• 2006

Episode list

Tom Scott
Why Britain Sucks At Product Placement
Sun, Jan 03, 2016
  • S6.E1
  • Why Britain Sucks At Product Placement
Britain has some of the strongest product placement rules in the world - and it means YouTube vloggers have to declare their advertising before you click on the video. Why? And what did it mean for our version of The Price is Right?
0 /10
Why Mountain Dew Rots Your Teeth More Than Coca-Cola
Sun, Aug 28, 2016
  • S6.E38
  • Why Mountain Dew Rots Your Teeth More Than Coca-Cola
"Hi Tom, I've got two of my sister's teeth dissolving in cola." That was the best pitch I got for guest videos - and so please welcome Chase from ScienceC, to talk about pH, TA, and show off some really disgusting close-ups of rotten teeth.
0 /10
The Man Who Invented, Then Hated, Shopping Malls
Sun, Jul 03, 2016
  • S6.E29
  • The Man Who Invented, Then Hated, Shopping Malls
Victor Gruen is, according to history, the man who invented the shopping mall - but that wasn't quite what he was aiming for.
0 /10
Why Britain Sucks At Product Placement

S6.E1 ∙ Why Britain Sucks At Product Placement

Sun, Jan 03, 2016
Britain has some of the strongest product placement rules in the world - and it means YouTube vloggers have to declare their advertising before you click on the video. Why? And what did it mean for our version of The Price is Right?
0 /10
Calling The Police Doesn't Charge Your Phone Battery

S6.E3 ∙ Calling The Police Doesn't Charge Your Phone Battery

Sun, Jan 17, 2016
In Slough, outside the headquarters of Blackberry, I talk about an urban legend that's almost true: the idea that calling 999, the British emergency number, could actually charge your phone battery. It's not quite right, but it's close.
0 /10
How

S6.E5 ∙ How "Crash Safari" Reboots Your Phone

Sun, Jan 24, 2016
Crash Safari dot com -- and no, I'm deliberately not linking to it -- crashes your phone. Or your browser. Pretty much instantly. How? And after several months of obscurity, why did it go viral so fast today?
0 /10
What Counts as the World's Largest Clock?

S6.E9 ∙ What Counts as the World's Largest Clock?

Sun, Feb 07, 2016
Time is complicated. World records are complicated. Put the two together, and you've got a fight about large clocks between Düsseldorf's Rheinturm, the Mecca Clock Tower, and a laser sculpture from Burning Man.
0 /10
Why 1/1/1970 Bricks Your iPhone

S6.E10 ∙ Why 1/1/1970 Bricks Your iPhone

Thu, Feb 11, 2016
People keep finding bugs in iPhones, and other people keep asking me to make videos about them. So here you go. Here's a tale of binary, of the Unix epoch, and a date beyond the lifespan of the universe.
0 /10
Power, Politics and Pragmatism: The British National Grid

S6.E11 ∙ Power, Politics and Pragmatism: The British National Grid

Sun, Feb 14, 2016
Back in the 1920s, electricity was generated by hundreds of small companies in towns and cities across the country. They were all different and mostly incompatible: London alone had 24 voltages and 10 frequencies. How did we get from there to the billion-pound tunnel projects of today?
0 /10
Inside A Satellite Clean Room

S6.E12 ∙ Inside A Satellite Clean Room

Sun, Feb 21, 2016
Welcome to Innovative Space Logistics, in the Netherlands: they invited me inside their clean room to see an actual CubeSat satellite that's going into space soon.
0 /10
Will YouTube Ever Run Out Of Video IDs?

S6.E15 ∙ Will YouTube Ever Run Out Of Video IDs?

Sun, Mar 20, 2016
In the URL of each YouTube video is the 11-character video ID, unique for each video. Can they ever run out? Just how many videos can YouTube handle? To work it out, we need to talk about counting systems, and about something called Base 64.
0 /10
In Norway, Everyone Can Know How Much You Earn

S6.E18 ∙ In Norway, Everyone Can Know How Much You Earn

Wed, Apr 13, 2016
Wage transparency is a strange concept for most of us: not so in some of the Nordic countries. And while Norway, Sweden and Finland differ in exactly the amount of access they give the public, fundamentally your tax return would be public knowledge there. So how does it affect the world? And is it a good idea? Let's look at the science and find out.
0 /10
Help, My Fusion Reactor's Making A Weird Noise

S6.E19 ∙ Help, My Fusion Reactor's Making A Weird Noise

Sun, Apr 24, 2016
At the JET reactor at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy -- I talk to the engineers about fusion power, being the hottest place in the solar system, deliberate disruptions, and about the surround-sound speakers that give a diagnostic test you might not expect.
0 /10
The Flower That Smells Like Death

S6.E27 ∙ The Flower That Smells Like Death

Sun, Jun 19, 2016
There's a titan arum - a corpse flower - blooming at the Eden Project in Cornwall. For years, it stores energy: and then for 48 hours, it heats up and sends out the smell of decay and death through the rainforest. And it stinks.
0 /10
The Bus Replacement Rail Service (yes, that's the right way round)

S6.E30 ∙ The Bus Replacement Rail Service (yes, that's the right way round)

Tue, Jul 05, 2016
This may be the most British video I've done in a while. But I saw the news story and immediately wanted to film it: the volunteer-run, narrow-gauge Leadhills and Wanlockhead Railway, in the south of Scotland, has stepped in to replace buses while a road is being resurfaced -- avoiding a 45-mile diversion and meaning that local residents can still get to their neighbouring village. This isn't the first bus replacement train in British history, but it's pretty rare.
0 /10
The Fake Vinegar In British Fish and Chip Shops

S6.E33 ∙ The Fake Vinegar In British Fish and Chip Shops

Sun, Jul 24, 2016
"Non-brewed condiment" is what they call it: it's chemically very similar to proper vinegar, a mixture of ethanoic acid, colourings and flavourings, but it's put together by just combining simple chemicals rather than brewing. Hardly anyone knows, and those that do know don't generally care; so here's my question. Does it matter?
0 /10
Hebocon UK: Deliberately Terrible Robot Fighting

S6.E35 ∙ Hebocon UK: Deliberately Terrible Robot Fighting

Sun, Aug 07, 2016
If your robot-building skills aren't quite up to Battlebots or Robot Wars, then Hebocon might be for you. Described "as a robot sumo-wrestling competition for those who are not technically gifted", the emphasis is on having fun, entertaining the crowd, and "heboiness". At Electromagnetic Field 2016, a maker festival in the UK, I hosted one of the UK's first Hebocon contests.
0 /10
The Problem With Renewable Energy (and how we're fixing it)

S6.E36 ∙ The Problem With Renewable Energy (and how we're fixing it)

Wed, Aug 17, 2016
As the world switches to renewable energy - and we are switching - there's a problem you might not expect: balancing the grid. Rotational mass and system inertia are the things that keep your lights from flickering: and they only appear in big, old, traditional power stations. Here's why that's a problem, and how we're likely going to fix it.
0 /10
The Battery That's Lasted 176 Years

S6.E37 ∙ The Battery That's Lasted 176 Years

Sun, Aug 21, 2016
In a laboratory at Oxford University sits the Oxford Electric Bell, which has spent 176 years constantly ringing. And no-one's quite sure what the battery that powers it is made of.
0 /10
Why Mountain Dew Rots Your Teeth More Than Coca-Cola

S6.E38 ∙ Why Mountain Dew Rots Your Teeth More Than Coca-Cola

Sun, Aug 28, 2016
"Hi Tom, I've got two of my sister's teeth dissolving in cola." That was the best pitch I got for guest videos - and so please welcome Chase from ScienceC, to talk about pH, TA, and show off some really disgusting close-ups of rotten teeth.
0 /10
Internet to the Arctic: A Greenlandic Relay Station

S6.E44 ∙ Internet to the Arctic: A Greenlandic Relay Station

Wed, Sep 21, 2016
Jakob emailed me when I said I was headed to the Arctic, offering to help out with a video. I don't think he knew what he was signing up for. Thank you so much to both Jakob Schytz and John Davidsen: we had only a few minutes to film this before I had to be on the last Zodiac boat out of town, so I'm really happy with the result.
0 /10
The Inuktitut Language

S6.E45 ∙ The Inuktitut Language

Sun, Sep 25, 2016
Inuktitut syllabics are brilliant. A writing system that's not an alphabet, but something really clever: an abugida, one designed from scratch for a language very unlike anything European.
0 /10
Cold Wars, Cruise Ships, and the Northwest Passage

S6.E46 ∙ Cold Wars, Cruise Ships, and the Northwest Passage

Wed, Sep 28, 2016
There are a few communities, up in northern Canada, with a dark history and a worrying future. Resolute is one of them, sat at the east of the once-legendary Northwest Passage. In a few years, it might be a tourist destination. Here's why.
0 /10
The world's most dangerous path... isn't.

S6.E49 ∙ The world's most dangerous path... isn't.

Sun, Oct 16, 2016
El Caminito del Rey, the King's Little Pathway, is now a tourist attraction near Malaga, in southern Spain. But once, it brought adrenaline junkies here - sometimes fatally. Now it's safe: but the internet doesn't really know that yet.
0 /10
The Zip Line Across Time Zones

S6.E50 ∙ The Zip Line Across Time Zones

Sun, Oct 23, 2016
In Sanlúcar de Guadiana, in Spain, there's a zip line called Límite Zero: the only cross-border zip wire in the world, landing in Alcoutim, Portugal. You land about an hour before you set off. It seemed like a good time to talk about programming.
0 /10
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This week's popular movies

The First Family of Satan

7.2
Generally favorable

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No rating

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2.8
A flood of negative reviews

Pornography: Addictive, Progressive and Deadly

0
No rating

Alone Australia: The Reunion

4.8
Mixed or average

Journey Into Self

6.2
Generally favorable

Until the End of the World: Wim Wenders in Tokyo

7.1
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Dog Eat Dog: Beyond Fest Q&A with Director Paul Schrader and Actor Nicolas Cage

0
No rating

Playboy: Night Calls

0
No rating

The Bond Women of 'Spectre'

0
No rating

This week's popular TV shows

The Great War

7.1
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Grænseland

8.2
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The Celts

8
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U kraya bezdny

9.4
Universal Acclaim

Secret Vatican Files: The Pope and the Devil

6.1
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Dunkirk

7.2
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Stalingrad

8.2
Generally favorable

Rome: Rise and Fall of an Empire

7.7
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Air Warriors

7.5
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Secrets of the Dead

7.9
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Edit Focus

The Last Days

The Last Days

In late 1944, even as they faced imminent defeat, the Nazis expended enormous resources to kill or deport over 425,000 Jews during the "cleansing" of Hungary. This Oscar-winning documentary, executive produced by Steven Spielberg, focuses on the plight of five Hungarian Jews who survived imprisonment in Auschwitz.

  • Movies
Cries from Syria

Cries from Syria

CRIES FROM SYRIA is a searing, comprehensive account of a brutal five-year conflict from the inside out, drawing on hundreds of hours of war footage from Syrian activists and citizen journalists, as well as testimony from child protesters, leaders of the revolution, human rights defenders, ordinary citizens, and high-ranking army generals who defected from the government. Their collective stories are a cry for attention and help from a world that little understands their reality or agrees on what to do about it. A documentary by Evgeny Afineevsky, director of the Oscar-nominated film WINTER ON FIRE, CRIES FROM SYRIA premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.

  • Movies
Hollywoodgate

Hollywoodgate

Immediately after the US pullout from Afghanistan, Taliban forces occupied the Hollywood Gate complex, which is claimed to be a former CIA base in Kabul.

  • Movies
Europa: The Last Battle

Europa: The Last Battle

World War II revisionist film that claims Jews deliberately caused both World Wars--and that Hitler was only trying to save Germany from the Jews--as part of a plot to found the nation of Israel.

  • Movies
City of Ghosts

City of Ghosts

The anonymous activists who exposed ISIS atrocities in Raqqa. Follows their undercover operations, exile, and risks taken to reveal the ruthless realities under ISIS rule.

  • Movies
Occupied City

Occupied City

The past collides with the present in this excavation of the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam: a journey from World War II to recent years of pandemic and protest and a provocative, life-affirming reflection on memory, time and what's to come.

  • Movies
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