English.

Technology Connections explains why North American tail light rules, which allow red turn signals and flashing brake lights, make signals ambiguous. He argues for amber signals and cites studies showing a safety benefit.

Tom Scott explains Gricean maxims, the unwritten guidelines that shape how we understand each other. He uses examples such as why 'asbestos-free cereal' sounds suspicious.

Matt Cutts of Google explains what cloaking is: serving different content to search engine crawlers than to users. He covers why it violates Google's webmaster guidelines.

Posy gives a short history of the computer mouse cursor, from early straight pointers to the tilted arrow, comparing Apple and Windows designs. He then explains why he designed his own cursor set and offers it as a free download.

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.

David and Ben Crystal introduce the Original Pronunciation production of Shakespeare and show what it reveals about the history of English, including puns and rhymes lost in modern speech.

jan Misali traces the history of the letter W, including why it is called double u. The video is part of a series of deep dives into individual letters.

Yuta, a Japanese YouTuber, explains whether Japanese speakers can read Chinese text. He shows how shared kanji let people guess meanings while the two languages remain completely different.

CGP Grey investigates why the name Tiffany spiked in popularity and then faded, with help from onomastics experts. It is a short, playful look at how names spread.

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.

Tom Scott makes a short descriptivist argument that language keeps changing and that casual internet writing conventions, like lowercase typing and dropped full stops, are legitimate. It is part of his Language Files series, written with Gretchen McCulloch.

A Langfocus video examining why Portuguese, especially European Portuguese, sounds like Russian or Polish. It compares shared sounds such as vowel reduction and palatalization.

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.

Tom Scott explains for Computerphile why electronic voting is a bad idea, arguing that paper ballots are transparent, auditable and hard to tamper with at scale. He covers why moving voting to phones, tablets or computers undermines trust and verifiability.

Kurzgesagt makes a selfish case for improving the world, arguing that helping people far away raises prosperity and innovation for everyone, including yourself. The animated video frames this as egoistic altruism and positive-sum cooperation.

3Blue1Brown explains space-filling curves and the Hilbert curve, and how infinite mathematical constructions connect to finite, practical approximations. It touches on mapping between dimensions and sensory ideas.

Veritasium explains why bicycles are stable, arguing that gyroscopic effects are not the answer. The video shows countersteering and an experiment where riders blocked from steering the opposite way cannot turn.

The School of Life sets out principles for making attractive cities, arguing that the art has been lost in the modern world.

A short Healthcare Triage episode by Aaron Carroll arguing that milk gets an undeserved pass in efforts to improve diets. It examines claims about calcium and bone strength and concludes you don't need to drink milk.

America's Test Kitchen tests eight carbon-steel skillets to find the best one, asking whether a single pan can replace stainless, cast iron and nonstick. It names a winner and covers how the pans perform.

A five-minute CGP Grey explainer arguing that a phone is effectively an extension of your mind, and that any backdoor or master key into encrypted devices will inevitably be abused or leaked. It frames the encryption debate as locks that are either unbreakable or absent.

Sabine Hossenfelder asks whether complex numbers are just a convenient tool or necessary in physics. She discusses a recent paper arguing that quantum mechanics cannot be done with real numbers alone.

An RSA Animate summary of Iain McGilchrist's lecture on the divided brain, arguing the brain's two hemispheres attend to the world differently and that this has shaped culture and society.

A Kurzgesagt video arguing that social media's problem is information flooding and tribal polarization. It suggests a return to smaller online communities and more in-person interaction.

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.

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.

Technology Connections examines an old feature-rich microwave and shows how it uses a humidity or steam sensor and lookup data to cook food well, arguing it beats many modern ones.

2swap explains how he solved the Klotski sliding-block puzzle by mapping its full state space as a graph and visualizing it. The video includes footage of the Guinness world-record solve and links to an interactive graph.

A short RepresentUs explainer on how money corrupts American politics and what an anti-corruption act could do about it. It covers lobbying, super PACs and campaign finance, and pitches the group's proposed reforms. The video was later superseded by an updated version.

FortNine's tongue-in-cheek guide to why drivers fail to see motorcyclists and how riders can make themselves more visible. It touches on perception psychology, including the role of saccades.