Who takes the pictures in a movie? Who is responsible for making a movie look good, or creating meaning with light and shadow, or make an action scene clear and thrilling? A lot of the time, that's the job of the cinematographer. In this...

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...

Today we’re talking about mass transfer. It doesn’t just apply to objects and fluids as a whole, but also to the individual molecules and components that make them up. We’ll see that transfers of mass need their own driving force,...

These days, we don't have to worry too much about meeting an early demise from ulcers, breaks in the stomach lining that could be fatal back in the early 1900s. This is because we have medicines to treat them, like proton pump...

Well, here we are. It's the final episode of Crash Course Film Criticism and we're going to chat about one of the more polarizing films ever made: Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. On the surface, 2001 tells the story of human...

In 1959, the WHO set out to eradicate smallpox, an ambitious goal that was achieved by 1980. But this goal wouldn't have been possible without coordination on all levels of society. In this episode of Crash Course Outbreak Science, we'll...

In eastern Europe, in the 17th century a couple of "great powers" were coming into their own. The vast empire of Russia was modernizing under Peter the Great, and the relatively tiny state of Prussia was evolving as well. Russia (and...

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...

Today, we’re going to take a closer look at borders and the stories they tell. When we look at a map, the shapes we’re seeing can seem so permanent, but a map is just a snapshot of the Earth at a particular time, and by looking a...

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...

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...

Mainstream American films don’t often tackle race and racism head-on, and when they do, they often end up trying to find easy answers. Which makes films like Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing all the more powerful. It’s an intimate portrait...

Today we’re going to talk about climate change which is when there is a change in the average weather patterns in a region over a long period of time - these changes can be natural or human-caused. We’ll discuss the main driving forces...

Pitching your movie to people can be hard. A studio, a friend, your mom... each of these entities will have different stressed and give you different results. But, what's important in a pitch? And what happens after the pitch? How do you...

It's time to look at some of the most under-sung heroes of the film world, Grip and Electric. Doing everything from setting up dollies and tripods, to helping the cinematographer shape the light with flags and silks, the Grips are there...

Steven Soderbergh is known as much for his Oscar winning tense dramas as he is retiring... then not retiring. He was a part of the indy revolution in the 1980s and 90s that helped usher in a new case of writers and directors who didn't...

James Cameron rocketed onto the action film scene with 1984's "The Terminator" and followed that up with a highly anticipated sequel to the 1979 film, "Alien." His film, "Aliens," would go on to not only be a financial success, but a...

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...

The European Renaissance may have started in Florence, but it pretty quickly moved out of Italy and spread the art, architecture, literature, and humanism across Europe to places like France, Spain, England, and the Low Countries....

John Green Bot wrote his first novel! Today, in our first ever Lab we’re going to program a neural network to recognize handwritten letters to convert the first part of John Green Bot’s novel into typed text. To do this we’re going to...

Until roughly 1100, there were relatively few places of knowledge-making. Monasteries and abbeys had special rooms called scriptoria where monks copied manuscripts by hand. But the biggest places where knowledge was made were the Gothic...

Before the Hayes Code was enacted, movies were a lot more brazen than we sometimes tend to think. Director/Producer Lois Weber spent much of her career making movies that challenged audiences. Her film, "Where Are My Children" is no...

In which John Green previews the new Crash Course on Navigating Digital Information! We've partnered with MediaWise, The Poynter Institute, and The Stanford History Education Group to teach a course in hands-on skills to evaluate the...

Beginning April 13th, join Craig Benzine (the internet's WheezyWaiter) for 16 weeks of Film History right here on Crash Course. He'll look at the history of one of our most powerful mediums. Film has the ability to communicate with...