In which John Green teaches you about Imperialism, but not from the perspective of the colonizers. This week John looks at some Asian perspectives on Imperialism; specifically, writers from countries that were colonized by European powers. We'll look at the writings of Sayyid Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani from the Middle East, Liang Qichao from China, and Rabindranath Tagore from India. these voices from the countries that were colonized give us a sense of how conquered people saw their conquerors, and give an insight into what these nations learned from being dominated by Europe. It's pretty interesting, OK? A lot of this episode is drawn from a fascinating book by Pankaj Mishra called The Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia. You should read it.

As we wrap up Crash Course Philosophy, we’re using the things we’ve learned to explore big issues like the value of life. Today, we’re discussing abortions in cases of fetal abnormality, assisted suicide, and euthanasia. We will consider the standard of substituted judgment and the values people hold on both sides of these issues—values about the sacredness of life, and the importance of a life of quality, as well as the values of personal liberty and avoiding pain.

Now that we’ve finished our tour of the planets, we’re headed back to the asteroid belt. Asteroids are chunks of rock, metal, or both that were once part of smallish planets but were destroyed after collisions. Most orbit the Sun between Mars and Jupiter, but some get near the Earth. The biggest, Ceres, is far smaller than the Moon but still big enough to be round and has undergone differentiation.

CORRECTION: In the episode, we say that 2010 TK7 is 800 km away. However, 2010 TK7 stays on average 150 million kilometers from Earth, but that can vary wildly.
Sorry about that!

Chapters:
Introduction: Asteroids
What are Asteroids?
Structure of the Main Belt
Ceres's Structure
Vesta and other Main Belt Asteroids
Rubble Piles
Why did the Asteroid Belt form?
Mars-crossing, Apollo, and Aten Asteroids
Trojan Asteroids & Lagrange Points
How Asteroids Get Their Names
Review

It's time for the end. At least the end of our first series on physics here at Crash Course. In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini sits down to talk about astrophysics and cosmology. By using what we've learned this year, we can better understand our universe. Join us for this final episode of Crash Course Physics as we head into the final frontier.

Today, Andre is going to talk about the rise of Atari and with it the rise of the video game industry. So if you remember from last episode, we mentioned that the first arcade machine, Galaxy Game, happened to have a coin slot, but this was just the beginning. Nolan Bushnell, often considered the Father of the Video Game Industry, saw the opportunity for the commercialization of video games. Bushnell founded Atari and oversaw the development of its first game - Pong. And then, through some questionably ethical business strategies, Bushnell was able to get his machines into arcades all across the United States. But if this is all Atari had done, we probably wouldn’t be dedicating an entire episode to it. Atari also played a major role in getting video games into the home with the Atari 2600 console. Video games were becoming a part of peoples’ everyday lives and they were becoming a part of popular culture. But Atari wasn’t the only video game company in the 1970s, it wasn’t even the first. So we’re going talk about some of the other companies that took part in the war for a place in our living rooms next week!

In which John Green teaches you about one of the least funny subjects in history: slavery. John investigates when and where slavery originated, how it changed over the centuries, and how Europeans and colonists in the Americas arrived at the idea that people could own other people based on skin color.

Slavery has existed as long as humans have had civilization, but the Atlantic Slave Trade was the height, or depth, of dehumanizing, brutal, chattel slavery. American slavery ended less than 150 years ago. In some parts of the world, it is still going on. So how do we reconcile that with modern life? In a desperate attempt at comic relief, Boba Fett makes an appearance.

Chapters:
Introduction
The Atlantic Slave Trade
The History of European Slave Trade
How Africans Became Enslaved
Living Conditions of Enslaved People
An Open Letter to the Word 'Slave'
What is the Definition of Slavery?
Other Models of Slavery: Greek, Roman, Judeo-Christian, and Muslim
Credits

The story picks up where we left off last time, with Einstein writing the president of his new homeland, the United States, urging him to build a nuclear weapon before Hitler. This is the tale of the most destructive force humans have ever unleashed. The Atomic Bomb.

Atoms are a lot like us - we call their relationships "bonds," and there are many different types. Each kind of atomic relationship requires a different type of energy, but they all do best when they settle into the lowest stress situation possible. The nature of the bond between atoms is related to the distance between them and, like people, it also depends on how positive or negative they are. Unlike human relationships, we can analyze exactly what makes chemical relationships work, and that's what this episode is all about.

If you are paying attention, you will learn that chemical bonds form in order to minimize the energy difference between two atoms or ions; that those chemical bonds may be covalent if atoms share electrons, and that covalent bonds can share those electrons evenly or unevenly; that bonds can also be ionic if the electrons are transferred instead of shared: and how to calculate the energy transferred in an ionic bond using Coulomb's Law.

Chapters:
Bonds Minimize Energy
Covalent Bonds
Ionic Bonds
Coulomb's Law

Hank takes you on a tour of your two-part autonomic nervous system. This episode explains how your sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system work together as foils, balancing each other out. Their key anatomical differences - where nerve fibers originate and where their ganglia are located - drive their distinct anatomical functions, making your sympathetic nervous system the "fight or flight" while your parasympathetic nervous system is for "resting and digesting."

Chapters:
Introduction: Autonomic Nervous System
Sympathetic & Parasympathetic Nervous Systems
Origins - Comparing the Sympathetic & Parasympathetic Nervous Systems
Ganglia - Comparing the Sympathetic & Parasympathetic Nervous Systems
Axon Lengths - Comparing the Sympathetic & Parasympathetic Nervous Systems
Review
Credits

Bacteria often get a bad rap, but they’re some of our best partners in science and medicine! In this episode, we’ll explore what bacteria are doing with their DNA — including how they can trade it around. We’ll learn about chromosomes and plasmids, gene expression and recombinant DNA, and how E. coli are used to make insulin.
Chapters:
Introduction: The Microbiome
Prokaryotes & DNA
Plasmids & Horizontal Gene Transfer
Insulin
Gene Expression
Dr. Rebecca Lancefield
Review & Credits
Credits

Barack Obama was the first Black man elected President in the United States in 2008. In this episode, Clint Smith will explore the early life, political career, presidential campaign, and legislative milestones of Barack Obama.

Language is complicated, especially in organic chemistry. This episode of Crash Course Organic Chemistry is all about nomenclature. We'll dive into IUPAC systematic naming of organic molecules, and get to practice with the help of three trusty steps!

Today we're going to finish up our discussion of Bayesian inference by showing you how we can it be used for continuous data sets and be applied both in science and everyday life. From A/B testing of websites and getting a better understanding of psychological disorders to helping with language translation and purchase recommendations Bayes statistics really are being used everywhere!

Beasts of No Nation is available to stream on Netflix (as it is a Netflix release).

Some films are about war, some films are about kids, but some films are about kids during a time of war. Even more upsetting are films about kids who participate in war. Beasts of No Nation tells the story of Agu, a child forced into serving in a war in Africa and it is both upsetting and compassionate. In this episode of Crash Course Film Criticism, Michael Aranda talks to us about the craft of filmmaking in Cary Fukunaga's "Beasts of No Nation."

Get ready to get weird. Mike Rugnetta teaches you about the Theater of the Absurd, a 1950s theatrical reaction to the dire world events of the 1940s. You'll learn about Jean Genet, Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, and the theatrical movement that left us all Waiting for Godot.

In which John Green concludes the Crash Course Literature mini-series with an examination of the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Sure, John explores the creepy biographical details of Dickinson's life, but he also gets into why her poems have remained relevant over the decades. John discusses Dickinson's language, the structure of her work, and her cake recipes. He also talks about Dickinson's famously eccentric punctuation, which again ends up relating to her cake recipes. Also, Dickinson's coconut cake recipe is included. Also, here are links to some of the poems discussed in the video:

Why do people buy the stuff they buy? In classical economics, most models assume that consumers behave rationally. As you've probably noticed in your real life, in case after case, people don't actually make rational decisions. There can be emotional or social reasons for all this irrationality, and behavioral economics tries to address this. We'll talk about risk, nudge theory, prices and perception, and the ultimatum game. So, let's get irrational, in a logical way, of course.

Are you ready to learn something about the world? Then you're ready for Bertolt Brecht, and his ideas about Epic Theater. Brecht wanted to lean into the idea of theater as a tool to upset and educate the world about stuff like the struggles of the working class and the problematic aspects of capitalism. He wanted to SHOCK people into seeing the world as it is and taking action, rather than merely entertain audiences. But, he messed up, and wrote some pretty entertaining stories, with some really catchy music integrated into it. And do, people ended up whistling Mack the Knife instead of throwing off the shackles of an oppressive social order. To be fair, it is a catchy tune. Today you're going to learn about Brecht, Epic Theater, and a little bit about the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Because those jerks hauled Brecht up in 1948 to shake him down about whether or not he was a communist.

In which Craig Benzine teaches you about the United States Congress, why it's bicameral, and what bicameral means. Craig tells you what the Senate and House of Representatives are for, talks about some of the histories of the institutions, and reveals to you just how you can become a representative. It's not that easy. But an eagle gets punched, so there's that.

Thanks to observations of galaxy redshifts, we can tell that the universe is EXPANDING! Knowing that the universe is expanding and how quickly it's expanding also allows us to run the clock backward 14 billion years to the way the universe began - with a bang.

Chapters:
Introduction: The Origins of the Universe
Distant Galaxies Show a Redshift in Their Spectra
The Universe is Expanding
The Big Bang
Lookback Time
The Cosmic Microwave Background
What is the Universe Expanding Into?
Review