social experiment

A short animated lesson, featuring Dr. Quantum, on the double slit experiment and how observing electrons seems to change their behavior.

Veritasium visits Richard Lenski's lab to explain the decades-long E. coli evolution experiment, which asks how repeatable evolution is and shows bacteria evolving to use a new food source.

Vsauce explores how human reasoning works, drawing on the social theory of reason and the extended mind thesis, made in partnership with Bill Gates around climate change.

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.

A Kurzgesagt video arguing that social media's problem is information flooding and tribal polarization. It suggests a return to smaller online communities and more in-person interaction.

Veritasium revisits Thomas Young's original double slit experiment with light, showing how interference supports the wave nature of light. It uses a pond-wave demonstration to explain the pattern.

CGP Grey explains how ideas spread like germs, and why content that triggers outrage spreads fastest, using a study on what makes online content viral. He argues that opposing outrage-driven memes feed each other.

CGP Grey explains the history of the US Social Security card and number, and why they became a de facto national ID despite never being meant for it. He also covers why America resists a proper identity card.

Kurzgesagt explains why humans feel loneliness, its evolutionary role, and how modern life can turn it into a harmful downward spiral. It cites research and offers ideas on what to do about it.

Derek Sivers annotates a short clip of a lone dancer at a festival, showing how a first follower turns a ridiculous act into a movement. He draws out lessons about leadership and making it easy to follow.

Veritasium explores how electrical energy actually travels in a circuit, arguing that it flows through electromagnetic fields around the wires rather than through the electrons. It builds a long-cable experiment with Caltech to test when a distant bulb lights.

Part 1 of Smarter Every Day's three-part series on manipulating the YouTube algorithm. It features Renee DiResta and examples of how social media platforms can be manipulated.

Veritasium debunks the idea of learning styles, such as being a visual learner, with an interview with Daniel Willingham and a memory experiment. It argues that a multimodal approach helps everyone.

A short excerpt from Frans de Waal's TED talk showing a capuchin monkey fairness experiment in which two monkeys are paid unequally, one with cucumber and one with grapes. The shortchanged monkey reacts angrily.

Dr. K of HealthyGamerGG explains why people feel unmotivated and unable to start tasks after hours of YouTube or similar distractions. He frames it as a result of how social media is designed to capture attention, and says not to blame yourself.

An animated Sprouts video presenting Dietrich Bonhoeffer's argument that stupidity is more dangerous than evil, because reason cannot reach stupid people. It frames stupidity as a social and moral phenomenon.

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.

PBS Space Time explains the quantum eraser experiment, in which erasing which-path information appears to reverse causality in a double-slit setup. It discusses what this means for quantum mechanics.

Sabine Hossenfelder explains the delayed choice quantum eraser and argues it does not rewrite the past, as popular accounts claim. She walks through what the experiment actually shows.

The Thought Emporium's update on the home-brewed gene therapy he took to cure his lactose intolerance. It reports how the effect held up over two years and what future versions might look like.

Mark Rober digs into bed bugs, testing popular beliefs about where they come from and how to get rid of them. It mixes entertaining experiments with research-based advice on what works and what does not.

Wendover Productions explains how UK rail privatization worked and why it failed. It covers the fragmented operator and infrastructure structure and why market forces apply poorly to rail.

About Here looks at the housing crisis and argues for non-market solutions such as co-op and social housing, drawing on Vancouver's situation. It discusses how public supply can hold down rents.

A BBC Earth clip from Super Powered Owls in which the team uses sensitive sound equipment to compare owl flight with other birds. It shows why owls fly almost silently.

A short animated explainer that stages a $100 footrace in which contestants start at different distances from the line, depending on the advantages or disadvantages they inherited. It uses the race as a metaphor for how unequal starting points shape outcomes, citing US census income and poverty figures.

Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day investigates manipulation on Facebook, interviewing the company's team about content moderation. It is the third video in his series on social media manipulation.

Quanta Magazine explains the 2022 experiment that claimed to create a holographic wormhole on Google's quantum computer. The description now notes that a later independent analysis questioned whether any wormhole was created.

Forgotten Weapons examines the Heckler & Koch G11, a West German experimental rifle built around a caseless cartridge. The video covers the G11K2 and its unusual technology before its cancellation for political and economic reasons.

Sciencium examines the Mpemba effect, the claim that hot water freezes faster than cold water. It walks through experiments and a published paper questioning the effect.

An RSA Animate whiteboard adaptation of Dan Pink's talk on what motivates people at work. It argues that beyond simple tasks, autonomy, mastery and purpose drive performance more than money.

Veritasium examines the role of luck in success, with simulations and examples showing how small advantages and chance can compound. It argues that top outcomes are disproportionately luck-driven while still crediting effort.

CGP Grey's sarcastic animated video adapted from the book How to Be Miserable, listing habits that reliably make people unhappy. By inverting the advice, it shows what to avoid and prompts reflection on goals and routines.

Veritasium examines which experts have real expertise, drawing on chess research and work by Klein and Kahneman. It explains that expertise comes from pattern recognition built through deliberate practice in valid, feedback-rich environments.

CGP Grey explains how traffic jams come from human driving behavior such as tailgating and reaction delays, and how leaving gaps and smoothing speed would reduce congestion. It also touches on self-driving cars.

A short Veritasium video explaining regression to the mean and how ignoring it leads to wrong conclusions about punishment versus reward, medical treatments and sports streaks. It uses the example of flight instructors who believed criticism works better than praise.

A Technology Connections video essay on how analog and digital clocks shape different mental models of time, with the minute hand acting as a progress indicator.

An RSA Animate drawing of Barbara Ehrenreich's talk on the darker side of positive thinking. It argues that forced positivity in culture, work and policy can be harmful and played a part in the financial crisis.

A short animated RSA piece with Dr Brene Brown's voiceover on the difference between empathy and sympathy. She argues that real connection requires getting in touch with your own vulnerability, rather than trying to fix someone's pain.

Veritasium explores why time seems to speed up as we age, covering chronoception and several competing explanations beyond the common proportional-theory argument.

A Veritasium video that runs the 2-4-8 rule-guessing puzzle on people to show how they test only examples that confirm their hypothesis. It uses this to illustrate confirmation bias and falsification.