You may not know the name Graeme Obree, but he was a cycling legend––and controversy––in the early 1990s. He built his own bike out of old washing machine parts. No fancy technology, no computer programing, just some good engineering. With this bike, he broke the world hour record. Twice. The bike itself was uniquely laid out. It allowed him to sit in an extremely aggressive position, meaning his body was essentially flat against the handlebars. He was so fast in that position that it was actually banned. So he made his position a little less aggressive––and it was banned again! This video tests to see whether he was a real world champion athlete or if it was his bike’s design. 

Walking through the spice aisle in the grocery store is painful sometimes. Spices are so expensive. It’s very tempting to go for the cheap spices––after all, how different could they be? In this video, a spice expert tries the cheap and expensive version of different spices––things like cinnamon, turmeric, and so on––and explains the difference between them. Cheap turmeric, for example, is chalky and bland compared to the real deal, partly because it’s adulterated. 

“Who Shot Mr. Burns” was a cliffhanger season finale from the peak Simpsons period, the so-called golden age. There was a big, nation-wide contest to guess which character shot Mr. Burns. Only one person guessed it, but he moved out of the country before the killer was revealed so technically no one won. This episode proves that it’s possible to deduce who the killer is using only clues from the episode and (extensive) knowledge about the Simpsons. 

Kids are wonderful, life-giving, adorable and, frankly, sometimes pretty stupid. Two middle school girls were recently arrested in Florida for hatching a plot to murder their classmates, chop up their bodies, eat their flesh, and then drink their blood. The girls would then kill themselves. They planned their crimes to be extra heinous so they could go to hell and be closer to Satan. They hatched this genius scheme while watching a scary movie. They were found hiding in a bathroom with some knives, a knife sharpener, and––wait for it––a pizza cutter. 

How much table salt did you use in the last week? Take a moment to think about that. Try to remember whether at home or restaurants or what. Then think about this: 90% of table salt brands have microplastics. “The density of microplastics found in salt varied dramatically among different brands, but those from Asian brands were especially high, the study found. The highest quantities of microplastics were found in salt sold in Indonesia.” We have yet very little idea of how harmful ingesting plastic is. 

Koeberle Bull had a rude awakening. She received a Facebook message from a Kentucky man full of vulgar, racist slurs. She looked at the guy’s profile picture, told some friends about, and told the police. The police agreed to investigate per her concerns. Some of Bull’s friends who did a little digital sleuthing and gave the police the man’s name. The police drove to the home of Dylan Jarrell and found him on his way out. He was wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying guns and ammunition. He planned to visit two schools that day.

You don’t think much about disguises as an adult. As a kid, disguises are in the books you read, the shows you watch, the games you play with friends. But we grow out of that. This video is going to launch your right back into that feeling you got when you watched your first spy movie. This CIA chief was so good at disguise that she gave George H.W. Bush a briefing on disguise…while she was in a perfectly lifelike mask. You’ll also learn all kinds of fun facts about how CIA spies keep their identities hidden. 

Recently, Vox released a video that argued that the Marvel Comics Universe was overrated. Generally, Vox gets away with these kinds of claims thanks to its excellent video editing, pseudo-intellectualism, and pop-history. Historians and generally thoughtful people have criticized them, but the criticism never sticks. But this time, they messed with the wrong nerds––comic nerds. This video explains everything wrong with Vox’s video, starting with the fact that the video was terribly organized, not chronological, and weakly argued. 

A nine-year-old Canadian girl has better business sense than most grown adults. On the first day of legal weed sales in Canada, she set up her cookie stand outside a store selling marijuana. Her dad suggested she sell to those customers, and she recognized good advice when she saw it. For those who might disagree with her parents’ encouragement to do this, her father explains: 

“We like to have frank discussions with her, so she understands what it is and take away that mystery behind it,” he said in a separate interview with The Canadian Press. “Just to show her people of all ages and all walks of life are doing this and it’s legal in Canada now, just demystify it for her so it’s not a big deal for her.”

SunKist has agreed to plead guilty to a charge of felony price fixing. “The DOJ said StarKist faces up to a $100 million fine when it is sentenced. Prosecutors allege that the industry’s top three companies conspired between 2010 and 2013 to keep prices artificially high.” Last year, Bumble Bee Foods pled guilty for the same charge last year, but only paid $25 million. None of their executives have been charged with a crime. 

By all pop music standards, Lorde’s “Royals” was a weird song when it came out––it was so weird, in fact, that it should not have been a hit. The song is way slower than most pop songs. Lorde’s voice is restrained, soft, and low. The song criticizes pop music culture. But it absolutely caught fire, and it changed pop music. This video explains the history of Lorde’s song, why it’s so different from other songs, and how it’s impacted pop music. 

By the time you’re 40, you’ve got a 10% chance of experiencing hearing loss. It happens so gradually that you don’t even know it’s happening. By the time hearing loss becomes apparent, you may already be suffering from age-related memory loss. Researchers found something interesting recently: using hearing aids or getting corrective eye surgery slows that decline. “Stimulating your ears stimulates the nerves that stimulate your brain,” says one of the experts. The rate of decline slows by 75% after using hearing aids, and 30% after cataract surgery.