Series · 5 episodes · 2:47
How the modern world works
Electricity, the internet, AI and money: the systems you use every day, from the wire up.
Play from episode 1- 1
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.
- 2
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.
- 3
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.
- 4
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.
- 5
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.