In which John Green teaches you about war! Specifically, John talks about whether humanity is naturally warlike, hard-wired to kill, or if perhaps war is a cultural construct. John will talk about the Hobbes versus Rousseau debate, the...

The European Renaissance may have started in Florence, but it pretty quickly moved out of Italy and spread the art, architecture, literature, and humanism across Europe to places like France, Spain, England, and the Low Countries....

Plants are amazing. Really! Photosynthesis is an incredible thing. But it also means that some plants can't live everywhere. They need to get the right amount of sunlight for the right amount of time. In this episode of Crash Course...

So we know what life needs here to work, and we've talked a little about what life COULD look like on other planets. But what about plant life? What could plant life look like on other planets? In this episode of Crash Course Kids,...

How do characters make a story? In this episode of Crash Course Kids Literature, we’ll investigate the traits of characters from “King and the Dragonflies” by Kacen Callender and uncover the ways they relate to each...

The Park Grass experiment at Rothamsted Research Centre in England is the world's longest-running ecological experiment. It's also the result of a sort of Victorian Stardew Valley, the enduring friendship between John Bennet Lawes and...

Small grains in the Murchison meteorite have been estimated to be 7 billion years old—much older than the Earth, and even the solar system.

The Sahara is rather famously a desert, but it wasn't always that way. And during the time of lush green forests, there were plenty of people who lived there, but they've been hard to study. However, new genetic analysis has given us...

The North American continent used to have deep roots extending far into the Earth's mantle. They melted. Here's how scientists think they disappeared.

The Giant's Causeway is a rock formation that is so otherworldly that it seems like it was made by supernatural beings. But these incredible hexagonal columns of rock aren't the result of giant masons. They formed through a quirk of...

We all picked up new habits during the COVID-19 pandemic. But not all of them stuck. Here's the data on whether we're better or worse drivers, exercisers, social media community members, neighbors, and self carers than during and before...

Whether you saw a quantum computer featured in a tech news blog post, or that Black Mirror episode "Joan is Awful", the chandelier-like look may have inspired the thought "Why does it look like that?" Well, it's not for the sci-fi...

Bill and Webb want to know: What's stronger, wind or water? Both of them can change the shape of the land. So which one does it better?

Squeaks is looking to plan his next vacation. Jessi tells him all about the amazing volcanoes you can find in

Jessi and Sam the Bat learn about every kind of volcano. Some erupt suddenly and some erupt slowly. Some are tall, some aren't big mountains at all, and some stopped erupting a long time ago. But they're all volcanoes!

Reading books can be fun, but there’s so much more to discover beneath the surface. In this episode of Crash Course Kids Literature, we’ll use our background knowledge and story evidence to make inferences about E.B. White’s novel,...

How do characters make a story? In this episode of Crash Course Kids Literature, we’ll investigate the traits of characters from “King and the Dragonflies” by Kacen Callender and uncover the ways they relate to each other. Topic:...

Where do you find a theme? Deep in the characters, under the setting, entwined in the plot? In this episode of Crash Course Kids Literature, we travel through the universe with the characters in “A Wrinkle in Time” to discover its...

Fairy tales aren’t just “once upon a time…” and “happily ever after.” They can connect us to people across the world! In our final episode of Crash Course Kids Literature, we compare and contrast different versions of “Little Red Riding...

In this video Paul Andersen shows you how to analyze and interpret data in a mini-lesson on quantitative analysis. Two examples are included in the video and two additional examples are included in the linked thinking slides. <br/>

Millions of Americans are expected to go on a European vacation this summer. Many of those going for the first time are likely to be following the advice of travel writer Rick Steves, host of “Rick Steves’ Europe” on PBS stations. John...

There are growing concerns around the proliferation of misogyny online and its migration into real-world interactions, especially those involving young men. John Yang reports on a Detroit teenager’s experience and the broader...

According to the CDC, 1 in 5 American adults is living with obesity. In recent years, many have turned to weight loss drugs containing GLP-1, a hormone that slows digestion and helps with sustained weight loss. In a new book, former FDA...

In 1992, something unprecedented happened in Los Angeles: rival gang members negotiated a historic peace treaty, significantly reducing violence across the city. Aqeela Sherrills, one of the key negotiators of that treaty, continues to...