Today we’re going to talk about ethical data collection. From the Tuskegee syphilis experiments and Henrietta Lacks’ HeLa cells to the horrifying experiments performed at Nazi concentration camps, many strides have been made from Institutional Review Boards (or IRBs) to the Nuremberg Code to guarantee voluntariness, informed consent, and beneficence in modern statistical gathering. But as we’ll discuss, with the complexities of research in the digital age many new ethical questions arise.

This week, Mike Rugnetta re-introduces Herakles, the strong man of Greek and Roman myth. Strongman with a darkside, that is. You'll learn about Herakles' 10 actually 12 labors, the story of his birth, his death, some of his marriages, none of which turned out that great, and some of his character flaws that definitely wouldn't fly in the modern world.

Hank and his brother John discuss heredity via the gross example of relative ear wax moistness.

In which Mike Rugnetta continues to teach you about tricksters. In this episode, we're talking about tricksters as culture heroes. Basically, a culture hero is someone whose creativity adds to their mythological culture. We'll learn how the shennanigans of Hermes are credited with deeply influencing Greek culture and myth, and we'll look at how Loki's tricks led to a lot of important aspects of Norse myth. This episode has it all! Cattle rustling, cook outs, luthiery, joke haircuts, and Gullinbursti the Battle Swine. All that's to say, this is a good one.

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 telling are pretty cool. And they've been hugely influential on the way we tell stories today. So, consider this your Call to Destiny. Crash Course is going to help you Cross the Threshold into the Belly of the Whale that is YouTube, and escort you through the Many Trials, on our way to the Ultimate Boon of knowledge. And there are a bunch of other steps in there, too. So, come along heroes! Let's learn this stuff!

From sunsets to double rainbows, nature’s full of beautiful things. So it’s not surprising that artists have found inspiration in Mother Nature for millennia. What is surprising is the wide variety of human concerns that nature art has been used to convey. In this episode of Crash Course Art History, we’ll learn about the ways artists use nature to make arguments about the world around us, and our place within it.
Chapters:
Introduction: The Nazca Plateau
The Hidden Meanings in Nature Art
Social Issues in Nature Art
Humans & the Environment
Review & Credits
Credits

Ditching fossil fuels is the most important thing we can do to combat climate change, but it can feel like wandering through a labyrinth to try to do so. In this episode of Crash Course Climate and Energy, we'll explore why it's so hard for us to break up with fossil fuels and the ways governments and fuel companies affect our relationship with them.

Chapters:
Introduction: Ditching Fossil Fuels
Why Fossil Fuels Are Everywhere
Fossil Fuel Subsidies
Fossil Fuels & The Economy
Cuba's Special Period
Fossil Fuels' Global Impacts
Fuel Companies & Misinformation
Review & Credits
Credits

Massive stars fuse heavier elements in their cores than lower-mass stars. This leads to the creation of heavier elements up to iron. Iron robs critical energy from the core, causing it to collapse. The shock wave, together with a huge swarm of neutrinos, blasts through the star’s outer layers, causing it to explode. The resulting supernova creates even more heavy elements, scattering them through space. Also, happily, we’re in no danger from a nearby supernova.

Chapters:
Introduction: High Mass Stars
Core Fusion Creates Heavier Elements
Other Stages of High Mass Stars
Silicone & Iron Fusion
Core Collapse
Supernova Remnants
Explosive Nucleosynthesis
Review

How did we get here? Well, in terms of Atomic Chemistry, Hank takes us on a tour of the folks that were part of the long chain of other folks who helped us get to these deeper understandings of the world. From Leucippus to Heisenberg to you - yes, YOU - the story of Atomic Chemistry is all wibbly-wobbly... and amazing.

Today we’ll cover the fourth and final of our core disciplines of engineering: chemical engineering. We’ll talk about its history and evolution going from soda ash competitions to oil refineries and renewable energies. We’ll also discuss some newer and emerging fields like biotechnology and pharmaceuticals.

Next stop on our tour of engineering’s major fields: electrical engineering. In this episode we’ll explore the history of telecommunications, electric power and lighting, and computers. We’ll introduce topics like magnetism, electrical conduction, telegraphy, lighting, and computers.

Today we're going to talk about game shows! Game shows have a long history going all the way back to the 1920s on the radio and then proliferating across media to the massive pop culture icons they are today. And they're different from most game genres we've discussed in this series because chances are most of us won't participate in shows like Jeopardy!, American Idol, or The Price is Right. Even so, many us are innately familiar with them and actively watch them, much like sports. So today we're going to talk about the winding history game shows, the event that nearly ended the genre altogether, and of course take closer look at why exactly they've become so popular.

With a solid understanding of biology on the small scale under our belts, it's time for the long view - for the next twelve weeks, we'll be learning how the living things that we've studied interact with and influence each other and their environments. Life is powerful, and in order to understand how living systems work, you first have to understand how they originated, developed, and diversified over the past 4.5 billion years of Earth's history. Hang on to your hats as Hank tells us the epic drama that is the history of life on Earth.

Chapters:
1) Archaean & Proterozoic Eons
a) Protobionts
b) Prokaryotes
c) Eukaryotes

In order to understand the history of media literacy we have to go all the way back to straight up literacy. In the first half of our look at the history of media literacy, Jay takes us all the way back to Ancient Greece and forward through the printing press, newspapers, and Yellow Journalism.

Introduction: Who thinks about Media Literacy?
The Phaedrus and Plato
The early history of literacy
The printing press
Literacy and religion (Martin Luther)
Media literacy and media technology
The newspaper
The penny press
Sensationalism (Pulitzer vs. Hearst)
Yellow Journalism
Thought Bubble: Yellow Journalism and the Maine explosion
Yellow Journalism Details
Credits

Jay continues our journey through the history of media literacy with the arrival of movies, television, and the other screens that now permeate our lives – along with some of the different approaches to media literacy that these inventions brought with them.

Introduction: Review and new technologies
Protectionism and types of defensiveness
Cultural defensiveness
Political defensiveness
Moral defensiveness
Modern media literacy and Marshall Mcluhan
Thought Bubble: Online message sharing
The purpose of modern media literacy
Digital literacy
News literacy
Social media
Review
Credits

In this episode of Crash Course Art History, we’ll learn why museums are so much more than just collections of interesting and pretty objects. Their legacy includes everything from violence to theft, to, oddly enough, mermaid hands.
Chapters:
Introduction: What Counts as a Museum?
Ancient Versions of Museums
Cabinets of Curiosities
Colonialism & Museums
Critiques of Museums
The Future of Museums
Review & Credits
Credits

In which John Green teaches you a bit about the 4th of July. In this special short Crash Course, John celebrates American Independence Day by teaching you how the holiday came to be on the 4th of July, and the many ways that Americans celebrate the day. This is a little different than the normal Crash Course episode, so be prepared.

Chapters:
Introduction
The Declaration of Independence
July 4, 1776
How Americans Celebrate Independence Day
July 4: When Presidents Die
Americans Love Eating!
Happy Fourth of July from Crash Course!
Credits

In which John continues the discussion of JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. This week John reads the novel with Salinger's life story in mind. John explores how Salinger's war experience, educational background, and romantic life inform the events of Holden Caulfield's life. How did Holden get to be such a whiny, self-absorbed teen? While it's not a great idea to read novels too biographically, Salinger's life surely informed Holden's. Watch on to get an idea of just how much.

As the New Hollywood gained steam in the late 70s and early 80s, another revenue stream opened its doors: home video. From Betamax to Laserdisc to Bluray to streaming services, home video revolutionized how we ingest movies. In this episode of Crash Course Film History, Craig gives us an overview of it all.

HOMUNCULUS! It's a big and weird word that you may or may not have heard before, but do you know what it means? In this episode of Crash Course Psychology, Hank gives us a deeper understanding of this weird model of human sensation.

Chapters:
Introduction: HOMUNCULUS
Sensation vs. Perception
Sound Waves
How Human Hearing Works
How Human Taste Works
Synesthesia
How Human Smell Works
How Human Touch Works
Kinesthesis
Vestibular Sense
Credits