In which John Green investigates the dawn of human civilization. John looks into how people gave up hunting and gathering to become agriculturalists, and how that change has influenced the world we live in today. Also, there are some jokes about cheeseburgers.
In which John Green teaches you about the Indus Valley Civilization, one of the largest of the ancient civilizations. John teaches you the who, how, when, where and why of the Indus Valley Civilization, and dispenses advice on how to be more successful in your romantic relationships.
In which John presents Mesopotamia, and the early civilizations that arose around the Fertile Crescent. Topics covered include the birth of territorial kingdoms, empires, Neo-Assyrian torture tactics, sacred marriages, ancient labor practices, the world's first law code, and the great failed romance of John's undergrad years.
In which John covers the long, long history of ancient Egypt, including the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms, and even a couple of intermediate periods. Learn about mummies, pharaohs, pyramids and the Nile with John Green.
In which John compares and contrasts Greek civilization and the Persian Empire. Of course we're glad that Greek civilization spawned modern western civilization, right? Maybe not. From Socrates and Plato to Darius and Xerxes, John explains two of the great powers of the ancient world, all WITHOUT the use of footage from 300.
In which John relates a condensed history of India, post-Indus Valley Civilization. John explores Hinduism and the origins of Buddhism. He also gets into the reign of Ashoka, the Buddhist emperor who, in spite of Buddhism's structural disapproval of violence, managed to win a bunch of battles.
In which John introduces you to quite a lot of Chinese history by discussing the complicated relationship between the Confucian scholars who wrote Chinese history and the emperors (and empress) who made it. Included is a brief introduction to all the dynasties in Chinese history and an introduction to Confucius and the Confucian emphasis on filial piety, the role the mandate of heaven played in organizing China, and how China became the first modern state.
In which you are introduced to the life and accomplishments of Alexander the Great, his empire, his horse Bucephalus, the empires that came after him, and the idea of Greatness. Is greatness a question of accomplishment, of impact, or are people great because the rest of us decide they're great? Also discussed are Kim Kardashian and the Situation, gender bias in history, Catherine the Great's death (not via horse love), the ardent love other generals--from Pompey the Great to Napoleon--had for Alexander, a bit of Persian history.
The Silk Road and Ancient Trade: In which John Green teaches you about the so-called Silk Road, a network of trade routes where goods such as ivory, silver, iron, wine, and yes, silk were exchanged across the ancient world, from China to the West. Along with all these consumer goods, things like disease and ideas made the trip as well. As is his custom, John ties the Silk Road to modern life, and the ways that we get our stuff today.
In which John Green explores exactly when Rome went from being the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. Here's a hint: it had something to do with Julius Caesar, but maybe less than you think. Find out how Caesar came to rule the empire, what led to him getting stabbed 23 times on the floor of the senate, and what happened in the scramble for power after his assassination. John covers Rome's transition from city-state to dominant force in the Mediterranean in less than 12 minutes. Well, Rome's expansion took hundreds of years, he just explains it in under 12 minutes. The senate, the people, Rome, the caesarian section, the Julian calendar and our old friend Pompey all make appearances, but NOT the Caesar Salad, as Julius had nothing to do with it.
In which John Green teaches you the history of Christianity, from the beginnings of Judaism and the development of monotheism, right up to Paul and how Christianity stormed the Roman Empire in just a few hundred years. Along the way, John will cover Abram/Abraham, the Covenant, the Roman Occupation of Judea, and the birth, life, death and legacy of Jesus of Nazareth. No flame wars! Let's keep the commentary civil.
In which John Green teaches you about the fall of the Roman Empire, which happened considerably later than you may have been told. While the Western Roman Empire fell to barbarians in 476 CE, the Byzantines in Constantinople continued the Eastern Empire nicely, calling themselves Romans for a further 1000 years. Find out what Justinian and the rest of the Byzantine emperors were up to over there, and how the Roman Empire dragged out its famous Decline well into medieval times. In addition to all this, you'll learn about ancient sports riots and hipster barbarians, too.
In which John Green teaches you the history of Islam, including the revelation of the Qu'ran to Muhammad, the five pillars of Islam, how the Islamic empire got its start, the Rightly Guided Caliphs, and more. Learn about hadiths, Abu Bakr, and whether the Umma has anything to do with Uma Thurman (spoiler alert: it doesn't). Also, learn a little about the split between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and how to tell if this year's Ramadan is going to be difficult for your Muslim friends. Let's try to keep the flame wars out of this reasoned discussion.
John Green teaches you about the so-called Dark Ages, which it turns out weren't as uniformly dark as you may have been led to believe. While Europe was indeed having some issues, many other parts of the world were thriving and relatively enlightened. John covers European Feudalism, the cultural blossoming of the Islamic world, and the scientific and artistic advances in China, all during these "Dark Ages." Along the way, John will raise questions about the validity of Europe's status as a continent, reveal the best and worst years of his life, and frankly state that science and religion were once able to coexist.
In which John Green teaches you about the Crusades embarked upon by European Christians in the 12th and 13th centuries. Our traditional perception of the Crusades as European Colonization thinly veiled in religion isn't quite right. John covers the First through the Fourth Crusades, telling you which were successful, which were well-intentioned yet ultimately destructive, and which were just plain crazy. Before you ask, no, he doesn't cover the Children's Crusade, in which children were provoked to gather for a Crusade, and then promptly sold into slavery by the organizers of said Crusade. While this story is charming, it turns out to be complete and utter hooey.
In which John Green teaches you about Sub-Saharan Africa! So, what exactly was going on there? It turns out, it was a lot of trade, converting to Islam, visits from Ibn Battuta, trade, beautiful women, trade, some impressive architecture, and several empires. John not only cover the the West African Malian Empire, which is the one Mansa Musa ruled, but he discusses the Ghana Empire, and even gets over to East Africa as well to discuss the trade-based city-states of Mogadishu, Mombasa, and Zanzibar. In addition to all this, John considers emigrating to Canada.
In which John Green teaches you, at long last, about the most exceptional bunch of empire-building nomads in the history of the world, the Mongols! How did the Mongols go from being a relatively small band of herders who occasionally engaged in some light hunting-gathering to being one of the most formidable fighting forces in the world? It turns out Genghis Khan was a pretty big part of it, but you probably already knew that. The more interesting questions might be, what kind of rulers were they, and what effect did their empire have on the world we know today? Find out, as John FINALLY teaches you about the Mongols.
In which John Green teaches you the history of the Indian Ocean Trade. John weaves a tale of swashbuckling adventure, replete with trade in books, ivory, and timber. Along the way, John manages to cover advances in seafaring technology, just how the monsoons work, and there's even a disembowelment for you Fangoria fans.
In which John Green discusses the strange and mutually beneficial relationship between a republic, the citystate of Venice, and an Empire, the Ottomans--and how studying history can help you to be a better boyfriend and/or girlfriend. Together, the Ottoman Empire and Venice grew wealthy by facilitating trade: The Venetians had ships and nautical expertise; the Ottomans had access to many of the most valuable goods in the world, especially pepper and grain. Working together across cultural and religious divides, they both become very rich, and the Ottomans became one of the most powerful political entities in the world. We also discuss how economic realities can overcome religious and political differences (in this case between Muslims and Christians), the doges of Venice, the sultans of the Ottoman empire, the janissaries and so-called slave aristocracy of the Ottoman Empire, and how money and knowledge from the Islamic world helped fuel and fund the European Renaissance.
In which John Green teaches you how Russia evolved from a loose amalgamation of medieval principalities known as the Kievan Rus into the thriving democracy we know today. As you can imagine, there were a few bumps along the road. It turns out, our old friends the Mongols had quite a lot to do with unifying Russia. In yet another example of how surprisingly organized nomadic raiders can be, the Mongols brought the Kievan Rus together under a single leadership, and concentrated power in Moscow. This set the stage for the various Ivans (the Great and the Terrible) to throw off the yoke and form a pan-Russian nation ruled by an autocratic leader. More than 500 years later, we still have autocratic leadership in Russia. All this, plus a rundown of some of our favorite atrocities of Ivan the Terrible, and a visit from Putin!
In which John Green teaches you about the beginning of the so-called Age of Discovery. You've probably heard of Christopher Columbus, who "discovered" America in 1492, but what about Vasco da Gama? How about Zheng He? Columbus gets a bad rap from many modern historians, but it turns out he was pretty important as far as the history of the world goes. That said, he wasn't the only pioneer plying the seas in the 1400s. In Portugal, Vasco da Gama was busy integrating Europe into the Indian Ocean Trade by sailing around Africa. Chinese admiral Zheng He was also traveling far and wide in the largest wooden ships ever built. Columbus, whether portrayed as hero or villain, is usually credited as the great sailor of the 15th century, but he definitely wasn't the only contender. What better way to settle this question than with a knock-down, drag-out, no holds barred, old-fashioned battle royal? We were going to make it a cage match, but welding is EXPENSIVE.
In which John Green teaches you about the European Renaissance. European learning changed the world in the 15th and 16th century, but was it a cultural revolution, or an evolution? We'd argue that any cultural shift that occurs over a couple of hundred years isn't too overwhelming to the people who live through it. In retrospect though, the cultural bloom in Europe during this time was pretty impressive. In addition to investigating what caused the Renaissance and who benefitted from the changes that occurred, John will tell you just how the Ninja Turtles got mixed up in all this.
In which John Green teaches you about the changes wrought by contact between the Old World and the New. John does this by exploring the totally awesome history book "The Columbian Exchange" by Alfred Cosby, Jr. After Columbus "discovered" the Americas, European conquerors, traders, and settlers brought all manner of changes to the formerly isolated continents. Disease and invasive plant and animal species remade the New World, usually in negative ways. While native people, plants, and animals were being displaced in the Americas, the rest of the world was benefitting from American imports, especially foods like maize, tomatoes, potatoes, pineapple, blueberries, sweet potatoes, and manioc. Was the Columbian Exchange a net positive? It's debatable. So debate.
In which John Green teaches you about one of the least funny subjects in history: slavery. John investigates when and where slavery originated, how it changed over the centuries, and how Europeans and colonists in the Americas arrived at the idea that people could own other people based on skin color. Slavery has existed as long as humans have had civilization, but the Atlantic Slave Trade was the height, or depth, of dehumanizing, brutal, chattel slavery. American slavery ended less than 150 years ago. In some parts of the world, it is still going on. So how do we reconcile that with modern life? In a desperate attempt at comic relief, Boba Fett makes an appearance.
In which John Green explores how Spain went from being a middling European power to one of the most powerful empires on Earth, thanks to their plunder of the New World in the 16th and 17th centuries. Learn how Spain managed to destroy the two biggest pre-Columbian civilizations, mine a mountain made of silver, mishandle their economy, and lose it all by the mid-1700s. Come along for the roller coaster ride with Charles I (he was also Charles V), Philip II, Atahualpa, Moctezuma, Hernán Cortés, and Francisco Pizarro as Spain rises and falls, and takes two empires and China down with them.
In which John teaches you about the Seven Years War, which may have lasted nine years. Or as many as 23. It was a very confusing was. The Seven Years War was a global war, fought on five continents, which is kind of a lot. John focuses on the war as it happened in the Americas, Asia, and Africa. the "great" European powers were the primary combatants, but they fought just about everywhere. Of course, this being a history course, the outcomes of this war still resonate in our lives today. The Seven Years war determined the direction of the British Empire, and led pretty directly to the subject of Episode 28, the American Revolution.
In which John Green teaches you about the life and death of one of history's great explorers, Captain James Cook of the British Navy. He charted large swaths of the Pacific ocean, laid claim to Australia and New Zealand, and died a bizarre death in the Sandwich Islands, which are now called the Hawaiian Islands. Exactly how and why Captain Cook was killed in Hawaii is a long-running historical debate. John presents two interpretations of the event, and talks about what the differing interpretations say about history. It turns out how the story is told depends on who is doing the storytelling, and people from different backgrounds can interpret events in very different ways. Also, there is a celebration and a moustache involved in this episode, so you definitely don't want to miss it.
In which John Green teaches you about the American Revolution and the American Revolutionary War, which it turns out were two different things. John goes over the issues and events that precipitated rebellion in Britain's American colonies, and he also explores the ideas that laid the groundwork for the new American democracy. Find out how the tax bill from the Seven Years War fomented an uprising, how the Enlightenment influenced the Founding Fathers, and who were the winners and losers in this conflict.(hint: many of the people living in the Colonies ended up losers) The Revolution purportedly brought freedom and equality to the Thirteen Colonies, but they weren't equally distributed. Also, you'll learn about America's love affair with commemorative ceramics and what happens when rich white guys take the reins from reins white guys, and put together a society of, by, and for rich white guys.
In which John Green examines the French Revolution, and gets into how and why it differed from the American Revolution. Was it the serial authoritarian regimes? The guillotine? The Reign of Terror? All of this and more contributed to the French Revolution not being quite as revolutionary as it could have been. France endured multiple constitutions, the heads of heads of state literally rolled, and then they ended up with a megalomaniacal little emperor by the name of Napoleon. But how did all of this change the world, and how did it lead to other, more successful revolutions around the world? Watch this video and find out. Spoiler alert: Marie Antoinette never said, "Let them eat cake." Sorry.
Ideas like liberty, freedom, and self-determination were hot stuff in the late 18th century, as evidenced by our recent revolutionary videos. Although freedom was breaking out all over, many of the societies that were touting these ideas relied on slave labor. Few places in the world relied so heavily on slave labor as Saint-Domingue, France's most profitable colony. Slaves made up nearly 90% of Saint-Domingue's population, and in 1789 they couldn't help but hear about the revolution underway in France. All the talk of liberty, equality, and fraternity sounds pretty good to a person in bondage, and so the slaves rebelled. This led to not one but two revolutions, and ended up with France, the rebels, Britain, and Spain all fighting in the territory. Spoiler alert: the slaves won. So how did the slaves of what would become Haiti throw off the yoke of one of the world's great empires? John Green tells how they did it, and what it has meant in Haiti and in the rest of the world.
In which John Green talks about the many revolutions of Latin America in the 19th century. At the beginning of the 1800s, Latin America was firmly under the control of Spain and Portugal. The revolutionary zeal that had recently created the United States and had taken off Louis XVI's head in France arrived in South America, and a racially diverse group of people who felt more South American than European took over. John covers the soft revolution of Brazil, in which Prince Pedro boldly seized power from his father, but promised to give it back if King João ever returned to Brazil. He also covers the decidedly more violent revolutions in Mexico, Venezuela, and Argentina. Watch the video to see Simón Bolívar's dream of a United South America crushed, even as he manages to liberate a bunch of countries and get two currencies and about a thousand schools and parks named after him.
In which John Green wraps up revolutions month with what is arguably the most revolutionary of modern revolutions, the Industrial Revolution. While very few leaders were beheaded in the course of this one, it changed the lives of more people more dramatically than any of the political revolutions we've discussed. So, why did the Industrial Revolution happen around 1750 in the United Kingdom? Coal. Easily accessible coal, it turns out. All this, plus you'll finally learn the difference between James Watt and Thomas Newcomen, and will never again be caught telling people that your blender has a 900 Newcomen motor.
In which John Green teaches you about capitalism and socialism in a way that is sure to please commenters from both sides of the debate. Learn how capitalism arose from the industrial revolution, and then gave rise to socialism. Learn about how we got from the British East India Company to iPhones and consumer culture in just a couple of hundred years. Stops along the way include the rise of industrial capitalism, mass production, disgruntled workers, Karl Marx, and the Socialist Beard. The socialist reactions to the ills of capitalism are covered as well, and John discusses some of the ideas of Karl Marx, and how they've been implemented or ignored in various socialist states. Plus, there are robots!
In which John Green teaches you about Nationalism. Nationalism was everywhere in the 19th century, as people all over the world carved new nation-states out of old empires. Nationalist leaders changed the way people thought of themselves and the places they lived by reinventing education, military service, and the relationship between government and governed. In Japan, the traditional feudal society underwent a long transformation over the course of about 300 years to become a modern nation-state. John follows the course of Japanese history from the emergence of the Tokugawa Shogunate to the Meiji Restoration, and covers Nationalism in many other countries along the way. All this, plus a special guest appearance, plus the return of an old friend on a extra-special episode of Crash Course.
In which John Green teaches you about European Imperialism in the 19th century. European powers started to create colonial empires way back in the 16th century, but businesses really took off in the 19th century, especially in Asia and Africa. During the 1800s, European powers carved out spheres of influence in China, India, and pretty much all of Africa. While all of the major (and some minor) powers in Europe participated in this new imperialism, England was by far the most dominant, once able to claim that the "sun never set on the British Empire." Also, they went to war for the right to continue to sell opium to the people of China. Twice. John will teach you how these empires managed to leverage the advances of the Industrial Revolution to build vast, wealth-generating empires. As it turns out, improved medicine, steam engines, and better guns were crucial in the 19th century conquests. Also, the willingness to exploit and abuse the people and resources of so-called "primitive" na
In which John Green teaches you about the war that was supposed to end all wars. Instead, it solved nothing and set the stage for the world to be back at war just a couple of decades later. As an added bonus, World War I changed the way people look at the world, and normalized cynicism and irony. John will teach you how the assassination of an Austrian Archduke kicked off a new kind of war that involved more nations and more people than any war that came before. New technology like machine guns, airplanes, tanks, and poison gas made the killing more efficient than ever. Trench warfare and modern weapons led to battles in which tens of thousands of soldiers were killed in a day, with no ground gained for either side. World War I washed away the last vestiges of 19th century Romanticism and paved the way for the 20th century modernism that we all know and find to be cold and off-putting. While there may not be much upside to WWI, at least it inspired George M. Cohan to write the awesome
In which John Green teaches you about China's Revolutions. While the rest of the world was off having a couple of World Wars, China was busily uprooting the dynastic system that had ruled there for millennia. Most revolutions have some degree of tumult associated with them, but China's 20th century revolutions were REALLY disruptive. In 1911 and 1912, Chinese nationalists brought 3000 years of dynastic rule to an end. China plunged into chaos as warlords staked out regions of the country for themselves. The nationalists and communists joined forces briefly to bring the nation back together under the Chinese Republic, and then they quickly split and started fighting the Chinese Civil War. The fight between nationalists and communists went on for decades, and was interrupted by an alliance to fight the invading Japanese during World War II. After the World War II ended, the Chinese Civil War was back on. Mao and the communists were ultimately victorious, and Chiang Kai-Shek ended up in T
In which John Green teaches you about World War II, aka The Great Patriotic War, aka The Big One. So how did this war happen? And what does it mean? We've all learned the facts about World War II many times over, thanks to repeated classroom coverage, the History channel, and your grandfather (or maybe great-grandfather) showing you that Nazi bayonet he used to keep in his sock drawer and telling you a bunch of age-inappropriate stories about his harrowing war experiences. So, why did the Axis powers think forceful expansion was a good idea? (they were hungry). So why did this thing shake out in favor of the Allies? HInt: it has to do with the fact that it was a world war. Germany and Japan made some pretty serious strategic errors, such as invading Russia and attacking the United States, and those errors meant that pretty much the whole world was against them. So, fins out how this worldwide alliance came together to stop the Axis expansion.
In which John Green teaches you about the Cold War, which was occasionally hot, but on average, it was cool. In the sense of its temperature. It was by no means cool, man. After World War II, there were basically two big geopolitical powers left to divide up the world. And divide they did. The United States and the Soviet Union divvied up Europe in the aftermath of the war, and then proceeded to spend the next 45 years fighting over the rest of the world. It was the great ideological struggle, with the US on the side of capitalism and profit, and the USSR pushing Communism, so-called. While both sides presented themselves as the good guy in this situation, the reality is that there are no good guys. Both parties to the Cold War engaged in forcible regime changes, built up vast nuclear arsenals, and basically got up to dirty tricks. If you had to pick a bad guy though, I would point out that the USSR had no intention of brining Laika the Cosmonaut Dog home alive. That poor dog never had
In which John Green teaches you about the post-World War II breakup of most of the European empires. As you'll remember from previous installments of Crash Course, Europeans spent several centuries sailing around the world creating empires, despite the fact that most of the places they conquered were perfectly happy to carry on alone. After World War II, most of these empires collapsed. This is the story of those collapses. In most places, the end of empire was not orderly, and violence often ensued. While India was a (sort of) shining example of non-violent change, in places like The Congo, Egypt, Rwanda, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, things didn't go smoothly at all. John brings you all this, plus pictures of Sea Monkeys. Sadly, they don't look anything like those awesome commercials in the comic books.
In which John Green teaches you about globalization, a subject so epic, so, um, global, it requires two videos. In this video, John follows the surprisingly complex path of t-shirt as it criss-crosses the world before coming to rest on your doorstep, and eventually in your dresser. (Unless you're one of those people who never puts their laundry away and lives out of a laundry basket. If that's the case, shame on you.) Anyway, the story of the t-shirt and its manufacture in far-flung places like China, Guatemala, and India is a microcosm of what's going on in the global economy. Globalization is a bit of a mixed bag, and there have definitely been winners and losers along the way. In this episode John will talk about some of the benefits that have come along with it. Next week, he'll get into some of the less-positive side effects of globalization.
In which John asks whether globalization is a net positive for humanity. While the new global economy has created a lot of wealth, and lifted a lot of people out of poverty, it also has some effects that aren't so hot. Wealth disparity, rising divorce rates, environmental damage, and new paths for the spread of disease. So does all this outweigh the economic benefits, the innovation, and the relative peace that come with interconnected economies? As usual, the answer is not simple. In this case, we're living in the middle of the events we're discussing, so it's hard to know how it's going to turn out.
And thus begins the most revolutionary biology course in history. Come and learn about covalent, ionic, and hydrogen bonds. What about electron orbitals, the octet rule, and what does it all have to do with a mad man named Gilbert Lewis? It's all contained within.
Hank teaches us why water is one of the most fascinating and important substances in the universe.
Hank talks about the molecules that make up every living thing - carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins - and how we find them in our environment and in the food that we eat.
Hank tells us about the city of Eukaryopolis - the animal cell that is responsible for all the cool things that happen in our bodies.
Hank describes how cells regulate their contents and communicate with one another via mechanisms within the cell membrane.
Hank describes why plants are so freaking amazing - discussing their evolution, and how their cells are both similar to & different from animal cells.
In which Hank does some push ups for science and describes the "economy" of cellular respiration and the various processes whereby our bodies create energy in the form of ATP.
Hank explains the extremely complex series of reactions whereby plants feed themselves on sunlight, carbon dioxide and water, and also create some by products we're pretty fond of as well.
Hank and his brother John discuss heredity via the gross example of relative ear wax moistness.
Hank introduces us to that wondrous molecule deoxyribonucleic acid - also known as DNA - and explains how it replicates itself in our cells.
Hank imagines himself breaking into the Hot Pockets factory to steal their secret recipes and instruction manuals in order to help us understand how the processes known as DNA transcription and translation allow our cells to build proteins.
Hank describes mitosis and cytokinesis - the series of processes our cells go through to divide into two identical copies.
Hank gets down to the nitty gritty about meiosis, the special type of cell division that is necessary for sexual reproduction in eukaryotic organisms.
Hank guides us through the process of natural selection, the key mechanism of evolution.
Hank explains speciation - the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise - in terms of finches, ligers, mules, and dogs.
Hank discusses the process by which organisms grow and develop, maintaining that, in the end, we're all just tubes.
Hank introduces us to the relatively new field of evolutionary developmental biology, which compares the developmental processes of different organisms to determine their ancestral relationship, and to discover how those processes evolved. Also fruit flies with eyes on their legs and chickens with teeth!
Hank talks about population genetics, which helps to explain the evolution of populations over time by combing the principles of Mendel and Darwin, and by means of the Hardy-Weinberg equation.
Hank tells us the background story and explains the importance of the science of classifying living things, also known as taxonomy.
Hank gets real with us in a discussion of evolution - it's a thing, not a debate. Gene distribution changes over time, across successive generations, to give rise to diversity at every level of biological organization.
Hank introduces us to comparative anatomy, which studies the similarities and differences in animal anatomy to support the theory of evolution and the shared ancestry of living things.
Hank introduces us to the "simplest" of the animals, complexity-wise: beginning with sponges (whose very inclusion in the list as "animals" has been called into question because they are so simple) and finishing with the most complex molluscs, octopuses and squid. We differentiate them by the number of tissue layers they have, and by the complexity of those layers.
Hank continues our exploration of animal phyla with the more complexly organized annelida and arthropoda, and a biolography on insects.
Hank introduces us to ourselves by taking us on a journey through the fascinatingly diverse phyla known as chordata. And the next time someone asks you who you are, you can give them the facts: you're a mammalian amniotic tetrapodal sarcopterygian osteichthyen gnathostomal vertebrate cranial chordate.
Hank and his cat Cameo help teach us about animal behavior and how we can discover why animals do the things they do.
Hank and his cat Cameo help teach us about animal behavior and how we can discover why animals do the things they do.
Hank takes us on a trip around the body - we follow the circulatory and respiratory systems as they deliver oxygen and remove carbon dioxide from cells, and help make it possible for our bodies to function.
Hank takes us on the fascinating journey through our excretory system to learn how our kidneys make pee.
Hank takes us on the fascinating journey through our excretory system to learn how our kidneys make pee.
Hank introduces us to the framework of our bodies, our skeleton, which apart from being the support and protection for all our fleshy parts, is involved in many other vital processes that help our bodies to function properly.
Hank tells us the story of the complicated chemical dance that allows our skeletal muscles to contract and relax.
Hank tells us about the team of deadly ninja assassins that is tasked with protecting our bodies from all the bad guys that want to kill us - also known as our immune system.
Hank tells us about the team of deadly ninja assassins that is tasked with protecting our bodies from all the bad guys that want to kill us - also known as our immune system.
Hank lets us in on the meaning of life, at least from a biological perspective - it's reproduction, which answers the essential question of all organisms: how do I make more of myself? So, sex, how does it work?
Hank veers away from human anatomy to teach us about the (mostly) single-celled organisms that make up two of the three taxonomic domains of life, and one of the four kingdoms: Archaea, Bacteria, and Protists. They are by far the most abundant organisms on Earth, and are our oldest, oddest relatives.
Hank introduces us to nonvascular plants - liverworts, hornworts & mosses - which have bizarre features, kooky habits, and strange sex lives. Nonvascular plants inherited their reproductive cycle from algae, but have perfected it to the point where it is now used by all plants in one way or another, and has even left traces in our own reproductive systems.
Hank introduces us to one of the most diverse and important families in the tree of life - the vascular plants. These plants have found tremendous success and the their secret is also their defining trait: conductive tissues that can take food and water from one part of a plant to another part. Though it sounds simple, the ability to move nutrients and water from one part of an organism to another was a evolutionary breakthrough for vascular plants, allowing them to grow exponentially larger, store food for lean times, and develop features that allowed them to spread farther and faster. Plants dominated the earth long before animals even showed up, and even today hold the world records for the largest, most massive, and oldest organisms on the planet.
Hank gets into the dirty details about vascular plant reproduction: they use the basic alternation of generations developed by nonvascular plants 470 million years ago, but they've tricked it out so that it works a whole lot differently compared to the way it did back in the Ordovician swamps where it got its start. Here's how the vascular plants (ferns, gymnosperms and angiosperms) do it.
Death is what fungi are all about. By feasting on the deceased remains of almost all organisms on the planet, converting the organic matter back into soil from which new life will spring, they perform perhaps the most vital function in the global food web. Fungi, which thrive on death, make all life possible.
Hank introduces us to ecology - the study of the rules of engagement for all of us earthlings - which seeks to explain why the world looks and acts the way it does. The world is crammed with things, both animate and not, that have been interacting with each other all the time, every day, since life on this planet began, and these interactions depend mostly on just two things... Learn what they are as Crash Course Biology takes its final voyage outside the body and into the entire world.
With a solid understanding of biology on the small scale under our belts, it's time for the long view - for the next twelve weeks, we'll be learning how the living things that we've studied interact with and influence each other and their environments. Life is powerful, and in order to understand how living systems work, you first have to understand how they originated, developed and diversified over the past 4.5 billion years of Earth's history. Hang on to your hats as Hank tells us the epic drama that is the history of life on Earth.
Population ecology is the study of groups within a species that interact mostly with each other, and it examines how they live together in one geographic area to understand why these populations are different in one time and place than they are in another. How is that in any way useful to anyone ever? Hank uses the example a of West Nile virus outbreak in Texas to show you in this episode of Crash Course: Ecology.
If being alive on Earth were a contest, humans would win it hands down. We're like the Michael Phelps of being alive, but with 250,000 times more gold medals. Today Hank is here to tell us the specifics of why and how human population growth has happened over the past hundred and fifty years or so, and how those specifics relate to ecology.
Interactions between species are what define ecological communities, and community ecology studies these interactions anywhere they take place. Although interspecies interactions are mostly competitive, competition is pretty dangerous, so a lot of interactions are actually about side-stepping direct competition and instead finding ways to divvy up resources to let species get along. Feel the love?
Hank gets to the more violent part of community ecology by describing predation and the many ways prey organisms have developed to avoid it.
In the world of ecology, the only constant is change - but change can be good. Today Hank explains ecological succession and how ecological communities change over time to become beautiful, biodiverse mosaics.
Hank brings us to the next level of ecological study with ecosystem ecology, which looks at how energy, nutrients, and materials are getting shuffled around within an ecosystem (a collection of living and non-living things interacting in a specific place), and which basically comes down to who is eating who.
Hank introduces us to biogeochemical cycles by describing his two favorites: carbon and water. The hydrologic cycle describes how water moves on, above, and below the surface of the Earth, driven by energy supplied by the sun and wind. The carbon cycle does the same... for carbon!
Hank describes the desperate need many organisms have for nutrients (specifically nitrogen and phosphorus) and how they go about getting them via the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles.
Hank gives the run down on the top five ways humans are negatively impacting the environment and having detrimental effects on the valuable ecosystem services which a healthy biosphere provides.
Hank talks about the last major way humans are impacting the environment in this penultimate episode of Crash Course Ecology. Pollution takes many forms - from the simplest piece of litter to the more complex endocrine distruptors - and ultimately, humans are responsible for it all.
Hank wraps up the Crash Course on ecology by taking a look at the growing fields of conservation biology and restoration ecology, which use all the kung fu moves we've learned about in the past eleven weeks and apply them to protecting ecosystems and to cleaning up the messes that we've already made.
In which John Green kicks off the Crash Course Literature mini series with a reasonable set of questions. Why do we read? What's the point of reading critically. John will argue that reading is about effectively communicating with other people. Unlike a direct communication though, the writer has to communicate with a stranger, through time and space, with only "dry dead words on a page." So how's that going to work? Find out with Crash Course Literature! Also, readers are empowered during the open letter, so that's pretty cool.
In which John Green examines Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare. John delves into the world of Bill Shakespeare's famous star-crossed lovers and examines what the play is about, its structure, and the context in which it was written. Have you ever wanted to know what iambic pentameter is? Then you should watch this video. Have you ever pondered what kind of people actually went to see a Shakespeare play in 1598? Watch this video. Were you aware that wherefore means "why?" Whether you were or not, watch this video. In Shakespeare's time, entertainment choices ranged from taking in a play to watching a restrained bear try to fight off a pack of dogs. Today on YouTube, our entertainment choices are just as wide-ranging. So you can either choose to watch the modern equivalent of bear baiting (another cinnamon challenge) or you can be edified and entertained by John and Crash Course. So wherefore are you reading this description instead of watching the video?
In which John Green returns to William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to explore the themes of true love, lust, and whether Romeo and Juliet were truly, deeply in love, or they were just a pair of impetuous teens. How exactly did Romeo manage to go from pining for Rosaline to marrying Juliet in 36 hours? Maybe they were impetuous teens who were ALSO deeply in love. John looks into how the structure and conventions of society in medieval Verona led to the star-crossed lovers' downfall. Along the way, you'll learn about courtly love, medieval responsibility to church, family and society, Chipotle burritos as a metaphor for true love, and even learn about literary sex. We may even tie in trapeze artists and Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. You'll have to watch to find out.
In which John Green explores F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel of the Jazz Age, The Great Gatsby. John introduces you to Nick Carraway, Jay Gatsby, Daisy and Tom Buchanan, and the other characters in the novel, and tries to look beyond the surface story to figure out what this thing is ABOUT. Set in the 1920's against a conflicted backdrop of prohibition and excess, The Great Gatsby takes a close look at the American Dream as it existed in Fitzgerald's time. It turns out, it had a lot to do with money and status, and it still does today. John will cover the rich symbolism of the novel, from the distant green light to the pale gold of wealth and decay. Also, Paris Hilton drops by.
SPOILER ALERT: This video assumes you've read the book. In which John Green continues to explore F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby. In this installment, John looks into the titular Gatsby's purported Greatness. Gatsby's single-minded pursuit of Daisy, his checkered past, and his checkered present all play a role in determining whether he was, in fact, great. Here's a hint: you don't have to be good to be great. It turns out greatness doesn't have much to do with whether you're a good person. Along the way, John explores the relentless forward march of time, the use of poetic language, and ironic titling of novels.
In which John Green examines JD Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye. John pulls out the old school literary criticism by examining the text itself rather than paying attention to the biographical or historical context of the novel (that's for next week). Listen, words matter. The Catcher in the Rye has managed to endure without a movie adaptation because a lot of its quality arises from the book's language. Find out how Holden's voice, his language, and his narrative technique combine to make the novel work. Also, Thought Bubble gives us a quick rundown of the plot, in which Ikea Monkey may or may not appear.
In which John continues the discussion of JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. This week John reads the novel with Salinger's life story in mind. John explores how Salinger's war experience, educational background, and romantic life inform the events of Holden Caulfield's life. How did Holden get to be such a whiny, self-absorbed teen? While it's not a great idea to read novels too biographically, Salinger's life surely informed Holden's. Watch on to get an idea just how much.
In which John Green concludes the Crash Course Literature mini-series with an examination of the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Sure, John explores the creepy biographical details of Dickinson's life, but he also gets into why her poems have remained relevant over the decades. John discusses Dickinson's language, the structure of her work, and her cake recipes. He also talks about Dickinson's famously eccentric punctuation, which again ends up relating to her cake recipes. Also, Dickinson's coconut cake recipe is included.
In which John Green kicks off Crash Course US History! Why, you may ask, are we covering US History, and not more World History, or the history of some other country, or the very specific history of your home region? Well, the reasons are many. But, like it or not, the United States has probably meddled in your country to some degree in the last 236 years or so, and that means US History is relevant all over the world. In episode 1, John talks about the Native Americans who lived in what is now the US prior to European contact. This is a history class, not archaeology, so we're mainly going to cover written history. That means we start with the first sustained European settlement in North America, and that means the Spanish. The Spanish have a long history with the natives of the Americas, and not all of it was positive. The Spanish were definitely not peaceful colonizers, but what colonizers are peaceful?
In which John Green teaches you about the (English) colonies in what is now the United States. He covers the first permanent English colony at Jamestown, Virginia, the various havens for persecuted religions in Maryland and Massachusetts, and even a bit about the spooky lost colony at Roanoke Island. What were the English doing in America, anyway? Lots of stuff. In Virginia, the colonists were largely there to make money. In Maryland, the idea was to create a Catholic colony safe from the depraved Protestants back in England. In Massachusetts, the Pilgrims and Puritans came to America to find a place where they could practice their religion freely. And also persecute those who didn't share their beliefs. But there was a healthy profit motive in Massachusetts as well. Profits were thin at first, and so were the colonists.
In which John Green teaches you about relations between the early English colonists and the native people the encountered in the New World. In short, these relations were poor. As soon as they arrived, the English were in conflict with the native people. At Jamestown, Captain John Smith briefly managed to get the colony on pretty solid footing with the local tribes, but it didn't last, and a long series of wars with the natives ensued. This pattern would continue in US history, with settlers pushing into native lands and pushing the inhabitants further west. In this episode, you'll learn about Wahunsunacawh (who the English called Powhatan), his daughter Pocahontas, King Philip's (aka Metacom) War, and the Mystic Massacre. By and large, the history of the Natives and the English was not a happy one, even Thanksgiving wasn't all it's cracked up to be.
In which John Green teaches you about some of the colonies that were not in Virginia or Massachussetts. Old New York was once New Amsterdam. Why they changed it, I can say; ENGLISH people just liked it better that way, and when the English took New Amssterdam in 1643, that's just what they did. Before the English got there though, the colony was full of Dutch people who treated women pretty fairly, and allowed free black people to hold jobs. John also discusses Penn's Woods, also known as Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania was (briefly) a haven of religious freedom, and William Penn dealt relatively fairly with the natives his colony displaced. Of course, as soon as Penn died, the colonist started abusing the natives immediately. We venture as far south as the Carolina colonies, where the slave labor economy was taking shape. John also takes on the idea of the classless society in America, and the beginning of the idea of the American dream.
In which John Green teaches you about the beginnings of the American Revolution in a video titled The Seven Years War. Confusing? Maybe. John argues that the Seven Years War, which is often called the French and Indian War in the US, laid a lot of the groundwork for the Revolution. More confusing? Why does this war have two names? Why were the French and Indians fighting each other? The Seven Years war was actually a global war that went on for nine years. I think I'm having trouble making this clear. Anyway, the part of this global war that happened in North America was the French and Indian War. The French and Indian tribes were the force opposing the British, so that's the name that stuck. Let's get away from this war, as it makes my head hurt. Other stuff was going on in the colonies in the 18th century that primed the people for revolution. One was the Great Awakening. Religious revival was sweeping the country, introducing new ideas about religion and how it should be practiced.
In which John Green teaches you about the roots of the American Revolution. The Revolution did not start on July 4, 1776. The Revolutionary War didn't start on July 4 either. (as you remember, I'm sure, the Revolution and the Revolutionary War are not the same thing) The shooting started on April 19, 1775, at Lexington and/or Concord, MA. Or the shooting started with the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. At least we can pin down the Declaration of Independence to July 4, 1776. Except that most of the signers didn't sign until August 2. The point is that the beginning of the Revolution is very complex and hard to pin down. John will lead you through the bramble of taxes, royal decrees, acts of parliament, colonial responses, and various congresses. We'll start with the end of the Seven Years War, and the bill that the British ran up fighting the war. This led to taxes on colonial trade, which led to colonists demanding representation, which led to revolution.
In which John Green teaches you about the American Revolution. And the Revolutionary War. I know we've labored the point here, but they weren't the same thing. In any case, John will teach you about the major battles of the war, and discuss the strategies on both sides. Everyone is familiar with how this war played out for the Founding Fathers; they got to become the Founding Fathers. But what did the revolution mean to the common people in the United States? For white, property-owning males, it was pretty sweet. They gained rights that were a definite step up from being British Colonial citizens. For everyone else, the short-term gains were not clear. Women's rights were unaffected, and slaves remained in slavery. As for poor white folks, they remained poor and disenfranchised.
In which John Green teaches you about the United States Constitution. During and after the American Revolutionary War, the government of the new country operated under the Articles of Confederation. While these Articles got the young nation through its war with England, they weren't of much use when it came to running a country. So, the founding fathers decided try their hand at nation-building, and they created the Constitution of the United States, which you may remember as the one that says We The People at the top. John will tell you how the convention came together, some of the compromises that had to be made to pass this thing, and why it's very lucky that the framers installed a somewhat reasonable process for making changes to the thing. You'll learn about Shays' Rebellion, the Federalist Papers, the elite vs rabble dynamic of the houses of congress, and start to find out just what an anti-federalist is.
In which John Green teaches you where American politicians come from. In the beginning, soon after the US constitution was adopted, politics were pretty non-existent. George Washington was elected president with no opposition, everything was new and exciting, and everyone just got along. For several months. Then the contentious debate about the nature of the United States began, and it continues to this day. Washington and his lackey/handler Alexander Hamilton pursued an elitist program of federalism. They attempted to strengthen the central government, create a strong nation-state, and leave less of the governance to the states, They wanted to create debt, encourage manufacturing, and really modernize the new nation/ The opposition, creatively known as the anti-federalists, wanted to build some kind of agrarian pseudo-paradise where every (white) man could have his own farm, and live a free, self-reliant life. The founding father who epitomized this view was Thomas Jefferson.
In which John Green teaches you about founding father and third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson is a somewhat controversial figure in American history, largely because he, like pretty much all humans, was a big bundle of contradictions. Jefferson was a slave-owner who couldn't decide if he liked slavery. He advocated for mall government, but expanded federal power more than either of his presidential predecessors. He also idealised the independent farmer and demonised manufacturing, but put policies in place that would expand industrial production in the US. Controversy may ensue as we try to deviate a bit from the standard hagiography/slander story that usually told about old TJ. John explores Jefferson's election, his policies, and some of the new nation's (literally and figuratively) formative events that took place during Jefferson's presidency. In addition to all this, Napoleon drops in to sell Louisiana,
In which John Green teaches you about the War of 1812. The War of 1812 was fought between the United States and its former colonial overlord England. It started in, you guessed it 1812. The war lasted until 1815, and it resolved very little. John will take you through the causes of the war, tell you a little bit about the fighting itself, and get into just why the US Army couldn't manage to make any progress invading Canada. And yes, Canadians, we're going to talk about the White House getting burned down. The upshot: no territory changed hands, and most of the other bones of contention were solved prior to the actual war. Although nothing much changed for the US and England, the Native Americans were the big losers. Tecumseh was killed, and the Indian tribes lost a lot of territory. Watch as John lays it all out for you. Also, check out #1812problems on Twitter. It's awesome.
In which John Green teaches you about the Market Revolution. In the first half of the 19th century, the way people lived and worked in the United States changed drastically. At play was the classic (if anything in a 30 year old nation can be called classic) American struggle between the Jeffersonian ideal of individuals sustaining themselves on small farms vs. the Hamiltonian vision of an economy based on manufacturing and trade. I'll give you one guess who won. Too late! It was Hamilton, which is why if you live in the United States, you probably live in a city, and are unlikely to be a farmer. Please resist the urge to comment about this if you live in the country and/or are a farmer. Your anecdotal experience doesn't change the fact that most people live in cities. In the early 19th century, new technologies in transportation and communication helped remake the economic system of the country.
In which John Green teaches you about America's "peculiar institution," slavery. I wouldn't really call it peculiar. I'd lean more toward horrifying and depressing institution, but nobody asked me. John will talk about what life was like for a slave in the 19th century United States, and how slaves resisted oppression, to the degree that was possible. We'll hear about cotton plantations, violent punishment of slaves, day to day slave life, and slave rebellions. Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, and Whipped Peter all make an appearance. Slavery as an institution is arguably the darkest part of America's history, and we're still dealing with its aftermath 150 years after it ended.
In which John Green teaches you about the presidency of Andrew Jackson So how did a president with astoundingly bad fiscal policies end up on the $20 bill? That's a question we can't answer, but we can tell you how Jackson got to be president, and how he changed the country when he got the job. Jackson's election was more democratic than any previous presidential election. More people were able to vote, and they picked a doozie. Jackson was a well-known war hero, and he was elected over his longtime political enemy, John Quincy Adams. Once Jackson was in office, he did more to expand executive power than any of the previous occupants of the White House.
In which John Green teaches you about various reform movements in the 19th century United States. From Utopian societies to the Second Great Awakening to the Abolition movement, American society was undergoing great changes in the first half of the 19th century. Attempts at idealized societies popped up (and universally failed) at Utopia, OH, New Harmony, IN, Modern Times, NY, and many other places around the country. These utopians had a problem with mainstream society, and their answer was to withdraw into their own little worlds. Others didn't like the society they saw, and decided to try to change it.
In which John Green finally gets around to talking about some women's history. In the 19th Century, the United States was changing rapidly, as we noted in the recent Market Revolution and Reform Movements episodes. Things were also in a state of flux for women. The reform movements, which were in large part driven by women, gave these self-same women the idea that they could work on their own behalf, and radically improve the state of their own lives. So, while these women were working on prison reform, education reform, and abolition, they also started talking about equal rights, universal suffrage, temperance, and fair pay. Women like Susan B. Anthony, Carry Nation, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the Grimkés, and Lucretia Mott strove tirelessly to improve the lot of American women, and it worked, eventually.
In which John Green teaches you about the Mexican-American War in the late 1840s, and the expansion of the United States into the western end of North America. In this episode of Crash Course, US territory finally reaches from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific Ocean. After Oregon was secured from the UK and the southwest was ceded by Mexico, that is. Famous Americans abound in this episode, including James K Polk (Young Hickory, Napoleon of the Stump), Martin Van Buren, Zachary Taylor, and Winfield Scott. You'll also learn about the California Gold Rush of 1848, and California's admission as a state, which necessitated the Compromise of 1850.
In which John Green teaches you about the election of 1860. As you may remember from last week, things were not great at this time in US history. The tensions between the North and South were rising, ultimately due to the single issue of slavery. The North wanted to abolish slavery, and the South wanted to continue on with it. It seemed like a war was inevitable, and it turns out that it was. But first the nation had to get through this election. You'll learn how the bloodshed in Kansas, and the truly awful Kansas-Nebraska Act led directly to the decrease in popularity of Stephen Douglas, the splitting of the Democratic party, and the unlikely victory of a relatively inexperienced politician from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln.
In which John Green lists a whole lot of the battles of the US Civil War in seven and a half minutes. We get a lot of requests for military history, so we offer a list of battle names, with some commentary about outcomes, and lots of really interesting pictures. This is a but of a departure for Crash Course as we leave behind the world of thoughtful analysis and just list some facts. Don't worry though. We've already got our brains turned back on for next week.
In which John Green ACTUALLY teaches about the Civil War. In part one of our two part look at the US Civil War, John looks into the causes of the war, and the motivations of the individuals who went to war. The overarching causes and the individual motivations were not always the same, you see. John also looks into why the North won, and whether that outcome was inevitable. The North's industrial and population advantages are examined, as are the problems of the Confederacy, including its need to build a nation at the same time it was fighting a war. As usual, John doesn't get much into the actual battle by battle breakdown.
In which John Green teaches you how the Civil War played a large part in making the United States the country that it is today. He covers some of the key ways in which Abraham Lincoln influenced the outcome of the war, and how the lack of foreign intervention also helped the Union win the war. John also covers the technology that made the Civil War different than previous wars. New weapons helped to influence the outcomes of battles, but photography influenced how the public at large perceived the war. In addition, John gets into the long term effects of the war, including the federalization and unification of the United States.
In which John Green teaches you about Reconstruction. After the divisive, destructive Civil War, Abraham Lincoln had a plan to reconcile the country and make it whole again. Then he got shot, Andrew Johnson took over, and the disagreements between Johnson and Congress ensured that Reconstruction would fail. The election of 1876 made the whole thing even more of a mess, and the country called it off, leaving the nation still very divided. John will talk about the gains made by African-Americans in the years after the Civil War, and how they lost those gains almost immediately when Reconstruction stopped.
In which John Green teaches you about the Industrial Economy that arose in the United States after the Civil War. You know how when you're studying history, and you're reading along and everything seems safely in the past, and then BOOM you think, "Man, this suddenly seems very modern." For me, that moment in US History is the post-Reconstruction expansion of industrialism in America. After the Civil War, many of the changes in technology and ideas gave rise to this new industrialism. You'll learn about the rise of Captains of Industry (or Robber Barons) like Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, John D Rockefeller, and JP Morgan. You'll learn about trusts, combinations, and how the government responded to these new business practices. All this, plus John will cover how workers reacted to the changes in society and the early days of the labor movement.
In which John Green teaches you about the Wild, Wild, West, which as it turns out, wasn't as wild as it seemed in the movies. When we think of the western expansion of the United States in the 19th century, we're conditioned to imagine the loner. The self-reliant, unattached cowpoke roaming the prairie in search of wandering calves, or the half-addled prospector who has broken from reality thanks to the solitude of his single-minded quest for gold dust. While there may be a grain of truth to these classic Hollywood stereotypes, it isn't a very big grain of truth. Many of the pioneers who settled the west were family groups. Many were immigrants. Many were major corporations.
In which John Green teaches you about the massive immigration to the United States during the late 19th and early 20th century. Immigrants flocked to the US from all over the world in this time period. Millions of Europeans moved to the US where they drove the growth of cities and manned the rapid industrialization that was taking place. In the western US many, many Chinese immigrants arrived to work on the railroad and in mines. As is often the case in the United States, the people who already lived in the US reacted kind of badly to this flood of immigrants. Some legislators tried to stem the flow of new arrivals, with mixed success. Grover Cleveland vetoed a general ban on immigration, but the leadership at the time did manage to get together to pass and anti-Chinese immigration law.
In which John Green teaches you about the Gilded Age and its politics. What, you may ask, is the Gilded Age? The term comes from a book by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner titled, "The Gilded Age." You may see a pattern emerging here. It started in the 1870s and continued on until the turn of the 20th century. The era is called Gilded because of the massive inequality that existed in the United States. Gilded Age politics were marked by a number of phenomenons, most of them having to do with corruption. On the local and state level, political machines wielded enormous power. John gets into details about the most famous political machine, Tammany Hall. Tammany Hall ran New York City for a long, long time, notably under Boss Tweed. Graft, kickbacks, and voter fraud were rampant, but not just at the local level. Ulysses S. Grant ran one of the most scandalous presidential administrations in U.S. history, and John will tell you about two of the best known scandals, the Credit Mobilier.
In which John Green teaches you about the Progressive Era in the United States. In the late 19th and early 20th century in America, there was a sense that things could be improved upon. A sense that reforms should be enacted. A sense that progress should be made. As a result, we got the Progressive Era, which has very little to do with automobile insurance, but a little to do with automobiles. All this overlapped with the Gilded Age, and is a little confusing, but here we have it. Basically, people were trying to solve some of the social problems that came with the benefits of industrial capitalism. To oversimplify, there was a competition between the corporations' desire to keep wages low and workers' desire to have a decent life.
In which John Green teaches you about Imperialism. In the late 19th century, the great powers of Europe were running around the world obtaining colonial possessions, especially in Africa and Asia. The United States, which as a young country was especially suceptible to peer pressure, followed along and snapped up some colonies of its own. The US saw that Spain's hold on its empire was weak, and like some kind of expansionist predator, it jumped into the Cuban War for Independence and turned it into the Spanish-Cuban-Phillipino-American War, which usually just gets called the Spanish-American War. John will tell you how America turned this war into colonial possessions like Puerto Rico, The Philippines, and almost even got to keep Cuba.
In which John Green teaches you about the Progressive Presidents, who are not a super-group of former presidents who create complicated, symphonic, rock soundscapes that transport you into a fantasy fugue state. Although that would be awesome. The presidents most associated with the Progressive Era are Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, and Woodrow Wilson. During the times these guys held office, trusts were busted, national parks were founded, social programs were enacted, and tariffs were lowered. It wasn't all positive though, as their collective tenure also saw Latin America invaded A LOT, a split in the Republican party that resulted in a Bull Moose, all kinds of other international intervention, and the end of the Progressive Era saw the United States involved in World War.
In which John Green teaches you about American involvement in World War I, which at the time was called the Great War. They didn't know there was going to be a second one, though they probably should have guessed, 'cause this one didn't wrap up very neatly. So, the United States stayed out of World War I at first, because Americans were in an isolationist mood in the early 20th century. That didn't last though, as the affronts piled up and drew the US into the war. Spoiler alert: the Lusitania was sunk two years before we joined the war, so that wasn't the sole cause for our jumping in. It was part of it though, as was the Zimmerman telegram, unrestricted submarine warfare, and our affinity for the Brits.
In which John Green teaches you about American women in the Progressive Era and, well, the progress they made. So the big deal is, of course, the right to vote women gained when the 19th amendment was passed and ratified. But women made a lot of other gains in the 30 years between 1890 and 1920. More women joined the workforce, they acquired lots of other legal rights related to property, and they also became key consumers in the industrial economy. Women also continued to play a vital role in reform movements. Sadly, they got Prohibition enacted in the US, but they did a lot of good stuff, too. The field of social work emerged as women like Jane Addams created settlement houses to assist immigrants in their integration into the United States.
In which John Green teaches you about the United States in the 1920s. They were known as the roaring 20s, but not because there were lions running around everywhere. In the 1920s, America's economy was booming, and all kinds of social changes were in progress. Hollywood, flappers, jazz, there was all kinds of stuff going on in the 20s. But as usual with Crash Course, things were about to take a turn for the worse. John will teach you about the Charleston, the many Republican presidents of the 1920s, laissez-faire capitalism, jazz, consumer credit, the resurgent Klan, and all kinds of other stuff.
In which John Green teaches you about the Great Depression. So, everybody knows that the Great Depression started with the stock market crash in 1929, right? Not exactly. The Depression happened after the stock market crash, but wasn't caused by the crash. John will teach you about how the depression started, what Herbert Hoover tried to do to fix it, and why those efforts failed.
In which John Green teaches you about the New Deal, which was president Franklin D. Roosevelt's plan to pull the united States out of the Great Depression of the 1930's. Did it work? Maybe. John will teach you about some of the most effective and some of the best known programs of the New Deal. They weren't always the same thing. John will tell you who supported the New Deal, and who opposed it. He'll also get into how the New Deal changed the relationship between the government and citizens, and will even reveal just how the Depression ended. (hint: it was war spending)
In which John Green teaches you about World War II, a subject so big, it takes up two episodes. This week, John will teach you how the United States got into the war, and just how involved America was before Congress actually declared war. John will actually talk a little about the military tactics involved, and he'll get into some of the weaponry involved, specifically the huge amount of aerial bombing that characterized the war, and the atomic bombs that ended the war in the Pacific.
In which John Green teaches you about World War 2, as it was lived on the home front. You'll learn about how the war changed the country as a whole, and changed how Americans thought about their country. John talks about the government control of war production, and how the war probably helped to end the Great Depression. A broader implementation of the income tax, the growth of large corporations, and the development of the West Coast as a manufacturing center were also results of the war. The war positivelychanged the roles of women and African Americans, but it was pretty terrible for the Japanese Americans who were interred in camps. In short, World War II changed America's role in the world, changed American life at home, and eventually spawned the History Channel.
In which John Green teaches you about the Cold War, which was the decades long conflict between the USA and the USSR. The Cold War was called cold because of the lack of actual fighting, but this is inaccurate. There was plenty of fighting, from Korea to Viet Nam to Afghanistan, but we'll get into that stuff next week. This week we'll talk about how the Cold War started. In short it grew out of World War II. Basically, the Soviets occupied eastern Europe, and the US supported western Europe. This setup would spill across the world, with client states on both sides. It's all in the video. You should just watch it.
In which John Green teaches you about the Cold War as it unfolded in Asia. As John pointed out last week, the Cold War was occasionally hot, and a lot of that heat was generated in Asia. This is starting to sound weird with the hot/cold thing, so let's just say that the United States struggle against communist expansion escalated to full-blown, boots on the ground war in Korea and Vietnam. In both of these cases, the United States sent soldiers to intervene in civil wars that it looked like communists might win. That's a bit of a simplification, but John will explain it all to you.
In which John Green teaches you about the early days of the Civil Rights movement. By way of providing context for this, John also talks a bit about wider America in the 1950s. The 1950s are a deeply nostalgic period for many Americans, but there is more than a little idealizing going on here. The 1950s were a time of economic expansion, new technologies, and a growing middle class. America was becoming a suburban nation thanks to cookie-cutter housing developments like the Levittowns. While the white working class saw their wages and status improve, the proverbial rising tide wasn't lifting all proverbial ships. A lot of people were excluded from the prosperity of the 1950s. Segregation in housing and education made for some serious inequality for African Americans. As a result, the Civil Rights movement was born.
In which John Green teaches you about a time of relative tumult in the United States, the 1960s. America was changing rapidly in the 1960s, and rights movements were at the forefront of those changes. Civil Rights were dominant, but the 60s also saw growth in the Women's Movement, the LGBT rights movement, the Latino rights movement, and the American Indian movement. Also, Americans began to pay a bit more attention to the environment. All this change happened against the backdrop of the Cold War and the Rise of Conservatism. It was just wild. John will teach you about sit-ins, Freedom Rides, The March on Washington, MLK, JFK, LBJ, and NOW. Man, that is a lot of initialisms. And one acronym.
In which John Green teaches you about the rise of the conservative movement in United States politics. So, the sixties are often remembered for the liberal changes that the decade brought to America, but lest you forget, Richard Nixon was elected to the presidency during the sixties. The conservative movement didn't start with Nixon though. Modern conservatism really entered mainstream consciousness during the 1964 presidential contest between incumbent president and Kennedy torch-bearer Lyndon B Johnson, and Republican senator Barry Goldwater. While Goldwater never had a shot in the election, he used the campaign to talk about all kinds of conservative ideas.
In which John Green teaches you about the economic malaise that beset the United States in the 1970s. A sort of perfect storm of events, it combined the continuing decline of America's manufacturing base and the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979, and brought about an stagnant economy, paired with high inflation. Economists with a flair for neologisms and portamenteau words called this "stagflation," and it made people miserable. Two presidential administrations were scuttled at least in part by these economic woes; both Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter are considered failed presidents for many reasons, but largely because of an inability to improve the economy. (hint: In reality, no one person can materially change something as big as the world economy, even if they are president, but one person sure can make a handy scapegoat!)
In which John Green teaches you about what is often called the Reagan Era. Mainly, it covers the eight years during which a former actor who had also been governor of the state of California was president of the United States. John will teach you about Reagan's election victory over the hapless Jimmy Carter, tax cuts, Reagan's Economic Bill of Rights, union busting, and the Iran-Contra among other things. Learn about Reagan's domestic and foreign policy initiatives, and even a little about Bonzo the Chimp.
In which John Green teaches you about the end of the Cold War and the presidency of George H.W. Bush. It was neither the best of times, nor the worst of times. On the domestic front, the first president Bush inherited the relative prosperity of the later Reagan years, and watched that prosperity evaporate. That was about all the interest Bush 41 had, domestically, so let's move to foreign policy, which was a bigger deal at this time. The biggie was the end of the Cold War, which is the title of the video, so you know it's important. The collapse of the Soviet Union was the biggest deal of Bush's term, and history has assigned the credit to Ronald Reagan. We give the guy a break, and say that he helped. He was certainly expert in foreign policy, having been and envoy to China, ambassador to the United Nations, and head of the CIA.
In which John Green teaches you about the United States as it was in the 1990s. You'll remember from last week that the old-school Republican George H.W. Bush had lost the 1992 presidential election to a young upstart Democrat from Arkansas named Bill Clinton. Clinton was a bit of a dark horse candidate, having survived a sex scandal during the election, but a third party run by Ross Perot split the vote, and Clinton was inaugurated in 1993. John will teach you about Clinton's foreign policy agenda, which included NATO action in the Balkans and the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO. He'll also cover some of the domestic successes and failures of the Clinton years, including the failed attempt at healthcare reform, the pretty terrible record on GLBTQ issues, Welfare reform, which got mixed reviews, and the happier issues like the huge improvements in the economy.
In which John Green teaches you about the tumultuous 2000's in the United States of America, mainly the 2000's that coincide with the presidency of George W Bush. From the controversial election in 2000, to the events of 9/11 and Bush's prosecution of the War on Terror, the George W. Bush presidency was an eventful one. John will teach you about Bush's domestic policies like tax cutting, education reform, and he'll get into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The event that came to pass during Bush's presidency are still very much effecting the United States and the world today, so listen up!
In which John Green teaches you about recent history. By which we mean VERY recent history. John covers the end of George W. Bush's administration presidency of Barack Obama (so far). Some people would say, "It's too soon to try to interpret the historical importance of such recent events!" To those people we answer, "You're right." Nonetheless, it's worthwhile to take a look at the American we live in right now as a way of looking back at how far we've come. Anyway, John will teach you about Obama's election, some of his policies like the Affordable Care Act, the 2009 stimulus, and the continuation of the war on terror. If you still can't reconcile a history course teaching such recent stuff, just think of this one as a current events episode.
Hank does his best to convince us that chemistry is not torture, but is instead the amazing and beautiful science of stuff. Chemistry can tell us how three tiny particles - the proton, neutron and electron - come together in trillions of combinations to form ... everything. In this inaugural episode of Crash Course Chemistry, we start out with one of the biggest ideas in chemistry ever - stuff is made from atoms. More specifically, we learn about the properties of the nucleus and why they are important to defining what an atom actually is.
A unit is the frequently arbitrary designation we have given to something to convey a definite magnitude of a physical quantity and every quantity can be expressed in terms of the seven base units that are contained in the international system of units. Hank thinks this is a thrilling subject, and while you may not agree, it is a subject that is very important if you want to be a scientist and communicate with accuracy and precision with other scientists. So listen up and learn something or Hank might have to kill you! (NOT REALLY!)
Today's Crash Course Chemistry takes a historical perspective on the creation of the science, which didn't really exist until a super-smart, super-wealthy Frenchman put the puzzle pieces together - Hank tells the story of how we went from alchemists to chemists, who understood the law of conservation of mass as proposed by a decapitated aristocrat, and explains how we came to have a greater understanding of how chemical compounds work and eventually a complete understanding of what atoms and molecules are.
Hank gives us a tour of the most important table ever, including the life story of the obsessive man who championed it, Dmitri Mendeleev. The periodic table of elements is a concise, information-dense catalog of all of the different sorts of atoms in the universe, and it has a wealth of information to tell us if we can learn to read it.
Hank brings us the story of the electron and describes how reality is a kind of music, discussing electron shells and orbitals, electron configurations, ionization and electron affinities, and how all these things can be understood via the periodic table.
Chemists need stoichiometry to make the scale of chemistry more understandable - Hank is here to explain why, and to teach us how to use it.
Dihydrogen monoxide (better know as water) is the key to nearly everything. It falls from the sky, makes up 60% of our bodies, and just about every chemical process related to life takes place with it or in it. Without it, none of the chemical reactions that keep us alive would happen - none of the reactions that sustain any life form on earth would happen - and the majority of inorganic chemical reactions that shape the surface of the earth would not happen either. Every one of us uses water for all kinds of chemistry every day - our body chemistry, our food chemistry and our laundry chemistry all take place in water. In today's Crash Course Chemistry, we use Hank's actual dirty laundry (ew) to learn about some of the properties of water that make it so special - it's polarity and dielectric property; how electrolytes can be used to classify solutions; and we discover how to calculate a solution's molarity as well as how to dilute a solution using the dilution equation.
Last week, Hank talked about how stuff mixes together in solutions. Today, and for the next few weeks, he will talk about the actual reactions happening in those solutions - atoms reorganizing themselves to create whole new substances in the processes that make our world the one we know and love. This week, we focus on acids and bases and their proton-exchanging ways.
A lot of ionic compounds dissolve in water, dissociating into individual ions. But when two ions find each other that form an insoluble compound, they suddenly fall out of solution in what's called a precipitation reaction. In this episode of Crash Course Chemistry, we learn about precipitation, precipitates, anions, cations, and how to describe and discuss ionic reactions.
All the magic that we know is in the transfer of electrons. Reduction (the loss of electrons) and oxidation (gaining electrons) combine to form Redox Chemistry, which contains the majority of chemical reactions. As electrons jump from atom to atom, they carry energy with them, and that transfer of energy is what makes all life on earth possible.
Learning to talk about chemistry can be like learning a foreign language, but Hank is here to help with some straightforward and simple rules to help you learn to speak Chemistrian like a native.
Gases are everywhere, and this is good news and bad news for chemists. The good news: when they are behaving themselves, it's extremely easy to describe their behavior theoretically, experimentally and mathematically. The bad news is they almost never behave themselves. In this episode of Crash Course Chemistry, Hank tells how the work of some amazing thinkers combined to produce the Ideal Gas Law, how none of those people were Robert Boyle, and how the ideal gas equation allows you to find out pressure, volume, temperature or number of moles. You'll also get a quick introduction to a few jargon-y phrases to help you sound like you know what you're talking about.
We don't live in a perfect world, and neither do gases - it would be great if their particles always fulfilled the assumptions of the ideal gas law, and we could use PV=nRT to get the right answer every time. Unfortunately, the ideal gas law (like our culture) has unrealistic expectations when it comes to size and attraction: it assumes that particles do not have size at all and that they never attract each other. So the ideal gas "law" often becomes little more than the ideal gas estimate when it comes to what gases do naturally. But it's a close enough estimate in enough situations that it's very valuable to know. In this episode, Hank goes through a bunch of calculations according to the ideal gas law so you can get familiar with it.
Hank bursts our ideal gas law bubble, er, balloon, and brings us back to reality, explaining how the constants in the gas law aren't all that constant; how the ideal gas law we've spent the past two weeks with has to be corrected for volume because atoms and molecules take up space and for pressure because they're attracted to each other; that Einstein was behind a lot more of what we know today than most people realize; and how a Dutch scientist named Johannes van der Waals figured out those correction factors in the late 19th century and earned a Nobel Prize for his efforts.
This week we continue to spend quality time with gases, more deeply investigating some principles regarding pressure - including John Dalton's Law of Partial Pressures, vapor pressure - and demonstrating the method for collecting gas over water.
We have learned over the past few weeks that gases have real-life constraints on how they move here in the non-ideal world. As with most things in chemistry (and also in life) how a gas moves is more complex than it at first appears. In this episode, Hank describes what it means when we talk about the velocity of a gas - to understand gas velocity, we have to know what factors effect it, and how. Hank also teaches you about effusion, diffusion and concentration gradients, before showing off a cool experiment that physically demonstrates the things you have just learned. Sound exciting enough for you? Let's get started.
Grumpy Professor Hank admits to being wrong about how everything is chemicals. But he now wants you to listen as he blows your mind with a new sweeping statement: everything (yes, really everything this time) is energy. What?! This week, Hank takes us on a quick tour of how thermodynamics is applied in chemistry using his toy trebuchet as an example, because he is a proud nerd.
Energy is like the bestest best friend ever and yet, most of the time we take it for granted. Hank feels bad for our friend and wants us to learn more about it so that we can understand what it's trying to tell us - like that any bond between two atoms contains energy. How much energy? That's not the simplest question to answer, but today Hank will answer it (kinda), by teaching us about a nifty little thing called enthalpy. If you are paying attention to this episode you'll learn what the state function is, and how it varies from a path-dependent function; why enthalpy change is different from heat; that bonds are energy and to form and break them they release and absorb heat to and from their environment. You'll get the quickest introduction to calorimetry ever (more on that in upcoming episodes) and learn the power of Hess's Law and how to use Germain Hess's concept of the standard enthalpy of formation to calculate exactly how much heat is produced by any chemical reaction.
Today's episode dives into the HOW of enthalpy. How we calculate it, and how we determine it experimentally...even if our determinations here at Crash Course Chemistry are somewhat shoddy.
Life is chaos and the universe tends toward disorder. But why? If you think about it, there are only a few ways for things to be arranged in an organized manner, but there are nearly infinite other ways for those same things to be arranged. Simple rules of probability dictate that it's much more likely for stuff to be in one of the many disorganized states than in one of the few organized states. This tendency is so unavoidable that it's known as the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Obviously, disorder is a pretty big deal in the universe and that makes it a pretty big deal in chemistry - it's such a big deal that scientists have a special name for it: entropy. In chemistry, entropy is the measure of molecular randomness, or disorder. For the next thirteen minutes, Hank hopes you will embrace the chaos as he teaches you about entropy.
Hank takes a break from the desk to bring you to the lab in order to demonstrate some important points about the practical side of chemistry - experimentation in the laboratory. You'll learn what to wear in the lab, how to dispose of chemicals safely, how to avoid the most common accidents, how to pour solutions properly, what the HazMat diamond means, what an MSDS is, and how to use a fume hood. And as a reward for sticking with him through this maybe less-than-thrilling lecture, you'll see Hank subject himself to an exciting piece of safety apparatus.
Atoms are a lot like us - we call their relationships "bonds," and there are many different types. Each kind of atomic relationship requires a different type of energy, but they all do best when they settle into the lowest stress situation possible. The nature of the bond between atoms is related to the distance between them and, like people, it also depends on how positive or negative they are. Unlike with human relationships, we can analyze exactly what makes chemical relationships work, and that's what this episode is all about. If you are paying attention, you will learn that chemical bonds form in order to minimize the energy difference between two atoms or ions; that those chemical bonds may be covalent if atoms share electrons, and that covalent bonds can share those electrons evenly or unevenly; that bonds can also be ionic if the electrons are transferred instead of shared: and how to calculate the energy transferred in an ionic bond using Coulomb's Law.
Molecules come in infinite varieties, so in order to help the complicated chemical world make a little more sense, we classify and categorize them. One of the most important of those classifications is whether a molecule is polar or non-polar, which describes a kind of symmetry - not just of the molecule, but of the charge. In this edition of Crash Course Chemistry, Hank comes out for Team Polar, and describes why these molecules are so interesting to him. You'll learn that molecules need to have both charge asymmetry and geometric asymmetry to be polar, and that charge asymmetry is caused by a difference in electronegativities. You'll also learn how to notate a dipole moment (or charge separation) of a molecule, the physical mechanism behind like dissolves like, and why water is so dang good at fostering life on Earth.
Models are great, except they're also usually inaccurate. In this episode of Crash Course Chemistry, Hank discusses why we need models in the world and how we can learn from them... even when they're almost completely wrong. Plus, Lewis Structures!
In this episode of Crash Course Chemistry, Hank discusses what Molecules actually look like and why, some quantum-mechanical three dimensional wave functions are explored, he touches on hybridization, and delves into sigma and pi bonds.
In this episode of Crash Course Chemistry, Hank gives you the low down on things like London Dispersion Forces, Hydrogen Bonds, Cohesion, Adhesion, Viscosity, Capillary Action, Surface Tension, and why liquids are just... WEIRD!
This week, Hank elaborates on why Fugu can kill you by illustrating the ideas of solutions and discussing molarity, molality, and mass percent. Also, why polar solvents dissolve polar solutes, and nonpolar solvents dissolve nonpolar solutes. All that plus Henry's Law and why Coke = Burps.
In this episode of Crash Course Chemistry, Hank goes over the ideas of keeping your life balance... well, your chemical life. Equilibrium is all about balance and today Hank discusses Chemical Equilibrium, Concentration, Temperature, and Pressure. Also, he'll chat about Le Chatalier's Principle and Fritz Haber.
In which Hank shows you that, while it may seem like the Universe is messing with us, equilibrium isn't a cosmic trick. Here, he shows you how to calculate equilibrium constant & conditions of reactions and use RICE tables all with some very easy, not-so-scary math.
In this episode, Hank goes over Reversible Reactions, the water dissociation constant, what pH and pOH actually mean, Acids, Bases, and Neutral Substances as well as the not-so-terrifying Logarithms, strong acids, weak acids, and how to calculate pH and pOH. Oh, and litmus paper!
In this episode, Hank talks about how nutty our world is via Buffers! He defines buffers and their compositions, talks about carbonate buffering systems in nature, acid rain, pH of buffers, and titration. Plus, a really cool experiment using indicators to showcase just how awesome buffers are.
Have you ever been to a Demolition Derby? Then you have an idea of how molecular collisions happen. In this episode, Hank talks about collisions between molecules and atoms, activation energy, writing rate laws, equilibrium expressions, reactions mechanics, and rate-determining steps. And funnel cakes are AWESOME!
In which Hank blows our minds with the different kinds of Solids out there and talks about why they're all different and have different properties. Today, you'll learn about amorphous and crystalline solids, types of crystalline solids, types of crystalline atomic solids, properties of each type of solid, and that the properties depend on the bond types.
In this episode, Hank talks about Network solids and Carbon and how you can actually create a Diamond from plain old Carbon... well, YOU probably can't unless you own a bunch of elephants. It's a long story. BUT, within you will learn about Solid Networks, Diamond and Graphite Network Structures, as well as Sheet and 3D Networks. It's not making diamonds from scratch, but it's still pretty cool!
In this episode, we talk about Silicon Valley's namesake and how network solids are at the heart of it all. Hank also discusses Solid-State Semiconductors, N-Type and P-Type Semiconductors, Diodes, Transistors, Computer Chips, and Binary Code. All from the same thing that makes up sand!
Chemistry raised to the power of AWESOME! That's what Hank is talking about today with Electrochemistry. Contained within, Hank discusses electrochemical reactions, half reactions, how batteries work, galvanic cells, voltage, standard reduction potential, cell potential, electrolysis, and electro plating and the things that go into making it possible for you to watch this episode of Crash Course Chemistry!
How did we get here? Well, in terms of Atomic Chemistry, Hank takes us on a tour of the folks that were part of the long chain of other folks who helped us get to these deeper understandings of the world. From Leucippus to Heisenberg to you - yes, YOU - the story of Atomic Chemistry is all wibbly-wobbly... and amazing.
In this episode, Hank welcomes you to the new age, to the new age, welcome to the new age. Here he'll talk about transmutation among elements, isotopes, calculating half-life, radioactive decay, and spontaneous fission.
Continuing our look at Nuclear Chemistry, Hank takes this episode to talk about Fusion and Fission. What they mean, how they work, their positives, negatives, and dangers. Plus, E=mc2, Mass Defect, and Applications of Fission and Fusion in the real world!
In which Hank introduces us to the world of Organic Chemistry and, more specifically, the power of hydrocarbon. He talks about the classifications of organic compounds, the structures & properties of alkanes, isomers, and naming an alkane all by observing its structure.
Today Hank talks about the deliciousness of alkenes & alkynes, their structures, and how to remember which is which by simply knowing the alphabet. Also, he breaks down hydrogenation, halogenation, polymerization, and triglycerides all while helping us figure out the meaning of different names for fats.
What's that smell? Smell's like Organic Chemistry! This week Hank talks about Aromatics and Cyclic Compounds and naming their substituents, resonance as well as common reactions & uses.
Functional groups? Functional groups within functional groups? Hank takes today's Crash Course video to discuss some confusing ideas about Hydrocarbon Derivatives, but then makes it all make more sense.
Ever feel like there's a international team of bad guys changing all of the easily remembered chemical names and turning them into test-failing, number-infused, pain in the neck names? Well... you're not wrong. IUPAC exists but try to keep in mind that they're doing it for the greater good. In this episode, Hank talks about IUPAC, prefixes, suffixes, ranking, numbers for carbon chains, and cis or trans double bonds.
Did you know that Polymers save the lives of Elephants? Well, now you do! The world of Polymers is so amazingly integrated into our daily lives that we sometimes forget how amazing they are. Here, Hank talks about how they were developed an the different types of Polymers that are common in the world today, including some that may surprise you.
In this final episode of Crash Course Chemistry, Hank takes us on a tour of the The Global Carbon Cycle and how it all works. From Carbon Fixation to Redox Reactions, it's all contained within!
What does Psychology mean? Where does it come from? Hank gives you a 10 minute intro to one of the more tricky sciences and talks about some of the big names in the development of the field. Welcome to Crash Course Psychology!!!
So how do we apply the scientific method to psychological research? Lots of ways, but today Hank talks about case studies, naturalistic observation, surveys and interviews, and experimentation. Also he covers different kinds of bias in experimentation and how research practices help us avoid them.
BAHHHHHH! Did I scare you? What exactly happens when we get scared? How does our brain make our body react? Just what are Neurotransmitters? In this episode of Crash Course Psychology, Hank takes us to the simplest part of the complex system of our brains and nervous systems; The Neuron.
In this episode of Crash Course Psychology, we get to meet the brain. Hank talks us through the Central Nervous System, the ancestral structures of the brain, the limbic system, and new structures of the brain. Plus, what does Phineas Gage have to do with all of this?
Just what is the difference between sensing and perceiving? And how does vision actually work? And what does this have to do with a Corgi? In this episode of Crash Course Psychology, Hank takes us on a journey through the brain to better explain these and other concepts. Plus, you know, CORGI!
HOMUNCULUS! It's a big and weird word that you may or may not have heard before, but do you know what it means? In this episode of Crash Course Psychology, Hank gives us a deeper understanding of this weird model of human sensation.
So what does perception even mean? What's the difference between seeing something and making sense of it? In today's episode of Crash Course Psychology, Hank gives us some insight into the differences between sensing and perceiving.
What exactly is Consciousness? Well... that's kind of a gray area. In this episode of Crash Course Psychology, Hank gives you the basic ideas of what Consciousness is, how our attention works, and why we shouldn't text and drive... ever... no, really, NEVER!
Why do we sleep? Well... that's a tricky question. More easily answered is the question,"How do we sleep?" In this episode of Crash Course Psychology, Hank discusses some of the ways our brain functions when sleeping and how it can malfunction as well.
You may think you know all about hypnosis from the movies. Zoolander, The Manchurian Candidate, etc... but there's a whole lot more going on. In this episode of Crash Course Psychology, Hank tells us about some of the many altered states of consciousness, including hypnosis.
I'm sure you've heard of Pavlov's Bell (and I'm not talking about the Aimee Mann song), but what was Ivan Pavlov up to, exactly? And how are our brains trained? And what is a "Skinner Box"? All those questions and more are answered in today's Crash Course Psychology, in which Hank talks about some of the aspects of learning.
In this episode of Crash Course Psychology, Hank talks about how we learn by observation... and how that can mean beating the tar out of an inanimate clown named Bobo.
Remember that guy from 300? What was his name? ARG!!! It turns out our brains make and recall memories in different ways. In this episode of Crash Course Psychology, Hank talks about the way we do it, what damaging that process can do to us, and that guy... with the face and six pack...
In this REALLY IMPORTANT EPISODE of Crash Course Psychology, Hank talks about how we remember and forget things, why our memories are fallible, and the dangers that can pose.
We used to think that the human brain was a lot like a computer; using logic to figure out complicated problems. It turns out, it's a lot more complex and, well, weird than that. In this episode of Crash Course Psychology, Hank discusses thinking & communication, solving problems, creating problems, and a few ideas about what our brains are doing up there.
You know what's amazing? That we can talk to people, they can make meaning out of it, and then talk back to us. In this episode of Crash Course Psychology, Hank talks to us and tries to make meaning out of how our brains do this thing called Language. Plus, monkeys!
Feeling motivated? Even if you are, do you know why? The story of Aaron Ralston can tell us a lot about motivation. In this episode of Crash Course Psychology, Hank tells us Ralston's story, as well as 4 theories of motivation and some evolutionary perspectives on motivation.
How does our knowledge grow? It turns out there are some different ideas about that. Schemas, Four-Stage Theory of Cognitive Development, and Vygotsky's Theory of Scaffolding all play different roles but the basic idea is that children think about things very differently than adults. Hank explains in today's episode of Crash Course Psychology.
In this episode of Crash Course Psychology Hank takes a look at a few experiments that helped us understand how we develop as human beings. Things like attachment separation anxiety stranger anxiety and morality are all discussed... also a seriously unpleasant study with monkeys and fake mothers.
In this episode of Crash Course Psychology Hank has a look at that oh so troublesome time in everyone's life Adolescence! He talks about identity individuality and The Breakfast Club.
Herman Rorschach (no, not the guy from Watchmen) came up with the eponymous tests, but what do they mean? Why are we so fascinated with them despite the division in the world of Psychology? Hank tackles these topics as we take a closer look at personality in this episode of Crash Course Psychology.
How would you measure a personality? What exactly is the self? Well as you've come to expect it's not that easy to nail down an answer for those questions. Whether you're into blood bile earth wind fire or those Buzzfeed questionaires there are LOTS of ways to get at who we are and why.
So how many different kinds of intelligence are there? And what is the G-Factor? Eugenics? Have you ever taken an IQ Test? All of these things play into the fascinating and sometimes icky history of Intelligence Testing. In this episode of Crash Course Psychology Hank talks us through some of the important aspects of that history... as well as Nazis. Hey I said some of it was icky.
In this episode of Crash Course Psychology Hank takes a look at WAIS and WISC intelligence tests and how bias can really skew both results and the usefulness of those results.
Even if you're Mel Gibson or Kanye it's probably best to not wear all of your emotions on your sleeve. In this episode of Crash Course Psychology Hank talks about these things called 'Emotions'. What are they? And why do we need them?
So it turns out we have an easy time reading emotions in facial expressions but emotions can straight up kill us! In this episode of Crash Course Psychology Hank discusses stress emotions and their overall impact on our health.
Sex is complicated for different reasons in different cultures. But it's the entire purpose of life so there's no reason to blush. In this episode of Crash Course Psychology Hank talks about Kinsey Masters and Johnson Sexuality Gender Identity Hormones and even looks into the idea of why we have sex. There's a lot to go through here.
In this episode of Crash Course Psychology Hank takes a look at how the treatment for Psychological Disorders has changed over the last hundred years and who is responsible for getting us on the path to getting us here.
Ever call someone OCD because they like to have a clean apartment? Ever tell someone you have a phobia of spiders when in fact they just creep you out a little? In this episode of Crash Course psychology Hank talks about OCD and Anxiety Disorders in the hope we'll understand what people with actual OCD have to deal with as well as how torturous Anxiety Disorders and Panic Attacks can actually be.
Not sleeping for days on end. Long periods of euphoria. Racing thoughts. Grandiose ideas. Mania. Depression. All of these are symptoms of Bipolar Disorder. In this episode of Crash Course Psychology Hank talks about mood disorders and their causes as well as how these disorders can impact people's lives.
So what do Batman and J.R.R. Tolkien have in common? Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It used to be called 'Shellshock' and it can be really really really destructive. In this episode of Crash Course Psychology Hank lays out the low down on PTSD and how trauma can affect the brain. Plus a look at how addiction can play into trauma and the different types of treatments used to help those afflicted.
Did you know that Schizophrenia and Multiple Personality Disorder aren't the same thing? Did you know that we don't call it Multiple Personality Disorder anymore? In this episode of Crash Course Psychology Hank takes us down the road of some very misunderstood psychological disorders.
In this episode of Crash Course Psychology Hank walks us through the troubling world of Eating and Body Dysmorphic disorders. There's a lot going on here and even though we still have a lot of dots to connect a lot we can learn to help ourselves and each other.
What exactly are Personality Disorders? How can they be diagnosed? Can we prevent some of them? In this episode of Crash Course Psychology, Hank gives us the down low on things like Ego-Dystonic and Ego-Syntonic Disorders, Borderline and Antisocial Personality Disorders, and Potential Biological, Psychological, and Social Roots of these disorders.
So you know you'd like to get help with some problematic behavior (like fear of flying). What do you do? Who can you go to for help? Once you've gone what can you expect? In this episode of Crash Course Psychology Hank talks about what 'Getting Help' can look like.
Do you know how Prozac works? Or lithium? Did you know that electro shock therapy is still a thing? There's a lot to know about biomedical treatments and how they work in tandem with psychotherapy or talk therapy. In this episode of Crash Course Psychology Hank talks about how Biomedical Treatments have evolved and how they work with other therapies.
Why do people do bad things? Is it because of the situation or who they are at their core? In this week's episode of Crash Course Psychology Hank works to shed a little light on the ideas of Situation vs. Personality. Oh and we'll have a look at the Stanford Prison Experiment... It's alarming.
Why do people sometimes do bad things just because someone else told them to? And what does the term Groupthink mean? In today's episode of Crash Course Psychology Hank talks about the ideas of Social Influence and how it can affect our decisions to act or to not act.
In this episode of Crash Course Psychology Hank tackles some difficult topics dealing with prejudice stereotyping and discrimination.
In our final episode of Crash Course Psychology, Hank discusses the ideas of Aggression and Altruism. These two things are difficult to understand and explain so sit tight and get ready to run the gauntlet of human emotions.
In which John Green returns to teaching World History! This week, we'll be talking about the idea of civilization, some of the traditional hallmarks of so-called civilization, and why some people would choose to live outside the civilization model. It turns out, not everyone who lives outside of what we traditionally think of as a "civilized" social order is necessarily a barbarian! To defuse any tension you may be feeling, I'll just tell you now, the Mongols are back. You'll learn about Zomia, swidden agriculture, and even a little about anarchy!
In which John Green teaches about filthy, filthy lucre. Money. And Debt. So, what is money? And what is it for? And why do we use money? And why does it all disappear so quickly after payday? John will look into 75% of these questions, and if he doesn't come up with answers, we'll get into some interesting ideas along the way, at least. This week we'll investigate whether money displaces barter, then leads to war, slavery, and what we think of as civilized social orders. We'll also see what old Adam Smith thinks of big money, no whammies, this week on Crash Course.
In which John Green teaches you about disease, and the effects that disease has had in human history. Disease has been with man since the beginning, and it has shaped the way humans operate in a lot of ways. John will teach you about the Black Death, the Great Dying, and the modern medical revolution that has changed the world.
In which John Green teaches you about war! Specifically, John talks about whether humanity is naturally warlike, hard-wired to kill, or if perhaps war is a cultural construct. John will talk about the Hobbes versus Rousseau debate, the effects that war has on human social orders, and the effects that war has on individuals. So is war human nature? Watch and find out what we have to say about it.
In which John Green investigates war, and what exactly it may or may not be good for. Was war a result of human beings organizing into larger and more complex agricultural social orders, or did war maybe create agriculture and "civilization?" It's hard to know for sure, but it's sure fun to think about.
In which John Green teaches you about the Little Ice Age. The Little Ice Age was a period of global cooling that occurred from the 13th to the 19th centuries. This cooling was likely caused by a number of factors, including unusual solar activity and volcanic eruptions. The Little Ice Age greatly impacted human social orders, especially during the 17th century. When the climate changed, and weather became unpredictable, the world changed profoundly. Poor harvests led to hunger, which led to even less productivity, which even resulted in violent upheaval in a lot of places. All this from a little change in the temperature? Definitely.
In which Stan Muller subs for John Green and teaches you about energy and humanity. Today we discuss the ideas put forth by Alfred Crosby in his book, Children of the Sun. Historically, almost all of the energy that humans use has been directly or indirectly generated by the sun, whether that be food energy from plants, wind energy, direct solar energy, or fossil fuels. Stan looks into these different sources, and talks about how humanity will continue to use energy in the future as populations grow and energy resources become more scarce.
In which John Green teaches you a little bit about drought, which is a natural weather phenomenon, and famine, which is almost always the result of human activity. Throughout human history, when food shortages strike humanity, there was food around. There was just a failure to connect those people with the food that would keep them alive. There are a lot of reasons that food distribution breaks down, and John is going to teach you about them in the context of the late-19th century famines that struck British India.
In which John Green teaches you about World War I and how it got started. Crash Course doesn't usually talk much about dates, but the way that things unfolded in July and August of 1914 are kind of important to understanding the Great War. You'll learn about Franz Ferdinand, Gavrilo Pincep, the Black Hand, and why the Serbian nationalists wanted to kill the poor Archduke. You'll also learn who mobilized first and who exactly started the war. Sort of. Actually there's no good answer to who started the war, but we give it a shot anyway.
In which John Green teaches you WHY World War I started. Or tries to anyway. With this kind of thing, it's kind of hard to assign blame to any one of the nations involved. Did the fault lie with Austria-Hungary? Germany? Russia? Julius Caesar? One thing we can say for sure is that you can't blame the United States of America for this one. Woohoo! Well, you can hardly blame the US.
In which John Green teaches you about the Bronze Age civilization in what we today call the middle east, and how the vast, interconnected civilization that encompassed Egypt, The Levant, and Mesopotamia came to an end. What's that you say? There was no such civilization? Your word against ours. John will argue that through a complex network of trade and alliances, there was a loosely confederated and relatively continuous civilization in the region. Why it all fell apart was a mystery. Was it the invasion of the Sea People? An earthquake storm? Or just a general collapse, to which complex systems are prone? We'll look into a few of these possibilities. As usual with Crash Course, we may not come up with a definitive answer, but it sure is a lot of fun to think about.
In which John Green talks about the methods of writing history by looking at some of the ways that history has been written about the rise of the West. But first he has to tell you what the West is. And then he has to explain the Rise of the West. And then he gets down to talking about the different ways that historians and other academics have explained how the West became dominant in the world. He'll look at explanations from Acemoglu and Robinson's "Why Nations Fail," Francis Fukuyama's "The Origins of Political Order," and Ian Morris's "Why the West Rules, for Now."
In which John Green teaches you about Imperialism, but not from the perspective of the colonizers. This week John looks at some Asian perspectives on Imperialism, specifically writers from countries that were colonized by European powers. We'll look at the writings of Sayyid Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani from the Middle East, Liang Qichao from China, and Rabindranath Tagore from India. these voices from the countries that were colonized give us a sense of how conquered people saw their conquerors, and gives an insight into what these nations learned from being dominated by Europe. It's pretty interesting, OK? A lot of this episode is drawn from a fascinating book by Pankaj Mishra called The Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia. You should read it.
In which John Green teaches you about railroads, and some of the ways they changed the world, and how they were a sort of microcosm for the Industrial Revolution as a whole. Prior to the invention of steam powered railroads, pretty much all locomotion had been muscle-powered. You either walked where you wanted to go, or rode on an animal to get where you were going. The railroad changed human perception of time and space, making long distance travel much faster and easier. Railroads also changed habits, including increasing reading. People needed some sort of distraction to ensure they didn't have to talk to other people on the train. Like any new technology, railroads also scared people. All kinds of fears surrounded rail travel, but over time, people got over them. And the quality of boiler manufacturing improved, so the trains exploded less often, which also made people feel safer.
In which John Green teaches you about population. So, how many people can reasonably live on the Earth? Thomas Malthus got it totally wrong in the 19th century, but for some reason, he keeps coming up when we talk about population. In 1800, the human population of the Earth passed 1 billion, and Thomas Malthus posited that growth had hit its ceiling, and the population would level off and stop growing. He was totally right. Just kidding, he was totally wrong! There are like 7 billion people on the planet now! John will teach a little about how Malthus made his calculations, and explain how Malthus came up with the wrong answer. As is often the case, it has to do with making projections based on faulty assumptions. Man, people do that a lot.
In which John Green teaches you about how Islam has interacted with politics during it's history, and how it continues to do so today. Islamist movements are in the news a lot lately, but how did that happen. John will point out that Islam has alway been tied to political movements. Mohammed was not only a religious leader, he led an empire. So how did this lead to modern movements like ISIS? Islam has traditionally been a pretty egalitarian religion, and its scriptures value peace, so it is surprising in a lot of ways that such a violent fundamentalist movement would come out of it. What is a caliphate? What is a Caliph? John will teach you all about it. Take it easy in the comments, y'all. Be kind and respectful to each other.
In which John Green teaches you about the Mughal Empire, which ruled large swaths of the Indian Sub-Continent from 1526 to (technically) 1857. While John teaches you about this long-lived Muslim empire, he'll also look at the idea of historical reputation and how we view people from history. Namely, he'll look at the reputations of Mughal emperors Akbar I and Aurangzeb. Traditionally, Akbar I is considered the emperor that made the Mughal Empire great, and Aurangzeb gets the blame for running the whole thing into the ground and setting it up for decline. Is that really how it was, though? It turns out, it's complicated.
In which John Green teaches you about the Protestant Reformation. Prior to the Protestant Reformation, pretty much everyone in Europe was a Roman Catholic. Not to get all great man, but Martin Luther changed all that. Martin Luther didn't like the corruption he saw in the church, especially the sale of indulgences, so he left the church and started his own. And it caught on! And it really did kind of change the world. The changes increased literacy and education, and some even say the Protestant Reformation was the beginning of Capitalism in Europe.
In which John Green teaches you about the Holy Roman Empire by teaching you about Charles V. Charles Hapsburg was the holy Roman Emperor, but he was also the King of Spain. And the King of Germany. And the King of Italy and the Lord of the Netherlands and Count Palatine of Burgundy. In short, Charles was runnin' thangs in much of the world during his reign. Charles ruled a lot of countries, and he was also known for encouraging intellectual discourse and he even spoke out against slavery, in a limited. So why did he consider himself a failure, and why did he break up the Empire when he abdicated in 1556? Mainly because the Holy Roman Empire didn't work very well. It was huge, and it didn't have any means of directly raising taxes. Plus, it was a pretty crazy time in Europe anyway, and Charles found himself in charge of the Catholic-Church-Endorsed Empire in the time of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation.
In which John Green teaches you about World War II, and some of the causes behind the war. In a lot of ways, WWII was about resources, and especially about food. The expansionist aggression of both Germany and Japan were in a lot of ways about resources. There were other reasons, to be sure, but the idea that the Axis needed more food can't be ignored.
In which John Green teaches you about the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which used to be Zaire, which used to be The Belgian Congo, which used to be the Congo Free State, which used to be the region surrounding the Congo River Basin in central Africa. So the history of this place is a little convoluted. The history of Congo is central to the history of central Africa, and the Congo Wars embroiled neighboring countries like Uganda and Rwanda. John will talk you through the history of Congo and the region.
In which John Green teaches you about water! So, we talk about resources a lot on Crash Course, and today is no exception. It turns out people can't live without water, which means it's absolutely necessary for civilization. Today John talks about water in the context of classical civilizations, but not like Greece or Rome or something. We're talking about the Maya civilization in Central America, and the Khmer civilization in what is now Cambodia. So this is an awesome video, OK?
In which John Green teaches you about conflict in Israel and Palestine. This conflict is often cast as a long-term beef going back thousands of years, and rooted in a clash between religions. Well, that's not quite true. What is true is that the conflict is immensely complicated, and just about everyone in the world has an opinion about it. John is going to try to get the facts across in under 13 minutes.
In which John Green teaches you about Vikings! That's right, one of our most requested subjects, the Vikings, right here on Crash Course. So what's the deal with Vikings? Well, the stuff you've heard about them may not be true. The Vikings weren't just pagan raiders striking terror into the hearts of defenseless European Christendom. They were some of the greatest travelers of their time, and they weren't always traveling to steal. In a lot of cases, they were traveling to trade. John will teach you about Viking trade goods, Norse Mythology, and yes, there will be blood, guts, and dragons. OK?
In which John Green teaches you about nation building and nationalism in Latin America. Sometimes, the nations of Latin America get compared to the nations of Europe, and are found wanting. This is kind of a silly comparison. The rise of democratic, economically powerful nations in Europe came about under a very different set of circumstances than the way nations arose in Latin America, so the regions are necessarily a lot different. But why? John will explore whether it was a lack of international war which impeded Latin America's growth, which sounds like a crazy thing to say, but you should hear him out.
In which John Green teaches you about Iran's Revolutions. Yes, revolutions plural. What was the1979 Iranian Revolution about? It turns out, Iran has a pretty long history of unrest in order to put power in the hands of the people, and the most recent revolution in 1979 was, at least at first, not necessarily about creating an Islamic state. It certainly turned out to be about that, but it was initially just about people who wanted to get rid of an oppressive regime. Listen up as John teaches you about Iran's long history of revolution.
In which John Green teaches you about what westerners call the middle ages and the lives of the aristocracy...in Japan. The Heian period in Japan lasted from 794CE to 1185CE, and it was an interesting time in Japan. Rather than being known for a thriving economy, or particularly interesting politics, the most important things to come out of the Heian period were largely cultural. There was a flourishing of art and literature in the period, and a lot of that culture was created by women. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu was the classic piece of literature of the day, and it gave a detailed look into the way the Aristocrats of the Heian period lived. While this doesn't give a lot of insight into the lives of daily people, it can be very valuable, and the idea of approaching history from a cultural perspective is a refreshing change from the usual military or political history that survives from so many eras.
In which John Green teaches you about nonviolence and peace movements in the 20th century. What is nonviolence? What is a peace movement? Well. traditionally, humans often resort to violence when they come into conflict. In the 20th century, it became much more common for people to enact change by means of nonviolence, and there was a common thread of connection between many of the most notable advocates of peaceful change. Crash Course will take you from Gandhi to Gregg to Bayard Rustin to Martin Luther King, Jr, to the Cold War to Arab Spring along a path of nonviolent resistance and peaceful change. It's pretty great.
In which John Green teaches you about the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, doing business as the VOC, also known as the Dutch East India Company. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Dutch managed to dominate world trade, and they did all through the pioneering use of corporations and finance. Well, they did also use some traditional methods like violently enforced monopolies, unfair trade agreements, and plain old warfare. You'll learn how the Dutch invented stuff like joint stock corporations, maritime insurance, and futures trading. Basically, how the Dutch East India Company crashed the US economy in 2008. I'm kidding. Or am I?
In which John Green teaches you about the end of World History, and the end of the world as we know it, kind of. For the last hundred years or so, it seemed that one important ingredient for running an economically successful country was a western-style democratic government. All evidence pointed to the idea that capitalist representative democracies made for the best economic outcomes. It turns out that isn't the only way to succeed. In the last 40 years or so, authoritarian capitalism as it's practiced in places like China and Singapore has been working really, really well. John is going to look at these systems and talk about why they work, and he's even going to make a few predictions about the future. Also, thanks for watching this series. It has been amazingly fun to create, and we appreciate all of you.
In which John Green, Hank Green, and Emily Graslie teach you about, well, everything. Big History is the history of everything. We're going to start with the Big Bang, take you right through all of history (recorded and otherwise), and even talk a little bit about the future. It is going to be awesome. In the awe-inspiring sense of the word awesome. In this episode, we walk you through the start of everything: The Big Bang. We'll look at how the universe unfolded at its very beginning, and how everything in the universe that we know today came into being. So that's kind of a big deal, right?
In which John Green, Hank Green, and Emily Graslie teach you about what happened in the Universe after the big bang. They'll teach you about cosmic background radiation, how a bunch of hydrogen and helium turned into stars, formed galaxies, created heavy elements, and eventually created planets.
In which John Green, Hank Green, and Emily Graslie teach you about our Sun, and the formation of the planets. We're going to focus on the formation and development of the Earth, because that's where people live. You'll learn about the Solar nebula, the birth of the sun, the formation of planets, and how the Earth and the rest of the solar system developed over the last 4.567 billion years.
In which Hank and John Green teach you about life on Earth. They won't be giving advice on how life should be lived, because this is a history series. Instead, they'll teach you about the earliest forms of life on Earth, and some of the ways that they developed into the types of life we know, love, and sometimes don't love so much (I'm looking at you here, opossums). You'll learn about prokaryotes, eukaryotes, panspermia, reproduction, a little about DNA, and even a thing or two about trees. Maybe.
In which John Green, Hank Green, and Emily Graslie teach you about evolution. So, in the last 3.8 billion years, life on Earth has evolved from single-celled prokaryotes to the dizzying array of life we have today. So how did all this happen? We'll talk about Darwin, evolution, natural selection, and how we got from there to here, and from then to now.
In which John Green and Hank Green teach you about how human primates moved out of Africa and turned Earth into a real-life Planet of the Apes. And the apes are people! John and Hank teach you about how humans evolved, and the sort of tricks they picked up along the way like complex tool use, big brains, and fighting. Our ancestors adapted to the grasslands of Africa, and went through several iterations including Australopithecus, Homo Habilis, and Homo Ergaster/Erectus. Our ancestors tamed fire, made pressure flake tools, and eventually smartphones.
In which Hank and John Green teach you about humanity conquering the Earth. Or at least moving from Africa into the rest of the Earth. As human beings spread out across the world and populations grew, humanity reached a critical mass of innovators, and collective learning took off! All these innovations were great for lots of human endeavors, but none fared better than agriculture.
In which Hank and John Green teach you a Crash Course on the modern revolution, and the upside of the progress that humanity has made in the last 500 years or so. And while there are two sides to every history, and many of these changes haven't been great for the other inhabitants of the Earth, collective learning has made life better for people in general. We'll talk about the European explorations, improvements in machinery, communications, and the harnessing of energy that improved the lot of human beings.
In which John Green, Hank Green, and Emily Graslie teach you about the Anthropocene, an unofficial geological era that covers the last century or so, in which humanity has made massive progress. We've discovered the Higgs-Boson particle, and awesome electric cars, and amazing smartphones. So all this collective learning and progress has been good for everyone, right? Maybe not. We'll look at some of the pros and cons of all this "progress," including environmental impact, changes in the way people live and work, and political changes and wars that come along with the modern world. We've come a long way, but there's a long way to go. Crash Course will also take a look at what's going to happen in the near future. If we manage to make our way through the coming bottlenecks, we could be OK in coming centuries. Don't get too hopeful, though. The Sun will eventually die, and the Earth will be destroyed, and later the universe will eventually experience heat death.
Finally, after what seems like eons and eons, the end is nigh. We're talking not only about the end of Crash Course Big History, but also the end of everything. The end of humanity and the end of the universe.John and Hank Green will teach you about what the future holds for humanity and the universe. Spoiler alert: in the long, long, long, long, long, long term, it doesn't look good. In the short term though, it's not too bad. But don't lose hope, there is an upside. You'll have to watch the video to find out.
In this episode of Crash Course, Hank introduces you to the complex history and terminology of Anatomy & Physiology.
In this episode of Crash Course Anatomy & Physiology, Hank gives you a brief history of histology and introduces you to the different types and functions of your body's tissues.
Today on Crash Course Anatomy & Physiology, Hank breaks down the parts and functions of one of your body's unsung heroes: your epithelial tissue.
On today's episode of Crash Course Anatomy & Physiology, Hank continues our exploration of tissues, with an introduction to your connective tissues.
Today Hank wraps up our look at Connective Tissues with a discussion of its various types and a breakdown of what you can and can't easily break down. Also chicken.
Anatomy & Physiology continues with a look at your biggest organ - your skin.
Today Hank wraps up this look at your integumentary system and all the hard work it does protecting you from and helping you interact with the world around you.
Today Hank kicks off our look around MISSION CONTROL: your nervous system.
What do you and a sack of batteries have in common? Today, Hank explains.
We continue our tour of the nervous system with a look at synapses and the crazy stuff cocaine does to your body.
Today Hank talks about your central nervous system. In this episode we'll explore how your brain develops and how important location is for each of your brain's many functions.
It is now time to meet the system that helps your crazy brain stay in touch with the outside world. We follow up last week's tour of the central nervous system with a look at your peripheral nervous system, its afferent and efferent divisions, how it processes information, the reflex arc, and what your brain has to say about pain.
Hank takes you on a tour of your two-part autonomic nervous system. This episode explains how your sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system work together as foils, balancing each other out. Their key anatomical differences - where nerve fibers originate and where their ganglia are located - drive their distinct anatomical functions, making your sympathetic nervous system the "fight or flight" while your parasympathetic nervous system is for "resting and digesting."
Hank tries not to stress you out too much as he delves into the functions and terminology of your sympathetic nervous system.
This week we are looking at your parasympathetic division, which is the "resting and digesting" unit. Unfortunately, learning about this de-stressing division also involves a whole lot of memorization. Don't worry, though - we've got some mnemonic devices to help you out!
Hank resists the urge to devour a slice of pizza so that he can walk you through the way we experience our major special senses. It all boils down to one thing: sensory cells translating chemical, electromagnetic, and mechanical stimuli into action potentials that our nervous system can make sense of. Today we're focusing on smell (olfaction) and taste (gustation), which are chemical senses that call on chemoreceptors. As usual, we'll begin with a quick look at how these things can go wrong.
Crash Course A&P continues the journey through sensory systems with a look at how your sense of hearing works. We follow sounds as they work there way into the ear where they are registered and transformed into action potentials. This mechanism not only helps you hear but also helps maintain your equilibrium.
Next stop in our tour of your sensory systems? VISION. With a little help from an optical illusion, we take a look inside your eyes to try to figure out how your sense of vision works -- and how it can be tricked.
Today Hank explains the skeletal system and why astronauts Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko are out in space studying it. He talks about the anatomy of the skeletal system, including the flat, short, and irregular bones, and their individual arrangements of compact and spongy bone. He'll also cover the microanatomy of bones, particularly the osteons and their inner lamella. And finally he will introduce the process of bone remodeling, which is carried out by crews of osteocytes, osteoblasts, and osteoclasts.
We continue our look at your bones and skeletal system, skipping over the silly kid's song in favor of a more detailed look at your your axial and appendicular skeleton. This episode also talks about the structural and functional classifications of your joints and the major types of body movement that they facilitate.
We're kicking off our exploration of muscles with a look at the complex and important relationship between actin and myosin. Your smooth, cardiac, and skeletal muscles create movement by contracting and releasing in a process called the sliding filament model. Your skeletal muscles are constructed like a rope made of bundles of protein fibers, and that the smallest strands are your actin and myosin myofilaments. Its their use of calcium and ATP that causes the binding and unbinding that makes sarcomeres contract and relax.
Hank calls in a friend to do his push ups for him today to explain how skeletal muscles work together to create and reverse movements. Hank and Claire also demonstrate the role size plays in motor units, the three phase cycle of muscle twitches, and how the strength and frequency of an impulse affects the strength and duration of a contraction. This episode also explains twitch summation, tetanus, and isotonic vs. isometric movements.
Hank begins teaching you about your endocrine system by explaining how it uses glands to produce hormones. These hormones are either amino-acid based and water soluble, or steroidal and lipid-soluble, and may target many types of cells or just turn on specific ones. He will also touch on hormone cascades, and how the HPA axis effects your stress response.
In the second half of our look at the endocrine system, Hank discusses chemical homeostasis and hormone cascades. Specifically, he looks at the hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid axis, or HPT axis, and all the ways your body can suffer when that system, or your hormones in general, get out of whack.
Your heart gets a lot of attention from poets, songwriters, and storytellers, but today Hank's gonna tell you how it really works. The heart’s ventricles, atria, and valves create a pump that maintains both high and low pressure to circulate blood from the heart to the body through your arteries, and bring it back to the heart through your veins. You'll also learn what your blood pressure measurements mean when we talk about systolic and diastolic blood pressure.
Today we're talking the heart and heart throbs -- both literal and those of the televised variety. Hank explains how your heart’s pacemaker cells use leaky membranes to generate their own action potentials, and how the resulting electricity travels through the cardiac conduction pathway from SA Node to Purkinje fibers, allowing your heart to contract. He's also going to make you better able to spot inaccuracies in medical dramas by explaining how defibrillators work to reset the rhythm of your heart.
Now that we've discussed blood, we're beginning our look at how it gets around your body. Today Hank explains your blood vessels and their basic three-layer structure of your blood vessels. We're also going over how those structures differ slightly in different types of vessels. We will also follow the flow of blood from your heart to capillaries in your right thumb, and all the way back to your heart again.
And now we return to blood vessels. In this episode, we start discussing what blood pressure is, how it can become "high", and what that means for our health. One of the more interesting points is that your body has ways of dealing with high blood pressure, but they're not ways we want out bodies to operate on a full time basis. And why can't we butter our bacon? WHY!?!?!
Now that we've talked about your blood vessels, we're going to zoom in a little closer and talk about your blood itself. We'll start by outlining the basic components of blood -- including erythrocytes, leukocytes, platelets, and plasma -- as well as the basic process of hemostasis that stops bleeding, and how antigens are responsible for the blood type that you have. By the end of this episode, you should be totally prepared for your next blood drive.
It's time to start talking about some of the terrible things you can do to your own body, like blood doping. We'll start by explaining the structure and function of your erythrocytes, and of hemoglobin, which they use to carry oxygen. We'll follow the formation and life cycle of a red blood cell, including how their levels are regulated by EPO and their signalling molecules. We'll wrap up by looking at how blood doping works and how it is truly a recipe for disaster.
So we all know that breathing is pretty important, right? Today we're going to talk about how it works, starting with the nameless evolutionary ancestor that we inherited this from, and continuing to the mechanics of both simple diffusion and bulk flow, as well as the physiology of breathing, and finishing with the anatomy of both the conducting zone and the respiratory zone of your respiratory system.
Can a paper bag really help you when you are hyperventilating? It turns out that it can. In part 2 of our look at your respiratory system Hank explains how your blood cells exchange oxygen and CO2 to maintain homeostasis. We'll dive into partial pressure gradients, and how they, along with changes in blood temperature, acidity, and CO2 concentrations, change how hemoglobin binds to gases in your blood. (And yes, we'll explain the paper bag thing too!)
Nachos are delicious. And versatile because today they're also going to help us learn a thing or two about your digestive system. Nachos can provide us with energy and raw materials, by first ingesting something nutritious, propelling it through the alimentary canal where it will be mechanically broken down, and chemically digested by enzymes until my cells can absorb their monomers and use them to make whatever they need. And eventually, there will be pooping.
Nearly 200 years ago, Alexis St. Martin was shot in the stomach. He was saved by local army doctor William Beaumont, but had to live out his remaining years with a gaping hole in the stomach -- allowing Beaumont to learn a lot about how human digestion works. So today we're going to walk you through that process. We'll cover how mechanical and chemical digestion start in the mouth and continues in the stomach, where it’s pummeled by acids and enzymes and turned into chyme. We will also go over the stomach’s cephalic, gastric, and intestinal phases of digestive regulation.
Nachos are great...if you are among the lucky ones whose body can digest them. When digestion goes according to plan, the small intestine performs most of your chemical digestion in the duodenum, while accessory organs including the liver, gallbladder, and pancreas contribute enzymes that all but finish the job. Then your large intestine, which is actually shorter than the small intestine, tries to extract the last bit of nutrition, including the occasional attempt to turn nachos into energy, which for most humans, ends in gassy failure.
Metabolism is a complex process that has a lot more going on than personal trainers and commercials might have you believe. Today we are exploring some of its key parts, including vital nutrients -- such as water, vitamins, minerals, carbs, fats, and proteins -- as well as how anabolic reactions build structures and require energy, while catabolic reactions tear things apart and release energy.
If you're like us, you love the sound of a brunch buffet. But not everything you eat at that glorious buffet is going to be turned into energy. Your body has to work with different forms of food in different ways. In this episode of Crash Course Anatomy & Physiology, Hank takes us through more about our metabolism including cellular respiration, atp, glycogenesis, and how insulin regulates our blood sugar levels.
Even though you probably don't choose to spend a lot of time thinking about it, your pee is kind of a big deal. Today we're talking about the anatomy of your urinary system, and how your kidneys filter metabolic waste and balance salt and water concentrations in the blood. We'll cover how nephrons use glomerular filtration, tubular reabsorption, and tubular secretion to reabsorb water and nutrients back into the blood, and make urine with the leftovers.
As we promised last week, we're not quite done talking about your pee yet. Today Hank explains how the urinary system regulates the production of urine, by maintaining a study glomerular flow rate. He'll also cover the anatomy of storing and excreting urine -- from the ureters to the urethra -- and the nervous system’s role in controlling the act of urination.
Human reproduction is complicated an important, and it's going to take a four part series for us to cover it. Today, we're kicking that off with the female reproductive system, starting with how sex hormones affect oogenesis and ovulation, continuing through how the ovarian and menstrual cycles mature and release oocytes, and create a comfy uterine environment for a fertilized egg.
Our month-long exploration of human reproduction continues with a look at testicular anatomy, the steps of sperm production, and how it’s influenced by gonadotropin and testosterone. Hank also explains how sperm mature, and how they leave the body on a tide of glandular secretions during ejaculation.
After weeks of discussion of human reproduction, today we arrive at the main event: THE SEX. Hank explains the four phases of the human sexual response, how a sperm finds and fertilizes an egg, creating a zygote, and how different types of contraception work to prevent that from happening.
We've reached the grand finale of our four part series on human reproduction: BABIES! Today Hank walks you through the stages of pregnancy, beginning with how a zygote develops into blastomeres to a morula to a blastocyst and finally to an embryo and a fetus. He also explains some of the amazing anatomical changes that take place in the mother, and the hormonal sequence of events that lead to labor.
Today Hank explains your unsung lymphatic system and how it supports cardiovascular function by collecting, filtering, and returning interstitial fluid back into the bloodstream via a system of lymphatic vessels. He also explains the system’s major role in fighting off infection, and how lymph nodes, and other lymphoid organs, and MALT areas house antigen-attacking lymphocytes that provide crucial support to the immune system.
Our final episodes of Anatomy & Physiology explore the way your body keeps all that complex, intricate stuff alive and healthy -- your immune system. The immune system’s responses begin with physical barriers like skin and mucous membranes, and when they’re not enough, there are phagocytes -- the neutrophils and macrophages. It also features the awesomely named natural killer cells and the inflammatory response, and we'll explain how all of these elements work together to save the day if you happen to slip on a banana peel.
In the penultimate episode of Crash Course Anatomy & Physiology, Hank explains your adaptive immune system. The adaptive immune system's humoral response guards extracellular terrain against pathogens. Hank also explains B cells, antibodies, and how vaccines work.
THE FINAL SHOWDOWN! This is the last episode on the immune system and also the very last episode of Crash Course Anatomy & Physiology. In it, Hank explains how the cellular immune response uses helper, cytotoxic, and regulatory T cells to attack body cells compromised by pathogens. He also explores how cytokines activate B and T cells, and what happens if your immune system goes rogue and starts causing autoimmune trouble.
Welcome to the first episode of Crash Course Astronomy. Your host for this intergalactic adventure is the Bad Astronomer himself, Phil Plait. We begin with answering a question: "What is astronomy?"
Today on Crash Course Astronomy, Phil invites you to head outside and take a look at all the incredible things you can see with your naked eye.
This week we build on our naked eye observations from last week and take a look at the cyclical phenomena that we can see at work in the universe.
In this episode of Crash Course Astronomy, Phil takes you through the cause and name of the Moon's phases.
The big question in the comments last week was, "BUT WHAT ABOUT ECLIPSES?" Today, Phil breaks 'em down for you.
Today Phil explains how telescopes work and offers up some astronomical shopping advice.
In today's episode, Phil looks at how gravity plays out across the universe.
Today Phil explores the world of tides! What is the relationship between tides and gravity? How do planets and their moons become tidally locked? What would happen if you were 300km tall? Important questions.
In today's Crash Course Astronomy, Phil takes a look at the explosive history of our cosmic backyard. We explore how we went from a giant ball of gas to the system of planets and other celestial objects we have today.
Phil takes us for a closer (eye safe!) look at the two-octillion ton star that rules our solar system. We look at the sun's core, plasma, magnetic fields, sunspots, solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and what all of that means for our planet.
Phil starts the planet-by-planet tour of the solar system right here at home, Earth.
Join Phil for a tour of our capital-M Moon, from surface features, inside to the core, and back in time to theories about its formation.
Mercury is the closest planet to the sun. It has no atmosphere and is, as such, covered in craters. It's also incredibly hot but, surprisingly, has water ice hiding beneath its surface.
Venus is a gorgeous naked-eye planet, hanging like a diamond in the twilight -- but it’s beauty is best looked at from afar. Even though Mercury is closer to the sun, Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system, due to a runaway greenhouse effect, and has the most volcanic activity in the solar system. Its north and south poles were flipped, causing it to rotate backwards and making for very strange days on this beautiful but inhospitable world.
The fourth planet from the sun and the outermost of the terrestrial planets, Mars has long been a popular spot for missions and imagination. Phil walks you through the planet's topography, core, and features. We'll take a look back to Mars's past and makes predictions for its future, including the possibilities for human life.
Jupiter is the biggest planet in our solar system. The gas giant is NOT a failed star, but a really successful planet! It has a dynamic atmosphere with belts and zones, as well as an enormous red spot that’s actually a persistent hurricane. Jupiter is still warm from its formation, and has an interior that’s mostly metallic hydrogen, and it may not even have a core.
Before moving on from Jupiter to Saturn, we’re going to linger for a moment on Jupiter’s moons. There are 67 known moons, and 4 huge ones that we want to explore in greater detail. Ganymede is the largest - larger, in fact, than any other moon in the solar system and the planet Mercury! Callisto, orbiting the farthest out, is smaller but quite similar to Ganymede in many ways. Io, meanwhile, is most noteworthy for its tremendous volcanic activity. There’s also water on Ganymede and Europa!
Saturn is the crown jewel of the solar system, beautiful and fascinating. It is a gas giant, and has a broad set of rings made of ice particles. Moons create gaps in the rings via their gravity. Saturn has dozens of moons, including Titan, which is as big as Mercury and has a thick atmosphere and lakes of methane; and Enceladus which has an undersurface ocean and eruptions of water geysers. While we are still uncertain, it is entirely possible that either or both moons may support life.
Today we’re rounding out our planetary tour with ice giants Uranus and Neptune. Both have small rocky cores, thick mantles of ammonia, water, and methane, and atmospheres that make them look greenish and blue. Uranus has a truly weird rotation and relatively dull weather, while Neptune has clouds and storms whipped by tremendous winds. Both have rings and moons, with Neptune’s Triton probably being a captured iceball that has active geology.
Now that we’ve finished our tour of the planets, we’re headed back to the asteroid belt. Asteroids are chunks of rock, metal, or both that were once part of smallish planets but were destroyed after collisions. Most orbit the Sun between Mars and Jupiter, but some get near the Earth. The biggest, Ceres is far smaller than the Moon but still big enough to be round and have undergone differentiation.
Today on Crash Course Astronomy, Phil explains comets. Comets are chunks of ice and rock that orbit the Sun. When they get near the Sun the ice turns into gas, forming the long tail, and also releases dust that forms a different tail. We’ve visited comets up close and found them to be lumpy, with vents in the surface that release the gas as ice sublimates. Eons ago, comets (and asteroids) may have brought a lot of water to Earth -- as well as the ingredients for life.
Now that we’re done with the planets, asteroid belt, and comets, we’re heading to the outskirts of the solar system. Out past Neptune are vast reservoirs of icy bodies that can become comets if they get poked into the inner solar system. The Kuiper Belt is a donut shape aligned with the plane of the solar system; the scattered disk is more eccentric and is the source of short period comets; and the Oort Cloud which surrounds the solar system out to great distances is the source of long-period comets. These bodies all probably formed closer into the Sun, and got flung out to the solar system’s suburbs by gravitational interactions with the outer planets.
Today Phil helps keep you from ticking off an astronomer in your life by making sure you know the difference between a meteor, meteorite, and meteoroid. When the Earth plows through the stream emitted by a comet we get a meteor shower. Meteors burn up about 100 km above the Earth, but some survive to hit the ground. Most of these meteorites are rocky, some are metallic, and a few are a mix of the two. Very big meteorites can be a very big problem, but there are plans in the works to prevent us from going the way of the dinosaurs.
In order to understand how we study the universe, we need to talk a little bit about light. Light is a form of energy. Its wavelength tells us its energy and color. Spectroscopy allows us to analyze those colors and determine an object’s temperature, density, spin, motion, and chemical composition.
How do astronomers make sense out of the vastness of space? How do they study things so far away? Today Phil talks about distances, going back to early astronomy. Ancient Greeks were able to find the size of the Earth, and from that the distance to and the sizes of the Moon and Sun. Once the Earth/Sun distance was found, parallax was used to find the distance to nearby stars, and that was bootstrapped using brightness to determine the distances to much farther stars.
Today Phil’s explaining the stars and how they can be categorized using their spectra. Together with their distance, this provides a wealth of information about them including their luminosity, size, and temperature. The HR diagram plots stars’ luminosity versus temperature, and most stars fall along the main sequence, where they live most of their lives.
Today Phil explains that YES, there are other planets out there and astonomers have a lot of methods for detecting them. Nearly 2000 have been found so far. The most successful method is using transits, where a planet physically passes in front of its parent star, producing a measurable dip in the star’s light. Another is to measuring the Doppler shift in a star’s light due to reflexive motion as the planet orbits. Exoplanets appear to orbit nearly every kind of star, and we’ve even found planets that are the same size as Earth. We think there may be many billions of Earth-like planets in our galaxy.
While Jupiter is nowhere near massive enough to initiate fusion in its core, there are even more massive objects out there that fall just short of that achievement as well called brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs, have a mass that places them between giant planets and small stars. They were only recently discovered in the 1990’s, but thousands are now known. More massive ones can fuse deuterium, and even lithium, but not hydrogen, distinguishing them from “normal” stars. Sort of.
Today we are talking about the life -- and death -- of stars. Low mass stars live a long time, fusing all their hydrogen into helium over a trillion years. More massive stars like the Sun live shorter lives. They fuse hydrogen into helium, and eventually helium into carbon (and also some oxygen and neon). When this happens they expand, get brighter, and cool off, becoming red giants. They lose most of their mass, exposing their cores, and then cool off over many billions of years.
Today Phil follows up last week’s look at the death of low mass stars with what comes next: a white dwarf. White dwarfs are incredibly hot and dense objects roughly the size of Earth. They also can form planetary nebulae: huge, intricately detailed objects created when the wind blown from the dying stars is lit up by the central white dwarf. They only last a few millennia. The Sun probably won’t form one, but higher mass stars do.
Massive stars fuse heavier elements in their cores than lower mass stars. This leads to the creation of heavier elements up to iron. Iron robs critical energy from the core, causing it to collapse. The shock wave, together with a huge swarm of neutrinos, blast through the star’s outer layers, causing it to explode. The resulting supernova creates even more heavy elements, scattering them through space. Also, happily, we’re in no danger from a nearby supernova.
In the aftermath of a 8 – 20 solar mass star’s demise we find a weird little object known as a neutron star. Neutrons stars are incredibly dense, spin rapidly, and have very strong magnetic fields. Some of them we see as pulsars, flashing in brightness as they spin. Neutrons stars with the strongest magnetic fields are called magnetars, and are capable of colossal bursts of energy that can be detected over vast distances.
We’ve covered a lot of incredible stuff, but this week we’re talking about the weirdest objects in space: BLACK HOLES. Stellar mass black holes form when a very massive star dies, and its core collapses. The core has to be more than about 2.8 times the Sun’s mass to form a black hole. Black holes come in different sizes, but for all of them, the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light, so nothing can escape, not matter or light. They don’t wander the Universe gobbling everything down around them; their gravity is only really intense very close to them. Tides near a stellar mass black hole will spaghettify you, and time slows down when you get near a black hole — not that this helps much if you’re falling in.
Double stars are stars that appear to be near each other in the sky, but if they’re gravitationally bound together we call them binary stars. Many stars are actually part of binary or multiple systems. If they are close enough together they can actually touch other, merging into one peanut-shaped star. In some close binaries matter can flow from one star to the other, changing the way it ages. If one star is a white dwarf, this can cause periodic explosions, and possibly even lead to blowing up the entire star.
Last week we covered multiple star systems, but what if we added thousands or even millions of stars to the mix? A star cluster. There are different kinds of clusters, though. Open clusters contain hundreds or thousands of stars held together by gravity. They’re young, and evaporate over time, their stars let loose to roam space freely. Globular clusters, on the other hand, are larger, have hundreds of thousands of stars, and are more spherical. They’re very old, a significant fraction of the age of the Universe itself, and that means their stars have less heavy elements in them, are redder, and probably don’t have planets (though we’re not really sure).
Astronomers study a lot of gorgeous things, but nebulae might be the most breathtakingly beautiful of them all. Nebulae are clouds of gas and dust in space. They can glow on their own or reflect light from nearby stars. When they glow it’s usually predominantly red from hydrogen and green from oxygen, and when they reflect and scatter light it’s from massive hot stars, so they look blue. Stars are born in some nebulae, and create new ones as they die. Some nebulae are small and dense, others can be dozens or hundreds of light years across.
Today we’re talking about our galactic neighborhood: The Milky Way. It’s a disk galaxy, a collection of dust, gas, and hundreds of billions of stars, with the Sun located about halfway out from the center. The disk has grand spiral patterns in it, formed by the traffic jams of stars and nebulae, where stars are born. The central region is shaped like a bar, and is mostly old, red stars. There’s also a halo surrounding us of old stars.
The Milky Way is our neighborhood in the universe. It’s a galaxy and there are many others out there. Galaxies contain gas, dust, and billions of stars or more. They come in four main shapes: elliptical, spiral, peculiar, and irregular. Galaxies can collide, and grow in size by eating each other.
Active galaxies pour out lots of energy, due to their central supermassive black holes gobbling down matter. Galaxies tend not to be loners, but instead exist in smaller groups and larger clusters. Our Milky Way is part of the Local Group, and will one day collide with the Andromeda galaxy. Clusters of galaxies also clump together to form superclusters, the largest structures in the Universe. In total, there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the Universe.
Gamma-ray bursts are not only incredible to study, but their discovery has an epic story all its own. Today Phil takes you through some Cold War history and then dives into what we know. Bursts come in two rough varieties: Long and short. Long ones are from hypernovae, massive stars exploding, sending out twin beams of matter and energy. Short ones are from merging neutron stars. Both kinds are so energetic they are visible for billions of light years, and both are also the birth announcements of black holes.
Today on Crash Course Astronomy, Phil dives into some very dark matters. The stuff we can actually observe in the universe isn’t all there is. Galaxies and other large structures in the universe are created and shifted by a force we detect mostly indirectly, by observing its impact: DARK MATTER.
Thanks to observations of galaxy redshifts, we can tell that the universe is EXPANDING! Knowing that the universe is expanding and how quickly its expanding also allows us to run the clock backwards 14 billion years to the way the universe began - with a bang.
The majority of the universe is made up of a currently mysterious entity that pervades space: dark energy. We don’t know exactly what it is, but we do know that dark energy accelerates the expansion of space. We think this means the Universe will expand forever, even as our view of it shrinks while space expands faster all the time.
Thanks to the wonders of physics, astronomers can map a timeline of the universe’s history. Today, Phil’s going to give you an overview of those first few minutes (yes, MINUTES) of the universe’s life. It started with a Big Bang, when the Universe was incredibly dense and hot. It expanded and cooled, going through multiple stages where different kinds of matter could form. It underwent a phenomenally rapid expansion called inflation, which smoothed out much of the lumpiness in the matter. Normal matter formed atoms between 3 and 20 minutes after the bang, and the lumps left over from inflation formed the galaxies and larger structures we see today.
As we approach the end of Crash Course Astronomy, it’s time now to acknowledge that our Universe’s days are numbered. Stars will die out after a few trillion years, protons will decay and matter will dissolve after a thousand trillion trillion trillion years, black holes will evaporate after 10^92 years, and then all will be dark. But there is still hope that a new Universe will be born from it.
Here it is, folks: the end. In our final episode of Crash Course Astronomy, Phil gives the course a send off with a look at some of his favorite topics and the big questions that Astronomy allows us to ask.
Craig Benzine introduces a brand new Crash Course about U.S. Government and Politics! This course will provide you with an overview of how the government of the United States is supposed to function, and we'll get into how it actually does function. The two aren't always the same thing. We'll be learning about the branches of government, politics, elections, political parties, pizza parties, and much, much more!
Craig Benzine teaches you about the United States Congress, and why it's bicameral, and what bicameral means. Craig tells you what the Senate and House of Representatives are for, some of the history of the institutions, and reveal to you just how you can become a representative. It's not that easy. But an eagle gets punched, so there's that.
In which Craig Benzine teaches you about the US Governments Separation of powers and the system of checks and balances. In theory, the Legislative Branch, the Executive Branch, and the Judicial Brach are designed to keep each other in check, and to keep any branch from becoming too powerful. In reality, the system was designed to keep the president from becoming some kind of autocrat. For the most part, it has worked. Craig will call in the clones to explain which powers belong to which branches, and to reveal some secret perks that the Supreme Court justices enjoy.
In which Craig Benzine teaches you about federalism, or the idea that in the United States, power is divided between the national government and the 50 state governments. Craig will teach you about how federalism has evolved over the history of the US, and what powers are given to the federal government, and what stuff the states control on their own. And he punches an eagle, which may not surprise you at all.
In which Craig Benzine teaches you about the compromises met in ratifying the U.S. Constitution. The United State’s didn’t always have its current system of government. Actually, this is it’s second attempt. Craig will delve into the failures (and few successes) of the Articles of Confederation, tell you how delegates settled on a two-house system of representation, discuss the issues of slavery and population that have been imbedded into our constitution, and fire up the clone machine to discuss how federalists and anti-federalist opposition provided the U.S. a Bill of Rights. And who knows, maybe all this talk of compromise will even inspire Craig and eagle to find some middle ground.
S01E06 Congressional Elections 02/27/2015 This week Craig Benzine talks about the importance of elections. But he isn’t going to focus on presidential elections, but instead those of the strongest part of our government: congressional elections. Craig will talk about the frequency of elections in the Senate and House, typical characteristics of a candidate, and the motivating factors our congresspeople follow to get re-elected.
This week Craig Benzine clears up the role of committees in Congress. We’ll talk about standing committees, joint committees, conference committees, and caucuses (and not the candidate-choosing kinds) as well as the staff agencies that help advise these committees and congresspeople. As most bills never even make it to the house and senate floors for a vote, the role of committees, and their respective chairpersons as gatekeeper is pretty important. There’s a lot to demystify here as the legislative process can seem pretty arcane at times, but the model, at least in theory, helps Congress run more efficiently.
This week Craig Benzine explores the leadership structure of congress. We’ll break out the clone machine to examine the responsibilities of the speaker of the house, the majority and minority leaders as well as the majority and minority whips in both the Senate and the House. As the leadership heavily influences assignments to committees and acts as the primary point of contact with the media, they wield significant power in influencing the public dialog.
Oh my, Craig has his work cut out for him this week. The process of how a bill becomes a law can be pretty complex, fraught with potential bill-death at every corner. As if just getting through committee isn’t difficult enough, bills have to navigate a series of amendments and votes in both houses, potentially more committees, further compromise bills, and even more floor votes, just to end up on the chopping block of the president. And then in one fell swoop the president can stop a bill in its tracks with a veto! But then again, a presidential veto isn’t necessarily a bill’s end either. As you can see we’ve got to lot to cover, and we’ll be the first to admit this has been covered before, and extraordinarily well might we add, by the folks at School House Rock. But we’ll give it our best shot - without the singing of course. Well, not too much singing anyway.
This week Craig breaks out the crystal ball to try and figure out why our congresspeople do the things that they do. We’ll talk about the three motivating factors of congressional decisions - constituency, interest groups, and political parties - and we’ll break down how each of these factors motivate certain actions like casework, public opinion polls, and logrolling. Craig will even weigh in on which of these factors probably contributes most significantly to the actions and decisions of our congresspersons and he'll do it without even a touch of cynicism!
This week Craig looks at the expressed powers of the President of the United States - that is the ones you can find in the Constitution. From appointing judges and granting pardons, to vetoing laws and acting as the nation’s chief diplomat on foreign policy, the Commander in Chief is a pretty powerful person, but actually not as powerful as you might think. The Constitution also limits presidential powers to maintain balance among the three branches of government. Next week we'll talk about the president's powers NOT mentioned in the Constitution - implied powers.
This week Craig continues our conversation on presidential powers by looking at those NOT found in the Constitution - implied or inherent powers. We’ll talk about how the president uses his or her power to negotiate executive agreements, recommend legislative initiatives, instate executive orders, impound funds, and claim executive privilege in order to get things done. Implied powers are kind of tough to tack down, as they aren’t really powers until they’re asserted, but once the they are, most subsequent presidents chose not to give them up. So we’ll try to cover those we’ve seen so far and talk a little bit about reactions to these sometimes controversial actions from the other branches of Congress.
In which Craig Benzine teaches you about delegation, and informal powers. What are all these federal agencies about? Well, the president has a lot of stuff to do as the chief executive, and as much as Americans like to talk about personal responsibility, the president can't really do all this stuff alone. Because it's a huge job! Same deal with Congress. So, they delegate authority. This is where all the government agencies and stuff come from. The Congress creates them to actually get around to enforcing laws. You'll learn about stuff like OSHA, and the FDA, and maybe even the FCC. Although you hear an occasional complaint about bureaucracies and such, the business of government wouldn't get done without agencies and delegation.
This week Craig Benzine talks about how the president gets things done. Filling the role of the executive branch is a pretty big job - much too big for just one person. It's so big that the president employees an entire federal bureaucracy! Today, we’re just going to focus on those closest to the president, like the vice president, the Cabinet, and the Executive Office of the President. We’ll figure out which strategy is most useful in helping the president make things happen and we’ll discuss the controversy around the president’s gradual increase in power. Oh, and as many of you noticed - last episode eagle got off too easy. Let’s see if we can make it up to you.
This week Craig Benzine discuses bureaucracies. Bureaucracies tend to be associated with unintelligible rules and time-wasting procedures, but they play an important, though controversial, role in governing. From the FDA to the EPA, these agencies were established to help the government manage and carry out laws much more efficiently - to bring the rule making and enforcement closer to the experts. But the federal bureaucracy (which is part of the executive branch) has a lot of power and sometimes acts likes Congress in creating regulations and like the courts through administrative adjudications. It's all a bit problematic for that whole "separation of powers" thing. So we'll talk about that too, and the arguments for and against increased federal bureaucracy.
This week Craig Benzine breaks down the different types of bureaucracies. I mean sure, they’re all part of the executive branch, but some work more directly with the president than others. Some bureaucracies exist solely to independently regulate industry whereas others are expected to operate like corporations and make a profit. And on top of all that, some of these agencies have sub-agencies! It can all get pretty complicated, so we’ll try to discuss some of the most significant agencies out there and the ones you hear a lot about on the news. We’ll talk about how they seem to have steadily gained more and more power, and of course, we’ll talk about what all the agencies are for in the first place!
In which Craig Benzine tells you how we keep bureaucracy in check. So we've spent the last few episodes telling you all about what bureaucracies are and why they are formed. And throughout we've hinted about this ever-expanding power within the executive branch. So today, we're going to finish our discussion of bureaucracy by looking at methods the other branches of government use to manage this power. From watch-dog organizations to reporting requirements there has been quite a bit of legislation passed aimed at taming the bureaucracy.
This week Craig Benzine takes a first look at the judicial branch. It's pretty easy to forget that the courts, and the laws that come out of them, affect our lives on a daily basis. But how exactly these decisions are made and where each law's jurisdiction starts and ends can get pretty complicated. So complicated in fact that you may want to smash something. But don't worry, Craig will clear the way.
This week Craig Benzine is going to talk about the structure of the U.S. court system and how exactly it manages to keep things moving smoothly. We’’ll talk about trial courts, district courts, appeals courts, circuit courts, state supreme courts, and of course the one at the top - the U.S. Supreme Court. It’s all quite a bit to manage with jurisdictions and such, but it's important to remember that the vast majority of cases never even make it to court! Most are settled out of court, but also terms like mootness and ripeness are used to throw cases out altogether. Today, we're going to focus on how cases make it to the top, and next week we’ll talk about what happens when they get there.
This week Craig Benzine talks about what happens when a case makes it to the Supreme Court of the United States (or the SCOTUS). We're going to focus on court procedure today. We talk about how to petition to get your case heard, how written arguments, or briefs, are made, what actually happens on the courtroom floor, and of course the variety of ways the SCOTUS issues opinions on cases.
Today, Craig Benzine is going to tell you about the Supreme Court's most important case, Marbury v. Madison, and how the court granted itself the power of judicial review. Judicial review is the power to examine and invalidate actions of the legislative and executive branches. It happens at both the state and federal court levels, but today we're going to focus primarily on the court at the top - the Supreme Court of the United States. Now it's important to remember that the court has granted itself these powers and they aren't found within the Constitution, but as with the executive and legislative branches, the courts rely heavily on implied powers to get stuff done.
Today, Craig Benzine is going to dive into the factors that influence judicial decisions. As you may have noticed, the Supreme Court recently handed down some pretty big decisions on same-sex marriage (in Obergefell v Hodges) and the Affordable Care Act (in King v. Burwell). Now, it's important to remember that these decisions are not made in a vacuum, but influenced by the other branches of government, political affiliations, and past court decisions. We’re also talk about a judge’s judicial philosophy - that is their relative restraint or activism in making decisions on laws. Judicial restraint is often equated with conservatism, but as we’ll show you, this is not always the case.
Today, Craig is going to give you an overview of civil rights and civil liberties. Often these terms are used interchangeably, but they are actually very different. Our civil liberties, contained in the Bill of Rights, once only protected us from the federal government, but slowly these liberties have been incorporated to protect us from the states. We’ll take a look at how this has happened and the supreme court cases that got us here.
Today, Craig is going to take a look at the First Amendment and your right to freedom of religion. We’ll examine some significant Supreme Court decisions and talk about how they’ve affected our interpretations of the law with respect to stuff like animal sacrifice and prayer in schools. As you’ll see, there aren’t always clearly defined, or bright-line, rules in approaching legal questions. Sometimes tests have to be developed to account for the ever-changing nature of the law and it’s applications - so we’re talk about some of those too.
Today, FINALLY, Craig is going to talk about Free Speech! Now, free speech is so important because it not only allows you to critique the government, but it also protects you from the government. But it's essential to remember that not ALL speech is protected equally under the First Amendment, and just because you have a right to free speech doesn't mean your employer, for instance, can't fire you for something you say (unless your work for the government and then things get a bit more complicated). So we'll take a look at a couple significant Supreme Court cases that have gotten us to our current definition of free speech, and we'll also discuss some of the more controversial aspects of free speech - like hate speech.
Today, Craig is going to finish up our discussion of the First Amendment with freedom of the press. Like an individual's right to free speech, the press has a right, and arguably responsibility, to tell the public what the government is doing. But of course there are some complications in doing so, like if that information will compromise national security or wrongfully discredit an individual. When considering Edward Snowden's NSA disclosures or Julian Assange's Wikileaks, it's just as important as ever to understand the role of the press in informing the public as well as our role as citizens in staying informed.
This week Craig talks about police searches and seizures. Now, the fourth amendment says that you have the right to be protected against "unreasonable searches and seizures" but what exactly does this mean? Well, it's complicated. The police often need warrants issued with proof of probable cause, but this isn't always the case - such as when you're pulled over for a moving violation. We'll finish up with the limitations of these protections and discuss one group of people in particular that aren't protected equally - students.
This week Craig is going to continue our discussion of due process. Technically, we started last week with the 4th amendment and search and seizure, but this week we’re going to look at the 5th and 6th amendments and how they ensure a fair trial. We’ll talk about some stuff you tend to hear a lot on tv, like your right to an attorney and a jury of your peers and also terms like “double jeopardy” and “pleading the fifth”. Now, this stuff can get pretty complicated, which is where lawyers come in handy, but it’s important to know your liberties to keep the police and other judicial officers in check.
Today, Craig is going to talk about the most important part of the Constitution - the Fourteenth Amendment. In particular, we're going to discuss the "equal protection" clause and how it relates to our civil rights. So we've spent the last few episodes talking about civil liberties , or our protections from the government, but civil rights are different as they involve how some groups of citizens are able to treat other groups (usually minorities) under existing laws. We'll talk about the process the Supreme Court follows in equal protection cases, called strict scrutiny, and look at one landmark case, Brown v Board of Education, and explain its role in starting the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
Today, Craig is going to talk about employment discrimination, and we're going to focus primarily on women in the workforce. Discrimination against women tends to be handled somewhat differently in the courts as they are not a minority. Even so, the courts need a method for challenging issues to help further important government interests - this is called intermediate scrutiny. (If you'll remember, strict scrutiny is the most rigorous form of judicial review and rational basis review is the least rigorous.) So we'll talk about things like disparate impact and sexual harassment in the workplace and how these cases are handled in the courts.
Today, Craig is going to wrap up our discussion of discrimination by looking more closely at those “discrete and insular minorities” referenced in the 14th Amendment. We’ll talk about instances of discrimination of Asian, European, and Latino immigrants, Native Americans, non-English speakers, people with disabilities, and LGBT people. We’ll also talk about federal and state responses to this discrimination. It’s a lot to cover, and we’ll only scratch the surface of the battles these groups fought (and are still fighting) for equality, but we will give you some historical context for the discrimination that has occurred and the court decisioned made to help defend these groups.
So we've been talking about civil rights for the last few episodes now, and we're finally going to wrap this discussion up with the rather controversial topic of affirmative action. We'll explain what exactly affirmative action is, who it is for, and why it still exists. Now, affirmative action is a pretty problematic concept. So we'll get into the court's rationalization for it in the 70s as well as its fall from favor in more recent years. Now, people tend to have pretty strong, and varying opinions, about this stuff - so we'll start talking about how these opinions are informed next week when we start our discussion on politics.
So today, Craig is finally going to start talking about politics. Now up until this point we've specifically been looking at government - that is answering the questions of who, what, and how in relation to policies. But politics is different in that it looks at why certain policies are made. We're going to start today by looking at public opinion - specifically how the public does (and does not) influence our elected officials.
So today Craig is going to talk about where our political opinions come from. Of course, most people’s politics are grounded in their ideologies, but there are also other external influences such as the government itself, interest groups, and the media. So we're going to talk about how these influencers factor into the overall public opinion and how their roles have changed over time. Now this stuff may seem like common sense, but it’s important to know where our opinions come from, especially when you consider how quickly the media landscape is changing.
So today Craig is going to look at political ideology in America. We're going to focus on liberals and conservatives and talk about the influencers of both of these viewpoints. Now, it's important to remember that political ideologies don't always perfectly correspond with political parties, and this correspondence becomes less and less likely over time. So, sure we can say that Democrats tend to be liberal and Republicans tend to be conservative, but we're not going to be talking about political parties in this episode. It's also important to note, that there are going to be a lot of generalizations here, as most peoples' ideologies fall on a spectrum, but we're going to try our best *crosses fingers* to summarize the most commonly held viewpoints for each of these positions as they are used pretty frequently in discussions of American politics.
This week Craig is going to give you a broad overview of elections in the United States. So as you may have noticed, there are kind of a lot of people in the U.S, and holding individual issues up to a public vote doesn't seem particularly plausible. So to deal with this complexity, we vote for people, not policies, that represent our best interests. But as you'll see, this process was not thoroughly addressed in the Constitution, so there have been a number of amendments and laws at the state level implemented to create the election system we all know and (maybe) love today.
Today Craig is going to talk about a topic that makes voters and politicians alike ANGRY! We're going to talk about Gerrymandering - that is the process in which voting districts are redrawn in a way to favor one party during elections. As you'll see, this is why election outcomes on Census years (which tend to be when districts are redrawn) are a really big deal. So we'll talk about how some of these cockamamie voting districts come to be and explain how Gerrymandering can affect the outcomes (and misrepresent voters) during elections. But even with all these rage-inducing and bizarre district maps, it's important to remember that it isn't ALL political scheming, but also a reflection of the tendency for Democrats to live in urban areas.
So today, Craig is going to try to get inside the heads of voters by discussing how voters make decisions. Now obviously, like all decision making, voter decisions are influenced by a multitude of factors, but the three we are going to focus on today (and the three political scientists seem to think play the biggest role) are party loyalty, the issues involved in an election, and candidate characteristics. Now this all might seem like common sense, and well it sort of is, but it's important to be aware of and take into account the factors that influence our decisions - especially when considering that many voters are not particularly well-informed.
So political campaigns are a pretty big deal in the United States. For instance the 2012 presidential election clocked in at the most expensive ever - at around $6 billion dollars! Needless to say, money plays a very big role in American elections. So today, Craig is going to take a look at why we have campaigns in the first place, why the campaign seasons run for so long, and of course why campaigns cost so much.
Today, Craig is going to talk about political parties and their role in American politics. So, when most people think about political parties they associate them with the common ideologies of the voters and representatives within that party, but the goal of a party is NOT to influence policies. The role of political parties is much simpler: to win control of the government. So today, we’re going got talk about why we have political parties in the first place and then finish with the five functions they use in reaching that goal. It’s a lot to cover, so next week we’ll talk about what each political party stands for and how that has changed historically.
Today, Craig is going to dive into the history of American political parties. So throughout most of United States history our political system has been dominated by a two-party system, but the policies and the groups that support these parties have changed drastically throughout history. There have been five, arguably six, party systems since the election of John Adams in 1796 (George Washington’s presidency was an unusual case, and we’ll get to that), so we’ll look at the supporters and policies of each of the parties during these eras and look at how historical contingencies cause these policy shifts. We’ll also talk a bit about the benefit of a third party, which although rarely ever wins, helps to influence political debate.
Today, Craig is going to talk about something you fans out there have been demanding for months - money in politics. Specifically, we're going to talk about special interest groups and their role in the U.S. political system. Special interest groups are groups of individuals that make policy-related appeals to government - like the NRA, AARP, or the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It's all pretty controversial, as money plays an important role in the policies and people these groups influence, so we'll bring in the clones to argue for and against them.
So last week we talked about what special interest groups are and how they influence the political system, and today we’re going to focus on why we even have them in the first place. As to avoid getting too cynical, we’re going to focus on five benefits of special interest groups and look at how these factor weigh in a group’s formation and size. We’ll also talk about lobbyists, recent congressional action to limit their influence, and finish with a discussion of both insider and outsider strategies that interest groups use to influence policy.
So today we're going to look at the rather thorny issue of the media and its role in politics. Wether you're talking about older forms of media like newspapers and radio or newer forms like television and the Internet, all media serves the same purpose - to provide information to the public. So we're going to discuss their strengths and weaknesses and examine how both content creators and consumers play a role in the information that is told. It could be argued that because the media only relays information it isn't actually important to the American political system, but when you look more closely at what and how this information affects voters as well as their elected officials, we can more clearly see its importance as a political institution.
Today we wrap up our discussion of the media by talking about how the government interacts with and influences the content we see. Now it may be easy to assume that because we live in a free-market capitalist society, the only real regulation of the media is determined by the consumers, but this isn’t necessarily true. The government controls a number of factors including the potential for lawsuits, spectrum licensing, FCC fines, and has even tried to pass a bit of legislation. So we’ll talk about how all of these factors influence the media and end with a discussion of a pretty hotly debated topic these days - net neutrality.
Today, we’re going to take a look at how the government plays a role in the economy. Specifically, the way the government creates and maintains our market economic system. Now sure, the government’s role in the economy can be controversial, some may even say completely unnecessary. But there are some deficiencies in a free market, and we’re going to look at those, and the tools the government uses to combat those issues in maintaining a healthy and stable economy.
Today, we’re going to wrap up our discussion of economic policy by looking at government regulation. We're going to talk about the government's goals for the U.S. economy and the policies it employs to achieve those goals. Ever since the New Deal, we've seen an increased role of the government within the economy - even with the deregulation initiatives of President Carter and Reagan in the 80's. Now this is all pretty controversial and we're going to talk about it, as this is a long way from the federal government handed down by the framers of the constitution.
Today, Craig is going to dive into the controversy of monetary and fiscal policy. Monetary and fiscal policy are ways the government, and most notably the Federal Reserve, influences the economy - for better or for worse. So we’re going to start by looking at monetary policy, and specifically how the Federal Reserve uses interests rates as a means of controlling (or at least attempting to control) inflation. We’ll then move onto fiscal policy - that is the government’s use of taxation to raise and spend money. It’s all, well, pretty controversial, but as it seems Americans hate taxes the most, monetary policy is most often used - meaning that the Federal Reserve plays a hugely significant role in steering the U.S. economy.
Today, Craig is going to talk about social policy - in the United States this means achieving one of three goals: protecting Americans from risk, promoting equal opportunity, or assisting the poor. Many Americans strongly believe in individualism, that is self-reliance, but since the Great Depression and the New Deal the government’s role has increased significantly. We’re going to focus on two social policies that came out of the New Deal - Social Security and what we tend to think of as “welfare” - and talk about why they’re still around now and potentially the future. These and other social policies are not without controversy, as things tend to be when involving our tax dollars, and we’re going to talk about that too.
Today Craig finishes up our series on U.S. Government and Politics by talking about both the least and most important aspect of government: foreign policy. Foreign policy is important because it has the potential to affect the largest number of people, but at the same time, it tends to play a minimal role in our perception of the government (unless we’re at war). Foreign policy addresses diplomacy, security, human rights, economics, and the environment at a global scale, and we’re going to talk about how our government has approached each of these policies in the past and which it tends to hold most important. As with all things political, the decisions made in fulfilling these policies can be pretty controversial, especially when considering that the President often has the last word in these issues.
This week, Stan Muller launches the Crash Course Intellectual Property mini-series. So, what is intellectual property, and why are we teaching it? Well, intellectual property is about ideas and their ownership, and it's basically about the rights of creators to make money from their work. Intellectual property is so pervasive in today's world that we thought you ought to know a little bit about it. We're going to discuss the three major elements of IP: Copyright, Patents, and Trademarks.
This week, Stan Muller teaches you the basics of copyright in the United States. Copyright law is territorial, so we're going to cover the system we know the most about, and that's the US. Stan will talk about what kind of ideas can be copyrighted, who can get a copyright, and what protections the copyright grants. We'll also talk about the always contentious and seemingly ever-growing term of copyright. Stan will also teach you about the low bar for creativity, which means that original work doesn't have to be all that original, and he'll also touch on the problems with copyright in the modern world.
Stan Muller teaches you a few things about copyright enforcement and talks about the exceptions to copyright enforcement. While there are several, the one you've probably heard of is Fair Use, and it's a pretty tricky one. We'll try to explain it and teach you just why fair use is so loosey-goosey.
This week, Stan teaches you about patents. It turns out, they're patently complicated! So, patents have some similarities to copyright, in that they grant a limited monopoly to people who invent things. The key difference between patents and copyright is that patents are for THINGS. Copyright is for an idea. So, if you've come up with a great new invention, like for example, a condiment gun, you should get a patent. We'll also talk about some of the limitations and problems of patents, including patent trolls
In which Stan Muller teaches you about our third branch of Intellectual Property, trademarks. A lot of people confuse trademark and copyright. Trademarks apply to things like company and product names and logos, packaging designs, and commercial designs. Basically, copyright protects ideas, but trademarks protect the things that help consumers tell companies apart. This ensures that consumers know the source of the goods they're buying. Without trademarks, it would be really difficult to buy the same product twice, and very easy for unscrupulous companies to pass off fakes and knock-offs of the products you want. I'm telling you, you like trademarks.
This week, Stan Muller teaches you how intellectual property law functions internationally. Like, between countries. Well, guess what. There's kind of no such thing as international law. But we can talk about treaties. There is a bevy of international treaties that regulate how countries deal with each others' IP. The upside is that this cooperation tends to foster international trade. The downside is that these treaties tend to stifle creativity by making it harder to shorten copyright terms. You win some, you lose some.
In which Stan Muller talks about some of the problems in Intellectual Property law as it exists today. He'll also teach you a little about how IP law applies to everyone's favorite media platform, YouTube. Lastly, he'll do a little prognosticating, and try to predict how IP law might change in the future.
In which Jacob Clifford and Adriene Hill launch a brand new Crash Course on Economics! So, what is economics? Good question. It's not necessarily about money, or stock markets, or trade. It's about people and choices. What, you may ask, does that mean. We'll show you. Let's get started!
In which Adriene Hill and Jacob Clifford teach you about specialization and trade, and how countries decide whether they're going to make stuff or trade for stuff. You'll learn about things like comparative advantage, the production possibilities frontier and how to make pizza!
In which Jacob Clifford and Adriene Hill teach you about Economic Systems and Macroeconomics. So, economics is basically about choices. We'll look at some of the broadest economic choices when we talk about the difference between planned economies and market economies. We'll get into communism, socialism, command economies, and capitalism. We'll look at how countries choose the kind of system they're going to use (spoiler alert: many end up with mixed economies). We'll also look into how individuals make economic choices.
In which Adriene Hill and Jacob Clifford teach you about one of the fundamental economic ideas, supply and demand. What is supply and demand? Well, you’ll have to watch the video to really understand it, but it’s kind of important for everything economically. Supply and demand sets prices, and indicates to manufacturers how much to produce. Also, it has a lot to do with strawberries.
This week, Adriene and Jacob teach you about macroeconomics. This is the stuff of big picture economics, and the major movers in the economy. Like taxes and monetary policy and inflation and policy. We need this stuff, because if you don't have a big picture of the economy, crashes and panics are more likely. Of course, economics is extremely complex and unpredictable. Today we'll talk about GDP as a measure of a country's economic health, the basics of economic analysis, and even a little about full employment, unemployment
Why are some countries rich? Why are some countries poor? In the end it comes down to Productivity. This week on Crash Course Econ, Adriene and Jacob investigate just why some economies are more productive than others, and what happens when an economy is mor productive. We'll look at how things like per capita GDP translate to the lifestyle of normal people. And, there's a mystery.
In which Adriene and Jacob teach you about how and why prices rise. Sometimes prices rise as a result of inflation, which is a pretty normal thing for economies to do. We'll talk about how across the board prices rise over time, and how economists track inflation. Bubbles are a pretty normal thing for humans to do. One item, like tulips or beanie babies or houses or tech startups experience a rapid rise in prices. This is often accompanied by speculation, a bunch of outrageous profits, and then a nasty crash when the bubble bursts. People get excited about rising prices, and next thing you know, people are trading their life savings for a tulip bulb.
In which Jacob and Adriene teach you about the evils of fiscal policy and stimulus. Well, maybe the policies aren't evil, but there is an evil lair involved. In this episode we learn how government use taxes and spending influence the economy. Sometimes the government gives, and sometimes it takes. And the giving and the taking can have a profound effect on how economies behave.
What is debt? What is a deficit? And do these things have different outcomes for individuals and nations? Adriene and Jacob answer all these questions and more on this week's Crash Course Econ. Deficit and debt are easy to misunderstand, but luckily, they're also pretty easy to understand. This week we'll explain what deficit and debt are, and talk about what the sources of deficit and debt are for the US Government. Also, we'll take a very special trip to Cliffordonia to try and understand these concepts and get a look at what a colonial-era space program might have looked like.
This week on Crash Course Economics, we're talking about monetary policy. The reality of the world is that the United States (and most of the world's economies) are, to varying degrees, Keynesian. When things go wrong, economically, the central bank of the country intervenes to try aand get things back on track. In the United States, the Federal Reserve is the organization that steps in to use monetary policy to steer the economy. When the Fed, as it's called, does step in, there are a few different tacks it can take. The Fed can change interest rates, or it can change the money supply. This is pretty interesting stuff, and it's what we're getting into today.
So, we've been putting off a kind of basic question here. What is money? What is currency? How are the two different. Well, not to give away too much, but money has a few basic functions. It acts as a store of value, a medium of exchange, and as a unit of account. Money isn't just bills and coins. It can be anything that meets these three criteria. In US prisons, apparently, pouches of Mackerel are currency. Yes, mackerel the fish. Paper and coins work as money because they're backed by the government, which is an advantage over mackerel. So, once you've got money, you need finance. We'll talk about borrowing, lending, interest, and stocks and bonds. Also, this episode features a giant zucchini, which Adriene grew in her garden. So that's cool.
Today on Crash Course Economics, Adriene and Jacob talk about the 2008 financial crisis and the US Goverment's response to the troubles. So, all this starts with home mortgages, and the use of mortgages as an investment instrument. For years, it seemed like the US housing market would go up and up. Like a bubble or something. It turns out it was a bubble. But not the good kind. And the government response was...interesting. Anyway, why are you reading this? Watch the video!
If you're ever put in charge of a national economy, there are a few things you should try to avoid. Before you laugh, just remember, you COULD be in charge of an economy someday. Someone has to do it, and anyway, if it could happen to Alan Greenspan, it could happen to you, too. The first thing you're going to want to avoid is hyperinflation. Don't print too much money, okay? Actually, it's a little more complicated than that. Jacob and Adriene will explain. You're also going to want to stay away from recessions, and especially depressions. In the world as it exists today, continued growth is the only path to viability. While some argue for sustainability or even controlled recession, you're not going to keep a job as head of central bank thinking like that in this day and age. Also, avoid stagflation, which is a stagnant, no-growth economy combined with inflation. It's just the worst. Don't do it. All this and more on this week's Crash Course Economics.
We talk a lot about Keynesian economics on this show, pretty much because the real world currently runs on Keynesian principles. That said, there are some other economic ideas out there, and today we're going to talk about a few of them. So, if you've been aching to hear about socialism, communism, the Chicago School, or the Austrian School, this episode is for you.
What is a trade deficit? Well, it all has to do with imports and exports and, well, trade. This week Jacob and Adriene walk you through the basics of imports, exports, and exchange. So, you remember the specialization and trade thing, right? So, that leads to imports and exports. Economically, in the aggregate, this is usually a good thing. Globalization and free trade do tend to increase overall wealth. But not everybody wins.
What is globalization? Is globalization a good thing or not. Well, I have an answer that may not surprise you: It's complicated. This week, Jacob and Adriene will argue that globalization is, in aggregate, good. Free trade and globalization tend to provide an overall benefit, and raises average incomes across the globe. The downside is that it isn't good for every individual in the system. In some countries, manufacturing jobs move to places where labor costs are lower. And some countries that receive the influx of jobs aren't prepared to deal with it, from a regulatory standpoint. Anyway, Jacob and Adriene can explain the whole thing to you in 10 minutes.
Inequality is a big, big subject. There's racial inequality, gender inequality, and lots and lots of other kinds of inequality. This is Econ, so we're going to talk about wealth inequality and income inequality. There's no question that economic inequality is real. But there is disagreement as to whether income inequality is a problem, and what can or should be done about it.
This week Jacob and Adriene teach you about marginal analysis, which you're using RIGHT NOW! The video is coming from inside the house! Or something. You'll learn how marginal analysis guides the decision making if cities, nations, companies, and amusement park enthusiasts. We'll also look at the idea of elasticity, and what people are willing to pay for certain stuff based on the supply. Why is a Van Gogh worth more than an OBEY poster? (hint: it's because they're still cranking out the OBEY posters, and Vincent is dead) All this and more on Crash Course Economics!
Adriene and Jacob teach you all about markets. So, in free market(ish) economies like the United States and most of the world, markets are a big deal. Markets work to produce the stuff that consumers want, and that society needs. Today we'll talk about productive and allocative efficiency, skinny jeans, price signals, and more in this information-dense installment of Crash Course.
So, during times of inflation or deflation, why doesn't the government just set prices? It sounds reasonable, but price ceilings or floors just don't work. Adriene and Jacob explain why. Subsidies, however, are a little different, and sometimes they even work. We'll also explain that. Today you'll learn about stuff like price controls, deadweight loss, subsidies, and efficiency.
This week on Crash Course Econ, Jacob and Adriene are talking about failure. Specifically, we're talking about market failures. When markets don't provide a good or service efficiently, that's a market failure. When markets fail, often governments step in to provide those services. Stuff like public education or military protection are good examples of market failures. So, what are some of the ways governments address, market failures? Well, it's funny you should ask, as we also talk about that in this episode. We'll get into taxes and subsidies and externalities and a bunch of other important stuff this week on Crash Course Econ.
So, if economics is about choices and how we use our resources, econ probably has a lot to say about the environment, right? Right! In simple terms, pollution is just a market failure. The market is producing more pollution than society wants. This week, Adriene and Jacob focus on the environment, and how economics can be used to control and reduce pollution and emissions. You'll learn about supply and demand, incentives, and how government intervention influences the environment.
How does education work? Where does the money come from? Who pays for it? Is going to college a good investment? Adriene and Jacob are talking today about the economics of education. Most countries require that their citizens get some education, and most countries pay for basic education, but the quality of education can vary widely. And in the US, post-secondary education can come with a lot of costs.
How do companies make money? What are profits? Revenues? How are prices set? This week, Jacob and Adriene are talking business. Whether you're selling cars, pizza, or glow sticks, this video has pretty much all the information you need to run a business. Well, not really, but there's a lot of good stuff in here.
What is a monopoly? It turns out, it's more than just a board game. It's a terrible, terrible economic practice in which giant corporations dominate markets and hurt consumers. Except when it isn't. In some industries, monopolies are the most efficient way to do business. Utilities like electricity, water, and broadband internet access are probably less efficiently delivered in competitive markets. Come along, and let us monopolize your attention for a few minutes. You might learn something. And you might land on Free Parking.
Would you like to play a game, Dr. Falken? Actually, this episode isn't really about games, or Matthew Broderick, or Thermonuclear War. But enough with the long references to 1983's best movie, War Games. Today Jacob and Adriene are going to teach you about Oligopolies, which are kind of like the monopolies that we talked about last week, except with more companies involved. Then we'll get to the games, or rather, the game theory. Which is all about how companies try to compete with each other in the real world.
Why do people buy the stuff they buy? In classical economics, most models assume that consumers behave rationally. As you've probably noticed in your real life, in case after case, people don't actually make rational decisions. There can be emotional or social reasons for all this irrationality, and behavioral economics tries to address this. We'll talk about risk, nudge theory, prices and perception, and the ultimatum game. So, let's get irrational, in a logical way, of course.
How much should you get paid for your job? Well, that depends on a lot of factors. Your skill set, the demand for the skills you have, and what other people are getting paid around you all factor in. In a lot of ways, labor markets work on supply and demand, just like many of the markets we talk about in Crash Course Econ. But, again, there aren't a lot of pure, true markets in the world. There are all kinds of oddities and regulations that change the way labor markets work. One common (and kind of controversial one) is the minimum wage. The minimum wage has potential upsides and downsides, and we'll take a look at the various arguments for an against it.
Why is health care so expensive? Once again, there are a lot of factors in play. Jacob and Adriene look at the many reasons that health care in the US is so expensive, and what exactly we get for all that money. Spoiler alert: countries that spend less and get better results are not that uncommon.
We need to have a talk about your future. You're going to die. We all are. And it's probably going to be expensive. This week on CC Econ, Adriene is talking about the economics of death. Some of the expense is tied to the cost of end-of-life health care, but funerals are a big business, too.
We've been talking about the unavoidables recently. Last time, we covered Death. This time, it's taxes. So, what are taxes? Why do we pay taxes? What is all that tax money used for? This week, Adriene is going to cover all that and more. We'll talk about types of taxes, progressive and regressive taxes, tax brackets, and we'll even get into a few historical scenarios where bad tax policy led to revolutions.
What is an underground economy? Whether you call it a black market, a grey market, or just the shop down the street, its about connecting people with goods outside of official channels. Some stuff happens in the underground economy because it's illegal, but a lot of the money that moves around this way is exchanged for pretty mundane goods and services. We'll talk about how these things work, and the awesome ways that economists figure out where all that money is.
Is Immigration good or bad? Immigration is a touchy subject in the United States. The 2016 election has been filled with debate about the subject, and both proponents and opponents have lots of reasons for their stance. But, this is a show about economics, and when it comes to the effects of immigration on economies, there is actually a lot of consensus. It turns out, immigration is economically beneficial.
What is foreign aid? How much foreign aid does the United States distribute each year. Comparatively, not much. In fact, foreign aid only accounts for a small fraction of most nations' overall spending. But it's hugely important. Foreign aid improves healthcare, can promote economic growth, and assists people who've been through disasters. Remittances are moneys that are sent internationally by immigrants. People move internationally to
They say money can't buy happiness, but who are they? Can money buy happiness? The answer is: sort of. While money may not be able to buy true happiness, lack of money can cause very real misery. Today, we look at the economics of happiness, and talk about how much money it takes to be happy. And where you should live to maximize your income-to-happiness ratio.
Today Hank begins to teach you about Philosophy by discussing the historical origins of philosophy in ancient Greece, and its three main divisions: metaphysics, epistemology, and value theory. He will also introduce logic, and how you’re going to use it to understand and critically evaluate a whole host of different worldviews throughout this course. And also, hopefully, the rest of your life.
Before we dive into the big questions of philosophy, you need to know how to argue properly. We’ll start with an overview of philosophical reasoning and breakdown of how deductive arguments work (and sometimes don’t work).
We continue our look at philosophical reasoning by introducing two more types: induction and abduction. Hank explains their strengths and weaknesses, as well as counterarguments and the Socratic method.
Today Hank gains insight from that most philosophical of figures...Leonardo DiCaprio. In this episode, we’re talking about the process of philosophical discovery and questioning the relationship between appearance and reality by taking a look at Plato’s famous Myth of the Cave. All with a little help from our good pal Leo.
This week Hank introduces skepticism, exploring everything from the nature of reality through the eyes of a 17th century philosopher and, of course, The Matrix.
This week we answer skeptics like Descartes with empiricism. Hank explains John Locke’s primary and secondary qualities and why George Berkeley doesn’t think that distinction works -- leaving us with literally nothing but our minds, ideas, and perceptions.
On today’s episode...CATS. Also: Hank talks about some philosophy stuff, like a few of the key concepts philosophers use when discussing belief and knowledge, such as what defines an assertion and a proposition, and that belief is a kind of propositional attitude. Hank also discusses forms of justification and the traditional definition of knowledge, which Edmund Gettier just totally messed with, using his Gettier cases.
The early 1900s was an amazing time for Western science, as Albert Einstein was developing his theories of relativity and psychology was born, as Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis took over the scientific mainstream. Karl Popper observed these developments firsthand and came to draw a distinction between what he referred to as science and pseudoscience, which might best be summarized as science disconfirms, while pseudoscience confirms. While the way we describe these disciplines has changed in the intervening years, Popper’s ideas speak to the heart of how we arrive at knowledge.
Today we are introducing a new area of philosophy – philosophy of religion. We are starting this unit off with Anselm’s argument for God’s existence, while also considering objections to that argument.
Our unit on the philosophy of religion and the existence of god continues with Thomas Aquinas. Today, we consider his first four arguments: the cosmological arguments.
Last week we introduced Thomas Aquinas’s four cosmological arguments for the existence of god; today we introduce his fifth argument: the teleological argument, and the ensuing dialogue it initiated.
Today we are moving on from the existence of God to look at the philosophical debate surrounding the traditional divine attributes - omnipotence, omniscience, omnitemporality, and omnibenevolence. We are exploring the puzzles that these attributes create as well as some possible solutions to those puzzles, from Aquinas’ ideas of analogical predication, to the work of Eleanor Stump.
After weeks of exploring the existence of nature of god, today Hank explores one of the biggest problems in theism, and possibly the biggest philosophical question humanity faces: why is there evil?
Today we explore what obligations we hold with our personal beliefs. Hank explains epistemic responsibility and the issues it raises with everything from religious belief, to ship owning, to vaccinations.
Today we conclude our unit on Philosophy of Religion and Hank gets a little help from Indiana Jones to explain religious pragmatism and Pascal’s Wager, fideism, and Kierkegaard’s leap to faith.
Now that we’ve left behind the philosophy of religion, it’s time to start exploring what other ways might exist to find meaning in the world. Today we explore essentialism and its response: existentialism. We’ll also learn about Jean-Paul Sartre and his ideas about how to find meaning in a meaningless world.
Today we are talking about death, looking at philosophical approaches from Socrates, Epicurus, and Zhuangzi. We will consider whether it’s logical to fear your own death, or the deaths of your loved ones. Hank also discusses Thomas Nagel, death, and Fear of Missing Out.
Hank explores different ways of understanding identity – including the Indiscernibility of Identicals, and essential and accidental properties. In what ways does affect identity? In what ways does it not? What does it mean for a thing to persist over time?
Today Hank is building on last week’s exploration of identity to focus on personal identity. Does it in reside in your body? Is it in the collective memories of your consciousness? There are, of course, strengths and weaknesses to both of these ideas, and that’s what we’re talking about today.
How can Daenerys Targaryen help us understand personal identity? Find out as Hank continues our exploration of personal identity, learning about Hume’s bundle theory and Parfit’s theory of survival through psychological connectedness.
Now that we’ve started talking about identity, today Hank tackles the question of personhood. Philosophers have tried to assess what constitutes personhood with a variety of different criteria, including genetic, cognitive, social, sentience, and the gradient theory. As with many of philosophy’s great questions, this has much broader implications than simple conjecture. The way we answer this question informs all sorts of things about the way we move about the world, including our views on some of our greatest social debates.
Today we continue our unit on identity by asking where the mind resides. Hank explains the mind-body problem and several approaches to the question of where our minds reside, including reductive physicalism, substance dualism, and mysterianism.
Today Hank explores artificial intelligence, including weak AI and strong AI, and the various ways that thinkers have tried to define strong AI including the Turing Test, and John Searle’s response to the Turing Test, the Chinese Room. Hank also tries to figure out one of the more personally daunting questions yet: is his brother John a robot?
Do we really have free will? Today Hank explores possible answers to that question, explaining theories like libertarian free will and its counterpoint, hard determinism.
As we continue explore free will, today Hank considers a middle ground between hard determinism and libertarian free will: compatibilism. This view seeks to find ways that our internally motivated actions can be understood as free in a deterministic world. We’ll also cover Frankfurt Cases and Patricia Churchland’s rejection of the free-or-not-free dichotomy and her focus on the amount of control we have over our actions.
Today we start our unit on language with a discussion of meaning and how we assign and understand meaning. We’ll cover sense and reference, beetles in boxes, and language games.
Last week we talked about language and meaning. Today, Hank explores some of the things that complicate meaning and how we get around that. We’ll explain conversational implicature, the cooperative principle, and the four main maxims of successful communication, as laid out by Paul Grice, as well as performative utterances.
Content warning: today’s episode contains language that some viewers might find upsetting and that may not be viewable in all settings.
Today we transition between units on language and aesthetics with a discussion of nonexistent and imaginary objects. Is it possible to make true assertions about things that aren’t real? We’ll explore Meinong’s Jungle and the concept of a universe of discourse.
Today we are talking about art and aesthetic appreciation. What makes something an artwork? Can art really be defined? Is aesthetic value objective or subjective? Can taste be developed? How?
How do art and morality intersect? Today we look at an ethically questionable work of art and discuss R. G. Collingwood’s view that art is best when it helps us live better lives. We’ll go over Aristotle’s concept of catharsis and how it can resolve the problem of tragedy. We are also exploring the paradox of fiction and the debate between autonomism and moralism.
We begin our unit on ethics with a look at metaethics. Hank explains three forms of moral realism – moral absolutism, and cultural relativism, including the difference between descriptive and normative cultural relativism – and moral subjectivism, which is a form of moral antirealism. Finally, we’ll introduce the concept of an ethical theory.
As we venture into the world of ethics, there are a lot of different answers to the grounding problem for us to explore. One of the oldest and most popular is the divine command theory. But with age comes a long history of questions, too, such as the dilemma presented by Plato known as the Euthyphro Problem.
Our exploration of ethical theories continues with another theistic answer to the grounding problem: natural law theory. Thomas Aquinas’s version of this theory says that we all seek out what’s known as the basic goods and argued that instinct and reason come together to point us to the natural law. There are, of course, objections to this theory – in particular, the is-ought problem advanced by David Hume.
Our next stop on our tour of ethics is Kant’s ethics. Today Hank explains hypothetical and categorical imperatives, the universalizability principle, autonomy, and what it means to treat people as ends-in-themselves, rather than as mere means.
Our next stop in our tour of the ethical lay of the land is utilitarianism. With a little help from Batman, Hank explains the principle of utility, and the difference between act and rule utilitarianism.
Today we explore the penultimate ethical theory in this unit: contractarianism. Hank explains Hobbes’ state of nature, implicit and explicit contracts, as well as the Prisoner’s Dilemma, and the benefits, and costs, of violating contracts.
This week we explore the final ethical theory in this unit: Aristotle’s virtue theory. Hank explains the Golden Mean, and how it exists as the midpoint between vices of excess and deficiency. We’ll also discuss moral exemplars, and introduce the concept of “eudaimonia.”
Can two people who make the same bad decision bear different levels of moral responsibility? Today, we try to address this question with the concept of moral luck. Hank explains the difference between moral and causal responsibility and the reasons we assign praise and blame.
In today’s episode, Hank asks you to consider all the ways people talk about justice and what we really mean when we use that word. We’ll explain various theories of justice, just distribution, and different approaches to punishment.
Is it OK to discriminate? Do you do it? Is it always wrong or are there cases where it can be acceptable? Today we’re talking through several tricky cases and different philosophical perspectives on this issue.
Today we are taking all the things we have learned this year about doing philosophy and applying that to moral considerations regarding non-human animals. We’ll explore what philosophers like Peter Singer and Carl Cohen have to say about their use, including the concept of equal consideration of interests.
Today we are investigating our moral obligations to our parents and our families. Do we owe our parents anything as adults? Would it be a good idea to license parents? We’ll explore these questions as well as the ethics of care, and some potential problems that type of approach to morality carries with it.
We’re picking up where we left off last time, exploring the “ethics of care” and how it applies to extreme poverty. Are we responding to global poverty in a moral way? Philosophers like Peter Singer argue that we have an obligation to prevent harm caused by poverty, whereas Garrett Hardin offers a “lifeboat analogy” to explain our obligations to focus on caring for our own.
As we wrap up Crash Course Philosophy, we’re using the things we’ve learned to explore big issues like the value of life. Today, we’re discussing abortions in cases of fetal abnormality, assisted suicide, and euthanasia. We will consider the standard of substituted judgment and the values people hold on both sides of these issues—values about the sacredness of life, and the importance of a life of quality, as well as the values of personal liberty and avoiding pain.
In our final episode of Crash Course Philosophy, we consider what it means to live a good life. We’ll look at the myth of Sisyphus, Robert Nozick’s experience machine, Aristotle’s eudaimonistic picture of a good human life, and the existentialists’ view that we each determine the value of our own lives. And we’ll think about how you, too, can live the life of a philosopher.
In this, THE FIRST EPISODE of Crash Course Physics, your host Dr. Shini Somara introduces us to the ideas of motion in a straight line. She talks about displacement, acceleration, time, velocity, and the definition of acceleration. Also, how does a physicist discuss speed as opposed to a police officer? And did you deserve that ticket? You can figure it all out with the help of Physics!
CALCULUS! Today we take our first steps into the language of Physics; mathematics. Every branch of science has its own way to describe the things that it investigates. And, with Physics, that's math. In this episode, Shini talks us through derivatives and how calculus helps us to understand the world around us.
Continuing with last week's calculus introduction, Shini leads us through how integrals can help us figure out things like distance when we have several other essential bits of information. Say, for instance, you wanted to know how far your window was off the ground. You can figure that out by using integrals, a tennis ball, and a stopwatch! It's all here in this episode of Crash Course Physics!
Continuing in our journey of understanding motion, direction, and velocity... today, Shini introduces the ideas of vectors and scalars so we can better understand how to figure out motion in 2 dimensions. But what does that have to do with baseball? Or two baseballs?
I'm sure you've heard of Isaac Newton and maybe of some of his laws. Like, that thing about "equal and opposite reactions" and such. But what do his laws mean? And how do they help us understand the world around us? In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini talks to us about just that.
This episode is sponsored by Audible. Try Audible: http://audible.com/crashcourse
Did you know that centrifugal force isn't really a thing? I mean, it's a thing, it's just not real. In fact, physicists call it a "fictitious force." Mind blown yet? To explore this idea further, this week Shini sits down with us to discuss centripetal force, centrifugal force, and a few other bits of physics to help us understand uniform circular motion.
I'm sure you've all heard about Isaac Newton and that apple that fell on his head and how that was a huge deal to our understanding of gravity. Well... let's talk about that. In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini sits down to talk about the realities of the apple story and how Newtonian Gravity is more than a little important.
When you hear the word "work," what is the first thing you think of? Maybe sitting at a desk? Maybe plowing a field? Maybe working out? Work is a word that has a little bit of a different meaning in physics and today, Shini is going to walk us through it. Also, energy and power!
COLLISIONS! A big part of physics is understanding collisions and how they're not all the same. Mass, momentum, and many other things dictate how collisions can be unique. In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini sits down to lead us through an understanding of collisions. Plus, she brings along our old friend Sir Isaac Newton.
Did you know that at a certain point on a moving wheel... there's no motion? I mean, kinda... it's all relative, right? Prepare to have your mind blown in this episode of Crash Course Physics where Shini delves into the world of rotational motion!
What is torque? This is one of those things that you may have heard about in passing but never really understood. In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini sits down with us to discuss what torque is, how it works, why it works, and what it all has to do with this thing called "moment of inertia."
The Physics we're talking about today has saved your life! Whenever you walk across a bridge or lean on a building, Statics are at work. Statics is the study of objects when they're NOT accelerating. In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini talks to us about stretching, compressing, and springing as they relate to statics! Also... Game of Thrones.
In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini is very excited to start talking about fluids. You see, she's a fluid dynamicist and mechanical engineer, so fluids are really important to her. Actually, they're really important to anyone studying physics. So, let's start down this path of understanding, not only how fluids work, but what they are!
Today, we continue our exploration of fluids and fluid dynamics. How do fluids act when they're in motion? How does pressure in different places change water flow? And what is one of the motion annoying things about filming outside on a nice day? I'll give you a hint on that last one... it's lawnmowers.
Bridges... bridges, bridges, bridges. We talk a lot about bridges in physics. Why? Because there is A LOT of practical physics that can be learned from the planning and construction of them. In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini talks to us about a particular mistake made in engineering the Millennium Bridge which allows us to talk about simple harmonic motion.
Waves are cool. The more we learn about waves, the more we learn about a lot of things in physics. Everything from earthquakes to music! Ropes can tell us a lot about how traveling waves work so, in this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini uses ropes to talk about how waves carry energy and how different kinds of waves transmit energy differently.
We learn a lot about our surroundings thanks to sound. But... what is it exactly? Sound, that is. What is sound? And how does it travel? And what is this doppler effect that we've heard so much about? In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini goes over some of the basics (and some of the not-so-basics) of the Physics of Sound.
Music plays a big part in many of our lives. Whether you just like to listen or you enjoy playing an instrument, music is powerful. So what is music? How does it work? What are the physics of music? In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini talks to us about how music functions in terms of waves and how these waves interact with our ears.
Bridges. Bridges don't deal well with temperature changes. In order to combat this, engineers have come up with some workarounds that allow bridges to flex as they expand or contract. In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini talks to us about temperature and the ideal gas law. Also, we figure out how much air is in your car.
How the heck do we map out a planet without oceans? NASA had to figure that out when we sent the Mariner 9 probe to Mars. There's some tricky, yet fascinating science behind all of it! In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini talks to us about sea level, kinetic theory, and phase changes.
Have you ever wondered why we wear clothes? I mean, beyond the obvious. Why does wearing a jacket in the cold keep you warmer? What is happening to all the heat inside your body? In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini talks about the physics of heat!
Have you ever heard of a perpetual motion machine? More to the point, have you ever heard of why perpetual motion machines are impossible? One of the reasons is because of the first law of thermodynamics! In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini talks to us about thermodynamics and entropy. Also, we learn about isovolumetric, isobaric, isothermal, and adiabatic processes. It'll all make sense in a minute!
One of the greatest inventions is the steam engine. But why? What makes it so useful? And how does it work? In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini talks to us about how engines work, what makes them efficient, and why they're pretty cool.
Moving on to our unit on the Physics of Electricity, it's time to talk about charge. What is charge? Is there a positive and negative charge? What do those things mean? In this episode, Shini talks about electrostatic forces, electrical charge, Coulomb's law, and the force between charged particles.
As we learn more about electricity, we have to talk about fields. Electric fields may seem complicated, but they're really fascinating and a crucial part of physics. In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini chats about capacitors, conductors, electric field lines, and how objects with net charge generate electric fields.
So, how do those defibrillators you see on TV actually work? Surprise! Physics can explain! Okay, buckle up, everyone! Today, Shini has the task of breaking down electrical potential energy, electric potential, voltage, capacitors, energy storage, and potential energy... it's a lot!
So, electric current works like a river... kinda... Instead of flowing based on elevation, electric current works a little differently. But it's a good metaphor. In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini talks to us about electric current, voltaic cells, and how we get electric charge.
Batteries power much of your daily life, so today we're going to talk about how they work. We're also explaining how terminal voltage results from the natural internal resistance of every real battery. We'll get into both series and parallel circuit configurations, and how the laws of conservation affect the current and voltage for each.
How does Stranger Things fit in with physics and, more specifically, circuit analysis? I'm glad you asked! In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini walks us through the differences between series and parallel circuits and how that makes Christmas lights work the way they work.
By now you know your way around a basic DC circuit. You’ve learned how to simplify circuits with resistors connected in series and parallel with a single battery source. But a lot of the real-world circuits that you encounter — and will have to describe — are much more complicated. For example, what happens when there are MULTIPLE batteries, connected in ‘parallel’? And what happens when we add ‘capacitors’ into the mix, with resistors in our DC circuits? On this, our last go-round inside a DC circuit, we’ll encounter junctions, loops, and capacitors!
You’re probably familiar with the basics of magnets already: They have a north pole and a south pole. Two of the same pole will repel each other, while opposites attract. Only certain materials, especially those that contain iron, can be magnets. And there’s a magnetic field around Earth, which is why you can use a compass to figure out which way is north. In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini takes us into the world of magnetism!
Hans Christian Oersted had just discovered the connection between electricity and magnetism. Meanwhile, a French physicist named André-Marie Ampère was experimenting with some wires, trying to learn more about the connection between currents and the magnetic fields they create. Ampère would discover one of the most fundamental laws of electromagnetism: what we now call Ampère’s Law.
In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Megneto helps Shini explain what induction is, how it works, and why magnetism is so seemingly complicated.
In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini talks to us about how power gets to our homes. It's kind of amazing when you think about it and much more complicated than it may seem!
We've talked about AC Circuits, but now it's time to delve into the world of AC Circuits (or alternating currents). We’ve talked about how they change voltage, which helps transmit electricity over long distances, but there’s so much more to the physics of AC circuitry.
In the early 1800s, Michael Faraday showed us how a changing magnetic field induces an electromotive force, or emf, resulting in an electric current. He also found that electric fields sometimes act like magnetic fields, and developed equations to calculate the forces exerted by both. In the mid-1800s, Scottish physicist James Maxwell thought something interesting was going on there, too. So he decided to assemble a set of equations that held true for all electromagnetic interactions. In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini talks to us about Maxwell's Equations and how important they are to our understanding of Physics.
LIGHT! Let's talk about it today. Sunlight, moonlight, torchlight, and flashlight. They all come from different places, but they’re the very same thing: light! It’s what makes it possible for us to see the world around us, so it’s worth a close, hard look. For instance, how does light travel? When you flip that switch in the bathroom to brush your teeth, how does light move from the light bulb, to the mirror, and into your eyes?
The way light behaves can seem very counterintuitive, and many physicists would agree with that, but once you figure out light waves it all starts to make more sense! In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini shows us how we know that light exists as a wave and why that's really cool!
Light is everywhere … but it’s not as predictable as you might think. It’s a wave that travels in straight lines, yet it also reflects off of surfaces, refracts through various materials, and generally changes direction all the time! We’ve learned how to bend light to our will, with lenses and mirrors, but it’s time to take a step back and ask what we can LEARN from light.
How do lenses work? How do they form images? Well, in order to understand how optics work, we have to understand the physics of light. In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini talks to us about optical instruments and how they make magnification possible.
So we've all heard of relativity, right? But... what is relativity? And how does it relate to light? And motion? In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini talks to us about perspective, observation, and how relativity is REALLY weird!
What is light? That is something that has plagued scientists for centuries. It behaves like a wave... and a particle... what? Is it both? In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini introduces the idea of quantum mechanics and how it helps us understand light. Also, there's this thing called the ULTRAVIOLET CATASTROPHE!
e=mc2... it's a big deal, right? But why? And what about this grumpy cat in a box and probability? In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini attempts to explain a little more on the topic of quantum mechanics.
It's time for our second to final Physics episode. So, let's talk about Einstein and nuclear physics. What does E=MC2 actually mean? Why is it so useful to us as physicists and humans? In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini sits down to go over the basics of it all.
It's time for the end. At least the end of our first series on physics here at Crash Course. In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini sits down to talk about astrophysics and cosmology. By using what we've learned this year, we can better understand our universe. Join us for this final episode of Crash Course Physics as we head into the final frontier.
Welcome to Crash Course Games! In this series our host Andre Meadows is going to discuss the history and science of games. We’re going to talk about video games of course, but also board games, role playing games, card games, even sports! But before we get ahead of ourselves we are going to look at what a game actually is, who is playing these games, and what they are doing to us. It turns out these answers aren’t as obvious as they would seem, but one thing is definitely clear: games make up a huge portion of most peoples’ lives, and we think that can be a great thing!
From the ancient Egyptian game of Senet to the Aztec’s Patolli, games have been played since the beginning of civilization. Today, your host Andre Meadows is going to take a look at a few of these games, including some that are actually still played today, and talk about how they’ve influenced our modern board and video games and why they have had such staying power.
Over the next few episodes we’re going to talk about the history of video games. Today, we’re going to start with the first re-programmable computers in the 1940’s. Now, these computers were serious tools. They were for codebreaking and calculating artillery tables during World War II - but like most tools we human use, we eventually looked for ways to make them playthings. And over the next three decades the advances of computer technology and the tentative curiosity of many engineers and programmers would inspire a new culture and eventually the first true coin-operated video game in 1971.
Today, Andre is going to talk about the rise of Atari and with it the rise of the video game industry. So if you remember from last episode, we mentioned that the first arcade machine, Galaxy Game, happened to have a coin slot, but this was just the beginning. Nolan Bushnell, often considered the Father of the Video Game Industry, saw the opportunity for the commercialization of video games. Bushnell founded Atari and oversaw the development of its first game - Pong. And then, through some questionably ethical business strategies, Bushnell was able to get his machines into arcades all across the United States. But if this is all Atari had done, we probably wouldn’t be dedicating an entire episode to it. Atari also played a major role in getting video games into the home with the Atari 2600 console. Video games were becoming a part of peoples’ everyday lives and they were becoming a part of popular culture. But Atari wasn’t the only video game company in the 1970s, it wasn’t even the first. So we’re going talk about some of the other companies that took part in the war for a place in our living rooms next week!
So last week Andre talked about Atari’s role in the rise of the video game industry, but Atari wasn’t the only major player in the 1970s. So we’re going to step back a few years and first talk about Ralph Baer who designed the first video game console - the Magnavox Odyssey. The Odyssey would go on to inspire the industry including of course Atari but also Mattel and many others. This was the start of the first console wars and with it we see huge improvements in graphics, gameplay, and of course better storytelling. But we’ll also see a flooding of the market which will have a cost, but we’ll get to that next week.
So the 1980s was the golden age of arcade games. Games like Donkey Kong, Pac- Man, Space Invaders, and Centipede had become a cultural phenomenon. These games had expanded the gamer demographic and even encouraged the rise of competitive gaming. There were also many innovations in the home console and computer market with deeper and longer games like Pitfall and Castle Wolfenstein. Suddenly, you could play a game for much longer than your single quarter could get you on an arcade machine. So the video game industry was booming, but it had also become a sort of Wild West and everyone from Purina to Quaker wanted to get into the action. With these new creators came a glut of choices, and to remain competitive Atari began rushing games to market resulting in some truly terrible games. Gamers started to lose confidence in the industry and then in 1983 the gaming industry in the United States crashed.
So we ended the last episode at the North American Video Game Crash of 1983, and even though the video game market had collapsed in the United States, demand for video games remained strong in Europe and Asia. Nintendo of Japan, originally a playing card company, which had seen some success in arcades, saw this as an opportunity to (tentatively) introduce its own console to the U.S. - the Nintendo Entertainment System or NES. The NES saw a number of significant technological and gameplay improvements but it was Nintendo’s approach to game development that changed the industry. Nintendo’s defined a new set of standards for video game quality by requiring contracts with all 3rd party developers. Nintendo even used special technology within the console that forced developers to get approval, marketed as a Seal of Quality, for their games to work on the console. And this strategy worked. Nintendo reinvigorated the North American market and became synonymous with quality games. But it wouldn’t be the only new player in the U.S. for long.
So we ended the last episode nearing the close of the 1980s and Nintendo had become the dominant player in the home console market, but Sega, originally a slot machine game company during World War 2, was looking to get its own console into players’ homes. Sega’s first console wouldn't see much success, but with the introduction of Sonic the Hedgehog on the technologically superior Sega Genesis, Sega established itself as the new best thing in video games. This would be the start of a new round of console wars and the era that brought us more mature games including fighting games, 1st person shooters, and lots of sports games. This maturation of games also led us to the software ratings system by the ESRB. But Sega and Nintendo would not be the alone in the market for long, next week we’re going to talk about the entrance of technology monolith Sony and their introduction of the Playstation.
So by the mid-90s the video game industry was once again booming and this attracted the attention of the Japanese electronics giant Sony. In 1994, Sony introduced their Playstation console which successfully coupled cutting edge technologies with some great games. But Nintendo and Sega weren’t just sitting around. In the 90’s we would see the introduction of the Sega Saturn and eventually the Sega Dreamcast as well as Nintendo’s immensely popular Nintendo 64. And with this new hardware came a new era of immersive games. Games were going 3D, and with the introduction of CD’s, the size of games increased dramatically allowing for much longer and complex storytelling. Local multi-player and split screen games also became popular during this time as consoles such like Nintendo 64 were now powerful enough to support these kinds of social games. And games on the PC were becoming more immersive as first person shooters began to flourish on the platform.
Today, we wrap up our discussion of the console wars by taking a look at Microsoft’s Xbox which was announced in 2001. The early 2000s saw a lot of innovation in hardware and games and we’ll cover some of that, but one significant change that would heavily influence the industry was actually pioneered by that doomed Sega Dreamcast was Internet connectivity. Sony’s Playstation 2, released in 2000, and Nintendo’s GameCube, released in 2001, would also include ways to get online, but Xbox’s implementation of a fully unified network that allowed gamers to compete across consoles was the first of its kind. Now, PCs gamers had been playing across networks, particularly within the popular MMORPG genre, since the mid 90s and we’ll spend a couple episodes taking a closer look at the PC's influence, but today we’re going to focus specifically on how the Internet on consoles helped lead to the prevalence of the competitive gaming and online gaming communities we see today.
Today, we’re moving on from game consoles to talk about a bigger shift that was happening in the gaming industry. In the mid 2000s, we saw a proliferation of Internet accessible devices and with them gaming would expand to a new audience. We’re going to talk about two types of games that are found on these devices, social and mobile games, which together we’ll call casual games. Now, the definitions of these terms can get a little muddy, as they’re continuously evolving, but largely what was seen in the industry was a widespread adoption of asynchronous, socially driven gameplay. These changes spurred the industry to change its profit model, and by 2015, these casual games now make up nearly half of all video game industry revenue. And with their easier mechanics, lower price point, and social component these casual games helped integrate gaming into our daily lives like never before.
So we ended the last episode with casual gaming and a more connected gaming community, but these connected communities started much before smartphones and Facebook. Today, we’re going to talk about MMORPGs - or Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. These games, usually found on PCs, are often nicknamed “life-games” as they have no definitive ending. MMORPGs trace their histories back to early text-based games that were inspired by the the real life RPG, Dungeons and Dragons, which we’ll talk about in a future episode. And with the creation of the Internet, these games have slowly evolved to support shared gaming communities that have exploded in popularity and variety with games like EVE Online, World of Warcraft, and the upcoming No Man’s Sky. But these games and their communities aren’t just interesting to players, they’re also informing us about how civilizations and their economies work. And the economies in these games are actual economies that have real-world monetary value. MMORPGs represent a larger shift that was happening in the gaming community towards livable game worlds as players like never before were becoming a part of the games they were playing.
Today, we’re going to step away from video games and take a closer look at a game type that has been with us for over a millennium - card games. Since Tang Dynasty China, cards have proven to have quite the staying power spawning a countless variety of games as well largely influencing gaming culture, particularly in games like Poker within the gambling industry and also more recently in trading card game communities around games like Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon TCG, and Magic: The Gathering.
Today, we’re going to talk about board games, but instead of trying to trace their histories, which we’ve already covered a bit of in ep2 on ancient games, we’re going to look really closely at just two board games - Monopoly and The Settlers of Catan. These two games have been played by millions, and we’ll talk about why they’re so popular (and controversial), but more importantly these two games have helped define two approaches to board game design: the American style board game and the European style board game. Now these two different “styles” of board games are mostly just over-generalizations about board game mechanics and there’s a ton of overlap, but with the recent resurgence in board game popularity they help us more clearly define two discrete time periods in board game popularity and discuss how these approaches have been defined by the times.
Chess, Number Munchers, The Oregon Trail! Today, we’re going to talk about gaming’s role in education. Now technically all games have an educational component, because games are defined by their rules and players have to learn those rules to participate. But of course there is a subset of games designed to teach players skills useful within but but also outside game worlds. And these kinds of games have actually been around for thousands of years! So today we’re going to focus a few educational game successes, talk about how they got there, and what they have done for us in the process.
So we’ve talked a lot about what makes games so great in this series, but we haven’t really addressed the big question: why do we play games anyway? And well, the answer is pretty complicated, especially when you consider that some people really like card games, others may only like playing baseball, and others may only like watching Minecraft Let’s Play videos But there are reasons behind these preferences and we’re going to talk about them, what these preferences say about ourselves, and look at how these preferences inform the games we play.
Today, John Green is going to be your substitute teacher as we dive into the world of sports! Now “sports” is a pretty broad genre of game, we probably couldn’t even cover them in an entire series, but today we’re going to do our best to look at the origins of sports as they trace their histories back the Olympics (and even a little earlier), and look at how the rise of national pride and gaming communities has led us to the cultural behemoth of the FIFA World Cup. It’s a lot to cover, but we’re do our best to answer the big question for you non-sports-loving-gamers out there along the way: why do we love sports anyway?
Today, we’re going to explore the world of role-playing games. Role-playing games are different than most, because they’re technically a form of interactive storytelling with one player managing the game as the game master (or dungeon master), and all of players assuming the roles of their characters. These games started within the genre of wargaming, but reached widespread popularity relatively recently in the 1970s and 80s with its incredibly popular fantasy-based entry Dungeons & Dragons. But with this rise in popularity also came controversy. The United States during this time saw RPGs as an attack on morality and religion and even claimed that these games lured its players into Satanism and black magic.
Good game design is essential for a positive player experience whether it’s a board games, video game, or even dice game. So today, we’re going to take some time to give you an introductory overview of the process of creating a game, and talk about some of the popular design strategies game creators take to ensure a fun experience for players. Now these are all theories, and there are plenty of games that break the common “rules” of good game design, but hopefully it’ll give you a better sense of how and why we love certain games so much.
Today, we're FINALLY going to talk about PC Gaming. So the personal computer is the precursor to the console, but it's not quite accurate to say that it just led to the console. PCs and the video games created on them have and continue to influence the rest of the video game industry. The PC was the first to bring gamers a number of experiences from adventures in Myst, to first person shooters in Wolfenstein 3D, and of course real-time strategy games with Dune II. And the PC platform continues to grow and thrive with genres that are best and sometimes only possible on this platform.
Today, we’re going to take a look at a seemingly cutting-edge technology that has actually been around for decades - virtual reality. Virtual reality devices have been introduced multiple times in the video game era, but they never seem to stick. But why is that? To try to answer this question we’re going to trace the origins of virtual reality all the way from panoramic paintings in 12th century China to the present and hopefully it will better inform what the future holds for this gaming technology.
Today we’re going to talk about open world games. Open world games are different than most video games because although they often have goals and tasks, they usually encourage what is known as “emergent stories.” These are stories that weren’t planned by the game creators, but players create within the constructs of the game. And this leads to a completely different type of gameplay encouraging players to explore as well as socialize with others. Now, these types of games have been around for a while, but within the past couple decades they’ve seen incredible growth with games like Minecraft, Skyrim, and Grand Theft Auto, and this isn’t by accident - open world game also mirror the growth of the hardware that supports them.
Today, we’re going to talk about the gaming devices that combine the screen, speakers, controls, and computer into one neat little package - that’s right we’re talking about handheld game consoles. Handhelds have actually been around since the mid 1970s, and they’ve made some incredible strides within the past few decades from blinking lights to glasses free 3d and even console-equivalent graphics. But even with their early successes their future isn’t so certain. The early market saw the rise of Nintendo, Sony, and Sega, but has since been whittled down to just to Nintendo. And although the Game Boy, and Nintendo DS handhelds have sold incredibly well, mobile gaming seems to be eating away at Nintendo’s market.
Today we’re going to talk about controllers. Controllers are incredibly important in the gaming experience because they are how we communicate actions within a game and often play a significant role in why we like or dislike certain games. And over the years they have seen some huge improvements mostly brought on by the creation of more complex and immersive video games. Controller design is so important in fact that some of the largest game console manufacturers spend hundreds of millions of dollars each cycle trying to update and refine their designs. But interestingly, the same can’t quite be said for one of the biggest gaming platforms right now - so we’ll talk about that too.
Today we're going to talk about game shows! Game shows have a long history going all the way back to the 1920s on the radio and then proliferating across media to the massive pop culture icons they are today. And they're different from most game genres we've discussed in this series because chances are most of us won't participate in shows like Jeopardy!, American Idol, or The Price is Right. Even so, many us are innately familiar with them and actively watch them, much like sports. So today we're going to talk about the winding history game shows, the event that nearly ended the genre altogether, and of course take closer look at why exactly they've become so popular.
Today we’re going to talk about LARPs or live action role-playing games. Larping tends to conjure up the image of a bunch of nerds hitting each other with foam weapons but it’s much more than that. LARPs merge performance, community, and art in a way that allows players to experience different lives within the safe confines of a game. And it isn’t all just medieval battles either, there are LARPs for just about any kind of game scenario you could imagine, and even some that you might not - like those designed to help players better understand the real-world struggles of oppressed populations. And LARPs aren’t just some niche game, LARPs are played in over 80 countries, and are growing rapidly in participation all over the world.
Today we’re going to talk about gambling. Now, gambling is interesting because it could be argued that gambling doesn’t even have anything to do with games. It’s usually about making money after all - which makes it much closer to work. But gambling definitely has a gaming component from its uncertain outcomes to rules of play, and gambling has had a huge impact on the more traditional games we see today. So let’s take a look at gambling’s not-so-certain history all the way from antiquity to the present, and maybe along the way we’ll try to figure out why we like playing these “games” so much anyway.
Today we’re going to do something a little bit different and take everything we’ve learned so far and apply it to a case study on (arguably) the biggest game franchise in the world: Pokémon. Now Pokémon, like a select few other games we’ve discussed in this series has ingrained itself into our pop culture, but the way Pokémon has done this, and the extent of its reach into almost every genre of gaming is what makes it such a phenomenon. But interestingly, Pokémon’s success wasn’t only by chance.
Welcome to the FINAL LEVEL of Crash Course Games! We thought it made the most sense to sign off this series by taking a look towards the future because you know... boss battles are supposed to be tough. Now we don’t know the future obviously, so this episode is going to be a bit more speculative than we’re used to, but we’re going to do our best to recap what we’ve learned throughout this series and try to use that information to make inferences about what is to come. This series has been a joy to make by everyone involved and we collectively wanted to say thank you so much for playing along.
In which John Green teaches you about Homer's Odyssey. If it was Homer's If Homer was even real. Anyway, that stuff doesn't really matter. John teaches you the classic, by which I mean classical, epic poem, the Odyssey. The Journey of Odysseus as he made his way home after the conclusion of the Trojan War is the stuff of legend. Literally. John will teach you about the double standard in Greek culture, Odysseus as jerk/hero, ancient PTSD, and cycles of violence. Also, there are no yogurt jokes. So think of that as a gift.
In which John Green teaches you about one of the least family-friendly family dramas in the history of family dramas, Oedipus Rex. Sophocles' most famous play sees its main character, who seems like he's got it all together, find out that he's killed his father, married his mother, had a bunch of incest children, and brought a plague down on his adopted hometown. He doesn't take this news well. John touches on all the classic Oedipus themes, including hamartia, fate, and the wrath of the gods, and even gets into some Freud, although Oedipus was notably not a sufferer of an Oedipus complex. In any case get ready for mystery, incest, bird entrails, and self-inflicted blindness. Very dramatic.
In which John Green teaches you about Hamlet, William Shakespeare's longest and most-performed play. People love Hamlet. The play that is, not necessarily the character. Hamlet is a Tragedy with a capital T (I guess I don't have to point that out since you can see clearly in the text that the T was capitalized). By Tragedy, I mean virtually everyone dies at the end. John will talk a little bit about the history of the play and the different versions of it that have appeared in the centuries since it was written. You'll also learn about some of the big themes in the play, get a brief plot overview, and the all-important connections between Prince Hamlet and Simba, the Lion King. Seriously though, The Lion King is totally just a Hamlet musical with animals instead of people.
In which John Green teaches you MORE about Bill Shakespeare's Hamlet. John talks about gender roles in Hamlet, and what kind of power and agency Ophelia and Gertrude had, if they had any at all (spoiler alert: we think they did). You'll also learn about regicide, Ophelia's flowers, and Hamlet's potential motivations. Also, Oedipus comes up again, but we don't buy it.
In which John Green teaches you about Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein. Sure, you know Frankenstein the cultural phenomenon, but how much do you know about the novel that started it all? You'll learn about the Romantic movement in English lit, of which Frankenstein is a GREAT example, and you'll learn that Frankenstein might just be the first SciFi novel. Once again, literature comes down to just what it means to be human. John will review the plot, take you through a couple of different critical readings of the novel, and will discuss the final disposition of Percy Shelley's heart.
In which John Green continues to teach you about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. You'll learn about romantic vs Romantic, the latter of which is a literary movement. John will also look at a few different critical readings of Frankenstein, and you'll learn about Victor's motivations. We'll also look a little bit at the moral limitations of science, if there are any.
In which John Green teaches you about Charlotte Brontë's classic coming of age novel, Jane Eyre. Look, we don't like to make judgment values here, but Jane Eyre is awesome. By which we mean the book is great, and the character is amazing. When Jane Eyre was published in 1847, it was a huge hit. It really hit the controversial balance beautifully, being edgy enough to make news, but still mainstream enough to be widely popular. It was sort of like the Fight Club of its day, but not quite as testosterone-fueled. You'll learn a little about the story, learn about Jane as a feminist heroine, and even get some critical analysis on how Bertha might just be a dark mirror that acts out Jane's emotional reactions.
In which John Green teaches you about Chinua Achebe's 1958 novel, Things Fall Apart. You'll learn about Igboland, a region in modern-day Nigeria, prior to the arrival of the British Empire. Achebe tells the story of Okonkwo, an Igbo villager who has worked his way up from life as a sharecropped and become a respected leader in his community. Okonkwo has a tragic fall and is exiled. And then the trouble starts. British missionaries arrive and change everything. Things Fall Apart has a lot to say about colonization and even something to say about decolonization.
In which John Green concludes teaching you about Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. You'll learn about the historical contexts of Things Fall Apart, including 19th-century colonization and 20th-century decolonization. We're going to learn a little bit about Achebe's childhood between two cultures, cover Okonkwo's sad, sad end, and even learn a little about The Babysitters Club.
In which John Green teaches you about Harper Lee's famous novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. John will cover a bit about Harper Lee's personal life, (seeing as this novel has some autobiographical elements) and her long association with Truman Capote, who figures as a character in the book. You'll get an overview of the plot, and we'll talk a bit about Mockingbird as an example of bildungsroman (again) and Southern Gothic, and look into the novel as a commentary on the racism and patriarchy of the Alabama in which Harper Lee grew up.
In which John Green teaches you MORE about To Kill a Mockingbird. In this installment, John teaches you about race, class, and gender in the American south, as seen through the eyes of Scout and Harper Lee. John will talk about how Scout learns about these aspects of the social order as she interacts with the people of the town, learns from Calpurnia, watches the trial of Tom Robinson, and endures the attack of Bob Ewell. You'll also learn a little bit about Demi Moore and Mila Kunis, and John will ask just who is the Mockingbird, anyway? Not that he'll answer that, but he'll ask it.
In which John Green teaches you about Kurt Vonnegut's most famous novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. Vonnegut wrote the book in the Vietnam era, and it closely mirrors his personal experiences in World War II, as long as you throw out the time travel and aliens and porn stars and stuff. Slaughterhouse-Five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, a World War II veteran who was a prisoner of war, survived the Battle of the Bulge and the fire-bombing of Dresden, goes home after the war, and has trouble adapting to civilian life (this is the part that's like Vonnegut's own experience). Billy Pilgrim has flashbacks to the war that he interprets as being "unstuck in time." He believes he's been abducted by aliens, and pretty much loses it. You'll learn a little about Vonnegut's life, quite a bit about Dresden, and probably more than you'd like about barbershop quartets as a metaphor for post-traumatic stress.
In which John Green continues to teach you about Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. (WARNING: When Slaughterhouse-Five was published, some of the crude language in the book caused controversy. We quote one mildly controversial line in this video. If you're mature enough to read this book, you're likely mature enough to tolerate this quote, but we're obliged to warn you about it.) Anyway, this week, John is going to talk about Slaughterhouse-Five's status as an anti-war novel, and what exactly anti-war novels are good for. He'll also get into the idea of free will, and to what degree Billy Pilgrim's time travel and abduction by aliens were hallucinations induced by posttraumatic stress disorder. John will even give you an interpretation of why the Tralfamadorians look like toilet plungers. Hint: it has to do with plunging metaphorical toilets.
In which John Green teaches you about Beloved by Toni Morrison. I'll warn you upfront, this book is something of a downer. That's because it deals with subjects like slavery, the death of a child, a potential haunting, and a bunch of other sad stuff. John will talk about Beloved in relation to slavery, and how that terrible institution affected individuals, families, and all of American culture in the years surrounding the Civil War. We will also not be getting into whether or not Beloved was a ghost because it really has no bearing on what the book has to say. Also, as usual, spoilers abound, so we recommend you read the book before you watch this video!
In which John Green teaches you about the poetry of Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes was a poet and playwright in the first half of the 20th century, and he was involved in the Harlem Renaissance, which was a cultural movement among African Americans of the time that produced all kinds of great works in literature, poetry, painting, sculpture, music, and other areas. The Harlem Renaissance mainly happened in Harlem, the traditionally black neighborhood in upper Manhattan in New York City. Langston Hughes was primarily known as a poet, but he was involved deeply in the movement itself as well. John will teach you a bit about Hughes's background, and he'll examine a few of his best-known poems.
In which John Green teaches you about the poetry of Sylvia Plath. When a lot of people think about Sylvia Plath, they think about her struggles with mental illness and her eventual suicide. Her actual work can get lost in the shuffle a bit, so this video really tries to focus on the poetry. You'll learn about Sylvia Plath's role as a feminist poet, and you'll also learn about her extraordinary ability to recreate the experiences of real life in a beautiful and relatable way.
Hello, world! Welcome to Crash Course Computer Science! So today, we’re going to take a look at computing’s origins, because even though our digital computers are relatively new, the need for computation is not. Since the start of civilization itself, humans have had an increasing need for special devices to help manage laborious tasks, and as the scale of society continued to grow, these computational devices began to play a crucial role in amplifying our mental abilities. From the abacus and astrolabe to the difference engine and tabulating machine, we’ve come a long way to satisfying this increasing need, and in the process completely transformed commerce, government, and daily life.
So we ended last episode at the start of the 20th century with special purpose computing devices such as Herman Hollerith’s tabulating machines. But as the scale of human civilization continued to grow as did the demand for more sophisticated and powerful devices. Soon these cabinet-sized electro-mechanical computers would grow into room-sized behemoths that were prone to errors. But is was these computers that would help usher in a new era of computation - electronic computing.
Today, Carrie Anne is going to take a look at how those transistors we talked about last episode can be used to perform complex actions. With the just two states, on and off, the flow of electricity can be used to perform a number of logical operations, which are guided by a branch of mathematics called Boolean Algebra. We’re going to focus on three fundamental operations - NOT, AND, and OR - and show how they were created in a series of really useful circuits. And its these simple electrical circuits that lay the groundwork for our much more complex machines.
Today, we’re going to look at how computers use a stream of 1s and 0s to represent all of our data - from our text messages and photos to music and web pages. We’re going to focus on how these binary values are used to represent numbers and letters and discuss how our need to perform operations on more extensive and more complex matters brought us from our 8-bit video games to beautiful Instagram photos, and from unreadable garbled text in our emails to a universal language encoding scheme.
Today we're going to talk about a fundamental part of all modern computers. The thing that basically everything else uses - the Arithmetic and Logic Unit (or the ALU). The ALU may not have to most exciting name, but it is the mathematical brain of a computer and is responsible for all the calculations your computer does! And it's actually not that complicated. So today we're going to use the binary and logic gates we learned in previous episodes to build one from scratch, and then we'll use our newly minted ALU when we construct the heart of a computer, the CPU, in episode 7.
Take the 2017 PBS Digital Studios Survey: http://surveymonkey.com/r/pbsds2017. Today we’re going to create memory! Using the basic logic gates we discussed in episode 3 we can build a circuit that stores a single bit of information, and then through some clever scaling (and of course many new levels of abstraction) we’ll show you how we can construct the modern random-access memory, or RAM, found in our computers today. RAM is the working memory of a computer. It holds the information that is being executed by the computer and as such is a crucial component for a computer to operate. Next week we’ll use this RAM, and the ALU we made last episode, to help us construct our CPU - the heart of a computer.
Today we’re going to build the ticking heart of every computer - the Central Processing Unit or CPU. The CPU’s job is to execute the programs we know and love - you know like GTA V, Slack... and Power Point. To make our CPU we’ll bring in our ALU and RAM we made in the previous two episodes and then with the help of Carrie Anne’s wonderful dictation (slowly) step through some clock cycles. WARNING: this is probably the most complicated episode in this series, we watched this a few times over ourselves, but don't worry at about .03Hz we think you can keep up.
Today we’re going to take our first baby steps from hardware into software! Using that CPU we built last episode we’re going to run some instructions and walk you through how a program operates on the machine level. We'll show you how different programs can be used to perform different tasks, and how software can unlock new capabilities that aren't built into the hardware. This episode, like the last is pretty complicated, but don’t worry - as we move forward into programming the idea of opcodes, addresses, and registers at this machine level will be abstracted away like many of the concepts in this series.
So now that we’ve built and programmed our very own CPU, we’re going to take a step back and look at how CPU speeds have rapidly increased from just a few cycles per second to gigahertz! Some of that improvement, of course, has come from faster and more efficient transistors, but a number hardware designs have been implemented to boost performance. And you’ve probably heard or read about a lot of these - they’re the buzz words attached to just about every new CPU release - terms like instruction pipelining, cache, FLOPS, superscalar, branch prediction, multi-core processors, and even super computers! These designs are pretty complicated, but the fundamental concepts behind them are not. So bear with us as we introduce a lot of new terminology including what might just be the best computer science term of all time: the dirty bit. Let us explain.
Since Joseph Marie Jacquard’s textile loom in 1801, there has been a demonstrated need to give our machines instructions. In the last few episodes, our instructions were already in our computer’s memory, but we need to talk about how they got there - this is the heart of programming. Today, we’re going to look at the history of programming and the innovations that brought us from punch cards and punch paper tape to plugboards and consoles of switches. These technologies will bring us to the mid 1970s and the start of home computing, but they had limitations, and what was really needed was an easier and more accessible way to write programs - programming languages. Which we’ll get to next week.
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Today, Carrie Anne is going to start our overview of the fundamental building blocks of programming languages. We’ll start by creating small programs for our very own video game to show how statements and functions work. We aren’t going to code in a specific language, but we’ll show you how conditional statements like IF and ELSE statements, WHILE loops, and FOR loops control the flow of programs in nearly all languages, and then we’ll finish by packaging up these instructions into functions that can be called by our game to perform more and more complex actions.
Algorithms are the sets of steps necessary to complete computation - they are at the heart of what our devices actually do. And this isn’t a new concept. Since the development of math itself algorithms have been needed to help us complete tasks more efficiently, but today we’re going to take a look a couple modern computing problems like sorting and graph search, and show how we’ve made them more efficient so you can more easily find cheap airfare or map directions to Winterfell... or like a restaurant or something.
Today we’re going to talk about on how we organize the data we use on our devices. You might remember last episode we walked through some sorting algorithms, but skipped over how the information actually got there in the first place! And it is this ability to store and access information in a structured and meaningful way that is crucial to programming. From strings, pointers, and nodes, to heaps, trees, and stacks get ready for an ARRAY of new terminology and concepts.
Today we’re going to take a step back from programming and discuss the person who formulated many of the theoretical concepts that underlie modern computation - the father of computer science himself: Alan Turing. Now normally we try to avoid “Great Man" history in Crash Course because truthfully all milestones in humanity are much more complex than just an individual or through a single lens - but for Turing we are going to make an exception. From his theoretical Turing Machine and work on the Bombe to break Nazi Enigma codes during World War II, to his contributions in the field of Artificial Intelligence (before it was even called that), Alan Turing helped inspire the first generation of computer scientists - despite a life tragically cut short.
Today, we’re going to talk about how HUGE programs with millions of lines of code like Microsoft Office are built. Programs like these are way too complicated for a single person, but instead require teams of programmers using the tools and best practices that form the discipline of Software Engineering. We'll talk about how large programs are typically broken up into into function units that are nested into objects known as Object Oriented Programming, as well as how programmers write and debug their code efficiently, document and share their code with others, and also how code repositories are used to allow programmers to make changes while mitigating risk.
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Today we’re going to look at how our computers read and interpret computer files. We’ll talk about how some popular file formats like txt, wave, and bitmap are encoded and decoded giving us pretty pictures and lifelike recordings from just strings of 1’s and 0’s, and we’ll discuss how our computers are able to keep all this data organized and readily accessible to users. You’ll notice in this episode that we’re starting to talk more about computer users, not programmers, foreshadowing where the series will be going in a few episodes.
Get your first two months of CuriosityStream free by going to http://curiositystream.com/crashcourse and using the promo code “crashcourse”. So last episode we talked about some basic file formats, but what we didn’t talk about is compression. Often files are way too large to be easily stored on hard drives or transferred over the Internet - the solution, unsurprisingly, is to make them smaller. Today, we’re going to talk about lossless compression, which will give you the exact same thing when reassembled, as well as lossy compression, which uses the limitations of human perception to remove less important data. From listening to music and sharing photos, to talking on the phone and even streaming this video right now the ways we use the Internet and our computing devices just wouldn’t be possible without the help of compression.
Today, we are going to start our discussion on user experience. We've talked a lot in this series about how computers move data around within the computer, but not so much about our role in the process. So today, we're going to look at our earliest form of interaction through keyboards. We'll talk about how the keyboard got its qwerty layout, and then we'll track its evolution in electronic typewriters, and eventually terminals with screens. We are going to focus specifically on text interaction through command line interfaces, and next week we'll take a look at graphics.
Today we begin our discussion of computer graphics. So we ended last episode with the proliferation of command line (or text) interfaces, which sometimes used screens, but typically electronic typewriters or teletypes onto paper. But by the early 1960s a number of technologies were introduced to make screens much more useful from cathode ray tubes and graphics cards to ASCII art and light pens. This era would mark a turning point in computing - computers were no longer just number crunching machines, but potential assistants interactively augmenting human tasks. This was the dawn of graphical user interfaces which we’ll cover more in a few episodes.
Today we’re going to step back from hardware and software, and take a closer look at how the backdrop of the cold war and space race and the rise of consumerism and globalization brought us from huge, expensive codebreaking machines in the 1940s to affordable handhelds and personal computers in the 1970s. This is an era that saw huge government funded projects - like the race to the moon. And afterward, a shift towards the individual consumer, commoditization of components, and the rise of the Japanese electronics industry.
Today we're going to talk about the birth of personal computing. Up until the early 1970s components were just too expensive, or underpowered, for making a useful computer for an individual, but this would begin to change with the introduction of the Altair 8800 in 1975. In the years that follow, we'll see the founding of Microsoft and Apple and the creation of the 1977 Trinity: The Apple II, Tandy TRS-80, and Commodore PET 2001. These new consumer oriented computers would become a huge hit, but arguably the biggest success of the era came with the release of the IBM PC in 1981. IBM completely changed the industry as its "IBM compatible" open architecture consolidated most of the industry except for, notably, Apple. Apple chose a closed architecture forming the basis of the Mac Vs PC debate that rages today. But in 1984, when Apple was losing marketshare fast it looked for a way to offer a new user experience like none other - which we'll discuss next week.
Today, we're going to discuss the critical role graphical user interfaces, or GUIs played in the adoption of computers. Before the mid 1980's the most common way people could interact with their devices was through command line interfaces, which though efficient, aren't really designed for casual users. This all changed with the introduction of the Macintosh by Apple in 1984. It was the first mainstream computer to use a GUI, standing on the shoulder of nearly two decades of innovation including work from the father of the GUI himself, Douglas Englebart, and some amazing breakthroughs at Xerox Parc.
Today we’re going to discuss how 3D graphics are created and then rendered for a 2D screen. From polygon count and meshes, to lighting and texturing, there are a lot of considerations in building the 3D objects we see in our movies and video games, but then displaying these 3D objects of a 2D surface adds an additional number of challenges. So we’ll talk about some of the reasons you see occasional glitches in your video games as well as the reason a dedicated graphics processing unit, or GPU, was needed to meet the increasing demand for more and more complex graphics.
Today we start a three episode arc on the rise of a global telecommunications network that changed the world forever. We’re going to begin with computer networks, and how they grew from small groups of connected computers on LAN networks to eventually larger worldwide networks like the ARPANET and even the Internet we know today. We'll also discuss how many technologies like Ethernet, MAC addresses, IP Addresses, packet switching, network switches, and TCP/IP were implemented to new problems as our computers became ever-increasingly connected. Next week we’ll talk about the Internet, and the week after the World Wide Web!
Today, we're going to talk about how the Internet works. Specifically, how that stream of characters you punch into your browser's address bar, like "youtube.com", return this very website. Just to clarify we're talking in a broader sense about that massive network of networks connecting millions of computers together, not just the World Wide Web, which is a portion of the Internet, and our topic for next week. Today, we're going to focus on how data is passed back and forth - how a domain name is registered by the Domain Name System, and of course how the data requested or sent gets to the right person in little packets following standard Internet Protocol, or IP. We'll also discuss two different approaches to transferring this data: Transmission Control Protocol, or TCP, when we need to be certain no information is lost, and User Datagram Protocol, or UDP, for those time sensitive applications - because nobody wants an email with missing text, but they also don't want to get lag-fragged in their favorite first person shooter.
Today we’re going to discuss the World Wide Web - not to be confused with the Internet, which is the underlying plumbing for the web as well as other networks. The World Wide Web is built on the foundation of simply linking pages to other pages with hyperlinks, but it is this massive interconnectedness that makes it so powerful. But before the web could become a thing, Tim Berners-Lee would need to invent the web browser at CERN, and search engines would need to be created to navigate these massive directories of information. By the mid 1990’s we will see the rise of Yahoo and Google and monolithic websites like Ebay and Amazon, forming the web we know today. But before we end our unit on the Internet we want to take a moment to discuss the implications of Net Neutrality, and its potential to shape the Internet's future.
Cybersecurity is a set of techniques to protect the secrecy, integrity, and availability of computer systems and data against threats. In today’s episode, we’re going to unpack these three goals and talk through some strategies we use like passwords, biometrics, and access privileges to keep our information as secure, but also as accessible as possible. From massive Denial of Service, or DDos attacks, to malware and brute force password cracking there are a lot of ways for hackers to gain access to your data, so we’ll also discuss some strategies like creating strong passwords, and using 2-factor authentication, to keep your information safe.
Today we're going to talk about hackers and their strategies for breaking into computer systems. Now, not all hackers are are malicious cybercriminals intent on stealing your data (these people are known as Black Hats). There are also White Hats who hunt for bugs, close security holes, and perform security evaluations for companies. And there are a lot of different motivations for hackers—sometimes just amusement or curiosity, sometimes for money, and sometimes to promote social or political goals. Regardless, we're not going to teach you how to become a hacker in this episode but we are going to walk you through some of the strategies hackers use to gain access to your devices, so you can be better prepared to keep your data safe.
Today we’re going to talk about how to keep information secret, and this isn’t a new goal. From as early as Julius Caesar’s Caesar cipher to Mary, Queen of Scots, encrypted messages to kill Queen Elizabeth in 1587, theres has long been a need to encrypt and decrypt private correspondence. This proved especially critical during World War II as Allan Turing and his team at Bletchley Park attempted to decrypt messages from Nazi Enigma machines, and this need has only grown as more and more information sensitive tasks are completed on our computers. So today, we’re going to walk you through some common encryption techniques such as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange, and RSA which are employed to keep your information safe, private, and secure.
So we've talked a lot in this series about how computers fetch and display data, but how do they make decisions on this data? From spam filters and self-driving cars, to cutting edge medical diagnosis and real-time language translation, there has been an increasing need for our computers to learn from data and apply that knowledge to make predictions and decisions. This is the heart of machine learning which sits inside the more ambitious goal of artificial intelligence. We may be a long way from self-aware computers that think just like us, but with advancements in deep learning and artificial neural networks our computers are becoming more powerful than ever.
Today we’re going to talk about how computers see. We’ve long known that our digital cameras and smartphones can take incredibly detailed images, but taking pictures is not quite the same thing. For the past half-century, computer scientists have been working to help our computing devices understand the imagery they capture, leading to advancements everywhere, from tracking hands and whole bodies, biometrics to unlock our phones, and eventually giving autonomous cars the ability to understand their surroundings.
Today we’re going to talk about how computers understand speech and speak themselves. As computers play an increasing role in our daily lives there has been an growing demand for voice user interfaces, but speech is also terribly complicated. Vocabularies are diverse, sentence structures can often dictate the meaning of certain words, and computers also have to deal with accents, mispronunciations, and many common linguistic faux pas. The field of Natural Language Processing, or NLP, attempts to solve these problems, with a number of techniques we’ll discuss today. And even though our virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, Google Home, Bixby, and Cortana have come a long way from the first speech processing and synthesis models, there is still much room for improvement.
Today we're going to talk about robots! Robots are often thought as a technology of the future, but they're already here by the millions in the workplace, our homes, and pretty soon on the roads. We'll discuss the origins of robotics to its proliferation, and even look at some common control designs that were implemented to make them more useful in the workplace. Robots are often thought of as a menace or danger to society, and although there definitely is the propensity for malicious uses, robots also have the potential to drastically improve the world.
We’ve spent most of this series talking about computers. Which makes sense - this is Crash Course COMPUTER SCIENCE after all. But at their core computers are tools employed by humans and humans are pretty complicated. So today, we’re going to discuss some psychological considerations in building computers like how to make them easier for humans to use, the uncanny valley problem when humanoid robots gets more and more humanlike, and strategies to make our devices work better with us by incorporating our emotions and even altering our gaze. Oh, and we'll talk about Carrie Anne's all time favorite user interface design principle - knurling.
Today we’re going to go a little meta and talk about how computer science can support learning with educational technology. We here at Crash Course are big fans of interactive in-class learning and hands-on experiences, but we also believe in the additive power of educational technology inside and outside the classroom from the Internet itself and Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs to AI driven intelligent tutoring systems and virtual reality.
In our SERIES FINALE of Crash Course Computer Science we take a look towards the future! In the past 70 years electronic computing has fundamentally changed how we live our lives, and we believe it’s just getting started. From ubiquitous computing, artificial intelligence, and self-driving cars to brain computer interfaces, wearable computers, and maybe even the singularity there is so much amazing potential on the horizon. Of course there is also room for peril with the rise of artificial intelligence and more immediate displacement of much of the workforce through automation. It’s tough to predict how it will all shake out, but it’s our hope that this series has inspired you to take part in shaping that future. Thank you so much for watching.
Welcome to Crash Course World Mythology, our latest adventure (and this series may be literally adventurous) in education. Over the next 40 episodes or so, we and Mike Rugnetta are going to learn about the world by looking at the foundational stories of a bunch of different cultural traditions. We’re going to look at the ways that people’s stories define them, and the ways they shape their culture. We’re going to learn about gods, goddesses, heroes, and tricksters, and a lot more. We’re going to walk the blurry line between myth and religion, and we’re going to like it.
Today on Crash Course Mythology we’re starting in on creation stories. This week, we’ll focus on the creation of the universe out of nothing, or Ex Nihlio creation. Basically, a god decides to make a universe out of nothing. We’ll look at the Genesis story (which has nothing to do with Peter Gabriel or Phil Collins), a Mayan creation tale, a Kono story of the beginning, and we’ll even look at the Big Bang.
In which Mike teaches you about the creation of the universe, with sex. This week we're talking about creations stories from Egypt, West Africa, Greece, China, and Persia that have a lot in common with human sexual reproduction. And also some castration and puking, to boot. We've got your cosmic eggs, right here!
So, we’re still talking about sex this week, but we’re talking about Earth Mothers and their children. We'll start with Gaia, and her son Kronos, who had a classic childhood rebellion, and castrated his father. We'll also get into Kronos’s son Zeus, who would go on to dethrone his father. We’ll talk about Norse mythology, too, and look at the family that created the world, and worked together to make people.
In which Mike Rugnetta sits you down for a little talk about myth as a way to construct or reinforce social orders. Specifically, we’re going to look today at stories from around the world that establish or amplify the idea that the errors of women have brought bad things into the world. We’re talking about the idea that death and disease and pain came into the world as a result of human (specifically woman human) action, and that men should therefore be considered superior to women. This idea, which on its face may sound a little out there to our modern ears, is persistent and pernicious. We’re interested in looking at the ways that stories make social orders. We’ll look at Abrahamic, Greek, and Japanese creation stories that have, over the millennia, served to push something of a social order agenda.
In which Mike Rugnetta brings you the final installation of our unit on creation myths. This week, we're talking about human beings and their relationship to the natural world. It turns out foundational stories have a lot to teach us about the ways in which people relate to the physical world around them, and the other organisms that inhabit that world. We'll talk about the Biblical idea that humans have dominion over animals, and we'll talk about Native American stories in which people and nature collaborate to create the world.
In which Mike Rugnetta begins our unit on pantheons, which are families of gods. We further define pantheons and talk about why they're important. Then, we discuss pantheons from the myths of the ancient Mediterranean, starting with ancient Sumer in Mesopotamia. The Egyptian pantheon brings us the story of Osiris and his envious brother Seth. We learn what these two pantheons suggest about the cultures where they originated.
In which Mike Rugnetta continues our unit on pantheons with the complex Indian pantheon, focusing on stories that were written in Sanskrit. We start with a violent creation story. We talk about the concept of Brahman, and the personification as three deities: Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Then, the goddess Durga teaches us how to behead a buffalo demon while riding a lion.
This week, we continue our look at various Pantheons, and Mike digs deep into the gods of the ancient Greeks. We're talking Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hades, Artemis, Hephaestos, Ares, and Apollo. We're also talking Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, Pluto, Diana, Vulcan, Mars, and...Apollo. Similar gods, different names. We'll start with the origin stories of the gods, talk about their family relationships, and what exactly their specialties are.
This week, we're headed north. To check out the gods of the Northmen. Or the Norse. That's right, we're talking Thor, Loki, Freyr, Freya, Odin, Frigg, Baldr, and Tyr. And Fenrir. And the Frost Giants. There's a lot to cover here, and it's going to be fun. Watch this prior to Ragnarok, as this video probably won't be available after the end of the universe.
So, today we’re talking about African Pantheons. Now, you might say, that’s ridiculous. Africa isn’t a single place with a single pantheon, and we’d be fools to try and cover all that in an eleven minute video. You’d be right. Instead we’re going to focus on Yoruba religion from west Africa, and the Orishas that populate Yoruba stories. The many, many Orishas cover all aspects of life, and can be pretty specialized. We’re going to focus on a dozen or so.
This week, we're talking about theories of Myth. We'll look at the different ways mythology has been studied in the last couple of millenia, and talk about the diffeent ways people have interpreted myth, academically.
This week on Crash Course Mythology, we're talking archetypes. Specifically, we're talking about archetypes as they're applied to female deities. Goddesses, man. You'll learn about prehistoric fertility goddesses like the Venus of Willendorf, life and death goddesses like the Ancient Greek Fates and the Norse Norns. And we'll learn about regeneration goddesses like Ireland's Nimah, and Japan's Oto-Hime.
This week, we’re continuing our talk about the characteristics of Goddesses, and we’re going to look in depth at two stories from parts of the world we haven’t visited much in this series so far. From Hawaii, we’re going to hear a story about Pe-le, the great goddess of the Hawaiian Islands, and we’ll hear the story of the gifts of the White Buffalo Calf Woman from Native American tradition. We’ll look at the similarities and the differences in these stories, and talk about how goddesses interact with the world and with humanity in pretty interesting ways.
This week on Crash Course Mythology, Mike is teaching you about the archetypes that are often associated with male divinities. We’re going to talk about Fathers & Sons, Kings & Judges, Saviors & Sages, Shamans, Tricksters, and Lords of Destruction. Along the way, we’ll look at the story of Hwaning, Hwanung, and Dangun from the Korean peninsula, and we’ll learn about Arjuna and all the help he got from Krishna. We’ll also touch on a ton of other myths from around the world. These things play out this way all the time, man.
This week on Crash Course mythology, Mike is talking to you about floods. You may have heard the story of Noah and the Ark from the Bible, but that is not the only flood story humans tell. Turns out, it's a common thing across cultures`. You could say the study of mythology is...flooded with them. Sorry. We'll be looking at floods from Mesopotamia from the Epic of Gilgamesh, and a flood story from the Zoroastrian tradition. And we'll look at a Roman flood story from Ovid's metamorphosis. It's a deluge of flood stories!
On this Crash Course in World Mythology, Mike Rugnetta is teaching you about floods and deluges, specifically in China. In Chinese myth, flood stories pretty much all revolve around a guy named Yu the Great, or Yu the Engineer. In the distant past, he was tasked with stopping the flooding on the Yangtze and Yellow rivers, and he did it. After working on the job for 13 years. Yu also founded the legendary Xia Dynasty. Yu exists as a sort of model for future emperors. He works tirelessly on behalf of his people, and always does the right thing. He's a good emperor, and a model for rulers to emulate. He's also super cool, and can turn into a bear when he needs to dig really fast.
We don’t want to deluge you with information on the subject, but this week on Crash Course Mythology, Mike Rugnetta is talking once again about floods. We’re looking at ancient flood myths in the Americas, and what they can tell us about the stories that people tell, and how they can look similar, even in cultures separated by large swathes of time and space. We’ll talk about floods from Mayan and Aztec traditions, and as always, see if we can find something in these tales that gives us some insight into what it means to be a human.
This week on Crash Course World Mythology, it's the Circle of Life. And Death. And sometimes, Life again. Mike Rugnetta is teaching you about Dying Gods, by which I mean gods that die, and then return to life. You'll learn about the Corn Mother from Native American Traditions, Adonis of the Greek and Roman pantheon, Odin of the Norse, and a little about the most famous dying deity, Jesus. These aren't all the dying gods in the world, but it's a good introduction to the archetype.
This week, Mike introduces you to Tricksters, starting with Anansi, the West African trickster god who is also sometimes a spider. Tricksters are, well, tricky. They're wise and foolish, they're promiscuous and amoral, but in a lot of ways, they're good guys. We'll also talk about the occasionally tricky Hercules and Atlas, and touch on more recent tricksters like B'rer Rabbit.
In which Mike Rugnetta continues to teach you about tricksters. In this episode, we're talking about tricksters as culture heroes. Basically, a culture hero is someone whose creativity adds to their mythological culture. We'll learn how the shennanigans of Hermes are credited with deeply influencing Greek culture and myth, and we'll look at how Loki's tricks led to a lot of important aspects of Norse myth. This episode has it all! Cattle rustling, cook outs, luthiery, joke haircuts, and Gullinbursti the Battle Swine. All that's to say, this is a good one.
Mike Rugnetta continues to teach you about Tricksters in myth, and this time we're headed to the Americas. Coyote and Raven appear in stories from many Native American groups, and more often than not, they're tricky. They're also often kind of, well, nasty. Not to get too judgy. But we do a lot of talking about poop in this episode. I'm just saying. We also talk about Tricksters as creators, as Coyote creates constellations, and Raven creates some rivers.
Mike Rugnetta is going to tell you stories of death, destruction, divine judgment, damnation, and the occasional happy ending. That's right, this week we're talking about the Apocalypse. Actually, we're talking about a bunch of ways the world could end. Prepare for stories of the end times from Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam! It's the (mostly) Abrahamic Apocalypses on Crash Course World Mythology.
Ragnarok! It's the end of the world, Norse style. It's got everything you want in an apocalypse. Earthquakes, destruction, armies of the dead, a giant evil wolf, giants with flaming swords, and a kind of happy ending. It's got it all. But is it really Norse? It wasn't written down until after Christianity had arrived in Europe. So how much influence is there?
Let's get Heroic with Mike Rugnetta. This week on Crash Course World Mythology, we're talking about the Hero's Journey and the Monomyth, as described by Joseph Campbell. Campbell's theories about the shared qualities of human story telling are pretty cool. And they've been hugely influential on the way we tell stories today. So, consider this your Call to Destiny. Crash Course is going to help you Cross the Threshold into the Belly of the Whale that is YouTube, and escort you through the Many Trials, on our way to the Ultimate Boon of knowledge. And there are a bunch of other steps in there, too. So, come along heroes! Let's learn this stuff!
This week, we're continuing our discussion of heroes by talking about Gilgamesh, star of one of the earliest written hero stories, The Epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh was a terrible ancient king who left his kingdom seeking adventure, and eventually on the prowl for immortality. Along the way, he checks pretty much all the boxes on the checklist of Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey.
The next entry in our parade of heroes is Rama, the protagonist of the Ramayana, one of India’s oldest stories. We’re going to be talking about Rama’s importance to Hindu culture, and how Rama fits into Campbell’s idea of the Hero’s Journey. Although, Rama may not even be the hero.
In which Mike Rugnetta quests for knowledge of the Holy Grail of Mythology. Which is the actual, literal Holy Grail! The cup of Christ! Legends about the Holy Grail are often connected to the British legends of King Arthur, and this episode is definitely about this. Except we’re not talking much about Arthur, since he never actually found the grail. Instead, we’re going to talk about a couple different versions of the Grail legend, the stories of Perceval and Galahad. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy learning Grail lore. You have chosen wisely!
In which Mike Rugnetta teaches you about the hero of The Congo, Mwindo! Mike will tell you the stories of Mwindo's birth, his many deaths, and his evolution from a braggy superhuman baby to a wise, superhuman leader of his people. Along the way, we'll learn about the Wiki game, and when you should and shouldn't drink banana beer.
This week, Mike Rugnetta re-introduces Herakles, the strong man of Greek and Roman myth. Strongman with a darkside, that is. You'll learn about Herakles' 10 actually 12 labors, the story of his birth, his death, some of his marriages, none of which turned out that great, and some of his character flaws that definitely wouldn't fly in the modern world.
In which Mike Rugnetta teaches you about Ma'ui, prominent hero of many cultures in Oceania, aka the Pacific Island nations. Ma'ui is just the kind of hero we're interested in here at Crash Course. He's a culture hero, he's a an adventurer, he has a divine birth, AND he's a trickster. In short, he's pretty cool, and the tasks he accomplishes in his life are great examples of how human stories can touch on universal themes.
This week, Mike Rugnetta is teaching you about mythical gardens and caves, which appear in cultures all over the world. Caves and gardens can stand for different things, but in the two stories we're talking about today, they tie into the creation of the world in general, and the origins of humans in particular.
Our mythical places series continues, and this week Mike Rugnetta is talking about some stories that revolve around mountains. Mountains loom large in human stories, not least because mountains are, well, large. So ascend with us to the lofty peaks of The Ten Thousand Treasure Mountain in China, and Mount Fuji in Japan.
This week on CC Myth, Mike Rugnetta is teaching you about mythical trees. There are lots of trees in myth, and we've touched on some of them before, but today we're going to focus on three trees from three different traditions. We'll talk about the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil from the biblical tradition, Yggdrasil from the Norse Tradition, and Ashvattha, which is important in both Hindu and Buddhist tradition.
This week on Crash Course Mythology, we're getting urban. Mike Rugnetta is the man with the orange umbrella who's about to give you a free tour of mythical cities. We'll talk about a few cities that didn't exist, but we're going to focus on real cities with mythical founding stories. We'll talk about Jericho, Jerusalem, and Rome, among others.
This week, we're starting our discussion of Mythical Creatures with the WORST creatures. Monsters. What makes a monster monstrous though? Mike Rugnetta will guide you through the fine line between a magical creature and a monster. Spoiler alert: like 60% of the time, the difference is that monsters eat people. We'll talk about sea monsters, Sphinxes, and take an elongated look directly into the Canadian face of horror, the Wendigo.
Horses have been human companions for thousands of years, and have been essential companions and tools for the development of human culture. So, it makes sense that horses would make their way into our most important stories. Today, we're looking at horses in myth, and we'll talk about noble steeds from all over the world, including Svadlfari, Sleipneir, Pegasus, Qilin, Bucephalus, Al Baraq, and Unicorns! Let's get to the horsing around.
This week, Mike is teaching you about the most mythic of mythological creatures: Dragons. Cultures across the world (and across Westeros) tell stories of dragons, and their power to destroy, their power to prop up kings, and their power to cause a nice, refreshing rain shower.
In which Mike Rugnetta teaches you about the stories we tell about witches and hags. It's definitely unfortunate that a lot of social orders have generated stories about evil women with magical powers. Today we're going to look at a few of those stories, and talk a little about why these stories appear, and what they mean.
In which Mike Rugnetta teaches you about Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, and how a lot of their work was influenced by myth and mythology. While Freud and Jung aren't quite as revered as they once were, they were undoubtedly a huge influence on the practice of psychology and psychiatry, and these two fellas were undoubtedly influenced by foundational stories. Today, we'll learn about Oedipus, the collective unconscious, archetypes, Star Wars, and more!
It's the end of the world, everybody. Well, it's the end of our mythology series, anyway. This week, we're talking about how mythological themes have made their way into the English language. We're taking on the Herculean task of tracking down phrases that have made their way into language from mythical stories.
Today we kick off Crash Course Sociology by explaining what exactly sociology is. We’ll introduce the sociological perspective and discuss how sociology differentiates itself from the other social sciences. We’ll also explore what sociology can do, and how a concern with social problems was at the center of sociology's beginnings.
This week we introduce sociology’s three major theoretical paradigms, and some of the advantages and disadvantages of each paradigm.
What puts the “science” in social science? Today we’ll explore positivist sociology and how sociologists use empirical evidence to explore questions about the social world. We’ll also introduce two alternatives: interpretative sociology and critical sociology.
Today we’re talking about how we actually DO sociology. Nicole explains the research method: form a question and a hypothesis, collect data, and analyze that data to contribute to our theories about society.
Now that we’ve talked a little bit about how sociology works, it’s time to start exploring some of the ideas of the discipline’s founders. First up: Émile Durkheim. We’ll explain the concept of social facts and how Durkheim framed sociology as a science. We’ll introduce the idea of common consciousness and how Durkheim believed it binds society together. We’ll also talk about Durkheim’s studies on suicide and how he applied his concepts to a specific social problem.
Today we’ll continue to explore sociology’s founding theorists with a look at Karl Marx and his idea of historical materialism. We’ll discuss modes of production, their development, and how they fit into Marx’s overall theory of historical development, along with class struggle and revolution. We’ll also discuss how Marx’s ideas gave rise to Gramsci’s idea of hegemony, and to conflict theories more generally.
We’re continuing our exploration of conflict theories with W.E.B. Dubois, who is one of the founders of sociological thought more broadly and the founder of race-conflict theory. We’ll discuss shifting ideas about race, Dubois’ idea of ‘double-consciousness’, and the modern day field of racial identity. We’ll explore the idea racial formation and discuss Dubois’ survey of African Americans in Philadelphia to look at how economic, political, and social structures affect how we perceive different races – and vice versa. We’ll also discuss the activist side of Dubois’ life as co-founder of the NAACP and editor of the Crisis, and how modern day sociologists study racial politics and racial resistance.
Today we’re exploring another branch of conflict theory: gender conflict theory, with a look at sociology’s forgotten founder, Harriet Martineau. We’ll also discuss the three waves of feminism, as well as intersectionality.
This week we are wrapping up our overview of sociology’s core frameworks and founding theorists with a look Max Weber and his understanding of the modern world. We’ll explore rationalization and the transition from traditional to modern society. We’ll also discuss bureaucracy, legitimacy, and social stratification in the modern state. Finally, we’ll see why Weber was so worried about the modern world.
What exactly is culture? This week we’re going to try to answer that, and explain the difference between material and non-material culture. We’ll look at three things that make up culture: symbols, values and beliefs, and norms. We’ll explore Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (and some of its problems) and how language influences culture. Finally, we’ll talk about the three types of norms – folkways, mores, and taboos – which govern our daily life.
What is culture? How do we define it and how does it change? We’ll explore different categories of culture, like low culture, high culture, and sub-cultures. We'll also revisit our founding theories to consider both a structural functionalist and a conflict theory perspective on what cultures mean for society.
So we know that sociology is the study of society, but what exactly *is* a society? Today we’re going to find out. We’ll look at Gerhard Lenski's classification of societies into five types, and the technological changes that turn one into another. We’ll also return to Marx, Weber, and Durkheim to consider how they understood societal change. Finally, we’ll explore Durkheim's concept of social solidarity.
What makes you… you? How did you get to be that way? Today we’re talking about social development, starting with the role of nature and nurture in influencing a person’s development. We’ll discuss socialization, the importance of care & human interaction, as well as theories of development from a range of theorists.
Last week we introduced the idea of socialization and today we’re talking a little more about how it works, including an introduction to five main types of socialization. We’ll explore anticipatory socialization from your family, the “hidden curriculum” in schools, peer groups, the role of media in socialization, and we’ll discuss total institutions and how they can act as a form of re-socialization.
How do sociologists study and understand social interaction? Today we’ll explain the language sociologists use to discuss how we interact with the social world. What are statuses and roles? How are they different? How do you acquire them? We’ll talk about why these things matter by exploring the socially constructed nature of reality. We’ll also discuss the theory of dramaturgical analysis and how we can understand social interaction as in terms of theatrical performance.
How do the groups that you're part of affect you? How do you, in turn, affect those groups? Today we are talking about how people in society come together with a look at social groups. We’ll look at what social groups are, the different kinds of groups that exist, group dynamics, leadership, conformity, networks and more!
Today we are exploring the world of formal organizations. We’ll go back to the historical process of rationalization and its impact on organizations in the form of bureaucracy and then discuss how organizations change in response to their organizational environment. We will also go over the negative consequences of rationalization in organizations.
What is social deviance? Who defines what is deviant and how to people come to behave that way? Today we’re going to explore biological and psychological approaches to explaining deviance, including what each perspective can bring to the table, and their inherent limitations. From there, we’ll explain the sociological perspective and the social foundations of deviance.
Last week we introduced deviance as a concept, but today we’re going return to our major paradigms in sociology and how each approaches deviance. We’ll explore how structural functionalism sees deviance fulfilling a function in society; how deviance is constructed, according to symbolic interactionism; and finally, how conflict theory views deviance as tied to power and inequality.
We’ve talked about deviance more broadly, but today we’re focusing on crime, specifically in the US. We’ll start with legal definitions of crime and use FBI data to get an idea of the amount and kinds of crime committed in the US. We’ll also use that date to paint a demographic picture of who gets arrested, and explain why that’s not necessarily a full look of who commits crime. We’ll also discuss society’s response to crime in the criminal justice system, and how that response has resulted in mass incarceration.
How do different societies establish a social hierarchy? Today we’re starting our unit on social stratification, starting with four basic principles of a sociological understanding of stratification. We’ll explain open and closed systems of stratification and explore examples of different kinds of stratification systems, including caste systems and class systems.
As we get into our unit on stratification, we inevitably return to our old friends, the three sociological paradigms. How to structural functionalism, social conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism each think about stratification? How does ideology and help stratification reproduce itself? What did Marx and Weber have to say about all of this? And at the micro level, how does stratification work in everyday life?
Social class in America is... hard to talk about. As Sociology, the difficulty lies in pinning down what we mean by "Social Class." In this episode of Crash Course Sociology, Nicole chats to us about how Sociologists figure this out so we can all have a clearer idea of what we're talking about.
Today we’re breaking down the five different social class in the United States: the upper class, the upper middle class, the average middle class, the working class, and the lower class. We’ll also go over what poverty looks like in the United States.
This week we are building on last week’s outline of American stratification to explore how class differences affect people’s daily lives. We’ll explore variations in everything from values & beliefs to health outcomes, and look at how these things can perpetuate inequality across generations.
Today we’re exploring social mobility in some more depth. We’ll look at intergenerational and intragenerational mobility and the difference between absolute and relative mobility. We’ll go over the long run upward social mobility trends in the United States, as well as recent declines in absolute social mobility. We’ll also explore how opportunities for social mobility differ by class, race, and gender.
This week we’re taking our discussion of stratification global. We’ll look at First and Third World countries and the reasons why these terms are no longer used. We’ll introduce the four types of country categories we now use: high income, upper middle income, lower middle income, and low income countries. We’ll also go over some consequences of and explanations for global poverty.
Today we’ll discuss two theories of global stratification. First, we’ll go over modernization theory and Walt Rostow’s Four Stages of Modernization. Next, we’ll explain dependency theory, the legacy of colonialism, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Capitalist World Economy Model.
This week we’ll see how economies can be broken down into the primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors. We’ll look at the three stages of economic revolution that brought us to the modern post-industrial era. We’ll also explore two types of economic models: capitalism and socialism.
While politics is generally seen as the domain of a civics class (and Craig did a great job of teaching US Government & Politics elsewhere on this channel!) it’s something that sociology is interested in too. Today we’re looking at the sociological approach to politics, different types of authority and political systems, and different sociological theories of power.
While sociology is a social science, we can use it to explore some intensely personal, private things. Today we’ll explore what sociology can tell us about sex and sexuality. We’ll also see what the three sociological paradigms have to say about sexuality and sexual orientations.
Today we’re looking at how society becomes stratified along gender lines. We’ll discuss Raewyn Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinities and emphasized femininities. We’ll explore gender socialization in the home, media, and schools. Finally, we’ll explain how gender stratification results in different outcomes by gender in education, occupations, earnings, and criminal activity.
Why is gender even a thing? To answer that, we’re going back to our three sociological paradigms and how each school of thought approaches gender theory. We’ll look at the structural functionalist view that gender is a way of organizing society into complementary roles, the symbolic interactionist take on how gender guides our daily life, and conflict theory’s ideas about how gender distributes power within society.
What’s the difference between race and ethnicity? Today we’ll look at how definitions of races and ethnicities have changed over time and across places. We also discuss the terms minority and minority-majority and how races are defined in the United States.
We can’t talk about race without also discussing racism, so today we are going to define and explain prejudice, stereotypes, and racism. We’ll look at five theories for why prejudice exists. We’ll discuss discrimination and the legacies of institutional racism. We’ll also provide an overview of four types of racial interaction: pluralism, assimilation, segregation, and genocide.
People are getting older – not just in the individual sense, but the human population itself. Today we’re going to explore those shifting patterns and their implications. We’ll go over the biological, psychological, and cultural aspects of aging, including some of the particular challenges that older individuals face.
Today we’ll explore how sociology defines family and the different terms used to describe specific types of family. We’ll look at marriage in different societies, as well as marital residential patterns and patterns of descent. And, of course, we’ll go over the three sociological schools of thought on the societal role of marriage and family.
One way of thinking about family life says that there are stages that families move through: courtship, marriage, child-rearing, and family life in your later years. We’ll also discuss changing patterns of marriage and childbearing in the US, highlighting some of the varied family types that exist.
Today we’re turning our sociological eye to another major social institution: religion. We’ll use symbolic interactionism to help us understand the dichotomy of the Sacred vs. the Profane. We’ll compare the perspectives of structural functionalists and conflict theorists on whether religion improves social cohesiveness or increases social stratification. We’ll also explore how religious practice in the US differs across race and class lines.
Today we’ll explore the history of education as a social institution, with a specific focus on how the US organizes its educational system. We’ll look at education through the lenses of some sociological paradigms: structural functionalist approaches (including some of the manifest and latent functions associated with education), and a symbolic interactionist approach to education that shows us how self-fulfilling prophecies in educational settings contribute to differences in academic outcomes for students.
In the second half of our education unit, we’re using conflict theory to explore a few social inequalities in the US education system. We’ll look at variation in school funding and quality, the role of cultural capital, and some of the ways in which the American school system disadvantages minority students.
Our final unit of Crash Course Sociology is medical sociology. Today we’ll explain what it is and get an overview of the role of society in our notions of health and disease.
We’re continuing our unit on health with a discussion of some of the indicators that help us measure health for different populations. We’ll also explore three contributors to health disparities: individual factors like genetics, physical factors like pollution, and social factors like stress.
In our final episode of Crash Course Sociology we are going to talk about what the health care system in the US looks like, the five A’s of health care accessibility, and a couple of contributing factors to the affordability of health care: fee for service care and the structure of our health insurance system which encourage higher spending.
Well, they're not really "magic." Maybe "illusion" is a better way to say it. As we begin this journey of the history of cinema, we need to understand how movies trick our brains into even understanding that a movie is a movie. In this episode of Crash Course Film History, Craig takes us down the road of the very first inventors of motion pictures.
After serial photography became a thing, it wasn't long before motion pictures started to develop. And, at the front of that development was Thomas Edison, who you may know as an inventor and business person. In this episode of Crash Course Film History, Craig talks to us about Edison, his assistant W.K.L. Dickson, and their inventions that pioneered motion pictures.
As cinema started to take off, things like "single viewer" devices weren't going to cut it as the medium advanced. In this episode of Crash Course Film History, Craig talks to us about the Lumiere brothers, their invention of the Cinematographe, and the idea of projecting a movie to an audience.
After the Lumiere brothers and Thomas Edison got the ball rolling with Vaudeville acts and Actualites, the time was coming for movie magic and fiction to make an appearance. The time was coming of filmmakers like Georges Melies and Alice Guy-Blache.
In this episode of Crash Course Film History, we talk about the development of the language of films by filmmakers like Edwin S. Porter and his films; Life of an American Fireman and The Great Train Robbery.
Movies didn't always look like they do now. There was a period (kind of a problematic one) where movies transitioned from short novelties to big, epic, feature films. That's our focus this week as Craig talks to us about the birth of the feature film and the work of D.W. Griffith.
We've spent a lot of time focusing on France and the U.S. as that's where a significant amount of both infrastructure and business models were initially set up for film. But there were other countries adding their own stories to the annals of film history. In this episode of Crash Course Film History, we're going to focus on Germany and how they got a bit expressive with film.
Russia went and had a revolution in 1917 and cinema was a big part of its aftermath. Even though film stock was hard to come by, we saw the first film school started, and the study of film became hugely important. Russian filmmakers started trying to understand the power of the cut itself, thus developing a theory of filmmaking based solely around the juxtaposition of images: Soviet Montage. In this episode of Crash Course Film History, Craig talks us through some of the filmic things going on in post-revolution era Russia.
The Silent Era of Hollywood set a lot of things into motion in terms of how movies were made and sold. Big stars were one of the main ways studios tried to make their movies stand apart from one another and get the public to make choices at the cinema. But, this also gave a lot of power to those stars to command a lot of money. In this episode of Crash Course Film History, we take a look at the Silent Era of Hollywood and people like Charlie Chaplin.
Nothing changed movies like the arrival of synchronous sound. NOTHING! Acting, directing, cinematography, and presentation all had to be rethought. Some studios were more quick to take on the challenge while others waited until the last moment. Some actors made graceful transitions while others struggled with the new format. But this was the big turning point and a major completion point to what movies would ultimately become.
It's time for the glitz and the glamour of big motion pictures that helped keep American spirits up during and after the Great Depression. Sound was a huge change to motion pictures, but there were still a few technological innovations to come, like color and aspect ration. Today, Craig walks us through the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Hollywood was riding high until their formula got to be stale. In places like Italy and France (as well as other places in the world we'll talk about soon) filmmakers were starting to break out of the mold and make daring films that challenged the idea of what movies were and what audiences wanted. In this episode of Crash Course Film History, Craig takes us through the beginnings of independent cinema.
As the New Hollywood gained steam in the late 70s and early 80s, another revenue stream opened its doors: home video. From Betamax to Laserdisc to Bluray to streaming services, home video revolutionized how we ingest movies. In this episode of Crash Course Film History, Craig gives us an overview of it all.
The world is a big place and cinema isn't limited to just the U.S. and Europe. There are a lot of vibrant and influential film movements and cultures from all over the world. In this episode of Crash Course Film History, Craig talks to us a little about some of the big moments in Asian cinema; from Japan, to China, to India.
Africa, the Middle East, and South America have their own vibrant film communities and filmmakers. From social and political commentary to experimental films, these regions have made some very important pieces of cinema over the last century. In this episode of Crash Course Film History, Craig talks us through some of these movies and movie makers.
It's Craig's last episode of Film and in it he's going to talk about weird stuff... and real stuff. Experimental and Documentary films could each take up their own Crash Course series. The different styles and intents of different filmmakers make each film unique. So let's settle in and have a look at how Experimental and Documentary films have evolved.
The first step in honing your new study skills is to take better notes. This week Thomas will tell you everything you need to know to come to class prepared and find a note-taking system that will help you retain and review like a champ.
Leaving the bookstore at the beginning of the semester you’re probably wondering how the heck you’re going to get through all of that reading. Today we’re explaining how much of that reading you really need to do and the best strategies for making your way through it.
An essential part of learning and studying is remembering things, so this week Thomas explains some of how your memory works so that you can spend less time working against your memory’s limitations and more time playing to its real strengths.
The best way to make sure you’re making the most of the time you have is to start off well organized. This week we’re talking about planning and organizational systems and how to set yourself up for success.
Have you ever noticed how easy it is to get distracted while studying – even when you know you really don’t have time for Facebook, Snapchat, Cookie Clicker, or whatever else is calling you? This week we’re going to help you get a better handle on your focus and concentration and how to improve those skills.
You’re on YouTube right now, but you should probably be studying or writing that research paper. But as long as you’re here, we’re going to help you figure out how to get the better of your desire to procrastinate in the future. Just don’t forget about us when you fully master your procrastination, OK?
It turns out that saving all of your studying until after midnight on the night before your big exam is not actually a great way to prepare. Today, Thomas explains some test prep strategies that actually work.
Exams can be terrifying. It’s easy to feel like the weight of the world rests in these moments – like this one test determines your grades and, in turn, your whole future – even if you know, rationally, that this isn’t really the case. What’s worse is that this fear and anxiety can make you do worse on the test. So, take a deep breath, and let us walk you through some tips for beating test anxiety so that you can walk in on test day feeling refreshed and confident.
Writing research papers is an essential skill in your career as a student, and this week we’re going to help you do that like a pro. From figuring out where to begin, to finding the best systems, to breaking out of “research recursion system” (maybe just figuring out what that means), we’ve got you covered.
We’re finally to the end of our time together here on Crash Course Study Skills, so this week we’re taking a more holistic approach to being the best learner you can. Part of taking care of your brain is taking care of your whole body, of which your brain is a part. We’re wrapping up this course by outlining some good tips and tricks for maintaining a healthy body, and why it’s such an important part of being a great student.