Awesome Learning

With the right locks, you can easily open a locked car door using only a shoelace. You need to know how to tie a slipknot, but that’s easy as well. View the instructions as a comic here.

The iFixit for cars. It has tons of videos with step-by-step guides for repairs on specific vehicle models. Their YouTube channel has sample clips; check out their site for more videos. Still in Beta.

Don’t let the kids see this video – it’s knowledge dropper CGPGrey’s informative compilation of the various origins of the modern Santa Claus. A little elf Santa does make more sense.

Destin of Smarter Every Day traveled to Germany to meet master slingshot maker Jörg Sprave and discuss the numbers behind one of his creations. It feels wrong calling that huge ass cannon a slingshot.

An animated version of Iain McGilchrist’s lecture on the brain – how the popular left- and right- brain dichotomy is misinformed and why he thinks the US is living in a left-brained society today.

YouTube knowledge-dropper vsauce gives us a brief primer on dreams. Find out why sometimes we can’t move our bodies even when we’re awake, the possible explanations for dreaming and more.

Whether you’re on a budget, eager to learn something new or just plain bored, here’s a quick way to make mayo. Don’t know what “neutral oil” means? Check out Serious Eats for more info.

NPR’s Adam Cole and Robert Krulwich take us on a literary and historical tour as they sing a song about eponyms and whether or not it is a good or bad thing to become a noun. Go forth and Google.

Peeling garlic is a messy and tedious process. Or is it? Let the food and travel magazine Saveur and their editor Todd Coleman show you a much better and manlier way to do the job.

One of YouTube’s resident knowledge droppers C.G.P. Grey reminds us of how language and other arbitrary distinctions made by other people shapes how the rest of us view – or divide – the world.

A brief and entertaining primer on how TV ratings are made. Courtesy of ESPN Research & Analytics and JESS3, who used puppets to capture the attention of to – oh, so that’s what ESPN stands for!

Learn how to make a website (that doesn’t suck) with Don’t Fear the Internet, a series of informal and noob-friendly Web Design 101 videos by Jessica Hische and Russ Maschmeyer.

While not as awesome as The Typing of the Dead, Key Hero does a good job of making typing tests fun. It uses interesting quotes, gives concrete feedback of mistakes and even has rankings.