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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.

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.

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, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Numberphile explains the long and short scales for naming large numbers, covering millions, billions, trillions, milliards and the Greek myriad, with James Grime and Tony Padilla.

CGP Grey explains why "Indian" is often preferred over "Native American" in the United States, especially near reservations, and how many tribes exist in the US. He draws on conversations with people who identify as Indian.

Ted Nelson explains the original Xanadu hypertext idea of visible connection, the notion that links between documents should be shown and preserved. He argues that the Web and current document standards lost this concept.

Tom Scott-style exploration by suckerpinch (Tom7) of generalized anagrams where letters can be broken into pieces, called anagraphs, with a whimsical computational approach.

Vox breaks down how great rappers build rhymes, from Kurtis Blow's simple bars to Biggie's smooth flow and Kendrick Lamar's dense, fast delivery. It uses on-screen visualizations of rhyme structure.

A re-upload of a video breaking down Eminem's rhyme schemes, showing multi-syllable and internal rhymes in songs such as Lose Yourself. It aims to show why he is considered a standout lyricist.

CGP Grey explains why airport codes are inconsistent and sometimes confusing, from their origins in old weather station codes to the quirks that cause mistakes. He builds the story around a single typo that sent a flight to the wrong continent.

Tom Scott explains why subtitles often differ from dubbed dialogue, covering how translation, timing and reading speed shape each. It features translators and voice talent working in several languages.

Yuta asks whether native Japanese speakers can actually write kanji by hand, showing that many struggle to recall characters from memory.

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

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.

Tantacrul explains how he and engraver Simon Smith designed the free music notation font for MuseScore 3.6. It draws on the history of the SCORE notation application by Leland Smith.

Vox Earworm explains why John Coltrane's Giant Steps is so hard to improvise over: it is fast and moves through three keys. Musicians Braxton Cook and Adam Neely walk the host through the underlying music theory.

Adam Neely explains what perfect (absolute) pitch is, how it differs from relative and quasi-absolute pitch, and why he would not want it. He covers its drawbacks, including drift with age.

Adam Neely tests the claims for tuning to A=432 Hz by trying the unusual tuning systems that its proponents' numerology requires. He compares how they sound against standard tuning and temperaments.

Rick Beato argues that adults cannot develop true perfect pitch, which he ties to critical-period brain plasticity and language acquisition. He says it can only be developed in young children, and discusses the research behind this.

Andrew Huang explains the harmonic series, which he calls the foundation of almost all music. He builds the idea up step by step, with demonstrations of overtones and how harmonies derive from them.

A minutephysics video explaining why a piano cannot be perfectly tuned, comparing equal temperament with just intonation and the math of harmonics.

Musician Adam Neely examines whether certain keys sound sadder than others, looking at the history of tuning systems and temperaments and at how instrument timbre shapes the emotional character we hear. It draws on historical aesthetics writing and audio examples.

An episode of Plogue's chipresearch series on emulating the Yamaha DX7 from the hardware up. It covers the sub CPU and main CPU, address map investigation, cartridges, firmware analysis and a skeleton MAME driver.

Technology Connections praises a 1940s-50s Sunbeam toaster and explains what makes a toaster well designed, drawing on a vintage Sunbeam video.