2006

S13.E1 ∙ The "architecture graveyard" is alive and well

Sun, Jan 01, 2023

Poly Canyon, at Cal Poly, is an experimental architecture laboratory. And it's open to the public.

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S13.E2 ∙ This rollercoaster doesn't stop automatically

Sun, Jan 08, 2023

The Great Scenic Railway, at Luna Park in Melbourne, Australia, is the second oldest roller coaster in the world: and it's one of only a few which still uses a manual brake. Here's how it works.

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S13.E3 ∙ These chickens save lives.

Sun, Jan 15, 2023

"Sentinel chickens" in New South Wales provide an early warning system against MVE, a mosquito-borne disease.

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S13.E4 ∙ I took a ride on a moving radio telescope

Sun, Jan 22, 2023

The Parkes Radio Telescope, part of CSIRO, is one of the most famous telescopes in the world: and it's got a unique way of getting equipment up and down from the central section.

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S13.E5 ∙ Why Australia bottles up its air

Sun, Jan 29, 2023

Every few months, when the wind's blowing in the right direction, a bottle of air is taken from Kennaook/Cape Grim, at the northern tip of Tasmania, and saved for science. Here's how and why.

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S13.E6 ∙ Google gave the Shweeb $1,000,000.

Sun, Feb 05, 2023

At Velocity Valley in Rotorua, New Zealand, there's the Shweeb: a pedal-powered monorail. It's a fun ride: but in 2010, Google gave it a million dollars as a potential "future of transit."

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S13.E7 ∙ I tried using AI. It scared me.

Sun, Feb 12, 2023

I just wanted to fix my email.

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S13.E8 ∙ This café sends food through pneumatic tubes

Sun, Feb 19, 2023

C1 Espresso, in Christchurch, New Zealand, has a set of pneumatic tubes. But that's not enough on its own to keep a business running.

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S13.E9 ∙ This is 'impossible', but New Zealand is trying anyway.

Sun, Feb 26, 2023

The common wisdom is that, once an invasive species is truly established, it can't be eradicated - but I talked to the team from Predator Free Wellington, who think they can do just that.

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S13.E10 ∙ The city with a hundred private cable cars

Sun, Mar 05, 2023

Wellington, in New Zealand, has more than a hundred private cable cars. I found out why.

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S13.E11 ∙ Things are changing at the world's oldest hotel

Sun, Mar 12, 2023

Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan is not just the world's oldest hotel, but the world's oldest still-operating business. Or at least, that's one way of looking at it. But things are changing here, just like they always have.

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S13.E12 ∙ This bus transforms into a train

Sun, Mar 19, 2023

The DMV, or Dual Mode Vehicle, on the Asa Coast Railway in Shikoku, Japan, is a hybrid bus and train. And I rode it.

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S13.E13 ∙ I climbed inside a giant robotic parking garage

Sun, Mar 26, 2023

I was going to film a video about a robot bicycle park. And then GIKEN, the company who built it, said: you know we do this for cars as well, right?

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S13.E14 ∙ I rode the world's fastest train.

Sun, Apr 02, 2023

I thought maglev trains were a dead-end technology: but it looks like I was wrong. At JR Central's Yamanashi Maglev Test Track, I rode Japan's new maglev.

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S13.E15 ∙ This tiny hovercraft went viral.

Sun, Apr 09, 2023

Hideyasu Ito runs the Micro Hovercraft Laboratory, and I got to meet him and ride his incredible four-bubble hovercraft.

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S13.E16 ∙ It's the Matrix, but for locusts.

Sun, Apr 16, 2023

At the Department of Collective Behaviour, part of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, researchers are putting locusts into simulated worlds, both virtual and physical, in the hope that they can figure out how devastating swarms form and move.

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S13.E17 ∙ The military base where you drive over the runway

Sun, Apr 23, 2023

Meiringen Air Base, in Switzerland, has an unusual feature: two public roads that go straight over the runway. How do they keep it safe? And, as a side note, just how loud is it when you're standing next to a fighter jet?

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S13.E18 ∙ How they saved the holes in Swiss cheese

Sun, Apr 30, 2023

Agroscope is a Swiss government-backed agricultural research lab. It's got a lot of other research projects too, but it also keeps a backup of the Swiss cheese bacterial cultures - just in käse.

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S13.E19 ∙ The world's cleanest railway

Sun, May 07, 2023

At CEA-Leti, in Grenoble, there's a "funicular" that not many people get to ride: because it's between two clean rooms, and getting to it requires quite a lot of preparation.

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S13.E20 ∙ The people who get paid to get sick

Sun, May 14, 2023

I went inside the former hotel where, for science (and money), people are volunteering to get colds, flu, and RSV.

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S13.E21 ∙ Shake tables are way more complex than I thought

Sun, May 21, 2023

At the University of California San Diego, there's the Shake Table: an earthquake simulator with the heaviest payload capacity in the world.

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S13.E22 ∙ This is an excuse to show you a really good tunnel

Sun, May 28, 2023

The Catesby Tunnel, in the UK, is an old Victorian railway tunnel that has a new use: a secretive car testing facility, like a wind tunnel but in reverse. So rather than just show it to the world, I thought I'd answer a question: if you stick a camera on the outside of your car, how much does the drag cost you?

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S13.E23 ∙ No-one knows how explosions work (yet)

Sun, Jun 04, 2023

The first few moments of an explosion can't be simulated yet. But there's a team at the University of Sheffield working on it.

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S13.E24 ∙ I had to throw out my script about this submarine simulator

Sun, Jun 11, 2023

In an old mill in a remote corner of Italy, sits the Bathysphere Project at Explorandia: a submarine simulator that explores an actual, small pond. It might be the best homemade project I've ever seen.

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S13.E25 ∙ The cable car that you pedal by hand

Sun, Jun 18, 2023

Through the mountains of Slovenia, there are manual cable cars: some historic, some more modern. There aren't many left. I was able to try one, and to talk to the person who still maintains it.

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S13.E26 ∙ The first jungle gym was meant to hack kids' brains

Sun, Jun 25, 2023

Well before the first climbing frame was patented as "jungle gym", mathematician Charles Hinton thought they might be able to teach kids four-dimensional thinking. Filmed at the Winnetka Historical Society.

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S13.E27 ∙ Six months from now, this channel stops.

Fri, Jun 30, 2023

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S13.E28 ∙ How can you legally fly a plane designed in 1910?

Sun, Jul 02, 2023

Filmed at the Wright "B" Flyer Inc. at the Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport.

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S13.E29 ∙ I thought this rotating house was impossible.

Sun, Jul 09, 2023

Near San Diego, California, there's a rotating house: and somehow, all the utilities, the electricity, gas and water, work even on the rotating part. How's that possible?

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S13.E30 ∙ If this survives for an hour, it passes the Bear Test.

Sun, Jul 16, 2023

At the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, Montana, you can get a product certified as bear-resistant - by actual bears.

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S13.E31 ∙ A bear found my GoPro and took a selfie

Sun, Jul 23, 2023

An unexpected update.

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S13.E32 ∙ Grizzly bear GoPro selfie: raw unedited footage

Sun, Jul 23, 2023

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S13.E33 ∙ Storing dead people at -196°C

Sun, Jul 30, 2023

In Switzerland, there's a new cryonics company: and they invited me to have a look around. I had questions: legal, practical, and ethical, and I want to be clear: this is not an endorsement. I just wasn't going to turn down that invitation.

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S13.E34 ∙ This town banned cars (except tiny electric ones)

Sun, Aug 06, 2023

Zermatt, in Switzerland, bans all private cars and all gasoline cars. But if you run a business, you might be able to buy one of the special, tiny ones that are built right there.

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S13.E35 ∙ This town throws pennies at people. They hurt.

Sun, Aug 13, 2023

The Honiton Hot Pennies ceremony is the result of 800 years of tradition: from when rich people would entertain themselves by throwing scalding-hot pennies onto the poor people below. These days, it's a bit less dangerous - but only a bit.

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S13.E36 ∙ No-one built these for 5,000 years... until now.

Sun, Aug 20, 2023

Long barrows are Neolithic constructions that might have been churches, or graveyards, or landmarks. And some are being built again: for the first time in recorded history.

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S13.E37 ∙ This man built his office inside an elevator

Sun, Aug 27, 2023

The Bata Skyscraper, in Zlín, Czechia, is a landmark of architecture. And the office of Jan Antonín Bata - is an elevator.

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S13.E38 ∙ Why are adverts so loud?

Sun, Sep 03, 2023

This was so much more complex than I thought.

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S13.E39 ∙ This library has every book ever published.

Sun, Sep 10, 2023

A profile of the legal deposit program at British Library.

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S13.E40 ∙ How languages steal words from each other

Sun, Sep 17, 2023

This is the only pirate reference you're getting from me.

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S13.E41 ∙ Spherical houses weren't a great idea.

Sun, Sep 24, 2023

The Bolwoningen, in Den Bosch, in the Netherlands, are experimental architecture: the surprising part is that people still live there.

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S13.E42 ∙ The largest telescope that will ever be built*

Sun, Oct 01, 2023

The asterisk is important.

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S13.E43 ∙ I finally rode the weird, curved German elevator.

Sun, Oct 08, 2023

At the New Town Hall, the Neues Rathaus, in Hanover, there's a strange elevator where the track curves unevenly. For years, people from Germany have been emailing Tom about it: well, he finally visited.

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S13.E44 ∙ there'dn't've

Sun, Oct 15, 2023

This script was a nightmare to pronounce.

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S13.E45 ∙ 0-100 in less than a second. And I'm driving.

Sun, Oct 22, 2023

AMZ Racing's "mythen" holds the world record for electric vehicle acceleration: 0-100km/h in 0.956 seconds. And they let me drive it.

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S13.E46 ∙ Boarding planes could have been very different

Sun, Oct 29, 2023

There's a world in which everyone boards planes with "mobile lounges", PTVs, or Plane-Mates - but this is not that world.

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S13.E47 ∙ Does the language you speak change how you think?

Sun, Nov 05, 2023

No. Mostly.

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S13.E48 ∙ Every mistake I've made since 2014.

Sun, Nov 12, 2023

Time to correct the record.

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S13.E49 ∙ These tiny ships have a serious purpose

Sun, Nov 19, 2023

At Port Ilawa in Poland, pilots and captains of massive ships train on 1-to-24 scale ship models: and I got to drive one.

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S13.E50 ∙ Why use many streetlights when one will do?

Sun, Nov 26, 2023

The moonlight towers of Austin, Texas, are the last urban municipal lighting towers in the world: because before every street was wired to the grid, how else would you light up a city?

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