ted
47:25Thoth's Pill - an Animated History of Writing
1.3M views • 11 years ago
NativLang
NativLang's 47-minute animated documentary traces the birth and evolution of writing, from early cave marks to modern scripts. It presents the history of the world's writing systems as a story.
54:16HOW ROCKETS ARE MADE (Rocket Factory Tour - United Launch Alliance) - Smarter Every Day 231
13.4M views • 6 years ago
SmarterEveryDay
Destin Sandlin tours United Launch Alliance's rocket factory with CEO Tory Bruno, showing friction stir welding, structural rocket skins and large milled parts.
1:43:00Disney's FastPass: A Complicated History
27.3M views • 4 years ago
Defunctland
A feature-length Defunctland documentary on the history of Disney's FastPass and FastPass+ expedited queue systems. It covers how the systems evolved and how they were designed, with simulation of their effects on park lines.
20:49How Prince of Persia Defeated Apple II's Memory Limitations | War Stories | Ars Technica
1.5M views • 6 years ago
Ars Technica
In an Ars Technica War Stories episode, Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner describes how he made the game on the Apple II, fighting hardware memory limits and the platform's decline. It covers the rotoscoped animation and the engineering tricks involved.
22:00Desert Storm - The Air War, Day 1 - Animated
14M views • 6 years ago
The Operations Room
An animated account of Day 1 of the Desert Storm air war on 17 January 1991, covering the 2,775 sorties flown against Iraqi strategic targets in the first 24 hours.
1:43:57Oswald Acted Alone: JFK Assassination Solved (Part 1 of 2)
703K views • 4 years ago
Sean Munger
The first part of a long two-part video series by historian Sean Munger arguing, with citations, that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy and acted alone. It goes through the provable historical facts and addresses conspiracy theories.
11:05Updated BP Texas City Animation on the 15th Anniversary of the Explosion
2.3M views • 6 years ago
USCSB
The US Chemical Safety Board's updated animation of the 2005 BP Texas City refinery explosion, which killed 15 workers. It was released ahead of a process safety training application.
47:01Operation InfeKtion: How Russia Perfected the Art of War | NYT Opinion
1.8M views • 7 years ago
New York Times Opinion
A New York Times Opinion documentary tracing Soviet and KGB disinformation, from the 1980s AIDS origin hoax to modern campaigns like Pizzagate. It features former KGB officers and the people who tried to counter the lies.
45:23BUSTED: The Citizen's Guide to Surviving Police Encounters
4.1M views • 19 years ago
Flex Your Rights
A 45-minute Flex Your Rights documentary on how to deal with police in three situations: traffic stops, encounters at home, and on the street. It presents practical advice on asserting constitutional rights and refusing searches.
5:28Inside a Google data center
22.6M views • 11 years ago
Google Workspace
Joe Kava, VP of Google's Data Center Operations, gives a short tour of a Google data center. He covers security, sustainability and the core infrastructure architecture.
Topic match · Distributed systems
1:04:04Everything is a Remix (2023 Edition)
328K views • 3 years ago
Kirby Ferguson
Kirby Ferguson's updated four-part video essay arguing that creativity is built on copying, transforming and combining existing work. It covers examples from film, music and technology and touches on generative AI.
Topic match · Futurism & technology and society
41:46The Battle of Midway 1942: Told from the Japanese Perspective (1/3)
19.7M views • 7 years ago
Montemayor
Part one of Montemayor's animated-map documentary on the Battle of Midway, told using only the information available to the Japanese side. It focuses on Nagumo's dilemma.
49:22Douglas Adams - Hyperland
55K views • 12 years ago
UJ ObscureMedia
Hyperland is a 1990 BBC documentary written by and starring Douglas Adams, who tours an imagined future of hypertext and software agents. It features Ted Nelson among others.
2:18The odd accent of Tangier VA - American Tongues episode #3
1.9M views • 18 years ago
People Like Us - The CNAM Channel
A clip from the documentary American Tongues about the isolated Tangier Island, Virginia, whose dialect is among the most unusual in the US. It is often said to resemble speech from centuries ago.
Topic match · Language & linguistics
34:52There's No Tomorrow (limits to growth & the future)
1.1M views • 14 years ago
incubatepictures
An animated short on limits to growth, covering oil formation, peak oil, energy, economic growth and resource depletion. Its central section deals with exponential growth, and the author notes some statistics are dated.
Topic match · Futurism & technology and society
25:30No Béarla Series 1, Episode 1.
256K views • 14 years ago
An Ghaeilge
The first episode of the Irish TV series No Bearla, in which native Irish speaker Manchan Magan travels around Ireland trying to get by using only Irish. It documents the highs and lows of the attempt.
Topic match · Language & linguistics
42:49Future Shock Documentary (1972)
630K views • 10 years ago
Jamie Clay
The 1972 documentary based on Alvin Toffler's book Future Shock, narrated by Orson Welles. It is a dystopian look at the accelerating pace of technological change and its psychological toll.
Topic match · Futurism & technology and society
8:11Appalachian English
8.4M views • 18 years ago
The Language & Life Project
An excerpt from the documentary Mountain Talk on Appalachian English. Residents of Southern Appalachia talk about their dialect and give examples of its distinctive words.
Topic match · Language & linguistics
10:40Automatic Hamburger Machine - 50 Years Ahead of Its Time!
102K views • 12 years ago
Automated Foodservice
A circa-1964 film showing AMF's AMFare system, which ordered, cooked and packaged hamburgers, fries, shakes and more automatically for a pilot fast-food operation.
46:21Money as Debt I - Revised Edition 2009 (Full Movie)
291K views • 11 years ago
Ethaniel RockX
An animated documentary by Paul Grignon explaining how modern money is created through bank lending as debt. This is a combined upload of the revised 2009 edition.
11:27This Swiss Builder uses NO INSULATION...
857K views • 7 years ago
Matt Risinger
Builders Matt Risinger and Jordan Smith visit a Swiss cross-laminated timber factory that makes thick all-wood walls with no traditional insulation and wooden nails instead of glue or chemicals. The video is sponsored by Siga.
1:42:01MyHouse.WAD - Inside Doom's Most Terrifying Mod
19.4M views • 3 years ago
Power Pak
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.
Topic match · Speedrunning, glitches & game hacking
29:54[Epilepsy Warning] Choco Mountain: The History of Mario Kart 64's Most Infamous Track
5.4M views • 8 years ago
Summoning Salt
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.
Topic match · Speedrunning, glitches & game hacking
47:03Derren Brown - The System (Full)
408K views • 15 years ago
ScepticaTV
Derren Brown's TV special in which he convinces a person he has a system for predicting horse race winners, demonstrating how survivorship bias and selective outcomes can fake predictive powers.
Topic match · Probability & game theory
27:09Sega Saturn CD - Cracked after 20 years
4.4M views • 10 years ago
debuglive
A look inside Dr Abrasive's lab as he engineers a flash-card replacement for the Sega Saturn optical drive after cracking its CD protection 20 years on.
Topic match · Speedrunning, glitches & game hacking
5:22:14The Complete History of the A Button Challenge
2.4M views • 3 years ago
Bismuth
A five-hour documentary history of the Super Mario 64 A button challenge, which aims to beat the game with as few A presses as possible. It covers the bugs and exploits discovered over the years.
Topic match · Speedrunning, glitches & game hacking
37:36Making Sense of VRChat, the "Metaverse" People Actually Like
511K views • 4 years ago
People Make Games
People Make Games explores VRChat, the social virtual world that many consider the metaverse people actually like, interviewing users and covering its communities and uncertain future.
Topic match · VR, AR & spatial computing
27:58GraphQL: The Documentary
603K views • 7 years ago
CultRepo
A documentary on how GraphQL came to be at Facebook, featuring its co-creators Lee Byron, Dan Schafer and Nick Schrock. It covers the problems it solved and its adoption at companies like Twitter, Airbnb and GitHub.
Topic match · Software architecture & design
1:53:34The History of Tetris World Records
7.3M views • 2 years ago
Summoning Salt
Summoning Salt's roughly two-hour documentary traces the history of Tetris world records, from early play through the modern competitive scene. It is a long, well-researched narrative about the players and techniques that pushed the records.
Topic match · Speedrunning, glitches & game hacking
50:00Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism | VPRO Documentary
4.7M views • 6 years ago
vpro documentary
A VPRO documentary in which Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff explains her book on surveillance capitalism. It covers how Google and Facebook turn personal data into raw material for prediction and behavioral influence.
Topic match · Futurism & technology and society
3:01The Disappearing American Dialect of North Carolina
2.2M views • 10 years ago
Great Big Story
A short Great Big Story piece on the Ocracoke Brogue, or Hoi Toider dialect, spoken on North Carolina's Outer Banks, which developed through centuries of isolation and traces back to the 1600s.
Topic match · Language & linguistics
15:29Life in Syntropy
931K views • 10 years ago
Agenda Gotsch
A short film from Agenda Gotsch introducing syntropic agriculture and Ernst Gotsch's agroforestry methods, made for COP21. It shows degraded land regenerated into productive forest farms.
2:40:29HyperNormalisation 2016
2.3M views • 10 years ago
crisalist
Adam Curtis's 2016 BBC documentary HyperNormalisation, about 160 minutes long. It cuts together roughly forty years of politics, finance and technology to argue that people have retreated into a simplified fake world.
42:30The man who almost faked his way to a Nobel Prize
4.2M views • 6 years ago
BobbyBroccoli
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.
26:49Inside a Huge PCB Factory
3.7M views • 8 years ago
Strange Parts
Strange Parts tours JLCPCB's large PCB factory in Huizhou, China, walking through the printed circuit board manufacturing process step by step. It shows the machinery, quality checks and scale behind cheap prototype boards.
14:52Modern Times Streetwise - part 1/4 - 1996 BBC Documentary how become a London cabbie.
54K views • 15 years ago
TaxiWarrior
Part one of a 1996 BBC Modern Times documentary on the training to become a London black cab driver. It follows candidates learning the Knowledge and facing stressful repeated exams with Public Carriage Office examiners.
8:26Part 1 - Training Video for Bell Labs' Holmdel Computing Center - AT&T Archives
59K views • 13 years ago
AT&T Tech Channel
A 1973 AT&T training film made for new employees at Bell Labs' Holmdel Computing Center, when Unix was in its third version and running at 16 computer centers in the Bell System. It shows how users submitted jobs and used the center's machines.
15:11Oldest US mall blends old/modern with 225-sq-ft micro-lofts
7.2M views • 11 years ago
Kirsten Dirksen
Kirsten Dirksen visits the Providence Arcade, the oldest US indoor mall, which was converted into 225-square-foot micro-lofts classified as a rooming house.
40:33BMW i3 Factory Production Tour
6.6M views • 12 years ago
europeanautosource
A 41-minute factory tour showing how the BMW i3 electric car is built from start to finish, in the style of a Megafactories documentary. It shows a highly automated production line with carbon-fiber body construction and robots doing most of the work.
58:59British Airways Boeing 747-400 in D-Check
9.7M views • 14 years ago
JDProductions INC.
An Engineering Giants documentary episode following a British Airways Boeing 747-400 through a D-check, the heaviest maintenance inspection, in Cardiff. The aircraft is stripped down and inspected nearly everywhere.