17 Jun 2020 #industrial #manchesterhistory #canals
Manchester’s story continues with the introduction of the world’s first industrial canal system. We’ start by looking at why the River Irwell didn’t become Manchester’s primary port or its biggest waterway as the industrial era expanded and trade needed to move in and out of the city fast.
Then we move onto the only other option – canals. First the famous Bridgewater Canal – its origins, its source at Worsley Delph, and its terminus at the new Castlefield Basin in Manchester city centre.
Then we look at how the basin itself was constructed, and how it encouraged some of the world’s earliest and largest industrial-era warehouses.
Finally, we’ll see how other canals soon surrounded the Manchester region, including those that cut through the city centre itself.
If you like the video you can show your support by buying me a brew. Thanks!
5 Jun 2026
Something is disrupting GPS signals across Europe. Sponsored by Ground News. Go to https://ground.news/Ve for 40% off the unlimited Vantage plan.
If you’re looking for a molecular modelling kit, try Snatoms, a kit I invented where the atoms snap together magnetically – https://ve42.co/SnatomsV
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0:00 What is jamming Europe’s GPS?
4:43 How does GPS work?
10:46 How easy is it to jam GPS?
12:18 The Hunt To Find The Jammer
17:12 Who are the possible culprits?
20:06 The Investigation Goes Public
23:00 Narrowing In On The Jammer
25:15 Cosmos 2546
28:25 A Secret Messaging Service?
29:19 What happens if we lose GPS?
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Special thanks to the experts and collaborators who made this video possible:
Professor Todd Humphreys and Dr Zach Clements at the University of Texas at Austin, whose research this story is based on – thank you for sharing your data, your time, and the inside story of the hunt.
Ramsey Faragher, for the brilliant interview, feedback and stories that helped to shape this video.
Richard D. Easton, for helping us understand the history of GPS.
Dana Goward, President of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, for providing context on interference and alternative systems.
Richard Bowden and Luis Enrique Aguado from GMV for sharing their independent work tracing the source of the interference.
Ben Watts, for sharing his first-hand experience of GPS jamming and spoofing from the cockpit.
KeepTrack (https://keeptrack.space/) for generously giving us access to their satellite-tracking software, which we used to visualise the search through 15,000 satellites for the culprit. And to GPSWise (https://gpswise.aero/) for kindly providing their software which we used to visualise GPS jamming and spoofing.
Bartosz Ciechanowski, whose interactive GPS explainer (https://ciechanow.ski/gps/) was a great resource for research and the basis for one of our technical animations. Thank you for allowing us to build on your work.
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References:
Clements, Z. L., Kriezis, A., & Humphreys, T. E. (2026). Chasing Lightning: Detecting, Characterizing, and Identifying a Powerful Space-Based GNSS Interference – https://ve42.co/GNSSInterference
After making Age of Audio, a feature documentary about the history of podcasting, filmmaker Shaun Michael Colón sat down with Dallas for a revealing conversation about the state and future of this industry. Together, Dallas & Shaun unpack the shift toward celebrity chit chat shows, what gets lost in video, the real economics of making Twenty Thousand Hertz, and why highly crafted audio storytelling still matters.
MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE
Wesley Slover – Just Facts 06
Wesley Slover – Help from a Stranger
Wesley Slover – Inner System
Wesley Slover – Just Facts 01
Learn about this year’s Listener Stories competition and submit your story at 20k.org/2026.
Premiered on 24 May 2026 #BarrysEconomics #GarysEconomics #Inequality
Elon Musk. Tesla. Spacex. Cybertrucks. Solar Power… not your normal supervillain origin story.
But the neuroscience explains everything.
Do you remember when we all kind of liked Elon Musk?
Electric cars. Space travel. Solar panels. He felt like the closest thing we had to a real-life Tony Stark.
And now he’s… this.
Nobody’s asking the right question. Not “what did he do?” but “what happened to him?” Because there’s a scientific answer. And the unsettling part isn’t what it says about Elon Musk. It’s what it says about everyone with that much power.
Fifty years of peer-reviewed research on power, wealth and the brain from Columbia, Berkeley and McMaster University, shows that power isn’t a metaphor for corruption. It’s a corruption toxin. It does measurable damage to specific neural pathways.
This is the psychology of billionaires. This is the neuroscience of wealth and power. And this is why Elon Musk was always going to become this.
Galinsky et al. (2006) :Power and Perspectives Not Taken, Psychological Science
Sukhvinder Obhi: Power and neural mirrorin, McMaster University
Paul Piff: Wealth, empathy and the dose-response relationship, UC Berkeley
Roger Fisher: Preventing Nuclear War, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1981
I’m Barry Ferns – a comedian whose personal journey through failure, homelessness, and rebuilding led me to explore the socio and behavioural economics of inequality.
This channel digs into how systems of power shape our identity, behaviour, and beliefs, and how we can shift the stories we tell ourselves and each other about poverty, inequality, and who’s to blame.
msamba 