Awesome Videos

Scientists estimate that Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years, with modern humans existing for a mere 200,000. Kurzgesagt recounts human history in this chill animated movie. Experience our entire arc looking out a train window, watching time pass from our earliest ancestors in Africa through tools, art, rituals, disasters, and the rise and fall of civilizations.

A slapophone is an instrument that makes music by banging a paddle on a PVC pipe. Maker Ivan Miranda created a version that can be played via a MIDI controller. His system uses motors to adjust the length of the pipes to change notes and to move its slappers. Musician and composer Lou Wiss demonstrates just how amazing the electromechanical instrument is.

With the help of Suisse Tourisme and Travel Switzerland, music producer Thylacine spent 16 days touring some of the Swiss nation’s sights and sounds. Along the way, he captured more than 200 sounds which he edited together into a rhythmic composition that celebrates the nation’s beauty, from rivers and waterfalls, to glaciers, to a cheese cellar.

The Kiffness made us laugh out loud with his silly remake of the 2011 Awolnation track Sail, which cleverly replaces the original’s synthesizer with the irresistible snoring sounds of a dog deep in slumber. Blame it on his floppy cheeks, baby!

Bianca Caderas and Kerstin Zemp’s off-kilter animated short film takes place in a weird, dystopian world where human contact is forbidden. Matta and Matto run an under-the-radar hotel that offers guests an opportunity to be touched without barriers – but there’s a strange and disturbing price for this freedom.

Typical vehicle suspension systems use springs and hydraulics to absorb shocks. But inventor Colin Furze doesn’t do anything ordinary, so he challenged himself to build a bicycle suspension system that uses the invisible forces between powerful magnets to sop up bumps. We’ve never seen such a repulsive bike.

Known for their richly emotive and atmospheric sounds, Air is a band that defies categorization. We were fortunate to see the French group in concert earlier this year. Now, thanks to NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, you can too. The group turned in a hypnotic performance of tracks from their albums Moon Safari, Talkie Walkie, and the score for The Virgin Suicides.

The 1993 Portishead track Glory Box is a trip hop classic. The talented musicians of Brass Against gave it their own spin by performing the largely electronic track on brass and string instruments. The icing on the cake? Sophia Urista’s incredible lead vocals, which are every bit as compelling as Beth Gibbons’ original.

Developed as a labor of love by two brothers, Tenkemo could be the next big thing. The multiplayer, open-world PC game encourages players to craft tools, mine for resources, and build structures, all while rescuing cute and fuzzy animals. Expect lots of areas to explore, day/night and weather systems, and character customization abilities. Coming to Steam.

Hurricane Melissa devastated the Caribbean earlier this year. During the storm, the US Air Force 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron’s “Hurricane Hunters” flew into the eye of the hurricane to gather meteorological data to help save lives. They also captured this hauntingly peaceful GoPro footage from the POV of their Super Hercules airplane.

Musician Joshua Woo takes the Kate Bush track Running Up That Hill and transforms it into a Cure song. Not only does he nail Robert Smith’s emotive vocal style, he captures the musical nuances of the long-running alternative band. An MP3 is available on Joshua’s Patreon. His Cure-ified versions of Don’t Stop Believin’ and Rebel Yell are great too.

We’ve typed millions of letters and numbers on our keyboards over the years. Could we have harnessed the kinetic energy of all of those keypresses and used that to power things? Inspired by a viewer question, xkcd’s What If? does the math to extrapolate the amount of energy generated by writing a typical novel or by playing computer games.

Between his Knives Out cases, Benoit Blanc found his way to Sesame Street to help solve another mystery. Cookie Monster’s triple-berry pie has been devoured, and it’s up to Daniel Craig’s eccentric detective to sleuth out the culprit. Which Muppet could it be? Oscar the Grouch, Elmo, Zoe, or maybe the monster who reported the crime in the first place?

Generative AI technology has potential to take on boring, time-intensive tasks nobody wants to do. But, as Rowan J Coleman reminds us, it’s also coming for creative jobs. In this video essay, Rowan talks about a 1968 Star Trek episode in which a computer threatens the livelihood of Captain Kirk and his crew, and how AI-prompted art is fundamentally hollow.

In its original formulation, Coca-Cola contained two stimulating ingredients that gave the drink its famous name. In this short explainer, TED-Ed’s Shantel George offers a quick history lesson about how cocaine and the kola nut ended up in the earliest versions of the beverage and also touches on the cultural significance of the kola nut.

Security cameras and alarm systems can only do so much to deter criminals. If you really want to protect your home, you need to scare them off with something creepy. Electo decided the best way to keep thieves away was with a robotic Pikachu with light-up red eyes and designed to deliver a Taser-like electrical shock to anyone who crosses its path.