Awesome Cgp Grey

CGP Grey’s Cortex brand created the Sidekick, a wide-format notepad that works hand-in-hand with your computer workspace. It sits between you and your keyboard and has a large, gridded area for sketching and a narrow space for to-do lists on the right. It’s made with 60 pages of premium Munken Lynx paper with a cover made from recycled coffee cups.

Unlike US paper sizes, metric paper sizes like A3 and A4 can be folded into quarters to make smaller standard size sheets. CGP Grey explains the satisfying math of this paper sizing standard, then zooms in and out to see how it relates to the exponential nature of the universe.

CGP Grey has a thing for flags. In this video, he goes state-by-state through America to assess each flag and whether or not they succeed at some basic concepts like being simple, easy to identify from a distance, distinct from others, meaningful, and free from words. A surprising number of flags failed right off the bat.

While there have been flags associated with Antarctica, they have never been official. That’s because Antarctica isn’t a country. CGP Grey explains how this enormous land mass is dotted with scientific outposts representing numerous countries and how it ended up with its various flags over the years.

The airport code LAX stands for Los Angeles International, which makes sense. But why is Nashville International BNA? Or Newark International EWR? CGP Gray does his best to untangle the IATA three-letter naming conventions for airports around the globe and the further mess that the FAA made of US names.

Previously, CGP Grey explained the surprisingly simple numbering scheme for U.S. interstates. Now he’s back to teach us how the numbers on airport runways work. You’ll also learn how airports decide which way to run their runways and what the North Pole has to do with everything. Oh, and this is not a physics video.

When the U.S. started creating highways connecting the nation, interstates were identified with a logical numbering scheme. CGP Grey looks back at the rationale behind the numbers which have since become cluttered with intrastate interstates, bypasses, beltways, spurs, and exception cases to confuse matters.

Most of us know tumbleweed from its appearance in old Westerns, or maybe we’ve seen a couple along the side of the road in the desert Southwest. But as CGP Grey explains, these seemingly innocuous plants are anything but harmless, with their nasty thorns, incredible flammability, and propensity to multiply like, uh, weeds.

The name “Tiffany” became wildly popular back in the 1980s. But the name came to be long before the I Think We’re Alone Now singer. Learn about the origins of the name and its history over the years in only the way that CGP Grey can tell a story.

While visiting London, historian and storyteller CGP Grey stumbled onto a quirky sculpture of sharks floating in a canal. Not one to ignore something so unusual, he decided to dig into the backstory of this floating artwork and discovered the piece has been mired in a battle between artists, bureaucrats, and conservationists.

We all know that bees make their honeycombs by creating nearly perfect hexagonal cells. But why is that they chose hexagons to do their building? CGP Grey looks into the power and strength of this basic six-sided form, especially when it comes to tiling efficiency.

In much of the world, a five-day workweek is the norm, with Saturdays and Sundays as our days off. But is that the best day arrangement for maintaining your focus and stamina? CGP Grey explains how breaking up your weekend into two parts can have significant advantages if you have the flexibility to do so.

We all learned the positions of the planets from some chart on the wall in grade school. But as CGP Grey reminds us, planets rotate in elliptical orbits at varying speeds around the sun, meaning that the answer isn’t quite as simple as you thought – depending on the question you’re actually asking.

Ever wonder why pirates flew the Jolly Roger (aka Skull & Bones) flag? CGP Grey digs into the often flamboyant approach of infamous pirates like Blackbeard, along with some of the clever tricks they used to lure their victims and steal their riches. Learn about the business of piracy here. Inspired by the book The Invisible Hook.

As we stay home to reduce the spread of COVID-19, we find ourselves in a familiar, but now strange place… our homes now transformed into the place where we work, teach, sleep, eat, exercise, and unwind. CGP Grey provides some tips on remaining productive and sane at home, in hopes of emerging stronger than before.

In the first episode of his series “Reservations”, CGP Grey explains how the Europeans who took over America slapped a label on its indigenous people that would later be thought of as offensive, yet is still commonly used within tribes. Plus, the term selected to replace it has stirred controversy for other reasons.