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A two-minute Rouxbe cooking-school demo of how to heat a pan properly before cooking. It uses the Leidenfrost effect, where water beads and skates across a hot pan, to show when a stainless steel pan is ready.

Kirk Sorensen's Google Tech Talk on liquid-fluoride thorium reactors, a design that could burn nuclear waste and use thorium as fuel. It draws on Oak Ridge National Laboratory work from the 1950s and 60s.

A 2008 Google Tech Talk making the case for the liquid fluoride thorium reactor as an abundant, safe source of electrical power. It covers the technical motivations and design of thorium molten-salt reactors.

The shareholder speech by Larry the Liquidator, played by Danny DeVito, from the film Other People's Money. He argues that a dying company should be liquidated rather than kept alive.

A one-minute clip in which columnist John C. Dvorak explains to Dave Winer his technique for trolling the Apple community.

James Howard Kunstler's TED talk argues that American public spaces and architecture have become unworthy of care, damaging civic life. He presents suburban sprawl and car-first design as failures of the common good.

Masagin is a realtime demoscene production by Farbrausch and Neuro with music by paniq, using animated recursive SVG graphics made in Inkscape. It is a psychedelic, nested-dials audiovisual piece.

A short video of Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 speech criticizing Gross Domestic Product as a measure of progress, saying it counts everything except what makes life worthwhile.

A short Adam Curtis clip on what he calls oh dearism, the habit of news reporting that presents events as a stream of sad, inexplicable happenings. He argues this leaves viewers passive and unable to imagine action.

Harvard physicist Eric Mazur explains how he realized his students were memorizing rather than understanding, and how he changed his teaching. He presents peer instruction and data showing improved student performance.

A short clip from a Richard Feynman interview in which he explains fire, describing how burning wood releases sunlight stored by the tree, which built itself mostly from air. It showcases his curiosity and plain-spoken explanations.

Douglas Adams gives a talk at UCSB, recorded shortly before his death, about the odd lives of animals and what they suggest about humanity's future. It draws on his Last Chance to See work and is funny and wide-ranging.

A five-minute clip of Ira Glass on the gap between good taste and early creative work. He says beginners know their work falls short and must keep producing to close the gap.

A short video from the trafficwaves.org site showing how traffic jams and standing waves form, including the fight between cheaters and blockers at an exit-lane backup. It also touches on how individual driving behavior affects the flow.

A 52-minute short version of the documentary The End of Suburbia, about peak oil and the end of cheap energy. It argues that American suburbs depend on cheap oil and may become the slums of the future.

David MacKay's 2007 Google Tech Talk presents Dasher, a text-entry system driven by continuous gestures and a language model, reaching about 35 words per minute with one finger and 25 hands-free. It explains the information-theory reasoning behind the design.

First lecture of MIT 6.00, an introductory computer science course taught in Python by Eric Grimson and John Guttag. It covers the goals of the course, what computation is, and data types, operators and variables.

The Google I/O 2009 keynote introducing Google Wave, a real-time collaborative communication and document platform. It includes a long live demo and the developer preview announcement.

An eight-minute excerpt of a 1983 video featuring Seymour Papert, creator of Logo, on children learning programming and abstract ideas through embodied play. It shows kids acting out the Logo turtle.

Stargate Studios' 2009 virtual backlot reel shows before-and-after shots in which green screen and compositing replace locations in ordinary TV dramas and comedies. It shows how much of a seemingly real show is computer generated.

Sir Ken Robinson argues, with humor and stories such as that of choreographer Gillian Lynne, that education systems undermine creativity and should be changed. It is one of the most viewed TED talks.

Peter Schiff, during his 2010 Senate campaign, argues that government loan programs and subsidies push college tuition up.

Clifford Stoll's energetic TED talk, a wandering mix of anecdotes, a science experiment and thoughts on curiosity, education and technology. He is the author of The Cuckoo's Egg.

A 1983 behind-the-scenes film about making the HBO 'Feature Presentation' starship logo sequence. It shows the handcrafted miniature city, motion-control cameras and practical effects.

A short vintage film clip of Seymour Papert, creator of Logo, on using computers to spark children's imagination and learning.

A clip from Charlie Brooker's BBC show Screenwipe showing how reality TV uses editing to manufacture emotion and narrative. It demonstrates how the same footage can be cut to give very different impressions.

A short concept video of Microsoft's unreleased Courier, a dual-screen tablet designed as a digital notebook with clippings and annotation. It was first leaked by Gizmodo in 2009.

Alan Kay's TED talk on teaching ideas, in which he argues the world is not what it seems and shows children learning through programming and building their own lessons with Etoys/Squeak.

A Google Tech Talk arguing that the best interface requires the fewest clicks and choices, with Google search, Facebook, the iPod and Firefox as examples. It shows how minimizing interaction makes interfaces easier to learn.

First lecture of Stanford's CS106A Programming Methodology by Mehran Sahami, giving a course overview and starting on programming. The course teaches software engineering principles using Java.

Street interviews of over 50 passersby in Times Square, asked what a browser is. Many answers show people confuse browsers with search engines or the internet.

The Schoolhouse Rock! cartoon song 'I'm Just a Bill', in which a bill explains how it travels through Congress to become law.

Mark Bittman and baker Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street Bakery demonstrate the no-knead bread recipe, where a long, slow rise does the work instead of kneading. It is a short New York Times recipe video.

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, reflects on the pressure placed on artists to be geniuses. She proposes the older idea that creative people have a genius that visits them rather than being one.

A one-minute Sesame Street animation of a counting pinball game focused on the number 12, set to Pointer Sisters music.

A US Chemical Safety Board video explaining how sugar dust explosions at the Imperial Sugar plant in Georgia killed fourteen workers in 2008.

A one-minute New Scientist clip showing a Japanese experiment in which drivers on a circular track produce a spontaneous traffic jam that travels backward. It illustrates phantom traffic jams without any obstacle.

Jensen Harris of the Office 2007 design team tells the behind-the-scenes story of the Ribbon at MIX08. He covers early prototypes, mistakes, and the UX principles used to design and validate it.

A short clip of Richard Feynman explaining how a train stays on its tracks, through the conical shape of wheels and how it handles curves without differentials.

Honda's 2003 'Cog' commercial for the Accord, a two-minute Rube Goldberg chain reaction of car parts. It was filmed practically rather than with CGI.