No. 01 · The sea
Why every ship wears a painted circle
Sailors jailed for refusing to sail, an uproar in Parliament in 1875, and a simple mark on the hull that shows how heavily a ship may be loaded.
True stories · How the world works
Everything is made of tales.
Every object, map and habit around you is the end of a true story. We find the story, check it against the record, and tell it well.
The first tales are on their way
The idea
Molecules make up matter. Tales make up the world.
Take any small thing you pass every day. Behind it sits a chain of real people, problems, decisions and lucky accidents, each one joined to the next like atoms in a molecule.
Talecules follows that chain from the first link to the last, so that a painted line, a plug or a price tag suddenly explains a piece of how the world works. That's the whole idea behind the name, said just like molecules.
Example tales
Small things. Big systems.
Every tale starts with something you can see today and ends with you understanding the world a little differently. A few examples of what we mean:
No. 02 · Power
The country that runs on two electricities
Eastern Japan runs at 50 hertz, western Japan at 60. The split goes back to two generators bought from two different countries in the 1890s.
No. 03 · Signals
Why GPS is free for everyone
It was built for the military. A tragedy in 1983 changed who it was for, and a switch flipped in 2000 made it as precise as we know it.
No. 04 · Borders
Who owns the sea?
For centuries, only a narrow strip along each coast. Then a few countries drew lines 200 miles out to sea, and in time the rest of the world followed.
Each one researched from the record before a single frame is drawn.
How we tell them
A tale is only worth telling if it's true.
01
Records first
Original documents, official records, papers and archives. Articles help us find them; they are never the last word.
02
Two solid sources
Every important claim rests on two independent, reputable sources, or on one primary record.
03
Legends named
When a famous story is a legend or rests on one person's word, we say so. When historians disagree, so do we.
04
Corrected in public
If we get something wrong, we fix it under the video and in the pinned comment, for everyone to see.
The first tales are on their way.
Subscribe on YouTube and they'll find you. Got a story we should tell, or a fact we got wrong? Write to hello@talecules.com.