Beginning Mondays in March, we are bringing you Crash Course Sociology. Host Nicole Sweeney will walk you through questions big and small about how we both shape societies and are shaped by them. We hope you'll join us.
Welcome to Crash Course Statistics! In this series we're going to take a closer look at how statistics play a significant role in our everyday lives. Now this a "math" course, and there will definitely be some math, but we're going to focus on how statistics is useful and valuable to you - someone that performs AND consumes statistics all the time. Statistics are everywhere from batting averages and insurance rates to weather forecasting and smart assistants, and it's our hope that when you finish this series you'll get a better idea of the role statistics play in helping us better understand the world!
We're back! This year Mike Rugnetta is teaching you about theater and drama. Are you in drama club? Want to know about the history of theater? Maybe learn some theater history? Have a lot of fun? This is the series for you! Over the next year, we're going to learn about the history and workings of the dramatic arts, together. It's going to be a great time, very low drama. Except it's all drama. Embrace the paradox, folks.
We’ve talked about deviance more broadly, but today we’re focusing on crime, specifically in the US. We’ll start with legal definitions of crime and use FBI data to get an idea of the amount and kinds of crime committed in the US. We’ll also use that date to paint a demographic picture of who gets arrested, and explain why that’s not necessarily a full look of who commits crime. We’ll also discuss society’s response to crime in the criminal justice system, and how that response has resulted in mass incarceration.
In which John Green teaches you about the Crusades embarked upon by European Christians in the 12th and 13th centuries. Our traditional perception of the Crusades as European Colonization thinly veiled in religion isn't quite right. John covers the First through the Fourth Crusades, telling you which were successful, which were well-intentioned yet ultimately destructive, and which were just plain crazy. Before you ask, no, he doesn't cover the Children's Crusade, in which children were provoked to gather for a Crusade, and then promptly sold into slavery by the organizers of said Crusade. While this story is charming, it turns out to be complete and utter hooey.
Today we’re going to talk about how to keep information secret, and this isn’t a new goal. From as early as Julius Caesar’s Caesar cipher to Mary, Queen of Scots, encrypted messages to kill Queen Elizabeth in 1587, theres has long been a need to encrypt and decrypt private correspondence. This proved especially critical during World War II as Allan Turing and his team at Bletchley Park attempted to decrypt messages from Nazi Enigma machines, and this need has only grown as more and more information sensitive tasks are completed on our computers. So today, we’re going to walk you through some common encryption techniques such as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange, and RSA which are employed to keep your information safe, private, and secure.
What is culture? How do we define it and how does it change? We’ll explore different categories of culture, like low culture, high culture, and sub-cultures. We'll also revisit our founding theories to consider both a structural functionalist and a conflict theory perspective on what cultures mean for society.
Cybersecurity is a set of techniques to protect the secrecy, integrity, and availability of computer systems and data against threats. In today’s episode, we’re going to unpack these three goals and talk through some strategies we use like passwords, biometrics, and access privileges to keep our information as secure, but also as accessible as possible. From massive Denial of Service, or DDos attacks, to malware and brute force password cracking there are a lot of ways for hackers to gain access to your data, so we’ll also discuss some strategies like creating strong passwords, and using 2-factor authentication, to keep your information safe.
Hank imagines himself breaking into the Hot Pockets factory to steal their secret recipes and instruction manuals in order to help us understand how the processes known as DNA transcription and translation allow our cells to build proteins.
Hank introduces us to that wondrous molecule deoxyribonucleic acid - also known as DNA - and explains how it replicates itself in our cells.
Watch. Dime. Develop. Powder. Pantry. Dirt. That's right, it's time for a dip into the random, because we're talking about the Dada theater that grew out of Symbolism, and the Surrealist theater that followed Dada. You'll learn about Maurice Maeterlinck, Paul Fort, Lugne Poe, Andre Breton, and Alfred Jarry and his infamous play, Ubu Roi. Along the way, you'll pick up lots of interesting facts. For instance, Jarry's favorite cocktail was made up of absinthe, vinegar, and ink. We don't want to boss you around, but do not ever drink anything like that.
Today, Mike Rugnetta takes you from our beginnings in ancient Greek theater, and moves on to the development of Roman theater. Which, it turns out, is A LOT like Greek theater. Because the Romans were real Grecophiles, they modeled their plays on the Greeks.
John Green teaches you about the so-called Dark Ages, which it turns out weren't as uniformly dark as you may have been led to believe. While Europe was indeed having some issues, many other parts of the world were thriving and relatively enlightened. John covers European Feudalism, the cultural blossoming of the Islamic world, and the scientific and artistic advances in China, all during these "Dark Ages." Along the way, John will raise questions about the validity of Europe's status as a continent, reveal the best and worst years of his life, and frankly state that science and religion were once able to coexist.
Propaganda! Misinformation! Disinformation! Today we’re talking about the dark – or, shall we say, darkER – side of media. Understanding these media bogeymen is essential to being a more media literate citizen.
Today we’re going to talk about on how we organize the data we use on our devices. You might remember last episode we walked through some sorting algorithms, but skipped over how the information actually got there in the first place! And it is this ability to store and access information in a structured and meaningful way that is crucial to programming. From strings, pointers, and nodes, to heaps, trees, and stacks get ready for an ARRAY of new terminology and concepts.
As the Roman Empire fell, so did the theater. If there's anyone who hates theater and actors more than Romans, it's early Christians. As Christianity ascended in the west, theater declined. But, fear not. This isn't the end of the series. Theater would be back, and in the best subversive theater-y fashion, it would return via the Catholic mass!
In which John Green teaches you about the post-World War II breakup of most of the European empires. As you'll remember from previous installments of Crash Course, Europeans spent several centuries sailing around the world creating empires, despite the fact that most of the places they conquered were perfectly happy to carry on alone. After World War II, most of these empires collapsed. This is the story of those collapses. In most places, the end of empire was not orderly, and violence often ensued. While India was a (sort of) shining example of non-violent change, in places like The Congo, Egypt, Rwanda, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, things didn't go smoothly at all. John brings you all this, plus pictures of Sea Monkeys. Sadly, they don't look anything like those awesome commercials in the comic books.
Today we're going to talk about degrees of freedom - which are the number of independent pieces of information that make up our models. More degrees of freedom typically mean more concrete results. But something that is statistically significant isn't always practically significant. And to measure that, we'll introduce another new concept - effect size.
In which John Green teaches you about the end of World History, and the end of the world as we know it, kind of. For the last hundred years or so, it seemed that one important ingredient for running an economically successful country was a western-style democratic government. All evidence pointed to the idea that capitalist representative democracies made for the best economic outcomes. It turns out that isn't the only way to succeed. In the last 40 years or so, authoritarian capitalism as it's practiced in places like China and Singapore has been working really, really well. John is going to look at these systems and talk about why they work, and he's even going to make a few predictions about the future. Also, thanks for watching this series. It has been amazingly fun to create, and we appreciate all of you.
What is social deviance? Who defines what is deviant and how to people come to behave that way? Today we’re going to explore biological and psychological approaches to explaining deviance, including what each perspective can bring to the table, and their inherent limitations. From there, we’ll explain the sociological perspective and the social foundations of deviance.