Tom Scott
Season 8
A series of educational web videos across a range of topics.
Where to Watch Tom Scott • Season 8
55 Episodes
- 17 Tonnes of Spinning Glass: Making the World's Largest Telescope
E117 Tonnes of Spinning Glass: Making the World's Largest TelescopeAt the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab, under the football stadium of the University of Arizona, there's an enormous rotating furnace, keeping tonnes of glass heated as it forms the mirrors for the Giant Magellan Telescope. Here's a look inside. - Canada's Most Successful King
E4Canada's Most Successful KingWilliam Lyon Mackenzie King was a sexually repressed, hypocritical, guilt-ridden, prostitute-visiting momma's boy who was exceptionally weird. He was also, perhaps, Canada's greatest prime minister. This week, Evan talks about legacy, and about how you don't need to be a good person to be a good politician. - Remote controlling an entire airport
E5Remote controlling an entire airportLondon City Airport's getting a new control tower: but it's just going to be a large mast with 14 high-definition cameras on it. The actual tower will be 80 miles away, in the headquarters of NATS near Swanwick. It feels questionable: but is it? - Faceswapping, Unethical Videos, and Future Shock
E6Faceswapping, Unethical Videos, and Future ShockI was going to tell a science fiction story about faceswapping, and mass blackmail. Then the news broke about unethical faceswapping videos, and software designed and marketed for creating them: and I realised the future had arrived faster than I thought. - Making artificial earthquakes with a huge steel ball
E7Making artificial earthquakes with a huge steel ballIn Göttingen, Germany, there's a four-tonne steel ball that can be raised up a 14-metre tower -- and then dropped in less than two seconds, crashing back to earth. It makes tiny, artificial earthquakes: here's why. - The moiré effect lights that guide ships home
E10The moiré effect lights that guide ships homeI'd never heard of moiré effect beacons until I got an email asking me about them. It seemed like a really clever idea - but it was really hard to research. Or at least it was, until I stumbled upon one magic phrase that revealed its history. - European clocks ran slow for a bit. British clocks didn't.
E11European clocks ran slow for a bit. British clocks didn't.Many people sent me this story: it covers my favourite topics of power grids and temporal anomalies. But when the mainstream press have already covered it, how could I add something more? The answer: by adding another pet topic, Unnecessary British Patriotism. And a teasmade. - How formation flying works
E12How formation flying worksThe Red Arrows are the Royal Air Force's aerobatic display team - the best in the world. They fly Hawk T1 jets, powering through the sky at hundreds of miles per hour, pulling high-G maneuvers with just a few metres between their wingtips. Here's how they do it: and part of it's a skill that you probably already know. - There's a mermaid show in Florida
E13There's a mermaid show in FloridaIn Weeki Wachee Springs State Park, Florida, there's a mermaid show -- and there has been for 70 years. It's one of the United States' oldest roadside attractions, and it still does three shows a day. At least, provided the local wildlife doesn't get in the way. - The US president has a bulletproof railcar
E14The US president has a bulletproof railcarUS Car Number 1, the Ferdinand Magellan, sits in the Gold Coast Railway Museum in Miami. It's 120 tonnes of bulletproof, armoured railcar: a train carriage designed to move the President of the United States around the country in safety and style. At least, it was, until other transport came along to do a better job. - Making an international standard cup of tea
E15Making an international standard cup of teaAs far as I can find, no-one has actually made a International Standard Cup of Tea - ISO 3103 or BS 6008 - for the internet before. Lots of people have talked about it, but that's easy. Making one? That requires precision... and some specialist equipment. - 2½ Hours of Unedited Garlic Bread Flight Footage
E182½ Hours of Unedited Garlic Bread Flight FootageThere's a concept called "Slow TV", championed by Norwegian broadcaster NRK, that emphasises long, unedited, contemplative journeys. Well, I've been snowed under with planning and editing some big projects, so for this week's video we're doing Slow TV with a video even less conventional than last week's. - How The Black Point Message Crashes Android Apps
E19How The Black Point Message Crashes Android Apps"_If you touch the black point then your WhatsApp will hang_", says the message that's being sent around, and it's right. It's a text rendering bug, the same as many others -- which isn't interesting. But the characters it's using, Unicode RTL and LTR marks, are worth knowing about. - How planes stay safe over the Atlantic
E20How planes stay safe over the AtlanticOver the North Atlantic, there's no radar coverage: so how do air traffic controllers keep planes safe? The answer, at least in part, can be found at Nav Canada's Gander Area Control Centre in Newfoundland. The North Atlantic Tracks are like freeway lanes in the sky, if freeway lanes were stacked a thousand feet on top of each other. - The US-Canada border splits this road down the middle
E22The US-Canada border splits this road down the middleRue Canusa (or Canusa Avenue) is a street that's split in two by a border: the northern part is in Stanstead, Canada, and the southern part is in Derby Line, USA - and border crossings here aren't as easy as they used to be. - The town that was burned for science
E23The town that was burned for scienceThe St Lawrence Burns were a series of deliberate fires in the soon-to-be-demolished village of Aultsville, Ontario, which was due to be flooded to make way for the St Lawrence Seaway. The results changed the way buildings are constructed around the world, and saved lives. - The giant freezer that tests winter boots
E24The giant freezer that tests winter bootsIf you're in Canada, you need good winter boots. But how do you know whether they're actually safe, or whether you'll fall over the first time you step on ice? This is WinterLab, part of the Challenging Environment Assessment Laboratories at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, where they're testing winter shoes with science. - Making 200,000 tons of arsenic dust safe
E25Making 200,000 tons of arsenic dust safeGiant Mine sits near Yellowknife, in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Once it was a productive gold mine, but after the gold ran out, the mining company went bankrupt and left the government to clean up the mess: enough arsenic trioxide dust to kill everyone on Earth. The solution: freezing it, at least for now. - Watching for nuclear attack in the Arctic
E27Watching for nuclear attack in the ArcticIn the far north of Canada sit the DEW Line stations: "Distant Early Warning". Built in the 1950s, these were the sites that would have sounded the alarm if the Soviet Union ever attacked North America. Or at least, they were until they went obsolete just a few years later. - We Should Let Some Wildfires Burn
E29We Should Let Some Wildfires BurnIn the last few years, wildfires have been getting worse - and, oddly, it's because humans have been preventing them. From a helicopter above the forests of British Columbia, and from the Tree Ring Lab at UBC, let's talk about how we should just let some wildfires burn. - I hit 3,000-year-old art with a hammer
E34I hit 3,000-year-old art with a hammerThe White Horse, in Uffington, is one of the oldest surviving works of art in Britain: carved into a hillside in Oxfordshire 3,000 years ago. Every year, it's rechalked by volunteers co-ordinated through the National Trust, a line of maintenance going back to before England had written history. - The collapsible crash-test robot car
E39The collapsible crash-test robot carThe Global Vehicle Target is the new standard for testing autonomous driving and crash test systems. To cameras and radar, it looks like a car: but if you hit it, it'll fly apart. So if your emergency braking doesn't quite work... well, this is what happens. - Wingwalking used to be a lot more dangerous
E41Wingwalking used to be a lot more dangerousBack in the 1920s, wingwalking claimed lives. Daredevils would move around on the top of a plane's wings, in mid-flight, often without any harness or any safety line. Maybe they'd be able to clip onto something during takeoff and landing, but maybe not. There are still a few of those true daredevil wingwalkers out there in the world, but in the 21st century... it's usually a bit different. - How the first ever telecoms scam worked
E42How the first ever telecoms scam workedIn the 1830s, two French brothers, François and Joseph Blanc, pulled off the first telecoms scam in history. The optical telegraph, a line of semaphore towers stretching from hilltop to hilltop, was for government use only: but something as simple as the law wasn't going to get in their way. - The Ogham language
E45The Ogham languageOgham is an old Irish script made by carving notches into stones. It fell out of use more than a millennium ago - but it's an interesting exception to a linguistics and computer-science rule that I'd never even realised existed. Let's talk about the Ogham Space Mark. - Britain's Largest Battery Is Actually A Lake
E47Britain's Largest Battery Is Actually A LakeDinorwig Power Station, otherwise known as Electric Mountain, is a pumped-storage hydro station in Llanberis, Wales. And yes: it's Britain's largest battery. Here's how it works, and why some of the things you think you know about TV pickups might not be so true any more. - Why Computers Can't Count Sometimes
E48Why Computers Can't Count SometimesSometimes, numbers on sites like YouTube and Twitter jump up and down; subscriber counts lag, like-counts bounce all over the place. Why is it so hard for computers to count? To answer that, we need to talk about threading, eventual consistency, and caching. - An American Stonehenge: The Mysterious Georgia Guidestones
E50An American Stonehenge: The Mysterious Georgia GuidestonesIn a field near Elberton, Georgia, USA, sit a set of mysterious standing stones: mysterious not because they're ancient, but because they were funded by someone anonymous in 1980, perhaps as a message to any survivors of the end of the world. - The Consequences of Your Code
E53The Consequences of Your CodeThis is the story of one of the best, and also one of the worst, text messages I've ever received. It's about harm, about consequences, and about the responsibilities that designers, coders and hackers have to make sure we treat other people with care.
