Activist Shad Begum has spent her life empowering women to live up to their full potential. In a personal talk, she shares her determined struggle to improve the lives of women in her deeply religious and conservative community in...

Lakshmi Pratury remembers the lost art of letter-writing and shares a series of notes her father wrote to her before he died. Her short but heartfelt talk may inspire you to set pen to paper, too.

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...

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...

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...

When he was a child, George Takei and his family were forced into an internment camp for Japanese-Americans, as a "security" measure during World War II. 70 years later, Takei looks back at how the camp shaped his surprising, personal...

"Co-parenting" isn't a buzzword -- it's a way of showing up for your family openly, consistently and lovingly, says storyteller and father Joel Leon. In this moving talk, he challenges all parents to play an equal, active role in their...

In mythological ancient Greece, Icarus flew above Crete on wings made from wax and feathers, defying the laws of man and nature. To witnesses on the ground, he looked like a god, and he felt like one too. But, in his society, the line...

No one thinks twice about a woman wearing blue jeans in New York City -- but when Nobel laureate Malala wears them, it's a political act. Around the globe, individuality can be a crime, and clothing can be a form of protest. In a talk...

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...

One of the ways that the US Constitution baked the institution of slavery into the very core of the new United States was through the fugitive slave clause. The clause required that people who escaped slavery be returned to their...

The world of modern theater owes its roots to the tragedians of Ancient Greece. As far back as the 5th Century BCE, actors and playwrights were entertaining the masses with intriguing stories. Melanie Sirof unveils the ancient theatrical...

The starving orphan seeking a second helping of gruel. The spinster wasting away in her tattered wedding dress. The stone-hearted miser plagued by the ghost of Christmas past. More than a century after his death, these remain...

The public is losing faith in democracy, says British MP Rory Stewart. Iraq and Afghanistan’s new democracies are deeply corrupt; meanwhile, 84 percent of people in Britain say politics is broken. In this important talk, Stewart sounds a...

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,...

Like Beat writers who composed their work by shredding and reassembling scraps of writing, artist Jean-Michel Basquiat used similar techniques to remix his materials. Pulling in splintered anatomy, reimagined historical scenes and...

Mr. Andersen uses chromosome beads to simulate both mitosis and meiosis. A brief discussion of gamete formation is also included.

Kakenya Ntaiya made a deal with her father: She would undergo a traditional Maasai rite of passage, female circumcision, if he would let her go to high school. Ntaiya tells the fearless story of continuing on to college, and of working...

Shakespeare's tragedies...were tragic. But they had some jokes. They also changed the way tragedies were written. Characters like Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear had tragic outcomes, but they were sympathetic characters in a lot of ways....

Explore William Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, “Hamlet,” a play about conspiracy, deception and the tragic consequences of indecision. -- “Who’s there?” Whispered in the dark, this question begins a tale of conspiracy, deception and...

In which John Green teaches you about Harper Lee's famous (and only) 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...

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...

New ReviewRikki Tikki Tavi is found by Teddy and his family. He learns to live with the humans, and finds out about the evil cobras Nag and Nagaina.

New ReviewAlice and Ted look for Imps in the woods. On the way they learn about static electricity and habitats, and spot animals including hares, rabbits, ducks, corvids and more.