About Strange to Say
Strange to Say tells the strange stories behind ordinary things, like why we change the clocks twice a year.
The case file
Each video opens a case file: the story everyone repeats, set next to the record. We start from the documents (laws, hearing records, newspapers of the day, archives) and write the script from what they say, not from what is usually repeated.
Every claim has a source
Every claim and number in a film is checked against a source before it is narrated. The sources are listed in full on each case page and in the video description.
When a story is still moving, like a bill in Congress, the film says so and dates it: where it stands as of the day it was checked. Those lines are checked again before a video goes up.
Real photographs, credited
The photographs, documents and posters are real. Most come from public archives such as the Library of Congress and the US National Archives; a few are used under Creative Commons licenses. Every one is credited, and an old photo is never presented as a current one.
The maps, charts and document cards are drawn in code from the sourced numbers. The slow 3D motion on a photo adds nothing to it: no objects, no people.
No AI-generated images of real people or events
We do not use AI-generated pictures of real people or events, and nothing generated is ever passed off as a photograph or a document. The first case uses no generated images at all.
The voice and the music
The narrator is a generated voice: Peter, a library voice from ElevenLabs that imitates no real person. When a film quotes someone, the narrator reads the quote. The music and sound effects are generated with ElevenLabs.
Contact
Spotted an error, or know a better source? Write to hello@strangetosay.com.
Every case is on the YouTube channel, and here with its full sources.
Privacy
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A video loads from YouTube (youtube-nocookie.com) only when you press play. From then on, YouTube's own privacy policy applies to that video.
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Type: Linux Libertine Display by Philipp H. Poll, served here as a renamed subset (StS Display), and Courier Prime by Alan Dague-Greene. Both are under the SIL Open Font License 1.1. Font licenses.