A Crash Course on Psychology: A 30-Part Video Series from Hank Green

Nov­el­ist, edu­ca­tor, and vlog­ger John Green has drawn a lot of press late­ly, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to New York­er pro­file by Mar­garet Tal­bot, in the wake of the film ver­sion of his pop­u­lar young-adult nov­el The Fault in Our Stars. But we here at Open Cul­ture can say we fea­tured him before that mag­a­zine of cul­tur­al record did: in 2012 we post­ed his Crash Course in World His­to­ry, and last Octo­ber, his Crash Course on Lit­er­a­ture. If you keep up with this site, you prob­a­bly know Green less as a com­ing-of-age-tragedy-writ­ing “teen whis­per­er” (in the words of the New York­er) than as the mile-a-minute, con­stant­ly wise­crack­ing, but nev­er­the­less whole­some teacher you nev­er had. You may not know that he has an equal­ly edu­ca­tion­al broth­er named Hank, who first came to inter­net promi­nence in a back-and-forth video series of John’s devis­ing called Vlog­broth­ers, which Tal­bot describes as “less a con­ver­sa­tion than an extend­ed form of par­al­lel play.”

Now you can find Hank, pos­sessed of a sim­i­lar­ly fast and fun­ny deliv­ery style, pre­pared to inform you on a whole range of oth­er sub­jects, teach­ing crash cours­es just like John does. At the top of the post, we have his 30-part Crash Course in Psy­chol­o­gy, in which he cov­ers every­thing about the study of the human mind from sen­sa­tion and per­cep­tion to the the­o­ry of the homuncu­lus to remem­ber­ing and for­get­ting to lan­guage to depres­sion. (You can watch the series from start to fin­ish above.) Psy­chol­o­gy has long ranked among the most pop­u­lar under­grad­u­ate majors in Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties, and giv­en human­i­ty’s ever-increas­ing curios­i­ty (and grad­u­al­ly accu­mu­lat­ing knowl­edge) about the work­ings of its brains, that should­n’t come as a sur­prise. But those of us who felt com­pelled to pick a more “prac­ti­cal” course of study back in col­lege, can now turn to Hank Green, who offers us a sur­pris­ing­ly thor­ough psy­cho­log­i­cal ground­ing with only about five hours of “lec­tur­ing” — much less than the major would have tak­en us, and with many more corny jokes. Per­haps the course will help you under­stand why we laugh at them any­way.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es

A Crash Course in World His­to­ry

Crash Course on Lit­er­a­ture: Watch John Green’s Fun Intro­duc­tions to Gats­by, Catch­er in the Rye & Oth­er Clas­sics

How To Think Like a Psy­chol­o­gist: A Free Online Course from Stan­ford

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.


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Comments (3)
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  • I once did Psy­chol­o­gy in first semes­ter in uni­ver­si­ty and got 60level 4 I as cred­it for it, I went off to media school and grad­u­at­ed, but I want to con­tin­ue my crash course in Psy­chol­o­gy and pleased even YouTube is unite help­ful too, so please send me fur­ther details, thanks again, your you tube ver­sion is vast­ly com­pre­hen­sive and far eas­i­er to under­stand in com­par­i­son to class room lec­tures!

  • Helen Oyekan says:

    I once did Psy­chol­o­gy in first semes­ter in uni­ver­si­ty and got 60level 4 Ucas cred­it for it, I went off to media school and grad­u­at­ed, but I want to con­tin­ue my crash course in Psy­chol­o­gy and pleased even YouTube is unite help­ful too, so please send me fur­ther details, thanks again, your you tube ver­sion is vast­ly com­pre­hen­sive and far eas­i­er to under­stand in com­par­i­son to class room lec­tures!

  • Erik says:

    Wow! That was like a fire hose of Intro to Psych in my face. There is one error; Wundt was incor­rect­ly cred­it­ed as the author of Prin­ci­ples of Psy­chol­o­gy. Lat­er in the lec­ture William James is also, this time cor­rect­ly, cred­it­ed as the author of the first text­book on Psy­chol­o­gy.

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