Hey there, I'm Mike Rugnetta and this is going to be Crash Course World Mythology. We're going to learn about the stories that explain life, the universe and almost everything. We'll explore the beginning of the universe, the end of the universe, who exactly is running the said universe. We're going to address a bunch of questions like where children come from, how we got death and disease, and what exactly the deal is with unicorns and virgins. So, yeah, no big deal. 

It probably does seem like a lot, and as it should. We really are going to try to emphasize the world part of world mythology. We're going to get in to Zeus and Odin and they're terrible siblings and kids, but we're also going to be looking  at stories from Japan, Sumar, Egypt, Guinea, the Americas, India, and more. By the time you're seeing this, we will have shot only seven episodes, and look at all of the spots we've already visited. There's still a lot more to go. The point though, isn't to tick all of the mythological locales off of a geographical list one by one. We want to zoom out and look at the entire world of myth rather than one tradition at a time so we can see the similarities in the stories that different people tell about the universe.

Even with the vast diversity of stories that humans have come up with to understand everything around them, it turns out that we all have a lot in common. Many civilizations search for answers to the same questions. And what they come up with always teaches us something about who the people of that civilization are, and what they value. Our own included. 

We're really excited to learn all this stuff with you; how the world was variously created, will eventually be destroyed and why in the meantime we have the pleasure of gardening on it. It's gonna be epic... literally.