Geography is maps, and rivers, and
mountains. But, it’s more than that. Geography is cities and cultures and
people. But it’s more than that too. Geography is finding patterns and connections
between places and seemingly unrelated processes, digging deeper into the stories behind facts,
and asking “why is this happening here?” Hi, I’m Alizé Carrère and welcome
to Crash Course Geography! I’m so excited to embark with you on this
journey around the world to explore the ins and outs of everything above and below the
surface of the Earth over the next year. To me, geography is about understanding
the dynamic relationship between us humans and the incredible
place we get to call our home. It’s an inquisitive, close-up look at how we shape
the land and how in turn the land shapes us. Like where and how we choose to produce our food,
move our goods, and build our economies -- and what happens when natural or human-caused
forces change or disrupt entire ecosystems. My own research has taken me to the
far corners of the Earth to explore, study, and document these types of issues.
In the Middle East I spent time looking at electronic waste disposal and the impact it
has on water, livestock, and human health. As a National Geographic Explorer, I
traveled to Madagascar to study how farmers are adapting their agricultural
practices to cope with severe erosion, and to Bangladesh to study how people are adapting
to sea level rise by building floating gardens. As a documentary filmmaker, I trekked through
the Himalayas to learn firsthand how communities live with the consequences of glacial melt, then
through the muddy backwaters of the Mississippi River to understand the fate of the most prolific
invasive fish species in the United States. And one of the most amazing things I’ve learned
while traveling across such distant and diverse locations is how remarkably connected
we are to each other and our planet. I’ve seen how our individual and
collective actions affect the systems and landscapes around us -- whether
it’s a swift change at the local level or a slow-moving shift over an entire hemisphere. Geography teaches us about the profound
interconnectedness of the world. Traditionally, geography is split
into two tightly intertwined parts. So we’ll begin our time together studying
physical geography or the processes and phenomena of the physical world both
above and below the Earth’s surface. We’ll ask lots of questions like, why is
the seafloor so young when the Earth is so old? Or try to identify why winds and
ocean currents are so important to life on Earth. Or explain why the Aral
sea in Central Asia has been called “one of the worst environmental
disasters in modern history.” Halfway through, we’ll turn our focus to
human geography and explore the ways people occupy the Earth’s surface. Like how we’ve moved,
settled, and used the land, resources and space. So we’ll look at how languages migrate and
change, like how the Bantu language spread throughout Africa. Or how humans interact with
their environment, like how for centuries people have relied on the seasonal monsoon rains in India
to bring life-giving moisture to their crops. But there’s not a clear line
dividing the physical and the human, which is where geography gets its strength.
Because, really, geography is telling the story of the Earth. Even something as commonplace
as a banana has a complicated backstory that twists across continents and climates and turns
betweens vast trade networks and political coups. We’ll get to all that and more, and in the end
well...we’ll probably still have questions. I hope you’ll join me on this journey as we
unravel the tale in Crash Course Geography. Crash Course Geography is made with
the help of all these nice people! If you’d like to help keep Crash Course free, for
everyone, forever, please consider supporting us on Patreon, and if you’d like to keep learning
from this course click the playlist below.