Tom Scott

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?

Zebra, pelican, puffin, toucan, pegasus: Britain names our crosswalks after creatures, thanks to historical reasons. But do they actually make you safer? Well, not always.

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. (It's easy to make fun of Slough. There's no second part to that, it's just easy to make fun of Slough.)

In Wuppertal, Germany, there's the Schwebebahn: a suspended monorail that carries 80,000 people a day above the streets of the city, and above the river Wupper. It's a wonderful thing: but it wasn't the future of travel, and here's why.

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? And yes, I did have to put this video together really quickly. Thank you SO MUCH to the wonderful Matthew Walster, @dotwaffle on Twitter, who not only found me somewhere to film at short notice but also volunteered to hold the camera. I am massively grateful to him -- thank you!

In Lillehammer, Norway, it's time to make some snow. With science. As well as being one of my regular videos, this is an ad for the 2016 Youth Winter Olympic Games! Subscribe to the Olympic YouTube channel: http://bit.ly/1MFol69 - and see the rest of this description for more links.

The famous Lillehammer Bobsleigh Track! Massive, fast, and working in summer. Here's how. As well as being one of my regular videos, this is an ad for the Youth Winter Olympic Games! Subscribe to the Olympic YouTube channel: http://bit.ly/1MFol69 - and see the full description for more links.

Welcome to one of the toughest winter sports - although it might not look like it. As well as being one of my regular videos, this is an ad for the Youth Winter Olympic Games! Subscribe to the Olympic YouTube channel: http://bit.ly/1MFol69 - and see the full description for more links.

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.

This video has a correction! Turns out "Nuclear Gandhi" is a myth: https://kotaku.com/civilization-creat... - for all corrections on this channel, see https://www.tomscott.com/corrections - 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.

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?

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! (No, this isn't a sponsored video: I paid my own way there!) Go look at their site: http://isilaunch.com - and if you need to send something into space, get in touch with them!

In the Thames Estuary, near a town called Sheerness, a few dozen miles east of London, lies a World War 2 shipwreck that contains over 1,000 tonnes of unexploded bombs. Is it a risk to the area? Or is it just an interesting historical artifact? The trouble is, no-one's quite sure...

In the south-east of Estonia, there's 800m of road where you can drive through Russia without a visa. We drove it. This video has a correction: Further research revealed that the camera tower Matt spots is, almost certainly, just a regular cell tower. Or, at least, that's what they want us to think.

Don't worry, I've not gone all DJ Khaled. ???? Let's talk about an interesting quirk of psychology, and a TV "Year of Promise" telethon that didn't stick around too long. EDIT: my conclusions here are questionable.

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.

No, it wasn't called "hacking" back then: it was called "scientific hooliganism". Let's talk about Marconi, Nevil Maskelyne, and a demonstration that didn't go as planned. And go check out the Royal Institution's channel! • Slow Motion Contact Explosive - Nitro... I'm indebted to Sungook Hong's wonderful book "Wireless", which helped me track down some of the more obscure sources here -- and to the British Library, whose incredible archives and microfilm tapes helped me find the original newspapers and journals you see in the video.

On stage at An Evening of Unnecessary Detail - http://aeoud.com - I tell a dramatised and extremely shortened history of emoji, run through what's coming up in 2016, and have a look at what might be coming up for them soon. Also, I use the word "dysentry". Thanks to the Festival of the Spoken Nerd team for inviting me, and to the lovely audience and crew at the Backyard Comedy Club in Bethnal Green!

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?

At the JET reactor at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy -- http://ccfe.ac.uk -- 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.

At Culham Centre for Fusion Energy -- http://ccfe.ac.uk -- my camera's being held by a robot. Well, not really by a robot. It's being held by a man called John. It's... complicated.

I know, I know, it's a clickbait title. But I stand by it, because the water is so deceptive, and so pretty, and there's a path that leads straight down to it and that jump looks very, very possible... The 12th century legend is the "Boy of Egremont", immortalised in poetry by the famous William Wordsworth. His "The Force of Prayer" is about the Strid and the Boy of Egremont, and the full text is here: http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww342.html Also, I need to make one correction: I say "a hundred metres upstream", but that shot's actually about that far downstream. I couldn't fix that in post, but since the river's basically the same for a mile or so in each direction with no significant confluences, it's a small enough slip that I don't think it's too bad. The amount of water is the same!

Continuing the occasional Weird European Infrastructure Tour: an Italian lift that switches direction from horizontal to vertical. And honestly, until someone pointed it out to me, I could not figure out how this could possibly be done safely. In hindsight, it was kind of obvious. (By the way, the Ascensore Castello d'Albertis-Montegalletto is known by a few names: I went by the one that seems most commonly used online by both Italian-speaking and English-speaking folk.)

Your sports team wins. The confetti drops. And suddenly, the video quality falls apart. Why? Let's talk about interframe compression, bitrate, and unnecessary green screen effects.

In a small town with an unfortunate name, let's talk about filtering and innuendo. And use it as an excuse for as many visual jokes as possible.

This week, TV star Noel Edmonds endorsed the "EMP Pad". He said it could help with cancer -- and the company behind that claim denied it right away. Here's why. (Pull down the description for a full bibliography!)

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.

Yes, it's only micrograms of difference, but it's still really weird: until 2018, the kilogram is defined as "the weight of this physical object". So what happens when that object changes?

Victor Gruen is, according to history, the man who invented the shopping mall... but that wasn't quite what he was aiming for. And it seemed like an appropriate day to do a video about suburban sprawl -- happy Independence Day, America!

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. You can find out more about the Leadhills and Wanlockhead Railway here: http://www.leadhillsrailway.co.uk -- thank you so much to all the volunteers there for the time they spent with me today!

In Crystal Palace Park, in South London, are 150-year-old dinosaur models: the first ever full-size replicas of extinct animals. But they're... well, they're a bit wrong, and they likely always will be. Here's why.

The inevitable Pokémon Go security video. With many thanks to Simon Coxall - http://mushybees.tumblr.com/ - for the wonderful not-Pokémon illustrations, and to Sheila for holding the camera at very short notice! Here's the wonderful breakdown of the technical details by Ari Rubinstein: https://gist.github.com/arirubinstein... And have you, or someone you know, would like a guest slot for Things You Might Know or Amazing Places while I'm off in the Arctic, have a look at https://www.tomscott.com/guest for more details!

"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?

Near the village of Hanbury is RAF Fauld. Once it was a munitions dump: now it's a crater. Here's why. (I'm indebted to authors, archivists and aerial crews for this video: here's a full bibliography and list of image credits!)

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. I'll be honest: we skipped over a few of the more complicated rules about penalising high-tech robots in favour of entertaining the crowd, but no-one seemed to mind. Not even the actual Robot Wars competitors. Thanks to everyone who helped put this together: Alia Sheikh, Andrew Vine and Robert McWilliam on the film crew, Jim MacArthur who actually ran the show, and all the folks at EMF Camp -- and of course, all the people who built the robots!

( This isn't a sponsored video, but I am massively grateful to all the team at SSE! Go look: http://sse.com/whatwedo/ourprojectsan... , and pull down the description for more. ) 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. CORRECTION: I say that turbines spin thousands of times "per second" when it should be "per minute".

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...

"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!

Welcome to Thames Town, the fake-British ghost town in China. Why did they build it? Who lives there? And why is it all so quiet? Today, Collin from the Collin Sphere Travel Vlog is guesting on this channel to investigate!

Inés is a PhD student researching insect flight at Oxford, and enjoys making videos about the fun and curious bits of science in her spare time!

At Qaanaaq, in Greenland, there's IS18: an infrasound station that's quietly listening for nuclear tests — or any other large bang. Here's what, why, and a few words the man who, for years, has been quietly keeping it running. Pull down this description for more! I'm here because of Chris Hadfield's Generator Arctic - go check out everyone else who was on the trip, and have a look at tickets for their show at Massey Hall, Toronto, on November 12th! http://generatorevent.com

Glaciologists will find this video obvious. Everyone else... well, maybe I slept through a bit of sixth-grade geography, but I didn't know this, and I reckon I should have done. Pull down the description for more! I'm here because of Chris Hadfield's Generator Arctic - go check out everyone else who was on the trip, and have a look at tickets for their show at Massey Hall, Toronto, on November 12th! http://generatorevent.com

I thought I knew who got to the North Pole first. It turns out that it's a lot more complicated than you might think. [Pull down the description!] Frederick Cook; Robert Peary; Roald Amundsen. They all have claims, and they can all be disputed for one reason or another...

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!

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. [Pull down the description!]

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. [Pull down the description!]

Tucked away in a valley in the Allegheny Mountains in West Virginia, is this: the Green Bank Radio Telescope, the largest steerable radio telescope in the world. And there are some rather special rules for the area around it... Thanks to Justin Richmond-Decker and Mike Holstine at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank for inviting me over and letting us film at the Telescope on one of their maintenance days! For more about the Green Bank Observatory: https://science.nrao.edu/facilities/gbt Want a tour? You can! (Although you won't be allowed up the telescope!) https://greenbankobservatory.org/visit/

The Morgantown Personal Rapid Transit system threads its way through West Virginia University, taking thousands of people a day around the campus, non-stop. It's a system that was meant to be the future: so why isn't it?

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...

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.

In the Aljarafe region of Spain, there's PS10 and PS20: concentrated solar power towers. They're huge towers surrounded by heliostats: movable mirrors that track the sun and reflect its light onto a giant boiler. They are beautiful, but they're also controversial: here's why.

Herman Sörgel wanted to create the largest civil engineering project the world has ever seen: a colossal dam across the Strait of Gibraltar, lowering the Mediterranean sea. There were, of course, a few problems with this.

In a cemetery in Huelva, in Spain, is the grave of Major William Martin, of the British Royal Marines. Or rather, it's the grave of a man called Glyndwr Michael, who served his country during World War 2 in a very unexpected way... after his death.

Fashion-tech designer Anouk Wipprecht has built a Spider Dress, which reacts based on how close you're standing and how quickly you approached. It's based on 'proxemics': the study of personal space... although how much of that counts as science is an open question. Let's talk about Edward T Hall, about what counts as science, and what happens if you get too close to someone.

At Autodesk's Pier 9 workshop in San Francisco -- and no, this isn't an ad, pull down the description for more! -- there are giant robot arms using welders to 3D print with stainless steel. Which seemed like a good place to talk about programming abstractions, high-level languages, training pendants, and just how safe something like a robot arm needs to be. FULL DISCLOSURE: Autodesk were good enough to cover my travel to San Francisco, but they haven't paid me and they had no control over the script, the content or the final cut! You can see more about Pier 9 at http://www.autodesk.com/pier-9/

At the Computer History Museum, in Mountain View, California, there sits a small teapot. It's the world's most famous teapot, after a computer graphics researcher called Martin Newell digitised it. You've probably seen it: here's its story. And thanks to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California: you can visit them online here: http://www.computerhistory.org/

In Gävle, Sweden, every year they build Gävlebocken, an enormous traditional Swedish Christmas straw goat. And every year, someone tries to burn it down. Here's to holiday traditions.

John Reber had a plan: to dam the San Francisco Bay. He convinced some politicians - and it took the US Army Corps of Engineers, and the Bay Model they built in Sausalito, to prove him not just wrong, but dangerously wrong.

In this small city near San Francisco, the dead outnumber the living by a thousand to one. There's some gruesome history here - and a few questions for the future.

Perpetual motion machines are badly named. And impossible. But that hasn't stopped a lot of people trying to build them. Sure, you could try and argue physics: but there's a more common-sense reason why free energy's not coming any time soon.

Brace yourselves, we're about to get into some serious detail about telephone systems. Thanks to all the folks at Seattle's Museum of Communications! http://museumofcommunications.org/

At the University of Salford's Energy House, all the energy use is monitored and controlled, allowing researchers to experiment with all sorts of insulation and energy-saving techniques. But how to control for factors like sun, wind and rain? The solution: put the whole house inside an environmental chamber: a building inside a building that means the weather is controlled, repeatable, and part of the science.

The Christmas Number One is a British tradition: but it's one that's having to go through some changes -- because not many people buy music any more. Here's how the charts are calculated these days, and why listening to "All I Want For Christmas" on repeat isn't going to change who wins. Thanks to Martin Talbot and all the team from the Official Charts Company, who agreed to an interview on less than two hours' notice for this video! You can visit them here: http://www.officialcharts.com/ or on Twitter at @officialcharts

Switzerland has a reputation for being... not paranoid, exactly, but certainly careful with their own safety. Zurich exemplifies this: not just with its fallout shelters, but with an entire backup water system. Just in case the world ends.