Pictured Out explains everyday questions in pictures. Each video takes one ordinary thing that behaves strangely and follows it from the wrong first guess to what the evidence shows, including what nobody has settled yet. The videos are on our YouTube channel.
The blog tells the full story behind each video. It has room for what a short film can’t hold: the numbers, the details of the experiments, and the places where the film’s version is simpler than the science.
How it’s made
Research, scripts, and animation are AI-assisted, and the narration is an AI voice. A person chooses each topic and reviews each video before it goes up.
The same goes for this website. The blog posts are written with AI help from each video’s script and research notes, and a person reviews them before they go up.
How we check
- Every fact gets a row. Each post ends with a table of what we said, where it came from, how old the data is, when we checked it, and how sure we are.
- We go to primary sources first. That means the published study, the government data, or the maker’s own documents. When we rely on something weaker, the table says so.
- We say how much we read. A row tells you if we read a whole paper or only its abstract.
- We say what we simplified. Films need short sentences, and short sentences can go too far. Each post points out where ours did.
- We test the links. Our tools test every link before a post goes up. A passing test means the link works. It doesn’t confirm what the source says, which is why a reader can follow the link and check.
How sure we are
Each fact carries one of these four labels.
- Certain: logic or arithmetic we checked ourselves, so it holds as long as its stated assumptions do.
- High: a primary source says this directly.
- Good: the source supports it, but the evidence is indirect, or the authors offer it as an explanation and not a measured result.
- Simplified: our wording goes further than the source does, and the row explains how.
If we got something wrong
Tell us in the comments on the channel. When we fix a post, we say what changed and when.
Privacy
This website sets no cookies and runs no analytics or ads. Its fonts and images come from our own server. A video loads from YouTube only after you press play, and then YouTube’s privacy policy applies. Links to sources open on other websites, which have their own policies.