today show

Engineering Explained uses physics to show why today's electric cars, including Teslas, are poor at towing, pointing to battery energy density and weight. It examines Cybertruck and F-150 towing claims.

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.

Monty Montgomery of Xiph.org gives real-time demonstrations of sampling, quantization, bit depth and dither using real audio equipment, including both digital analysis tools and vintage analog bench gear. It shows that sampled audio is not stair-stepped and corrects common misconceptions about digital audio.

Not Just Bikes compares the same cycling trip to a hardware store in Calgary and in Amsterdam, using a 'plus 1 minus 2' format. It shows how street design shapes how safe and practical cycling is.

An Economics Explained video arguing that the Netherlands shows taxes alone can't reduce wealth inequality. It distinguishes income inequality from wealth inequality and discusses the Gini index.

A nutrition-science explainer reviewing the human evidence on whether seed oils cause inflammation. It looks at nine different seed oils, heated oils, and genetic variability, and compares omega-6 intake with saturated fat.

Tom Scott explains why a vivid pink pigment by artist Stuart Semple cannot be fully shown on a screen, and touches on the dispute over exclusive rights to the blackest black pigment. It is a short explainer on color gamuts and pigment politics.

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.

Engineering Explained examines new research suggesting corn ethanol in US gasoline may emit as much or more carbon than gasoline. It covers the Renewable Fuel Standard and why ethanol was assumed to be a green fuel.

8-Bit Show And Tell walks through the BASIC source code of the original Commodore 64 Sid Meier's Pirates!. It covers bugs, quirks and traces of abandoned features and scenarios left in the code.

Hans Rosling uses augmented-reality animation to show 200 countries over 200 years in four minutes, built from 120,000 data points. It tracks life expectancy and income to show the world's development.

A short BicycleDutch episode showing how people with disabilities use Dutch cycle tracks on hand-cycles, tricycles and mobility scooters.

Huygens Optics shows how DIY photon sieves shape a laser's wave front, explaining how they differ from zone plates and how aperture count affects the focal point, with time-resolved visualizations of the diffraction.

Mark Handley of UCL explains, with simulation visualizations, how early Starlink satellites without inter-satellite links could still give low-latency wide-area communication by hopping via ground relays. He shows it can beat fibre on many long paths.

An MTA video on communications-based train control, the system meant to replace the New York City subway's century-old signaling. It also shows the mechanical interlocks and signals in use today.

NFPA video in which wildfire researcher Jack Cohen explains that embers (firebrands), not the flame front, are the main cause of homes igniting in wildfires. He shows how landscaping and removing debris around the home reduce risk.

3Blue1Brown's animated visual introduction to the Fourier Transform, showing how a signal breaks into frequency components.

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.

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.

A short explainer on the history and mechanics of public key cryptography and the Diffie-Hellman key exchange. It uses a mixing-paint-colors analogy to show how two parties can agree on a shared secret in public.

Veritasium explores the Prisoner's Dilemma and Axelrod's tournaments, showing why tit-for-tat and forgiving strategies win in repeated games. It extends the ideas to cooperation in evolution and conflict.

Sabine Hossenfelder explains how close nuclear fusion really is to break-even, and why headlines about ITER and lab milestones are misleading. She distinguishes plasma gain (Q plasma) from whole-system gain (Q total) and shows the latter is still far below one.

3Blue1Brown walks through a very hard Putnam competition problem and its elegant solution, emphasizing the visual intuition and the thought process behind solving it.

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.

CGP Grey's six-minute explainer of the relationships the UK could have with the EU, based on Barnier's slide, shown as orbits of different closeness. It explains why the UK's red lines ruled out the closer options.

A short CGP Grey explainer on the alternative vote (instant runoff voting) versus first past the post, made around the 2011 UK referendum. It shows how ranked ballots are tallied and why they avoid spoiler 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.

A short animated simulation comparing how Multics and Unix were developed, showing why Unix's small composable programs and pipes gave it a efficiency advantage. It frames Unix as a moonshot achievable by a small team.

3Blue1Brown explains fractal dimension and shows why many fractals are not strictly self-similar. Self-similarity turns out to be a special case of the broader idea of fractional dimension.

Technology Connections examines why light bulbs have the lifespans they do, including the real history of the Phoebus cartel. He shows that bulb life trades off against brightness and efficiency rather than being simple planned obsolescence.

VFX supervisor Jonas Ussing examines what studios mean by "no CGI", showing how much invisible CGI hides behind practical-effects marketing. It is the first part of a multi-part series that includes analysis of doctored behind-the-scenes footage.

ScienceClic explains why the rubber sheet analogy for general relativity is misleading and offers a new visualization that includes the curvature of time and shows gravity as motion through curved spacetime.

CGP Grey compares airplane boarding methods, based on an arXiv paper, and shows why the intuitive back-to-front approach is slow while random or outside-in boarding does better.

Matt Parker talks Numberphile through the different kinds of numbers: algebraic, transcendental, computable, normal, and beyond. It shows how few numbers we can actually name or describe.

Everyday Astronaut's Tim Dodd runs an hour-long, data-driven analysis of what rockets actually emit and how that compares with airliners and other industries. It breaks down exhaust by propellant type, per-passenger and total emissions, and ways launches could be cleaner.

3Blue1Brown shows how the uncertainty principle arises from Fourier transforms. A wave packet cannot be narrow in both position and frequency, so the principle is a property of waves rather than of measurement.

Technology Connections explains how old-fashioned non-electronic rice cookers work, using a magnet and spring switch tripped by the Curie point. It shows the thermodynamics and magnetism behind a simple appliance.

3Blue1Brown builds visual intuition for quaternions, showing how to think about this four-dimensional number system using stereographic projection and rotations in 3D space. It is part one of a two-part series with an interactive companion site.

The 8-Bit Guy covers IBM's 1981 CGA graphics system, including how composite output and artifacting produced extra colors beyond the nominal palette. He argues CGA looked better in period than it does on RGB monitors.

Technology Connections takes a long, detailed look at how a 1970s electromechanical pinball machine works, from relays to stepper motors and mechanical logic. It is the first part of a series.