Our future faces several potential problems, but we’re also equipped with plenty of tools to make positive changes now. How can empathy help us solve even the most pressing global issues?
Driving Question: How can we work today to solve problems that will affect future generations?
Why do we need the past in order to make informed decisions about the future? Today we’ll take a look at what historical evidence can do for us today and even into the deep future, trillions of years from now!
Driving Question: How can we use historical evidence to make more accurate predictions of the future?
The interconnection of our planet and our acceleration of energy use has brought with it plenty of challenges. Today Alphonse the camel will be here to help us identify the biggest problems facing humanity today.
Driving Question: What are the most pressing global problems today?
The world is more interconnected than ever before. Today we can cross the Atlantic Ocean in under eight hours. It took Columbus over a month. Are we better for it?
Driving Question: To what extent has globalization been a positive or negative force?
We’ve studied 13.8 billion years of history in this course. Now it’s time to reflect on what we’ve learned!
Driving Question: What were the most significant events in history?
We live in the healthiest and wealthiest age in history, yet those qualities are not shared equally among people around the globe. Today we'll examine how acceleration increased inequality.
Driving Question: How has acceleration increased inequality?
Humans have become the dominant species on the planet. Have our actions been overall more positive or more negative?
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Driving Question: To what extent has the Anthropocene been positive?
Many of the comforts of our modern life can be traced to the Industrial Revolution, from the clothes we wear to the foods we eat. Alphonse the camel returns as co-host to examine how the Industrial Revolution transformed the way goods were produced and life as we know it.
Driving Question: How did change accelerate?
What kinds of energy have you used in the past 24 hours? Which of those sources were used 100 years, or 500 years in the past? Our appetite for energy has accelerated during the Modern Revolution!
Driving Question: How has our energy use changed over time?
Just a few hundred years after the interconnection of the world zones, there was a dramatic acceleration in innovation and population growth. These changes ushered in the Modern Revolution.
Driving Question: How did the Modern Revolution develop?
Where does our stuff come from? Why does it matter? Most of the things we buy and eat were made far from our homes. Today we’ll trace the journey of our stuff from raw material to finished product.
Driving Question: Where does our stuff come from and why does it matter?
What did we do before the invention of money? And who invented it? Will it ever go away completely? Today we’re doing a little big history of money!
Driving Question: How has money changed over time?
More people, more connections, and more exchange lead to innovation. Today Alphonse the camel is back to co-host our discussion on the ways that new networks of trade and migration increased our ability to learn collectively.
Driving Question: How did new networks of exchange accelerate collective learning?
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue...and then what?! This initial exchange of people, goods, ideas, plants, animals, and diseases changed the world forever.
Driving Question: How did the world become interconnected?
Your civilization is growing in population and power, but it’s also running out of resources. As the leader, would you decide to tax your people or invade your neighbors? Today we’ll explore the question of why civilizations of the past chose to expand.
Driving Question: Why did civilizations expand?
If you’ve ever played a game of telephone then you understand how unreliable human memory is on its own. The invention of writing was a game-changer! No more telephone. Humans finally had a way to efficiently and effectively pass down their knowledge.
Driving Question: How did the invention of writing accelerate collective learning?
As farming spread, so did humans! These migrations led to increased populations, more innovations, and a huge increase in collective learning. What are the effects of the movement of people around the globe?
Driving Question: What are the positive and negative impacts of agriculture?
Early cities were complex! We can find evidence of art, writing, law codes, and new and complex ways of organizing society. Today, Alphonse the camel will help us unpack what life was like in early cities from some of the artifacts they left behind.
Driving Question: How did societies change as they became more complex?
The domestication of plants and animals meant more people could settle in one place, allowing our populations to grow larger and denser. Over time, cities, states and empires emerged.
Driving Question: Where and why did the first cities and states appear?
The invention of farming about 12,000 years ago meant that humans finally stopped chasing their food and settled down to farm! This gave us vast new food and energy resources, which dramatically changed the way we lived.
Driving Question: Why was agriculture so important?
What was a day in the life of early humans like? Wake up at dawn. Walk in search of water and food. Try not to get injured while hunting. Maybe just go fishing instead—that seems safer. Relax with family and friends to watch the sunset. Was life as a forager better than the life we know today?
Driving Question: How did the first humans live?
Can you imagine a pink elephant? Even though you’ve never seen one, it is possible to conjure up an image in your head. Humans are unique in their ability to imagine things that don’t exist and never will. It’s all thanks to the power of symbolic language.
Driving Question: What makes humans different?
We often teach dogs a few basic tricks: sit, stay, and fetch. However, have you ever seen dogs teach one another tricks? Dogs mimic behavior, but they can’t pass on new knowledge. If they could, we wouldn’t have to train them! Alphonse the Camel is back to co-host this episode on what makes collective learning uniquely human.
Driving Question: What is collective learning?
How can we know what happened millions of years ago if no one was there to see it? Today we’re going to be archaeologists! We’re going to investigate what the fossils of early peoples and the items they left behind can tell us about our early ancestors.
Driving Question: What does archaeology reveal about our early ancestors?
Did we evolve from monkeys? In this lesson, we’ll investigate the key milestones in the evolution of our species, homo sapiens.
Driving Question: How did our early ancestors evolve?
