Technology Connections
Media
https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections
Overview
Alec Watson, in Chicago, makes long videos about how ordinary technology works and why it was designed that way: dishwashers, heat pumps, refrigeration, toasters, colour television, traffic lights, lava lamps, the colour brown. The explanations go all the way down, usually with the device opened on the bench, and are delivered with a dry, slightly exasperated humour and a running willingness to tell viewers that they are using their appliances wrong. The heat pump and dishwasher videos have become minor public-information campaigns.
Notes
On the list because he is patient enough to explain the whole mechanism and funny enough that you stay for it. Watson's dishwasher opinions are strongly held and backed by evidence, which is the correct order, and his heat pump series is the clearest household-scale account of the energy arguments I touch on under Nuclear Power. It is also a standing reminder that most of the world is well-designed machinery that nobody has bothered to explain.