Crash Course Big History

In which John Green, Hank Green, and Emily Graslie teach you about, well, everything. Big History is the history of everything. We're going to start with the Big Bang, take you right through all of history (recorded and otherwise), and even talk a little bit about the future. It is going to be awesome. In the awe-inspiring sense of the word awesome. In this episode, we walk you through the start of everything: The Big Bang. We'll look at how the universe unfolded at its very beginning, and how everything in the universe that we know today came into being. So that's kind of a big deal, right?

In which John Green, Hank Green, and Emily Graslie teach you about what happened in the Universe after the big bang. They'll teach you about cosmic background radiation, how a bunch of hydrogen and helium turned into stars, formed galaxies, created heavy elements, and eventually created planets.

In which John Green, Hank Green, and Emily Graslie teach you about our Sun, and the formation of the planets. We're going to focus on the formation and development of the Earth, because that's where people live. You'll learn about the Solar nebula, the birth of the sun, the formation of planets, and how the Earth and the rest of the solar system developed over the last 4.567 billion years.

In which Hank and John Green teach you about life on Earth. They won't be giving advice on how life should be lived, because this is a history series. Instead, they'll teach you about the earliest forms of life on Earth, and some of the ways that they developed into the types of life we know, love, and sometimes don't love so much (I'm looking at you here, opossums). You'll learn about prokaryotes, eukaryotes, panspermia, reproduction, a little about DNA, and even a thing or two about trees. Maybe.

In which John Green, Hank Green, and Emily Graslie teach you about evolution. So, in the last 3.8 billion years, life on Earth has evolved from single-celled prokaryotes to the dizzying array of life we have today. So how did all this happen? We'll talk about Darwin, evolution, natural selection, and how we got from there to here, and from then to now.

In which John Green and Hank Green teach you about how human primates moved out of Africa and turned Earth into a real-life Planet of the Apes. And the apes are people! John and Hank teach you about how humans evolved, and the sort of tricks they picked up along the way like complex tool use, big brains, and fighting. Our ancestors adapted to the grasslands of Africa, and went through several iterations including Australopithecus, Homo Habilis, and Homo Ergaster/Erectus. Our ancestors tamed fire, made pressure flake tools, and eventually smartphones.

In which Hank and John Green teach you about humanity conquering the Earth. Or at least moving from Africa into the rest of the Earth. As human beings spread out across the world and populations grew, humanity reached a critical mass of innovators, and collective learning took off! All these innovations were great for lots of human endeavors, but none fared better than agriculture.

In which Hank and John Green teach you a Crash Course on the modern revolution, and the upside of the progress that humanity has made in the last 500 years or so. And while there are two sides to every history, and many of these changes haven't been great for the other inhabitants of the Earth, collective learning has made life better for people in general. We'll talk about the European explorations, improvements in machinery, communications, and the harnessing of energy that improved the lot of human beings.

In which John Green, Hank Green, and Emily Graslie teach you about the Anthropocene, an unofficial geological era that covers the last century or so, in which humanity has made massive progress. We've discovered the Higgs-Boson particle, and awesome electric cars, and amazing smartphones. So all this collective learning and progress has been good for everyone, right? Maybe not. We'll look at some of the pros and cons of all this "progress," including environmental impact, changes in the way people live and work, and political changes and wars that come along with the modern world. We've come a long way, but there's a long way to go. Crash Course will also take a look at what's going to happen in the near future. If we manage to make our way through the coming bottlenecks, we could be OK in coming centuries. Don't get too hopeful, though. The Sun will eventually die, and the Earth will be destroyed, and later the universe will eventually experience heat death. But we won't talk about those downers until next week.

Finally, after what seems like eons and eons, the end is nigh. We're talking not only about the end of Crash Course Big History, but also the end of everything. The end of humanity and the end of the universe.John and Hank Green will teach you about what the future holds for humanity and the universe. Spoiler alert: in the long, long, long, long, long, long term, it doesn't look good. In the short term though, it's not too bad. But don't lose hope, there is an upside. You'll have to watch the video to find out.