Hey there! I am Mike Rugnetta,
and this is going to be Crash Course World Mythology.
We're gonna 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 said universe.
We're gonna 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 gonna get into Zeus and Odin
and their terrible siblings and kids,
but we're also going to be looking at stories from Japan,
Sumer, 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
the 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 peoples 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 of 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.
♫ [Crash Course theme] ♫