how-to

A 1994 Today Show clip in which hosts puzzle over what the Internet is and how to say the at-sign in email addresses. It is a short archival piece from the early days of the web.

Daniel Radcliffe performs his party trick on The Graham Norton Show: singing Tom Lehrer's 'The Elements', the periodic table song, from memory. It is a two-minute talk-show clip.

Asianometry traces the 30-year rise and peak of Japan's semiconductor industry from the 1950s to the 1980s, covering how a postwar country gained competence in an emerging technology.

Tom Scott tours Ocado's automated grocery warehouse, where thousands of robots move boxes on a grid called the Hive, and asks whether they are individual robots or a hive mind.

Ben Eater gives a detailed look at how an NPN bipolar junction transistor works and what it does. It is an eleven-minute explanation aimed at building real understanding of the device.

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

Asianometry examines how East Germany tried and failed to build a native semiconductor industry despite heavy investment, including the espionage involved in acquiring Western microelectronics technology.

A Climate Town video on how the auto industry reshaped American cities and culture through advertising, lobbying and campaigns like the 1939 World's Fair. It is snarky in tone but backed by a published source document.

A Startup School talk by YC partner and former Airbnb growth head Gustaf Alstromer on how startups get their first customers. It covers doing things that don't scale, founders learning sales, the sales funnel, and charging your first customer.

A pulmonologist and critical care physician explains how COVID-19 can lead to pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome. He covers evidence-based ARDS treatments such as low tidal volume ventilation.

A Wendover Productions video on how dollar store chains expanded across America and why they displace grocery stores in small towns. It covers their business model and supplier leverage.

The Godot Engine 2022 showreel of apps and tools built with Godot, with a timestamped list of each project. It shows the engine being used well beyond games.

A Telegraph news clip showing newly revealed footage from the January 6 Capitol attack, with rioters overwhelming police. It accompanies coverage of the congressional committee's televised hearing.

A one-minute Monty Python sketch, 'How to Do It', which tells viewers how to rid the world of all known diseases in a deliberately glib way.

A 41-minute factory tour showing how the BMW i3 electric car is built from start to finish, in the style of a Megafactories documentary. It shows a highly automated production line with carbon-fiber body construction and robots doing most of the work.

Tom Scott visits IEX, a stock exchange that slows down trading with a long coil of fiber. The coil removes the speed advantage of high-frequency traders.

A circa-1964 film showing AMF's AMFare system, which ordered, cooked and packaged hamburgers, fries, shakes and more automatically for a pilot fast-food operation.

A 38C3 talk on how advanced chips are made, centered on EUV lithography and the global supply chain behind it. It covers technical challenges from raw materials to finished chips and the geopolitical weight of semiconductors.

Destin Sandlin tours United Launch Alliance's rocket factory with CEO Tory Bruno, showing friction stir welding, structural rocket skins and large milled parts.

A Motherboard documentary episode from Nebraska about farmers and mechanics fighting manufacturers like John Deere over access to the diagnostic software needed to repair modern tractors. It shows how software locks have taken away farmers' traditional self-reliance.

Ken Shirriff walks through how to reverse engineer integrated circuits from die photos, using famous chips as examples, in a Hackaday SuperConference talk.

A Ben Heck Show episode tearing down the Nintendo PlayStation prototype, one of the rarest consoles ever, with its owners Terry and Dan Diebold. Part 2 then gets it working again.

A Boeing 737 pilot explains the runaway stabilizer checklist, the procedure for stopping unwanted horizontal stabilizer movement such as an MCAS activation on the 737 MAX. He walks through the steps, the trim cutout switches and the jackscrew mechanism, and shows a simulator run including the manual trim wheel effort.

Deviant Ollam and Howard Payne give an in-depth DEF CON 22 explanation of how elevators work, from the pit to the penthouse. It covers their control modes and how pen testers use elevators to bypass building security.

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.

Huygens Optics shows through a laser interference experiment that the question of a photon's size is really about coherence length. It argues that photons exist as energy exchanges between radiation and matter, not as little particles in free space.

City Beautiful explains how Houston, which has no formal zoning, still shapes land use through deed restrictions, parking minimums and buffering ordinances.

A man spends six months and $1500 making a chicken sandwich entirely from scratch: growing vegetables, making salt from seawater, milking a cow for cheese, grinding wheat, collecting honey and killing a chicken.

Tom Scott investigates the claim that the microwave was invented to heat hamsters, and interviews James Lovelock about freezing and microwave-thawing hamsters in the 1950s. It traces early magnetron uses beyond radar.

A behind-the-scenes tour of the ILFORD factory in Mobberley, England, showing how black and white film, paper and chemicals are made. It walks through emulsion making, coating, finishing, QC and distribution.

Tom Scott, who never learned to ride a bike, gets lessons from Mike Boyd, a YouTuber known for learning skills quickly. The video follows an adult's attempt to learn cycling in a short time.

Autoline's John McElroy and Caresoft president Terry Woychowski look at the BYD Seagull, an electric hatchback that sells in China for about $11,500. Woychowski points out the cost-saving design and manufacturing choices, and McElroy takes it for a short test drive.

A 47-minute restoration of a 1920s IBM computing cheese cutter, a machine with parts patented between 1901 and 1907. The video covers the restoration work and explains why it is a computing cheese cutter.

Patrick Winston's long-running MIT lecture on public speaking teaches heuristic rules for talks. It covers how to start, use time and place, boards, props and slides, and how to inform, persuade and finish.

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 beginner-focused tutorial on freehand knife sharpening with a single stone, aiming for a shaving-sharp edge in about five minutes.

A short TEDx talk by Joe Smith teaching how to dry your hands with a single paper towel. It shows a simple technique for cutting waste.

Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day tours a Kodak factory to show how photographic film is manufactured. This is part one of a three-part series covering the large-scale coating and production process.

Jeri Ellsworth shows step by step how to make an NMOS transistor at home using a kiln, rust remover, spin-on dopant, eBay wafers and vinyl stickers.

Jeri Ellsworth demonstrates a PMOS transistor she fabricated herself in a home chip lab. She shows some of its electrical characteristics.