Computers and computing have changed a lot over the History of Science but ESPECIALLY over the last 100 years. In this episode of Crash Course History of Science, we have a look at that history around World War Two and how that conflict...

Scientists tend to be careful and resistant to big claims. So evidence for the possible end of the living world took a while to be seen as such. In this episode of Crash Course History of Science, Hank talks to us about where Climate...

It's the final episode of our History of Science series and we thought it would be good to talk a little about some of the people we couldn't get to and some of the reasons we need to talk about diversity in scientists. Thanks for the...

In this episode of Crash Course History of Science, we travel to the Americas to ask the question, "When are we?" and get some answers. We'll look at the Maya, Inca, and Olmec civilizations and how they recorded their science.

The Presocratics: Crash Course History of Science #2

The history of science up until the Cold War is often overshadowed by the Manhattan Project. But, today we are going to talk about advances in biomedicine, or healthcare based on a biological understanding of human bodies and diseases.

We’ve talked a lot about advances in biotech. But none of those could have happened without advances in computing. It’s time to get back to data and explore the unlikely birth, strange life, and potential futures of the Internet. In this...

Plato and Aristotle: Crash Course History of Science #3

You probably know some of the signs of industrialization in the nineteenth century: Trains connected cities, symbolizing progress. But they also brought about the destruction of rural lands, divisions between social classes, and rapid...

It's all about the SUPER TINY in this episode of Crash Course: History of Science. In it, Hank Green talks about germ theory, John Snow (the other one), pasteurization, and why following our senses isn't always the worst idea.

It's time to heat things up! LITERALLY! It's time for Hank to talk about the history of Thermodynamics!!! It's messy and there are a lot of people who came up with some ideas that worked and other that didn't and then some ideas that...

Sometimes trail blazers of science aren't famous like Darwin or Pasteur. Sometimes they're humble Abbots, just growing peas in the back of their Abbey. This is the story of Gregor Mendel and how his work was done, lost, then found again.

The Islamic Golden Age of Science is largely to thank for our scientific developments today. Around 750-1250 CE, the Islamic empire made incredible scientific advancements that changed the course of history! Join Michael Aranda for a...

Like Egypt, Sumer, and Mesoamerica, ancient China represents a hydraulic civilization—one that maintained its population by diverting rivers to aid in irrigation—and one that developed writing thousands of years ago. Today, we’re going...

Intro to History of Science: Crash Course History of Science #1

For as long as Hank has hosted Crash Course, he's wanted to host a series about the history of science. We've been asking big questions for a really long time and we've all wanted to explore how we've sought to answer those questions...

Remember how Darwin and Mendel lived around the same time, but everyone forgot about Mendel until 1900, and even then biologists saw Darwinism and Mendelism as two competing grand theories about how life works?

Well, in this episode...

The Romans developed a lot of infrastructure like roads and aqueducts to both help their cities flourish and to... you know... be better at war. But the interesting thing about Roman Engineering is how it was almost all focused on Techne...

It's Earth Science time!!!! In this field, natural philosophers were asking questions like, what’s up with fossils? Are they the remains of extinct organisms? Or are they so-called “sports of nature”—rocks that just happen to look like...

One of the problems with the whole idea of a single Scientific Revolution is that some disciplines decided not to join any revolution. And others just took a long time to get there.

Like the Industrial or the Einsteinian Revolution, the Space Race is a trope, or way of organizing historical events into a story that makes sense. In this story, the two great powers that emerged after World War Two—the United States...

It's time to have a look at the future of human life and how technology could possibly extend longevity. But, within that tech, are questions of ethics that are not always at the top of mind when the tech is being developed. In this...

Scientists in the nineteenth century discovered a lot about life and matter. But exactly what kind of stuff is the human brain? That one was—and is—tricky.



The brain sciences—with experiments and therapies tied to biological...

The study of electricity goes all the way back to antiquity. But, by the time electricity started to become more well known, a few familiar names started to appear. Edison, Galvani, and a few others really changed the way the world worked.