THE ARCHIVE · EVERY DISCOVERY
3,553 videos with summaries and linked Hacker News recommendations, arranged by title.
Chris Notap · 2 HN recommenders
A demonstration comparing what a month of vaping versus a month of smoking cigarettes does to the lungs, using a filter to show the residue. It is part of a series of similar experiments.
Veritasium · 7 HN recommenders
Veritasium explains magnetism as a consequence of special relativity. Length contraction of moving charges makes a current in a wire attract or repel a nearby moving charge.
Andrew Huberman · 2 HN recommenders
A long Huberman Lab podcast episode with Dr. Robert Lustig on the calories-in, calories-out model and how sugar, fructose, fiber and processed foods affect insulin, liver and metabolic health.
bert hubert · 2 HN recommenders
A conference presentation by Bert Hubert on how companies lose their technological edge and become outsourcing hubs. It argues the same dynamic applies to whole countries and continents, and ends with suggestions for reversing it.
Climate Town · 3 HN recommenders
A Climate Town video on how the auto industry reshaped American cities and culture through advertising, lobbying and campaigns like the 1939 World's Fair. It is snarky in tone but backed by a published source document.
Economics Explained · 2 HN recommenders
An Economics Explained video arguing that the Netherlands shows taxes alone can't reduce wealth inequality. It distinguishes income inequality from wealth inequality and discusses the Gini index.
BicycleDutch · 9 HN recommenders
A short BicycleDutch video on how the Netherlands got its cycling infrastructure, including the 1970s protests and the shift away from car-centric planning. The channel later published an updated version.
Principles by Ray Dalio · 18 HN recommenders
Ray Dalio's 30-minute animated video explains how the economy works through credit, debt, interest rates, and short- and long-term cycles. It is based on his template for understanding the economy.
Ben Felix · 2 HN recommenders
Ben Felix explains how central bank money creation and quantitative easing actually work, and what they do and do not imply for asset prices and currency. He addresses the common belief that the Fed prints unlimited money and props up markets.
PBS Space Time · 4 HN recommenders
A PBS Space Time episode on how the Higgs mechanism gives particles mass, prompted by Fermilab's heavier-than-expected W boson measurement. It goes beyond the usual pop-science treatment without heavy math.
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell · 3 HN recommenders
A Kurzgesagt animation giving a big-picture tour of the human immune system, its organs, transport network, and the cells it produces every day. It accompanies their IMMUNE book.
The Royal Institution · 2 HN recommenders
Biochemist Nick Lane gives a Royal Institution lecture arguing that the Krebs cycle is central to what makes cells alive, not just genetic information. He draws on the themes of his book Transformer to link metabolism to the origin of life, death, and aging.
PBS Space Time · 4 HN recommenders
PBS Space Time explains the quantum eraser experiment, in which erasing which-path information appears to reverse causality in a double-slit setup. It discusses what this means for quantum mechanics.
TED · 2 HN recommenders
Scott Galloway's TED talk uses data to argue that young Americans are financially worse off than earlier generations, calling it a great intergenerational theft. He covers root causes and what could change it.
Tom Scott · 4 HN recommenders
Tom Scott visits the USPS Remote Encoding Center in Salt Lake City, where keyers decipher mail images machines cannot read. It shows the lengths taken to decode bad handwriting.
PBS Space Time · 4 HN recommenders
A PBS Space Time episode explaining how space and time swap roles inside a black hole's event horizon. It is part of the channel's black hole series.
Rouxbe · 2 HN recommenders
A two-minute Rouxbe cooking-school demo of how to heat a pan properly before cooking. It uses the Leidenfrost effect, where water beads and skates across a hot pan, to show when a stainless steel pan is ready.
Breaking Taps · 4 HN recommenders
Breaking Taps explains how the cryogenic mirror actuators on the James Webb Space Telescope achieve nanometer precision using flexures. It shows a 3D-printed replica and how one motor handles both coarse and fine motion.
TEDx Talks · 3 HN recommenders
Stephen Duneier describes a decision-making approach that took him from struggling with simple tasks to achieving ambitious goals. The talk centers on breaking goals into small marginal adjustments.
CBC · 2 HN recommenders
A five-minute CBC Radio WireTap farewell video in which people of all ages offer words of wisdom to younger people. The advice is short and funny, and keeps coming back to the point that nobody really knows what they are doing.
Andrea Dorfman · 6 HN recommenders
An animated short film of Tanya Davis's spoken-word poem 'How To Be Alone', illustrated by Andrea Dorfman. It gently argues that being alone can be embraced and enjoyed.
VICE · 2 HN recommenders
VICE's Oobah Butler spends eight months using fake reviews to push a nonexistent restaurant, The Shed at Dulwich, to number one on TripAdvisor in London. The short documentary shows how easily review systems can be gamed.
@levelsio · 2 HN recommenders
Pieter Levels talks at Dojo Bali about building startups without venture capital through bootstrapping, persistence and learning many skills as a generalist. He reviews his own past projects.
EEVdiscover · 2 HN recommenders
Dave Jones of EEVblog and Richard Stephenson tour the 70m DSS43 dish at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex and explain how NASA talks to Voyager 2. It covers the transmitters, receivers and tracking involved.
Vsauce · 6 HN recommenders
Vsauce's Michael Stevens takes viewers past infinity using transfinite numbers, ordinals and cardinals, with input from mathematician Hugh Woodin. It is a fast-paced, mind-bending tour of different sizes of infinity.
LeadDev · 4 HN recommenders
Nickolas Means tells the story of United Airlines Flight 232, which lost all flight control yet saved more than half its passengers. He draws lessons on teamwork, crew resource management and leadership for software teams.
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell · 3 HN recommenders
A Kurzgesagt animated explainer on whether aging could be cured within our lifetimes, made with Lifespan.io and the LEAF foundation. It introduces the idea of treating aging as a medical problem.
Google TechTalks · 12 HN recommenders
Joshua Bloch's Google Tech Talk on how to design good APIs and why it matters, with concrete principles and examples. It treats every programmer as an occasional API designer.
Technology Connections · 2 HN recommenders
Technology Connections praises a 1940s-50s Sunbeam toaster and explains what makes a toaster well designed, drawing on a vintage Sunbeam video.
Wendover Productions · 2 HN recommenders
A Wendover Productions explainer on how airport security is designed, covering screening layers, x-ray scanning, and the contrast with Israel's profiling-based approach. It walks through the logic behind why security works the way it does.
PBS Space Time · 3 HN recommenders
A PBS Space Time episode on how gravitational wave observations of a neutron star merger, GW170817, can limit the number of spacetime dimensions. It is based on a 2018 paper.
thoughtbot · 10 HN recommenders
A thoughtbot meetup talk by Max Cantor on getting most of what popular plugins provide using only built-in Vim features. It covers autocomplete, file jumping, filesystem navigation, build integration and snippets, with slides and a vimrc available.
Jellybean Fenderson · 3 HN recommenders
Jerobeam Fenderson shows how to draw a mushroom on an oscilloscope in XY mode using stereo audio, then animates it by modulating with a larger wave. Pd and Max4Live patches are provided.
Andrew Huberman · 3 HN recommenders
A Huberman Lab podcast episode on the gut-brain axis and how the gut microbiome affects the nervous system, hunger and overall health. It covers the pathways by which the gut influences the brain and practical steps for gut health.
Sid Smith · 4 HN recommenders
A Virginia Tech presentation by Sid Smith about collapse, fossil fuels and overshoot, arguing that industrial civilization faces a decline and how one might live with that. It was later expanded into a video series.
Stanford Online · 4 HN recommenders
Segment co-founder and CEO Peter Reinhardt recounts how his company found product-market fit, including how a product grew out of a small feature of another. It is a lecture from Stanford's Startup School course.
RepresentUs · 2 HN recommenders
A short RepresentUs explainer on how money corrupts American politics and what an anti-corruption act could do about it. It covers lobbying, super PACs and campaign finance, and pitches the group's proposed reforms. The video was later superseded by an updated version.
Harvard Business Review · 2 HN recommenders
A Harvard Business Review video with tactics for getting better at small talk and enjoying it, such as setting goals, allowing pauses, and starting and ending conversations.
Y Combinator · 2 HN recommenders
A Startup School talk by YC partner and former Airbnb growth head Gustaf Alstromer on how startups get their first customers. It covers doing things that don't scale, founders learning sales, the sales funnel, and charging your first customer.
TED · 9 HN recommenders
Allan Savory's TED talk arguing that desertification of grasslands can be reversed with holistic managed grazing, which he says would also help reverse climate change. TED notes that other scientists have challenged his claims.
TED · 2 HN recommenders
Researcher Kamal Meattle describes how an arrangement of three common houseplants placed in specific spots can measurably clean the air in a home or office. It is a short TED talk based on his work in a plant-filled building.
Stanford Online · 3 HN recommenders
Alan Kay's Stanford Startup School lecture covers his career at Xerox PARC and how to think about inventing the future. He goes through what came out of PARC and why companies fail to capitalize on such ideas.
Stanford Online · 3 HN recommenders
Part two of Alan Kay's Stanford Startup School lecture on inventing the future. He draws on his time at Xerox PARC and elsewhere to discuss how to think about new technology and what makes ideas useful.
Bret · 2 HN recommenders
Bret Copeland, in an astronaut costume, gives an energetic talk on how the Space Shuttle landed from orbit, including reentry and the unpowered glide. It includes real-time landing footage with HUD and audio.
TEDx Talks · 5 HN recommenders
Chris Lonsdale presents a TEDx talk on how adults can learn a language in about six months, centering on immersion, comprehensible input and a practical learning methodology.
This Old House · 2 HN recommenders
This Old House's Ross Trethewey explains MERV filter ratings and how air filtration works, then shows how to build a localized DIY air filter, including a box fan with multiple filters.
The School of Life · 4 HN recommenders
The School of Life sets out principles for making attractive cities, arguing that the art has been lost in the modern world.
NightHawkInLight · 4 HN recommenders
NightHawkInLight shows how to make ultra-white radiative paint that cools surfaces below ambient temperature without electricity. He walks through the research papers and the household-materials process.
TED · 2 HN recommenders
Psychologist Kelly McGonigal argues in this TED talk that stress is harmful mainly if you believe it is, and that reaching out to others is an underrated way to reduce its effects.
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell · 3 HN recommenders
Kurzgesagt explains stellar engines such as the Shkadov thruster and Caplan thruster, which could move the Sun and solar system across the galaxy over millions of years to avoid hazards and reach new regions.
Kenneth Finnegan · 2 HN recommenders
Kenneth Finnegan shows how USB-C Power Delivery trigger boards like the ZY12PDN negotiate 5V to 20V so you can power projects from a USB-C charger, including the color coding for each voltage.
Psychlopaedia.org · 3 HN recommenders
Clinical psychologist Dr Michael Yapko draws on forty years of practice and research to explain skills that help people recover from, and even prevent, depression. He emphasizes cognitive and social factors beyond medication.
BBC Comedy Greats · 2 HN recommenders
A short Yes Minister clip in which Sir Humphrey explains why a hospital with no patients still needs a large administrative staff. It is a satirical look at bureaucratic bloat in the public sector.
Y Combinator · 3 HN recommenders
Tyler Bosmeny, CEO of Clever, gives a Y Combinator Startup School talk on how early-stage companies should approach sales and build an enterprise sales team.
OUTDOORS55 · 3 HN recommenders
A beginner-focused tutorial on freehand knife sharpening with a single stone, aiming for a shaving-sharp edge in about five minutes.
TEDx Talks · 6 HN recommenders
Will Stephen's humorous six-minute TEDx talk shows presentation techniques that make you sound brilliant while saying essentially nothing.
MIT OpenCourseWare · 17 HN recommenders
Patrick Winston's long-running MIT lecture on public speaking teaches heuristic rules for talks. It covers how to start, use time and place, boards, props and slides, and how to inform, persuade and finish.
InfoQ · 3 HN recommenders
David Schachter describes how he made a data-collection Python program run 114,000 times faster, drawing on decades of experience. The talk covers pipelining, cache effects and other optimization lessons.
GDC Festival of Gaming · 3 HN recommenders
Jake Birkett of Grey Alien Games explains at GDC 2016 how an indie developer survived eleven years without a hit by building a long tail of games and redefining success.
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell · 4 HN recommenders
Kurzgesagt lays out a speculative plan to terraform Venus, covering its hostile atmosphere and how it might be made Earth-like, with a sources page linked.