The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra combined live music with animation and live action to perform a fully immersive rendition of the classic Sergei Prokofiev tale Peter and the Wolf in 2021. Each animal is cleverly represented by a specific instrument, allowing the viewer to easily follow the story. For example, Peter is represented by strings, the wolf by horns, the bird by flute, the grandfather by bassoon, and the hunters by timpani.

Experience Prokofiev’s classic tale about an adventurous boy and a hapless wolf. This special presentation blends animation with on-stage performances as instruments portray the duck, bird, cat, wolf, hunters, Peter and his Grandfather. The whole family will love this charming story and wonderful introduction to the orchestra.

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra also released a separate Spanish version.

via The Kid Should See This

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Wildlife filmmaker Devon Massyn captured absolutely magnificent and rare drone footage of the volcano Kavachi erupting explosively underwater. Kavachi, which sits in the Pacific Ocean near the Solomon Islands, had not erupted for nearly a decade before this.

We went on an expedition to capture Kavachi, one of the world’s most active underwater volcanoes, erupting beneath the Pacific Ocean in the remote Solomon Islands.

via Tom Scott

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Master instrument artisan Takao Iwai shared the incredible process of handcrafting a violin and a cello separately, each over the course of six months. Each instrument starts with a simple block of wood that is expertly cut, carved, and painted before the strings are put on.

The process of making of a violin. A high-end Japanese violin crafted over 6 months by a master. …The Process of Making a Cello. A High-End Japanese Cello Crafted by One Artisan in Six Months.

via The Awesomer

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Mr. Science marveled at how deep sea creatures in the twilight and midnight zones of the ocean become so much stranger and so much larger as the water deepens. He further explains that bioluminescence, which creates organic light where none exists, is paradoxically used to hide in plain sight.

To us, it’s dazzling. Flashing dots, glowing patterns, entire bodies flickering like lanterns. But here, light is survival. Some use it to lure prey, some to find a mate, and some to disappear. This trick is called counter illumination. From below, predators can spot a dark silhouette against the faint shimmer above.

He also talks about the really unusual creatures of the midnight zone.

Each dive into the midnight zone uncovers creatures never before seen by science. animals with glowing eyes, needle-like teeth, or bodies so fragile they disintegrate when brought to the surface. This is the Midnight Zone. A world where light is a weapon, where invisibility is survival, where even reproduction follows rules beyond our imagination.

Why Sea Creatures Are So Large in the Midnight Zone

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The post Why Deep Sea Creatures Become So Much Stranger and Larger as the Water Gets Deeper was originally published on Laughing Squid.

Guitar scientist Jabez tested several legendary myths about guitars and their components to see if they would work in real life. The experiments included poking holes in an amp with a pencil like Link Wray, freezing and boiling guitar strings, a price quality comparison of guitar picks, and whether or not United Airlines still breaks guitars.

The guitar community has questions that need to be answered, so I decieded to test some of those out. Which ends up with me doing the craziest guitar experiments I’ve ever done.

‘United Breaks Guitars’ Song

via The Awesomer

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The very talented artisan Kent creates absolutely adorable hats that look just like yummy Japanese breads and other baked goods. These remarkably realistic hats also feature details such as seeds, frosting, and, in a few cases, a cherry or strawberry on top.

I handcraft each hat one by one, featuring designs inspired by bread, sweets, and animals!

via Neatorama

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Will of the video series What Is This?, which lightheartedly explains the fascinating history behind ordinary things, looked into why New York City has so many wooden water towers. while other cities don’t.

This is a water tower. Look out any window in New York City and you’ll see one….In a sea of brick, concrete, glass, and steel, New York’s wooden water towers stand out. So, why are they there? 

Will also explained what types of buildings have water towers, how they use gravity to work, and how they serve a dual purpose.

Ultimately, they’re just big tanks of water on the roof. They use gravity to provide water pressure to a building. When you turn on a faucet, the water literally falls out. The beautiful simplicity of this as a system is that if there’s water in the tank, it works. No power required. A building can still get water even in a total blackout. That’s critical for fire response

Wooden Water Towers of New York City

New York City Water Towers

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The post Why New York City Has So Many Wooden Water Towers was originally published on Laughing Squid.

Cameron Duke of MinuteEarth, who previously shared why there are queen bees but no king bees and why some hives rebel, explained why some honey bees will ignore “waggle dance” instructions from other bees and why this ignorance is actually very clever.

You’ve probably heard that bees use a complex series of movements – often called the “waggle dance” – to tell other worker bees where to find new sources of nectar…it’s a super clever and sophisticated system. But it turns out that bees almost never immediately jump up to follow the directions they just got, which, weirdly, is also super-clever and sophisticated.

A bee’s “waggle dance” shares important information about where a source of nectar is, which is helpful to both the bee and to the hive. However, if this information is widely shared, there may be nothing left at that location. Duke likens this to crowdsourcing.

A bee analyzes the information conveyed by a waggle dance. They weigh the risks of venturing into the unknown versus sticking with what they know, and then make a decision. And the vast majority of the time, bees end up passing on that suggestion, which probably isn’t different than how you use crowdsourced information. …It’s the same with bees.

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The post Why Honey Bees Often Ignore the ‘Waggle Dance’ by Other Bees That Reveals Food Sources was originally published on Laughing Squid.

Filmmaker Oscar Hudson of Isle of Any created “Your Way Out”, an incredibly innovative ad for Coinbase that looks like a video game but features real actors, shot in-camera.

Real performers. Real sets. Real unreal.

The ad was filmed on handmade, pixelated sets under specialized lighting, with actors in custom costumes, wearing low-polygon masks of their own faces, performing incredible NPC choreography.

Deliberately pixelated sets, actors choreographed to move like NPC’s, masks with their own faces printed back onto them, painted costume and lighting that cast no shadows. All to make the world we live in, look like a game.

‘Your Way Out’ Behind the Scenes

‘Your Way Out’ Extended Cut

Arthur Chruszcz, The Primary Performer of the Ad

via The Awesomer

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Rob Williams recreated the Guinness World Record that he set in 2000 for the fastest sandwich made with feet, demonstrating how he could do so in a clean, sanitary manner.

The Guinness World Record that Rob actually holds is the fastest sandwich made with feet. You heard correctly. His record stands at 1 minute 57 seconds. And though he’s not going for a record today, he’s here to show Al his sockless sandwich-making skill.

Williams then prepared a bologna sandwich with cheese, lettuce, sliced tomatoes, mustard, mayonnaise, and sliced pickles. This was the same sandwich as his record

Using just his feet, Rob Williams of Austin, Texas, USA, made a Bologna, cheese and lettuce sandwich, complete with olives on cocktail sticks, in 1 min 57 sec at the set of Guinness World Records: Primetime on 10 November 2000.

The Original 2000 Record

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Dr. Erica Brozovsky of the PBS series Otherwords explained the etymological origins of the word “cool”, noting how this word has transcended multiple generations over the course of a century.

Most slang words come and go, but there’s one undisputed king that’s over 100 years old and still as relevant as ever… and that’s cool.

Brozovsky also spoke to how the word’s linguistic flexibility led to such staying power.

Cool has a lot of usages, and they’re almost all positive. It can mean laid back and confident, trendy and fashionable, impressive, or awe-inspiring. It can be a verb, as in “cool it,” or a state of forgiveness, like “are we cool?” An intensifier, like a cool million bucks. Or just a term of approval, as in wanna see a movie? Cool.

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Actors Bryan Cranston and Ferdinand Kingsley read an absolutely fiery exchange between the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the Zaporozhian Cossacks from 1675 during a Letters Live event in New York in June 2025.

The Sultan’s original letter demanded that they submit to him. Unfortunately for the Sultan, this fairly unreasonable demand came after the Zaporozhian Cossacks had beaten his troops in battle, so the threat was rather thin. Their response, however, was considerately a bit less measured.

Bryan Cranston and Ferdinand Kingsley joined us to read the hilarious exchange of letters between the two opposing forces at Letters Live in New York in June 2025.

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The post Bryan Cranston and Ferdinand Kingsley Read a Fiery 1675 Exchange Between Opposing Military Forces was originally published on Laughing Squid.

A trio of adorable Scottish Fold cats from New York City, named Spongecake, Buttercream, and Donut, travel around the world in their finest attire, accompanied by their beloved humans. Their international travel has included Paris, London, Amsterdam, Venice, Milan, and Rome, while their domestic travel has included trips to Los Angeles and Florida.

The dessert family traveling the world

They are also very happy to make themselves known in their hometown of New York City.

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TimeWarp Cities captured the ever-changing evolution of Manhattan Island from 0 AD through 2026 in a captivating yet somewhat heartbreaking timlapse reconstruction using archeological evidence and other historic data. Featured are several key events that led from the once-pristine land of the Lenape people to the world-renowned bustling city of the present day.

Every reconstruction is based on archaeological evidence, historical maps, academic research, and expert consultation. No guesswork – just historically accurate visual time travel.

These events include Dutch possession, the sale to England for nutmeg rights, the Federal Era, the Industrial Boom, the Gilded Age, and the Art Deco era. The timelapse also pictorially captures the tragic collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Witness the remarkable *evolution* of New York, specifically Manhattan Island, from its initial narrow form in 1600 AD to its bustling 1950s “Art Deco Peak.”

Architectural Detail Timelapse From 300 BC Through 2025

1200 Year Fixed Camera Timelapse

Why New York City is So Huge

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In a rhetorical TED-Ed lesson by linguist Arika Okrent and animated by Sharon Colman, narrator Alexandra Panzer explained why three specific grammar rules that were so popular in the past are not all that relevant anymore.

Grammatical rules have caused heated debate in various regions and languages for centuries. But while we know people take grammar seriously, what’s less clear is, why? Where do these seemingly random rules come from, and which, if any, actually matter?

These rules include never ending a sentence with a preposition, the terms “less” versus “fewer,” and using “they” only as a plural. She further points out that grammar is more fluid than it ever was.

Grammar isn’t a hard science— it’s something we all build together to reflect the people using it. So however strange a rule’s origins may be, the usage we choose to respect today is far from arbitrary.

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Linguist Patrick Foote of Name Explain explored the etymological history behind every dinosaur name, noting that there were far more than he originally realized.

I went to find the list of every dinosaur name …oh god, there’s 334 of them. This is fine. We can do this. So, yeah, let’s explain how literally every dinosaur got their name. At least every dinosaur, according to the Natural History Museum.

With the list in hand, Foote went on to explain the different categories of dinosaurs, where the names originated, and what they looked like.

From the well known to the tad more obscure. So today let’s dive in and find out how every dinosaur got its name!

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Disney Animation partnered with Deaf West Theatre in Los Angeles to reimagine popular musical scenes from three Disney movies, featuring animated versions of actors who gracefully performed them in American Sign Language (ASL). The songs/scenes are “The Next Right Thing” from Frozen 2, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from Encanto, and “Beyond” from Moana 2.

Created in collaboration with Deaf West Theatre, ‘Songs in Sign Language’ features nearly all-new animation designed specifically for ASL performance. Deaf actors, artists, and cultural consultants worked closely with the animation team to ensure authenticity, clarity, and emotional accuracy.

This beautiful short film was directed by Hyrum Osmond, a veteran Disney animator, who worked closely with the deaf community to ensure proper representation.

Osmond led a team of more than 20 animators who worked with sign language reference expressly created for Disney Animation’s Songs in Sign Language. DJ Kurs, artistic director for Deaf West Theatre, worked with sign language reference choreographer Catalene Sacchetti and a group of eight performers from Deaf West Theatre, reimagining and choreographing lyrics into ASL by focusing on concepts and emotion instead of a word-for-word transcription.

via Tom Scott

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A clever Mona Lisa cat bed combines artistic home décor with functionality, allowing cats to sleep in the arms of the Mona Lisa inside the frame of the painting. Its sturdy cardboard construction also gives cats freedom to scratch wherever they like.

The Oxfraki Mona Lisa Cat Bed seamlessly combines a cozy cat bed, durable cat scratcher, and home art piece into one. Perfect for upgrading your pet’s space and home décor together with timeless style and functionality.

View on Threads

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A shy chihuahua named Bluey learned how to howl just like his older half-husky brother, so that they could become friends.

Bluey actually started howling because he loves to copy his older brother. …So the older brother, when ever he howls, Bluey started howling, and that’s when it started.

Bluey’s efforts towards friendship have had only a slight effect on his brother, but Bluey still loves to howl with him regardless.

Bluey is the sweetest dog I’ve ever seen, like the sweetest animal ever. I don’t think he barks on his own. Whenever the older brother barks, he just joins in. My big dog doesn’t like cuddling, so he kind of pushes Bluey away, but Bluey always tries to kind of cuddle in my big dog’s fur. 

While Bluey and his brother like howling together, their feline sibling appeared less than pleased.

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A feisty little albino alligator named Coconut seemed to be smiling widely while getting a nice scrubby bath from her keeper at The Reptile Zoo in Fountain Valley, California. While it is difficult to actually judge a reptile’s emotion, it was clear that Coconut was enjoying some toothbrush scritching on her back.

This is Coconut and she loves a Good Scrub

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