Veritasium — transcripts.

1The Man Who Accidentally Killed The Most People In HistoryOne single scientist created three inventions that accidentally caused the deaths of millions of people, including himself. Not only that, they decreased the average intelligence… 2Chaos: The Science of the Butterfly EffectPart of this video is sponsored by LastPass. More about last pass at the end of the show. The butter fly effect is the idea that the tiny causes, like a flay of a butter fly's… 3What They (Probably) Don't Teach You About Rainbows At School 4How this helicopter survived 1004 days on Mars, then disappeared...427 days into what should have been a 30-day mission, and it's turned into a nightmare. On the surface of Mars, 297 million kilometers away is Ingenuity, a tiny 680 gram… 5Can something go faster than it’s pushed?You don't actually need aerodynamics. Here I have a little cart with a big wheel that rolls on two smaller spools. And what I'm going to show is that when you have two media… 6This mechanism shrinks when pulledThis little mechanism shrinks when you try to stretch it. You try to pull it apart and all of a sudden it pulls back on you. That's so weird, right? Here it is under controlled… 7The Blender Question Everyone Gets WrongThere is this famous Google interview question that everyone gets wrong. You're shrunk down to the size of a nickel and put into a blender. The blades will start spinning in 60… 8The World's Most Important Machine- This is a microchip. When you zoom in, you find a nanoscopic computing city skyscrapers, hundreds of layers tall with hundreds of kilometers of wires connecting everything. And… 9The Man Who Took LSD and Changed The WorldHere's what happens when you put your DNA under a microscope. You can extract some from your mouth, just gargle salt water and mix this with soap and rubbing alcohol. You'll get a… 10How Alpha Particles Can Break Computer ChipsIn 1978, Intel reported some strange errors popping up in their 16 kilobit dynamic random access memory or DRAM. Ones would spontaneously flip to zeros with no apparent cause. The… 11The Obviously True Theorem No One Can Prove- [Derek] In Xiamen, China, in the winter of 1954, (fire crackling) air raid sirens (explosions thudding) are sounded all over the city. (siren blaring) People scramble for cover… 12Something is jamming GPS over Europe. Here's what we found- In November 2024, Professor Todd Humphreys, a GPS expert at the University of Texas at Austin, got a mysterious tip-off. Look at two specific days, at exact times in a data set… 13Why Do Escalator Steps Have Teeth?- On October 23rd, 2018, thousands of football fans were making their way to the game in Rome. Excitement for the game was high, and the fans began to chant and sing. At 7:03 pm… 14This Is the Oldest, Weirdest Instrument On Earth(soft whimsical music) - [Derek] There is a limestone cave in Western Virginia where one of its giant chambers has been turned into a musical instrument. They call it an organ… 15Something Strange Happens When You Trust Quantum MechanicsAs a 42 year old who's spent most of my life studying physics, I must admit that I had a big misconception. I believed that every object has one single trajectory through space… 16The Future of Veritasium(cardboard thudding) (cardboard crunching) - Am I retiring? That is the question I will answer in this video, and you can skip ahead to the answer if you like, but I think it'll… 17The Man Who Fooled The WorldMost people don't know the real story of Alfred Nobel. (dramatic music) One morning in 1888, Alfred Nobel sat down to read the newspaper in his conservatory. He scanned the pages… 18We've Been Using The Wrong Science In Court For 50 years(dramatic music) - A man has been found lying dead at the side of the road with oozing, elongated wounds to his back. To solve the murder, a local official calls all the farmers… 19The Biggest Misconception in Physics- Imagine you are an astronaut out drifting in deep space when you throw a rock as hard as you can. What's gonna happen to that rock? Well, you would think that it would continue… 20The Crystal That Could Destroy All Medicine- For two years, this drug was a miracle. It was introduced in 1996 to treat HIV. And by 1998, 75,000 patients across the country were taking up to 20 of them every day. It's… 21Google Maps is unreasonably fast. Let me explain- [Derek] Say you wanna drive from New York to San Francisco. How could you calculate the absolute shortest path? There are over 64 million intersections in the North American… 22What happens if you drop 0.125 grams of antimatter?There is a prequel to the Da Vinci Code. It's called Angels and Demons. And in it, terrorists steal 1/8 of a gram of antimatter from CERN to try to blow up the Vatican. Because… 23Wombats Poop CubesWhy do wombats make cubic poops? At first, we thought it was because they stack so well. Without the round sides, they won't roll away. That makes it a lot easier to mark your… 24The Most Radioactive Place On EarthIf you had to guess the most radioactive place on Earth, where would you pick? Let's use this banana for scale. Because bananas are high in potassium, and around 0.0001% of… 25Can you solve the hat riddle?Here's the problem. You and three amigos are buried neck deep in sand in a prison yard facing a life sentence. The guards offer you a deal. Guess your hat color and you all go… 26The asbestos problem is worse than we thought- This same kind of material was used in the construction of the World Trade Center buildings. And when the towers fell, it was pulverized to a microscopic size and released into… 27AD - How do cities control traffic? We partnered with Anker to find out…Did you know the first traffic light involved a police officer manually pulling a lever to rotate panes of red and green glass in front of a gas lamp? It only lasted a month… 28The Internet Was Weeks Away From Disaster and No One Knew(suspenseful music) - [Derek] In 2021, a hacker uncovered a fatal weakness in the world's most important operating system. - What would you do with a key that gets you into any… 29The Most Controversial Idea In Math- There is a rule in mathematics that is so simple, you would think it obviously must be true, but if you accept it, you find there are now some line segments that have no length.… 30The Secret Spy Tech Inside Every Credit Card- Watch what happens if you take a credit card and stick it in a beaker of acetone. - Nail polish remover basically? - Nail polish remover. - Okay. - [Henry] It does start to work… 31Weird Things Happen When Energy Goes Negative- In 1928, a young man shuffled onto a stage in Germany to present a lecture on his recent work. He had a slightly unusual presentation style. Physicist Eugene Wigner described… 32How many batteries would it take to power a human?How many batteries would it take to power a human for an hour? Now, a normal AA battery like this has about 2.9 W hours worth of energy. That's enough energy to keep a worker ant… 33The Most Controversial Idea in BiologyIf you want to know if someone really understands evolution, just ask them this one weird question. Why does poop smell bad? Oh. Oh gosh. Because it has bacteria in it, I guess?… 34The Tiny Donut That Proved We Still Don't Understand Magnetism- Imagine you are in empty space and you fire off a stream of electrons. Well then, according to most physics textbooks, the only way to change how those electrons behave is by… 35The CIA's new tech doesn't make sense- Could the CIA really track your heartbeat from kilometers away? On April 3rd, 2026, Iranian forces shot down an American fighter plane just over Isfahan. Inside were a pilot and… 36How One Company Secretly Poisoned The PlanetIn 1929 in Chicago, people kept mysteriously dying inside their homes. It took 15 deaths for the authorities to realize that these people were getting killed by... their fridges… 37Why Don’t Railroads Need Expansion Joints?- Let's torch it! Previously on Veritasium, we learned how Hans Goldschmidt discovered that metal oxide-like rust can react with aluminum powder to produce pure liquid metal. Oh!… 38The Ridiculous Engineering of Jet EnginesThis is one of the most powerful jet engines in the world. And it actually runs at temperatures 250° C hotter than the melting point of the materials that make it up. >> That's… 39How a Student's Question Saved This NYC SkyscraperThis is Citicorp Center. In the summer of 1978, it had been open for less than a year when its structural engineer, Bill LeMessurier, made a terrifying discovery. His cutting edge… 40AlphaFold - The Most Useful Thing AI Has Ever DoneWhat if, all of the world's biggest problems from climate change, to curing diseases, to disposal of plastic waste, what if they all had the same solution? A solution so tiny it… 41How easy is it to steal $10,000 from a locked phone?- I'm here with MKBHD, and we're gonna try to steal $10,000 from his locked iPhone. - Really hope it doesn't work. Really hope it doesn't work. - I'm gonna get you to put that… 42What Happens If You Keep Slowing Down?This is a video of light traveling through a bottle at 250 billion frames per second. And here's that same video, but now with the camera moving. You can see it sweeps across the… 43This Paradox Splits Smart People 50/50- There is a problem that I can't bring up without starting a fight. - No, what? - It just seems so obvious to me. - Now I'm all screwed up, man. (Casper laughs) - It has… 44How An Infinite Hotel Ran Out Of RoomImagine there's a hotel with infinite rooms. They're numbered 1 2 3 4 and so on forever. This is the Hilbert Hotel and you are the manager. Now, it might seem like you could… 45Why Super Glue Is Perfect For Gluing SkinHere are two metal cylinders and a single drop of superglue. Once it sets, you can literally hang from that one drop of adhesive. Oh my God. That is crazy. So how is superglue so… 46There Is Something Faster Than Light- In 1935. Einstein came up with a thought experiment that showed quantum mechanics breaks one of the most sacred principles in physics, that nothing can go faster than the speed… 47Why don't trains make *that* sound anymore?Why is it so important that the stones on a real track are jagged? In the past, train tracks used to have gaps in between them. The gaps let the steel tracks expand and contract… 48The Strange Math That Predicts (Almost) AnythingHow many times do you need to shuffle a deck of cards to make them truly random? How much uranium does it take to build a nuclear bomb? How could you predict the next word in a… 49The Biggest Misconception in Football (ft. Tom Brady)This is Tom Brady. He's the greatest American football quarterback of all time. Holy sh Can you hear it go by you? Yeah. Scary. He's won seven Super Bowls and has thrown the most… 5034 Years Of Strandbeest Evolution- [Derek] This is a Strandbeest. It's a walking skeleton that's powered only by the wind, created by Dutch inventor Theo Jansen. There are no motors and no electronics, and… 51You've (Likely) Been Playing The Game of Life Wrong- Some things are not normal. By that I mean if you go out in the world and start measuring things like human height, IQ, or the size of apples on a tree. You will find that for… 52Why Is MIT Making Robot Insects?- [Derek] There are robots the size of bees, others that can jump on water, and some that are powered by tiny combustion engines the size of a penny. One day they could work in… 53Exposing Why Farmers Can't Legally Replant Their Own SeedsOne October evening in 2016, an Arkansas farmer was sitting in his pickup truck just outside his field, and he was growing impatient. Suddenly, another car pulled up beside him… 54Can you really reach anyone in 6 steps?- In 1999, the German newspaper "Die Zeit" ran an experiment. They asked a falafel salesman and former theater director, Salah ben Ghaly, who in the world he would most like to be… 55The Perfect Battery Material Is Dangerous- This is what the inside of a lithium-ion battery looks like. It's not exactly high tech, just two meters of foil coated in black paste, all packed into this tiny 45 gram… 56This is the natural disaster to worry aboutWhat happens if I heat up this rubber band? When you heat materials like glass or plastic, the atoms vibrate faster. They get slightly farther apart and this reduces… 57Making A Giant Zipper To Explain How They Work(zipper whirring) - How does a zipper actually work? Like try to push down on a zipper from above and it probably won't budge, but if you just use the pull tab, suddenly it's… 58Why People Are So Confident When They're WrongFriday the 17th of July 1992. Amidst the chaos of the trading floor at Singapore's International Stock Exchange, one of the junior traders makes an expensive mistake. Instead of… 59We're 99.9% sure this pattern is true, but no one can prove it- [Derek] On the morning of the 17th of April, 2013, the journal Annals of Mathematics received a curious email. It claimed to contain a 50 page proof relating to one of the… 60Can You Keep Zooming In Infinitely?This is a tiny piece of metal just three millimeters across. And here's what happens if you just keep zooming in: 1,000 times, 100,000 times, 50 million times. Each of these blobs… 61The Surprising Genius Of Sewing MachinesAs the needle lowers, the hook grabs the thread. The rotating hook spins around, the first loop is released, and then the hook grabs the second loop. The looper was held by pieces… 62Why Cold Drinks Were Deadly Before 1914- In the summer of 1841, Florida Doctor John Gorrie faced a dire situation. Yellow fever, also known as the black vomit, was sweeping through his town, wiping out entire families.…