2006

S3.E1 ∙ When Facebook Resurrected the Dead

Tue, Jan 08, 2013

When Facebook claimed they could resurrect the dead, the world laughed. But Facebook were entirely serious.

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S3.E2 ∙ Facebook Graph Search: a more realistic commercial

Wed, Jan 16, 2013

I made Facebook a new commercial for Graph Search. I don't think they'll like it.

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S3.E3 ∙ Ten Illegal Things To Do In London

Mon, Feb 18, 2013

Ten illegal things to do in London. Yes, these are all properly illegal.

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S3.E4 ∙ A Brief History of Lyric Videos

Tue, Mar 05, 2013

There's a good argument that lyric videos count as a whole new genre. Here's that genre's history, presented in its own style.

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S3.E5 ∙ Yorkshire Yoga

Sun, May 12, 2013

Are you tired? Stiff? Feeling a bit peaky? Try Yorkshire Yoga.

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S3.E6 ∙ A Spaceship Simulator in a Caravan: the LHS Bikeshed

Mon, May 13, 2013

Chris Paton, Tom Wyatt and Charles Yarnold made a starship simulator out of an old caravan, using Unity, Processing, Arduino, and two and a half months of hard work.

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S3.E7 ∙ Lies on the London Underground

Tue, May 14, 2013

Tom and Matt investigate some of the London Underground's greatest lies.

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S3.E8 ∙ Instant Whey

Wed, May 15, 2013

I found some instant whey. I'm sorry.

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S3.E9 ∙ Why Jonathan Ross Can't Pronounce His Rs

Thu, May 23, 2013

Jonathan Ross is known as "Wossy". He can't say his Rs. But there's a good chance that you've got the same speech defect he does, and you don't even know it.

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S3.E10 ∙ Fantastic Features We Don't Have in the English Language

Thu, May 30, 2013

English is a biggest language - if you're talking about vocabulary. But it is still missing some really useful features.

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S3.E11 ∙ All the Colours, Including Grue: How Languages See Colours Differently

Thu, Jun 06, 2013

The different languages name colors in different ways. And linguists can't figure out why.

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S3.E12 ∙ Whatever Happened to Tom's Hoodie?: Tom Scott at Thinking Digital 2013

Tue, Jun 11, 2013

I give Thinking Digital 2013's health and safety crew a massive headache, while talking about sentimental value, physical objects and digital data.

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S3.E13 ∙ Why You Swear in Anglo-Saxon and Order Fancy Food in French: Registers

Thu, Jun 13, 2013

Why is an "odour" classier than a "smell"? Why is a "beverage" fancier than a "drink"? The answer lies in English history - and in the way we automatically know which 'register' of language to use. Includes bonus medieval advice for constipation.

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S3.E14 ∙ There's Nothing Wrong With Saying "10 Items or Less": Descriptivism vs Prescriptivism

Thu, Jun 20, 2013

If you see the phrase "10 items or less" in a supermarket and immediately cringe and complain that it should be "10 items or fewer" - well, you are not going to like this week's video.

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S3.E15 ∙ Ghoti and the Ministry of Helth: Spelling Reform

Thu, Jun 27, 2013

Every so often, someone has a brilliant idea to reform English spelling. And you're probably thinking that I'm about to go off on a rant about how spelling reform never works. The trouble is, sometimes, just sometimes, it does work.

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S3.E16 ∙ Gender Neutral Pronouns: They're Here, Get Used To Them

Thu, Jul 04, 2013

Grammatical gender is a silly concept. So I'm about to go against my vow of descriptivism, and risk being run over by the Linguistic Mafia's bus, and say this: it's a silly idea.

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S3.E17 ∙ Mele Kalikimaka: Why You Can't Say "Christmas" in Hawaiian

Thu, Jul 11, 2013

It's not that Hawaiian has a completely different word for Christmas -- it's just that Kalikimaka is the closest that Hawaiian can possibly get to the word Christmas.

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S3.E18 ∙ Oversight: Thank you for volunteering, citizen.

Thu, Aug 01, 2013

Or: what happens when you privatise Big Brother.

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S3.E19 ∙ How Many Gs Do You Pull in an Elevator?

Fri, Oct 11, 2013

In one of the tallest buildings in London, Tom answers the question of how many Gs you pull in a lift, with the help of some sugar and a very dirty kitchen scale.

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S3.E20 ∙ Why Do We Have "Ye Olde"? Obsolete Letters, and the Mysteries of Ye Olde Ming

Tue, Dec 03, 2013

Why do we say "Ye Olde"? Why is "Menzies" pronounced "Mingis"? To find out, we have to go back into history.

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S3.E21 ∙ Adjectival Order: Why A "Big Red Balloon", not a "Red Big Balloon"?

Tue, Dec 10, 2013

The order of adjectives is one of those wonderful linguistic things that no-one really notices until it's pointed out to them.

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S3.E22 ∙ Why You Can Tweet More In Japanese: What Counts As A Character?

Mon, Dec 16, 2013

Twitter was set up to support 140 characters. And in the English alphabet, that's easy to understand: a character is a letter, number, space or punctuation mark. People more or less agree with computers there. And if it was twenty years ago, that's exactly how the system would work. That far, no further. But now, we have Unicode.

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S3.E23 ∙ Making Flaps Vibrate In Your Throat: Voicing

Thu, Dec 19, 2013

There's an interesting thing about English that hardly anyone thinks about. There are two "th" sounds. And if you want to know why it took me twenty-one takes to record this intro, you try switching them round.

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