Learn something in a minute.
Short animated explainers on science, technology, the body and how things work. Every video comes with its full transcript.
Watch a series
The Seven Deadly Sins, explained by science
Pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth, each shown at work in one famous study of ordinary people.
Great books in four ideas
The classics everyone quotes and few have read, from Sun Tzu to Orwell, in the order they were written.
How the modern world works
Electricity, the internet, AI and money: the systems you use every day, from the wire up.
Questions everyone asks
The simple questions children ask and adults rarely can answer.
Big ideas in science
Evolution, immunity, relativity and black holes: four ideas that changed how we see life and the universe.
Inventions that changed the world
The ideas behind machines, from the oldest simple tool to the press that spread books across Europe.
Every explainer
1:20Pride: why almost everyone thinks they're above average
The oldest of the deadly sins, measured: 93% of US students rate their driving in the top half, and 1 adult in 661 admits being more biased than average.
0:35How does the internet work?
A page is cut into numbered, addressed packets. Routers forward each one hop by hop along any working path; your device reorders them and re-requests lost ones.
0:35What is inflation?
Inflation is the average rise in prices, measured by repricing one basket of goods. At 3% a year, $100 of cash buys about $74 of today’s goods in ten years.
0:36Why do we sleep?
Sleep runs in 90-minute cycles that clean and repair the brain and file the day’s memories, timed by rising sleep pressure and a 24-hour body clock.
0:42How does electricity flow?
A voltage tilts the random jitter of a metal’s free electrons into a drift. Round a closed loop that drift is current; resistance turns it into heat and light.
0:28Sun Tzu's Art of War in four ideas
Sun Tzu's classic in four ideas: win without fighting, know both sides, wage war by deception, and move like water around the ground you meet.
0:28Machiavelli's The Prince in four ideas
Machiavelli's 1513 manual in four ideas: hold power by skill against fortune's floods, be feared without hatred, and seem virtuous while staying armed.
0:28Plato's cave allegory, explained
Plato's cave: chained prisoners mistake shadows for the world. One climbs to the sunlight, then returns to people who cannot believe him.
0:28Adam Smith's invisible hand, explained
Adam Smith's pin factory, the self-interest of the butcher and baker, and the invisible hand that turns private gain into public plenty.
0:28Marcus Aurelius' Meditations in four ideas
Marcus Aurelius' Meditations in four ideas: the line between what you control and what you do not, obstacles as the way, the view from above, and memento mori.
2:00How natural selection works
Natural selection in four steps: variation is inherited, more are born than survive, the fittest pass the filter, and deep time draws the tree of life.
0:28Orwell's 1984 in four ideas
Orwell's 1984 in four ideas: telescreens and Big Brother, doublethink, Newspeak shrinking the language, and a Party that seeks power for its own sake.
0:28Thoreau's Walden in four ideas
Thoreau's Walden in four ideas: a $28 cabin by the pond, the four necessities, the real cost of a thing measured in life, and the lake as earth's eye.
0:28How a neural network learns
A neural network learns by guessing, measuring its mistake and nudging its connection weights, over and over, until its answers come out right.
0:28Why moving clocks run slow
Special relativity in four steps: light’s fixed speed and a clock made of light show why a moving clock ticks more slowly.
0:28How a black hole forms
Why the heaviest stars collapse, what an event horizon is, and how small the Sun would have to be squeezed to become a black hole.
0:28How vaccines train your immune system
A vaccine lets your immune system meet a harmless copy of a germ, learn its shape and remember it, so the real germ meets a fast response.
0:28Why the Moon has phases
Half the Moon is always lit by the Sun. Its phases come from the angle we see that half from, not from Earth’s shadow.
0:28Where rain comes from
Evaporation, condensation, rain and rivers: how the same water travels from the sea to the clouds and back again.
0:28How the printing press changed books
From hand-copied manuscripts to Gutenberg’s reusable metal type: how one invention made books cheaper and spread them across Europe.
0:27How compound interest grows
Why $1,000 at 7% becomes about $7,612 in 30 years, and why simple interest only reaches $3,100.
0:28Why is the sky blue?
Sunlight holds every colour, but air scatters short blue waves far more than long red ones. That is also why sunsets turn red.
0:28The law of the lever
How 100 N can lift a 400 N load, and why a lever trades force for distance instead of creating energy.
0:26Leonardo’s aerial screw
Leonardo da Vinci’s 1480s design for a machine that would screw itself into the air, and why it could never fly.