Tom Scott

Poly Canyon, at Cal Poly, is an experimental architecture laboratory.

The Great Scenic Railway, at Luna Park in Melbourne, Australia, is the second oldest rollercoaster in the world: and it's one of only a few which still uses a manual brake. Here's how it works.

"Sentinel chickens" are an early-warning system against some nasty mosquito-borne diseases. I visited a flock in New South Wales, Australia.

The Parkes Radio Telescope, Murriyang, part of CSIRO, is one of the most famous telescopes in the world: and it's got a unique way of getting equipment up and down from the central section.

Every few months, when the wind's blowing in the right direction, a bottle of air is taken from Kennaook / Cape Grim, at the northern tip of Tasmania, and saved for science. Here's how and why.

At Velocity Valley in Rotorua, New Zealand, there's the Shweeb: a pedal-powered monorail. It's a fun ride: but in 2010, Google gave it a million dollars as a potential "future of transit".

I just wanted to fix my email.

C1 Espresso, in Christchurch, New Zealand, has a set of pneumatic tubes. But that's not enough on its own to keep a business running.

The common wisdom is that, once an invasive species is truly established, it can't be eradicated — but I talked to the team from Predator Free Wellington, who think they can do just that.

Wellington, in New Zealand, has more than a hundred private cable cars. I found out why.

Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan is not just the world's oldest hotel, but the world's oldest still-operating business. Or at least, that's one way of looking at it. But things are changing here, just like they always have.

The DMV, or Dual Mode Vehicle, on the Asa Coast Railway in Shikoku, Japan, is a hybrid bus and train. And I rode it.

I was going to film a video about a robot bicycle park. And then GIKEN, the company who built it, said: you know we do this for cars as well, right?

I thought maglev trains were a dead-end technology: but it looks like I was wrong. At JR Central's Yamanashi Maglev Test Track, I rode Japan's new maglev.

Hideyasu Ito runs the Micro Hovercraft Laboratory, and I got to meet him and ride his incredible four-bubble hovercraft.

At the Department of Collective Behaviour, part of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, researchers are putting locusts into simulated worlds, both virtual and physical, in the hope that they can figure out how devastating swarms form and move.

Meiringen Air Base, in Switzerland, has an unusual feature: two public roads that go straight over the runway. How do they keep it safe? And, as a side note, just how loud is it when you're standing next to a fighter jet? (Bonus things that didn't fit into the video: the aircraft aren't stored in hangars, but in caverns tunneled into the hillside! And if you want to get really close to the jets, there's a second, much narrower crossing over a taxiway to the caverns. They're not taking off at high speed there, though.)

Agroscope is a Swiss government-backed agricultural research lab. It's got a lot of other resarch projects too, but it also keeps a backup of the Swiss cheese bacterial cultures... just in käse.

At CEA-Leti, in Grenoble, there's a "funicular" that not many people get to ride: because it's between two clean rooms, and getting to it requires quite a lot of preparation.

I went inside the former hotel where, for science (and money), people are volunteering to get colds, flu, and RSV.

At the University of California San Diego, there's the Shake Table: an earthquake simulator with the heaviest payload capacity in the world.

The Catesby Tunnel, in the UK, is an old Victorian railway tunnel that has a new use: a secretive car testing facility, like a wind tunnel but in reverse. So rather than just show it to the world, I thought I'd answer a question: if you stick a camera on the outside of your car, how much does the drag cost you?

The first few moments of an explosion can't be simulated yet. But there's a team at the University of Sheffield working on it.

In an old mill in a remote corner of Italy, sits the Bathysphere Project at Explorandia: a submarine simulator that explores an actual, small pond. It might be the best homemade project I've ever seen.

Through the mountains of Slovenia, there are manual cable cars: some historic, some more modern. There aren't many left. I was able to try one, and to talk to the person who still maintains it. Just to be clear, there are a few of these in other places in the world, too. There's at least a couple in North America, one in Germany, and one in Turkey! (Or at least, I think they still exist.) But the video of the Cicka got me to beautiful Slovenia, and the story that I found there was worth the trip.

Well before the first climbing frame was patented as "jungle gym", mathematician Charles Hinton thought they might be able to teach kids four-dimensional thinking.

Near Dayton, Ohio there's a lookalike of the Wright Brothers' Model B: a 1910 aircraft with no cockpit. It's a modern plane with a very old design, and I went for a ride.

Near San Diego, California, there's a rotating house: and somehow, all the utilities, the electricity, gas and water, work even on the rotating part. How's that possible?

At the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, Montana, you can get a product certified as bear-resistant... by actual bears.

This footage is public domain, and the raw files are available at https://archive.org/details/grizzly-b... ■ An explanation, which is not public domain: • A bear found my GoPro and took a selfie ■ Two videos taken by grizzly bears at the Grizzy & Wolf Discovery Center, West Yellowstone, Montana. The bears found a previously-lost GoPro Hero 11 in a protective case, in their pond, which had enough battery left to take a couple of brief shots, including a selfie. As these video files were created entirely by bears, by accident, I believe them to be in the public domain. If that's not the case, then as the owner of the camera and potential copyright holder, I'm happy to license these files under CC0 and dedicate them to the public domain as far as legally possible. However, if I don't upload them to YouTube first, then someone else will — and YouTube's copyright systems often get confused by public domain footage, so for my own safety...

An unexpected update!

In Switzerland, there's a new cryonics company: and they invited me to have a look around. I had questions: legal, practical, and ethical, and I want to be clear: this is not an endorsement. I just wasn't going to turn down that invitation.

Zermatt, in Switzerland, bans all private cars and all gasoline cars. But if you run a business, you might be able to buy one of the special, tiny ones that are built right there.

The Honiton Hot Pennies ceremony is the result of 800 years of tradition: from when rich people would entertain themselves by throwing scalding-hot pennies onto the poor people below. These days, it's a bit less dangerous... but only a bit.

Long barrows are Neolithic constructions that might have been churches, or graveyards, or landmarks. And some are being built again: for the first time in recorded history.

The Baťa Skyscraper, in Zlín, Czechia, is a landmark of architecture. And the office of Jan Antonín Baťa... is an elevator. [Correction: Jan Antonín Baťa's birth year is 1898; the graphic is a typo.]

This was so much more complex than I thought.

The British Library is one of the six legal deposit libraries for the UK — and the only one that doesn't pick and choose, or have to ask for copies. That's a lot of books to store, and the internet's only making it worse.

This is the only pirate reference you're getting from me. • Written with Molly Ruhl and Gretchen McCulloch.

The Bolwoningen, in Den Bosch, in the Netherlands, are experimental architecture: the surprising part is that people still live there.

The asterisk is important. The Extremely Large Telescope, in Paranal, Chile, is probably going to be the largest optical telescope that will ever be constructed. I was invited out there by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council and the European Southern Observatory, and I wasn't going to turn down a chance like that.

At the New Town Hall, the Neues Rathaus, in Hanover, there's a strange elevator where the track curves unevenly. For years, people from Germany have been emailing me about it: well, I finally visited.

This script was a nightmare to pronounce. • Written with Molly Ruhl and Gretchen McCulloch.

AMZ Racing's "mythen" holds the world record for electric vehicle acceleration: 0-100km/h in 0.956 seconds. And they let me drive it.

There's a world in which everyone boards planes with "mobile lounges", PTVs, or Plane-Mates... but this is not that world.

No. Mostly. Written with Molly Ruhl and Gretchen McCulloch.

Time to correct the record.

At Port Iława in Poland, pilots and captains of massive ships train on 1-to-24 scale ship models: and I got to drive one.

The moonlight towers of Austin, Texas, are the last urban municipal lighting towers in the world: because before every street was wired to the grid, how else would you light up a city?

Translation is really difficult.

Nio is a Chinese auto maker that offers an alternative to charging: just swapping out the whole battery whenever you need it. I borrowed one of their cars.

There's a good reason for it.

Britain's power grid is turning inside-out, which means pylons are about to become a lot more controversial in Britain. At the National Grid Training Centre, I climbed one.