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.

Crash Course is a fast, funny, irreverent look at history. In this episode, brothers John and Hank Green gives us their take on what makes Big History so darn important.. Created by Big History Project.

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.

No, we really really did not evolve from monkeys. John and Hank Green explain this and lots of other things related to human evolution. . Created by Big History Project.

In which John Green wraps up revolutions month with what is arguably the most revolutionary of modern revolutions, the Industrial Revolution. Created by Big History Project.

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.

As civilizations grew larger, demand for resources grew along with it. This led people to spread out over larger territories in search of food, natural resources, and new ideas.

Hank gives us a tour of the most important table ever, including the life story of the obsessive man who championed it, Dmitri Mendeleev.

Crash Course Big History is back! It turns out, we couldn't tell all of the 13.8 billion years of the history of the universe in 10 Crash Course Episodes. So, Big History host Emily Graslie has returned to add 6 more episodes that look at why the stuff we studied in Big History matter. Today, we're starting with a look at why Cosmic Evolution matters. What exactly does the process of the big bang, the formation of stars, and the birth of planets mean to our lives? Let's find out together.

Globalization has been in process for centuries, and has had a huge effect on Big History, and on Collective Learning. This week, Emily is investigating early globalization through three things that moved around the world and shaped collective learning in the early decades of globalization: Printing, Potatoes, and Plagues.

This week, Emily Graslie is teaching you about human ancestry and geneaology, how we got to be the species we are, and why that matters in our zoomed out look at Big History.

This week on Crash Course Big History, Emily is talking about process of human evolution, and the knack for innovation that has allowed humans to become so dominant on the Earth. Human innovation, and the ability to build on those innovations generation after generation is what makes humans different than other animals. Collective learning is enabled by our highly evolved and efficient ability to communicate with each other and pass on information. With great power, of course, comes great responsibility, and how we use this powerful tool has kind of a mixed track record.

So, the stars made the elements, we're all made of star stuff, etc. But what does all this mean? This week Emily Graslie teaches you how the formation of chemical elements in the bellies of the earliest stars made life as we know it possible. Namely, we'll be learning about lowly carbon, which it turns out, is kind of a superhero when it comes to the rise of complexity.

Today we're talking about evolution–basically the history of all life on Earth. The thing is, why are we talking about this. Well, the story of life, all the way back to single celled microbes billions of years ago, is all part of our human story. An important facet of the story of life is the story of death. This episode will look at the various mass extinctions along the way, and we'll also talk about the sixth mass extinction, which is going on now, and is kind of driven by humans. Sorry everybody.