A clip from America Ferrera's TED Talk "My identity is a superpower -- not an obstacle" from TED2019 Hollywood needs to stop resisting what the world actually looks like, says actor, director and activist America Ferrera. Tracing the...

William Faulkner is considered one of America's most remarkable and perplexing writers. He confused his audience intentionally, using complex sentences, unreliable narrators, and outlandish imagery. His body of work is shocking,...

If you read "Bob, a DJ and a clown" on a guest list, are three people coming to the party, or only one? That depends on whether you're for or against the Oxford comma -- perhaps the most hotly contested punctuation mark of all time. When...

This animation is part of the TED-Ed series, "There's a Poem for That," which features animated interpretations of poems both old and new that give language to some of life's biggest feelings. [Poem by Denice Frohman, directed by KAPWA /...

This week on Crash Course Literature, John Green is continuing to talk about Shakespeare's dark, bloody, Scottish play, Macbeth. This time around, we're looking at the play's characters operate, how the play deals with gender, and the...

Today, about one-tenth of the world's population are southpaws. Why are such a small proportion of people left-handed -- and why does the trait exist in the first place? Daniel M. Abrams investigates how the uneven ratio of lefties and...

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...

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....

In which John Green teaches you about Beloved by Toni Morrison. I'll warn you up front, 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...

Optical illusions are images that seem to trick our minds into seeing something different from what they actually are. But how do they work? Nathan S. Jacobs walks us through a few common optical illusions and explains what these tricks...

Albert Camus grew up surrounded by violence. His homeland of Algeria was mired in conflict. He lost his father in World War I. Seeing World War II's devastation, Camus grew despondent. What was the meaning behind all this endless...

In the 1930s, broadcast radio introduced an entirely new form of storytelling; today, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter are changing the scene again. Andrew Fitzgerald takes a look at the (aptly) short but fascinating history of new...

How a famous theorem in topology, the Borsuk-Ulam theorem, can be used to solve a counting puzzle that seems completely distinct from topology.

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...

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 it's main character, who seems like he's got it all together, find out...

Did you ever notice how many jokes start with _Did you ever notice?" And what's the deal with "What's the deal?" There's a lot of funny to be found simply by noticing the ordinary, everyday things you don't ordinarily notice every day....

We’re continuing our discussion of nineteenth-century American theater with a look at some upsetting parts of the US's theatrical past. In the nineteenth century, race and racism contributed to a unique and troubling performance culture,...

This week, we're continuing our discussion of Mark Twain's 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.' This is part two of our talk about Huck Finn, and this time we're looking at the metaphors in the book, a little bit about what the...

The Sound! The Fury! Today, we're talking about Shakespeare's Scottish play, Macbeth. So, was Macbeth really predestined to do all the murdering and bad kinging and other terrible stuff? That's the big question in Macbeth, and it's one...

From sailors who were turned into pigs, nymphs that sprouted into trees, and a gaze that converted the beholder to stone, Greek mythology brims with shape-shifters. The powerful Gods usually changed their own forms at will - but for...

Try CuriosityStream today: http://curiositystream.com/crashcourse and use the promo code "crashcourse" to get the first two months free! Is Citizen Kane the BEST MOVIE EVER MADE? Is that even an answerable question? Michael Aranda will...

By the light of the moon, a group sneaks into the woods, where they take mind-altering substances, switch it up romantically and brush up against creatures from another dimension. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” sees Shakespeare play with...

Explore the haunting and intimate works of poet Sylvia Plath, who digs into issues of mental health, trauma and sexuality in works like “The Bell Jar.” -- Under her shrewd eye and pen, Sylvia Plath turned everyday objects into haunting...

This is an absolutely beautiful piece of math. It shows how certain ideas from topology, such as the mobius strip, can be used to solve a slightly softer form of an unsolved problem in geometry.