most viewed

The Pinkfong Baby Shark Dance children's song video, one of the most viewed videos on YouTube.

The 1997 novelty song by Komar and Melamid with composer Dave Soldier, built from survey results on what listeners dislike most in music. It features bagpipes, an opera singer rapping, and a children's choir urging shopping at Wal-Mart.

Marques Brownlee reviews the Humane AI Pin and calls it the worst product he has reviewed, arguing almost no one should buy it. He explains why smartphones still beat it as a daily carry device.

MKBHD reviews the Fisker Ocean electric SUV and concludes it is the worst car he has reviewed, going through its many problems. He warns viewers not to buy this version of the car.

A short clip posted on the Donald J Trump channel of Joe Biden saying his campaign built the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in history, widely taken as a gaffe for voter protection.

William Byrd presents at Papers We Love NYC on what he calls the most beautiful program ever written, a Lisp interpreter written in Lisp. He walks through the metacircular interpreter and related ideas, and demos relational programming and program synthesis near the end.

Not Just Bikes explains how small pockets of shops and restaurants inside residential Dutch neighbourhoods create liveliness and help reduce traffic. It argues this kind of mixed-use design has been illegal in most of the US and Canada for a century because of zoning, and should be brought back.

Veritasium's explainer on entropy, presented as one of physics' most important and least understood concepts. It uses examples such as heat engines and the sun's energy flowing through the Earth.

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.

Mathologer uses continued fractions to show why the golden ratio is the most irrational number, comparing it with root 2, e and pi and pointing to where this shows up in nature.

A SciShow episode in which Hank Green introduces five of the most dangerous chemicals, from lethal toxins to substances that explode on contact. It is an entertaining overview of extreme chemical hazards.

Pixar staff tell the story of how Toy Story 2 was almost deleted from the studio's computers and was saved by a home computer backup.

Veritasium visits Chernobyl, Fukushima and other places to find who on Earth is exposed to the most ionizing radiation. The answer turns out to be surprising and puts radiation risk in context.

Yannic Kilcher interviews Emad Mostaque, founder of Stability AI, about the company's funding, its mission, and the release of Stable Diffusion. Topics include access to compute, handling harmful outputs, and avoiding the corrupting influence of profit.

Dwarkesh Patel interviews Andy Matuschak on how he learns, why memorization matters for understanding, and why most learning tools fail. The conversation also covers handling confusion and the role of tutoring.

Louis Rossmann explains why many 16-inch MacBook Pros fail and are difficult to repair, focusing on power design on the logic board. He argues the design leads to failures that are hard to fix.

A CNN segment showing William Shatner emotionally describing his Blue Origin suborbital flight to Jeff Bezos right after landing.

An animated ranking of the most popular programming languages from 1965 to 2019, built from popularity indexes, GitHub access data and historical surveys.

Finnish comedian Ismo does a stand-up routine on Conan about the many meanings of the English word 'ass'. He riffs on the confusing quirks of English as a second language.

Rick Beato analyzes a pop song he argues is among the most harmonically complex ever, breaking down its chords and key changes. It is a music theory deep dive aimed at general music fans.

An Onion News Network satire about Prague's Kafka International being ranked the most alienating airport because of delays, bureaucratic staff, and an oppressive atmosphere.

A Kurzgesagt animation on supernovae, the most powerful explosions in the universe. It explains their role in creating elements and what would happen to Earth if one occurred nearby.

Nate Harrison's 2004 video history of the Amen Break, a six-second drum sample from a 1969 b-side that became the basis of hip-hop sampling, jungle and drum and bass. It is also a meditation on cultural ownership and creativity.

Part 1 of a lecture by physicist Albert Bartlett on the exponential function and its consequences for population growth, resource use and energy. It argues that steady growth rates quickly lead to enormous quantities.

Brian Kernighan interviews Unix co-creator Ken Thompson at VCF East 2019. Thompson recounts how he was hired at Bell Labs, writing the Unix kernel in about three weeks, the origins of B and TMG, pipes, and other anecdotes.

Reducible's visual walkthrough of the Fast Fourier Transform, motivated by polynomial multiplication. It shows how the FFT's key ideas can be discovered by asking the right questions.

Veritasium explains why a large share of published research findings may be false, covering p-values, p-hacking, publication bias and low replication rates. It draws on John Ioannidis's well-known paper and describes reforms such as preregistration.

Veritasium tells the story of how Shuji Nakamura and others made the blue LED, long thought nearly impossible. It covers the materials challenge of gallium nitride and the persistence it took.

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

Veritasium tells the story of Thomas Midgley Jr., who introduced leaded gasoline and CFCs, and covers the science behind lead exposure and ozone damage. It also touches on isotope geochemistry used to uncover the history.

BobbyBroccoli's first of three parts on Jan Hendrik Schon, the Bell Labs postdoc whose fabricated organic semiconductor results nearly won a Nobel Prize. It covers his rise and the context around Bell Labs.

Veritasium traces analog computers from the Antikythera mechanism and Kelvin's tide-predicting machines to fire control and modern analog approaches. It explains how these machines computed continuously rather than digitally.

A long video essay on MyHouse.wad, a Doom II mod uploaded by an anonymous user that hides unsettling secrets in its walls. It tells the story of the map, its mystery and its liminal horror.

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.

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.

Myst co-creator Rand Miller recounts how the HyperCard-built game struggled to run on 1x CD-ROM drives. He and his brother Robyn compressed image and audio data heavily to get acceptable performance. Part of Ars Technica's War Stories series.

Summoning Salt traces the speedrunning history of Mario Kart 64's Choco Mountain track and its famous shortcut, through the successive record holders and discoveries. It carries an epilepsy warning for flickering lights.

Veritasium tells the story of the Fast Fourier Transform, from its use in detecting nuclear tests to Cold War politics, and how it could have changed the arms race. It includes a short, intuitive explanation of what the Fourier transform does.

Permaculture instructor Andrew Millison visits the chinampas, the floating gardens of Xochimilco in Mexico City. He looks at this ancient Aztec agricultural system and the project restoring it.

Climate Town tells the history of the period when the greenhouse effect was not politically controversial and the US came close to acting on climate. It covers Exxon's early climate science and the policy failures that followed.