Tom Scott
Season 9
A series of educational web videos across a range of topics.
Where to Watch Tom Scott • Season 9
53 Episodes
- The Fishermen That Hold Their Breath For 10 Minutes
E1The Fishermen That Hold Their Breath For 10 MinutesThe Bajau people of Borneo can hold their breath longer than almost anyone else on the planet. How? Why? And how can the rest of us learn to hold our breath for longer? Rohin from Medlife Crisis explains. - I Got To See And Hold My Brain
E4I Got To See And Hold My BrainWe're all used to seeing MRI scans of brains. But how do they work? Can you really "see" brain activity, or read someone's mind? Alie and Micah from Neuro Transmissions went to get scanned -- and ended up having some fun with 3D printing, too. - How to slow down a stock exchange
E5How to slow down a stock exchangeHigh-frequency traders have a few tactics on stock exchanges: but simply put, they gather price information faster than anyone else, sometimes even faster than the markets themselves, and use that to make a tiny profit many, many, many times. There are all sorts of solutions: but it turns out there's a simpler one that involves physics. - The broken building that must not be destroyed
E9The broken building that must not be destroyedSt Peter's Seminary sits in woodland about an hour west of Glasgow, near a village called Cardross. If you like Brutalist architecture, then it's a beautiful ruin: if not, then perhaps your view isn't so kind. It's a historic, religious building: but it's also a money sink that can't be demolished. - The Last Play-For-Cash Fascination Parlor
E10The Last Play-For-Cash Fascination ParlorOn Nantasket Beach in the seaside town of Hull, Massachusetts, sits the last play-for-cash Fascination Parlor in the world. It's a century-old arcade game, made of relays that click and buzz. There are a few other parlors left in the world: but this is the only one where you're playing for actual money. - The library of rare colors
E11The library of rare colorsThe Forbes Pigment Collection at the Harvard Art Museums is a collection of pigments, binders, and other art materials for researchers to use as standards: so they can tell originals from restorations from forgeries. It's not open to the public, because it's a working research library -- and because some of the pigments in there are rare, historic, or really shouldn't be handled by anyone untrained. - Blindfold balancing in the spinning space chair
E12Blindfold balancing in the spinning space chairThe Multi-Axes Rotation and Tilt Device (MART) is used for spatial orientation experiments: it's a chair balanced on a metaphorical knife-edge, powered by precise and fast motors. And my job was to not fall over. - The artificial gravity lab
E13The artificial gravity labIn the Ashton Graybiel Spatial Orientation Laboratory at Brandeis University, there's the Artificial Gravity Facility: otherwise known as the rotating room. No-one's invented futuristic gravity plating yet, but if you want to test how humans would cope with artificial gravity, this is the best way. - I Drove My Childhood Favorite Racing Game In Real Life
E14I Drove My Childhood Favorite Racing Game In Real LifeWhen I was a kid, I played the demo version of Need for Speed II a lot. Just the demo: it came free on a CD with a monthly computer magazine. Every detail of that one demo track was stored in my head, long-dormant... until I ended up in Vancouver, and memories started surfacing in very odd ways. - The sculpture that looks like a real-life cartoon
E16The sculpture that looks like a real-life cartoonGibbs Farm, in New Zealand, is an enormous private sculpture collection. Its most famous piece is Horizons, by Neil Dawson - and it looks like a cartoon tissue somehow painted onto the landscape. To see it in person, though, will take a bit of effort. - The Hundred-Tonne Robots That Help Keep New Zealand Running
E17The Hundred-Tonne Robots That Help Keep New Zealand RunningThe Ports of Auckland are automating their straddle carriers, which might not seem like much: until you phrase it as "hundred-tonne autonomous robots guided by nanosecond-precision tracking". - The brain-eating amoebas of Kerosene Creek
E18The brain-eating amoebas of Kerosene CreekKerosene Creek is a natural hot spring near Rotorua, on the North Island of New Zealand. And there have been official warnings for years: don't put your head under water. It turns out that "brain-eating amoebas", naegleria fowleri, are a real, if rare, thing. - The first 3D color X-rays
E19The first 3D color X-raysAt the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, New Zealand, the team at Mars Bioimaging are using detector equipment originally developed for the Large Hadron Collider, and putting it to a very different use: medical imaging that allows 3D, false-color images inside the human body. - The circle visible from space
E20The circle visible from spaceMount Taranaki, on the North Island of New Zealand, is a large-scale circle that's visible from space: a stratovolcano with six miles of forest around it. But that didn't happen naturally. Oh, and there's a good chance that, in the next fifty years or so, it might explode. - Testing a zip line that goes round corners
E21Testing a zip line that goes round cornersIf you invent a new theme park or amusement ride, how do you test it to make sure it's safe? There's no Federal Bureau of Zip Lines. I visited one of the companies that does just that sort of testing - and, now, inventing. - What counts as the world's steepest street?
E22What counts as the world's steepest street?Baldwin Street in Dunedin, New Zealand, has the Guinness World Record for "steepest paved road over a continuous distance of more than ten metres". Which is enough to bring in quite a few tourists. What's the history? And what counts as "steepest street"? - The one-lane bridge shared by cars and trains
E23The one-lane bridge shared by cars and trainsNear Hindon, on the South Island of New Zealand, there's one of only two remaining one-lane road-rail bridges in the country. No barriers, no lights, no sirens: if you're driving across this, you need to make sure to listen out for the train horn. - Mr Olds' remarkable elevator
E24Mr Olds' remarkable elevatorOlds Engineering, a traditional workshop and foundry, sits in Maryborough, Australia. It's not the sort of place you'd expect to find a new industrial invention in the 21st century: and yet the Olds Elevator, patented by Peter Olds, is just that. - These tunnels stop part of Tokyo flooding
E27These tunnels stop part of Tokyo floodingIf you believe the hype, then the Metropolitan Area Underground Discharge Channel stops Tokyo flooding. It doesn't. But it is one colossal part of a huge network of flood defences that protect a city that would otherwise be, well, very wet. - How To Build An App: Everything You Didn't Know You Needed To Know
E28How To Build An App: Everything You Didn't Know You Needed To KnowThis isn't going to be a click-a-button and follow-along series that gives you the same result as everything else. We're not even going to talk about code. This is everything you didn't know you needed to know about building an app. - The only bit of Louisiana's coast that isn't sinking
E37The only bit of Louisiana's coast that isn't sinkingOn a coastline that's steadily sinking under the waves, the Wax Lake Delta is rising: which is a wonderful thing for researchers. Historically, every time humans try and mess with the Mississippi, there have been unintended consequences: and even though we can now model it fairly well, there are still surprises. - The elevator shaft was invented before the elevator
E47The elevator shaft was invented before the elevatorIt sounds ridiculous, but it's true. At the Cooper Union Foundation Building in New York, there's the world's first elevator shaft: constructed four years before the safety elevator was invented. - I visited the US National Helium Reserve
E48I visited the US National Helium ReserveAt the National Helium Reserve in Amarillo, Texas, the US government once stored 32 billion cubic feet of helium. There have been breathless news articles recently saying the world's running out: but it's still possible to buy party balloons. What's going on?
