New project! also a race across London! also a duck impression.
16th March 2026
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Hello!
Time for the big announcement, then. Most folks won't find this out until next week, when an update video
and trailer goes out on my YouTube channel, so newsletter readers are some of the first to know: I'm starting a new series and the first episode comes out next week! I went on a road trip through every historic county of England, and in each one, I filmed a video about something interesting.
The first episode of "Tom Scott: England"
goes live at 4pm, Monday 23rd March, on Nebula, and at the same time there'll be a big flashy public announcement on my YouTube channel. Each episode in the series will be released free on YouTube one week after it appears on Nebula. If all goes well, there'll be weekly episodes for the rest of the year. The new format is a combination of the best stuff
I've made in the past: filmed on location, but without a script, and with the story told "in-studio" afterwards.
It was just me and my cameras out on the road, but behind the scenes there's been a whole team working on this, and I'm really proud of them. I think these are the best videos I've ever made, and I'm looking forward to
showing them off to the world.
In a regular newsletter week, the next link would be the most important thing, so apologies for relegating this to an 'additional': I've also made an appearance on Evan Edinger's channel, racing across London. I'm on public transport; Evan's on an e-bike; and Matt Gray's in a car!
And Lateral, of course, continues: Iszi Lawrence, Abby Cox and Matt Gray face questions about eliminated equines, dangerous doors and porridge pools!
Here's some good stuff I've found on YouTube this week:
- Are you a Black-capped Chickadee? asks Riley Mae, in the first (and so far, only) episode of her series "Are You A Bird?". I can't explain why I enjoyed the structure and style of this video so much: objectively, it's just five
minutes of facts about a bird species that isn't even found where I live. But the framing device is charming, and I look forward to more episodes of this.
- I've linked to Will Anderson's Scrabble channel once before, a couple of years ago; this more recent video is a particular delight, as he breaks down the highest-scoring pair of moves in Scrabble History, including well-paced interviews with the players in question.
- Caroline Klidonas made a space movie without leaving her apartment. Excellent.
And around the rest of the web:
- This week, so many people sent me "What's My ΔE(OK) JND?", a game that checks your ability to tell two very-similar colours apart. And it's a nailed-on bit of web toy and game design: challenging but not too challenging, instant feedback, and with very flattering results that people want to share. For example, I got 0.0028, which is apparently better than the theoretical human limit... but from the posts I've seen, a lot
of people have managed the same. On a bright phone screen, when it's tilted around to change the contrast, I suspect that the "just noticeable difference", the HND, is a lot more noticeable than the theory makes it seem. (If you would like Too Much Colour Theory, here's an explanation from the game's creator.)
- Excellent news, as Croatia has been declared free of landmines after 31 years.
- Thank you to James and Josh, who pointed out that last week's playing-a-guitar-with-a-spoon TikTok was in fact someone miming to the sound of someone else's playing-a-guitar-with-a-spoon TikTok. Why? No idea. The modern internet is very, very weird. The original artist is on YouTube, too.
And finally, on TikTok: "want to see my impression of a duck?" (One miffled bit of
strong language.)
All the best,
— Tom
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