Awesome Learning

Pop culture often depicts Asian accents with swapped Ls and Rs when speaking in English. But as Vox reveals, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, and Cantonese accents can speak certain L sounds, but have difficulty with others.

“The Internet is fake.” Destin of Smarter Every Day got duped into watching an automatically generated video on YouTube about sensationalist politics. So he researched how it was happening and came up with this defense: stop hating and be more considerate.

(PG-13: Language) From a man who was shot through the head, to another who jammed a drill bit in there, to a guy who crash-landed his plane and fought off a pack of wild animals, Sam O’Nella Academy is here to regale us with another round of strange but true stories.

The Slow Mo Guys have captured some amazing imagery at speeds over 100,000 fps. But to visualize something as fast as the speed of light, they had to visit a science lab at Cal Tech to take advantage of a camera that shoots at 10 trillion fps. Learn more here.

Most of us already knew that skin was the largest organ in our bodies. But that’s just scratching the epidermis. TED-Ed explains how human skin works, and a few of the many functions that our outermost layers serve to keep us alive and functioning.

Another day, another happy thought about the end of the world from the guys at Kurzgesagt, as they asked scientists to put on their thinking caps about what might happen if we gathered up the approximately 15,000 known nuclear bombs and blew them all up at once.

American law states that vodka should be distilled or treated until it has no “distinctive character, aroma, taste or color.” So why are some vodkas more expensive than others? NPR points us to businessman Sidney Frank.

MIT’s food computers are small robotic gardens that let people control, gather and share data about the conditions of a plant’s growth. Such systems can be built anywhere in the world, greatly accelerating learning and experimentation to improve crop yields.

Kid-friendly movies often make bank in theaters. But as Cheddar explains, they are increasingly going the Star Wars and Transformers route, where the movies serve to introduce memorable characters that can be turned into even more lucrative toys.

Drivetribe shares the mythical story of Japan’s most infamous street racing group, the Mid Night Club. Founded in 1987, the club was allegedly composed of rich businessmen and had strict requirements and rules about speed, skill, and safety.

A nation’s infrastructure needs to be continuously maintained and expanded to keep up with population and economic growth. The B1M identifies the largest infrastructure projects underway as of 2019, all costing staggering amounts of money and resources.

Before the Internet, movie fans were mostly passive audiences. But as Wisecrack points out, making online jokes and memes about pop culture has become so influential that it’s shaping how movies, TV shows, and their stars are perceived, marketed, and cast.

Did you know that there’s no such thing as an alpha wolf? How about the fact that the Tyrannosaurus Rex actually had great eyesight? Or that female dogs also hump? Learn all that and more in Mental Floss’ animal list show.

Cheddar gives us a brief history of the escalator before explaining why the unspoken escalator rule of walking on one side and standing on the other needs to be abolished. Research shows how the right way is to have both lanes standing only.

Insider spoke with Andreas Petrides, founder of the British Action Academy. Among other things, the school teaches actors and stuntmen how to shoot different kinds of firearms in different stances. Reacting to being shot is also part of the course.

Californian sequoia trees have been known to grow to heights over 400 feet. But that’s about where they top out. TED-Ed’s Valentin Hammoudi explores some of the biological and physical constraints which may mean that’s the tallest a tree ever could be.

How to Make Everything gathered or made various cleaners from scratch – pumicite, borax, baking soda, vinegar, oxalic acid, bleach, lye, acetone, and ethanol. But before that, he had an interesting conversation with someone who cleans crime scenes for a living.

Technology is stretching the boundaries of sports. Innovation is normally good, but at what point does it become cheating? It’s a question that’s been asked for decades when it comes to golf balls, and the Titleist V1 Pro brought the debate back.

Want to build your own electronics projects? With this course and hardware combo kit, you’ll get everything you need, including a Raspberry Pi 3B+ computer, 37 sensors, and Raspberry Pi development training. Grab this great deal in The Awesomer Shop.

Veritasium spoke with Professor Larry Howell about flexible machines, aka compliant mechanisms. You’d think that a machine that deforms, bends or flexes would be a dud, but these mechanical marvels are actually tough, reliable and cheap to produce.

If someone tells us a phone number, we have to work hard to remember it. On the other hand, there’s a guy out there who memorized Pi to 70,000 digits. In this video, Verge Science explores the different kinds of storage our brains have, and how to optimize them.

In the world’s top economies, passenger trains have expensive tickets. Freight trains, on the other hand, move cargo at incredibly cheap rates. Wendover Productions explains why trains are more efficient than cargo trucks at moving goods across the Earth.

We always assumed that the phantom vocal sounds we hear in some songs were intentionally placed there, but You Can’t Unhear This‘ explains how that’s not always the case, and how sometimes they’re simply a remnant of old school studio recording.