We go down the rabbit hole for you.
True stories and real questions, researched, simplified and animated into short videos. Every Short has a write-up here with the extra context and every source, numbered.
Latest Short
The Panama Files · Part 1
The Panama Files, Part 1: The Vote
In 1879, a room in Paris voted on how to build a canal across Panama. Only 19 of the yes votes came from engineers, and only one had ever been to Central America.
Oct 30, 2026
Current series
The Panama Files
How a canal got built, and how Panama became its own country. A true story told in twelve parts plus a bonus, from France's doomed first attempt to opening day.
1 of 13 out · One part a day
More Shorts
Standalone
Iceland Fought a Volcano With Seawater, and Won (Heimaey 1973)
In 1973, lava was swallowing an Icelandic fishing town and heading for its harbor. So they sprayed it with the ocean, for five months.
· 22 sources
Standalone
NASA Studied Launching Our Nuclear Waste Into the Sun
Starting in the 1970s, NASA studied getting rid of nuclear waste forever by launching it into the Sun. The catch is that hitting the Sun is more than twice as hard as leaving the solar system.
· 11 sources
Standalone
So What Do We Do With Nuclear Waste?
The world has made almost half a million tons of nuclear waste. There are only two paths, store it or recycle it, and both end in the same place.
· 29 sources