Hi. I'm John Green.
This is Crash Course World History.
We're back!
Stan, we painted over all the green parts
of not-America with this globe.
We need a new globe!
Yesss!
New globe!
Also this one magically opens
and stuff comes out of it.
So it turns out,
surprisingly enough,
there is more world history
than we could fit into 42 episodes.
So for the next 30 episodes
we're gonna fill in some gaps
that we missed before.
But we're also gonna expand on
some of the big ideas about history.
And we're gonna continue,
not to sound meta,
to try to think about
how we think about history
by approaching the study of history
from different perspectives.
Mister Green! Mister Green!
Wait.
I don't understand how all this stuff's gonna help me
get a five on the AP test.
Ohhh...Me from the past.
I'm gonna let you in on little secret.
How well you do on the AP World History test
is not actually the event
that's going to shape
the course of your life.
And you are not actually
getting an education
so that you could get good grades
so that you can go to college
so that you can get a job.
We are investing as a social order
in your education because it is useful to us
to have you be an informed
and engaged citizen of the world.
I'm not interested in cramming
the facts down your throat
that will allow you to get a five on the AP test.
That's not what gets me excited in the morning.
And I don't wanna be presumptuous.
But I think I can speak for your teachers
when I say that's also not why they're doing their jobs.
Me from the past,
the biggest problem with being alive
is that you can only see the world out of your eyes.
You can only live inside of your skin,
your consciousness.
You can't effectively imagine
what it's like to be someone else.
But the study of history allows you
to empathize better;
it allows you to think more complexly about others.
And that's gonna useful to you
not just on AP test
but in every single moment of your entire life.
So I don't care that you have
already taken the AP test
because, and I say this with love,
you are still kind of an idiot.
And so am I.
So we're gonna learn this stuff together
in the hopes that what we learn
can somehow contribute in a small way
to making our lives better,
but also to making other lives better.
So we're gonna look at complicated
and problematic ideas like civilization.
We're gonna look at things like
the history of money and economics,
how environmental changes have affected
the stability of social orders.
And we're gonna talk about how war and disease and technology
have not only shaped the world that people used to live in
but also the one that we're living in now.
And yes,
due to extensive popular request,
we will be talking about Vikings.
So it's gonna be a fun 30 weeks.
Full of Vikings and pirates and complex ideas
and dirty jokes that can be read two ways
so they can still be shown in class.
We're so excited to back teaching you more World History.
Thank you for watching.
We'll see you next week.