Despite the diverse appearance and characteristics of organisms on Earth, the chemicals that make up living things are remarkably similar, often identical. In this episode of Crash Course Biology, we’ll look at the building blocks of the four major classes of biomolecules, how those join up to form macromolecules, and how a team of six atoms forms the vast majority of living matter.

Chapters:
Introduction to Life’s Molecules
Chemical Bonds
The Major Biological Molecules
Polymerization
Hydrolysis
Review & Credits
Credits

And thus begins the most revolutionary biology course in history. Come and learn about covalent, ionic, and hydrogen bonds. What about electron orbitals, the octet rule, and what does it all have to do with a madman named Gilbert Lewis? It's all contained within.

Chapters:
1. Intro
2. Carbon
3. Electron Shells
4. The Octet Rule
5. Gilbert Lewis
6. Covalent Bonds
7. Polar & Non-Polar Covalent Bonds
8. Ionic Bonds
9. Hydrogen Bonds
Review

Esters have a wide range of uses, from giving perfumes and colognes their fragrances, to preventing diseases like scurvy. Vitamin C, that scurvy preventing antioxidant, is derived from carboxylic acids, a class of organic compounds we’ve already learned a lot about! In this episode of Crash Course Organic Chemistry, we’ll look at four different carboxylic acid derivatives and their reactivities, react them with nucleophiles, and learn some hydrolysis reaction mechanisms that we can use in our synthesis of penicillin!

We get it, learning so many different organic reactions is probably giving you a headache, but hopefully this episode can help! We’re getting even deeper into carboxylic acid derivatives, some of which are used in common headache relieving painkillers. In this episode of Crash Course Organic Chemistry, we’ll learn how to convert more reactive carboxylic acid derivatives into less reactive ones, turn carboxylic acids into acid chlorides, reduce carboxylic acid derivatives using metal hydrides, and more! Plus, we’ll get to add the first stage of synthesizing Penicillin V to our Mold Medicine Map!

What do the smells of feet, armpits, vomit, and goats all have in common? (Besides being super gross…) Carboxylic acids! Despite being responsible for some of our least favorite odors, carboxylic acids are also super useful in organic chemistry. In this episode of Crash Course Organic Chemistry, we’ll review carboxylic acid synthesis and nomenclature, react carboxylic acids to form salts, esters, and acid chlorides, and start our journey towards synthesizing one of the most important organic chemicals in medicine, penicillin!

Today, we’re going to step away from video games and take a closer look at a game type that has been with us for over a millennium - card games. Since Tang Dynasty China, cards have proven to have quite the staying power spawning a countless variety of games as well largely influencing gaming culture, particularly in games like Poker within the gambling industry and also more recently in trading card game communities around games like Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon TCG, and Magic: The Gathering.

This week Hank introduces skepticism, exploring everything from the nature of reality through the eyes of a 17th century philosopher and, of course, The Matrix.

Today, we’re moving on from game consoles to talk about a bigger shift that was happening in the gaming industry. In the mid 2000s, we saw a proliferation of Internet accessible devices and with them gaming would expand to a new audience. We’re going to talk about two types of games that are found on these devices, social and mobile games, which together we’ll call casual games. Now, the definitions of these terms can get a little muddy, as they’re continuously evolving, but largely what was seen in the industry was a widespread adoption of asynchronous, socially driven gameplay. These changes spurred the industry to change its profit model, and by 2015, these casual games now make up nearly half of all video game industry revenue. And with their easier mechanics, lower price point, and social component these casual games helped integrate gaming into our daily lives like never before.

Until roughly 1100, there were relatively few places of knowledge-making. Monasteries and abbeys had special rooms called scriptoria where monks copied manuscripts by hand. But the biggest places where knowledge was made were the Gothic cathedrals. Then Universities came along, too. This is the story of those two institutions!

When the Protestant Reformation broke out in Western Europe, the Catholic Church got the message, at least a little bit. Pope Paul III called a council to look into reforming some aspects of the Catholic Church and try to stem the tide of competing Christian sects popping up all over the place. The Council of Trent changed some aspects of the organization, but doubled down on a lot of the practices that Martin Luther and other reformers had a problem with. Today you'll learn about the Council of Trent, the rise of the Jesuits, and Saint Teresa of Avila.

Today, in our final lab, Jabril tries to make an AI settle the question once and for all, "Will a cat or a dog make us happier?" But in building this AI, Jabril will accidentally incorporate the very bias he was trying to avoid. So today we'll talk about how bias creeps into our algorithms and what we can do to try to account for these problems.

The end of college isn't the end of your education, it's just the end of a chapter of your education. But before we think about what comes next, we should really pause to celebrate. Congratulate ourselves. The work to get through higher ed is challenging. And it can be really helpful to use a celebration to close the book on it so you're ready to move on to the next chapter. In this final episode of How to College, we talk about the road ahead.

Chapters:
- Introduction
Importance of Celebrating Successes
- Ways to Celebrate
- Sharing Your Accomplishments
- Lifelong Learning
- Graduate School
- Conclusion

Review

The cell membrane is a protein-studded phospholipid bilayer that not only protects our cells, but also regulates what goes in and out. In this episode of Crash Course Biology, we’ll look at the structure of the bilayer, learn about its discovery, and explore the many ways substances can be transported into and out of cells.

Chapters:
Introduction to the Cell Membrane
Membrane Structure
Membrane Proteins
Membrane Transport
Review & Credits
Credits

You know ‘em, you love ‘em. They’re the powerhouse of the cell: mitochondria. They produce the ATP molecules that we use to do everything from talk to our friends to run a marathon. In this episode of Crash Course Biology, we’re taking a deep dive into cellular respiration, the process that produces the ATP inside of our mitochondria.

Chapters:
Getting Energy
Mitochondria & ATP
Cellular Respiration
Glycolysis
The Citric Acid Cycle
The Electron Transport Chain
Review & Credits
Credits

Today Hank talks about your central nervous system. In this episode, we'll explore how your brain develops and how important location is for each of your brain's many functions.

Chapters:
Introduction: Broca's Aphasia
Central Nervous System Structure & Function
Brain Development: Neural Tube
Brain Development: 3 Primary Vesicles
Brain Development: 5 Secondary Vesicles
Brain Development: Major Adult Brain Regions
Brain Development: Cerebellum & Brain Stem
Brain Development: Reptilian Brain
Brain Development: Cerebral Hemispheres
The Brain's Lobes
Review
Credits

Today we’re going to build the ticking heart of every computer - the Central Processing Unit or CPU. The CPU’s job is to execute the programs we know and love - you know like GTA V, Slack... and Power Point. To make our CPU we’ll bring in our ALU and RAM we made in the previous two episodes and then with the help of Carrie Anne’s wonderful dictation (slowly) step through some clock cycles. WARNING: this is probably the most complicated episode in this series, we watched this a few times over ourselves, but don't worry at about .03Hz we think you can keep up.

With the question “What is life?” addressed at the molecular level, humanity could finally cure all disease and live forever… Except, not really. It turns out we're complicated.

Can we change the blueprints of life? This week we are exploring that question with genetic engineering. We’ll discuss how selective breeding can improve agricultural practices, and the potential DNA-level engineering could have on other fields of engineering. We’ll also look at how optogenetics and CRISPR have opened up new ways for genetic engineers to change the DNA inside living cells.

In which John Green teaches you about the Holy Roman Empire by teaching you about Charles V. Charles Hapsburg was the Holy Roman Emperor, but he was also the King of Spain. And the King of Germany. And the King of Italy and the Lord of the Netherlands and Count Palatine of Burgundy. In short, Charles was runnin' thangs in much of the world during his reign. Charles ruled a lot of countries, and he was also known for encouraging intellectual discourse and even spoke out against slavery, in a limited way. So why did he consider himself a failure, and why did he break up the Empire when he abdicated in 1556? Mainly because the Holy Roman Empire didn't work very well. It was huge, and it didn't have any means of directly raising taxes. Plus, it was a pretty crazy time in Europe anyway, and Charles found himself in charge of the Catholic-Church-Endorsed Empire during the time of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. John will teach you a bit about how Charles put the Empire together, and how it fell apart, and even talk a bit about the Diet of Worms.

Today we're going to start our two-part unit on data visualization. Up to this point we've discussed raw data - which are just numbers - but usually it's much more useful to represent this information with charts and graphs. There are two types of data we encounter, categorical and quantitative data, and they likewise require different types of visualizations. Today we'll focus on bar charts, pie charts, pictographs, and histograms and show you what they can and cannot tell us about their underlying data as well as some of the ways they can be misused to misinform.