This week on the channel +26M views this week

Vsauce's Magic Octagon puts your mental rotation to the test

Michael Stevens uses a transparent coin to explain why an ordinary object can be so difficult to follow.

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Vsauce Story of October 29, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? The channel's weekly summary: what went up this week, what is drawing views now, and where the channel stands among similar channels.

The Magic Octagon

"The coin is tragically normal," Michael Stevens says, which is little comfort when its arrows refuse to point where you expect.

In "The Magic Octagon," he turns a coin with an arrow on each side and asks viewers to predict what the reverse will show. A transparent version makes the rotations visible, but the more interesting question is why imagining them proves so slippery. Stevens credits Raymond Hall and research with Lorin Lachs at Fresno State, then offers his own hypothesis: perhaps describing arrows by their directions steers our attention toward the wrong thing.

The comments provide a small, informal test of that idea. Several viewers say tracking a corner instead of a direction helped them predict the result; others pinpoint the moment when they mentally rotated the hidden arrow the wrong way. Understanding the explanation and getting the picture right are not necessarily the same achievement.

The video reached roughly five million views, making it the most-watched of Vsauce's two uploads this week. "We Used To Think The Sun Was Cold" followed, passing three million and now drawing the channel's busiest daily viewing. The older "Audio Palindromes" also remains among its most active uploads.

Vsauce's subscriber count held steady over the week, while daily views are running below their usual level. Nearby in the science neighborhood, Kurzgesagt has stronger-than-usual daily viewing and a growing subscriber count. Vsauce nevertheless had the largest weekly view gain among the science channels here, with a very ordinary coin supplying its most engaging puzzle.

Published on Trari

Where next?

Also in Science and experimentsA video worth knowingKurzgesagt asks when, exactly, a person diesIts animated explainer follows the body after the heartbeat stops, from failing neurons to immune cells still fighting near the ten-minute mark.Channel: Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell · Story of November 11, 2026

A different discovery todayVideo taking off 49x its usual first dayWomen in ITV's Power and Silence say David Walliams pursued them as teenagersTwo of the women were 15 when they met him. Walliams denies all wrongdoing, saying in a statement: "I am not a sexual predator".Channel: ITV News · Story of November 11, 2026

What viewers say

focusing on the corners instead of directions immediately helped me predict where the "left" arrow would point, i think your theory works
@foundgeckoSee it on YouTube
I understand it, but my brain doesn't
@BrownieCatGaminSee it on YouTube
“Yo heads or tails?”

“Uh…. Left!”
@HellowyenekenekSee it on YouTube

5 more comments

I wasn't able to track it with the initial test. But after you explained it by tracking the corner instead of the direction, I started to track it perfectly.
@Ebin_CainSee it on YouTube
My problem with the rotations occurred either way you presented it. Every time you rotated the coin by 45°, in my mind I envisioned the arrow on the back rotating 45°, but in the wrong direction. That was the step where my imagination messed up both times.
@GizzyDillespeeSee it on YouTube
So the octagon isn't the magical one... Its our minds...
@TheFullOfItTaperSee it on YouTube
I never thought I’d be so tripped out form a coin.
@cadebecker2486See it on YouTube
I saw the thumbnail and my immediate thought was “How much do you want to bet it’s a Vsauce video?” Lo and behold…
@BontrasSnideSee it on YouTube