virtual threads

Insider explains how The Mandalorian replaced green screens with LED walls that project real-time 3D environments behind actors, with over half the show filmed on such virtual sets.

An Extra Credits episode on how MMO economies get overrun by inflation when players can mint unlimited gold by killing monsters. It covers approaches borrowed from real-world economics, such as anchoring or pegging currency, as alternatives to simple gold sinks.

Walt Disney Animation Studios' short introduction to path tracing, showing how rays are traced and bounced through a virtual scene to simulate light. It explains how this approach is used in animated films.

CGP Grey narrates an animated adaptation of Nick Bostrom's Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant. The story uses a dragon that demands a daily toll of lives as a metaphor for aging and society's acceptance of death.

CGP Grey explains that the City of London is a tiny, separate entity with its own governance, history and privileges, distinct from the city called London. He covers its financial role and how it is run.

CGP Grey explains first-past-the-post voting and why it pushes elections toward two dominant parties. It is the first in his series on electoral systems.

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.

Not Just Bikes explains how North American speed limits are set and why posted limits matter far less than street design. It argues that drivers follow the road's cues, so safe speeds have to be built into the street.

CGP Grey argues for picking a theme for the year or season instead of setting goals or new year's resolutions. He explains how a theme gives direction without a pass/fail target.

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.

CGP Grey argues that your brain treats a whole home as one room during lockdown, blurring work, rest and leisure. He recommends creating separate spaces and routines for different activities to stay balanced.

Kurzgesagt examines what individuals can do about climate change, covering lesser-known carbon sources and why systemic and political change matter more than personal footprints.

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 explains why the one-way speed of light has never been measured, only the round-trip speed, since measuring it requires synchronized clocks that assume the answer. It explores the implications for relativity.

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.

CGP Grey explains split-brain patients, where severing the corpus callosum lets the two hemispheres act independently. He uses this to explore the idea of two minds in one head.

Not Just Bikes argues that car-dependent suburbs rob children of independence, contrasting North American suburbia with Dutch cities where kids walk and bike on their own. It is the creator's remake of an earlier video on the topic.

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.

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.

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.

Tantacrul explains how he and engraver Simon Smith designed the free music notation font for MuseScore 3.6. It draws on the history of the SCORE notation application by Leland Smith.

Practical Engineering explains why connecting solar and other inverter-based generation to the grid is hard. It covers grid stability, load balancing and the behind-the-scenes engineering challenges of renewables.

Wendover Productions explains why Boeing's efficient 787 beat Airbus's giant A380, contrasting hub-and-spoke with point-to-point routes. It covers the economics of long-haul flights.

Together Louisiana asks why Louisiana stays poor despite its natural resources and industry, focusing on industrial tax exemptions and corporate welfare.

Cody's Lab builds a 200-billionth-scale model to show how far away the nearest stars are, using parallax and light speed. A short astronomy explainer on interstellar distances.

Not Just Bikes explains, using Urban3's property-tax analysis, why car-dependent suburbs generate less tax revenue than they cost to maintain, so dense urban cores effectively subsidize them. It is part of a Strong Towns series.

Numberphile interviews cryptographer Ron Rivest about end-to-end verifiable voting. He explains how homomorphic encryption and receipts let a voter confirm their ballot was counted without being able to prove how they voted to anyone else.

FortNine looks at the data on why newer pickup trucks with tall, blunt grilles kill so many pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. It argues that lowering hood height would substantially cut fatalities.

Not Just Bikes explains how small pockets of shops and restaurants inside residential Dutch neighbourhoods create liveliness and help reduce traffic. It argues this kind of mixed-use design has been illegal in most of the US and Canada for a century because of zoning, and should be brought back.

Real Engineering examines the efficiency of hydrogen as an energy carrier. It follows production, storage and fuel cell conversion losses and compares hydrogen cars with battery electric vehicles.

Kurzgesagt explains how accumulating space junk could trigger a collision cascade (Kessler syndrome) that makes launches too dangerous and traps humanity on Earth.

Veritasium explains the effort to redefine the kilogram, which was still defined by a physical artifact, and how a near-perfect silicon sphere from the Avogadro project helps. It also covers the history of the unit's odd naming.

An animated simulation comparing single-winner voting methods such as plurality, instant runoff and STAR. Colored regions show which candidate wins as a randomized electorate shifts across a two-dimensional political space, building on Ka-Ping Yee's earlier diagrams.

A short video on the US Sprint anti-ballistic missile, which accelerated to around Mach 10 in seconds under extreme g-forces and heat. It includes striking launch footage and a brief development history.

Explains induced demand beyond roads, showing that it applies to transit, walking and cycling infrastructure too but with different consequences. It corrects common misunderstandings of the concept.

Veritasium explains why bicycles are stable, arguing that gyroscopic effects are not the answer. The video shows countersteering and an experiment where riders blocked from steering the opposite way cannot turn.

The School of Life sets out principles for making attractive cities, arguing that the art has been lost in the modern world.

A Kurzgesagt explainer on why the human population exploded and why growth is slowing, drawing on Our World in Data. It argues that birth rates fall as countries develop, easing overpopulation fears.

Adam Neely explains what perfect (absolute) pitch is, how it differs from relative and quasi-absolute pitch, and why he would not want it. He covers its drawbacks, including drift with age.