stl

Practical Engineering explains Mechanically Stabilized Earth, where layers of reinforcement make soil strong enough to hold heavy loads, shown with a sand structure supporting a car. It notes that MSE walls are everywhere in infrastructure.

A short RepresentUs explainer on how money corrupts American politics and what an anti-corruption act could do about it. It covers lobbying, super PACs and campaign finance, and pitches the group's proposed reforms. The video was later superseded by an updated version.

Tom Scott visits Penistone to explain the Scunthorpe problem, showing why naive web and profanity filters block innocent words.

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.

Not Just Bikes argues that urban noise comes mostly from motor vehicles, drawing on the book Curbing Traffic and a visit to Delft, a city that takes noise seriously.

Sabine Hossenfelder explains how the greenhouse effect actually works, given that infrared is mostly absorbed low in the atmosphere already. She walks through why more CO2 still warms the surface.

A video essay from the Alt-Right Playbook series that explains how extremist movements draw ordinary people in, using deniable rhetoric, bad-faith games, and gradual escalation. It draws on books about the alt-right, male radicalization, and cult-style brainwashing.

Matthias Wandel tests old and new code on a range of PCs, including a new mini PC, to measure how much faster modern hardware really is. He also shows optimization techniques such as branchless code, with benchmark programs on GitHub.

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.

Paolo fromTOKYO explains why foreign tourists get arrested in Japan, covering strict laws and the justice system's very high conviction rate.

PolyMatter examines how universities, especially in the West, depend on foreign and Chinese student tuition and how rankings and incentives distort institutions around that money.

CGP Grey's short explainer arguing that caffeine addiction is mostly harmless and may even be beneficial. It covers what caffeine does in the body.

Technology Connections explains what forced-air furnaces are, how they work and why they need electricity. He covers combustion, airflow and the parts of a modern furnace.

Real Engineering examines whether greening the Sahara could draw down carbon and slow climate change. It concludes that the effort would be enormously costly and that changes in albedo and other effects undercut the climate benefit.

Professor Mike Merrifield of Nottingham explains in a mostly uncut conversation why light travels slower in glass. He treats light as a wave and describes how the material's electrons produce secondary waves that combine to slow it.

Tom Scott, with linguists Gretchen McCulloch and Molly Ruhl, examines whether the language you speak changes how you think. The short answer is mostly no, with caveats about the weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Gamers Nexus benchmarks how the amount and application method of thermal paste affect CPU cooling. It compares pea-sized dots, thin spreads and large blobs with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut.

Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day examines how bad actors and bots use Twitter, drawing on the released Russian IRA dataset and interviews. It asks why interactions on the platform turn hostile.

Not Just Bikes examines Toronto's GO Transit commuter rail, arguing it is a costly system with park-and-ride stations and rush-hour-only service that subsidizes car-dependent suburbs.

Cleo Abram's explainer on whether nuclear waste is really the intractable problem it is portrayed as, looking at how spent fuel can be recycled and used. It features a collaboration with Johnny Harris.

A three-minute Positive Money UK explainer arguing that the commercial banking system, where banks create most money as debt, redistributes income from the bottom 90 percent to the top 10 percent through interest.

Physics Girl compares hydrogen fuel cell cars and battery electric cars after driving 1800 miles in a Toyota Mirai. The video was part of a series sponsored by Toyota.

A short animation from Thames Valley Police that explains sexual consent by comparing it to offering someone a cup of tea.