Curated Video
Social Stratification: Crash Course Sociology
How do different societies establish a social hierarchy? Today we’re starting our unit on social stratification, starting with four basic principles of a sociological understanding of stratification. We’ll explain open and closed systems...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Is there any truth to the King Arthur legends? - Alan Lupack
King Arthur has risen again and again in our collective imagination, along with his retinue of knights, Guinevere, the Round Table, Camelot, and of course Excalibur. But where do these stories come from, and is there any truth to them?...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Everything you need to know to read Homer's "Odyssey" - Jill Dash
An encounter with a man-eating giant. A sorceress who turns men into pigs. A long-lost king taking back his throne. On their own, any of these make great stories. But each is just one episode in the "Odyssey," a 12,000-line poem spanning...
Curated Video
Cultures, Subcultures, and Countercultures: Crash Course Sociology
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...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: The rise and fall of the Byzantine Empire - Leonora Neville
Most history books will tell you that the Roman Empire fell in the fifth century CE, but this would've come as a surprise to the millions who lived in the Roman Empire through the Middle Ages. This Medieval Roman Empire, today called the...
Curated Video
Religion: Crash Course Sociology
Today we’re turning our sociological eye to another major social institution: religion. We’ll use symbolic interactionism to help us understand the dichotomy of the Sacred vs. the Profane. We’ll compare the perspectives of structural...
Curated Video
Major Sociological Paradigms: Crash Course Sociology
This week we introduce sociology’s three major theoretical paradigms, and some of the advantages and disadvantages of each paradigm.
Curated Video
Social Stratification in the US: Crash Course Sociology
Social class in America is... hard to talk about. As Sociology, the difficulty lies in pinning down what we mean by "Social Class." In this episode of Crash Course Sociology, Nicole chats to us about how Sociologists figure this out so...
Curated Video
Social Interaction & Performance: Crash Course Sociology
How do sociologists study and understand social interaction? Today we’ll explain the language sociologists use to discuss how we interact with the social world. What are statuses and roles? How are they different? How do you acquire...
Curated Video
Schools & Social Inequality: Crash Course Sociology
In the second half of our education unit, we’re using conflict theory to explore a few social inequalities in the US education system. We’ll look at variation in school funding and quality, the role of cultural capital, and some of the...
Curated Video
Social Development: Crash Course Sociology
What makes you… you? How did you get to be that way? Today we’re talking about social development, starting with the role of nature and nurture in influencing a person’s development. We’ll discuss socialization, the importance of care &...
Curated Video
Social Class & Poverty in the US: Crash Course Sociology
Today we’re breaking down the five different social class in the United States: the upper class, the upper middle class, the average middle class, the working class, and the lower class. We’ll also go over what poverty looks like in the...
Curated Video
Dubois & Race Conflict: Crash Course Sociology
We’re continuing our exploration of conflict theories with W.E.B. Dubois, who is one of the founders of sociological thought more broadly and the founder of race-conflict theory. We’ll discuss shifting ideas about race, Dubois’ idea of...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The origins of ballet - Jennifer Tortorello and Adrienne Westwood
Can you imagine a party where every movement and every visual detail were governed by a complex system of rules and procedures? For centuries, such rituals were commonplace for European nobility. And while they've gone out of fashion, we...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Rhythm in a box: The story of the cajon drum - Paul Jennings
Many modern musical instruments are complicated pieces of machinery with many moving parts. But the cajon is simply a drum and a stand and a seat all in one box. Paul Jennings explains the history behind the cajon and how it has become...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Who am I? A philosophical inquiry - Amy Adkins
Throughout the history of mankind, the subject of identity has sent poets to the blank page, philosophers to the agora and seekers to the oracles. These murky waters of abstract thinking are tricky to navigate, so it's probably fitting...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: How to spot a misleading graph - Lea Gaslowitz
When they're used well, graphs can help us intuitively grasp complex data. But as visual software has enabled more usage of graphs throughout all media, it has also made them easier to use in a careless or dishonest way - and as it turns...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: What makes the Great Wall of China so extraordinary
The Great Wall of China is a 13,000-mile dragon of earth and stone that winds its way through the countryside of China. As it turns out, the wall's history is almost as long and serpentine as its structure. Megan Campisi and Pen-Pen Chen...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: The incredible history of China's terracotta warriors - Megan Campisi and Pen-Pen Chen
In 1974, farmers digging a well near their small village stumbled upon one of the most important finds in archaeological history _ vast underground chambers surrounding a Chinese emperor's tomb that contained more than 8,000 life-size...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: A day in the life of a Roman soldier - Robert Garland
The year is 15 CE, and the Roman Empire is prospering. Most of the credit will go to the emperor, but this success wouldn't have been possible without loyal soldiers like Servius Felix. Robert Garland illuminates what life was like for a...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Why is the US Constitution so hard to amend? - Peter Paccone
When it was ratified in 1789, the US Constitution didn't just institute a government by the people _ it provided a way for the people to alter the Constitution itself. And yet, of the nearly 11,000 amendments proposed in the centuries...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Plato's Allegory of the Cave - Alex Gendler
Twenty four hundred years ago, Plato, one of history's most famous thinkers, said life is like being chained up in a cave forced to watch shadows flitting across a stone wall. Beyond sounding quite morbid, what exactly did he mean? Alex...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: How did Polynesian wayfinders navigate the Pacific Ocean? - Alan Tamayose and Shantell De Silva
Imagine setting sail from Hawaii in a canoe. Your target is a small island thousands of kilometers away in the middle of the Pacific Ocean - a body of water that covers more than 160 million square kilometers. For thousands of years,...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Population pyramids: Powerful predictors of the future - Kim Preshoff
Population statistics are like crystal balls -- when examined closely, they can help predict a country's future (and give important clues about the past). Kim Preshoff explains how using a visual tool called a population pyramid helps...