technology

Technology Connections explains how LED traffic lights, which do not melt snow, drew complaints and were blamed for accidents. He uses it to illustrate the 'but sometimes' fallacy against new technology.

Technology Connections explains the early history of analog color television, from the 1954 start of modern color broadcasting, and how shadow masks work in CRTs. It is the first in a series on how analog color TV works.

Technology Connections follows up on his analog TV video to clear up the debate over whether CRT phosphor dots are pixels. He explains the shadow mask, color triads and how they relate to the scanned picture.

A Technology Connections video on JVC's LCCS, a display hybrid that cycles a color LCD shutter over a monochrome CRT to produce field-sequential color without dots or stripes. It builds on his earlier videos about analog TV and compatible color.

A filmmaker explains why the Apollo moon landing footage could not have been faked in a studio, based on the video and film technology of the late 1960s. He walks through the limits of cameras, frame rates and effects of the era.

IEEE Spectrum interviews Samsung display researcher Johan Feenstra on how electrowetting displays work. He explains why they can match LCD capability while being about three times more efficient.

Kurzgesagt's animated explainer on CRISPR gene editing, covering how the technology works and what it could mean for curing disease, designer babies and aging. It frames genetic engineering as an irreversible change coming to humanity.

Technology Connections explains why the superheterodyne radio has its name and how mixing frequencies lets it tune stations well. It walks through the underlying wave phenomena and algebra and why the design solved a hard tuning problem.

Part one of Technology Connections' account of the VHS versus Betamax format war. It argues Sony was caught off guard by JVC's cheaper, more practical VHS system.

A Technology Connections video weighing LED streetlights against high pressure sodium lamps, covering efficiency, color, cost and light pollution. It is a follow-up to his earlier explanation of why street lights are orange.

Technology Connections explains how analog television produced moving images without computers, covering scanning, CRTs and standards like NTSC and PAL. It is part of a series on analog TV.

Technology Connections compares Betamax and VHS picture quality using footage from a 1979 RCA VCR and argues the Beta quality advantage was largely marketing.

The Slow Mo Guys film a TV and screens with a high-speed camera to show how displays build an image. The footage includes CRT-style scanning and how pixels light up over time.

Technology Connections takes apart a 1940s Sunbeam Radiant Control toaster. It senses the toast's own browning and lowers and raises it automatically using purely mechanical parts and no electronics.

Technology Connections explains how RGB light and color work, from hue and saturation to color vision and how objects appear under different lighting. It uses a studio setup with colored lights to demonstrate the effects.

A short animation from the DNA Learning Center showing how mRNA carries a gene's message to the ribosome, where tRNA and codons are used to assemble amino acids into a protein.

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.

Kurzgesagt makes a selfish case for improving the world, arguing that helping people far away raises prosperity and innovation for everyone, including yourself. The animated video frames this as egoistic altruism and positive-sum cooperation.

An Isaac Arthur episode on civilizations in the far future, past the Black Hole Era. It covers iron stars, Boltzmann brains, reversible computing and the idea of reversing entropy.

CGP Grey argues that aging and death are a problem worth defeating, using a short animated essay. It is part of a pair with a follow-up from Kurzgesagt.

Kurzgesagt explains stellar engines such as the Shkadov thruster and Caplan thruster, which could move the Sun and solar system across the galaxy over millions of years to avoid hazards and reach new regions.

An Isaac Arthur episode on civilizations in the dark, post-stellar universe, including black hole farming, accretion disks and the Penrose process as energy sources.

An animated Kurzgesagt explainer on bacteriophages, viruses that kill bacteria, covering how they infect and burst cells and their potential as therapy against antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Veritasium asks people where a tree's mass comes from, then explains that most of a dry tree's mass originates from carbon dioxide in the air. It combines street interviews with a short explanation of photosynthesis.

An Isaac Arthur episode on arcologies, self-sufficient habitats that could house whole cities, on Earth or on harsh worlds. It covers how such structures might work and what limits their size.

A short Kurzgesagt animation explaining the Great Filter, the idea that finding alien life might be bad news because it implies something usually destroys civilizations. It connects the concept to the Fermi paradox.

A video essay explaining hauntology, Mark Fisher's idea of lost futures, and 80s nostalgia. It uses the Fallout games and other media as examples of a retro-futurism that mourns futures that never arrived.

Veritasium explains X-chromosome inactivation, where different cells in a woman's body switch off different X chromosomes, giving a mosaic pattern. It uses animation from the WEHI institute and connects to calico cat coloring.

Isaac Arthur examines the Dyson Dilemma, the puzzle of why we see no Dyson spheres or megastructures if growth-oriented civilizations should build them. He covers detectability and whether such structures could hide.

An episode of Journey to the Microcosmos, hosted by Hank Green, about diatoms, single-celled algae with glass shells. It covers their role in producing a large share of Earth's oxygen and their uses in beer filtering, paint and kitty litter.

Arthur Keller gives a roughly half-hour crash course on environmental collapse, covering exponential growth, carrying capacity and ecological overshoot.

Curious Droid asks what traces human civilization would leave in the geological record 65 million years from now. It considers how thin the fossil record of humanity might be.

Isaac Arthur examines options for colonizing Venus, from vast floating habitats in the temperate upper atmosphere to full terraforming of the planet. It is a long-form speculative futurism episode in his solar system colonization series.

PBS Space Time, together with It's Okay to be Smart and PBS Eons, asks how a universe drifting toward disorder produced something as complex as life. It presents the idea that the laws of physics, through thermodynamics, may actually favor the emergence of life.

Stated Clearly explains the RNA world hypothesis, which resolves the chicken-or-egg problem of genes versus enzymes by proposing that RNA once did both jobs. It outlines how evolution could begin with RNA chains alone.

A short Harvard animation narrated by Professor Rob Lue introducing mitochondria as the cell's powerhouses and how cells turn food and oxygen into energy.

A Kurzgesagt animated explainer on how humanity could build a Dyson sphere, a swarm of structures capturing the sun's energy. It covers using Mercury's materials and a step-by-step construction approach.

Isaac Arthur explains the Matrioshka Brain, a hypothetical computer or artificial mind powered by an entire star using nested shells. It covers how such megastructures relate to Dyson spheres and superintelligence.

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.

Isaac Arthur examines Dyson spheres and swarms, including common myths and misconceptions. He covers uses such as interstellar travel, black hole generation, and computing large enough to simulate universes.