Hello.  It is your last chance to support the Crash Course Coin campaign.  If you've been thinking about doing that, now is the time, and I figured that would make this a good time to talk about what's been going on at Crash Course over the past year and what's going to be going on in the next year, and I can do this because the Crash Course team put together a blog post that you can read or you can just watch me basically read it to you right now.  

So first, this year has been a complex year, where we're like, taking on complex topics that maybe wouldn't be everybody's favorite to bring up at the dinner table.  We've got religion, we've got sex, we've got politics, and although those topics might seem different on the surface, from like biology or world history, the approach that Crash Course takes is the same.  They are curious, they are seeking the interesting context and nuance and they lead with evidence and scholarly research.  

So with the support of your views and shares and comments and contributions to our Patreon and Crash Course Coin campaign, here is what is out now.  Art History, which is not just the study of the lone geniuses of the Renaissance, there's like a known Ninja Turtles problem in Art History courses.  There's a lot of focus on one period of time and there is a big world out there, so our 22 episode series looked at the art history canon, highlighting a number of classics you have heard of aside a bunch of lesser known works, from ancient cave paintings to pride flags and everything in between.

We also did a 24 episode Religions course, hosted by my brother.  I know that it was a labor of love for him and it was quite intense and scary at times, because, you know, you're getting on the internet, talking about religions, that's not always going to be perfectly well received, but the Crash Course Religions course was about life's great mysteries, about how religion bumps up into other areas of life from social identity to political systems to popular culture.  It talks about cults, about magic, about the supernatural, about being "spiritual but not religious", about other elements that skirt around how we see religion.  

We also did a Political Theory course because since the beginning of time, people have been figuring out how to try and organize themselves and answering hard questions, like what does it look like to live in a healthy society?  What is justice?  Who decides what justice is?  This was a wide ranging course that looked at age-old questions and also modern political questions through the lens of like, Socrates and Marx and bell hooks and all over the place.

So those are the courses that are completed, and now we're into the ones that are still currently coming out.  Our Sex Ed course is a 15 episode series that tours through the delightfully varied realm of human sexuality.  This is definitely a tricky one to do and one we've been thinking about doing for a long time and needed to get the sort of right circumstances in place before we did it, 'cause we wanted to do it well.

We're also currently uploading a 24 episode series on Native American history, which begins, of course, well before 1492 and extends into the present.  It covers a wide range of topics from indigenous worldviews and tribal sovereignty, to the web of federal Indian law to the Land Back movement and issues of cultural appropriation along the way.  The most recent episode that just got uploaded is one that just sort of goes and looks at and dispels a bunch of myths and stereotypes about Native Americans.  

So that's what happened this year and is still happening now and let's move on now to what is going to be happening on Crash Course.  

They are adding a new kids series to the Kids channel.  It's Kids Literature.  It's a six part series that explores stories and storytelling techniques and it's geared toward 3rd to 5th graders, which is great for me because I have a 3rd grader.  Each episode's gonna focus on a different book while highlighting critical comprehension skills like making inferences and synthesizing information and comparing and contrasting, all stuff that we need people to be learning because thinking is important!  

There's also going to be a new Crash Course Guest Lecture from social commentator Amanda Montell, who is a New York Times bestselling author.  She wrote Cultish and also The Age of Magical Overthinking.  So the lecture is, I think this is the title, though it may change, it always, you know, YouTube titles are flexible.  It's called "The Cultish Power of Words" and it's going to look at the influence that linguistic tricks have over people and it's going to show those strategies are used in cults but also are lurking in some surprising places that are not quite cults but maybe are more cult-like than you think.

We're also doing a Latin American Literature course.  According to the blog post, it's not going to help us understanding exactly where Latin America begins and ends, so apparently that's a conversation that they had and I'm sure was complex, but it will tell us a lot about the cultures and people who've lived there.  This series will look at poems and short stories and novels from the pre-Colombian era all the way to the 21st century.

Also, hosted by me, we're doing a seven part miniseries that I am currently doing the edits on that I have, am, procr--that I currently have scripts for that I need to leave my comments on but I'm not doing that right now, but I will, I promise, Gary, if you're watching, I'll have it for you by Monday.  This is a seven-part miniseries that will teach people the foundational principles underlying scientific thought and will pull back the curtain on processes like peer review, interrogating what makes sources reliable, unpacking how consensus is reached, what consensus is, and we'll talk about how the--part of the process of science is that scientific understanding changes over time.  That does not make it weaker, it makes it stronger.  Ultimately the goal here is to like, actually explain how science works, which is not what you learn in science class in school, which is fascinating to me and I'm really excited about it.  It's very exciting.  It's going to be a quick little course, but I think it's going to be super useful.

Also, if you can believe it, we're doing a series called The Future of Artificial Intelligence.  Now, will it be outdated in six months?  Maybe.  Things are moving pretty fast.  But, this is something that we need to be thinking about a lot.  Crash Course can move fairly quickly, and I'm sure that we will continue having lots of these conversations, but beyond science fiction, Crash Course is going to be having this five-part miniseries exploring the capabilities and potential risks of artificial intelligence in the world right now, which is going to be, I mean, they gotta, they're gonna have to be editing the episodes like, right up until they film. 

And also, also, we have never done a Geology course, and so we are doing Crash Course: Geology this year.  The Earth is such a good rock.  It is so good and weird and cool and not just the biological parts.  This is the heart of geology.  While Earth is ever-changing, geologic rules and processes remain roughly the same.  This is a 25 episode full Crash Course series uncovering all of the constants that reveal our planet's past and help us learn how to prepare for the future, and we could not have done any of this without you, and that doesn't mean that you had to become a Patron or buy a Coin.

What it means is that you took the time to think about whether or not you could justify that.  We do a lot of good.  It has a lot of impact.  I see it all the time.  You might have seen my little video where I did, like, had people--I'll put it at the end.  All that this takes, all Crash Course needs, is for people to take some--a moment, and think, okay, here's how much value I feel like Crash Course provides for people by spending money on experts and hosts and writers and graphics and all the stuff that it spends money on, and then thinking, do I have enough money to become a Patron or to buy a Crash Course Coin, and if the answer to that question is yes, that's all it takes.  If the answer to that question is no, that's all it takes, because for some people, the answer is yes, and the question is whether you are that person, but the real question is whether you took the time to consider it.  If you took the time to consider it, you've done the work.  If you're not sure, you can go to the Crash Course Coin website and click around and see maybe if you have $100 and if you don't, maybe you could become a Patron.

The Coin is only going to be available until June 2nd.  I don't know what day it currently is, because I don't know when I will get this done.  It might be a while, or maybe I'll send it to Ben or Milo, and I don't know when they'll have it done, but here's what I know: Crash Course has so much it wants to do, and they're very grateful to have the support of people who can pay so that this content can be free for everyone forever.

Hello.  I'm Hank and I'm here with Jonah, who just graduated from MIT, class of 2025.  I'm standing on the same steps I was standing on before with Hanu, who just came up to me to thank me for Crash Course.  And here is Steve, who came up to me while I was talking to Hanu.  I've been sitting on the stairs for another five minutes, and Ella came up to thank me for Crash Course.

Ella: Hello.

Jonah: The bio series, that was my main one.

Steve: I like to enrich my understanding of the world.

Ella: It kind of explained everything I needed to know to get through school.

Hanu: It almost has comfort videos.

Hank: Comfort videos, that's great.

Jonah: It has tons of fun jokes in there, too, so yeah.  It always kept it, like, interesting.

Hanu: There's this one section that I obsessed over.  It talked about the war of attrition and a bunch of velociraptors come over.

Jonah: I've learned so much from it.  It helped me get through all those tough tests so--

Ella: Thank you to everybody who supports Crash Course.  It has been really, really valuable to me throughout all my educational journey.  My whole life, honestly.

Hanu: Thanks for getting a Crash Course Coin.