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I wish he had actually explained it. I can look up what a flat VII chord is, and I know what a tritone is, but what’s the “tritone in the 5-chord?”

If he actually understood that explanation going in, I don’t think he was studying music theory casually before he got there?

If you don’t actually explain things at an object level, it’s insight porn, not real learning.

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If you’re in C major, the V chord is G7, which contains a tritone between its 3 and 7, B and F. You can say, what if instead of B being the 3 of the chord and F being the 7, F is the 3 and B is the 7? Then you discover that the root of this other chord is C# (or Db). Because the function of a chord is largely dictated by the 3 and 7 in it, this means you can substitute any dominant 7 chord with another dominant 7 chord a tritone away and it will still basically function the same (this can create some extra dissonance before the cadence which is nice and it creates some nice chromatic movement in the bass).

Thanks! What I was missing is that for "V chord" I was thinking G not G7, and G doesn't have a tritone.

(He did say "with the flat seven" which sounded like another chord entirely, but that just means seventh chord.)

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