Tom Scott's breakout videos
Every recent long-form upload, scored against the channel's own median. These are the videos the audience pushed far past normal. Updated weekly.
After ten years, it's time to stop weekly videos.
Spherical houses weren't a great idea.4.1×3
I finally rode the weird, curved German elevator.3.9×4
there’dn’t’ve3.2×5
0-100 in less than a second. And I'm driving.3.0×6
Why use many streetlights when one will do?2.5×7
Boarding planes could have been very differentWhat's working for Tom Scott right now
The channel's typical long-form video gets about 1.7M views. “After ten years, it's time to stop weekly videos.” reached 12.2M, roughly 7.3 times that. Among this channel's outliers, the most common title formats are personal story (1), question (1). When one idea outperforms a channel's baseline this much, the audience is telling you the topic and packaging resonated, which makes it worth studying before you plan your next video.
How these scores work
We take the channel's latest long-form uploads (Shorts excluded), find the median view count, and divide each video's views by it. A 5× score means five times the channel's normal performance. Data comes from the public YouTube Data API and refreshes weekly. Last updated November 5, 2026.
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Public data via the YouTube Data API. Viralyst is not affiliated with or endorsed by Tom Scott. Thumbnails belong to their owners and link to the original videos.
