TED-Ed
TED-ED: How Magellan circumnavigated the globe - Ewandro Magalhaes
On September 6, 1522, the "Victoria" sailed into harbor in southern Spain. The battered vessel and its 18 sailors were all that remained of a fleet that had departed three years before. Yet her voyage was considered a success, for the...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: History vs. Che Guevara - Alex Gendler
His face is recognized all over the world _ the young medical student who became a revolutionary icon. But was Che Guevara a heroic champion of the poor, or a ruthless warlord who left a legacy of repression? Alex Gendler puts this...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How do hard drives work? - Kanawat Senanan
The modern hard drive is an object that can likely hold more information than your local library. But how does it store so much information in such a small space? Kanawat Senanan details the generations of engineers, material scientists,...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Who were the Vestal Virgins, and what was their job? - Peta Greenfield
In ancient Rome, Vestal Virgins were tasked with keeping vigil over the flame of Vesta, the virgin goddess of the hearth. The flame represented two things: the continuation of Rome as a power in the world and the continuing virginity of...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Harvey Milk's radical vision of equality - Lillian Faderman
Learn about the life and tragic death of gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk, California’s first openly gay public official. -- By 1973, Harvey Milk had already been many things: naval officer, high school teacher, bit-part actor and...
Curated Video
Theories of Gender: Crash Course Sociology
Why is gender even a thing? To answer that, we’re going back to our three sociological paradigms and how each school of thought approaches gender theory. We’ll look at the structural functionalist view that gender is a way of organizing...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The myth of Sisyphus - Alex Gendler
Sisyphus was both a clever ruler who made his city prosperous, and a devious tyrant who seduced his niece and killed visitors to show off his power. While his violation of the sacred hospitality tradition greatly angered the gods, it was...
Curated Video
Crime: Crash Course Sociology
We’ve talked about deviance more broadly, but today we’re focusing on crime, specifically in the US. We’ll start with legal definitions of crime and use FBI data to get an idea of the amount and kinds of crime committed in the US. We’ll...
Curated Video
Socialization: Crash Course Sociology
Last week we introduced the idea of socialization and today we’re talking a little more about how it works, including an introduction to five main types of socialization. We’ll explore anticipatory socialization from your family, the...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: How statistics can be misleading - Mark Liddell
Statistics are persuasive. So much so that people, organizations, and whole countries base some of their most important decisions on organized data. But any set of statistics might have something lurking inside it that can turn the...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: The myth of Oisin and the land of eternal youth - Iseult Gillespie
In a typical hero's journey, the protagonist sets out on an adventure, undergoes great change and returns in triumph to their point of origin. But in the Irish genre of myth known as echtrai, the journey to the otherworld ends in a point...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How much of human history is on the bottom of the ocean? - Peter Campbell
Sunken relics, ghostly shipwrecks, and lost cities aren't just wonders found in fictional adventures. Beneath the ocean's surface, there are ruins where people once roamed and shipwrecks loaded with artifacts from another time. Peter...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: How do executive orders work? - Christina Greer
On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln legally changed the status of over 3 million people from "slave" to "free." But his emancipation proclamation wasn't a law - it was an executive order. The framers of the American Constitution made...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: History vs. Andrew Jackson - James Fester
Andrew Jackson was both beloved and loathed during his presidency. In this imaginary courtroom, you get to be the jury, considering and weighing Jackson's part in the spoils system, economic depression, and the Indian Removal Act, as...
Curated Video
Economic Systems the Labor Market Crash Course Sociology
This week we’ll see how economies can be broken down into the primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors. We’ll look at the three stages of economic revolution that brought us to the modern post-industrial era. We’ll also explore two types...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: The life, legacy & assassination of an African revolutionary - Lisa Janae Bacon
In 1972, Thomas Sankara was swept into the revolution seeking to wrest control of Madagascar from France’s lingering colonial rule. The protests inspired the West African native to read works by socialist leaders and seek wisdom from...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Does "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" have a hidden message? - David B. Parker
In his introduction to "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," L. Frank Baum claims that the book is simply an innocent children's story. But some scholars have found hidden criticisms of late-nineteenth-century economic policies in the book. Is...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: The history of marriage - Alex Gendler
A white, puffy dress. Eternal love. A joint tax return. Marriage means something different to everyone and has changed over time and across cultures. Alex Gendler traces the history of getting hitched, providing insights on polygamy,...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The dangerous race for the South Pole - Elizabeth Leane
By the early 1900’s, nearly every region of the globe had been visited and mapped, with only two key locations left: the North and South Poles. After two Americans staked claim to reaching the North Pole, a Norwegian explorer and a...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: History vs. Augustus - Alex Gendler and Peta Greenfield
His reign marked the beginning of one of history's greatest empires . . . and the end of one of its first republics. Was Rome's first emperor a visionary leader who guaranteed his civilization's place in history, or a tyrant who...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: The murder of ancient Alexandria's greatest scholar - Soraya Field Fiorio
Dive into the life of one of Ancient Rome’s most powerful figures, Hypatia of Alexandria, a renowned scholar and political advisor to the city's leaders. -- In the city of Alexandria in 415 CE, the bishop and the governor were in a...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: What causes economic bubbles? - Prateek Singh
During the 1600's, the exotic tulip became a nationwide sensation; some single bulbs even sold for ten times the yearly salary of a skilled craftsman. Suddenly, though, the demand completely plummeted, leaving the tulip market in a...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: When will the next ice age happen? - Lorraine Lisiecki
Throughout Earth's history, climate has varied greatly. For hundreds of millions of years, the planet had no polar ice caps. Without this ice, the sea level was 70 meters higher. At the other extreme, about 700 million years ago, Earth...
Curated Video
Global Stratification & Poverty: Crash Course Sociology
This week we’re taking our discussion of stratification global. We’ll look at First and Third World countries and the reasons why these terms are no longer used. We’ll introduce the four types of country categories we now use: high...