VOX
What it’s like to work in the world’s greatest office
- Title
- What it’s like to work in the world’s greatest office
- Runtime
- 13:37
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- The SC Johnson administrative building was Frank Lloyd Wright’s corporate masterpiece. What does it feel like?
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
SC Johnson’s Administrative Building and Research Tower in Racine, Wisconsin, have become legendary as corporate headquarters buildings. The Administrative Building’s Great Workroom is a stunning example of architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s unique approach to office design.
But what did it really feel like? Vox’s Phil Edwards visited the HQ to find out — and try actually working there. He also visited the Hardy House, an earlier Wright design that features many of the same Wright signatures found in the SC Johnson building, from custom designed furniture to ideas about compression and expansion.
Watch the video to see what it really feels like to work in such a space.
Further Reading:
https://www.amazon.co...
- Title
- Who's really using up the water in the American West?
- Runtime
- 5:55
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Hint: water scarcity in the Western US has more to do with our diets than our lawns.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
The Western United States is currently battling the most severe drought in thousands of years. A mix of bad water management policies and manmade climate change has created a situation where water supplies in Western reservoirs are so low, states are being forced to cut their water use.
It’s not hard to find media coverage that focuses on the excesses of residential water use: long showers, swimming pools, lawn watering, at-home car washes. Or in the business sector, like irrigating golf courses or pumping water into hotel fountains in Las Vegas.
But when a team of researchers looked at water use in the West, they uncovered a very different story about where most Western water goes. Their findings may hold the solution to dwindling water supplies in the W...
- Title
- Why Queen Elizabeth II was the queen of 15 countries
- Runtime
- 6:00
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- The Commonwealth, explained.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
After centuries of colonizing much of the world, the British Empire began its fast descent in the 1960s amid a global wave of independence movements. But when Queen Elizabeth II died in 2022, she was not only still queen of 14 countries besides the United Kingdom, she was also still the leader of an organization that on a map looks a lot like the British Empire.
The British Empire created the first iteration of the Commonwealth to appease white settler colonies looking for more autonomy. It granted them more independence to govern themselves but kept them under the crown. As British leaders realized their power might be at risk throughout their colonies worldwide, the monarchy made a play to keep ties and preserve their global influence by allowing newly independent republics to join the Commonwealth too. The only catch: They ...
- Title
- How Ukraine got the upper hand against Russia
- Runtime
- 5:43
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Ukraine’s breakthrough counterattack, explained.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
In the spring and summer of 2022, the war between Ukraine and Russia settled into a stalemate. The first phase of the war had been a rapid invasion that drew new battle lines across Ukraine; this next phase saw those battle lines harden and change very little over a long period of fighting. But in September, that chapter came to an end. For the first time in several months, Ukraine scored a major victory and won back significant territory from Russia.
Ukraine pulled this victory off by taking advantage of a surprising weakness in the Russian army: the difficulty it’s had maintaining its ranks of skilled soldiers, especially compared to the training and resources that Ukraine’s army has received from its allies. Reports suggest that Russia’s army has suffered catastrophic losses in the war, and that ...
- Title
- How "Spider-Verse" forced animation to evolve
- Runtime
- 6:35
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Non-photorealistic rendering has opened up an alternative to the ubiquitous “Pixar look.”
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
When you think of CGI animated films, you likely think of Pixar. The studio practically invented the genre with 1995’s Toy Story — the first CGI animated feature film.
After Toy Story, almost all animation studios wanted to follow in Pixar’s successful footsteps, straight down to their style. Many studios sought out “The Pixar Look”: extremely high quality, physically based, and in some cases almost photorealistic.
It’s an appealing approach that remains popular at the box office — but animated movies started looking kind of homogeneous. And while studios and independent artists tested out more stylized approaches in short films, no studio would commit to a feature-length animated movie that looked so different.
That is, u...
- Title
- The real reason Egypt is moving its capital
- Runtime
- 10:36
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Cairo isn’t the problem.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
In 2017, Egypt’s government announced it would build a new capital city 45 kilometers outside of Cairo, the current capital. It was a shocking announcement since Cairo, a city of more than 10,000,000 people, has been the capital of Egypt for decades.
The government claims that Cairo has become too overcrowded and that moving the capital will give both Cairo’s residents and government workers more space. But this excuse is not new. For decades, Egypt’s rulers have been building brand new cities in the desert. None of them have solved Cairo’s density issue. And based on how construction is going, this new capital won’t be a solution either.
So why does Egypt want a new capital? Well, it has a lot to do with the political revolution in 2011.
Watch this episode of Vox Atlas to understand the rea...
- Title
- Why beavers matter as the planet heats up
- Runtime
- 5:21
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Beaver dams are cool(ing the air).
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
If you know anything about beavers, it’s probably that they build dams. These giant structures made of sticks, stones, and mud can reach heights up to 10 feet (3 meters) and lengths averaging 20 feet (6 meters) — though the biggest one ever found was significantly larger and could be seen from space. Dams completely alter the surrounding landscape, flooding the surrounding area and creating wetlands. It’s one reason beavers have often been considered pests that can cause serious damage when they build dams too close to homes or roads.
But scientists have also understood beavers’ importance as “ecosystem engineers” for decades. And as the climate crisis continues to worsen, newer studies are finding that beavers play a vital role in dampening its effects — especially in areas prone to fire, drought, and even...
- Title
- How your TV settings ruin movies
- Runtime
- 9:05
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Your TV is ruining your TV. Make it stop.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Your TV finds lots of ways to adjust your picture. You might not want any of them.
Motion smoothing, sharpening, brightness, contrast, and saturation are all adjustments that your television makes to your picture. These can differ wildly from what filmmakers intend and, sometimes, that’s a nightmare.
As the above video shows, these adjustments are subtle but significant, especially when viewed alongside the original image. Fortunately, there is a solution — TV manufacturers have begun adopting new modes like “Filmmaker Mode,” which largely remove television tweaks to an image.
Further reading:
https://alliance.experienceuhd.com/
You can learn more about what the UHD Alliance is and what it does here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPk_FuQrL00
Filmmak...
- Title
- Why I'm obsessed with these cheap paintings of Paris
- Runtime
- 9:50
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Did this French painter ever exist?
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Henry Rogers' French impressionist paintings of Paris street scenes seem to only exist in online auctions and yard sales. The mystery of his identity deepens when you take a closer look at his art, and notice that his signature changes from painting to painting – sometimes it’s spelled “Henry” and sometimes the French “Henri.”
For years, the only place anyone could learn more about Rogers was on a blog called living-in-the-past.com — a site where one man documented his curiosities and passion projects, dating back to the ’90s.
The author of this site, Philip Lord, became obsessed with gathering information about Rogers but found nothing in his early online searches. So he started researching himself by analyzing dozens of Rogers’ paintings, many of them seeming to show the same street in Pa...
- Title
- This giant laser can simulate a planet’s core
- Runtime
- 10:04
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- How do you study the innards of alien worlds? You just need the world’s largest laser.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
As astronomers search for life outside our solar system, they have to try and answer one big question: What’s the recipe for a habitable planet? We tend to think about the ingredients we encounter every day: liquid water, the protective blanket of the atmosphere, a sun that is neither too warm nor too hot. But there are other factors that are probably equally important: Earth’s cooled and hardened crust, its gooey molten guts, its magnetic field, its volcanoes and deep sea vents. These are the features that fostered life as we know it – they were shaped by unseen processes hidden deep within the globe.
In short, if we want to learn how life could arise on other planets, we need to know what’s going on under the hood.
But that’s easier said than ...
- Title
- How “dementia villages” work
- Runtime
- 7:10
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Can miniature towns make dementia care more humane?
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
On any given day at the Hogeweyk, you can see locals wandering the streets, going out for coffee, folding laundry, and tending gardens, all surrounded by lush outdoor space. Located in Weesp, a Dutch city just outside Amsterdam, the Hogeweyk is a planned village intentionally designed for one purpose: maximizing quality of life for its 180 residents — all of whom have severe dementia.
Inside, nurses and doctors don’t wear uniforms, meals are cooked inside the home with groceries from the village grocery store, and other Weesp residents are free to dine at the on-site restaurant. These design choices aim to deinstitutionalize senior living, blurring the line between what typically happens in front of residents and what happens out of sight.
The style of care that this facility pioneered ...
- Title
- How US corporations poisoned this Indigenous community
- Runtime
- 17:45
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Invisible chemicals changed the Mohawk way of life. They’re probably in you, too.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
In the 1950s, the US and Canada embarked on a massive project to widen the St. Lawrence River, transforming the region to facilitate commerce, attract industry, and boost both nations’ economies. But there was a third nation in the region whose people were not consulted, and whose lifestyle was completely transformed by the project: the Mohawk of Akwesasne.
The St. Lawrence River has been central to Mohawk culture in the region for thousands of years. The river’s fish form the central part of their diet. But for the Mohawk, the fish aren’t a “resource” to be used. They’re an equal partner in a relationship in which both humans and wildlife have sacred responsibilities to one another. These relationships are central to the Mohawk worldview, and they mirror simil...
- Title
- The fall (and rise?) of unions in the US
- Runtime
- 10:23
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- We answered a viewer’s question about the decline of unionization.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
📣 If the news feels chaotic to you these days, you're not alone. We want to answer your biggest questions about what's happening in the world today via our new video format: https://forms.gle/Mgp2oqa3gr8tNw1M7 📣
“How come we’ve seen such a decline in unionization in the US?” That’s the question we received from one of our viewers, Cameron when we put out a call for topics to explain. It comes at an interesting time.
Earlier this year, the Amazon Labor Union won its first election at a large warehouse in New York, and more than 200 Starbucks locations have voted to unionize since baristas in Buffalo broke the seal in December 2021. The National Labor Relations Board reports that petitions for union elections are up 56 percent this year compared to 2021.
- Title
- Humans finally figured out how to make it rain
- Runtime
- 9:46
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Cloud seeding, explained. We flew up to see it with our own eyes.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
For decades, drought-stricken areas around the world have practiced “cloud seeding,” a process where chemical flares full of silver iodide are shot into clouds to encourage them to rain. But until recently, the science didn’t quite back this practice up. In large part, that’s because operational cloud seeding programs don’t have the luxury of conducting controlled tests — they have an obligation to produce as much rain as possible for the people living under the clouds they seed.
But there’s been a new breakthrough. In 2017, a major cloud seeding experiment in the mountains of Idaho showed that cloud seeding works; shooting chemical flares into the sky does produce more precipitation.
As the world faces an increasing number of heat waves and droughts, banking wat...
- Title
- How F1 racers turn really fast
- Runtime
- 6:29
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- It’s all about using the entire width of the road and finding the ideal line.
Subscribe and turn on notifications (🔔) so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Cars travel at their fastest speeds when moving in a straight line, and Formula 1 is no different. F1 racers drive at over 215 mph on the straightest parts of the track. But when it comes to turning around tight corners, these kinds of speeds just aren’t possible. In order to avoid spinning out and crashing, racers have to slow down and use physics to strategically craft the most efficient turns while retaining the greatest amount of speed, ideally giving them a leg up against the competition.
The most efficient path through any corner (or set of corners) is generally referred to as the “ideal racing line.”
This line changes depending on the path of the track before and after the curve, but the goal is always to spend as little time in the turn as possible. ...
- Title
- This high-speed rail project is a warning for the US
- Runtime
- 8:25
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- California's "train to nowhere" shows the challenges ahead.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
In 2008, voters in California passed Proposition 1A, giving the state the go-ahead to build a high-speed rail line. In theory, it was a great idea. The train would whisk passengers between San Francisco and Los Angeles in less than 3 hours. Eventually it would also link San Diego and Sacramento. It was estimated that it would take until 2020 to complete.
But now it’s 2022, and so far California’s high-speed rail line is just a few concrete bridges and viaducts strewn across the rural Central Valley. Much of the plan had to be changed, redesigned, or even abandoned all together. Now the project is decades late and way over budget. And that isn’t just California’s problem. Because among the many factors that plagued the project, several are baked into the power structure of the US itself.<...
- Title
- Why US gun laws get looser after mass shootings
- Runtime
- 9:27
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Congress has rarely acted. But gun laws have been changing.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
For decades, the US Congress failed to make meaningful movement on gun reform in the aftermath of mass shootings. But that weak federal response has obscured another story: that state gun laws change after mass shootings all the time. And a study found that, in Republican-controlled state legislatures, a mass shooting roughly doubles the number of laws loosening gun restrictions in the next year.
In this video we look at Texas, where decades of mass shootings in the US have been met with laws that expand gun access. We spoke with Flo Rice, a survivor of the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting, where a gunman killed 10 people. Flo was shot six times. She and her husband, Scot, became advocates for gun safety, and tried to get tighter gun laws passed in Texas. Watch the piece above to see what happe...
- Title
- Why US schools are at the center of trans rights
- Runtime
- 8:58
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- A civil rights battle with transgender kids caught in the middle.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
In recent years, state legislatures in the US have introduced hundreds of bills targeting the rights of LGBTQ Americans. Many of those laws are focused in particular on the rights of transgender school children in public schools: what types of bathrooms they can use, whether their pronouns will be used, and whether they can participate in school sports. These laws are increasingly common in Republican-controlled states. Also, they may be violations of federal law.
This puts public schools in these states in a strange position: do they follow state laws that, under the Biden administration, could open them up to a federal civil rights investigation? Or do they ignore state law, and risk the state cutting their funding? Amid all that uncertainty, those who suffer most are the trans children c...
- Title
- 4 ways Americans are still getting abortion pills
- Runtime
- 7:01
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Banning abortion doesn’t eliminate the need for it.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
In June, the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 landmark decision Roe v. Wade — eliminating the federal right to abortion, and giving the power to decide whether abortion is a crime to each individual state. As of July, many states have already banned abortion outright, and more are soon to follow. But heavily restricting or banning abortion doesn’t eliminate the need for it. And abortion care looks a bit different than it did in 1973.
Over 50 percent of legal abortions in the United States are now carried out early in pregnancy with the use of a two-medication regime known as “abortion pills” or “medication abortion.” Most people are able to take the medication in the privacy of their own home.
In December 2021, the federal Food and Drug Administration permanently allowed the p...
![Your brain on travel [Advertiser Content From Marriott Bonvoy®]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/f0KLHiJLbL0/1.jpg)
- Title
- Your brain on travel [Advertiser Content From Marriott Bonvoy®]
- Runtime
- 4:16
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Let’s go back in time to one of the most groundbreaking neuroscience discoveries in all of history. Some scientists once believed that the human brain was unchangeable and only declined with age. In the 1960s, neuroscientist Dr. Marian Diamond proved that this belief was false. Dr. Diamond, who famously studied the brain of Dr. Albert Einstein, proved that if the brain was in an enriched environment, it could grow and renew its connections.
One way humans can access an enriched environment? Travel.
Different brains’ synapses are sparked when humans are exposed to new foods, smells, tastes, and sensations within their environment. Traveling is one way humans can potentially develop new synaptic connections and transform archaic ways of comprehending.
Dr. Diamond found that the cerebral cortices of the rats in enriched environments were about six percent bigger than the rats in the bare cages. Also, the rats in the multi-sensory environment had ...
- Title
- Why motion capture is harder than it looks
- Runtime
- 8:36
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- The suits are just the beginning of the motion capture process.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Motion capture has taken over a lot of computer animation for movies, video games, and TV. Coverage typically focuses on actors wearing funny suits and performing feats of imagination. But is it really that easy?
The above video shows that it’s a lot more complex than that. Motion capture requires heavy editing, tweaking, and processing after the actual capture to create animations that look real. That part of the process is key to understanding the images on your screen.
Watch the above video to learn more.
Further Reading:
https://plask.ai/
Plask.ai lets you try out these tools for yourself. It’s a fun way to see just how far AI-based motion capture can go.
https://www.mixamo.com/#/
Mixamo is one of many resources for motion captu...
- Title
- How abortion bans make inequality worse
- Runtime
- 10:47
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- And the study that offers a glimpse into a post-Roe v. Wade future.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
In 2008, researchers with the University of California San Francisco embarked on a study that compared the outcomes of two similar groups of women, each at a crucial juncture in their lives: a visit to an abortion clinic. The groups differed, though, in whether or not they were able to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. It was called the Turnaway Study, named for those who were turned away by the clinic because their pregnancies were past legal gestational limits, and it provides some of the best data we have on the impacts of abortion bans.
Among the study’s findings is the severe financial impact of being forced to parent a new child when someone is already living in difficult financial circumstances. People who seek abortions, especially later-term abortions, are far more likely than ...
- Title
- How the “lost cities” of the Amazon were finally found
- Runtime
- 6:55
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- And why they were so hard to see
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
The Amazon has always been one of the most mysterious places on earth.
When European colonizers arrived in the 16th century, they were captivated by rumors of a golden city, hidden somewhere in the rainforest. Their search for “El Dorado” lasted more than a century, but only resulted in disaster, death, and further conquest of the indigenous people there.
Experts thereafter looked at the Amazon and saw only a desolate jungle; too harsh for extensive agriculture and therefore sparsely populated. They believed that it had always been this way.
Until recently.
Beginning in the late 20th century, archaeologists began looking more closely at the forest floor. Working with the indigenous people who still remained there, they excavated long ditches and mounds. After mapping them, the...
- Title
- Drag kings, explained by drag kings
- Runtime
- 8:02
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Mo B. Dick, Maxxx Pleasure, Sigi Moonlight, Johnny Gentleman, and King Molasses explain the evolution of drag.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Drag kings have historically gotten a lot less attention than drag queens, but that’s starting to change. We interviewed five drag kings about their relationships to drag, how the artform has transformed, and what they love about it.
In the words of King Molasses, drag is full of “that swag you get in the shower that nobody sees.” Drag king performances are all about playing with masculine identities: politicizing them, satirizing them, and having fun with them. And these performers have been around for centuries.
In China, documentation of “male impersonators” dates back to the Tang Dynasty, from 618 to 907 AD. In the mid-to-late 1800s, drag king pioneers like Annie Hindle, Vesta Tilley, and Ella Wesner began performing. ...
- Title
- Why roller coaster loops aren't circular
- Runtime
- 6:27
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- The G forces were out of this world.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
If you’ve ever been on a modern looping roller coaster, you’ve probably experienced a thrilling, safe, and mostly comfortable ride. But this wasn’t always the case. Just over 100 years ago, loop-the-loops were painful, not sturdy, and much more dangerous than they are today.
Between the 1840s and early 1900s, loops on roller coasters were perfectly circular — meaning riders would go from traveling in a fairly straight line to immediately moving into a curve. This rapid onset of curvature caused extreme G force spikes that rattled passengers to their core.
The first looping roller coaster in North America — Coney Island’s Flip-Flap Railway — could exert up to 14 G's on a person. For reference, astronauts in a spaceship launch experience 3 G’s. Fighter pilots with very special equipment and ...
- Title
- Why shipping container homes are overrated
- Runtime
- 10:36
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- They’re fun. They’re also way more difficult to build than they seem.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Shipping container homes have been a trend for a while, from reality TV shows to housing policy discussions. But the truth is that these homes are a lot more difficult to build than you might think.
It’s easy to think that housing solutions are purely technological, but many obstacles to housing aren’t in construction but in the policies surrounding homebuilding. Moreover, many of the supposed advantages of shipping containers turn out to be more complicated in reality.
Vox’s Phil Edwards spent a night in a shipping container home to see how the experience of staying in a shipping container compares with the reality of building one.
Further Reading:
Mark Hogan’s 2015 opinion piece about shipping containers is a great introduction to the ...
- Title
- AI art, explained
- Runtime
- 13:33
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- How programmers turned the internet into a paintbrush. DALL-E 2, Midjourney, Imagen, explained.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Beginning in January 2021, advances in AI research have produced a plethora of deep-learning models capable of generating original images from simple text prompts, effectively extending the human imagination. Researchers at OpenAI, Google, Facebook, and others have developed text-to-image tools that they have not yet released to the public, and similar models have proliferated online in the open-source arena and at smaller companies like Midjourney.
These tools represent a massive cultural shift because they remove the requirement for technical labor from the process of image-making. Instead, they select for creative ideation, skillful use of language, and curatorial taste. The ultimate consequences are difficult to predict, but — like the invention of the cam...
- Title
- We tracked what happens after TikTok songs go viral
- Runtime
- 22:38
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- A data investigation into how TikTok is shaping the music industry, in collaboration with The Pudding.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
It’s no secret that TikTok is a virality machine. Songs get turned into sounds that can be used in any video, and if they gain enough traction they can catapult a musician into the pop culture stratosphere. But we wanted to know exactly what happens between a song going viral and an artist becoming a bonafide success. So in the fall of 2021, we partnered with data analysis website The Pudding figure it out.
Along the way, we discovered that using data to concretely answer this question is quite a challenge. Our process included creating dozens of custom data sets, careful fact-checking, and conversations with both hit songwriters and music industry executives to match data with real experiences.
After seven months of spreadsheets, data de...
- Title
- Why Germany is hooked on Russian gas
- Runtime
- 8:43
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- How Germany got stuck paying for Russia's war.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the EU has sanctioned much of Russia’s economy, but Russia’s natural gas trade remains untouched. The EU gets nearly a quarter of its energy from natural gas, and almost half of that comes from Russia, the world’s largest gas exporter. As the EU’s largest economy, Germany is Russia’s biggest customer, paying Russia’s state-owned gas company 200 million euros. So while Germany has even sent Ukraine weapons, in a historic shift of military policy, through its gas supply Germany is helping to pay for the war it’s trying to stop.
It’s inherently hard to pivot away from piped gas. Unlike oil and coal, which can be rerouted, gas pipelines cost billions, take years to build, and physically connect producer and buyer directly, making them long-term commitments. Th...
- Title
- The hidden history of “Hand Talk”
- Runtime
- 10:12
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- The hidden history of an ancient language.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Centuries before we had American Sign Language, Native sign languages, broadly known as “Hand Talk,” were thriving across North America. Hand Talk would be influential in the formation of American Sign Language. But it has largely been written out of history.
One of these Hand Talk variations, Plains Indian Sign Language, was used so widely across the Great Plains that it became a lingua franca — a universal language used by both deaf and hearing people to communicate among tribes that didn’t share a common spoken language. At one point, tens of thousands of indigenous people used Plains Indian Sign Language, or PISL, for everything from trade to hunting, conflict, storytelling, and rituals.
But by the late 1800s, the federal government had implemented a policy that would change the course...
- Title
- The world's biggest wave, explained
- Runtime
- 17:26
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- And how it's transformed a Portuguese town.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Nazaré, Portugal was for centuries just a small fishing village known for its fishermen and dangerous seas. Then one day in 2011, a pro-surfer named Garrett McNamara strapped on a surf board and rode a 78 foot wave right off its coast. It was a new world-record for big wave surfing and the moment that changed Nazaré forever. Now, Nazaré is the capital of Big Wave surfing. The secret to Nazaré’s giant waves lies under the surface, where a huge underwater canyon funnels swells right up to its cliffs, then launches that energy straight up, sometimes 60, 70, or 80 feet. Many surfers visit in the hopes of catching a 100-foot wave.
Make sure you never miss behind the scenes content in the Vox Video newsletter, sign up here: http://vox.com/video-newsletter
Vox.com is a news website that helps you cu...
- Title
- Who made these circles in the Sahara?
- Runtime
- 27:08
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Someone left these marks in the sand. We had to find out who.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Deep in the Sahara, far from any towns, roads, or other signs of life, is a row of markings in the sand. There are dozens of them stretching for miles in a straight line in central Algeria, each consisting of a central point surrounded by a circle of 12 nodes, like numbers on a clock. And when we started making this video, no one seemed to know what they were.
We first saw the circles back in September 2021, after finding a Reddit post on r/WhatIsThis with coordinates asking what the circles could be. With just two upvotes and two commenters, it wasn’t exactly a lively discussion. But seeing the circles themselves on Google Earth was fascinating: They were eerily perfect in their shape and regularity, but so deeply isolated in the desert. We were hooked on finding an answer.
So ...
- Title
- Why Frank Lloyd Wright’s windows look like this
- Runtime
- 8:27
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Natural light was an obsession — and he worked hard to let it in.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian homes included many distinctive features, from the brick and cedar materials to the open floor plan. But one of the most distinctive features might be the windows — which reflected his broader philosophy of natural light.
As the above video shows, Wright considered natural light an important part of the house that deserved highlighting, both in the windows used and in the way the rest of the house showcased that light. The Pope-Leighey house in Alexandria, Virginia, is a particularly good showcase of the way these windows made natural light an integral part of the home.
Further Reading:
Steven M. Reiss’s book about the Pope-Leighey House is an invaluable resource for learning about the house, but it also gives a peek into the developme...
- Title
- How “Z” became Putin’s new propaganda meme
- Runtime
- 8:16
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- The letter now signifies loyalty to the Russian president.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Russian gymnast Ivan Kuliak caused controversy in March 2022 when he accepted a bronze medal at a World Cup event, all while sporting a taped-on letter “Z” on his uniform. The Z symbol had already been appearing all over Russia, as a sign of support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine and loyalty to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The letter popped up on merchandise, in highly organized flash mobs that often involved children, at pro-war rallies, and in internet memes.
The symbol was originally spotted on Russian tanks and trucks building up at Ukraine’s border in late February, along with other letters like V and O. Questions about what the symbols meant began circulating online, and once the invasion began on February 24, most analysts agreed the markings were likely for tactical purposes...
- Title
- The banned weapon Russia (and the US) won’t give up
- Runtime
- 9:48
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Why war crimes investigators are looking for cluster bombs in Ukraine.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
In Ukraine, human rights investigators like Amnesty International and Bellingcat have been tracking Russian attacks to aid in a potential war crimes investigation. One thing they’re paying special attention to is cluster bombs. Cluster bombs were first used in World War II; they scatter numerous smaller bombs over a wide area — often killing civilians. It’s this indiscriminate nature that often makes their use a war crime.
Our modern conception of war crimes was created by a series of treaties spanning decades. In 1977, one of those treaties banned what’s known as “indiscriminate attacks.” That means militaries are legally prohibited from attacking an area imprecisely, in a way that can harm civilians.
Russia is not alone in using these weapons: In conflicts si...
- Title
- What Russia's war means for the International Space Station
- Runtime
- 8:30
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Can the US and Russia still collaborate in space?
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
The International Space Station has been orbiting above us for the last 20 years. It’s been home to astronauts from more than a dozen different countries — but mostly Americans and Russians. The two former “Space Race” countries control the main parts of the station. The science done there has required close collaboration and so it’s been largely insulated from politics on Earth.
But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may change that. The two countries have agreed to cooperate through 2024… but after that, the future of the space station is uncertain.
Make sure you never miss behind the scenes content in the Vox Video newsletter, sign up here: http://vox.com/video-newsletter
Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really drivin...
- Title
- How Ukrainians are saving art during the war
- Runtime
- 8:58
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- And the long history of why protecting physical culture matters.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Despite the fact that it’s a war crime to target cultural heritage, cultural sites are often treated as a second front: looted, damaged, or destroyed as a way for an aggressor to assert power, demoralize an enemy, and control — or even erase — a cultural narrative.
From the very beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, identity has been at the center of Putin’s agenda. And as cultural sites all over the country sustain damage, it is becoming increasingly clear that erasing the cultural and historical markers of Ukraine are a key facet of Russia’s plan.
Ukraine is home to a vast array of visual and material culture — museums, monuments, archives, and architecture — all of which is at grave risk of destruction, both collateral and intentional.
We...
- Title
- Why everyone has this chair
- Runtime
- 6:02
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- This two-legged chair has been famous for almost 100 years.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
If your internet overlaps even a little bit with mine, you’ve seen a Cesca (also known as a B32). The cantilevered cane and chrome chair is all over the place: in trendy homes, on movies and tv sets, even tattooed on people's bodies. But Instagram’s favorite chair is not exactly new.
It was designed nearly 100 years ago by an architect named Marcel Breuer, while he was a student at the Bauhaus, the famed German art school. This somewhat unassuming two-legged chair is the realization of a manifestos-worth of utopian ideals about design and functionality. So maybe it’s no surprise it has somehow remained in fashion for decades: It’s a design icon. And just a really, really nice looking chair.
To learn more about Marcel Breuer, “Marcel Breuer: Furniture and Interiors” by Ch...
- Title
- How China uses fruit to punish Taiwan
- Runtime
- 10:12
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- It's not just about fruit.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
In September 2021, China banned the import of sugar apples, or atemoya, from Taiwan, claiming they were bringing in pests. Critics say pests are an excuse, and China is weaponizing trade with Taiwan. And this isn’t the first time. In February of 2021, China banned the import of Taiwanese pineapples, causing a backlog and threatening farmers' livelihoods across the country.
The current situation is tied to a complex history that goes back to the Chinese civil war, and to recent tensions that go back to 2016, when Taiwan elected a new president. Since then, Chinese military incursions into Taiwan’s air space have been on the rise, and the relation between the two has kept deteriorating. Fruit is the latest expression of this.
To understand how this atemoya ban impacts farmers in Taiwan, and how it all ties toget...
- Title
- Why people thought steel houses were a good idea
- Runtime
- 10:55
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- It was supposed to be the future of housing. What went wrong?
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Why aren’t homes made of steel? In the late 1940s, one company posed that question. Lustron was a prefabricated home that was supposed to be the future of housing. So why did it fail?
For just a few years — 1947 to 1950 — the Columbus, Ohio-based Lustron represented the future of housing. Using a steel frame and porcelain enamel-covered steel panels, Lustron made homes in a factory and shipped them around the country.
Vox’s Phil Edwards visited a Lustron home just outside Dayton, Ohio, to experience the unusual features, like magnetic walls, for himself. This home’s quirks weren’t relegated to the materials. Through a combination of government funding sources, an attempt to reinvent the production cycle for home, and a unique distribution plan, the Lustron home helps exp...
- Title
- How Stalin starved Ukraine
- Runtime
- 15:10
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- It was a genocide that Russia continues to cover up to this day
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
In Ukraine, it’s become known as “the Holodomor,” meaning “death by starvation.” It was a genocide carried out by a dictator who wanted to keep Ukraine under his control and who would do anything to keep it covered up for decades.
In the 1930s, Soviet leaders under Joseph Stalin engineered a famine that killed millions as they sought to consolidate agricultural power. In Ukraine, they used additional force as they sought to clamp down on a burgeoning Ukrainian national identity. There, at least 4 million died. As hunger spread among residents, Stalin spearheaded a disinformation campaign to hide the truth from other Soviet citizens and the world. So many Ukrainians died that officials had to send people to resettle the area, setting off demographic shifts that last to this day.
- Title
- Why there's no one inside this Spider-Man suit
- Runtime
- 6:49
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- CGI superheroes are more common than you think.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
On June 9, 1995, Batman Forever introduced audiences to what was likely the first CGI stunt double.
In a few brief shots, a digital double lept from tall buildings and swung on a grappling hook, and was used to convince viewers that Bruce Wayne was more “super” than the average man. Since then, superheroes and digidoubles have gone hand in hand. Protagonists in superhero films often wear masks or skin-tight bodysuits, which makes them perfect candidates for digital replacement; fabric is way easier to replicate digitally than skin.
Technology has only improved over the years, which means digidoubles are used for so much more than just “super” sequences. Today, digidoubles are used to give filmmakers and artists flexibility. Instead of being locked into what they’re able to shoot duri...
- Title
- Ukrainians' escape by rail, explained
- Runtime
- 8:19
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- What it's like to flee Ukraine
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, more than 3 million people have been forced to flee their homes and leave the country. The vast majority are migrating west, toward the EU, and most are ending up in neighboring Poland. To escape the violence of the ground more than 2 million refugees have escaped by train, turning Ukraine’s railroad network into a vital lifeline.
We sent a crew out to Przemyśl, a small Polish town on the border with Ukraine, to speak with the people who have fled Ukraine and left everything behind. In this video, we share their stories and take a look at how the railroad is operating in a war-torn country. To help us understand what a difficult operation this is, we spoke to the CEO of Ukrainian Railways, Oleksandr Kamyshin, who is running a mobile command unit to ensure Ukraini...
- Title
- Are we done with face masks?
- Runtime
- 4:33
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Mandates around the globe are ending, but don’t throw out your masks yet.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Face masks were one of our earliest interventions to slow the spread of Covid-19. For two years we’ve largely relied on local governments and businesses to tell us when and where to wear them, but now those mandates are being lifted. So is it actually safe to take off the masks for good?
It depends on who you are and where you are. Cases are dropping in many places around the world after a harsh omicron surge, but some countries are still fighting off deadly waves of the virus. Many public health experts are warning that the pandemic isn’t over yet, even if it feels like it is to some of us. It’s a good idea to hang onto your mask for now, but that doesn’t mean you have to wear it every day for the rest of your life, just that you should take a few key things into conside...
- Title
- How a no-fly zone would change the war in Ukraine
- Runtime
- 6:06
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- The battle for Ukraine’s skies has enormous stakes.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
The Russian air force is huge. Ukraine’s is not. And yet, more than two weeks into Russia’s war in Ukraine, one of the biggest surprises was that Russia had not yet achieved control of the skies over Ukraine, or what’s called “air superiority.” When a military has air superiority, its planes can attack the enemy much more easily and its ground troops can advance much faster. If, or when, Russia achieves air superiority, it will have gained a major advantage in the war.
To prevent or slow down that outcome, Ukraine’s allies in the west are working to deny Russia air superiority, mostly by sending weapons that can be used to shoot down planes. But Ukraine itself has asked for a more drastic step: the declaration of a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which would prohibit Russian planes from the airsp...
- Title
- Volodymyr Zelenskyy, explained in 8 moments
- Runtime
- 8:50
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Zelenskyy's rise in Ukraine, from TV star to president.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Once known for his political comedy sketches and skits where he pretended to play the piano with his penis, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected as the president of Ukraine in 2019 in a landslide victory.
Although he promised that his presidency would be different from other Ukrainian leaders who “promise a lot” yet “do nothing,” President Zelenskyy would soon find himself unpopular with the public. Within two years, he had already navigated scandals like his offshore companies appearing in the Pandora Papers and struggled to fulfill his campaign pledge to end the war against Russia in the Donbas region of Ukraine.
But the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, found him extremely well-positioned to offer his skills in performance and storytelling to motivate Ukrainians, rally Europe...
- Title
- Putin's war on Ukraine, explained
- Runtime
- 8:49
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Ukraine is under attack. Follow Vox for the latest: https://bit.ly/3Kcg9Nb
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
On February 24th, Russia launched a military invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin called it a “special military operation,” but the scale of the attack shows this is a full-scale war that has already caused more than 100 casualties and forced more than half a million Ukrainians to flee their homes.
Ukraine and Russia’s conflict goes back to 2014, when Russia invaded and annexed Crimea and Russian-backed separatist forces took over parts of southeastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. But to understand the full context behind the invasion, it’s important to go even farther back, to the time when Europe’s current-day divisions began, and see how that shaped Europe’s power balance today.
To understand the current conflict’s history in less than...
- Title
- How American conservatives turned against the vaccine
- Runtime
- 14:48
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- The partisan pandemic, explained in 15 charts.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
President Donald Trump presided over the fastest vaccine development process in history, leading to abundant, free vaccines in the US by the spring of 2021. Although the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines haven’t been able to stop transmission of the virus, they have been highly effective against hospitalization and death, saving hundreds of thousands of lives and rendering the majority of new Covid-19 deaths preventable.
Trump has received three doses of the vaccine. But many of his most dedicated supporters have refused, and many have died as a result. Why? Obvious culprits include misinformation on social media and Fox News and the election of Joe Biden, which placed a Democrat at the top of the US government throughout the vaccine distribution period. But if you look closely at the data, you’ll see that vaccine-he...
- Title
- Why the US doesn’t have universal child care (anymore)
- Runtime
- 8:01
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- Other rich countries have family policies the US doesn’t.
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Every other high-income country in the world has a paid maternity leave policy. Most have a paternity leave policy, too. And usually some form of universal or subsidized child care for all families. The United States has… none of these policies.
It did have federally-funded child care once. And Congress even passed a universal child care policy in the 70s. But today, the US is stuck on a policy path of welfare and tax credits. So… why hasn’t the US been able to establish these common family policies?
The Promise of Preschool is a great dive into the history of child care policy in the US if you want to read more: https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395075.001.0001/acprof-9780195395075
And Anna Danziger Halperin’s researc...
- Title
- In defense of the "gentrification building"
- Runtime
- 9:16
- Date posted
- 4 years ago
- Description
- How new buildings can actually fight displacement
Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
When many people look at new housing construction, they don’t just see boxy, modern, and bland architecture. They see new buildings that symbolize displacement and gentrification, or the idea that the construction comes at the cost of pushing existing residents out and replacing them with richer, whiter residents. But as Vox policy reporter Jerusalem Demsas explains, new construction in the US can actually help fight displacement.
There’s a growing body of research on what actually happens when we add units of housing to neighborhoods: market-rate units decrease displacement and rents in neighborhoods, while adding strictly affordable units decreases gentrification. And while people may not love the aesthetics of the new architecture, these buildings all look so similar for a reason: it’s the cheap...
