Crash Course
Three Colors - Blue: Crash Course Film Criticism
Movies are really good at making us feel. Happy, sad, excited, etc... Part of that is because they use so many different types of media all at once. Photography, music, performance, and editing all play into their ability to communicate...
TED Talks
Jim Toomey: Learning from Sherman the shark
Cartoonist Jim Toomey created the comic strip Sherman's Lagoon, a wry look at underwater life starring Sherman the talking shark. As he sketches some of his favorite sea creatures live onstage, Toomey shares his love of the ocean and the...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Inside a cartoonist's world - Liza Donnelly
From cave drawings to the Sunday paper, artists have been visualizing ideas -- cartoons -- for centuries. New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly walks us through the many stages every cartoon goes through, starting with an idea and turning...
SciShow
Why We Love Movie Villains (According to Psychology)
Sometimes we find ourselves falling for the cute vampire or German bank robber, and this might say a lot about how we think about ourselves.
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why should you read "One Hundred Years of Solitude"? - Francisco Diez-Buzo
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" brought Latin American literature to the forefront of the global imagination and earned Garcia Marquez the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature. What makes the novel so...
MinutePhysics
Time Travel in Fiction Rundown
For ages I’ve been thinking about doing a video analyzing time travel in fiction and doing a comparison of different fictional time travels – some do use wormholes, some relativistic/faster than light travel with time dilation, some...
TED Talks
Torsten Reil: Animate characters by evolving them
Torsten Reil talks about how the study of biology can help make natural-looking animated people -- by building a human from the inside out, with bones, muscles and a nervous system. He spoke at TED in 2003; see his work now in GTA4.
TED Talks
TED: 4 larger-than-life lessons from soap operas | Kate Adams
Soap operas and telenovelas may be (ahem) overdramatic, but as Kate Adams shows us, their exaggerated stories and characters often cast light on the problems of real life. In this sparkling, funny talk, Adams, a former assistant casting...
PBS
Can Video Games Become the Next Spectator Sport?
As our South Korean friends can confirm, video games can most definitely be a spectator sport. But will they ever catch on in a huge way in the good ol' U.S. of A?
Crash Course
Lost in Translation: Crash Course Film Criticism
It's time to take a look at a quieter, sweeter, and maybe happier film in this series. Sophia Coppola's "Lost in Translation" is a wonderful romantic comedy that doesn't play by the usual rules of its genre. In this episode, Michael...
TED Talks
TED: Why I keep speaking up, even when people mock my accent | Safwat Saleem
Artist Safwat Saleem grew up with a stutter -- but as an independent animator, he decided to do his own voiceovers to give life to his characters. When YouTube commenters started mocking his Pakistani accent, it crushed him, and his...
TED Talks
ShaoLan: Learn to read Chinese ... with ease!
For foreigners, learning to speak Chinese is a hard task. But learning to read the beautiful, often complex characters of the Chinese written language may be less difficult. ShaoLan walks through a simple lesson in recognizing the ideas...
TED Talks
TED: What does the future hold? 11 characters offer quirky answers | Sarah Jones
Sarah Jones changes personas with the simplest of wardrobe swaps. In a laugh-out-loud improvisation, she invites 11 "friends" from the future on stage—from a fast-talking Latina to an outspoken police officer—to ask them questions...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Why should you read “Kafka on the Shore”? - Iseult Gillespie
Follow the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata in Haruki Murakami’s mind-bending novel “Kafka on the Shore.” -- Desperate to escape his tyrannical father and the family curse he feels doomed to repeat, Haruki Murakami’s teenage...
Crash Course
The Director: Crash Course Film Production
So... what do Directors even do? That's not an easy question to answer but today Lily will do her best. Generally, directors are the driving creative force behind a movie, deciding what kind of cinematic world the story will take place...
Crash Course
Zola, France, Realism, and Naturalism: Crash Course Theater #31
This week, we're back in Europe to learn about Realism and Naturalism. In the 19th Century, playwrights like Eugene Scribe, Alexandre de Dumas Fils, and Emile Zola remade the French theater, first with Realism, and later with Naturalism....
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Everything you need to know to read "The Canterbury Tales" - Iseult Gillespie
A portly Miller, barely able to sit on his horse, rambles on about the flighty wife of a crotchety old carpenter and the scholar she takes as her lover. This might sound like a bawdy joke, but it's part of one of the most esteemed works...
TED Talks
TED: Live drawings of the human experience | Jarrett J. Krosoczka
In this live drawing performance and poignant autobiographical journey, author and illustrator Jarrett J. Krosoczka sketches some life-shaping moments, showing us how drawing and storytelling can help us honor and remain close to those...
Crash Course
China, Zaju, and Beijing Opera: Crash Course Theater #25
This week we're headed to China to learn about the ancient origins of theater there. We'll look at the early days of wizard theater (not a typo), the development of classical Chinese theater, and the evolution of Beijing Opera.
TED-Ed
Why should you read Toni Morrison's "Beloved"? | Yen Pham
Two tiny handprints stamped into a cake. A mirror that shatters without warning. A trail of cracker crumbs strewn along the floor. Everyone at 124 Bluestone Road knows their home is haunted— but there's no mystery about the spirit...
Crash Course
Sula: Crash Course Literature
This week, John is talking about Toni Morrison's novel of friendship, betrayal, and loss, Sula. Sula tells the story of two African American girls, the town where they grew up, the tragic even that was central to their youth, and the...
SciShow
Why Are Celebrity Crushes So Intense?
Your love for Rihanna or Tom Hardy may be unrequited, but that doesn't necessarily make it unhealthy.
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Why should you read Virginia Woolf? - Iseult Gillespie
How best can we understand the internal experience of alienation? In both her essays and her fiction, Virginia Woolf shapes the slippery nature of subjective experience into words, while her characters frequently lead inner lives that...
SciShow
How Harry Potter Turns You Into A Wizard
Have you ever read Harry Potter and wished that you were a student at Hogwarts, studying magic with Harry, Ron, and Hermione? Well, your wish might have partially come true, without you knowing it.