For anyone who believes poetry is stuffy or elitist, Amanda Gorman -- the youngest inaugural poet in US history -- has some characteristically well-chosen words. Poetry is for everyone, she says, and at its core it's all about connection...

Never underestimate the power of an intriguing start. When analyzing the literary greats like Charles Dickens and Kurt Vonnegut, be inspired by their craft and learn how to write a tantalizing introduction and strong thesis for your...

Groups of animals have some really interesting names! Learn about them with Jessi and Squeaks!

Now that you have a solid understanding of the media landscape, it’s time to equip you with the essential skills for navigating it.

Rajesh Rao is fascinated by "the mother of all crossword puzzles": how to decipher the 4000-year-old Indus script. He's enlisting modern computation to try to read this lost language, the key to understanding this ancient civilization.

The prisoner strapped under a descending pendulum blade. A raven who refuses to leave the narrator's chamber. A beating heart buried under the floorboards. Poe's macabre and innovative stories of gothic horror have left a timeless mark...

If you can recognize when you're being persuaded, it's a lot easier to make sure your opinions are actually your own.

We’ve mentioned already that there’s a lot of money in media and a huge chunk of that money is spent on trying to get you to do something – buy something, vote a certain way, change a behavior. How does advertising work? And what’s the...

The point of fiction is to cast a spell, a momentary illusion that you are living in the world of the story. But as a writer, how do you suck your readers into your stories in this way? Nalo Hopkinson shares some tips for how to use...

In business, you need to know how to write. And that involves learning a bunch of things like knowing who you're writing to and what kind of thing you're writing. In this episode of Crash Course Business Soft Skills, Evelyn talks to us...

Leaving the bookstore at the beginning of the semester you're probably wondering how the heck you're going to get through all of that reading. Today we're explaining how much of that reading you really need to do and the best strategies...

This week, we're learning about sonnets, and English Literature's best-known purveyor of those fourteen-line paeans, William Shakespeare. We'll look at a few of Willy Shakes's biggest hits, including Sonnet 18, "Shall I compare thee to a...

Artist Raghava KK demos his new children's book for iPad with a fun feature: when you shake it, the story -- and your perspective -- changes. In this charming short talk, he invites all of us to shake up our perspective a little bit.

Certain moments in our lives seem to last forever. Whether it is a first kiss or a car crash, time can seem to stretchor even stop. Aaron Sitze explains how this sensation is conveyed in cinema and how the same conventions can be used to...

Reading slowly -- with her finger running beneath the words, even when she was taught not to -- has led Jacqueline Woodson to a life of writing books to be savored. In a lyrical talk, she invites us to slow down and appreciate stories...

In which John Green kicks off the Crash Course Literature mini series with a reasonable set of questions. Why do we read? What's the point of reading critically. John will argue that reading is about effectively communicating with other...

New ReviewIn an era long before phones, radios, telegraphs, or even writing systems, the people of Sub-Saharan Africa had already mastered one of history's quickest and most effective long distance communication systems.

New ReviewThis video teaches using commas in a series, as a short pause, in dates, locations, conjunctions, letter writing, and more.

New ReviewThis video teaches the closed exception sounds ild, ind, old, olt, and ost for kids.

New ReviewThis video teaches what nouns, verbs, and adjectives are. These are important grammar skills for reading and writing..

New ReviewThis video give instruction and practice with finding the problem and solution with simple and more complex texts.

New ReviewIn this video, the speaker discusses ten untranslatable German words that English should steal. From "yine" (a mix between yes and no) to "Fernweh" (a longing for faraway lands), these words capture unique concepts that English lacks....

New ReviewIn this video, the speaker explores the etymology of dinosaur names and explains the literal meanings behind them. With the help of an expert from London's Natural History Museum, they delve into the origins of terms like "dinosaur"...

New ReviewThis video explores the linguistic phenomenon of egg corns, which are misheard versions of terms that have become popularized. The term "eggcorn" was coined by linguists to describe these quirky mishearings, which often make their own...