YouTube — 2026-07-25#

Watch First#

The standout today is Veritasium’s deep dive into biological scaling laws: Why does every mammal get 1 billion heartbeats in their life?. It is a brilliant, perspective-shifting exploration of Kleiber’s Law, moving from why a 3,000-kilogram elephant only needs 100 times the calories of a cat, all the way to how human cities scale like biological super-organisms.

Highlights by Theme#

News & Business#

On the political front, The Wall Street Journal does a solid job breaking down how President Trump and allies raised $781 million since the 2024 election, while The New York Times highlights potential security risks on his retrofitted Qatari jet replacing Air Force One. In business, CNBC looks at the rise and fall of Kohl’s as it struggles to hold onto middle-class shoppers. Additionally, the Hoover Institution released a flurry of shorts critiquing California’s proposed one-time 5% billionaire tax, arguing it will drive wealth flight and permanently lift caps on intangible property taxes.

Learning & Ideas#

For history buffs, the Chinese-language channels offered some fantastic deep dives today. Xiaosong provides a nuanced 1920s retrospective on how the Beiyang government attempted to hold onto Outer Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet amidst the chaos of the Russian Civil War. Meanwhile, LIFEANO CLUB’s Yuan Tengfei answers viewer questions with an interesting look at Han Chinese adopting Manchu names in the Qing dynasty. Lastly, a quick TED Talk short offers a pragmatic reminder that simply emailing your local councilman can effect more change than you think.

Tech & AI#

The Chinese finance channel 美投侃新闻 brings excellent market analysis on the soaring AI capital expenditures of Big Tech, specifically looking at Google’s projected $375 billion capex and whether the cloud and TPU revenue can justify it. On the industrial side, CNBC International examines how ADNOC and Abu Dhabi’s AIQ are bringing AI to the oil business, moving from 45-minute subsurface geoscience workflows to autonomous well operations.

Everything Else#

Entertainment channels were busy dropping trailers, most notably Apple TV’s teasers for Dark Matter Season 2, an explosive live-action Matchbox movie, and a quick glimpse of Neuromancer. If you need a palate cleanser, GQ Taiwan has an eclectic mix of shorts, from Taylor Fritz giving tennis serve tips to Robert Pattinson complaining about being deaf in the Batsuit, while BBC Earth delivers stunning footage of a pride of lions hunting a massive wildebeest in 50°C heat.