hook and loop

CGP Grey's animated adaptation of The Dictator's Handbook, explaining how rulers stay in power by keeping a small group of key supporters happy rather than ruling fairly. It lays out selectorate theory and how resources shape regimes.

Not Just Bikes introduces the "stroad", a street-road hybrid common in the US and Canada that fails at both jobs. He contrasts it with Dutch design, where each road has a single purpose, and covers cost, danger and ugliness.

NASA's animated explanation of the Curiosity rover's Mars landing, which relied on a complex automated sequence taking about seven minutes. It features NASA engineers discussing the risks before the 2012 landing.

Numberphile with Dr Holly Krieger shows how the digits of pi surprisingly emerge from the Mandelbrot set. A short, accessible math explainer.

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.

CityNerd Ray Delahanty explains induced demand and what happens when freeways are widened. He walks through the economics of supply and demand applied to traffic and asks how much new traffic appears and whether congestion returns.

Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns explains how a land value tax differs from an ordinary property tax, why it makes economic sense, and why it is rarely used. It is a short six-minute explainer.

Linus Tech Tips warns against cheap Android TV boxes, many of which ship with preinstalled malware. It looks at several boxes and suggests safer alternatives such as Chromecast and Nvidia Shield.

Kurzgesagt explains the skyhook, a rotating cable with a counterweight that could catapult spacecraft from Earth orbit toward deep space. It covers why it would make space travel cheaper and more efficient.

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.

A short CGP Grey explainer on why 'Holland' is wrong as a name for the whole country of the Netherlands. It covers the country's provinces and its constituent territories.

Matt Parker of Stand-up Maths asks whether a country's reported land area accounts for hills and mountains, working through how surface area depends on the resolution of elevation data. It follows up on a question from a viewer and work by researchers who measured it.

Not Just Bikes explains how SUVs and light trucks have grown in size and share of US sales, and why that is dangerous for pedestrians, cyclists and city life. He covers the regulatory loopholes, such as fuel economy rules and the chicken tax, that favored them.

A short Boeing-supplied clip where the 737 MAX program's chief project engineer explains how the lengthened landing gear of the MAX 10 folds up. It shows the gear model in motion.

Technology Connections explains how LED traffic lights, which do not melt snow, drew complaints and were blamed for accidents. He uses it to illustrate the 'but sometimes' fallacy against new technology.

Real Engineering explains how Zipline built a drone delivery network for medical supplies in Rwanda. It covers the fixed-wing drones, catapult launch, parachute drop and the logistics behind the service.

An Extra Credits episode on China's Sesame Credit, which gamifies obedient citizenship through a social score. It covers how the system rewards conformity and pressures people through their friends' behavior.

CGP Grey tells the story of Alexander Pope's long takedown of a historian, Thomas Hearne, framed around the quirks of library books and archival research. It is a funny, digressive video essay about literary feuds and tracking down original sources.

Explains induced demand beyond roads, showing that it applies to transit, walking and cycling infrastructure too but with different consequences. It corrects common misunderstandings of the concept.

Not Just Bikes explains why cars rarely crash into buildings in the Netherlands, attributing it to street design that forgives mistakes and to systematic crash investigation. It contrasts this with North American acceptance of such crashes.

Not Just Bikes shows how traffic calming is built into streets across the Netherlands, from city centres to villages. Street design naturally slows cars and makes roads safer.

Mathologer shows how times table diagrams on a circle produce cardioids and other curves connected to the Mandelbrot set. He explains the patterns and links to a tool for making your own diagrams.

Numberphile with Simon Pampena on how humans misunderstand randomness, including coin-flip sequences, run lengths and the gambler's fallacy.

A PBS Space Time episode asking what matter, mass, and energy really are, starting with inertial versus gravitational mass and what mass-energy equivalence means.

Not Just Bikes argues that stop signs are a poor traffic control, drawing on Dutch practice and the Idaho stop to show intersections can be safer without them, especially for cyclists.

A two-minute clip of Andreas Antonopoulos explaining why a 51% attack on Bitcoin would not destroy it and what such an attack would cost. It is a succinct take on mining security.

Dr. John Campbell reviews studies on vitamin D deficiency and immunity, including links to influenza and COVID-19, with Public Health England advice. He walks through the sources he cites.

Not Just Bikes explains the Dutch concept of autoluw, or nearly car-free, streets and how it is applied across the Netherlands, with examples from Toronto and Copenhagen. It also covers Amsterdam's move toward a nearly car-free city.

Two Minute Papers covers OpenAI's multi-agent hide-and-seek experiment, in which agents learned emergent tool use and found ways to break the game's rules. It summarizes the 'Emergent Tool Use from Multi-Agent Interaction' paper.

A short, sarcastic Half as Interesting video about a tiny freight railway in Canada built to exploit a shipping regulation loophole. It explains how a track just 100 feet long counted as a railway.

Not Just Bikes explains why upright Dutch-style bicycles are comfortable and practical, and why they are rare outside the Netherlands.

Insider explains how The Mandalorian replaced green screens with LED walls that project real-time 3D environments behind actors, with over half the show filmed on such virtual sets.

Dr. John Campbell reviews studies on vitamin D and immunity, including research on respiratory infections, during the early COVID-19 period.

Not Just Bikes explains why living in a dense, bikeable Dutch city sharply reduced his family's environmental footprint and improved quality of life. It is a collaboration that continues on Climate Town.

Numberphile interviews Grant Sanderson of 3blue1brown about Bertrand's paradox, where different reasonable ways of picking a random chord of a circle give different probabilities.

Not Just Bikes reflects on five years in the Netherlands and tours small towns and cities, from Haarlem to Veenendaal. It argues that good urbanism with walkable streets, bike infrastructure and transit is found almost everywhere there, not just in Amsterdam.

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.

Curious Droid surveys vertical take-off and landing rockets that predate SpaceX and Blue Origin, including the McDonnell Douglas DC-X of the 1990s. It shows that propulsive landing has about 60 years of history.

Steve Mould shows that LEDs and solar panels are both diodes made from semiconductors, so a solar panel can emit light and an LED can generate electricity. He demonstrates a small solar panel lighting up.

Veritasium explores what general relativity says about black holes, white holes and wormholes, with help from physicists Geraint Lewis and Juan Maldacena. It introduces Penrose diagrams and the idea that other universes may be implied.