I tried to write a more honest VPN commercial. The sponsor wasn’t happy about it. • Get ██ days of ███ VPN free at ██████.com/honest The ASA ruling I referenced: https://www.asa.org.uk/rulings/tefincom-sa-a19-547668.html I’m at https://tomscott.com on Twitter at https://twitter.com/tomscott on Facebook at https://facebook.com/tomscott and on Instagram as tomscottgo

The Tree That Owns Itself in Athens, Georgia is well known. The other Tree That Owns Itself in Eufaula, Alabama, really isn’t. It’s the same story in a different place. Why? I’m at http://tomscott.com on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tomscott on Facebook at http://facebook.com/tomscott and on Instagram as tomscottgo

In Wuppertal, Germany, there’s the Schwebebahn: a suspended monorail that carries 80,000 people a day above the streets of the city, and above the river Wupper. It’s a wonderful thing: but it wasn’t the future of travel, and here’s why. INSTAGRAM: tomscottgo FACEBOOK: http://facebook.com/tomscott TWITTER: http://twitter.com/tomscott or on the web at https://tomscott.com

If you’ve been a subscriber for a while, you probably know where this one is going. Although you may still be surprised about where I ended up going… Montana’s Giant Springs State Park, and Lake Sumiainen in Finland, have very short rivers. Finding the shortest in the world, though: that could be trickier. Sources: https://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2012-06-18/d-river-lincoln-city-oregon-ken-jennings-maphead

The Berkeley Pit, in Butte, Montana, was once the richest hill on Earth: the Anaconda Copper Mine. Now: it’s not all that rich, and it’s not much of a hill. Instead, it’s a toxic pit filled with sulfuric acid. Thanks to the Montana Resources team: https://www.montanaresources.com/ REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING: “10,000 miles of tunnels”: https://mtstandard.com/news/local/new-map-plots-butte-underground/article_f1de51e2-948f-5634-9aa0-87ad730d9cfd.html

http://tomscott.com – http://twitter.com/tomscott – In north-west Germany sits Bielefeld, a city complete with castle, cathedral and citizens. Just one catch: according to something that’s half urban legend, half in-joke, it doesn’t exist. Let’s talk about belief and Bielefeld.

The International Phonetic Alphabet: one sound for each symbol, and one symbol for each sound. Except for the sounds we can’t make. Pull down the description for the references! MORE LANGUAGE FILES: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL96C35uN7xGLDEnHuhD7CTZES3KXFnwm0 Written with Gretchen McCulloch and Molly Ruhl. Gretchen’s new book, BECAUSE INTERNET, is available now: 🇺🇸 US: https://amzn.to/30tLpjT 🇨🇦 CA: https://amzn.to/2JsTYWH 🇬🇧

“Hello!” “Thank you!” “You’re welcome!” These are all phatic expressions, and people can argue about them. Pull down the description for the references! MORE LANGUAGE FILES: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL96C35uN7xGLDEnHuhD7CTZES3KXFnwm0 Written with Gretchen McCulloch and Molly Ruhl. Gretchen’s new book, BECAUSE INTERNET, is available now: 🇺🇸 US: https://amzn.to/30tLpjT 🇨🇦 CA: https://amzn.to/2JsTYWH 🇬🇧 UK: https://amzn.to/32epYoK (Those are affiliate links

http://tomscott.com – http://twitter.com/tomscott – In a fjord near Stavanger, in southern Norway, is Preikestolen: Pulpit Rock. It’s known as one of the world’s scariest tourist attractions, for good reason — but despite the millions that visit it, it’s pretty safe. At least, for current human values of safe. Let’s talk about risk, immortality, and what

http://tomscott.com – http://twitter.com/tomscott – In the abandoned theme park of Pripyat, I have a banana. For scale. Let’s talk about the Banana Equivalent Dose. Thanks to Ashley Shepherd for the drone footage – see the full video on his channel here: http://youtu.be/nhtL2dBrmlI

A decade ago, engineers found the Humber Bridge had the same problem as many of the world’s suspension bridges: unexpectedly fast corrosion. Here’s how they fixed it, and how they’re checking that it’s staying fixed. Thanks to all the team at the Humber Bridge board, at Cleveland Bridge, and Visit Hull and East Yorkshire, all

Language changes over time, and that’s fine. Time for a dose of descriptivism, as the Language Files return. Pull down the description for the references! MORE LANGUAGE FILES: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL96C35uN7xGLDEnHuhD7CTZES3KXFnwm0 Written with Gretchen McCulloch and Molly Ruhl. Gretchen’s new book, BECAUSE INTERNET, is available soon: 🇺🇸 US: https://amzn.to/30tLpjT 🇨🇦 CA: https://amzn.to/2JsTYWH 🇬🇧 UK: https://amzn.to/32epYoK (Those are

If you believe the hype, then the Metropolitan Area Underground Discharge Channel stops Tokyo flooding. It doesn’t. But it is one colossal part of a huge network of flood defences that protect a city that would otherwise be… well, very wet. MORE ABOUT THE DISCHARGE CHANNEL: The Discharge Channel’s site (in Japanese): http://www.ktr.mlit.go.jp/edogawa/gaikaku/ Advice for

JOIN OUR LIVE STUDIO AUDIENCE! MAYBE! http://techdif.co.uk/live/ — From East Asia to West Yorkshire, today we’re taking on the world’s culinary delights and some odd governmental manipulations. BONUS MATERIAL: https://youtu.be/Wv_NcNXwGRw FULL PLAYLIST: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL96C35uN7xGIo2odDuuPeYtb7BtQ1kBhp OFFICIAL ALL-NEW WEB SITE and MORE AUDIO EPISODES: http://techdif.co.uk Thanks again to our anonymous subtitler, and all the people who’ve helped translate

Olds Engineering, a traditional workshop and foundry, sits in Maryborough, Australia. It’s not the sort of place you’d expect to find a new industrial invention in the 21st century: and yet the Olds Elevator, patented by Peter Olds, is just that. More about Olds Engineering: https://www.olds.com.au/ and the Olds Elevator: https://www.oldselevator.com/ Edited by Michelle Martin

http://tomscott.com – http://twitter.com/tomscott – Under the Elbe river in Hamburg, Germany, lies the Old Elbe Tunnel in St Pauli. Like early 20th century tunnels around the world, it has lifts or stairs to take you down and under the river. But this is on a whole different scale to those you might have seen elsewhere…

Baldwin Street in Dunedin, New Zealand, has the Guinness World Record for “steepest paved road over a continuous distance of more than ten metres”. Which is enough to bring in quite a few tourists. What’s the history? And what counts as “steepest street”? Thanks to Mayor Dave Cull and to Gary Blackman. You can see

If you invent a new theme park or amusement ride, how do you test it to make sure it’s safe? There’s no Federal Bureau of Zip Lines. I visited one of the companies that does just that sort of testing – and, now, inventing. More about Holmes Solutions: https://holmessolutions.com/ And their adventure recreation division: https://holmessolutions.com/case-study/adventure-recreation

http://tomscott.com – http://twitter.com/tomscott – On the winter solstice, I trekked out to a cold and muddy Avebury Henge, out in Wiltshire, to talk about two things: first, the peculiar and mostly-British belief of ley lines, and second, the fact that it’s basically a hipster version of Stonehenge: bigger, cooler, and you’ve probably never heard of

http://tomscott.com – http://twitter.com/tomscott – Thanks to Ashley Shepherd for the drone footage – see the full video on his channel here: http://youtu.be/nhtL2dBrmlI This is the Duga-3 array, inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. It’s an incredible piece of Soviet engineering, capable of sending radar pulses so powerful they could see over the horizon. Which, when you

Mount Taranaki, on the North Island of New Zealand, is a large-scale circle that’s visible from space: a stratovolcano with six miles of forest around it. But that didn’t happen naturally. Oh, and there’s a good chance that, in the next fifty years or so, it might explode. GOOD VIDEOS ON NATURAL PERSONHOOD: Law professor

http://tomscott.com – http://twitter.com/tomscott – The Delta Works, to the west of the Netherlands, are one of the modern wonders of the world. But there’s other, lesser-known infrastructure there too: including the Rozenburg Wind Wall, on the Caland Canal, which turns a dangerous, windy stretch of canal into a much more navigable bit of water. It’s

Los Angeles needed water, and lots of it. It still does. And that water comes from the LA Aqueduct, masterplanned by William Mulholland. The end of his career, though, wasn’t such a triumph. This is the story of the St Francis Dam, and the collapse that stopped Los Angeles from taking over an entire valley.

A quick and dirty video from Tom (http://tomscott.com – @tomscott) and Matt (http://mattg.co.uk – @unnamedculprit) – ten illegal things to do in London. Yes, these are all properly illegal: you can see our references at http://tomscott.com/law/