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MIT_8333_Statistical_Mechanics_I_Statistical_Mechanics_of_Particles_Fall_2013	17_Interacting_Particles_Part_3.txt	The following content is provided under a Creative Commons license. Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare continue to offer high quality educational resources for free. To make a donation or view additional materials from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare at ocw.mit.edu. PROFESSOR: And to this purpose, we need to calculate some thermodynamics. And we usually do that in statistical mechanics by calculating for some kind of a partition function. And we saw last time that it would be useful to calculate this grand partition function, which is the ensemble where you specify the temperature, the chemical potential, and the volume of the gas. And in this ensemble, your task is to look at within this box of volume V the possibility of there being any number of particles. So you have to sum over all possible N particle states. The contribution of each N particle states is exponentially related to the number of particles through the chemical potential. And then given that you are in a segment that has N particles, you have to look at all possible configurations of those particles and integrate over all of those possibilities. And that amounts to calculating the partition function. So for the partition function of an N particle system, you have to integrate over all of the momenta. Integration over each component of the momentum gives you a factor of 1 over lambda, where lambda again was related to the mass of the particle and temperature through this formula with h what we use to make these integrations over pq combinations dimensionless. There are 3N such integrations. So that's a contribution from the momenta. And then we have to do the integration over all of the coordinates. And as long as these particles are identical, we decided to divide by the number of permutations. Because we cannot tear them apart. So having done that, I need to now integrate over all of the N particles spanning a box of size V so the integration is within the box. And when I have interactions, then I have to worry about the Boltzmann weight that comes from the interaction. So here I should really put some kind of e to the minus beta times the interaction U. And what we did was we said that let's assume that this interaction comes from pairs of particles. And so this U is the sum over all possible pairs of particles, which when exponentiated will then give you a product over all possible pairs j, k and a factor that is related to the potential interaction between these. And we found it useful to write that factor as 1 plus fjk, where this fjk stood for e to the minus beta of V qj minus qk minus 1. So basically if I add the 1 to that, I just get the exponentiated interaction potential. And then I have a forum such as this. So basically, this is the quantity that we wanted to compute. And so then we said, well, let's imagine expanding these factors of 1 plus f1, 2, 1 plus f1, 3, 1 plus f2, 3, all of these factors, and organize them according to the powers of f that they have. So the leading term would be taking 1 from everybody. So that would give me V to the N, which would be the 0-th order partition function, the non-interacting system. And then I would start to get corrections where there's order of f integrated, order of f squared integrated, all kinds of things. And that being a somewhat difficult object to look at, we said, let's imagine graphically what we would get. And the typical contribution that we would get to this would involve having to iterate over all of these N particles. So we have to somehow imagine that we have particles 1 to N. And then for a particular term, we either pick 1's-- and there will be some points that are not connected to any f that is integrated. There will be a bunch of things that will be connected to things where there are pair of f's. There will be things later on maybe where there are triplets of f, and so forth and so on. And then we said that when I do the integrations that correspond to this, what do I get? I will get the contribution that comes from one particle by itself integrated. Let's call that b1 to the power of n1. I will get the contribution from this pair integrated. I will get b2 to the power of n2. I will get the contributions from these entities. And in general, I said, well, OK, somewhere in this, I will get bl to the power of nl. Now of course, I have a big constraint here that is that the sum over l of lnl has to be the total number of points 1 to n. So however I partition this, I will have for each graph that particular constraint acting. We said that clearly there's a lot of graphs and combinations that give you precisely this same factor. But all I had to do was to sort of rearrange the numbers and ordering, et cetera, and I would get all of this. So it would be very nice if I could figure out what the overall factor is out here. So we said that the factor is something like N factorial. Because what I can do is I can permute all of these numbers, and I would get exactly the same thing. But then I have to make sure that I don't over count. And not over counting required me to divide by the number of permutations that I have within each subgroup. So I have bl to the power of n. I have l factorial to the power of nl. And then I have the change. Let's say this is 1, 2, this is 3, 4. I could have called one of them 3, 4, the other one 1, 2. So basically I will have nl factorial from the permutations within each. But I would have gotten exactly the same numerical factor out front if I had the same configuration but I had this diagram. I would have gotten exactly the same factor. I would call the contribution to this b3. I didn't say currently what b3 is. I would have gotten exactly the same factor. So maybe then what I did was to sort of group all of those things that would come with the same numerical factor into this [INAUDIBLE] sum that I call bl. So I call bl to be the sum over all l-particle clusters. And then, of course here, I have to sum over all configurations of nl that are consistent with this constraint that I have to put up there. So the rest of it then was algebra. We said that if I constrain the total number, it's difficult for me to do. That's why I didn't go and calculate the partition function and switch to the grand partition function. Because in the grand partition, I can essentially make this N that constrains the values of these nl's to be all over the place. And therefore summing over things with nl unconstrained is equivalent to summing over terms with nl constrained, and then summing over whatever the final constraint is. So once I did that, I was liberated from this constraint. I could do the sum for each value of nl separately. And the thing nicely broke up into pieces. And so then what I could do is I could show that each term in the sum, there would be a product over different contributions l. For each l, I could sum over nl running from 0 to infinity. I had the 1 over nl factorial from out here. I had an e to the beta mu divided by lambda cubed from the combination of these things raised to the power of lnl, which is how big N would have been composed. So I would have here lnl. And I also had an l factorial raised to the power of nl. So I can write things in this fashion. So this thing then became the same thing as an exponential of a sum over l running from 1 to infinity. 1 over l factorial, of if you like e to the beta mu over lambda cubed to the power of l 1 over l factorial. And then I had bl. So it was this very nice result somehow summing over all kinds of things, and then taking the logarithm. The logarithm really depends only on the contributions of single clusters. And again, the reason it had to be that way is because the ultimate thing that I calculated in this ensemble is that the answer should be e to the beta V times the pressure. And so the expression that we have over here better have terms which are all proportional to volume. Sorry, they're all made extensive by proportionality to volume. And indeed, when I do the integrations over a single any cluster, there is one degree of freedom, if you like, associated with the center of mass of the cluster that can go and explore the entire volume. And so all of these things are in fact in the large end limit proportional to V and something that I call bl bar. So once I divide by this volume, the final outcome of my calculation is that I can calculate the pressure of an interacting gas by summing over a series whose terms are this e to the beta mu over lambda cubed raised to the power of l bl bar divided by l factorial. OK, this is correct, but not particularly illuminating. Because the thing that we said we have some intuition for is that the pressure of a gas-- let's say if I look at it in terms of beta P, actually P is the density times kt, which is 1 over beta, if you like, or nkT. It doesn't matter. And then there will be corrections. There will be a term that is order of n squared. There will be a term that is order of n cubed. And there are these coefficients, which are functions of temperature, that are called the virial coefficient. And this is a virial expansion. Essentially what it is is a fitting of the form of the pressure of the gas as a function of density. In the very low density limit you get ideal gas result. And presumably because of these interactions, you will get corrections that presumably also know about the potential that went into the construction of all of these b bars, et cetera. So how do we relate these things that are, say, experimentally accessible to this expansion that we have over here? And the reason it is not obvious immediately is because this is an expansion in chemical potential, whereas over here, I have density. So what do I do? Well, I realize that the density can be obtained as follows. In the grand canonical ensemble, the number of particles is in principal a random variable. But that random variable is governed by this e to the beta mu N that controls how many you have. And if I take the log of Q with respect to beta mu, I will generate the average number, which in the thermodynamic limit we expect to be the same thing as what we thermodynamically would call the number. And this log Q we just established is beta PV. So what we have here is the derivative of beta VP with respect to beta mu. And if I do this at constant temperature, the betas disappear. This is the same thing as V dP by d mu at constant temperature. But also I can take the derivative right here. So what happens? I will find that the density which is N over V, is the derivative of this expression with respect to beta mu. I go and I find that there's a beta mu. If I take a derivative of this with respect to beta mu, really it's exponential of beta mu l. The derivative of it will give me l e to the beta mu l. So what I get is a sum over l e to the beta mu over lambda cubed. l gets repeated. And then I will have l times this. So I will have vl bar divided by l minus 1 factorial. So the series for density is very much like the series for pressure, except that you replace 1 over l factorial with 1 over l minus 1 factorial. So now my task is clear. What I should do is I should solve given a particular density for what mu is. Once I have mu as a function of density, I can substitute it back here. And I will have pressure as a function of density. Of course it's clear that the right variable to look at is not mu, but x, which is e to the beta mu over lambda cubed. This actually has a name. It's sometimes called fugacity. So the second equation is telling me that the density I can write in terms of the fugacity as a sum over l x to the l bl bar divided by l minus 1 factorial, which if I were to sort of write in its full details, it starts with b1 bar x plus b2 bar x squared. Because there I have 0 factorial or 1 factorial respectively. The next term will be b3 bar over 2 x cubed. And this will go on and on. Also, let me remind you what b1 bar is. b1 bar, for every one of these b1 bars, I have to divide by 1 over V because of this V. And then I have to do the integration that corresponds to the one cluster, which is essentially one cluster going over the entirety of space, which will give me V. So this is in fact 1. So basically this coefficient here is 1. And then I will have the corrections. So you say, well, I have n as a function of x. I want x as a function of n. And I say, OK, that's not that difficult. I will write that x equals n minus b2 bar x squared minus b3 bar x cubed over 2, and so forth. And I have now x. Maybe a few of you are skeptical. Some of you don't seem to be bothered. OK, so my claim is that this is indeed a systematic way of solving a series in which when the density goes to 0, you expect x to also go to 0. And to lowest order, x will be of the order of density. And these will be higher order powers in density. So to get a systematic series in density, all you need to do is to sort of work with a series such as this keeping in mind what order you have solved things to. So I claim that to lowest order, this really just says that x is n. And then there are corrections that are order of n squared. And to get the next order term, all I need to do is to substitute the lower order in this equation. So basically if I substitute x equals n in this equation, I will get n minus b2 n square. If I substitute x over n here, it will be a higher order term. And I claim that this is the correct result to order of n cubed. And then to get the result to order of n cubed, I substitute this back into the original equation. So I start with n minus b2 bar, the square of the previous solution at the right order. So squaring this, I will get n squared minus twice b2 bar n cubed. And the next term that would be the square of this, which is order of n to the fourth, I don't write down. And then I have minus b3 bar over 2, the cube of the previous solution. And at the right order that I have, that's the same thing as b3 bar over 2 n cubed and order of n to the fourth. And all I really need to do at this order is to recognize that I have two terms that are order of n cubed. Putting them together, I have n minus b2 bar n squared. And then I have plus 2b2 bar squared minus b3 bar over 2 n cubed and order of n to the fourth. So now we erase this. OK, so now I have solved for x in a power series in n. All I need to do is to substitute in the power series for p. So let's write that down. The power series for beta p is b1 bar times the density b2 bar squared over 2 density square, b3 bar over 3 factorial, which is 6 n cubed, and so forth. But I only calculated things to order of n cubed. Also, b1 bar is the same thing as 1. So basically that's what I should be working with. And so all I need to do is to substitute-- oops, except that these are all x's. The series here for beta p that I have is in powers of this quantity x. And it is x that I had calculated as a function of n. To the order that I calculated, it is n minus b2n squared. And then I have 2b2 squared minus b3 over b3. Somehow this sounds incorrect to me. Nope, that's fine. Because here I have 2. So that's correct. b3 over 2 n cubed-- so essentially, I just substituted for x here. The next order term is going to be b2 over 2 times the square of x. The square of x will give me a term that is n squared, a term that is from here 2b2n cubed. Order of n to the fourth I haven't calculated correctly. Order of n cubed I have b3 over 6. And just x cubed is the same thing as n cubed to this order. And I have not calculated anything at the next order. So let's see what we have. We have n. At the next order, there are two terms that are n squared. There is this term, and there is that term. Putting them together, I will get minus b2 over 2 n squared. At the next order, at the order of n cubed, I have a bunch of terms. First of all, there is this 2b2 squared. But then multiplying this with this will subtract one b2. So I'm going to be left with b2 squared. And then I have minus 1/2 b3. So that's one term. And then I have plus 1/6 b3. Minus 1/2 plus 1/6 is minus 1/3. So this is minus b3 over 3 n cubed. And I haven't calculated order of n to the fourth. And this is the formula for BP. So lowest order, I have the ideal gas result. Actually, let me, for simplicity, define the virial coefficients in this fashion. The second order, I will get a correction B2, which is minus 1/2 of b2 bar. So this is minus 1/2 of the diagram that corresponds to essentially one of these lines that I have up here. And so what is it? It is minus 1/2 the integral over the relative coordinate of e to the minus beta v as a function of the relative coordinate minus 1. Now earlier, we had in fact calculated this result directly through the partition function. I did a calculation in which I calculated the first term in the other way of looking at things, in the cumulant expansion, as a function of expansions in the potential. We saw that there was a term that all was order of density squared. We summed all of the terms to get this factor. And there was precisely a factor of minus 1/2 as a correction to pressure once we took the derivative of the partition function with respect to volume. OK, so the thing that is new is really the next order term, B3, which is b2 squared minus b3 bar over 3. OK, so what is that? Diagrammatically, B2 was this factor that we calculated above and is the square of this pair. And then I have to subtract from that 1/3 of whatever goes into B3. Now remember, we said that B3, I have to pick three points and make sure I link them in all possible ways. So the diagrams that go into B3, one of them is this. But then there are three other ways of making a linked object, which is these things. We also saw that if I were to calculate the contribution of any one of these objects, I can very easily choose to measure my coordinates with respect to, say, the point that is at their apex. And then I would have one variable which is this distance, one variable which is that distance. And independently, each one of them would give me the factor that I calculated before. In essence, all of these one particle reducible graphs give a contribution, which is the product of these single line graphs. There are three of them. Minus 1/3 precisely cancels that. And so the calculation that goes into the third virial coefficient ultimately will only depend on this one graph. And we had anticipated this before. When we were doing things previously using the expansion of the partition function, we saw that in this cumulant expansion, only the cumulants were appearing. And for calculation of the cumulants, I had to do lots of subtractions. And those subtractions were genetically removing these one particle reducible graphs. And this continues to all orders. And the general formula is that the l-th contribution here will be a factor of l minus 1 over l factorial, which is not so difficult to get by following the procedures that I have described over here, and then the part of bl that is one particle irreducible. So this is the eventual result for how you would be able, given some particular form of the two body interaction, to calculate an expansion for pressure in powers of density, how the coefficients of that expansion are related to properties of this potential through this diagrammatic expansion. So this is formally correct. And then the next question is, is it practical? Is it useful? So we need to start computing things to see something about the usefulness of this series for some particular type of potential. So we are going to look at the kind of potential that I already described for you. That is, if I look at two particles in a gas that are separated by an amount r-- let's imagine the potential only depends on the relative distance, not orientation or anything else. We said that basically, at large distances, the potential is attractive because of van der Waals. At short distances, the potential is repulsive. And so you have a general form such as this. Now, if I want to do calculations, it would be useful for me to have something that I can do calculations exactly with and get an estimate. So what I'm going to do is to replace that potential, essentially, with a hard wall. So my approximation to the potential is that my v of r is infinite for distances, separations that are less than some r0. So basically, I define some kind of r0, which is the-- if you think of them as billiard balls, it's related to the closest distance of approach. This potential at large distances has typical van der Waals form, by which I mean it falls off as a function of separation with the sixth power. It is attractive. So I put a minus sign here. In order to make sure that I get eventually the dimensions right, the coefficient that goes here I write as r0 with a u0 up here such that if I assume that the potential is precisely this for all r that are greater than r0, then I'm replacing the actual potential by something like this. And the minimum depth of potential will occur at this cusp over here at minus u0. So why did I do that? Because now I can calculate with that what the second virial coefficient is. So what is B2? B2 is minus 1/2 the integral of relative potential. Now this integral will take two parts from these two different contributions. One part is when I'm in the regime where the particles are excluded, the potential is infinity. And there, f is simply minus 1. So that minus 1 then gets integrated from 0 to r, giving me the volume that is excluded. So what I will get here is a minus 1 times the excluded volume. That's the first part, where the volume is, of course, 4 pi over 3 r0 cubed for the volume of the sphere. And then I have to add the part where I go from f0 all the way to infinity. The potential is vertically symmetric. So d cubed r becomes 4 pi r squared dr. And I have to integrate e to the minus beta times the attractive part of the potential. So it's beta u0 r0 over r to the sixth minus 1. So what I will do, I will additionally assume that I'm in the range of parameters where this beta u0 is much less than 1, that is, at temperatures that are higher compared to the depth of this potential converted to units of kT. And if that is the case, then I can expand this. And the expansion to the lowest order will simply give me beta u0 r0 over r to the sixth power. And I will ignore higher order terms. So this, if you like, is order of beta u0 squared. Now, having done that, then the second integral becomes simple. Because I have to integrate r squared divided by r to the fourth, which is r to the minus 4. Integral of r to the minus 4 gives me r to the minus 3. And then there's a factor of minus 1/3 from the integration. It has to be evaluated between 0 and infinity. And so the final answer, then, for B2 is minus 1/2. I have minus 4 pi over 3 r0 cubed from the excluded volume part. From here, I will get a 4 pi beta u0 r0 to the sixth. And then I will get this factor of r the minus 3 over 3 evaluated between infinity, which gives me 0 and r0. So you can see that with this potential, actually both terms are proportional to 4 pi r0 cubed over 3. And so I can write the answer as minus omega over 2 where I have defined omega to be this 4 pi r0 cubed over 3, which is the excluded volume. Basically, it's the volume that is excluded from exploration when you have two particles. Because their center of mass cannot come as close as r0. So that 1/2 appears here as 1. Because I already took care of that. This rest of the coefficients are proportional to this except with a factor of minus beta u0. So I get minus beta u0. So this is your second virial coefficient for this. AUDIENCE: It should be positive out front. PROFESSOR: Pardon? AUDIENCE: It should be positive out front, [INAUDIBLE]? PROFESSOR: Yes, because there was a minus, and there's a minus. There's a plus. Let's keep that. So what we have so far, we've said that beta times the pressure starts with ideal gas behavior n. And then I have the next correction, which is this B2 multiplying n squared. So I will have n squared times this coefficient that I have calculated for this type of gas, which is omega over 2 1 minus beta u0. And presumably there are higher order terms in this. So whenever you see something like this, then you have to start thinking about, is this a good expansion? So let's think about how this expansion could have become problematic. Actually, there is already one thing that I should have noted and I didn't, which is short versus long range potential. Now, it was nice for this potential that I got an answer that was in the form that I could write down, factor out omega. You can say, well, would you have always been able to do something similar to that? Because you see, ultimately what this says is that in order for all of these terms in this expansion to be dimensionally correct, the next term is a density, has dimensions of inverse volume, density squared compared to this. So it should be compensated by some factor of volume. And we can see that this factor of volume came from something that was of the order of this size of the molecule, this r0. OK, so it's interesting. It says that it's really the short-range part of the potential that seems to be setting the correction. Now, where did that come from? Well, there was one place that I had to do an integration over the potential. And I found that the integration was dominated by the lower range. That was over here. Where would this become difficult? AUDIENCE: In a small box? PROFESSOR: In a small box, but we are always taking the thermodynamic limit where V goes to infinity. AUDIENCE: Or inverse square log? PROFESSOR: Inverse square log, yes, that's right. So who says that this integral should converge? I'm doing an integral d cubed r, something like v of r. And convergence was the reason why this integral was dominated by short distance. If this potential goes like 1 over r cubed, then it will logarithmically depend on the size of the box. For Coulomb interaction, 1/r potential you can't even think about it. It's just too divergent. So this expansion will fail for potentials that have tails that are decaying as 1 over r cubed or even slower. Fortunately, that's not the case for van der Waals' potential and typical potentials. But if you have a plasma, you have to worry about this. And that's why I was also saying last time that the typical expansions that you have to do for plasmas are different. So given that we are dominated by the short range, what is the correction that I've obtained compared to the first term? So essentially, I have calculated a second order term that is of the order of this divided by the first order term and pressure that was density. And we find that this is of the order of n omega. How many particles are within the range of interaction? And this would be kind of like the ratio of the density of liquid to the density of gas. Because the density of liquid would be related-- oh, it's the other way around. The density of liquid would be 1 over the volume that one particle occupies. So the density of liquid would go in the denominator. The density of gas is this n that I have over here. And again, for the gas in this room, this ratio is of the order of 10 to the minus 3. And we are safe. But if I were to start compressing this so that I go to higher and higher densities, ultimately I say that this second order term becomes of the order of the first order term. And then perturbation doesn't make sense. Naturally, the reason for that is I haven't calculated. But typically what you find is that if you go to higher and higher order terms in the series, in most cases, but clearly not in all cases, the ratio of successive terms is more or less set by the ratio of the first terms. It has to be dimensionally correct. And we've established that the typical dimension that is controlling everything is the volume of the particle. So this expansion will fail for long range potentials, for going to liquid-like densities. But also I made another thing, which is that I assumed that that could expand this exponential. And then in principle, there are other difficulties that could arise if this condition that I wrote here is violated. If beta u0 is greater than 1, then this coefficient by itself becomes large exponentially. And then you would expect that higher order terms will also get more factors of this exponential and potential. And things will blow up on you. So it will also have difficulties at low temperatures for attractive potentials. Again, the reason for that is obvious. If you have an attractive potential, you go to low enough temperature, and the ground state is everybody sticking together-- looks nothing like a gas, looks like a solid or something. So these are the kind of limitations that one has in this series. OK, let's be brave and do some more rearrangements of this equation. So I have that to this order, beta P is n plus n squared this excluded volume over 2 1 minus beta u0. And then there's higher order terms of course. And then I notice that there are two terms on this equation that are proportional to beta. And I say, why not put both of them together? So I will have beta. Bring that term to this side, and it becomes P plus n squared omega over 2 u0. And then what is left on the other side? Let's factor out the n. I expect this to be a series in higher and higher powers of n. And the first correction to 1 comes from here, which is n omega over 2. And I expect there to be higher order terms. Now again, to order of n squared that I have calculated things correctly, this expression is no different from the following expression-- 1 minus n omega over 2. Again, there will be higher order terms in n. But the order of n squared, both of these equations, expressions, are equivalent. So if I now ignore higher order terms, this whole thing is equivalent to P plus n squared u-- well, let's write this in the following fashion-- p plus u0 omega over 2 N over V, which is density squared. And actually this side, if I were to multiply by V, what do I get? This becomes numerator V, denominator V minus N omega over 2. Let's multiply by V minus N omega over 2. And the right-hand side will be-- AUDIENCE: Is that where it should be there? PROFESSOR: What happened? AUDIENCE: This one, [INAUDIBLE]. PROFESSOR: Yes, so if I multiply this, which is N over V, by V, I will get N, good, which removes the difficulty that I had. Because now I multiply by kT. And the left hand side disappears. And on the right hand side, I will get NkT. So we'll spend some time on this equation that you will likely recognize as the van der Waals equation. I kind of justify it by rearranging this series. But van der Waals himself, of course, had a different way of justifying it, which is that basically if we think about the ideal gas, and you have particles that are moving within some volume V, if you have excluded volume interactions, then some of this volume is no longer available. And so maybe what you should do is you should reduce the volume by an amount that is proportional to the number of particles. This factor of 1/2 is actually very interesting. Because it is correct. And I see that a number of people in well known journals, et cetera, write that the excluded volume should be essentially n times the volume that is excluded around each particle. It's not that. It is 1/2 of that. And I'll leave you to mull on that. Because we will justify it later on. But in the meantime, you can think about why the factor of 1/2 is there. The other issue is that-- so there has to be a correction to the volume. And the kind of hand-waving statement that you make about the correction to pressure is that if you think about the particle that is in the middle, it is being attracted by everybody, whereas when it comes to the surface, it is really being attracted by things that are half of the space. So there is an effective potential that the particles feel from the collective action of all the others, which is slightly less steep when you approach the boundaries. And therefore, you can either think that because of this, there's less density that you have at the boundary. Less density will give you less pressure. Or if you have a particle that is kind of moving towards the wall, it is being pulled back so it doesn't hit the wall as strongly as you would expect, that would give the pressure of the ideal gas. So there is a pressure that has to be reduced related to the strength of the potential and something that has to do with all of the other particles. And there's density squared will appear there. We will have a more full justification of this equation later on. But for the time being, let's sort of sit with this equation and think about its consequences for awhile. Because the thing that we would like to do is we have come from a perspective of looking at the ideal gas and how the pressure of the ideal gas starts to get corrected because of the interactions. Of course, things become interesting when you go to the dense limit. And then the gas becomes something like a liquid. And you have transitions and things like that. So really, it's the other limit, the dense, highly interacting limited that is interesting. And to get that, we have few choices. Either I have to somehow sum many, many terms in the series, which will be very difficult, and we can't do that, or you can make some kind of approximation, rearrangement, and a guess. And this is what the van der Waals equation is based on. I made the guess here by somewhat rearranging and re-summing the terms in this series. But I will give you shortly a different justification that is more transparent and tells you immediately what the limitations are. But basically that's why we are going to spend some time with this equation. Because ultimately, we are hoping to transition from the weakly interacting case to the strongly interacting case. Yes. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] PROFESSOR: No, no, no, no, omega was defined as the volume excluded around one particle. So if you're thinking about billiard balls, r0 is the diameter. It's not the radius. And 4 pi over 3 r0 cubed is 8 times the diameter of a single billiard ball. So the correction that we get, if you like, is 4 times the volume of a billiard ball multiplied by the number of billiard balls. Where was I? OK, so what this equation gives you, the van der Waals, is an expression for how the pressure behaves as a function of volume. Actually, it would be nicer if we were to sort of replace this by volume per particle, which would be the inverse density. But you can use one or the other. It doesn't matter. Now, what you find is that there is, first of all, a limitation to the volume. So basically, none of your cares are going to go to volumes that are lower than n omega over 2. So basically there's a barrier here that occurs over here. But if you go to the other limit, where you go to large volumes, you can ignore terms like this. And then you get back the kind of ideal gas behavior. So basically, in one limit, where you are either at high temperatures-- and at high temperatures, essentially, the correction here will also be negligible. Or you are at high values of the volume. You get isotherms that are very much like the isotherms that you have for the ideal gas, except that rather than asymptote to 0, PV going like NkT, you asymptote to this excluded volume. So this is for high T, T large. T larger than what? Well essentially, what happens is that if I look at the pressure, I can write it in this fashion also. It is NkT divided by V minus N omega over 2. So that's the term that dominates at high temperature. It's proportional to kT. But then there's the subtraction u0 omega over 2 N/V squared. And again, this term is not so important at large volume. Because at large volume, this 1/V is more dominant than 1 over V squared. But as you go to lower temperatures and intermediate volumes, then essentially you have potentially a correction that falls off as minus 1 over V squared. And so this correction that falls off as 1 over V squared can potentially modify your curve, bring it down, and then give it a structure such as this. So this is T less than. And clearly, between these two types of behavior, where there is monotonic behavior or non-monotonic behavior, there has to be a limiting curve that, let's say, does something like this, comes tangentially to the horizontal axis, and then goes on like this. So this would be for T equals Tc. This is T greater than Tc, T less than Tc. OK, so that's fine, except that now we have encountered the difficulty. Because one of the things that we had established for thermodynamic stability was that delta P delta V had to be negative. And the ideal gas curve and portions of this curve which have a negative slope are all consistent with this. But this portion over here where dP by dV is positive, it kind of violates the condition that the compressibility kappa T, which is minus 1/V dV by dP at constant temperature, better be positive. And so clearly, the expression that one gets through this van der Waals equation has a limitation. And the most natural way about it is to say, well, the question that you wrote down is clearly incorrect. That's certainly true. Also, this equation is incorrect, except that this kind of reminds us with what actually happens if I look at the isotherms of a gas, such as gas in this room, or something that is more familiar, such as water. What you find is that at high temperatures, you indeed have curves that look like this. But at low temperatures, you liquidify. And what you have is a zone of coexistence, let's say something like this, by which I mean that the isotherm that you draw has a portion that lives in the gas phase and is a slightly modified version of the ideal gas. But then it has a portion that corresponds to the more or less incompressible liquid. Although this has clearly still some finite compressibility. And then in between, there is a region where if you have a box, part of your box would be liquid, and part of your box would be gas. And as you compress the box, the proportion of liquid and gas will change. And this happens for T less than some Tc. And once more, there is a curve that kind of looks like this at some intermediate temperature Tc. So you look at the comparison, you say, well, as long as I stay above Tc-- of course I don't expect this equation to give the right numbers for what Tc or whatever is. But qualitatively, I get topologies and behaviors at that T greater than Tc all the way up to Tc are not very different. But at T less than Tc, they also signal that something bad is happening. And somehow, the original description has to be modified. And so the thing that Maxwell and van der Waals and company did was to somehow convert this incorrect set of equations to something that resembles this. So let's see how they managed to do this. Actually, this may not be a bad thing to keep in mind. Let's have a thermodynamic-- well, I kind of emphasize that there is thermodynamic reason for why this is not valid. Always there's a corresponding reason if you look at things from the perspective of statistical mechanics. So it may be useful to sort of think about what's happening from that perspective. Let's imagine that we are in this grand canonical ensemble. In the grand canonical ensemble, the number of particles, as we discussed, is not fixed. But the mean number of particles is given by the expressions that we saw over here, is related to the pressure through dP by d mu at constant temperature. But there are fluctuations. So you would say that the fluctuations are related by taking a second derivative of this object. Because clearly, q, if I were to expand it in powers of beta mu, will generate various moments of n. Log of q will generate cumulants. So the variance would be one more derivative. And so that will amount to taking a derivative of the first derivative, which was the number itself. So I will get this to be dN by d mu at constant T, except that there's an additional factor of kT. So maybe I will write this carefully enough. I have d2 log Q with respect to beta mu squared will give me N squared. Now, the first derivative with respect to beta mu of log Q gave me the mean, which I'm actually thinking of as N itself. And then there's this factor of beta. So this is really kT dN by d mu. All of these are done at constant temperature. So the statistical analog of stability really comes down to variances being positive. So my claim is that this variance being positive is related to this stability condition. Let me do that in the following fashion. I divide these two expressions. I will get the average of N squared divided by average of N, which is really N, so the variance over N. I have kT. And then I have the ratio of two of these derivatives. And the reason I wanted to do that ratio was to get rid of the d mu. Because d mu is not so nice. If I take the ratio of those two derivatives, I will get dN by dP at constant T. But what I really wanted was to say something about dV by dP at constant T rather than dN by dP. So what I'm going to do is to somehow convert this dN by dP into dN by dV, and then dV by dP. And actually to do that, I need to use the chain rule. So this will be T, P. This will be T, N. And the chain rule will give me an additional minus sign. So this is a reminder of how your partial derivatives and the chain rule goes. Finally, dN by dV is none other than the density N/V. At constant temperature, N and V will be proportional. And what I have here is 1/V dV by dP, which is the compressibility. So the whole thing here is NkT times kappa of T. And so this being positive, this positivity of the variance, is-- the thermodynamic analog of it was from the stability, and something such as this. The statistical analog of it is that the probability distribution that I'm looking at in the grand canonical ensemble as a function of N has to be peaked around some region. The variance around that peak better be positive so that I'm looking in the vicinity of a maximum. If it was negative, it means that I'm looking in the vicinity of a minimum. And I'm looking at the least likely configuration. So it cannot be allowed. So that's the statistical reason. OK, now I want to use that in connection with what we have over here and see what I can learn about this. I said that I wrote two expressions and divided them, because I didn't want to deal with the chemical potential. But let me redefine that and say the following, that N is V dP by d mu at constant T. And maybe I will start to gain some idea about chemical potential if I rearrange this as d mu is V/N dP along this surface of constant P at constant T. And then I can calculate mu as a function of P at some particular temperature minus mu at some reference point by integrating from the reference point to the pressure of interest the quantity V/N dP prime where V of P prime I take from this curve. So this curve gives me P as a function of V. But I can invert it and think of V as a function of P, put it here, and see what is happening with the chemical potential if I walk along one of these trajectories. And in particular, let's kind of draw one of these curves that I am unhappy with that have this kind of form in general and calculate what happens to the chemical potential if I, let's say, pick this reference point A, and the corresponding pressure PA, and go along this curve, which corresponds to some temperature T that is less than this instability temperature, and track the shape of the chemical potential. So this formula says that the change in chemical potential we obtained by calculating V-- divide by N, but our N is fixed-- as a function of P, and integrating as you go up in pressure. So essentially, I'm calculating the integral starting from point A as I go under this curve. So let's plot as a result of that integration how that chemical potential at P minus PA is going to look like as I go in P beyond PA. So at PA, that's my reference. The chemical potential is some value. As I go up and up, because of this area of this curve, I keep adding to the chemical potential until I reach the maximum here at this point C. So there is some curve that goes from this A to some point C. Now, the thing is that when I continue going along this curve down this potential all the way to the bottom of this, which I will call D, my DP's are negative. So I start subtracting from what I had before. And so then the curve starts to go down. So all the way to D, I'm proceeding in the opposite direction. Once I hit D, I start going all the way to the end of the curve however far I want to go. And I'm adding some positive area. So the next part I also have a variation in chemical potential that goes like this. So you ask, well, if I give you what the temperature is and what the pressure is-- and I have told you what the temperature and pressure are-- I should be able to calculate the chemical potential. It's an intensive function of the other two intensive functions. And this curve tells me that, except that there are regions where I don't know which one to pick. There are regions where it's obvious there's one value of the chemical potential. But there is in between, because of this instability, three possible values. And typically, if you have systems-- think about different chemicals that can go between each other. And there are potentials for chemical transformations. You say, go and pick the lowest chemical potential. The system will evolve onto the condition that has the lowest chemical potential. So that says that when you have a situation such as this, you really have to pick the lowest one. And so you have to bail out on your first curve at the point B, and on your second curve at a point E, where on this curve B and E are such that when you integrate this BDP all the way from B to E, you will get 0, which means that you have to find points B and E such that the integral here is the same as the integral here. And this is the so-called Maxwell construction. So what that means is that originally I was telling you over here that there is some portion of the curve that violates all kinds of thermodynamics. And you should not access it. And this other argument that we are pursuing here says that actually the regions that you cannot access are beyond that. There's a portion that extends in this direction, and a portion that extends in that direction. And really there's a portion that you can access up to here, and a portion that you can access up to here. And maybe you should sort of then join them by a straight line and make an analog with what we have over there. Now, in another thing, another way of looking at this is that the green portion is certainly unstable, violates all kinds of thermodynamic conditions. And people argue that these other portions that have the right slope are in some sense metastable. So this would be a stable equilibrium. This would be an unstable equilibrium. And a metastable equilibrium is that you are at a minimum, but there's a deeper minimum somewhere else. And the picture is that if you manage to take your gas and put additional pressure on it, there is a region where there is a coexistence with the liquid which is better in terms of free energy, et cetera. But there could be some kind of a kinetic barrier, like nucleation or whatever, that prevents you to go there. And this again is something that is experimentally observed. If you try to rapidly pressurize a gas, you could sometimes avoid and not make your transition to the liquid state at the right pressure. But if you were to do things sufficiently slowly, you would ultimately reach this point that corresponds to the true equilibrium pressure of making this transition. Now, the thing is that somehow this whole story is not very satisfactory. I started with some rearrangement of some perturbative to arrive at this equation. This equation has this unstable portion. And somehow I'm trying to relate something that makes absolutely no thermodynamic sense and try to gain from it some idea about what is happening in a real liquid gas system. So it would be good if all of this could be more formally described within a framework where all of the approximations, et cetera, are clear, and we know what's going on. And so next time, we will do that. We will essentially developed a much more systematic formalism for calculating the properties of an interacting gas, and see that we get this, and we also understand why it fails.
MIT_8333_Statistical_Mechanics_I_Statistical_Mechanics_of_Particles_Fall_2013	25_Ideal_Quantum_Gases_Part_4.txt	The following content is provided under a Creative Commons license. Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare continue to offer high-quality educational resources for free. To make a donation or view additional materials from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare at ocw.mit.edu. PROFESSOR: Last time, we looked at the case of a Bose gas, and we found that there was this condensation phenomena into the ground state. Let's go over it one more time. So the idea was that when you have a Bose system, the occupation of the different one-particle states, which you can specify for a non-interacting system in the grand canonical ensemble, these entities are independent for each one of the one-particle states and have a form that is related to the chemical potential and the energy of these states through this form, epsilon [? kd ?] in the one-particle state, and z standing for e to the beta mu, chemical potential divided by temperature. OK? Now, if we go and look at this in the limit where z is much less than 1, which is appropriate to high temperatures or when the case where the gas is mostly classical, you can expand this. You can see that in the lowest order, it is z e to the minus beta epsilon of k. So it looks like a standard Boltzmann weight that we would use in classical statistical mechanics. But then there are higher order terms. And in particular there would be a correction that is e to the minus beta epsilon of k squared and so forth that would modify this result. But I think this is something that I mentioned. If you look at a form such as this at high temperatures, it's like a Boltzmann weight. So the state that has this lowest energy, in this case if we say epsilon of k is h bar squared k squared over 2m corresponding to k equals to 0 for the lowest energy, has the highest mean occupation number of weight. OK? Now that is always the case. This is a function that, as epsilon of k becomes larger, no matter whether you expand it or not, becomes less and less. The other limit that is of interest to us is how big can z be? We said that the largest it can be is when it approaches 1. And when it is 1, this quantity, the occupation number, is e to the beta epsilon of k minus 1. Again, something that is largest as k becomes smaller, and you go to the lowest energy. But there is the difficulty that the one energy that corresponds to k equals to 0, if I look at this formula, it is 1 divided by 0. It just doesn't make too much sense. Now, of course, we said that typically we don't want to work in this variable. We want to figure out things as a function of the number of particles or the number of particles divided by volume density, which is a nice intensive quantity. OK? So typically, what should we do? We said that in the grand canonical ensemble, N is the sum over k these expectation values. I should really put an average here, but we said that in the thermodynamic sense, fluctuations being of the order of square root of N, we are going to ignore. So this is what you would normally call the number that we have in the system. And then you have to replace this sum in the limit where we have a large system with an integral. So we have the integral d cubed k 2 pi cubed V. And then we have this N of k, which is 1 over z inverse e to the beta epsilon of k minus 1. Now if I go like I did in the line above to the limit where z is much less than 1, then the integral that I have to do is simply the integral of z e to the minus beta epsilon k h bar squared k squared 2m. We know what this is. This is simply, up to a factor of z, these are the integrals that have given me these factors of 1 over lambda cubed. Actually, there's the factor of V here, so it is V over lambda cubed. So normally, you would then solve for z, and you would find that z is the density times lambda cubed. And this is a formula that we have seen a number of times, that the chemical potential is kt log of n lambda cubed. OK? Fine. But now we are interested in the other limit. Now in the other limit, we have this difficulty that this quantity, if I look at it as a function of z, this is the quantity that we would call f-- it is related to f 3/2 of z. So this is going to be 1 over lambda cubed f 3/2 plus of z. It's a function that increases with z up to the limiting value that we are allowed to have, which is at z equals to 1. It's a function that starts linearly, as we have discussed, but then up here, it comes to a finite value of zeta 3/2. OK? So basically, we know that when I evaluate this for finite z, I'm less than where I was here. So this is certainly less than 1 over lambda cubed zeta of 3/2, the limiting value that we have over here. So now I have a difficulty. This function over here, I can only make it so big. But I need to make it big enough so that I can put enough particles, the total number of particles that I have in the system. So what is happening over here? What is happening is that when I make this density larger and larger, ultimately when I hit this point at z equals to 1, as we have discussed there is an uncertainty as to what happens to this expression when z is equal to 1, and you are at this state that corresponds to k equals to 0. Right? I don't know how many things are over there. So I can have, in principle, the freedom to take advantage of the fact that I don't know what 1 over 0 is to call that the number that I need to make up the difference between here and there. OK? And so, in principle, when z goes to 1, then this becomes 1 over lambda cubed, or V over lambda cubed, zeta of 3/2, obtained by essentially doing the integration with z equals to 1, evaluating it at this possible limit. And then whatever is left, I will put in the k equals to 0 state. OK? And you will say, well, what does that explicitly mean? Well, what it means is that I'm really evaluating things at the value of z that is extremely close to 1 so that in the thermodynamic limit where N goes to infinity I wouldn't know the difference. But it is really something that vanishes only in that thermodynamic limit of N going to infinity. And we saw that if I kind of look at the occupation number of the k equals to 0 state, what it is is z inverse, which is e to the minus beta mu minus 1. And if I'm in the limit where z is very small, or beta mu is-- sorry, z is very much close to 1 or beta mu is very small, then I can expand this. And this becomes approximately, when mu goes to 0, minus 1 over beta mu. OK? And I want this to be the N0, what is left over when I subtract from the total number the amount that I can put in to the ground state. OK? And so you can see that this is a quantity that is extensive. It is proportional to the number of particles. And mu is the inverse of that, so it is infinitesimal. And if I choose that value of mu that is, essentially, pushing z infinitesimally close to 1, then I can ensure that I have a finite occupation over there. OK? So what does it mean? If I could actually look at these occupation numbers, then I am at temperatures less than Tc of n. And we saw that basically we could get what the temperature is when this happens by equating this combination g over lambda cubed, in principle, over-- I had said g equals to 1. I could repeat it with g not equal to 1. And n, which is g over lambda cubed zeta of 3/2, rather than f 3/2 plus, this defines for me this temperature Tc of n. OK? Now, if I could look at the occupation numbers when I was at temperature less than Tc, what would I see? I would see that the occupation number as a function of k is exactly the form that we have over here with z equals to 1, 1 over e to the beta epsilon of k minus 1. But then at k equals to 0, which I can indicate by some kind of delta function, I have everybody else, which is this N minus V over lambda cubed zeta of 3/2. OK? Actually, let's remember that our k and momentum are related to each other. So rather than asking what the density is as a function of this label k, I can maybe ask what the density is for things that have different momentum P. And according to this formula, it is going to be beta P squared over 2m, this kind of modified version of the Boltzmann weight, and a delta function at P equals to 0 there. The rest of the particles are up here. Now, when people saw the signature of Bose-Einstein condensation, it was precisely this. So this is the figure that shows this from the experiment of Eric Cornell and group, and you see two thermometers. They are cooling the temperature of this gas of atoms that is confined in a trap. The way that they are cooling it is that they are evaporating away the high energy particles. And then the rest of the particles are cooled down because they thermalize, and the highest energy is always removed. But in the process, the density in the trap is also being reduced. And if the density goes down, then Tc of n will also go down. So what is plotted over here on the right thermometer is the Tc of n that you would calculate from that formula. And on the right thermometer is actually the temperature of the particles in the gas. And you can see that right at some point, then the Tc of the particles in the gas goes below Tc of n. And what is being plotted over here is as follows. So you have the particles that are in the trap at some temperature. We remove the trap, and then the particles are going to escape. The particles that have zero momentum are going to stay where they are. The particles that have large momentum are going to go further away. So let's say after one second you take a picture. And what you see over here from the picture is over here there are the particles that had most momentum and ran further away. While at the center, you see the particles that had small momentum. You can see that always, even at high temperature, the zero momentum is the peak. But once you go below this condition of Tc of n, in addition to the normal peak that is over here, you get some additional peak that is appearing at P equals to 0, which is the condensation that you have into that one single state. OK? The other thing that I started to do last time but let's complete and finish today is I wanted to show you the heat capacity of this system. OK. So how do we do that? So the first formula that we had, the one that I used over here if I were to divide by V, is that the density, in general, is given by g over lambda cubed f 3/2 plus of z. OK? And we said that if z goes to 1, then I have to interpret that appropriately that this is really just excited states, and there's going to be a separation into the ground state and the excited states. So there is really two portions of n when we are below Tc. OK? But then there is also a formula for pressure. Beta P was g over lambda cubed f 5/2 of z. Again, these f's we had defined-- f plus m minus 1 of z was 1 over m minus 1 factorial integral 0 to infinity dx x to the m minus 1 z inverse e to the x plus 1-- minus 1. OK? Fine. But in order to calculate the heat capacity, I need to work with the energy. And we said that, quite generally, whether you have classical system, quantum gas, bosons, fermions, the energy and pressure are related simply by this formula, which is ultimately a consequence of the scaling of the energy being proportional to momentum squared that we have over there. OK? So let's look at this formula. What do I have? For T that is less than Tc of n, my z is equal to 1. Pressure comes entirely from particles that are moving around. So although the density breaks into two components, in principle I guess I would say that the pressure also breaks into two components. But the component that is at k equals to 0 is not moving around. It is not giving you any contribution to the pressure. So what do we? We have P is kt, taking the beta to the other side. I have g over lambda cubed, and then this f plus evaluated at z equals to 1, which is this zeta function of 5/2. OK? So fine. So what do I have for energy? Energy is going to be at 3/2 V times this formula, kd T g over lambda cubed zeta 5/2. And I noticed that lambda, being h square root of 2 pi mk T, scales like T to the minus 1/2. So 1 over lambda cubed scales like T to the 3/2 plus this is something that's scaling like T to the 5/2. And this is simply proportional to the volume and temperature to the [INAUDIBLE] fifth power. It knows nothing about the density. Why? Because if you were at the same temperature and volume, put more particle in the system, all of those additional particles would go over here, would make no contribution to pressure or to energy. You wouldn't see them. So once you have this, the heat capacity at constant volume, dE by dT, is simply 5 over 2T of whatever energy is. And there is a reason that I write it in this fashion. So what you would say is that if I were to plot the heat capacity at constant volume as a function of temperature, well, it's natural units are of the order of kB. You can see that this T and this T I can cancel out. So I have something that has units of kB. It is extensive proportional to volume. I can really certainly write it in this fashion. And what I have is that the curve behaves like T to the 3/2. So this is proportional to T to the 3/2. And presumably, this behavior continues all the way until the temperature at which this system ceases to be a Bose-Einstein condensate. So the low temperature form of the heat capacity's calculation is very simple. Now, at very high temperatures, we know that the heat capacity is going to be 3/2 N kT, right? So ultimately, I know that if I go to very high temperatures, my heat capacity is going to be 3/2 N, if I divide it by [? kB. ?] OK? Now, there is a reason that I drew this line over here less than the peak here. Well, in order to calculate the heat capacity on this side, we'll have to do a little bit more work. You can no longer assume that z equals to 1. z is something that is less than 1 that is obtained by solving N equals to g over lambda cubed f 3/2 plus of z. OK? But I can still presumably use these formulae. I have that the energy is 3/2 PV. So I have V kT times-- what is the thing that I have on the right-hand side? It is g over lambda cubed, just as I have over here except that I have to put f 5/2 plus of z. OK? And if I want to calculate the heat capacity, what I need to do is to take a derivative of the energy with respect to temperature. And then I notice, well, again, right like I had before, whatever appears here is proportional to T to the 5/2. So when I take a derivative with respect to temperature, I essentially get 5/2 this whole quantity divided by T. So just like I had over here, I will write the result as 3/2 V kT g over lambda cubed. And then I have the 5/2 1 over T of f 5/2 plus of z. But you say that's the wrong way of doing things because in addition to this combination out front be explicitly proportional to T to the 5/2 power, this factor z here is implicitly a function of temperature because it is related to density through that formula N equals to g over lambda cubed f 5/2 plus of z. So you should not forget to take the derivative of what is over here with respect to T. OK? So what do I get when I take a derivative of this with respect to T? Well, the argument is not T, it is z. So I will have to take a dz by dT, and then the derivative of f 5/2 with respect to z. And we saw that one of the characteristics of these functions was that when we took the derivative of each one of them, we generated one with a lower argument. So the derivative would be f 3/2 plus of z. But in order to have this [? latter ?] property, I had to do a z d by dz, and so I essentially need to restore this 1 over z here. So you can see that, really, the difference between what I had at low temperatures and high temperatures, at low temperatures this was just a number that I was using over here, zeta of 5/2, and I didn't have to bother about this other term. Now, we can figure out what the behavior of this term is certainly at small z because we have the expansion of these functions at small z. And if you do sufficient work, you will find-- well, first of all, at the largest values of z-- sorry, at the smallest value, z going to 0, you can confirm that the heat capacity in units of N kB is simply 3/2. So you will come to this line over here, and then the first correction that you calculate you'll find is going to take you in that direction. Actually, if you do the calculation for bosons and fermions at high temperatures, you can convince yourself that while bosons will go in this direction, fermions, the heat capacity, will start to go in the other direction. But OK, so you have this behavior. And then what we haven't established and the reason that I'm still doing all of this algebra is that, OK, this curve is going up, where is it going to end up? Is it going to end up here, here, or right where this curve hits? OK? And what I will show you is that this has to end up right at this point. And actually, in order to show that, all we need to do is to figure out what these terms do when I evaluate them at z equals to 1. And because these things are telling me what is happening as I am approaching to this point, the question that I ask is, what is the limiting behavior of this function as I get to z equals to 1? But the limiting value of this one I know. It is precisely what I want over here. It is zeta of 5/2. So I have to somehow show you that this next term is 0. Well, this next term, however, depends on dz by dT. How can I get that? Well, all of these things are done under the conditions where the volume is fixed, or the number of particles is fixed, if the density is fixed. So z and T are related through the formula that says N over V, which is the density, is g over lambda cubed f 3/2 plus of z. OK? So if I take the system and I change its temperature, while keeping the number of particles, volume, fixed so that the density is fixed, if I take d by dT on both sides, on the other side I'm assuming that I'm doing the calculations under conditions where the density does not change. And then what do I have over here? I have to take the temperature derivative of this. There's an implicit derivative here since this is T to the 3/2 proportionately. So when I take a derivative, I will get 3 over 2T, and then I will have f 3/2 plus of z. But then I have to take the derivative that is implicit in the dependence on z here. And that's going to be identical to this, except that when I take a derivative of f 3/2, I will generate f 1/2 of z. OK? So since the left-hand side is equal to 0, I can immediately solve for this, and I find that T dz by dT 1 over z is minus 3/2 f 3/2 plus of z divided by f 1/2 plus of z. OK? So essentially, what I can do is I can multiply through by T. So this T will get rid of this T. I can bring a T, therefore, here. And this combination over here I can replace from what I have there with minus 3/2 f 3/2 plus of z divided by f 1/2 half plus of z. Why is any of this useful? Well, it immediately gives the answer that I need. Why? Because f 1/2 is the derivative of this function. And you can see that I drew it so that it has infinite derivative when z hits 1. And we had indeed said that this function zeta of m, which is the limit of this when z goes to 1, only exists for m that is larger than 1, and it is divergent for m that is less than 1. So when z hits 1, this thing goes to infinity, and the fraction disappears. And so basically, the additional correction that you have beyond this becoming zeta of 5/2, which is what we have over here, vanishes. So I have shown that, indeed, whatever this curve is doing, it will hit that point exactly at Tc of n at the same height as the low temperature curve. And you can do a certain amount of work and algebra to show that it goes there with a finite slope. So that's the shape of the heat capacity curve for the Bose-Einstein condensate. AUDIENCE: Professor? PROFESSOR: Yes? AUDIENCE: So it seems that f 1/2 goes to infinity, but it's [? on ?] the half, so it is half comes from the [INAUDIBLE] 3. So-- PROFESSOR: Exactly. AUDIENCE: --you have higher dimensional system, then it seems that [INAUDIBLE] won't vanish there. [INAUDIBLE]. PROFESSOR: So if you have a higher dimensional system, indeed the situation would be different. And I guess the borderline dimension would need to be-- since this is a V over 2 minus 1-- AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] PROFESSOR: V over 2 minus 1 being 1, which is the borderline, will give you a dc of 4. So something else happens above 4. Yes? AUDIENCE: So it seems that the nature of this phase transition, indeed it changes with the dimension. PROFESSOR: Exactly, yes. The nature of this phase transition does depend on [INAUDIBLE]. Good. OK? So we will come back to this heat capacity curve a little bit later because I want to now change directions and not talk about Bose-Einstein condensation anymore, but about a phenomena that is much more miraculous in my view, and that is superfluidity. So the first thing that is very interesting about helium is its phase diagram. So we are used to drawing phase diagrams as a function of pressure and temperature, which have a separation between a liquid and a gas that terminates at a critical point. So we have seen something like this many times, where you have on the low pressure/high temperature side a gas. On the higher pressure/lower temperature side, you have a liquid. And they terminate, this line of coexistence between the two of them, at a critical point. And for the case of helium, the critical point occurs roughly at 5.2 degrees Kelvin and something like 2.6 atmospheres. OK? So far, nothing different from, say, liquid water, for example, and steam, except that for all other substances, when we cool it at the low enough temperatures, we go past the triple point, and then we have a solid phase. For the case of helium, it stays liquid all the way down to 0 temperature. If you put sufficiently high pressure on it, ultimately it will become a solid. But at normal pressures-- so this maximal pressure is something of the order of 26 atmosphere. For pressures that are less than 26 atmosphere, you can cool the liquid all the way down to 0 temperature, and it stays happily a liquid. So let's think about why that is the case. Well, why do things typically become solids anyway? The reason is that if I think about the interaction that I have between two objects, two atoms and molecules, we have discussed this in connection with condensation before that what we have is that at very large separations there is a van der Waals' attraction. Typically, the dipole moments of these atoms would be fluctuating, and the fluctuations would somehow align them temporarily in the manner that the energy can be reduced. At very short distances, the electronic clouds will overlap, and so you would have something such as this. And then, typically, you will have the function that joins them and look something like this. OK? And this is no different for the case of helium. You have here essentially a hard core appearing at the distance that is of the order of 2.6 angstroms. There is a minimum that is of the order of 3 angstroms. Now, the depth of this potential is not very big for helium. It is only of the order of, say, 9 degrees Kelvin. And the reason is that the strength of this van der Waals' attraction is proportional to the polarizability that scales typically with the number of electrons that you have in your atom. And so it is, in fact, proportional to your atomic number squared. And with the exception of hydrogen, this is going to be the smallest value that you are going to get for the van der Waals' attraction. And hydrogen does not count because it forms a molecule. So helium does not form a molecule. You have these [? balls. ?] They have these attractions. Now, typically things become solid as you go to 0 temperature is because you can find the minimum energy in which you put everybody at the minimum energy separation. So you form a lattice. Everybody is around this separation, and they're all happy and that solid minimizes the energy. So why doesn't helium do the same thing? Maybe it should just do it at a lower temperature because the scale of this is lower. Again, the reason it doesn't do that is because of quantum mechanics. Because you can say that, really, I cannot specify exactly where the particle are because that would violate quantum mechanics. There has to be some uncertainty delta x. And associated with delta x there is going to be some kind of a typical momentum, which is h bar over delta x. And there will be some contribution to the kinetic energy of particles due to this uncertainty in delta x that is of this form. And if I make the localization more precise, I have to pay a higher cost in kinetic energy. Well, presumably the scale of the energies that I can tolerate and still keep these things localized is of the order of this binding energy, which is of the order of, as we said, 9 or 10 degrees Kelvin. Let's say 10 degrees Kelvin. OK? Now, the other property that distinguishes helium from krypton and, let's say, all the other noble gases is that its mass is very small. So because this mass is small, this uncertainty in energy becomes comparatively larger. OK? And so if you put the mass of the helium here and you use this value of 10 degrees K converted to the appropriate energy units, you ask what kind of a delta x would be compatible with this kind of binding energy, you find that the delta x that you get is of the order of 0.5 angstroms. OK? So basically, you cannot keep this in the bottom of the potential if you have uncertainty that is of this order. So the atoms of helium cannot form a nice lattice and stay in order because that registry would violate the quantum uncertainty principle. They are moving around. And so you have a system that has been [? melted ?] due to quantum fluctuations rather than thermal fluctuations. OK? So that's all nice, except that something does happen when you cool helium. And actually, it is interesting that helium provides us not only with one liquid that persists all the way to 0 temperature, but two liquids because helium has two isotopes. There is helium-4, which is the abundant one, and there is helium-3, which is a much less available isotope. But the number of protons being different in the nucleus of these means that helium-4 is a boson, while helium-3 is fermion. So we have the opportunity to observe both a Bose system that is liquid at low temperature and a Fermi liquid at [INAUDIBLE] temperatures. Now, the case of the Fermi liquid is not really that different in principle from the Fermi liquid of the electrons in copper that we already discussed. There are some subtleties. In the case of the bosons, [? well, ?] we saw that for bosons there is potentially this kind of phase transition. In reality, what happens is that helium has a transition between two forms of the liquid at a temperature that is of the order of 2.18 degrees Kelvin. So we can call this helium I and this helium II, OK, two different forms of the helium-4 liquid that you have. So how was this seen experimentally? I kind of told you how in these experiments of the Bose-Einstein condensation, part of the way that they cooled the system was to remove the high-energy particles, and the remaining particles cooled down. So that's the common method that actually people use for cooling various things. It's called evaporative-- evaporative cooling. And for the case of helium, it is actually reasonably simple to draw what it is. You have a bath that is full of helium that is reasonably nicely thermally isolated from the environment. So you want to cool it, remove the energy from it. And the thing that you do is you pump out the gas. OK? So this is a coexistence because this part up here on top of the liquid helium is not vacuum. What happens is that there is evaporation of helium, leaving the liquid and going into the gas. And once they are in the gas, they are pumped out. But every time you grab a helium from here to put it into the gas, you've essentially taken it from down here and moved it to infinity, so you lose this amount of binding energy. It's called latent heat. Essentially, this is the latent heat, and it is actually of the order of 7 degrees Kelvin because typically it has to be the depth of the typical positions of these particles. OK? So for each atom that you pump out, you have reduced the total energy that you have in the liquid, and the liquid cools down. And what is the trajectory? You always actually remain on this coexistence line. The pressure is changing. The temperature is lowering. But you're always remaining on the coexistence of the gas and liquid line. So you follow what is happening over here, and you find that as you are approaching here, suddenly this system starts to bubble up. It is just like having a kettle that is boiling. Indeed, it is, again, in like the case of kettle, there are these bubbles that are carrying the steam that is going to go over here and being pulled out, and so it is bubbling. And then suddenly, [INAUDIBLE] heat 2.18 degrees Kelvin, and the whole thing quiets down. And below that, it stays quiet. And so let's see if we can show that. We saw the phase diagram. So this is the liquid. Let's see if we can get the sound also. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] -[INAUDIBLE]. This rapid [INAUDIBLE] evaporates [INAUDIBLE] helium cools, until at 2 degrees above absolute 0, a dramatic transformation takes place. Suddenly, we see-- PROFESSOR: Everything quiets. --[INAUDIBLE] stops and that the surface of the liquid helium is completely still. The temperature is actually being lowered even further now, but nothing is happening. Well, this is really one of the great phenomenon in 20th-century physics. PROFESSOR: OK. I'll show you this movie at the next lecture. But this is just a segment of it that shows the important property of this fluid, helium II, which is the superfluid. So now you're above the temperature it was boiling, but it quieted down. You can see that the fluid started to go through the capillaries that were at the bottom of this. So at the bottom of this glass there were fine capillaries. As long as you were up here, the capillaries were sufficient to keep the fluid above. Once you went below, the fluid went through as if there is no resistance. And that's the superfluid property. -Superfluidity and superconductivity were baffling concepts for scien-- [END PLAYBACK] PROFESSOR: OK, we'll go back to that later. So let's list some of the properties of this superfluid state. OK. So what this last experiment showed is that it appears to have zero viscosity. So what's the way that you would calculate the viscosity of a fluid? And one way to sort of do that relies on like what we had over here, passing the fluid through some pore or capillary. In the case of this experiment, you have to really make this capillary extremely fine so that practically nothing will go through it. But this could be a quite general way of measuring viscosity of some fluid. So you have some fluid. You can measure its viscosity by trying to pass it through a capillary by exerting pressure on one side and measuring, in essence, the difference between the two pressures that you have on the two sides as a measure of the force that you are exerting on this. And once you do that, then these pistons enhance the velocity-- sorry, the fluid, are moving through with some kind of velocity. And some measure of viscosity, after you divide by various things that have dimensions of length and pressure, et cetera, would be related to the velocity divided by delta P-- is to achieve the same velocity, how much pressure difference you have to put. Now, for this experiment of superfluid helium, you'll find that essentially you can get a finite velocity by typically infinitesimal pressure difference. So when you try to use this method to calculate viscosity, you find that, to whatever precision you can measure, essentially this value of eta is not distinguishable from 0. OK? Yes? AUDIENCE: The way you defined it, it would be infinity? PROFESSOR: Then I probably defined it-- [? no? ?] Delta P goes to 0 for a finite V. Yes, so viscosity-- AUDIENCE: So what you're essentially writing is the Reynolds number, yeah? PROFESSOR: Exactly. AUDIENCE: OK. PROFESSOR: All right? But there is another experiment that appears to indicate that there is a finite viscosity, and that is a famous experiment due to Andronikashvili. And basically, this is the other experiment. You imagine that you put your fluid inside a container. And then you insert in this container a set of plates, could be copper plates or something else, that are stacked on top of each other. So essentially, you have a stack of these plates that have a common axis, and there's a rod that is going through them. And what you created here is a torsional oscillator in the sense that this rod that holds all of these things together has a particular preferred orientation. And if you start, let's say-- well, it may or may not have a particular orientation-- but if you start to rotate it, it will certainly have a moment of inertia that resists the rotation that is coming from all of the plates if it was in vacuum. So if I could measure the moment of inertia of these objects, either through torsion or some other mechanism, if it is a torsional oscillator I could figure out what the frequency is. If I knew the [? spinning ?] constant that wants to bring the angle to some particular value, I would divide that by the moment of inertia. The square root of that would give me the frequency. So the frequency is a measure of the moment of inertia. So if I had this thing in vacuum, I could figure out what the moment of inertia of all of the plates was. Now, if I add the fluid to this, then as I start to rotate this, some of the fluid will certainly move with the plates. And so the moment of inertia that you would measure in the presence of the fluid is larger than it is in the absence of fluid. And that additional moment of inertia tells you about how much of the fluid is, in some sense, stuck to the plates, and that's another different measure of the viscosity. OK? So if we sort of look at this experiment, we would imagine that if I measure the moment of inertia as a function of temperature, something should happen when I hit Tc. Above Tc, I'm getting some value that is measuring, essentially, the moment of inertia of the plates plus the fluid that is moving around, [? we do. ?] But what happens when you hit Tc? If the superfluid doesn't care about things around it, you would imagine that this would drop down to the value that it has in vacuum. In reality, what it does is something like this. So it does go to the value that you would have in vacuum but only at 0 temperature. So at any finite temperature we know Tc. There is indeed some fraction of the superfluid that is trapped by these plates. So what's happening? OK, so this is one [INAUDIBLE]. The other property-- maybe I will squeeze it somewhere here. There are a whole bunch of things that indicate that there is a coupling between temperature and mechanical properties, so-called thermo-mechanical couplings. What you find in this experiment, where the fluid spontaneously goes, let's say, from this side to this side, so the direction is like this, is that when you measure the temperatures you will find that the temperature of this one goes up, and the temperature of this one goes down. So somehow the motion led to some temperature differences. A dramatic one that, again, maybe we'll show in the movie next time is the fountain effect. What you do is you-- let's imagine that, again, you have a vat of helium, and inside of it you put a tube that is, let's say, shaped like this. And you have the fluid that is occupying everything here. Then inside this tube, you put some material that is a good absorber of heat, such as, let's say, a piece of carbon, and then you shine laser on it so that this thing becomes hot. So in this case, the temperature goes up, and what you find happens is that the fluid will start to shoot up here like a fountain. It's called the fountain effect because of that. And essentially, whereas here pressure was converted to temperature, here temperature, the heating, gets converted to pressure. So this is like-- I don't know if you've ever done this, where you put your hand under water, and if you squeeze your hand and the water shoots up. So it's kind of putting pressure here, causing a fountain that is shooting up like that. OK? So there is this coupling between temperature and-- actually, this issue of boiling-not boiling is also a manifestation of a coupling between temperature and mechanical properties, which is whether the fluid is boiling or not boiling. OK? So given everything that we have been talking about so far, it is tempting to imagine that there is a connection between all of this and the Bose-Einstein condensation. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. PROFESSOR: Yes? AUDIENCE: Do superfluids have no vorticity or can they? PROFESSOR: Yes, they can have vorticity, but it is of a special kind. It is quantized vorticity. And so what you can certainly do is you can take a vat of helium and set it into rotation, and then you will create vortex lines inside this superfluid. AUDIENCE: OK. I was wondering if there was an analogy to superconductivity and magnetic fields. PROFESSOR: The analog of the magnetic field is the rotation. AUDIENCE: Right. PROFESSOR: Yes. AUDIENCE: OK. PROFESSOR: So in that sense, yes. OK? OK. So similarities between BEC, Bose-Einstein Condensation, and superfluidity. I would say that perhaps the most important one, although I guess at the beginning of the story they didn't know this one, is that helium-3, which is a fermion, does not become superfluid around this same temperature of 2 degrees Kelvin, which is where helium-4 becomes superfluid. What is special about this is, well, you would say that once you have mass and density, you can figure out what the Bose-Einstein temperature is. You had this formula that was n lambda cubed is equal to zeta of 3/2. So that gives you some value of kB Tc being h squared 2 pi mass of helium, and then you have a zeta of 3/2 and n somewhere. 3-- I guess this n-- oops, n-- yeah, it's correct-- n h cubed 2 pi m kB Tc to the 3/2 being zeta of 3/2. So 2 pi m kB Tc is proportional to n zeta of 3/2 to the 2/3 power. OK. So I had a picture here, which was the typical attraction potential. The typical separation of helium atoms is something like 3.6 angstroms. How do I know that is because the density I can figure out is typically 1 over the volume per particle, and this volume per particle is roughly 3.6 angstroms cubed. It's something like 46.2 angstrom cubed. So I can put that value of n over here. I know what the mass of helium is. And I can figure out what this Tc is, and I find that Tc is 3.13 degrees K. You say, well, it's not exactly the 2 pi and something that we had. But given that we completely ignored the interactions that we have between this, and this is the result that we have for [? point ?] particles of mass m with no interactions, this is actually very good. You would say, OK, this is roughly in the right range. And presumably if I were to include the effects of interactions, potentially I will get an interaction, temperature, that is roughly correct. So this is another reason. The third reason is that you have automatically, when you are talking about the Bose-Einstein condensation, a relationship between pressure and temperature. So remember the formula that we had for the Bose-Einstein condensation, beta P was something, where P is kT 1 over lambda cubed zeta of 5/2, right? So once you specify the temperature, you've also specified the pressure. They go hand in hand. So then you can start to explain a lot of these phenomena, such as here you increase the temperature, pressure had to go up, and it was the increased pressure than did that. It kind of tells you something about what is going on in this experiment over here, where the temperature goes up where you have higher pressure. It actually also explains why things stop bubbling when you go into the superfluid. Because let's back out and think of why things are bubbling when you put your kettle on top of the oven. And the reason is that there are variations in temperature. There could be a local hotspot over here, and in this local hotspot, eventually there will a bubble that forms, and the bubble goes away. Why is it that it forms here is because heat gets spread out through diffusion. If I strike a match or even if I have a blow torch here, you won't feel the heat for some time. But if I do this, you hear my hand clapping much more rapidly. So pressure gets transmitted very efficiently through sound, whereas heat goes very slowly through diffusion. And that's why when you boil something, essentially you will have the diffusion of heat, local hotspots, bubbles. But if temperature changes are connected to pressure changes, then for the superfluid, having a local hotspot is like doing this. It creates immediately a pressure change, and pressure changes are rapidly taken away. And that's why this could also explain what's going on over here. So I think this number two was first noted by Fritz London. Maybe we'll talk about that a bit more next time around. Based on all of these similarities, Laszlo Tisza, who spent many years at MIT after being in Europe, proposed the two-fluid model. So again, roughly inspired by what we saw for the case of the Bose-Einstein condensate, we saw that for the Bose-Einstein condensate, below Tc you had to make a separation for the number of things that were in the ground state, k equals to 0, and all of the others that were in the higher excited states. Pressure, heat capacity, everything came from the excited component, whereas the component that was at the k equals to 0 state was not making any contribution to these phenomena. So what he proposed was that somehow, again, similarly when you are in the superfluid, you really have two components, two fluids that are in coexistence. There is a superfluid component, and there is a normal component. And as you change temperature, these two components get converted to each other. So just like the case of the Bose-Einstein condensate, it is not like you have so many of this fluid, so many of that fluid. These two things are always interchanging. And then what is happening in this experiment, presumably, is that the superfluid component goes through, the normal component leaves behind. The superfluid component is the component that, in some sense, has less entropy, is at lower temperature. So when it goes here, it cools down this part. This part then goes up in temperature. Again, there is no way that you can push all of the superfluid here and have normal here because these things get converted. So some amount of superfluid goes through here. Some amount gets converted from the normal back to the superfluid. So there is this exchange that is constantly taking place in the system. And so on the basis of this model and having different velocities for the normal and superfluid component, Tisza could explain a number of these things. OK? So I will mention some important differences at the end of this lecture and leave their resolution for next. So while those were similarities between BEC and superfluidity, there are very important differences. One important observation immediately is that if I try to compress superfluid helium or normal helium, it doesn't matter. It is just like trying to compress any other fluid such as water. It does not like to be squeezed. So helium liquid is approximately, of course not entirely, incompressible, while BEC, we saw that the pressure is only a function of temperature. It doesn't know anything about the density. So you can change the density. All of the additional particles will go to go to the k equals to 0 state. It doesn't really care. So BEC is infinitely compressible. And of course, this is immediately a manifestation of the interactions. In the case of the BEC, we didn't put any interactions among the particles. We can put as many of them as we like into the single state k equals to 0. Of course, real heliums, they have the self-avoiding-- the interaction between them. They cannot go [? through ?] each other. So that's an important difference. Number 2 is that detailed shapes/ T dependences of heat capacity and density of the superfluid part are different. OK. So I have up there what the heat capacity of a BEC should look like. Now, people have measured the heat capacity of helium as a function of temperature, and something does indeed happen at Tc. And what you find the shape is is something like this. It goes to 0, and then it does something like this. And so while it doesn't look that different from what I have up there, except that when you look at the behavior down here, at the transition, over there it went to a finite value. Here it diverges as a log. So when you go to Tc, it actually goes to infinity. And because of the shape that this has, this is sometimes called the lambda transition. Now, there's lots of issues about interesting things happening at the transition, and we won't be able to resolve that. But one thing that we should be able to figure out, based on what we know already, is the behavior as things go to 0 temperature. And I said that for the Bose-Einstein condensate, the temperature dependence is T to the 3/2. What is important is that for the superfluid, it is actually proportional to T cubed. And T cubed, if you go back in the course, is a signature of what was happening for phonons. So Landau looked at this and said there must be some kind of a phonon-like excitation going on, which is different from this case [INAUDIBLE] excitations that we have. The other thing that we had was that if we look at the fraction that is in-- let's say the density that is in the k equals to 0 state as a function of temperature, what happens for the superfluid-- sorry, what happens for the Bose-Einstein condensate-- for the Bose-Einstein condensate, let's use the green-- essentially, the curve will come down to Tc linearly, and then it goes up, and it reaches its asymptotic value. From this result, the fraction that is excited, the difference to 1 is proportional to 1 over lambda cubed. So this goes like T to the 3/2. You can ask whether what was observed in the Andronikashvili experiment, eventually this measure also, the fraction that is in the superfluid component or excited states, does this curve match that curve? But if I take this curve and put it over here, first of all, down here it is different. It goes like Tc minus T to the 2/3 power rather than linear that you have over here. That, again, is less [? worry ?] than the fact that over here it goes to 0 proportional to T to the fourth. Again, something that needs explanation. And finally, I will write down one statement, and then maybe we'll explain next time, is that BEC with the spectrum of excitations, which is k squared over 2m, cannot be superfluid. There is an interesting reason for that that we will explain. And indeed, we'll see that having excitations that are [INAUDIBLE] like is compatible with superfluidity. This kind of excitation is not. So why is that, et cetera, we'll talk about next time.
TEDEd_Politics	미국_정부의_권력은_어떻게_나뉘어져_있을까벨린다_스터츠만Belinda_Stutzman.txt	Translator: Andrea McDonough Reviewer: Bedirhan Cinar Have you ever wondered who has the authority to make laws or punish people who break them? When we think of power in the United States, we usually think of the President, but he does not act alone. In fact, he is only one piece of the power puzzle and for very good reason. When the American Revolution ended in 1783, the United States government was in a state of change. The founding fathers knew that they did not want to establish another country that was ruled by a king, so the discussions were centered on having a strong and fair national government that protected individual freedoms and did not abuse its power. When the new constitution was adopted in 1787, the structure of the infant government of the United States called for three separate branches, each with their own powers, and a system of checks and balances. This would ensure that no one branch would ever become too powerful because the other branches would always be able to check the power of the other two. These branches work together to run the country and set guidelines for us all to live by. The legislative branch is described in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution. Many people feel that the founding fathers put this branch in the document first because they thought it was the most important. The legislative branch is comprised of 100 U.S. Senators and 435 members in the U.S. House of Representatives. This is better known as the U.S. Congress. Making laws is the primary function of the legislative branch, but it is also responsible for approving federal judges and justices, passing the national budget, and declaring war. Each state gets two Senators and some number of Representatives, depending on how many people live in that state. The executive branch is described in Article 2 of the Constitution. The leaders of this branch of government are the President and Vice President, who are responsible for enforcing the laws that Congress sets forth. The President works closely with a group of advisors, known as the Cabinet. These appointed helpers assist the President in making important decisions within their area of expertise, such as defense, the treasury, and homeland security. The executive branch also appoints government officials, commands the armed forces, and meets with leaders of other nations. All that combined is a lot of work for a lot of people. In fact, the executive branch employs over 4 million people to get everything done. The third brand of the U.S. government is the judicial branch and is detailed in Article 3. This branch is comprised of all the courts in the land, from the federal district courts to the U.S. Supreme Court. These courts interpret our nation's laws and punish those who break them. The highest court, the Supreme Court, settles disputes among states, hears appeals from state and federal courts, and determines if federal laws are constitutional. There are nine justices on the Supreme Court, and, unlike any other job in our government, Supreme Court justices are appointed for life, or for as long as they want to stay. Our democracy depends on an informed citizenry, so it is our duty to know how it works and what authority each branch of government has over its citizens. Besides voting, chances are that some time in your life you'll be called upon to participate in your government, whether it is to serve on a jury, testify in court, or petition your Congress person to pass or defeat an idea for a law. By knowning the branches, who runs them, and how they work together, you can be involved, informed, and intelligent.
TEDEd_Politics	당신의_투표는_중요한가요_대통령_선거인단에_대한_설명_크리스티나_그리어.txt	Translator: tom carter Reviewer: Bedirhan Cinar Most people have heard of the Electoral College during presidential election years. But what exactly is the Electoral College? Simply said, it is a group of people appointed by each state who formally elect the President and Vice President of the United States. To understand how this process began and how it continues today, we can look at the Constitution of the United States: article two, section one, clause two of the constitution. It specifies how many electors each state is entitled to have. Since 1964, there have been 538 electors in each presidential election. How do they decide on the number 538? Well, the number of electors is equal to the total voting membership of the United States Congress. 435 representatives, plus 100 senators, and 3 electors from the District of Columbia. Essentially, the Democratic candidate and Republican candidate are each trying to add up the electors in every state so that they surpass 270 electoral votes, or just over half the 538 votes, and win the presidency. So how do states even get electoral votes? Each state receives a particular number of electors based on population size. The census is conducted every 10 years, so every time the census happens, states might gain or lose a few electoral votes. Let's say you're a voter in California, a state with 55 electoral votes. If your candidate wins in California, they get all 55 of the state's electoral votes. If your candidate loses, they get none. This is why many presidential candidates want to win states like Texas, Florida, and New York. If you currently add up the electoral votes of those three states, you would have 96 electoral votes. Even if a candidate won North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Vermont, New Hampshire. Connecticut and West Virginia, they would only gain 31 electoral votes total from those eight states. Here is where it can get a little tricky. On a rare occasion, like in the year 2000, someone can win the popular vote but fail to gain 270 electoral votes. This means that the winner may have won and collected their electoral votes by small margins, winning just enough states with just enough electoral votes, but the losing candidate may have captured large voter margins in the remaining states. If this is the case, the very large margins secured by the losing candidate in the other states would add up to over 50% of the ballots cast nationally. Therefore, the losing candidate may have gained more than 50% of the ballots cast by voters, but failed to gain 270 of the electoral votes. Some critics of the electoral college argue the system gives an unfair advantage to states with large numbers of electoral votes. Think of it this way. It is possible for a candidate to not get a single person's vote -- not one vote -- in 39 states, or the District of Columbia, yet be elected president by winning the popular vote in just 11 of these 12 states: California, New York, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Georgia or Virginia. This is why both parties pay attention to these states. However, others argue that the electoral college protects small states such as Rhode Island, Vermont and New Hampshire, and even geographically large states with small populations like Alaska, Wyoming and the Dakotas. That's because a candidate can't completely ignore small states, because in a close election, every electoral vote counts. There are certain states that have a long history of voting for a particular party. These are known as "safe states." For the past four election cycles -- in 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008 -- Democrats could count on states like Oregon, Maryland, Michigan and Massachusetts, whereas the Republicans could count on states like Mississippi, Alabama, Kansas and Idaho. States that are teetering between between parties are called "swing states." In the past four election cycles, Ohio and Florida have been swing states, twice providing electoral votes for a Democratic candidate, and twice providing electoral votes for a Republican candidate. Think about it. Do you live in a safe state? If so, is it a Democratic or Republican safe state? Do you live in a swing state? Are your neighboring states swing or safe? Is the population in your state increasing or decreasing? And do not forget, when you are watching the electoral returns on election night every four years and the big map of the United States is on the screen, know that the magic number is 270 and start adding.
TEDEd_Politics	지폐에_가치를_주는_것은_무엇일까_Doug_Levinson.txt	If you tried to pay for something with a piece of paper, you might run into some trouble. Unless, of course, the piece of paper was a hundred dollar bill. But what is it that makes that bill so much more interesting and valuable than other pieces of paper? After all, there's not much you can do with it. You can't eat it. You can't build things with it. And burning it is actually illegal. So what's the big deal? Of course, you probably know the answer. A hundred dollar bill is printed by the government and designated as official currency, while other pieces of paper are not. But that's just what makes them legal. What makes a hundred dollar bill valuable, on the other hand, is how many or few of them are around. Throughout history, most currency, including the US dollar, was linked to valuable commodities and the amount of it in circulation depended on a government's gold or silver reserves. But after the US abolished this system in 1971, the dollar became what is known as fiat money, meaning not linked to any external resource but relying instead solely on government policy to decide how much currency to print. Which branch of our government sets this policy? The Executive, the Legislative, or the Judicial? The surprising answer is: none of the above! In fact, monetary policy is set by an independent Federal Reserve System, or the Fed, made up of 12 regional banks in major cities around the country. Its board of governors, which is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, reports to Congress, and all the Fed's profit goes into the US Treasury. But to keep the Fed from being influenced by the day-to-day vicissitudes of politics, it is not under the direct control of any branch of government. Why doesn't the Fed just decide to print infinite hundred dollar bills to make everyone happy and rich? Well, because then the bills wouldn't be worth anything. Think about the purpose of currency, which is to be exchanged for goods and services. If the total amount of currency in circulation increases faster than the total value of goods and services in the economy, then each individual piece will be able to buy a smaller portion of those things than before. This is called inflation. On the other hand, if the money supply remains the same, while more goods and services are produced, each dollar's value would increase in a process known as deflation. So which is worse? Too much inflation means that the money in your wallet today will be worth less tomorrow, making you want to spend it right away. While this would stimulate business, it would also encourage overconsumption, or hoarding commodities, like food and fuel, raising their prices and leading to consumer shortages and even more inflation. But deflation would make people want to hold onto their money, and a decrease in consumer spending would reduce business profits, leading to more unemployment and a further decrease in spending, causing the economy to keep shrinking. So most economists believe that while too much of either is dangerous, a small, consistent amount of inflation is necessary to encourage economic growth. The Fed uses vast amounts of economic data to determine how much currency should be in circulation, including previous rates of inflation, international trends, and the unemployment rate. Like in the story of Goldilocks, they need to get the numbers just right in order to stimulate growth and keep people employed, without letting inflation reach disruptive levels. The Fed not only determines how much that paper in your wallet is worth but also your chances of getting or keeping the job where you earn it.
TEDEd_Politics	공화당을_탄생시킨_법안_벤_라바리_주니어.txt	Today when people complain about the state of American politics, they often mention the dominance of the Democratic and Republican Parties, or the sharp split between red and blue states. But while it may seem like both of these things have been around forever, the situation looked quite different in 1850, with the Republican Party not yet existing, and support for the dominant Democrats and Whigs cutting across geographic divides. The collapse of this Second Party System was at the center of increasing regional tensions that would lead to the birth of the Republican Party, the rise of Abraham Lincoln as its leader, and a civil war that would claim over half a million lives. And if this collapse could be blamed on a single event, it would be the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. The story starts with the Missouri Compromise of 1820. To balance the number of slave states and free states in the Union, it allowed slavery in the newly admitted state of Missouri, while making it off limits in the remaining federally administered Louisiana Territory. But compromises tend to last only as long as they're convenient, and by the early 1850s, a tenacious Democratic Senator from Illionis named Stephen A. Douglas found its terms very inconvenient. As an advocate of western expansion, he promoted constructing a transcontinental railroad across the Northern Plains with an eastern terminus in Chicago, where he happened to own real estate. For his proposal to succeed, Douglas felt that the territories through which the railroad passed, would have to be formally organized, which required the support of Southern politicians. He was also a believer in popular sovereignty, arguing that the status of slavery in a territory should be decided by its residents rather than Congress. So Douglas introduced a bill designed to kill two birds with one stone. It would divide the large chunk of incorporated land into two new organized territories: Nebraska and Kansas, each of which would be open to slavery if the population voted to allow it. While Douglas and his Southern supporters tried to frame the bill as protecting the political rights of settlers, horrified Northerners recognized it as repealing the 34-year-old Missouri Compromise and feared that its supporters' ultimate goal was to extend slavery to the entire nation. Congress was able to pass the Kansas-Nebraska Act, but at the huge cost of bitterly dividing the nation, with 91% of the opposition coming from Northerners. In the House of Representatives, politicians traded insults and brandished weapons until a Sargent at Arms restored order. President Pierce signed the bill into law amidst a storm of protest, while Georgia's Alexander Stephens, future Confederate Vice President, hailed the Act's passage as, "Glory enough for one day." The New York Tribune reported, "The unanimous sentiment of the North is indignant resistance." Douglas even admitted that he could travel from Washington D.C. to Chicago by the light of his own burning effigies. The political consequences of the Kansas-Nebraska Act were stunning. Previously, both Whigs and Democrats had included Northern and Southern lawmakers united around various issues, but now slavery became a dividing factor that could not be ignored. Congressmen from both parties spoke out against the act, including an Illinois Whig named Abraham Lincoln, denouncing "the monstrous injustice of slavery" in an 1854 speech. By this time the Whigs had all but ceased to exist, irreparably split between their Northern and Southern factions. In the same year, the new Republican Party was founded by the anti-slavery elements from both existing parties. Although Lincoln still ran for Senate as a Whig in 1854, he was an early supporter of the new party, and helped to recruit others to its cause. Meanwhile the Democratic Party was shaken when events in the newly formed Kansas Territory revealed the violent consequences of popular sovereignty. Advertisements appeared across the North imploring people to emigrate to Kansas to stem the advance of slavery. The South answered with Border Ruffians, pro-slavery Missourians who crossed state lines to vote in fraudulent elections and raid anti-slavery settlements. One northern abolitionist, John Brown, became notorious following the Pottawatomie Massacre of 1856 when he and his sons hacked to death five pro-slavery farmers with broad swords. In the end, more than 50 people died in Bleeding Kansas. While nominally still a national party, Douglas's Democrats were increasingly divided along sectional lines, and many Northern members left to join the Republicans. Abraham Lincoln finally took up the Republican Party banner in 1856 and never looked back. That year, John C. Fremont, the first Republican presidential candidate, lost to Democrat, James Buchanan, but garnered 33% of the popular vote all from Northern states. Two years later, Lincoln challenged Douglas for his Illinois Senate seat, and although he lost that contest, it elevated his status among Republicans. Lincoln would finally be vindicated in 1860, when he was elected President of the United States, defeating in his own home state, a certain Northern Democrat, who was finally undone by the disastrous aftermath of the law he had masterminded. Americans today continue to debate whether the Civil War was inevitable, but there is no doubt that the Kansas-Nebraska Act made the ghastly conflict much more likely. And for that reason, it should be remembered as one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in American history.
TEDEd_Politics	독립선언서에_대해_여러분이_모를_수도_있는_것_키네스_C_데이비스_Kenneth_C_Davis.txt	"All men are created equal and they are endowed with the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Not so fast, Mr. Jefferson! These words from the Declaration of Independence, and the facts behind them, are well known. In June of 1776, a little more than a year after the war against England began with the shots fired at Lexington and Concord, the Continental Congress was meeting in Philadelphia to discuss American independence. After long debates, a resolution of independence was approved on July 2, 1776. America was free! And men like John Adams thought we would celebrate that date forever. But it was two days later that the gentlemen in Congress voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence, largely written by Thomas Jefferson, offering all the reasons why the country should be free. More than 235 years later, we celebrate that day as America's birthday. But there are some pieces of the story you may not know. First of all, Thomas Jefferson gets the credit for writing the Declaration, but five men had been given the job to come up with a document explaining why America should be independent: Robert Livingston, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams were all named first. And it was Adams who suggested that the young, and little known, Thomas Jefferson join them because they needed a man from the influential Virginia Delegation, and Adams thought Jefferson was a much better writer than he was. Second, though Jefferson never used footnotes, or credited his sources, some of his memorable words and phrases were borrowed from other writers and slightly tweaked. Then, Franklin and Adams offered a few suggestions. But the most important change came after the Declaration was turned over to the full Congress. For two days, a very unhappy Thomas Jefferson sat and fumed while his words were picked over. In the end, the Congress made a few, minor word changes, and one big deletion. In the long list of charges that Jefferson made against the King of England, the author of the Declaration had included the idea that George the Third was responsible for the slave trade, and was preventing America from ending slavery. That was not only untrue, but Congress wanted no mention of slavery in the nation's founding document. The reference was cut out before the Declaration was approved and sent to the printer. But it leaves open the hard question: How could the men, who were about to sign a document, celebrating liberty and equality, accept a system in which some people owned others? It is a question that would eventually bring the nation to civil war and one we can still ask today.
TEDEd_Politics	How_to_understand_power_Eric_Liu.txt	Every day of your life, you move through systems of power that other people made. Do you sense them? Do you understand power? Do you realize why it matters? Power is something we are often uncomfortable talking about. That's especially true in civic life, how we live together in community. In a democracy, power is supposed to reside with the people, period. Any further talk about power and who really has it seems a little dirty, maybe even evil. But power is no more inherently good or evil than fire or physics. It just is. It governs how any form of government works. It determines who gets to determine the rules of the game. So learning how power operates is key to being effective, being taken seriously, and not being taken advantage of. In this lesson, we'll look at where power comes from, how it's exercised and what you can do to become more powerful in public life. Let's start with a basic definition. Power is the ability to make others do what you would have them do. Of course, this plays out in all arenas of life, from family to the workplace to our relationships. Our focus is on the civic arena, where power means getting a community to make the choices and to take the actions that you want. There are six main sources of civic power. First, there's physical force and a capacity for violence. Control of the means of force, whether in the police or a militia, is power at its most primal. A second core source of power is wealth. Money creates the ability to buy results and to buy almost any other kind of power. The third form of power is state action, government. This is the use of law and bureaucracy to compel people to do or not do certain things. In a democracy, for example, we the people, theoretically, give government its power through elections. In a dictatorship, state power emerges from the threat of force, not the consent of the governed. The fourth type of power is social norms or what other people think is okay. Norms don't have the centralized machinery of government. They operate in a softer way, peer to peer. They can certainly make people change behavior and even change laws. Think about how norms around marriage equality today are evolving. The fifth form of power is ideas. An idea, individual liberties, say, or racial equality, can generate boundless amounts of power if it motivates enough people to change their thinking and actions. And so the sixth source of power is numbers, lots of humans. A vocal mass of people creates power by expressing collective intensity of interest and by asserting legitimacy. Think of the Arab Spring or the rise of the Tea Party. Crowds count. These are the six main sources of power, what power is. So now, let's think about how power operates. There are three laws of power worth examining. Law number one: power is never static. It's always either accumulating or decaying in a civic arena. So if you aren't taking action, you're being acted upon. Law number two: power is like water. It flows like a current through everyday life. Politics is the work of harnessing that flow in a direction you prefer. Policymaking is an effort to freeze and perpetuate a particular flow of power. Policy is power frozen. Law number three: power compounds. Power begets more power, and so does powerlessness. The only thing that keeps law number three from leading to a situation where only one person has all the power is how we apply laws one and two. What rules do we set up so that a few people don't accumulate too much power, and so that they can't enshrine their privilege in policy? That's the question of democracy, and you can see each of these laws at work in any news story. Low wage workers organize to get higher pay. Oil companies push to get a big pipeline approved. Gay and lesbian couples seek the legal right to marry. Urban parents demand school vouchers. You may support these efforts or not. Whether you get what you want depends on how adept you are with power, which brings us finally to what you can do to become more powerful in public life. Here, it's useful to think in terms of literacy. Your challenge is to learn how to read power and write power. To read power means to pay attention to as many texts of power as you can. I don't mean books only. I mean seeing society as a set of texts. Don't like how things are in your campus or city or country? Map out who has what kind of power, arrayed in what systems. Understand why it turned out this way, who's made it so, and who wants to keep it so. Study the strategies others in such situations used: frontal attack or indirection, coalitions or charismatic authority. Read so you may write. To write power requires first that you believe you have the right to write, to be an author of change. You do. As with any kind of writing, you learn to express yourself, speak up in a voice that's authentic. Organize your ideas, then organize other people. Practice consensus building. Practice conflict. As with writing, it's all about practice. Every day you have a chance to practice, in your neighborhood and beyond. Set objectives, then bigger ones. Watch the patterns, see what works. Adapt, repeat. This is citizenship. In this short lesson, we've explored where civic power comes from, how it works and what you can do to exercise it. One big question remaining is the "why" of power. Do you want power to benefit everyone or only you? Are your purposes pro-social or anti-social? This question isn't about strategy. It's about character, and that's another set of lessons. But remember this: Power plus character equals a great citizen, and you have the power to be one.
Government_Declassified	How_does_impeachment_work_Alex_Gendler.txt	For most jobs, it's understood that you can be fired, whether for crime, incompetence, or just poor performance. But what if your job happens to be the most powerful position in the country, or the world? That's where impeachment comes in. Impeachment isn't the same as actually removing someone from office. Like an indictment in criminal court, it's only the formal accusation that launches a trial, which could end in conviction or acquittal. Originating in the United Kingdom, impeachment allowed Parliament to vote for removing a government official from office even without the king's consent. Although this was an important check on royal power, the king couldn't be impeached because the monarch was considered the source of all government power. But for the founders of the American Republic, there was no higher authority beyond the people themselves. And so impeachment was adopted in the United States as a power of Congress applying to any civil officers, up to and including the president. Although demands for impeachment can come from any members of the public, only the House of Representatives has the power to actually initiate the process. It begins by referring the matter to a committee, usually the House Committee on Rules and the House Committee on the Judiciary. These committees review the accusations, examine the evidence, and issue a recommendation. If they find sufficient grounds to proceed, the House holds a separate vote on each of the specific charges, known as Articles of Impeachment. If one or more passes by a simple majority, the official is impeached and the stage is set for trial. The actual trial that follows impeachment is held in the Senate. Selected members of the House, known as managers, act as the prosecution, while the impeached official and their lawyers present their defense. The Senate acts as both judge and jury, conducting the trial and deliberating after hearing all the arguments. If it's the president or vice president being impeached, the chief justice of the Supreme Court presides. A conviction requires a supermajority of two-thirds and results in automatic removal from power. Depending on the original charges, it can also disqualify them from holding office in the future and open them to standard criminal prosecution. So what exactly can get someone impeached? That's a bit more complicated. Unlike in the United Kingdom, impeachment in the U.S. pits an elected legislature against other democratically elected members of government. Therefore, to prevent the process from being used as a political weapon, the Constitution specifies that an official can only be impeached for treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. That still leaves a lot of room for interpretation, not to mention politics, and many impeachment trials have split along partisan lines. But the process is generally understood to be reserved for serious abuses of power. The first official to be impeached was Tennesse Senator William Blount in 1797 for conspiring with Britain to cease the Spanish colony of Louisiana. Since then, the House has launched impeachment investigations about 60 times, but only 19 have led to actual impeachment proceedings. The eight cases that ended in a conviction and removal from office were all federal judges. And impeachment of a sitting president is even more rare. Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868 for attempting to replace Secretary of War Edwin Stanton without consulting the Senate. Over a century later, Bill Clinton was impeached for making false statements under oath during a sexual harassment trial. Both were ultimately acquitted when the Senate's votes to convict fell short of the required two-thirds majority. And contrary to popular belief, Richard Nixon was never actually impeached for the Watergate scandal. He resigned before it could happen knowing he would almost certainly be convicted. Theoretically, the U.S. government is already designed to prevent abuses of power, limiting different branches through a system of checks and balances, term limits, and free elections. But impeachment can be seen as an emergency brake for when these safeguards fail.
Government_Declassified	매카시즘은_무엇이고_어떻게_생겨났을까요_엘렌_슈레커Ellen_Schrecker.txt	Imagine that one day, you're summoned before a government panel. Even though you haven't committed any crime, or been formally charged with one, you are repeatedly questioned about your political views, accused of disloyalty, and asked to incriminate your friends and associates. If you don't cooperate, you risk jail or losing your job. This is exactly what happened in the United States in the 1950s as part of a campaign to expose suspected communists. Named after its most notorious practitioner, the phenomenon known as McCarthyism destroyed thousands of lives and careers. For over a decade, American political leaders trampled democratic freedoms in the name of protecting them. During the 1930s and 1940s, there had been an active but small communist party in the United States. Its record was mixed. While it played crucial roles in wider progressive struggles for labor and civil rights, it also supported the Soviet Union. From the start, the American Communist Party faced attacks from conservatives and business leaders, as well as from liberals who criticized its ties to the oppressive Soviet regime. During World War II, when the USA and USSR were allied against Hitler, some American communists actually spied for the Russians. When the Cold War escalated and this espionage became known, domestic communism came to be seen as a threat to national security. But the attempt to eliminate that threat soon turned into the longest lasting and most widespread episode of political repression in American history. Spurred on by a network of bureaucrats, politicians, journalists, and businessmen, the campaign wildly exaggerated the danger of communist subversion. The people behind it harassed anyone suspected of holding left-of-center political views or associating with those who did. If you hung modern art on your walls, had a multiracial social circle, or signed petitions against nuclear weapons, you might just have been a communist. Starting in the late 1940s, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover used the resources of his agency to hunt down such supposed communists and eliminate them from any position of influence within American society. And the narrow criteria that Hoover and his allies used to screen federal employees spread to the rest of the country. Soon, Hollywood studios, universities, car manufacturers, and thousands of other public and private employers were imposing the same political tests on the men and women who worked for them. Meanwhile, Congress conducted its own witchhunt subpoenaing hundreds of people to testify before investigative bodies like the House Un-American Activities Committee. If they refused to cooperate, they could be jailed for contempt, or more commonly, fired and blacklisted. Ambitious politicians, like Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy, used such hearings as a partisan weapon accusing democrats of being soft on communism and deliberately losing China to the Communist Bloc. McCarthy, a Republican senator from Wisconsin became notorious by flaunting ever-changing lists of alleged communists within the State Department. Egged on by other politicians, he continued to make outrageous accusations while distorting or fabricating evidence. Many citizens reviled McCarthy while others praised him. And when the Korean War broke out, McCarthy seemed vindicated. Once he became chair of the Senate's permanent subcommittee on investigations in 1953, McCarthy recklessness increased. It was his investigation of the army that finally turned public opinion against him and diminished his power. McCarthy's colleagues in the Senate censured him and he died less than three years later, probably from alcoholism. McCarthyism ended as well. It had ruined hundreds, if not thousands, of lives and drastically narrowed the American political spectrum. Its damage to democratic institutions would be long lasting. In all likelihood, there were both Democrats and Republicans who knew that the anti-communist purges were deeply unjust but feared that directly opposing them would hurt their careers. Even the Supreme Court failed to stop the witchhunt, condoning serious violations of constitutional rights in the name of national security. Was domestic communism an actual threat to the American government? Perhaps, though a small one. But the reaction to it was so extreme that it caused far more damage than the threat itself. And if new demagogues appeared in uncertain times to attack unpopular minorities in the name of patriotism, could it all happen again?
Government_Declassified	Why_is_it_so_hard_to_escape_poverty_AnnHelén_Bay.txt	Imagine that you’ve been unemployed and seeking work for months. Government benefit programs have helped you cover rent, utilities, and food, but you're barely getting by. Finally, you hear back about a job application. You receive your first paycheck in months, and things seem to be turning around. But there’s a catch. Your new job pays just enough to disqualify you from the benefit programs, and not enough to cover the same costs. To make things worse, you have to pay for transportation to work, and childcare while you’re at the office. Somehow, you have less money now than when you were unemployed. Economists call this demoralizing situation the welfare trap— one of the many different poverty traps affecting millions of people around the world. Poverty traps are economic and environmental circumstances that reinforce themselves, perpetuating poverty for generations. Some poverty traps are tied to an individual’s circumstances, like a lack of access to healthy food or education. Others can affect entire nations, such as cycles of corrupt government or climate change. But the cruel irony of welfare traps in particular is that they stem from the very policies designed to battle poverty. Most societies throughout history employed some strategies to help people in poverty meet basic needs. Before the 20th century, religious groups and private charities often led such initiatives. Today, these are called welfare programs, and they usually take the form of government-provided subsidies for housing, food, energy, and healthcare. Typically, these programs are means-tested, meaning that only people who fall below a certain income level are eligible for benefits. This policy is designed to ensure aid goes to those who need it most. But it also means people lose access as soon as they earn more than the qualification threshold, regardless of whether or not they're financially stable enough to stay there. This vicious cycle is harmful to both those in poverty and those outside of it. Mainstream economic models assume people are rational actors who weigh the cost and benefits of their options and choose the most advantageous path forward. If those in poverty know they'll gain no net benefit from working, they're incentivized to remain in government assistance. Of course, people work for many reasons, including societal norms and personal values. But income is a major incentive to pursuing employment. And when less people take on new jobs, the economy slows down, keeping people in poverty and potentially pushing people on the cusp of poverty over the edge. Some have suggested this feedback loop could be removed by eliminating government assistance programs altogether. But most agree the solution is neither realistic nor humane. So how can we redesign benefits in a way that doesn't penalize people for working? Many countries have tried different ways to circumvent this problem. Some allow people to continue receiving benefits for a given period after finding a job, while others phase out benefits gradually as income increases. These policies still remove some financial incentive to work, but the risk of a welfare trap is lower. Other governments provide benefits like education, childcare, or medical care equally across all their citizens. One proposed solution takes this idea of universal benefits even further. A universal basic income would provide a fixed benefit to all members of society, regardless of wealth or employment status. This is the only known policy that could entirely remove welfare traps, since any earned wages would supplement the benefit rather than replace it. In fact, by creating a stable income floor below which no one can fall, basic income might prevent people from falling into poverty in the first place. Numerous economists and thinkers have championed this idea since the 18th century. But for now, universal basic income remains largely hypothetical. Although it's been tried in some places on a limited scale, these local experiments don’t tell us much about how the policy would play out across an entire nation— or a planet. Whatever strategy governments pursue, solving the welfare trap requires respecting people’s agency and autonomy. Only by empowering individuals to create long-term change in their lives and communities can we begin to break the cycle of poverty.
Government_Declassified	Whats_the_best_country_to_live_in.txt	What’s the best country in the world to live in? Is it the one with the best food? The longest life expectancy? The best weather? For the past 70 years, most governments have relied heavily on a single number to answer that question. This number influences elections, the stock market, and government policy. But it was never intended for its current purpose; and some would argue that the world is addicted to making it grow... forever. This number is called the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, and it was invented by the economist Simon Kuznets in the 1930s, to try and gauge the size of an economy in a single, easy to understand number. GDP is the total monetary value of everything a country produces and sells on the market. To this day, GDP per capita, which is just the total GDP divided by the number of people living in that country, is widely seen as a measure of well-being. But GDP doesn’t actually say anything direct about well-being, because it doesn't take into account what a country produces or who has access to it. A million dollars of weapons contributes the exact same amount to a country’s GDP as a million dollars of vaccines or food. The value society derives from things like public school or firefighters isn’t counted in GDP at all, because those services aren’t sold on the market. And if a country has a lot of wealth, but most of it is controlled by relatively few people, GDP per capita gives a distorted picture of how much money a typical person has. Despite all that, for a long time, higher GDP did correlate closely to a higher quality of life for people in many countries. From 1945 to 1970, as GDP doubled, tripled or even quadrupled in some western economies, people’s wages often grew proportionally. By the 1980s, this changed. Countries continued to grow richer, but wages stopped keeping pace with GDP growth, or in some cases, even declined, and most of the benefits went to an ever-smaller percentage of the population. Still, the idea of capturing a nation’s well-being in a single number had powerful appeal. In 1972, King Jigme Singye Wangchuk of Bhutan came up with the idea of Gross National Happiness as an alternative to Gross Domestic Product. Gross National Happiness is a metric that factors in matters like health, education, strong communities, and living standards, having citizens answer questions like, “How happy do you think your family members are at the moment?” “What is your knowledge of names of plants and wild animals in your area?” and “What type of day was yesterday?” The United Nations’ Human Development Index is a more widely used metric; it takes into account health and education, as well as income per capita to estimate overall well-being. Meanwhile, a metric called the Sustainable Development Index factors in both well-being and the environmental burdens of economic growth, again, boiling all this down to a single number. Though no country has been able to meet the basic needs of its people while also using resources fully sustainably, Costa Rica currently comes the closest. Over the past few decades, it’s managed to grow its economy and improve living standards substantially without drastically increasing its emissions. Other countries, like Colombia and Jordan, have made notable progress. Costa Rica now has better well-being outcomes like life expectancy than some of the world’s richest countries. Ultimately, there are limits to any approach that boils the quality of life in a country down to a single number. Increasingly, experts favor a dashboard approach that lays out all the factors a single number obscures. This approach makes even more sense given that people have different priorities, and the answer to which country is best to live in depends on who’s asking the question. So what if that were you designing your countries well-being metric? What do you value, and what would you measure?
Government_Declassified	The_movement_that_inspired_the_Holocaust_Alexandra_Minna_Stern_and_Natalie_Lira.txt	As a new widow, Sarah Rosas Garcia was already struggling to support her nine children when her oldest daughter was picked up by local authorities. Andrea Garcia had been accused of skipping school and being sexually promiscuous, so the authorities responsible for juvenile delinquents committed her to a state hospital. After being administered an IQ test and assigned a low score, the doctors made their verdict. They told Sara her 19-year-old daughter would be sterilized to prevent passing on what the state saw as a mental deficiency. This horrific tale may sound like a story from an authoritarian regime. But in fact, it took place in Southern California in 1938. And Andrea Garcia was one of thousands of poor women of color targeted by the state’s relentless campaign of eugenics. Since ancient Greece, there have been efforts to control human populations via reproduction, retaining some traits and removing others. But in the 19th century, the discovery of evolution and genetics inspired a new scientific movement dedicated to this endeavor. In 1883, British scientist Sir Francis Galton named this idea eugenics, drawn from the Greek word for “to be well born.” This wave of modern eugenicists included prominent scientists and progressive reformers who believed they could improve society by ensuring that only desirable traits were passed down. However, their definition of what traits were and were not desirable was largely determined by the prejudices of their era. Entire categories of people were considered “unfit” for reproduction, including immigrants, people of color and people with disabilities. Meanwhile, their ideal genetic standard reflected the movement’s members: white Europeans of Nordic or Anglo-Saxon descent. As the influence of eugenics spread in the early 20th century, many countries restricted immigration and outlawed interracial unions. These measures to improve so-called “racial hygiene” were taken to their horrific conclusion in Nazi Germany. The Nazi eugenics campaign systematically killed millions of Jews, as well as individuals from other groups, including Roma, gay men, and people with disabilities. Outside their extreme brutality, however, Nazi eugenic policies reflected similar standards across the globe. Throughout the mid-20th century, many countries enacted eugenics policies, and governments in Sweden, Canada, and Japan forcibly sterilized thousands of individuals. Sterilization was exceptionally common in the US. From 1907 to 1979, US policies enforced the sterilization of over 60,000 people, with 32 states passing laws that mandated sterilization for men and women deemed “mentally defective.” This label was typically applied based on superficial mental health diagnoses and the results of IQ tests, which were linguistically and culturally biased against most immigrant populations. These racist standards were particularly problematic in California. From 1920 to 1945, Latina women were 59% more likely to be sterilized than other women. And the rate of sterilizations in California was incredibly high— this single state performed over one third of the country’s sterilization operations. Such was the case of Andrea Garcia, whose story reflects thousands of individuals with similar fates. With the help of famed civil rights lawyer David Marcus, Andrea’s mother argued that California’s sterilization law violated the US Constitution, depriving Andrea of her rights to equal protection under the law. However, while one of the three judges overseeing the case voted to spare Andrea, the other two did not. Records suggests it’s possible Andrea escaped the impending surgery, but many more victims of these policies did not. Although eugenics acquired negative connotations after the horrors of World War II, many of its practices, including sterilization, continued for decades. By the late 1960s, research into human genetics was more nuanced, and bioethics had begun to blunt eugenics’ influence. Yet Sweden and the US continued to pursue involuntary sterilization well into the 70s. Finally, class action lawsuits and protest marches in the US galvanized lawmakers, and California’s sterilization laws were finally repealed in 1979. Unfortunately today, the legal and illegal sterilization of many oppressed communities still continues around the globe.
Government_Declassified	미국에서_투표권의_투쟁닉키_비멘_그리핀Nicki_Beaman_Griffin.txt	When the next general election rolls around, who will be eligible to show up at the polls and vote for the President of the United States? It's really pretty simple. If you are at least 18 years old, a citizen of the U.S., and a resident of a state, you can vote, assuming, that is, you are not a felon. Seems about right. After all, the United States prides itself on being a democracy, or a government in which the ultimate authority lies with the citizens of the nation. But it was not always this way. In 1789, George Washington won the electoral college with 100% of the vote, but whose vote was it? Probably not yours. Only 6% of the entire United States population was allowed to vote at all. Voting was a right that only white, male property owners were allowed to exercise. By the 1820s and 1830s, the American population was booming from the east coast into the western frontier. Frontier farmers were resilient, self-reliant, and mostly ineligible to vote because they did not own land. As these new areas of the nation became states, they typically left out the property requirement for voting. Leaders such as Andrew Jackson, the United State's first common man President, promoted what he called universal suffrage. Of course, by universal suffrage, Jackson really meant universal white, male suffrage. All he emphasized was getting rid of the property requirement for voting, not expanding the vote beyond white men. By the 1850s, about 55% of the adult population was eligible to vote in the U.S., much better than 6%, but far from everybody. Then, in 1861, the American Civil War began largely over the issue of slavery and states' rights in the United States. When it was all over, the U.S. ratified the 15th Amendment, which promised that a person's right to vote could not be denied based on race, color, or previous condition as a slave. This meant that black men, newly affirmed as citizens of the U.S., would now be allowed to vote. Of course, laws are far from reality. Despite the promise of the 15th Amendment, intimidation kept African-Americans from exercising their voting rights. States passed laws that limited the rights of African-Americans to vote, including things like literacy tests, which were rigged so that not even literate African-Americans were allowed to pass, and poll taxes. So, despite the 15th Amendment, by 1892, only about 6% of black men in Mississippi were registered to vote. By 1960, it was only 1%. And, of course, women were still totally out of the national voting picture. It wasn't until 1920 that the women's suffrage movement won their 30-year battle, and the 19th Amendment finally gave women the vote, well, white women. The restrictions on African-Americans, including African-American women, remained. After World War II, many Americans began to question the state of U.S. democracy. How could a nation that fought for freedom and human rights abroad come home and deny suffrage based on race? The modern civil rights movement began in the 1940s with those questions in mind. After years of sacrifice, bloodshed, and pain, the United States passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, finally eliminating restrictions such as literacy tests and protecting the voting rights promised under the 15th Amendment to the Constitution. Now, any citizen over the age of 21 could vote. All seemed well until the United States went to war. When the Vietnam War called up all men age 18 and over for the draft, many wondered whether it was fair to send men who couldn't vote to war. In 1971, the 26th Amendment to the Constitution made all citizens 18 and older eligible to vote, the last major expansion of voting rights in the United States. Today, the pool of eligible voters in the U.S. is far broader and more inclusive than ever before in U.S. history. But, of course, it's not perfect. There are still active efforts to suppress some groups from voting, and only about 60% of those who can vote do. Now that you know all the hard work that went into securing the right to vote, what do you think? Do enough citizens have the right to vote now? And among those who can vote, why don't more of them do it?
Government_Declassified	What_happened_when_these_6_dictators_took_over_Stephanie_Honchell_Smith.txt	According to legend, the ancient Roman statesman Cincinnatus was plowing his fields when news arrived that the Aequi, Rome’s powerful enemy to the east, had invaded. Rome was in need of swift, decisive action, and the senate had chosen him to serve as dictator, with absolute power over the military and government. Cincinnatus set down his plow, took control and, in a matter of weeks, saved Rome. This story reinforces the myth of the “benevolent dictator”— the idea of a leader who holds absolute power, yet only uses it for the common good, to address problems efficiently, and create a just regime. But can a truly benevolent dictator exist in today’s world? Nations established modern democracies to safeguard against the potentially destructive whims of a single individual. When functioning properly, democracies enable a society to be freer, and provide stability by protecting against corruption and the abuse of power. This is accomplished by holding regular, free, and fair elections, imposing term limits, and establishing strong legislative branches and court systems. Maintaining a free press also helps keep politicians accountable for their actions and encourages citizens to engage in their governments and communities. In a dictatorship, absolute or near-absolute power is held by a single individual who is free to impose their vision on society. Under certain conditions, the idea of a dictator can sound appealing, like when a democracy isn't functioning as it should due to corruption, economic instability, or extreme political polarization. At these moments, people may be willing to give up some democratic rights and freedoms for hopes of a better future. Authoritarian-leaning leaders present themselves as the ones who can fix everything. They distill complex problems into simple talking points and promise quick solutions. Some of the most overt authoritarian leaders have taken this strategy, including military dictators who seized control through coups like Augusto Pinochet, Mobuto Sese Seko, and Muammar Gaddafi. Gaddafi, for example, initially asserted himself as a revolutionary hero, canceling the country's exploitative foreign oil contracts. But the longer he was in power, the more riddled with paranoia he became. Like Pinochet and Mobuto, he used his position to target and torture opponents, embark on campaigns of mass violence against everyday people, and build an enormous personal fortune. Other modern dictators were initially elected democratically, then strategically accumulated power by embracing authoritarian forms of control. Italy’s Benito Mussolini and Germany’s Adolf Hitler, for example, gained popularity during waves of mass discontent. Both channeled economic woes into racist rhetoric and embraced fascism, a type of authoritarianism which exalts the importance of one nation, or race, above all others. Once in office, such leaders gradually dismantle checks on their power, including removing judges who might rule against them, abolishing term limits, or refusing to acknowledge unfavorable election results. Since they punish dissenting voices, dictators are often surrounded with yes-men, who are promoted based on loyalty over expertise, ultimately wreaking incalculable economic, social, and environmental costs. But these costs can also be hidden from view. Dictators build up cults of personality by minimizing negative coverage and pushing positive propaganda that presents them as strong or heroic. This can make it almost impossible to accurately measure their success. Did Mussolini really make the trains run on time? It’s hard to know, since he would have punished those who said otherwise. While some modern dictators have brought modest growth to their nation’s economies and industries, most have enriched the few and left widespread destruction in their wake. Even so-called benevolent dictators, whose regimes lacked overt violence, stand accused of censoring journalists and limiting the rights and freedoms of citizens. Back to ancient Rome. Perhaps the most important dimension of Cincinnatus’ legendary benevolent dictatorship is not that he held total power, but that he gave it up after only 16 days. Once Rome was safe, he stepped down and retired to his fields. His willingness to relinquish control to the senate was as important to the common good as his ability to fend off invaders. In practice, no modern dictator has lived up to this ideal. Dictators don’t willingly walk away from power, they continuously crave more. That’s why institutions that provide checks on leaders must be safeguarded: in the hands of an aspiring dictator, even seemingly robust democracies can sink into repressive, authoritarian regimes.
Government_Declassified	The_Nazis_recruited_to_win_the_Cold_War_Brian_Crim.txt	In May of 1945, the Third Reich was in chaos. Adolf Hitler was dead, German surrender was imminent, and Allied troops had already begun divvying up German territory. But high-ranking Nazi engineer Wernher von Braun wasn’t worried. In fact, he approached the US government directly— informing them of his location and waiting calmly for their arrival. As the brain behind the world’s first long-range ballistic missile, von Braun knew his expertise made him a highly valuable military asset. And sure enough, his so-called captors gave him a decidedly warm welcome. Von Braun wasn't the only Nazi scientist receiving this treatment. While World War II was almost over, a new war was brewing. And the US was eager to recruit the smartest minds in Germany before the Soviets got the chance. This became known as Operation Paperclip— a clandestine campaign that brought over 1,500 German scientists to the US between 1945 and 1962. The program was named for the paperclips attached to the files of early recruits— indicating that incriminating information like Nazi affiliations or suspected war crimes could be disregarded. Von Braun, for example, had overseen an SS project that relied on forced labor from thousands of concentration camp prisoners. While von Braun approached the US directly, other scientists had to be identified and located. One important asset in this effort was a Nazi-compiled list of Germany’s top scientists, which someone had unsuccessfully tried to dispose of by flushing down a toilet. But the US was just one player in this scramble. The Soviets were also competing to seize German brainpower, resorting to bribery and forced relocation. The French and British lacked the money to lure the best German brains, but that didn't stop them from kidnapping the occasional scientist. They also stole patents and dismantled factories to learn what they could. The US approach, however, featured a different and particularly tempting brand of coercion: the promise to relocate entire German families and grant them citizenship. This controversial offer was one of the reasons Paperclip was initially shrouded in secrecy. But the project became difficult to hide when Germans started popping up all over the US. The military tried to get ahead of any controversy by revealing the operation to the press in late 1946. But the news immediately attracted criticism from many prominent voices, including Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the NAACP, as well as many veteran’s organizations. These parties opposed granting German scientists citizenship while millions of displaced persons, including survivors of Nazi atrocities, had no chance of coming to America. Most Americans were also against employing former Nazis in sensitive national security positions. But as the Cold War ramped up, the military argument for keeping these scientists out of Soviet hands overpowered popular objections. With his Nazi past largely hidden from the public, von Braun became one of the US’s most important engineers at the height of the Space Race. In 1958, his team responded to the Soviet launch of Sputnik with the US’s own successful satellite launch. And in the 60s, he was the chief architect of Saturn V, the rocket that brought Americans to the moon. Other Paperclip recruits contributed to the development of chemical weapons such as Agent Orange, pharmaceutical research, and the development of modern airplanes. These contributions helped the US government present Paperclip as a success. But, in hindsight, it’s hard to gauge how helpful the program really was. While von Braun saved the US years of rocketry experimentation, there's no reason to think American scientists couldn't have developed the same technology without him. Furthermore, very few Paperclippers were as exceptional as von Braun. Many were average scientists who either completed their contracts and returned to Germany, or took jobs alongside Americans with equivalent expertise. But ultimately, the issue of Paperclip’s success is just one of many questions raised by its contentious approach to science, ethics, and national security. Can scientists working on military technology be apolitical, or are they responsible for their creations? Can pressing political and military concerns justify overlooking war crimes? In many ways, von Braun’s obituary sums up the operation’s murkiness: “A kind of Faustian shadow may be discerned in [...] the fascinating career of Wernher von Braun: a man so possessed of [...] intellectual hunger, that any accommodation may be justified.”
Government_Declassified	미국_정부의_권력은_어떻게_나뉘어져_있을까벨린다_스터츠만Belinda_Stutzman.txt	Translator: Andrea McDonough Reviewer: Bedirhan Cinar Have you ever wondered who has the authority to make laws or punish people who break them? When we think of power in the United States, we usually think of the President, but he does not act alone. In fact, he is only one piece of the power puzzle and for very good reason. When the American Revolution ended in 1783, the United States government was in a state of change. The founding fathers knew that they did not want to establish another country that was ruled by a king, so the discussions were centered on having a strong and fair national government that protected individual freedoms and did not abuse its power. When the new constitution was adopted in 1787, the structure of the infant government of the United States called for three separate branches, each with their own powers, and a system of checks and balances. This would ensure that no one branch would ever become too powerful because the other branches would always be able to check the power of the other two. These branches work together to run the country and set guidelines for us all to live by. The legislative branch is described in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution. Many people feel that the founding fathers put this branch in the document first because they thought it was the most important. The legislative branch is comprised of 100 U.S. Senators and 435 members in the U.S. House of Representatives. This is better known as the U.S. Congress. Making laws is the primary function of the legislative branch, but it is also responsible for approving federal judges and justices, passing the national budget, and declaring war. Each state gets two Senators and some number of Representatives, depending on how many people live in that state. The executive branch is described in Article 2 of the Constitution. The leaders of this branch of government are the President and Vice President, who are responsible for enforcing the laws that Congress sets forth. The President works closely with a group of advisors, known as the Cabinet. These appointed helpers assist the President in making important decisions within their area of expertise, such as defense, the treasury, and homeland security. The executive branch also appoints government officials, commands the armed forces, and meets with leaders of other nations. All that combined is a lot of work for a lot of people. In fact, the executive branch employs over 4 million people to get everything done. The third brand of the U.S. government is the judicial branch and is detailed in Article 3. This branch is comprised of all the courts in the land, from the federal district courts to the U.S. Supreme Court. These courts interpret our nation's laws and punish those who break them. The highest court, the Supreme Court, settles disputes among states, hears appeals from state and federal courts, and determines if federal laws are constitutional. There are nine justices on the Supreme Court, and, unlike any other job in our government, Supreme Court justices are appointed for life, or for as long as they want to stay. Our democracy depends on an informed citizenry, so it is our duty to know how it works and what authority each branch of government has over its citizens. Besides voting, chances are that some time in your life you'll be called upon to participate in your government, whether it is to serve on a jury, testify in court, or petition your Congress person to pass or defeat an idea for a law. By knowning the branches, who runs them, and how they work together, you can be involved, informed, and intelligent.
Government_Declassified	How_do_executive_orders_work_Christina_Greer.txt	On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln legally changed the status of over 3 million enslaved blacks across ten states from slave to free. His Emancipation Proclamation wasn't a law, or a presidential decree. It was an executive order. The framers of the American Constitution made the power of executive order available to the executive branch. But what exactly is this tool? How does it work? And what is the extent of its power? Well, an executive order isn't a law, but it can carry the weight of one. Passing laws involves a fairly lengthy process. First, a member of Congress proposes a piece of legislation in the form of a bill. After many committees and revisions, if the bill is approved by a majority votes in Congress, that is both the House and Senate, the bill is then sent to the president for signature. If the president signs the bill, it then becomes a law. An executive order, on the other hand, is something the president issues without consultation or permission from Congress. They are, however, enforced like laws, and are subject to judicial review by the court system to make sure they're within the limits of the Constitution. That means the courts have the power to invalidate any executive decisions that they determine are an overreach of the president in trying to assert power. And once the president leaves office, if his or her successor wants to eliminate the executive order, they can do so. So when does a president use an executive order? Sometimes a president feels the need to exert power without working with Congress, and in times of crisis, quick decisions can be justified. But most executive orders are not responses to emergencies. They're often directed towards agencies in the federal government in order to expand or contract their power. Others determine the extent to which legislation should be enforced. And sometimes, a president may use an executive order to clarify and help implement a policy that needs to be easily defined. Some of the most famous executive orders have changed the course of American history. FDR issued an executive order to establish the Works Progress Administration, which helped build thousands of roads, bridges, and parks throughout the country. The WPA also employed thousands of writers, painters, sculptors, and artists to create works of art in public spaces. Additionally, Harry Truman used an executive order to desegregate the armed forces in 1948. And in 1965, Lyndon Johnson signed an executive order to establish requirements for nondiscriminatory practices in hiring and employment. Executive orders have often been used in positive and inclusive ways, but they've also been used to exclude and divide. One of the most notable examples being FDR's 1942 executive order. He gave the military authority to target predominantly Japanese-Americans, as well as German-Americans and Italian-Americans, in certain regions across the country. This executive order also removed any or all of those people into military zones, most commonly known as internment camps. Beginning in the early 1960s, each president has issued roughly 300 executive orders, but FDR issued over 3,500. At the other end of the spectrum, William Henry Harrison never issued an executive order, probably because his presidency only lasted 31 days. The U.S. Constitution is somewhat ambiguous on the extent of the president's power. That's resulted in executive orders expanding over time. For instance, since Lyndon Johnson, presidents have begun issuing orders to create faith-based initiatives, establish federal agencies, and remove barriers for scientific research. There are checks and balances in the U.S. political system. Congress can pass laws to counteract executive orders, and judges can halt them by deeming them unconstitutional. But in the time it takes for those things to happen, an executive order can go into effect and possibly change the course of history, for better or for worse.
Government_Declassified	미국_대통령직_만들기_케네스_데이비스Kenneth_C_Davis.txt	Transcriber: Andrea McDonough Reviewer: Bedirhan Cinar The Oval Office, Inauguration Day, Rose Garden signings, and secret service agents with dark sunglasses and cool wrist radios. For a moment, forget all of it. Toss out everything you know about the President. Now, start over. What would you do if you had to invent the President? That was the question facing the 55 men who got together in secret to draw up the plans for a new American government in the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia, in the same place where the Declaration of Independence had been written eleven years earlier. Declaring independence had been risky business, demanding ferocious courage that put lives and fortunes in jeopardy. But, inventing a new government was no field day either, especially when it's summer and you're in scratchy suits, and the windows are closed because you don't want anybody to hear what you are saying, and the air conditioning doesn't work because it won't be invented for nearly 200 years. And, when you don't agree on things, it gets even hotter. For the framers, the question they argued over most while writing the Constitution and creating three branches of government had to do with the executive department. One man or three to do the job? How long should he serve? What would he really do? Who would pick him? How to get rid of him if he's doing a bad job or he's a crook? And, of course, they all meant him, and he would be a white man. The idea of a woman or an African American, for instance, holding this high office was not a glimmer in their eyes. But the framers knew they needed someone who could take charge, especially in a crisis, like an invasion or a rebellion, or negotiating treaties. Congress was not very good at making such important decisions without debates and delays. But the framers thought America needed a man who was decisive and could act quickly. They called it energy and dispatch. One thing they were dead-set against: there would be no king. They had fought a war against a country with a monarch and were afraid that one man with unchecked powers, in charge of an army, could take over the country. Instead, they settled on a president and laid out his powers in Article 2 of the Constitution. But who would choose him? Not the people, they were too liable to be misled as one framer worried. Not the legislature, that would lead to cabal and factions. Got it: electors, wise, informed men who have time to make a good decision. And if they didn't produce a winner, then the decision would go to one of the other branches of government, the Congress. The House of Representatives would step in and make the choice, which they did in 1801 and 1825. In the long, hot summer of 1787, compromises were made to invent the presidency, like counting slaves as 3/5 of a person, giving the President command of the army but Congress the power to declare war, and unlimited four-year terms. Since then, some of those compromises have been amended and the men in office have sometimes been too strong or too weak. But, if you could start from scratch, how would you redesign the Oval Office?
Government_Declassified	The_dark_history_of_the_Chinese_Exclusion_Act_Robert_Chang.txt	After 12 years living in California, Chinese citizen Chae Chan Ping was ready for a visit home. He procured the necessary documents for his departure and return journey, and set sail for China, where he spent the next year reconnecting with friends and family. But when he returned to San Francisco on October 8th, 1888, Ping and his fellow immigrant passengers were forbidden to disembark. Just days earlier, President Grover Cleveland had signed the Scott Act, which invalidated the legal documents allowing their re-entry to the United States. This policy threatened to separate families and deprive Chinese immigrants of their homes and livelihoods. Ping challenged the ruling, beginning a legal battle for the rights of thousands of Chinese immigrants. But his case inspired an even more controversial policy that continues to impact immigrants around the globe. Discrimination against Chinese immigrants had begun decades earlier, when the California Gold Rush created a massive demand for labor. Initially, Chinese immigrants were welcomed as reliable workers and became essential parts of frontier communities. Many built railroads and worked in the mines, while others operated laundries, restaurants, and general stores. The 1868 Burlingame Treaty even granted China favored trading status with the US, and allowed unrestricted migration between the two countries. But as large numbers of Chinese immigrants found success, American workers began to see them as a threat. Politicians and labor leaders denounced them for driving down wages, and violence against Chinese individuals became increasingly common. This anti-Chinese sentiment soon found its way into California’s courts. In 1854, following a murder trial where a white man was convicted of murdering a Chinese man, the California Supreme Court overturned the conviction, holding that Chinese eyewitness testimony was inadmissible. The court declared that Chinese citizens could not testify against white defendants, citing similar precedents forbidding testimony by Black and Native American individuals. This decision effectively legalized violence against California’s Chinese population, inspiring mob attacks and campaigns for segregation. Before long, anti-Chinese sentiment reached the federal level. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first federal law that restricted immigration based explicitly on nationality. In practice, the Act banned entry to all ethnically Chinese immigrants besides diplomats, and prohibited existing immigrants from obtaining citizenship. It also meant Chinese individuals couldn’t leave the United States and return without first applying for a certificate of re-entry. This policy remained in place until October 1st, 1888, when the Scott Act prohibited re-entry altogether, stranding Chae Chan Ping and thousands of other Chinese immigrants. In court, Ping argued he had followed the proper protocol obtaining his re-entry certificate, and the government had not honored his legally issued document. This argument was strong enough to send his case all the way to the Supreme Court. But the justices ruled against Ping, invalidating thousands of legal re-entry certificates in one fell swoop. The decision led to Ping’s deportation and left up to 20,000 Chinese immigrants unable to return to the US. But arguably even more important than the court’s racist ruling was the logic they used to support it. Traditionally, the Supreme Court is considered a check on the other two branches of American government, offering judgment on policies passed by Congress and the president. In this case however, the court stated they had no power to pass judgment on the Scott Act, since Congress had declared the immigration policy “a matter of national security.” This decision set a unique precedent. Unless Ping's case was overturned, congressional and executive branches could claim national security concerns to pass whatever immigration laws they wanted. Throughout the 20th century, xenophobic government officials used this power to freely discriminate against immigrant groups. The 1917 Asiatic Barred Zone Act prohibited the entry of all South Asians. And a series of immigration acts in the 1920s expanded restrictions throughout Asia, Eastern Europe and southern Europe. Many of these restrictions were lifted after World War II, and the Chinese Exclusion Act itself was finally repealed in 1943— over 60 years after it was enacted. But the US government continues to use this precedent to deploy sudden and sweeping immigration policies, targeting journalists and dissidents as well as ethnic groups. Little is known about what became of Chae Chan Ping following his deportation. But the injustices visited upon him and thousands of other Chinese Americans continue to impact immigrant rights and liberties.
Government_Declassified	당신의_투표는_중요한가요_대통령_선거인단에_대한_설명_크리스티나_그리어.txt	Translator: tom carter Reviewer: Bedirhan Cinar Most people have heard of the Electoral College during presidential election years. But what exactly is the Electoral College? Simply said, it is a group of people appointed by each state who formally elect the President and Vice President of the United States. To understand how this process began and how it continues today, we can look at the Constitution of the United States: article two, section one, clause two of the constitution. It specifies how many electors each state is entitled to have. Since 1964, there have been 538 electors in each presidential election. How do they decide on the number 538? Well, the number of electors is equal to the total voting membership of the United States Congress. 435 representatives, plus 100 senators, and 3 electors from the District of Columbia. Essentially, the Democratic candidate and Republican candidate are each trying to add up the electors in every state so that they surpass 270 electoral votes, or just over half the 538 votes, and win the presidency. So how do states even get electoral votes? Each state receives a particular number of electors based on population size. The census is conducted every 10 years, so every time the census happens, states might gain or lose a few electoral votes. Let's say you're a voter in California, a state with 55 electoral votes. If your candidate wins in California, they get all 55 of the state's electoral votes. If your candidate loses, they get none. This is why many presidential candidates want to win states like Texas, Florida, and New York. If you currently add up the electoral votes of those three states, you would have 96 electoral votes. Even if a candidate won North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Vermont, New Hampshire. Connecticut and West Virginia, they would only gain 31 electoral votes total from those eight states. Here is where it can get a little tricky. On a rare occasion, like in the year 2000, someone can win the popular vote but fail to gain 270 electoral votes. This means that the winner may have won and collected their electoral votes by small margins, winning just enough states with just enough electoral votes, but the losing candidate may have captured large voter margins in the remaining states. If this is the case, the very large margins secured by the losing candidate in the other states would add up to over 50% of the ballots cast nationally. Therefore, the losing candidate may have gained more than 50% of the ballots cast by voters, but failed to gain 270 of the electoral votes. Some critics of the electoral college argue the system gives an unfair advantage to states with large numbers of electoral votes. Think of it this way. It is possible for a candidate to not get a single person's vote -- not one vote -- in 39 states, or the District of Columbia, yet be elected president by winning the popular vote in just 11 of these 12 states: California, New York, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Georgia or Virginia. This is why both parties pay attention to these states. However, others argue that the electoral college protects small states such as Rhode Island, Vermont and New Hampshire, and even geographically large states with small populations like Alaska, Wyoming and the Dakotas. That's because a candidate can't completely ignore small states, because in a close election, every electoral vote counts. There are certain states that have a long history of voting for a particular party. These are known as "safe states." For the past four election cycles -- in 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008 -- Democrats could count on states like Oregon, Maryland, Michigan and Massachusetts, whereas the Republicans could count on states like Mississippi, Alabama, Kansas and Idaho. States that are teetering between between parties are called "swing states." In the past four election cycles, Ohio and Florida have been swing states, twice providing electoral votes for a Democratic candidate, and twice providing electoral votes for a Republican candidate. Think about it. Do you live in a safe state? If so, is it a Democratic or Republican safe state? Do you live in a swing state? Are your neighboring states swing or safe? Is the population in your state increasing or decreasing? And do not forget, when you are watching the electoral returns on election night every four years and the big map of the United States is on the screen, know that the magic number is 270 and start adding.
Government_Declassified	Which_voting_system_is_the_best_Alex_Gendler.txt	Imagine we want to build a new space port at one of four recently settled Martian bases, and are holding a vote to determine its location. Of the hundred colonists on Mars, 42 live on West Base, 26 on North Base, 15 on South Base, and 17 on East Base. For our purposes, let’s assume that everyone prefers the space port to be as close to their base as possible, and will vote accordingly. What is the fairest way to conduct that vote? The most straightforward solution would be to just let each individual cast a single ballot, and choose the location with the most votes. This is known as plurality voting, or "first past the post." In this case, West Base wins easily, since it has more residents than any other. And yet, most colonists would consider this the worst result, given how far it is from everyone else. So is plurality vote really the fairest method? What if we tried a system like instant runoff voting, which accounts for the full range of people’s preferences rather than just their top choices? Here’s how it would work. First, voters rank each of the options from 1 to 4, and we compare their top picks. South receives the fewest votes for first place, so it’s eliminated. Its 15 votes get allocated to those voters’ second choice— East Base— giving it a total of 32. We then compare top preferences and cut the last place option again. This time North Base is eliminated. Its residents’ second choice would’ve been South Base, but since that’s already gone, the votes go to their third choice. That gives East 58 votes over West’s 42, making it the winner. But this doesn’t seem fair either. Not only did East start out in second-to-last place, but a majority ranked it among their two least preferred options. Instead of using rankings, we could try voting in multiple rounds, with the top two winners proceeding to a separate runoff. Normally, this would mean West and North winning the first round, and North winning the second. But the residents of East Base realize that while they don’t have the votes to win, they can still skew the results in their favor. In the first round, they vote for South Base instead of their own, successfully keeping North from advancing. Thanks to this "tactical voting" by East Base residents, South wins the second round easily, despite being the least populated. Can a system be called fair and good if it incentivizes lying about your preferences? Maybe what we need to do is let voters express a preference in every possible head-to-head matchup. This is known as the Condorcet method. Consider one matchup: West versus North. All 100 colonists vote on their preference between the two. So that's West's 42 versus the 58 from North, South, and East, who would all prefer North. Now do the same for the other five matchups. The victor will be whichever base wins the most times. Here, North wins three and South wins two. These are indeed the two most central locations, and North has the advantage of not being anyone’s least preferred choice. So does that make the Condorcet method an ideal voting system in general? Not necessarily. Consider an election with three candidates. If voters prefer A over B, and B over C, but prefer C over A, this method fails to select a winner. Over the decades, researchers and statisticians have come up with dozens of intricate ways of conducting and counting votes, and some have even been put into practice. But whichever one you choose, it's possible to imagine it delivering an unfair result. It turns out that our intuitive concept of fairness actually contains a number of assumptions that may contradict each other. It doesn’t seem fair for some voters to have more influence than others. But nor does it seem fair to simply ignore minority preferences, or encourage people to game the system. In fact, mathematical proofs have shown that for any election with more than two options, it’s impossible to design a voting system that doesn’t violate at least some theoretically desirable criteria. So while we often think of democracy as a simple matter of counting votes, it’s also worth considering who benefits from the different ways of counting them.
Government_Declassified	모의_법정_역사_대_리처드_닉슨_사건_알렉스_겐들러.txt	The presidency of the United States of America is often said to be one of the most powerful positions in the world. But of all the U.S. presidents accused of misusing that power, only one has left office as a result. Does Richard Nixon deserve to be remembered for more than the scandal that ended his presidency? Find out as we put this disgraced president's legacy on trial in History vs. Richard Nixon. "Order, order. Now, who's the defendant today, some kind of crook?" "Cough. No, your Honor. This is Richard Milhous Nixon, the 37th president of the United States, who served from 1969 to 1974." "Hold on. That's a weird number of years for a president to serve." "Well, you see, President Nixon resigned for the good of the nation and was pardoned by President Ford, who took over after him." "He resigned because he was about to be impeached, and he didn't want the full extent of his crimes exposed." "And what were these crimes?" "Your Honor, the Watergate scandal was one of the grossest abuses of presidential power in history. Nixon's men broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters to wiretap the offices and dig up dirt on opponents for the reelection campaign." "Cough It was established that the President did not order this burglary." "But as soon as he learned of it, he did everything to cover it up, while lying about it for months." "Uh, yes, but it was for the good of the country. He did so much during his time in office and could have done so much more without a scandal jeopardizing his accomplishments." "Uh, accomplishments?" "Yes, your Honor. Did you know it was President Nixon who proposed the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, and signed the National Environmental Policy Act into law? Not to mention the Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, expansion of the Clean Air Act." "Sounds pretty progressive of him." "Progressive? Hardly. Nixon's presidential campaign courted Southern voters through fear and resentment of the civil rights movement." "Speaking of civil rights, the prosecution may be surprised to learn that he signed the Title IX amendment, banning gender-based discrimination in education, and ensured that desegregation of schools occurred peacefully, and he lowered the voting age to 18, so that students could vote." "He didn't have much concern for students after four were shot by the National Guard at Kent State. Instead, he called them bums for protesting the Vietnam War, a war he had campaigned on ending." "But he did end it." "He ended it two years after taking office. Meanwhile, his campaign had sabotaged the previous president's peace talks, urging the South Vietnamese government to hold out for supposedly better terms, which, I might add, didn't materialize. So, he protracted the war for four years, in which 20,000 more U.S. troops, and over a million more Vietnamese, died for nothing." "Hmm, a presidential candidate interfering in foreign negotiations -- isn't that treason?" "It is, your Honor, a clear violation of the Logan Act of 1799." "Uh, I think we're forgetting President Nixon's many foreign policy achievements. It was he who normalized ties with China, forging economic ties that continue today." "Are we so sure that's a good thing? And don't forget his support of the coup in Chile that replaced the democratically-elected President Allende with a brutal military dictator." "It was part of the fight against communism." "Weren't tyranny and violence the reasons we opposed communism to begin with? Or was it just fear of the lower class rising up against the rich?" "President Nixon couldn't have predicted the violence of Pinochet's regime, and being anti-communist didn't mean neglecting the poor. He proposed a guaranteed basic income for all American families, still a radical concept today. And he even pushed for comprehensive healthcare reform, just the kind that passed 40 years later." "I'm still confused about this burglary business. Was he a crook or not?" "Your Honor, President Nixon may have violated a law or two, but what was the real harm compared to all he accomplished while in office?" "The harm was to democracy itself. The whole point of the ideals Nixon claimed to promote abroad is that leaders are accountable to the people, and when they hold themselves above the law for whatever reason, those ideals are undermined." "And if you don't hold people accountable to the law, I'll be out of a job." Many politicians have compromised some principles to achieve results, but law-breaking and cover-ups threaten the very fabric the nation is built on. Those who do so may find their entire legacy tainted when history is put on trial.
Government_Declassified	What_few_people_know_about_the_program_that_saved_America_Meg_Jacobs.txt	In 1932, the Great Depression entered its third winter. One in four Americans was unemployed, marking the highest unemployment rate in the country’s history. Tens of thousands had lost their homes and life savings, and there was very little confidence that Republican President Herbert Hoover could turn things around. So when the election came, voters flocked to his Democratic competitor. Franklin D. Roosevelt promised a New Deal for Americans— a comprehensive set of legislation to support struggling citizens and put the country back to work. The massive federal intervention Roosevelt proposed was a radical challenge to the individualist ideals that governed many Americans’ lives. But due to the extreme circumstances, he began his presidency with public and political support. With the help of his advisers, Roosevelt’s first hundred days in office were perhaps the most eventful of any US president. In just over three months, he pushed over 15 bills through Congress and created an “alphabet soup” of government agencies to help farmers, workers, and businesses. The New Deal’s first priority was stabilizing the banks. Over the previous three years, many Americans had withdrawn their savings out of fear the bank would lose their money in bad investments. So to regain the public's confidence, FDR increased federal oversight of commercial banks, and created bank insurance to guarantee that any deposited funds would always be available. Next, he established the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. FERA cataloged each state’s need for relief and provided funds to help citizens afford groceries, rent, clothing, coal, and other necessities. Meanwhile, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration subsidized farmers and educated them in improving planting techniques. These policies fed and housed thousands, but they didn’t significantly address the New Deal’s biggest promise: reducing unemployment. So the Civilian Conservation Corps was established to employ over 250,000 young men for projects like tree planting, irrigation, and fire prevention. The CCC offered onsite work camps that provided food, shelter, and education to those employed; mostly young, single men with families in need of relief. Subsequent programs like the Works Progress Administration and the Tennessee Valley Authority added projects building roads, bridges, and hydroelectric dams. The WPA also funded art, writing, and theater programs. These initiatives cut civilian unemployment in half. And they did so alongside labor acts that abolished child labor, granted unions the right to collective bargaining, and set the first national minimum wage. Benefits were also created to help those unable to work. The Social Security Act established an old-age pension system in addition to unemployment insurance, disability benefits, and welfare assistance. But despite these sweeping policies, the New Deal helped some groups more than others. Black Americans were hit hardest by the economic downturn, and the New Deal’s impact on Black communities varied widely. In northern cities like Chicago, Black citizens received a large share of jobs, vocational training, and education, with New Deal programs teaching more than one million Black Americans to read. Northern Black communities also received an influx of public housing, though it was heavily segregated. In the South, results were less positive. Roosevelt relied heavily on the support of Southern Democrats, who welcomed economic development but fought to preserve white supremacy. They ensured that new labor laws excluded domestic servants and agricultural workers, occupations held by many Black Americans. These politicians and many others also undermined Eleanor Roosevelt’s attempts to push her husband toward supporting a federal anti-lynching law. As a result, the New Deal has often been called a “raw deal” for Black communities. And many modern inequities in housing, employment, and financial stability are partially due to New Deal programs prioritizing white Americans. In these ways and more, the New Deal didn’t fully live up to its promises. Despite employing over 8 million Americans, unemployment never went lower than 14%. And the US economy wouldn’t fully recover until the country’s mobilization for World War II. But this bold campaign of progressive policies did empower unions to start their own revolution. In the coming decades, northern liberals, Black Americans, and other working minorities, united to fight discriminatory hiring. In the process, they reshaped the Democratic Party; challenging its racist leadership, and laying the groundwork for an emerging civil rights coalition.
Government_Declassified	How_does_money_laundering_work_Delena_D_Spann.txt	As one of the most notorious gangsters in history, Al Capone presided over a vast and profitable empire of organized crime. When he was finally put on trial, the most he could be convicted of was tax evasion. The nearly $100 million a year, that's 1.4 billion in today's currency, that Capone had earned from illegal gambling, bootlegging, brothels, and extortion, would have served as evidence of his crimes. But the money was nowhere to be found. Capone and his associates had hidden it through investments in various businesses whose ultimate ownership couldn't be proven, like cash-only laundromats. In fact, those laundromats are part of the reason for the name of this activity, money laundering. Money laundering came to be the term for any process that cleans illegally obtained funds of their dirty criminal origins, allowing them to be used within the legal economy. But Capone wasn't the first to launder money. In fact, this practice is about as old as money itself. Merchants hid their riches from tax collecters, and pirates sought to sell their bounty without drawing attention to how they got it. With the recent arrival of virtual currencies, offshore banking, the darknet, and global markets, schemes have become much more complex. Although modern money laundering methods vary greatly, most share three basic steps: placement, layering, and integration. Placement is where illegally obtained money is converted into assets that seem legitimate. That's often done by depositing funds into a bank account registered to an anonymous corporation or a professional middleman. This step is where criminals are often most vulnerable to detection since they introduce massive wealth into the financial system seemingly out of nowhere. The second step, layering, involves using multiple transactions to further distance the funds from their origin. This can take the form of transfers between multiple accounts, or the purchase of tradable property, like expensive cars, artwork, and real estate. Casinos, where large sums of money change hands every second, are also popular venues for layering. A money launderer may have their gambling balance made available at a casino chain's locations in other countries, or work with employees to rig games. The last step, integration, allows clean money to re-enter the mainstream economy and to benefit the original criminal. They might invest it into a legal business claiming payment by producing fake invoices, or even start a bogus charity, placing themselves on the board of directors with an exorbitant salary. Money laundering itself wasn't officially recognized as a federal crime in the United States until 1986. Before that point, the government needed to prosecute a related crime, like tax evasion. From 1986 on, they could confiscate wealth simply by demonstrating that concealment had occurred, which had a positive effect on prosecuting major criminal operations, like drug traffickers. However, a legal shift has raised concerns involving privacy and government surveillance. Today, the United Nations, national governments, and various nonprofits fight against money laundering, yet the practice continues to play a major role in global crime. And the most high-profile instances of money laundering have involved not just private individuals, but major financial institutions and government officials. No one knows for sure the total amount of money that's laundered on a yearly basis, but some organizations estimate it to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Government_Declassified	How_to_prevent_political_corruption_Stephanie_Honchell_Smith.txt	On October 23, 2015, Mcebisi Jonas, South Africa’s deputy finance minister, faced a harrowing, yet enticing, decision. He had thought he was attending a normal business meeting but ended up in the home of the powerful Gupta family, sitting with the Gupta brothers and the president, Jacob Zuma’s, son. Jonas was offered a promotion and $45 million. In return, he would be expected to use his position to advance the Gupta’s many business interests. This included firing officials who opposed the construction of new power plants, which were slated to run on fuel from Gupta-owned mines. The deal was simple— but would Jonas accept? This kind of corruption in politics is nothing new. It plagued the ancient world— the “Arthasastra,” an Indian political treatise that dates back to the 3rd century BCE, lists 40 types of embezzlement alone. So, what exactly is corruption, and what can we do to combat it? Corruption is often defined as a misuse of a position of power for personal gain. For example, this could be a city clerk accepting bribes in exchange for issuing permits; or a mayor appointing a campaign donor to an influential position. But corruption isn’t limited to the political sphere; it can happen in schools, sports, businesses, or religious institutions. In ancient Greece, the power-hungry Alcmaeonid family notoriously bribed the priestesses at Delphi to deliver false prophecies, like telling the Spartans they should invade Athens. It may seem like all corruption is driven by greed, but individual motives are often complex. There can be economic drivers, like family pressure on an underpaid civil servant who exaggerates his expenses to get more money back. This might not seem like a big problem, but corruption can snowball. If anti-corruption laws aren’t enforced, or if loopholes are continuously exploited, a larger culture of corruption can emerge. For example, in 2009, numerous British MPs were exposed for using taxpayer money to cover personal expenses, from home renovations to luxury purchases, and even having a moat cleaned. And corruption isn't always directly about money. In 2016, a Department of Justice investigation found widespread patterns of unconstitutional policing, abuse, and corruption within the Baltimore Police Department. In just one elite task force, eight officers were convicted of crimes, including planting evidence and robbing citizens during traffic stops. Corruption like this causes people to lose faith in government and can deplete much needed resources. The more taxpayer money that goes into people’s pockets, the less there is to spend on services that benefit the community— like repairing roads, building schools, or providing healthcare. In the case of South Africa, the Gupta family plundered billions of dollars from the country’s funds through their wide-ranging corruption schemes, devastating the nation's economy. In Baltimore, the police department cost taxpayers more than $22 million in court settlements and gravely eroded public trust. So, how can we prevent corruption? While it’s important that laws set a high price for corrupt behavior, punishment is only one piece of the puzzle. Transparency in terms of budget and paper trails and support for freedom of the press are hugely important. In Botswana, the government has built public trust through their ongoing commitment to respond to corruption openly, quickly, and decisively. In Denmark, government ministers must publish monthly reports cataloging their spending on entertainment, official travel, and any gifts they’ve received. As citizens, we can vote out those who engage in corruption and question officials who push back against transparency measures. And we can stand up against corruption when we see it. In South Africa, Jonas refused the Guptas’ offer, and despite threats against his life, spoke out, exposing a sprawling web of corruption that toppled Zuma’s regime, and sent the Gupta family into exile. But it wasn’t just Jonas’ revelation that mattered. Once the scale of corruption was unearthed, everyday South Africans took to the streets, insisting that “Zuma must fall.” By using our civic voices, we can fight back to ensure that tax dollars don’t line pockets, but instead benefit everyone.
Government_Declassified	Why_are_US_cities_still_so_segregated_Kevin_EhrmanSolberg_and_Kirsten_Delegard.txt	On October 21st, 1909, 125 residents of an affluent Minneapolis neighborhood approached William Simpson, who’d just bought a plot in the area, and told him to leave. The Simpsons would be the second Black family in the otherwise white neighborhood, where they intended to build a home. When the Simpsons refused offers to buy them out, their neighbors tried blocking their home’s construction. They finally moved into their house, but the incident had a ripple effect. Just a few months after the mob harassed the Simpsons, the first racially restrictive covenant was put into place in Minneapolis. Covenants are agreements in property deeds that are intended to regulate how the property is to be used. Beginning in the mid-1800s, people in the United States and elsewhere began employing them in a new way: specifically, to racially restrict properties. They wrote clauses into deeds that were meant to prevent all future owners from selling or leasing to certain racial and ethnic groups, especially Black people. Between 1920 and 1950, these racial covenants spread like wildfire throughout the US, making cities more segregated and the suburbs more restricted. In the county encompassing Minneapolis, racial covenants eventually appeared on the deeds to more than 25,000 homes. Not only was this legal, but the US Federal Housing Administration promoted racial covenants in their underwriting manual. While constructing new homes, real estate developers began racially restricting them from the outset. Developments were planned as dream communities for American families— but for white people only. In 1947, one company began building what became widely recognized as the prototype of the postwar American suburb: Levittown, New York. It was a community of more than 17,000 identical homes. They cost around $7,000 each and were intended to be affordable for returning World War II veterans. But, according to Levittown’s racial covenants, none of the houses could “be used or occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race,” with one exception: servants. Between 1950 and 1970, the population of the American suburbs nearly doubled as white people flocked to more racially homogenous areas in a phenomenon known as “white flight.” The suburbs spread, replacing native ecosystems with miles of pavement and water-guzzling lawns. And their diffuse layout necessitated car travel. American automobile production quadrupled between 1946 and 1955, cementing the nation's dependence on cars. Federal programs like the G.I. Bill offered American veterans favorable lending rates for buying homes. But it was difficult for people of color to take advantage of such resources. Racial covenants restricted them from certain neighborhoods. And, at the same time, government programs labelled neighborhoods of color bad investments and often refused to insure mortgages in those areas. Therefore, banks usually wouldn’t lend money to people purchasing property in neighborhoods of color— a practice that became known as redlining. So, instead of owning homes that increased in value over time, creating wealth that could be passed to future generations, many people of color were forced to spend their income on rent. And even when they were able to buy property, their home’s value was less likely to increase. The suburbs boasted cul-de-sacs and dead ends that minimized traffic. Meanwhile, city planners often identified redlined neighborhoods as inexpensive areas for industrial development. So, the massive freeway projects of the mid-20th century disproportionately cut through redlined neighborhoods, accompanied by heavy industry and pollution. As a result, many neighborhoods of color experience higher rates of drinking water contamination, asthma, and other health issues. People targeted by racial covenants increasingly challenged them in court and, in 1968, they were finally banned under the Fair Housing Act. But the damage had been done. Racial covenants concentrated wealth and amenities in white neighborhoods and depressed the conditions and home values in neighborhoods of color. As of 2020, about 74% of white families in the US owned their homes, while about 44% of Black families did. That gap is greatest in Minnesota’s Twin Cities. Across the country, neighborhoods remain segregated and 90% of all suburban counties are predominantly white. Some landlords, real estate agents, and lenders still discriminate against people based on race— rejecting them, steering them to and away from certain neighborhoods, or providing inaccessibly high interest rates. Gentrification and exclusionary zoning practices also still displace and keep people of color out of certain neighborhoods. Racial covenants are now illegal. But they can still be seen on many housing deeds. The legacy of racial covenants is etched across the pristine lawns of the American suburbs. It’s a footnote in the demographic divides of every city. And it’s one of the insidious architects of the hidden inequalities that shape our world.
Government_Declassified	지폐에_가치를_주는_것은_무엇일까_Doug_Levinson.txt	If you tried to pay for something with a piece of paper, you might run into some trouble. Unless, of course, the piece of paper was a hundred dollar bill. But what is it that makes that bill so much more interesting and valuable than other pieces of paper? After all, there's not much you can do with it. You can't eat it. You can't build things with it. And burning it is actually illegal. So what's the big deal? Of course, you probably know the answer. A hundred dollar bill is printed by the government and designated as official currency, while other pieces of paper are not. But that's just what makes them legal. What makes a hundred dollar bill valuable, on the other hand, is how many or few of them are around. Throughout history, most currency, including the US dollar, was linked to valuable commodities and the amount of it in circulation depended on a government's gold or silver reserves. But after the US abolished this system in 1971, the dollar became what is known as fiat money, meaning not linked to any external resource but relying instead solely on government policy to decide how much currency to print. Which branch of our government sets this policy? The Executive, the Legislative, or the Judicial? The surprising answer is: none of the above! In fact, monetary policy is set by an independent Federal Reserve System, or the Fed, made up of 12 regional banks in major cities around the country. Its board of governors, which is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, reports to Congress, and all the Fed's profit goes into the US Treasury. But to keep the Fed from being influenced by the day-to-day vicissitudes of politics, it is not under the direct control of any branch of government. Why doesn't the Fed just decide to print infinite hundred dollar bills to make everyone happy and rich? Well, because then the bills wouldn't be worth anything. Think about the purpose of currency, which is to be exchanged for goods and services. If the total amount of currency in circulation increases faster than the total value of goods and services in the economy, then each individual piece will be able to buy a smaller portion of those things than before. This is called inflation. On the other hand, if the money supply remains the same, while more goods and services are produced, each dollar's value would increase in a process known as deflation. So which is worse? Too much inflation means that the money in your wallet today will be worth less tomorrow, making you want to spend it right away. While this would stimulate business, it would also encourage overconsumption, or hoarding commodities, like food and fuel, raising their prices and leading to consumer shortages and even more inflation. But deflation would make people want to hold onto their money, and a decrease in consumer spending would reduce business profits, leading to more unemployment and a further decrease in spending, causing the economy to keep shrinking. So most economists believe that while too much of either is dangerous, a small, consistent amount of inflation is necessary to encourage economic growth. The Fed uses vast amounts of economic data to determine how much currency should be in circulation, including previous rates of inflation, international trends, and the unemployment rate. Like in the story of Goldilocks, they need to get the numbers just right in order to stimulate growth and keep people employed, without letting inflation reach disruptive levels. The Fed not only determines how much that paper in your wallet is worth but also your chances of getting or keeping the job where you earn it.
Government_Declassified	Do_tax_cuts_stimulate_the_economy_Jonathan_Smith.txt	When President Ronald Reagan began his first term in 1981, the US economy was struggling. Unemployment rates were high and getting higher, and in 1979, inflation had peaked at an all-time high for peacetime. In an effort to combat these issues, Reagan's administration introduced a number of economic policies, including tax cuts for large corporations and high-income earners. The idea was that tax savings for the rich would cause extra money to trickle down to everyone else, and for that reason, these policies are often referred to as trickle-down economics. From the 80s to the late 90s, the US saw one of its longest and strongest periods of economic growth in history. Median income rose, as did rates of job creation. Since then, many politicians have invoked trickle-down theory as a justification for tax cuts— but did these policies actually work, either in the sense of stimulating economic growth, or in terms of improving circumstances for Americans? Would they work in other circumstances? To answer these questions, the main things to consider are whether the impact of the tax cut on the government’s tax revenue is harmful, whether the money saved in taxes actually stimulates the economy, and whether stimulating the economy actually improves people’s lives. The idea behind tax cuts is that if taxes are too high, people will be less willing to work, which would ultimately decrease tax revenue. So at a lower tax rate, the government might actually gain more tax money that it can theoretically put towards improving life for its citizens, because people will work more when they get to keep more of their earnings. Of course, there’s a limit to how much the government can cut taxes: at a zero tax rate there is no tax revenue regardless of how much people are working. So while cuts from a very high tax rate might be fine, cuts from a lower tax rate might be counterproductive, hampering the government's ability to accomplish crucial things. Tax rates were extremely high when Reagan took office. His administration cut the highest income tax bracket from 70% to 28% and corporation tax from 48% to 34%. By comparison, as of early 2021, those rates were 37% and 21% respectively. When tax rates are lower, tax cuts for the wealthy can be harmful. For example, in 2012 to 2013, lawmakers cut the top tax-rate in the state of Kansas by almost 30% and reduced some business tax rates to zero. As a result, the government’s balance sheet immediately fell into negative territory and did not recover, implying that wealthy individuals and companies did not invest back into the economy. In short, the money did not trickle down. This appears to be a trend: in a study over multiple periods of history and across 18 countries, The London School of Economics found that cutting taxes increased the wealth of the top 1% of people, but had little effect on the economy as a whole. In order for tax cuts for the rich to truly stimulate the economy, they would have to spend the saved money putting it back into, for example, local businesses— but this isn’t what happens in practice. No economic policy operates in isolation: each time and place is unique with multiple policies in place simultaneously, so there is only ever one test case for each set of scenarios. This makes it difficult to deliver definitive rulings on whether an economic policy worked, whether something else might have worked better, or whether it would work in a different situation. And yet, rhetoric around trickle-down economics, both during the Reagan era and since, often promises something definitive: that spending by society’s richest members on things other than taxes directly improves the financial circumstances of the less wealthy. And there’s not much evidence to support that.
Government_Declassified	역사_대_블리디미르_레닌알렉스_젠들러_Alex_Gendler.txt	He was one of the most influential figures of the 20th century, forever changing the course of one of the world's largest countries. But was he a hero who toppled an oppressive tyranny or a villain who replaced it with another? It's time to put Lenin on the stand in History vs. Lenin. "Order, order, hmm. Now, wasn't it your fault that the band broke up?" "Your honor, this is Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, AKA Lenin, the rabblerouser who helped overthrow the Russian tsar Nicholas II in 1917 and founded the Soviet Union, one of the worst dictatorships of the 20th century." "Ohh." "The tsar was a bloody tyrant under whom the masses toiled in slavery." "This is rubbish. Serfdom had already been abolished in 1861." "And replaced by something worse. The factory bosses treated the people far worse than their former feudal landlords. And unlike the landlords, they were always there. Russian workers toiled for eleven hours a day and were the lowest paid in all of Europe." "But Tsar Nicholas made laws to protect the workers." "He reluctantly did the bare minimum to avert revolution, and even there, he failed. Remember what happened in 1905 after his troops fired on peaceful petitioners?" "Yes, and the tsar ended the rebellion by introducing a constitution and an elected parliament, the Duma." "While retaining absolute power and dissolving them whenever he wanted." "Perhaps there would've been more reforms in due time if radicals, like Lenin, weren't always stirring up trouble." "Your Honor, Lenin had seen his older brother Aleksandr executed by the previous tsar for revolutionary activity, and even after the reforms, Nicholas continued the same mass repression and executions, as well as the unpopular involvement in World War I, that cost Russia so many lives and resources." "Hm, this tsar doesn't sound like such a capital fellow." "Your Honor, maybe Nicholas II did doom himself with bad decisions, but Lenin deserves no credit for this. When the February 1917 uprisings finally forced the tsar to abdicate, Lenin was still exiled in Switzerland." "Hm, so who came to power?" "The Duma formed a provisional government, led by Alexander Kerensky, an incompetent bourgeois failure. He even launched another failed offensive in the war, where Russia had already lost so much, instead of ending it like the people wanted." "It was a constitutional social democratic government, the most progressive of its time. And it could have succeeded eventually if Lenin hadn't returned in April, sent by the Germans to undermine the Russian war effort and instigate riots." "Such slander! The July Days were a spontaneous and justified reaction against the government's failures. And Kerensky showed his true colors when he blamed Lenin and arrested and outlawed his Bolshevik party, forcing him to flee into exile again. Some democracy! It's a good thing the government collapsed under their own incompetence and greed when they tried to stage a military coup then had to ask the Bolsheviks for help when it backfired. After that, all Lenin had to do was return in October and take charge. The government was peacefully overthrown overnight." "But what the Bolsheviks did after gaining power wasn't very peaceful. How many people did they execute without trial? And was it really necessary to murder the tsar's entire family, even the children?" "Russia was being attacked by foreign imperialists, trying to restore the tsar. Any royal heir that was rescued would be recognized as ruler by foreign governments. It would've been the end of everything the people had fought so hard to achieve. Besides, Lenin may not have given the order." "But it was not only imperialists that the Bolsheviks killed. What about the purges and executions of other socialist and anarchist parties, their old allies? What about the Tambov Rebellion, where peasants, resisting grain confiscation, were killed with poison gas? Or sending the army to crush the workers in Kronstadt, who were demanding democratic self-management? Was this still fighting for the people?" "Yes! The measures were difficult, but it was a difficult time. The new government needed to secure itself while being attacked from all sides, so that the socialist order could be established." "And what good came of this socialist order? Even after the civil war was won, there were famines, repression and millions executed or sent to die in camps, while Lenin's successor Stalin established a cult of personality and absolute power." "That wasn't the plan. Lenin never cared for personal gains, even his enemies admitted that he fully believed in his cause, living modestly and working tirelessly from his student days until his too early death. He saw how power-hungry Stalin was and tried to warn the party, but it was too late." "And the decades of totalitarianism that followed after?" "You could call it that, but it was Lenin's efforts that changed Russia in a few decades from a backward and undeveloped monarchy full of illiterate peasants to a modern, industrial superpower, with one of the world's best educated populations, unprecedented opportunities for women, and some of the most important scientific advancements of the century. Life may not have been luxurious, but nearly everyone had a roof over their head and food on their plate, which few countries have achieved." "But these advances could still have happened, even without Lenin and the repressive regime he established." "Yes, and I could've been a famous rock and roll singer. But how would I have sounded?" We can never be sure how things could've unfolded if different people were in power or different decisions were made, but to avoid the mistakes of the past, we must always be willing to put historical figures on trial.
Government_Declassified	Is_inequality_inevitable.txt	In South Africa, one of the most unequal countries in the world, the richest one-tenth of 1%, owns almost 30% of all the country’s wealth, more than double what the bottom 90% owns. Income and wealth inequality are not new. In fact, economists and historians who’ve charted economic inequality throughout history haven’t found a single society without it. Which raises a bleak question: is inequality inevitable? One way to estimate inequality is with a number called the Gini index, which is calculated by comparing the income or wealth distribution of a perfectly equal society to the actual income or wealth distribution. The area of this shape multiplied by 2 is the Gini index. A Gini of 1 indicates perfect inequality— one person has everything and everyone else has nothing. You’d never see this in real life because everyone except that one person would starve. A Gini index of 0 indicates perfect equality— everyone has exactly the same income or wealth. But you also never see this in real life, not even in communist countries, because for one thing, that would mean paying everyone— no matter how young, old, what job they’re in or where they work— the exact same wage. Typical after-tax Ginis in developed countries today are around 0.3, though there’s a wide range from pretty equal to pretty unequal. Before we go any further, you should know what the Gini index— or any other measure of economic inequality— doesn’t tell us: it gives no information about how income and wealth are distributed across genders, races, educational backgrounds or other demographics; it doesn’t tell us how easy or difficult it is to escape poverty. And it also gives no insight as to how a particular society arrived at its present level of inequality. Economic inequality is deeply entangled with other types of inequality: for example, generations of discrimination, imperialism, and colonialism created deeply rooted power and class inequalities that persist to this day. But we still need at least a rough measure of who gets how much in a country. That’s what the Gini index gives us. Some countries are, economically, much more unequal than others. And that’s because a significant portion of economic inequality is the result of choices that governments make. Let's talk about some of these choices. First: what kind of economy to use. In the 20th century, some countries switched to socialism or communism for a variety of reasons, including reducing economic inequality. These changes did dramatically reduce economic inequality in the two largest non-capitalist economies, China and the Soviet Union— especially in the Soviet Union. But neither country prospered as much as the world's leading economies. So yes, people earned about as much as their neighbors did, but that wasn’t very much. This— and many other issues— contributed to the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. And China, to grow more quickly, shifted its economy towards capitalism starting in the late 1970s. What about capitalist countries? Can they choose to reduce economic inequality? It’s tempting to think “no, because the whole point of capitalism is to hoard enough gold coins to be able to dive into them like Scrooge McDuck.” China seems to provide the textbook example of this: after it became more capitalist, its Gini index shot up from under 0.4 to over 0.55. Meanwhile, its per capita yearly income jumped from the rough equivalent of $1,500 to over $13,000. But there are many counter-examples: capitalist countries in which inequality is actually holding steady or decreasing. France has kept its Gini index below 0.32 since 1979. Ireland's Gini has been trending mostly downward since 1995. The Netherlands and Denmark have kept theirs below 0.28 since the 1980s. How do they do it? One way is with taxes. Personal income taxes in most countries are progressive: the more money you make, the higher your tax rate. And the more progressive your tax system, the more it reduces inequality. So, for example, while pre-tax income inequality in France is roughly the same as it is in the US, post-tax inequality in France is roughly 20% lower. Meanwhile, inheritance taxes can reduce the amount of wealth that a single family can amass over generations. Germany and many other European countries have inheritance or estate taxes that kick in at a few thousand to a few hundred thousand Euros, depending on who's inheriting. The US, on the other hand, lets you inherit $12 million without paying any federal tax. Another way is with transfers— when the government takes tax revenues from one group of people and gives it to another. For example, Social Security programs tax people who work and use the revenue to support retirees. In Italy, about a quarter of Italians’ disposable household income comes from government transfers. That’s a lot, especially relative to the US, where the figure is just over 5%. A third way is to ensure that everyone has access to things like education and healthcare. A highly educated, healthy workforce can command a higher salary on the market, thus reducing inequality. The fourth way is addressing the digital divide: the gap between those who have access to the Internet and those who do not. A fifth way is dealing with extreme wealth. Multibillionaires can buy social media platforms, news outlets, policy think-tanks, perhaps even politicians, and bend them to their will, threatening the very fabric of democracy. We are just barely scratching the surface of inequality here. We haven’t touched on the drastic divides in who has wealth and who doesn’t; the power structures that prevent social and economic mobility; and the drastic inequality between countries— the fact that, for example, just three Americans have 90 billion more dollars than Egypt, a country of 100 million people. And here’s one final thing to think about: power and wealth are self-reinforcing, which means that equality is not. Left to their own devices, societies tend toward inequality— unless we weaken the feedback loops of wealth and power concentration.
Government_Declassified	Picture_a_perfect_society_What_does_it_look_like_Joseph_Lacey.txt	You and a group of strangers have been gathered to design a just society. And to ensure none of you rig the system to benefit yourself, you’ve all been placed under a “veil of ignorance.” Under this veil, you’re blind to certain information about each other and yourselves. You don’t know your age or sex, your profession or natural talents, how much wealth you have, or your religious or philosophical beliefs. So, according to political philosopher John Rawls, you should be motivated to consider what’s most fair for all your society's citizens. When Rawls published this thought experiment— known as “the original position”— in his 1971 opus “A Theory of Justice,” he was trying to identify principles to support a realistic utopia. This visionary society would ensure everyone had the resources and opportunities required to freely pursue their goals. Rawls was confident these principles could only be realized in a democracy. But he felt existing social structures weren’t the right path forward. He believed free market philosophies and welfare capitalism led to unjust accumulations of wealth and power. And he saw models inspired by Marxism as extreme reactions to capitalism’s flaws, with unrealistic assumptions about economies and human nature. So Rawls proposed a new kind of democracy. One where no person was considered less valuable than another and all citizens could live according to their own wills. And while the details of this vision can seem radical, Rawls believed that, under the veil of ignorance, free and equal people would unanimously agree to his fair society. So, let’s play out this thought experiment. The first step in designing our society is deciding how to distribute what Rawls called primary goods. These include the basic liberties, opportunities, and wealth necessary for pursuing most goals. Rawls believed our justice-architects would agree to an “equal scheme of basic liberties” for all, including freedom of speech and the freedom to associate with whoever they choose. After all, without the freedom to pursue one's goals, resources like wealth and job opportunities lose their value. Citizens would also have equal political liberties to vote and run for office. Next, Rawls believes the architects would establish what he calls “fair equality of opportunity.” This means society must be arranged so no one is unfairly deprived of the resources necessary to compete for valued jobs and other positions. However, after agreeing upon equality of liberty and opportunity, Rawls believes our justice-architects would see the benefits of allowing for some wealth inequalities. For example, greater profits can incentivize innovation, productivity, and investment. But Rawls also believes our designers would want to limit differences in wealth with what he calls “the difference principle.” This states that wealth inequalities are only acceptable when they benefit the least advantaged citizens, making them better off than they’d be under conditions of strict equality. These tenets form the foundation of Rawls’ just society, and he believed they could be achieved through what he called “property owning democracy.” This model would guarantee equal access to education and healthcare and rely on government regulation to ensure a just distribution of property and wealth. Rawls knew fully adopting this approach would require major changes for existing democracies. But he believed his principles could at least inspire some immediate improvements. For example, Rawls advocated for limits on campaign spending and political contributions to reduce the influence of wealth on politics. He also endorsed policies fighting discrimination and generous social safety nets like unemployment benefits to ensure a good situation for the worst-off. Some philosophers have critiqued Rawls’ work. Ronald Dworkin argues that the difference principle unfairly tethers society’s progress to the status of the worst-off, even if they’re in that position because of their own choices. Meanwhile, Martha Nussbaum believes Rawls’ thought experiment overlooks real-life particulars. For example, the special needs of a person with disabilities might not be satisfied by the standard distribution of primary goods. And more generally, some argue the architects in Rawls’ harmonious thought experiment are simply too different from the competing interests building real societies. But since its publication, this thought experiment has inspired some very real consequences. Rawls’ rallying cry for social and political equality and a more justly regulated form of capitalism has impacted countless political philosophers, activists, and policymakers. And this new school of thought about justice continues to challenge people to look past their biases and consider what a fair society might truly look like.
Government_Declassified	역사_와_앤드류_잭슨_제임스_페스터.txt	A national hero? Or public enemy number one? Historical figures are often controversial, but few were as deified or vilified in their lifetime as the seventh President of the United States. This is History vs. Andrew Jackson. "Order, order, hm, uh, what were we...ah yes, Mr. Jackson! You stand accused of degrading the office of the presidency, causing financial collapse and wanton cruelty against American Indians. How do you plead?" "Now, Your Honor, I am not a big city lawyer, but I do know a few things. And I know that President Jackson was a self-made frontiersman, a great general, a real man of the people." "Your Honor, this 'man of the people' was a gambler, a drunk, and a brawler. Why, I've heard it said that he would fight at the drop of the hat and then drop the hat himself. I ask you, was such a man fit for the most distinguished office in the nation? Can we forget the debacle of his inauguration? Who ever heard of inviting a drunken mob into the White House? It took ages to get the upholstery clean." "That drunken mob, sir, was the American people, and they deserve to celebrate their victory." "Order, order! Now, did this celebration have pie?" "Very well. Mr. Jackson, is it not the case that immediately upon assuming office you introduced the spoils system, replacing hundreds of perfectly good federal employees with incompetent party loyalists?" "Your Honor, the President did no such thing. He tried to institute rotation in office to avoid any profiteering or funny business. It was the rest of the party who insisted on giving posts to their lackeys." "But Mr. Jackson complied, did he not?" "Now, uh, see here." "Moving on. Mr. Jackson, did you not help to cause the financial Panic of 1837, and the ensuing economic depression with your obsessive war against the Bank of the United States? Was not vetoing its reauthorization, as you did in 1832, an act of irresponsible populace pandering that made no economic sense?" "Your Honor, the gentleman has quite the imagination. That bank was just a way for rich Yanks to get richer. And all that money panic was caused when British banks raised interest rates and cut lending. To blame it on the President is preposterous, I say." "But if Mr. Jackson had not destroyed the National Bank, it would have been able to lend to farmers and businesses when other credit dried up, would it not?" "Hm, this is all highly speculative. Can we move on?" "Certainly, Your Honor. We now come to Mr. Jackson's most terrible offense: forcing entire tribes out of their native lands via the Indian Removal Act." "I resent that accusation, sir. The U.S. of A. bought that land from the Indians fair and square." "Do you call coercion and threats by a nation with a far more powerful army fair and square? Or signing a treaty for removing the Cherokee with a small group that didn't include their actual leaders? They didn't have time to properly supply themselves before the army came and forced them to march the Trail of Tears." "Now, hold on a minute. This was all Van Buren's doing after President Jackson left office." "But Mr. Jackson laid the groundwork and made sure the treaty was ratified. All President Van Buren had to do afterwards was enforce it." "Look here, Your Honor. Our government's been purchasing Indian land since the beginning, and my client was negotiating these deals even before he was President. President Jackson truly believed it was best for the Indians to get compensated for their land and move out West, where there was plenty of space for them to keep living the way they were accustomed, rather than stick around and keep butting heads with the white settlers. Some of whom, I remind our court, wanted to exterminate them outright. It was a different time." "And yet, even in this different time, there were many in Congress and even the Supreme Court who saw how wrong the Removal Act was and loudly opposed it, were there not?" "My client was under a great deal of pressure. I say, do you think it's easy governing such a huge country and keeping the Union together, when states are fixing to nullify federal laws? President Jackson barely got South Carolina to back down over those import tariffs, and then Georgia had to go discover gold and start grabbing up Cherokee land. It was either get the Indians to move or get in another fight with a state government." "So, you admit that Mr. Jackson sacrified moral principles to achieve some political goals?" "I do declare, show me one leader who hasn't." As societies change and morals evolve, yesterday's hero may become tomorrow's villain, or vice versa. History may be past, but our understanding of it is always on trial.
Government_Declassified	미국_대법관은_어떻게_임명될까_피터_파콘Peter_Paccone.txt	There's a job out there with a great deal of power, pay, prestige, and near-perfect job security. And there's only one way to be hired: get appointed to the US Supreme Court. If you want to become a justice on the Supreme Court, the highest federal court in the United States, three things have to happen. You have to be nominated by the president of the United States, your nomination needs to be approved by the Senate, and finally, the president must formally appoint you to the court. Because the Constitution doesn't specify any qualifications, in other words, that there's no age, education, profession, or even native-born citizenship requirement, a president can nominate any individual to serve. So far, six justices have been foreign-born, at least one never graduated from high school, and another was only 32 years old when he joined the bench. Most presidents nominate individuals who broadly share their ideological view, so a president with a liberal ideology will tend to appoint liberals to the court. Of course, a justice's leanings are not always so predictable. For example, when President Eisenhower, a Republican, nominated Earl Warren for Chief Justice, Eisenhower expected him to make conservative decisions. Instead, Warren's judgements have gone down as some of the most liberal in the Court's history. Eisenhower later remarked on that appointment as "the biggest damned-fool mistake" he ever made. Many other factors come up for consideration, as well, including experience, personal loyalties, ethnicity, and gender. The candidates are then thoroughly vetted down to their tax records and payments to domestic help. Once the president interviews the candidate and makes a formal nomination announcement, the Senate leadership traditionally turns the nomination over to hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Depending on the contentiousness of the choice, that can stretch over many days. Since the Nixon administration, these hearings have averaged 60 days. The nominee is interviewed about their law record, if applicable, and where they stand on key issues to discern how they might vote. And especially in more recent history, the committee tries to unearth any dark secrets or past indiscretions. The Judiciary Committee votes to send the nomination to the full Senate with a positive or negative recommendation, often reflective of political leanings, or no recommendation at all. Most rejections have happened when the Senate majority has been a different political party than the president. When the Senate does approve, it's by a simple majority vote, with ties broken by the vice president. With the Senate's consent, the president issues a written appointment, allowing the nominee to complete the final steps to take the constitutional and judicial oaths. In doing so, they solemnly swear to administer justice without respect to persons and do equal right to the poor and the rich and faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon a US Supreme Court justice. This job is for life, barring resignation, retirement, or removal from the court by impeachment. And of the 112 justices who have held the position, not one has yet been removed from office as a result of an impeachment. One of their roles is to protect the fundamental rights of all Americans, even as different parties take power. With the tremendous impact of this responsibility, it's no wonder that a US Supreme Court justice is expected to be, in the words of Irving R. Kaufman, "a paragon of virtue, an intellectual Titan, and an administrative wizard." Of course, not every member of the Court turns out to be an exemplar of justice. Each leaves behind a legacy of decisions and opinions to be debated and dissected by the ultimate judges, time and history.
Government_Declassified	평등_스포츠_그리고_타이틀_9_에린_버주비스_크리스틴_뉴홀.txt	Today lots of girls play sports. But, for a long time, girls were not encouraged to kick, throw, run, jump, shoot, slide, or hit like boys. So, why did things change? And how much have they changed? Are girls and boys treated equally when it comes to sports? To begin to answer these questions, we have to look back. In 1972, Congress passed a law called Title IX, which protected girls and women from discrimination in schools, colleges, and universities. This included discrimination in school-sponsored sports. At that time, only 15% of college athletes were women, and in high schools, only 7% of athletes were girls. Female athletes didn't get a lot of support either and often had to provide their own uniforms and equipment. It was Title IX that forced school administrators to make sports more equal. But what does equal mean in sports? The government developed rules to measure equality under two general categories: participation and treatment. In the early days of Title IX, the number of girls playing sports was so low that it would have been very difficult for schools to suddenly provide exactly the same number of opportunities for girls and boys. Instead, the government wrote rules that gave schools three options, or tests, to demonstrate fairness in opportunities for girls. The three tests are proportionality, progress, and satisfied interests. A school can pick which test to follow. Proportionality means that girls should receive the same percentage of athletic opportunities as the percentage of girls in the student body. So, if 51% of students are girls, then girls should have approximately 51% of the opportunities to play sports. The second test, progress, requires schools to make up for the days when girls had fewer opportunities by adding new sports for girls on a regular basis. The third test asks if girls interested in athletics are satisfied. Under this test, a school must regularly ask female students what sports they are interested in and also take into consideration the popularity of certain sports in the area where the school is located. It must, then, add teams according to the girls' interests. Another important part of Title IX is that it doesn't just look at how many athletic opportunities are available to each sex but whether those opportunities are of equal quality. Specifically, Title IX requires equality between boys and girls teams for things like equipment and supplies, publicity, the scheduling of games and practice times, and the quality and number of coaches. Girls should also have equal access to locker rooms, practice spaces, and competitive facilities, as well as medical services. So, if the best time to play basketball is on Friday nights because that's when most parents and fans can come, then the girls and boys teams should take turns playing on Friday night. If boys teams play in a stadium with lights, scoreboards, and concession stands, then girls teams must have the same opportunity, either by sharing those facilities or getting their own of equal quality. But, as we all know, just because a law exists doesn't mean that everybody follows it. School officials are responsible for making sure there is fairness in sports, but you can help, too, by keeping an eye on your own school. Look around. Are there a lot more boys than girls who play sports? Is the boys' soccer field better than the girls'? Are athletic trainers available to all teams equally? Does the baseball team get new uniforms every year, while the softball team gets them every three years? If you think there might be inequality in your schools, you can approach a school administrator, a parent, or the Office of Civil Rights, a government agency that makes sure schools comply with Title IX because equality is important for everyone, both on the field and off.
Government_Declassified	The_true_cost_of_gold_Lyla_Latif.txt	Gold is one of Earth’s most valuable resources, with one kilogram regularly valued at over 55,000 US dollars. In 2020, Mali produced an estimated 71.2 tons of gold. But Mali only saw $850 million from gold in 2020, when that amount is worth billions, not to mention that the country likely produced much more than the reported 71.2 tons. The situation isn’t unique: a number of other gold-rich countries in Africa, including Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Niger also aren’t seeing the income they should, given the price of gold. The force behind this is greed on an individual, corporate, and national scale, and a corrupt system that perpetuates itself. Although Mali has abundant gold, the country lacks the infrastructure to mine and export it. So the government allows multinational corporations to apply for licenses to mine gold in exchange for taxes paid to Mali’s government. These taxes should, theoretically, finance development, like building the infrastructure to mine gold, improve the economy, and provide citizens with public goods like healthcare and education. Tax money alone isn’t enough to do these things, of course: a government also has to be invested in its people’s well-being, and government corruption can prevent progress. But without adequate funds, even the best intentioned government doesn’t stand a chance of improving circumstances for its citizens. Foreign corporations exploit Mali’s need for tax revenue to get the government to sign on to very unfavorable yet perfectly legal contracts. For example, one such contract stated that no corporate taxes would be owed for the first five years, costing Mali millions in tax revenue. Meanwhile, mining licenses sometimes allow these corporations to take samples of gold out of the country without registering them or paying taxes on them. These should be small amounts of gold used to test for quality, but the license doesn’t limit the size of samples, so this creates a loophole where corporations export large amounts of gold without paying any tax. The multinational corporations are also evading taxes they are legally required to pay. They filter profits through a labyrinth of tax havens that’s difficult to trace. Or they exaggerate their expenses so they end up owing very little in taxes. For instance, a corporation in Mali uses a subsidiary in Ireland to manage its operations and another subsidiary in the Netherlands to license its brand name. The corporation in Mali pays management fees to the Irish subsidiary and pays intellectual property license fees to the Dutch company, all for enormous sums. These costs are deducted from overall profits, leaving the amount subject to taxes at a bare minimum. These companies also buy gold on the black market. Local, small-scale miners often operate without a license, so the government is unaware of how much gold they mine. Corporations buy gold from these miners, avoiding the cost of mining the gold themselves, and pay the miners far below market value. Then they turn around and tell the government they incurred huge expenses mining gold they didn’t mine at all. There’s no way for Mali’s revenue authority to verify this information, causing the country to lose even more tax money. Similarly, corporations pay corrupt government officials to help them smuggle gold across borders, primarily to the United Arab Emirates, rather than operating through legal channels. In 2016, Mali reported around $200 million of exported gold, but the UAE reported receiving slightly over $1.5 billion of imported gold from Mali that same year. The gold is then sold to European, American, and Asian markets from the UAE, with no questions asked about its origins. Similar patterns can be seen with gold-rich countries across Africa, indicating that gold smuggling is happening on a massive scale, without ever being subject to taxes. All of this creates a vicious cycle, forcing a continued reliance on the corporations that helped create the situation in the first place. More than half of Mali’s citizens live below the international poverty line, while their nation’s wealth lines the pockets of foreign corporations and corrupt officials.
Government_Declassified	Is_capitalism_actually_broken.txt	Each one of these machines represents the economic system of a country. Every machine has three inputs: labor, people’s work. Capital, all the stuff that a business might use, including intangibles, like ideas. And natural resources. The machine converts these inputs into goods and services, and because we’re willing to pay for the things the machine produces, what the machine is really creating here is value. Economies turn inputs into value. What determines whether the machine is capitalist, communist, socialist, or something else? Three dials. The first dial controls who owns the capital. Over here, the government owns every bit of capital, down to the last office paperclip. North Korea is probably the closest economy to 0%. On the other end of the spectrum, at 100%, private citizens own all the capital. The US is about here, at roughly two-thirds private ownership. The second dial dictates how much control the government has over what gets produced. In economies with high coordination, like the old USSR, the government dictated what the economy could— and would— produce. In economies with low coordination, the government might mandate a few things, but leaves most decision-making up to the private sector. The third dial controls how extensively markets are used to set prices. Over here at 0%, we have economies with no markets, where the government sets all prices, and consumers have no say. Over here at 100%, markets are used to set the price of everything, even things like basic life-saving health care. You can also think of this dial as controlling the number and extent of government regulations— from tariffs on foreign goods to antitrust laws to regulations on net neutrality. So, capitalism isn’t just one type of economy— it’s a wide range of possible economies, which makes answering the question of whether capitalism is broken, complicated. But we’re going to try. At the height of the Industrial Revolution, the dials were set pretty close to what we now call free market, or “laissez-faire” capitalism. There were very few regulations, and economists of the time believed that capitalism’s “invisible hand”— basically, individuals acting freely and in their own self-interest— would produce optimal outcomes, both for the economy and for society. And that’s how we ended up with embalming fluid in milk. In the late 1800s in the United States, food manufacturers put all kinds of cheap (and sometimes dangerous) adulterants in food to maximize profits. What they were doing was legal, but of course, wrong. There was a public outcry, and in 1906, Congress passed the Pure Food and Drugs Act, setting the stage for the Food and Drug Administration, which watches over the US’s food supply to this day. These days, no economy really practices pure “invisible hand” capitalism, but some people are increasingly worried that today’s threats, like climate change and rising inequality, can’t be solved by any capitalist system. Let’s look at climate change first. Capitalist economies incentivize growth. That’s created massive demand for the cheapest energy possible, which, for a long time, was fossil fuels. Burning all those fossil fuels unquestionably drove— and continues to drive— climate change. Not only that, but the desire to maximize profit usually gives corporations a powerful incentive to ignore inconvenient truths. Just like tobacco companies denied the link between cigarettes and cancer, oil and gas companies denied or downplayed climate science for decades. Next, inequality. Inequality is complicated enough that we made a whole video about it, but the simple story is: in many countries, inequality is rising. In the US, the UK, Canada, Ireland, and Australia, the top 1% of income earners have been eating up a larger and larger share of total income over the past 50 years. In the UK, the top 1% share doubled from 7% in 1980 to 14% in 2014. But that's not the whole picture. In England, the country for which we have the best data before capitalism, the share of income going to the top 5% of income earners peaked at around 40% in 1801, and then, as capitalism took hold, it fell steadily to a low of about 17% in 1977. These days, it’s back up— hovering around 26%. And here’s another data point: in many European countries and Japan, the top 1%’s share of income came down from 20 to 25% in the early 1900s to 7 to 12% today. So, is capitalism increasing inequality or not? It depends. Remember, there's a wide range of settings that all fall under capitalism, meaning that one country's version can look very different from another's. It’s totally possible that inequality could be increasing in China’s version of capitalism, while it decreases in France’s. Capitalism, it seems, is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it generates a huge amount of value, which translates to almost everyone having more money than they otherwise would. On the other hand, it also funnels the biggest chunk of that money into the wallets of relatively few people. Capitalism’s staunchest defenders say that with enough grit and determination, anyone can join the ranks of the wealthy. Is that really true? In a free, capitalist market, the wealth generated by successful companies mostly flows to the owners. And along with that come other benefits: education, health, social standing, and power. If owners tinker with the machine so that it benefits them more than others, they create a feedback loop where power and everything that flows with it calcifies within their families. And then you’ve got, basically, an aristocracy. So let’s break down the question we started with: is pure, “invisible hand” capitalism, with all the dials set to the extremes, broken? Yeah. But it’s also kind of irrelevant, since no country uses pure capitalism. Is contemporary capitalism— as it’s practiced in much of the world today— broken? Well, it’s the major driver of climate change and in many places is contributing to rising inequality. And it may even be creating a de facto aristocracy in certain countries, so, not looking good. The critical question is: can we fix contemporary capitalism by fiddling with the dials or restricting who can turn them, or do we need to tear the machine down and build a new one from scratch?
Government_Declassified	아테네에서_민주주의의_진실한_의미는_무엇인가_Melissa_Schwartzberg.txt	Hey, congratulations! You've just won the lottery, only the prize isn't cash or a luxury cruise. It's a position in your country's national legislature. And you aren't the only lucky winner. All of your fellow lawmakers were chosen in the same way. This might strike you as a strange way to run a government, let alone a democracy. Elections are the epitome of democracy, right? Well, the ancient Athenians who coined the word had another view. In fact, elections only played a small role in Athenian democracy, with most offices filled by random lottery from a pool of citizen volunteers. Unlike the representative democracies common today, where voters elect leaders to make laws and decisions on their behalf, 5th Century BC Athens was a direct democracy that encouraged wide participation through the principle of ho boulomenos, or anyone who wishes. This meant that any of its approximately 30,000 eligible citizens could attend the ecclesia, a general assembly meeting several times a month. In principle, any of the 6,000 or so who showed up at each session had the right to address their fellow citizens, propose a law, or bring a public lawsuit. Of course, a crowd of 6,000 people trying to speak at the same time would not have made for effective government. So the Athenian system also relied on a 500 member governing council called the Boule, to set the agenda and evaluate proposals, in addition to hundreds of jurors and magistrates to handle legal matters. Rather than being elected or appointed, the people in these positions were chosen by lot. This process of randomized selection is know as sortition. The only positions filled by elections were those recognized as requiring expertise, such as generals. But these were considered aristocratic, meaning rule by the best, as opposed to democracies, rule by the many. How did this system come to be? Well, democracy arose in Athens after long periods of social and political tension marked by conflict among nobles. Powers once restricted to elites, such as speaking in the assembly and having their votes counted, were expanded to ordinary citizens. And the ability of ordinary citizens to perform these tasks adequately became a central feature of the democratice ideology of Athens. Rather than a privilege, civic participation was the duty of all citizens, with sortition and strict term limits preventing governing classes or political parties from forming. By 21st century standards, Athenian rule by the many excluded an awful lot of people. Women, slaves and foreigners were denied full citizenship, and when we filter out those too young to serve, the pool of eligible Athenians drops to only 10-20% of the overall population. Some ancient philosophers, including Plato, disparaged this form of democracy as being anarchic and run by fools. But today the word has such positive associations, that vastly different regimes claim to embody it. At the same time, some share Plato's skepticism about the wisdom of crowds. Many modern democracies reconcile this conflict by having citizens elect those they consider qualified to legislate on their behalf. But this poses its own problems, including the influence of wealth, and the emergence of professional politicians with different interests than their constituents. Could reviving election by lottery lead to more effective government through a more diverse and representative group of legislatures? Or does modern political office, like Athenian military command, require specialized knowledge and skills? You probably shouldn't hold your breath to win a spot in your country's government. But depending on where you live, you may still be selected to participate in a jury, a citizens' assembly, or a deliberative poll, all examples of how the democratic principle behind sortition still survives today.
Government_Declassified	What_causes_an_economic_recession_Richard_Coffin.txt	For millennia, the people of Britain had been using bronze to make tools and jewelry, and as a currency for trade. But around 800 BCE, that began to change: the value of bronze declined, causing social upheaval and an economic crisis— what we would call a recession today. What causes recessions? This question has long been the subject of heated debate among economists, and for good reason. A recession can be a mild decline in economic activity in a single country that lasts months, a long-lasting downturn with global ramifications that last years, or anything in between. Complicating matters further, there are countless variables that contribute to an economy’s health, making it difficult to pinpoint specific causes. So it helps to start with the big picture: recessions occur when there is a negative disruption to the balance between supply and demand. There’s a mismatch between how many goods people want to buy, how many products and services producers can offer, and the price of the goods and services sold, which prompts an economic decline. An economy’s relationship between supply and demand is reflected in its inflation rates and interest rates. Inflation happens when goods and services get more expensive. Put another way, the value of money decreases. Still, inflation isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, a low inflation rate is thought to encourage economic activity. But high inflation that isn’t accompanied with high demand can both cause problems for an economy and eventually lead to a recession. Interest rates, meanwhile, reflect the cost of taking on debt for individuals and companies. The rate is typically an annual percentage of a loan that borrowers pay to their creditors until the loan is repaid. Low interest rates mean that companies can afford to borrow more money, which they can use to invest in more projects. High interest rates, meanwhile, increase costs for producers and consumers, slowing economic activity. Fluctuations in inflation and interest rates can give us insight into the health of the economy, but what causes these fluctuations in the first place? The most obvious causes are shocks like natural disaster, war, and geopolitical factors. An earthquake, for example, can destroy the infrastructure needed to produce important commodities such as oil. That forces the supply side of the economy to charge more for products that use oil, discouraging demand and potentially prompting a recession. But some recessions occur in times of economic prosperity— possibly even because of economic prosperity. Some economists believe that business activity from a market’s expansion can occasionally reach an unsustainable level. For example, corporations and consumers may borrow more money with the assumption that economic growth will help them handle the added burden. But if the economy doesn’t grow as quickly as expected, they may end up with more debt than they can manage. To pay it off, they’ll have to redirect funds from other activities, reducing business activity. Psychology can also contribute to a recession. Fear of a recession can become a self-fulfilling prophecy if it causes people to pull back investing and spending. In response, producers might cut operating costs to help weather the expected decline in demand. That can lead to a vicious cycle as cost cuts eventually lower wages, leading to even lower demand. Even policy designed to help prevent recessions can contribute. When times are tough, governments and central banks may print money, increase spending, and lower central bank interest rates. Smaller lenders can in turn lower their interest rates, effectively making debt “cheaper” to boost spending. But these policies are not sustainable and eventually need to be reversed to prevent excessive inflation. That can cause a recession if people have become too reliant on cheap debt and government stimulus. The Bronze recession in Britain eventually ended when the adoption of iron helped revolutionize farming and food production. Modern markets are more complex, making today’s recessions far more difficult to navigate. But each recession provides new data to help anticipate and respond to future recessions more effectively.
Government_Declassified	공화당을_탄생시킨_법안_벤_라바리_주니어.txt	Today when people complain about the state of American politics, they often mention the dominance of the Democratic and Republican Parties, or the sharp split between red and blue states. But while it may seem like both of these things have been around forever, the situation looked quite different in 1850, with the Republican Party not yet existing, and support for the dominant Democrats and Whigs cutting across geographic divides. The collapse of this Second Party System was at the center of increasing regional tensions that would lead to the birth of the Republican Party, the rise of Abraham Lincoln as its leader, and a civil war that would claim over half a million lives. And if this collapse could be blamed on a single event, it would be the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. The story starts with the Missouri Compromise of 1820. To balance the number of slave states and free states in the Union, it allowed slavery in the newly admitted state of Missouri, while making it off limits in the remaining federally administered Louisiana Territory. But compromises tend to last only as long as they're convenient, and by the early 1850s, a tenacious Democratic Senator from Illionis named Stephen A. Douglas found its terms very inconvenient. As an advocate of western expansion, he promoted constructing a transcontinental railroad across the Northern Plains with an eastern terminus in Chicago, where he happened to own real estate. For his proposal to succeed, Douglas felt that the territories through which the railroad passed, would have to be formally organized, which required the support of Southern politicians. He was also a believer in popular sovereignty, arguing that the status of slavery in a territory should be decided by its residents rather than Congress. So Douglas introduced a bill designed to kill two birds with one stone. It would divide the large chunk of incorporated land into two new organized territories: Nebraska and Kansas, each of which would be open to slavery if the population voted to allow it. While Douglas and his Southern supporters tried to frame the bill as protecting the political rights of settlers, horrified Northerners recognized it as repealing the 34-year-old Missouri Compromise and feared that its supporters' ultimate goal was to extend slavery to the entire nation. Congress was able to pass the Kansas-Nebraska Act, but at the huge cost of bitterly dividing the nation, with 91% of the opposition coming from Northerners. In the House of Representatives, politicians traded insults and brandished weapons until a Sargent at Arms restored order. President Pierce signed the bill into law amidst a storm of protest, while Georgia's Alexander Stephens, future Confederate Vice President, hailed the Act's passage as, "Glory enough for one day." The New York Tribune reported, "The unanimous sentiment of the North is indignant resistance." Douglas even admitted that he could travel from Washington D.C. to Chicago by the light of his own burning effigies. The political consequences of the Kansas-Nebraska Act were stunning. Previously, both Whigs and Democrats had included Northern and Southern lawmakers united around various issues, but now slavery became a dividing factor that could not be ignored. Congressmen from both parties spoke out against the act, including an Illinois Whig named Abraham Lincoln, denouncing "the monstrous injustice of slavery" in an 1854 speech. By this time the Whigs had all but ceased to exist, irreparably split between their Northern and Southern factions. In the same year, the new Republican Party was founded by the anti-slavery elements from both existing parties. Although Lincoln still ran for Senate as a Whig in 1854, he was an early supporter of the new party, and helped to recruit others to its cause. Meanwhile the Democratic Party was shaken when events in the newly formed Kansas Territory revealed the violent consequences of popular sovereignty. Advertisements appeared across the North imploring people to emigrate to Kansas to stem the advance of slavery. The South answered with Border Ruffians, pro-slavery Missourians who crossed state lines to vote in fraudulent elections and raid anti-slavery settlements. One northern abolitionist, John Brown, became notorious following the Pottawatomie Massacre of 1856 when he and his sons hacked to death five pro-slavery farmers with broad swords. In the end, more than 50 people died in Bleeding Kansas. While nominally still a national party, Douglas's Democrats were increasingly divided along sectional lines, and many Northern members left to join the Republicans. Abraham Lincoln finally took up the Republican Party banner in 1856 and never looked back. That year, John C. Fremont, the first Republican presidential candidate, lost to Democrat, James Buchanan, but garnered 33% of the popular vote all from Northern states. Two years later, Lincoln challenged Douglas for his Illinois Senate seat, and although he lost that contest, it elevated his status among Republicans. Lincoln would finally be vindicated in 1860, when he was elected President of the United States, defeating in his own home state, a certain Northern Democrat, who was finally undone by the disastrous aftermath of the law he had masterminded. Americans today continue to debate whether the Civil War was inevitable, but there is no doubt that the Kansas-Nebraska Act made the ghastly conflict much more likely. And for that reason, it should be remembered as one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in American history.
Government_Declassified	시위로_강력한_변화를_이끌어내는_방법에릭_리우_Eric_Liu.txt	We live in an age of protest. On campuses and public squares, on streets and social media, protesters around the world are challenging the status quo. Protest can thrust issues onto the national or global agenda, it can force out tyrants, it can activate people who have long been on the sidelines of civic life. While protest is often necessary, is it sufficient? Consider the Arab Spring. All across the Middle East, citizen protesters were able to topple dictators. Afterwards, though, the vacuum was too often filled by the most militant and violent. Protest can generate lasting positive change when it's followed by an equally passionate effort to mobilize voters, to cast ballots, to understand government, and to make it more inclusive. So here are three core strategies for peacefully turning awareness into action and protest into durable political power. First, expand the frame of the possible, second, choose a defining fight, and third, find an early win. Let's start with expanding the frame of the possible. How often have you heard in response to a policy idea, "That's just never going to happen"? When you hear someone say that, they're trying to define the boundaries of your civic imagination. The powerful citizen works to push those boundaries outward, to ask what if - what if it were possible? What if enough forms of power - people power, ideas, money, social norms - were aligned to make it happen? Simply asking that question and not taken as given all the givens of conventional politics is the first step in converting protest to power. But this requires concreteness about what it would look like to have, say, a radically smaller national government, or, by contrast, a big single-payer healthcare system, a way to hold corporations accountable for their misdeeds, or, instead, a way to free them from onerous regulations. This brings us to the second strategy, choosing a defining fight. All politics is about contrasts. Few of us think about civic life in the abstract. We think about things in relief compared to something else. Powerful citizens set the terms of that contrast. This doesn't mean being uncivil. It simply means thinking about a debate you want to have on your terms over an issue that captures the essence of the change you want. This is what the activists pushing for a $15 minimum wage in the U.S. have done. They don't pretend that $15 by itself can fix inequality, but with this ambitious and contentious goal, which they achieved first in Seattle and then beyond, they have forced a bigger debate about economic justice and prosperity. They've expanded the frame of the possible, strategy one, and created a sharp emblematic contrast, strategy two. The third key strategy, then, is to seek and achieve an early win. An early win, even if it's not as ambitious as the ultimate goal, creates momentum, which changes what people think is possible. The solidarity movement, which organized workers in Cold War Poland emerged just this way, first, with local shipyard strikes in 1980 that forced concessions, then, over the next decade, a nationwide effort that ultimately helped topple Poland's communist government. Getting early wins sets in motion a positive feedback loop, a contagion, a belief, a motivation. It requires pressuring policymakers, using the media to change narrative, making arguments in public, persuading skeptical neighbors one by one by one. None of this is as sexy as a protest, but this is the history of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, of Indian Independence, of Czech self-determination. Not the single sudden triumph, but the long, slow slog. You don't have to be anyone special to be part of this grind, to expand the frame of the possible, to pick a defining fight, or to secure an early win. You just have to be a participant and to live like a citizen. The spirit of protest is powerful. So is showing up after the protest. You can be the co-creator of what comes next.
Government_Declassified	게리멘더링_들쭉날쭉한_경계선이_선거에_미치는_영향_크리스티나_그리어.txt	Transcriber: tom carter Reviewer: Bedirhan Cinar Most people have heard the word "gerrymandering" once or twice, probably during a presidential election. What exactly is gerrymandering? Essentially, it's the process of giving one political party an advantage over another political party by redrawing district lines. It's like Democrats trying to gain an advantage over Republicans, or Republicans trying to gain an advantage over Democrats. You see, each party wants to gain as many districts as possible so they can do things like control the state budget, or set themselves up to win even more districts in the future. So to understand how this process began, and how it continues today, we must go back to 1812 in Massachusetts. Elbridge Gerry, the governor of Massachusetts, supported and signed a bill to allow redistricting. That is, redrawing the boundaries that separate districts. The catch? The new lines would favor Gerry's own political party, the Democratic-Republican party, which no longer exists. You see, Gerry wanted his party to win as many state Senate seats as possible. The more members of your party who vote, the more likely you are to win an election. The new lines were drawn to include loads of areas that would help Governor Gerry in the future. They were so strange looking that someone said the new districts looked like a salamander. The Boston Gazette added Gerry's name to the word salamander, and voilà! Gerrymandering, the process of dividing up and redrawing districts to give your political party an advantage. So how exactly does someone go about protecting their own political party, and actually gerrymandering a district? There are two successful practices. Packing a district, and cracking a district. Packing is the process of drawing district lines and packing in your opponents like cattle, into as few districts as possible. If more districts equals more votes, the fewer the districts there are, the fewer votes the opposition party will get. Packing, then, decreases the opponent's voter strength and influence. Cracking is the opposite: taking one district and cracking it into several pieces. This is usually done in districts where your opponent has many supporters. Cracking spreads these supporters out among many districts, denying your opponent a lot of votes. When you have a large number of people who would generally vote for one type of party, those folks are known as a voting bloc. Cracking is a way to break that all up. So when would a party choose to pack their opponent's districts rather than crack them? Well, that really depends on what the party needs. To dilute your opponent's voters, you could pack them into one district and leave the surrounding districts filled with voters of your own party. Or, if you and your party are in power when it's time to redraw district lines, you could redraw districts and crack up a powerful district and spread your opponent's voters out across several neighboring districts. So, Governor Gerry in 1812 wanted to gain an advantage for his party, and redrew district lines in his state in such a crazy way we have a whole new word and way of thinking about how political parties can gain advantages over their opponents. Politicians think of creative ways to draw districts every few years. So the next time an election comes around, and politicians ask people to vote, be sure to look up the shape of your district and the districts that surround it. How wide does your district stretch across your state? Are all of the districts in your state relatively the same shape? How many other districts does your district touch? But always be sure to ask yourself, does my district look like a salamander?
Government_Declassified	Can_the_economy_grow_forever.txt	Let’s say you discover a magical gold coin that doubles every 25 years. 75 years later, you’d only have eight coins. But 1,000 years later, you’d have over a trillion. And in just 4,600 years, your gold coins would outweigh the observable universe. This periodic doubling is an example of exponential growth, and while we’re not in any danger of discovering a real-life golden goose-coin, something almost as consequential has been growing like this for the past 200 or so years: the global economy. Many economists think that an eternally growing economy is necessary to keep improving people’s lives, and that if the global economy stops growing, people would fight more over the fixed amount of value that exists, rather than working to generate new value. That raises the question: is infinite growth possible on a finite planet? We measure economic growth by tracking the total financial value of everything a country (or the world) produces and sells on the market. These products can help us meet basic needs or improve our individual and collective quality of life. But they also, crucially, take resources to invent, build, or maintain. For example, this smartphone. It’s valuable in part because it contains aluminum, gallium, and silicon, all of which took energy and resources to mine, purify, and turn into a phone. It’s also valuable because of all the effort that went into designing the hardware and writing the software. And it’s also valuable because a guy in a black turtleneck got up on stage and told you it was. So how do we grow the total financial value of all things? One way is to make more things. Another way is to invent new things. However you do it, growing the economy requires resources and energy. And eventually, won’t we just run out? To answer this question, let's consider what goes into the economy and what comes out of it: its inputs are labor, capital— which you can think of as money— and natural resources, like water or energy. Its output is value. Over the past 200 years, economies have gotten exponentially more efficient at producing value. If we, as a species, are able to keep upgrading our economies so that they get ever-more efficient, we could theoretically pump out more and more value using the same— or, let’s be really ambitious here— fewer resources. So, how do we do that? How do we increase efficiency? With new technologies. This is where we hit a snag. New tech, in addition to making things more efficient, can also generate new demand, which ends up using more resources. We’re actually not in imminent danger of running out of most resources. But we have a much bigger and more immediate problem: the global economy, and in particular those of rich countries, is driving climate change and destroying valuable natural environments on which all of us depend— soil, forests, fisheries, and countless other resources that help keep our civilization running. So, what should we do? This is where economists disagree. Most economists think that new ideas will be able to fix most of these problems. They argue that, in the same way that exponentially increasing resource and energy use have fueled exponential economic growth, human ingenuity has also increased exponentially, and will rise to meet these challenges in ways that we simply can't predict. For example, between 2000 and 2014, Germany grew their GDP by 16%, while cutting CO2 emissions by 12%. That’s impressive, but it’s not cutting emissions fast enough to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. For this reason and others, some economists think the solution is to reengineer our economies completely. They make the case that what we should really be doing is weaning ourselves from the addiction to growth and shifting to a post-growth economy. What would that look like? A post-growth economy wouldn’t assume that the economy should grow; instead, it would require us to focus on improving what we really need— things like renewable energy, healthcare, and public transportation. To do that, post-growth economists suggest that rich countries should do things like guarantee living wages, reduce wealth and income inequality, and ensure universal access to public services, like healthcare. In such an economy, people would be theoretically less dependent on their jobs to earn their living or get healthcare, so it might be more feasible to scale down production of things deemed less necessary. But this raises other questions: who gets to define what’s necessary? How would we resolve the inevitable disagreements? Could we really do away with entire industries? The “we’ll come up with new ideas to solve these problems” approach can seem as realistic as, well, a magical gold coin. And the “we have to fundamentally change our economies” approach can seem politically daunting, particularly in rich countries. One way or another, we have to find a way to benefit everyone while also taking care of our planet.
Government_Declassified	Why_cant_governments_print_an_unlimited_amount_of_money_Jonathan_Smith.txt	In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic rocked economies worldwide. Millions of people lost their jobs, and many businesses struggled to survive or shut down completely. Governments responded with some of the largest economic relief packages in history— the United States alone spent $2.2 trillion on a first round of relief. So where did all this money come from? Most countries have a central bank that manages the money supply and is independent from the government to prevent political interference. The government can implement many types of economic policy, like decreasing people's taxes and creating jobs through public infrastructure projects, but it actually can’t just increase the money supply. The central bank determines how much money is in circulation at a time. So why can’t central banks authorize the printing of unlimited money to help an economy in crisis? They could, but that’s a short-term solution that doesn’t necessarily boost economic growth in the long-term, and can actually hurt the economy. Why? With more money in circulation, manufacturers of goods like food, clothing, and cars could respond to demand simply by raising prices, rather than manufacturing more of these goods and creating new jobs in the process. This would mean you could no longer buy as much with the same amount of money— a situation known as inflation. A little bit of inflation, about 2% a year, is considered a sign of economic health, but more can quickly derail an economy. In recent decades, central banks have tried an approach called quantitative easing to infuse the economy with cash while maintaining a low risk of severe inflation. In this approach, a central bank increases cash flow by purchasing another entity’s bonds. Anyone can buy bonds from corporations or governments. When you buy a bond, you’re essentially loaning money to the company— or government— with the promise that they’ll pay it back later with interest. This is why buying bonds is sometimes referred to as buying debt. When an individual buys a bond, they're using money that's already in circulation. But when the central bank buys a bond, it essentially creates cash, supplying money that didn’t exist before in exchange for bonds. Both during the 2008-2009 financial crisis and again in 2020, the United States’ central bank, the Federal Reserve, bought bonds from the US government called treasury bonds. Historically, many people have purchased these bonds as a safe form of investment, knowing the US government will pay them back with interest. In early 2020, the Federal Reserve pledged to buy unlimited treasury bonds, loaning the U.S. government an unprecedented amount of money— cash that the government used to fund relief efforts like stimulus checks and unemployment benefits. This isn’t equivalent to simply printing money, though it may sound similar. Because of the way bonds are priced, by buying so many, the Federal Reserve effectively lowered the return on them, which incentivizes other investors to lend to riskier entities— like small and midsize companies— in order to get a decent return. Encouraging lending this way should help companies of all sizes borrow money to funnel into projects and hires, boosting the economy over time in addition to helping the government supply people with urgently needed cash in the short term. The Federal Reserve’s pledge to buy unlimited government debt has raised some questions— and eyebrows. In theory, this means the government could issue more bonds, which the central bank would purchase. The government could then use the money from the new bonds to pay off the old bonds, effectively meaning the government never pays back its debt to the central bank. Citing this and other theoretical scenarios, some economists have raised concerns that a central bank buying government debt is a subversion of a system designed to protect the economy. Others have insisted these measures are necessary, and have so far helped stabilize economies. Though quantitative easing has become a lot more common in recent years, it’s still relatively new, and potential consequences are still unfolding.
Government_Declassified	미국_헌법의_탄생_쥬디_월턴_Judy_Walton.txt	Transcriber: tom carter Reviewer: Bedirhan Cinar It is the spring of 1787. The Revolutionary War has been over for only six years, and the young United States is still struggling in its infancy. Uprisings, boundary disputes and the lack of a common vision all plague the newborn country. In an effort to steady this precarious ship, the Confederation Congress calls on states to send delegates to the grand Convention, to begin on May 14 in Philadelphia. The delegates must draft revisions to the Articles of Confederation, which would then be considered by the Congress and approved by the states. Under the terms of the Articles, all 13 states had to agree to any changes. Since the purpose of the Convention is just to make recommendations, not everyone is excited about attending, and frankly, some think it's a waste of time. As men from different parts of the country began to travel down dusty, rugged roads on the way to Philadelphia, not all states send delegates. In fact, Rhode Island never even shows up. On May 14th, only 8 delegates -- not states, but individual delegates -- are present, so they wait. Finally, on May 25th, the necessary quorum of seven states is acheived. In all, 55 delegates arrive in Philadelphia over the course of the Convention. They are all white males, property owners, and the average age is about 44. Some are slaveholders, some had signed the Declaration of Independence, [James Madison, Roger Sherman] and almost all are well-educated. [Benjamin Franklin] Picture the delegates, James Madison and George Washington among them, sitting in Independence Hall in hot, humid Philadelphia. They're all wearing the dress of the day: frock coats, high collars and thick pants. They vote to keep their discussions secret to encourage honest debate. But that means the windows are closed, and there is no air conditioning in 1787, not even an electric fan. and they'll sit in that sweltering heat, in those heavy clothes, for three months. Shockingly, they all keep their vow of secrecy. That could never happen today, not even for an hour-long meeting. Someone would share "James Madison thinks he's so smart. Keyword: articles are dead" via social media, and the whole thing would be a disaster. But in 1787, there are no leaks. Not even a drip that hints at what they are doing. And what they are doing is nothing short of overthrowing the very government that sent them there. Within a few days, with only a seven-state quorum, and only six of those states agreeing, a handful of men change the course of history. They vote to get rid of the Articles of Confederation, and write a new, more nationalistic document that becomes our Constitution. The risk is immense. Everyone on the outside assumes they were working on recommended revisions to the Articles. It's an incredible gamble, and even when the Convention presents the signed Constitution on September 17th, not all delegates endorse it. The country will argue and debate for two more years before the document is adopted by the required nine out of 13 states. But instead of punishing them for their deception, today we celebrate the wisdom and vision of those men in Philadelphia.
Government_Declassified	The_story_behind_the_Boston_Tea_Party_Ben_Labaree.txt	Transcriber: Andrea McDonough Reviewer: Bedirhan Cinar You've probably heard of the Boston Tea Party, something about a bunch of angry colonists dressed as Native Americans throwing chests of tea into the water. But the story is far more complicated, filled with imperial intrigue, corporate crisis, smuggling, and the grassroots origins of the American Revolution. The first thing you need to know about tea in the 1700's is that it was really, really popular. In England, each man, woman, and child consumed almost 300 cups of this stuff every year. And, since the English colonized America, Americans were crazy about tea too. By the 1760's, they were drinking over a million pounds of tea every year. So, when Britain wanted to increase taxes on tea in America, people were not happy, mostly because they had no say in tax decisions made in London. Remember that famous phrase, "No taxation without representation"? The American colonists had long believed that they were not subject to taxes imposed by legislature in which they lacked representation. In fact, rather than paying the taxes, they simply dodged the tax collectors. Since the east coast of America is hundreds of miles long and British enforcement was lax, about 3/4 of the tea Americans were drinking was smuggled in, usually from Holland. But the British insisted that Parliament did have the authority to tax the colonists, especially after Britain went deeply into debt fighting the French in the Seven Years' War. To close the budget gap, London looked to Americans, and in 1767 imposed new taxes on a variety of imports, including the American's beloved tea. America's response: no thanks! They boycotted the importation of tea from Britain, and instead, brewed their own. After a new bunch of British customs commissioners cried to London for troops to help with tax enforcement, things got so heated that the Red Coats fired on a mob in Boston, killing several people, in what was soon called the Boston Massacre. Out of the terms of the 1773 Tea Act, Parliament cooked up a new strategy. Now the East India Company would sell the surplus tea directly through hand-picked consignees in America. This would lower the price to consumers, making British tea competitive with the smuggled variety while retaining some of the taxes. But the colonists saw through the British ploy and cried, "Monopoly!" Now it's a cold and rainy December 16, 1773. About 5,000 Bostonians are crowded into the Old South Meeting House, waiting to hear whether new shipments of tea that have arrived down the harbor will be unloaded for sale. When the captain of one of those ships reported that he could not leave with his cargo on board, Sam Adams rose to shout, "This meeting can do no more to save the country!" Cries of "Boston Harbor a teapot tonight!" rang out from the crowd, and about 50 men, some apparently dressed as Native Americans, marched down to Griffin's Wharf, stormed aboard three ships, and threw 340 tea chests overboard. An infuriated British government responsded with the so-called Coercive Acts of 1774, which, among other things, closed the port of Boston until the locals compensated the East India Company for the tea. That never happened. Representatives of the colonies gathered at Philadelphia to consider how best to respond to continued British oppression. This first Continental Congress supported destruction of the tea, pledged to support a continued boycott, and went home in late October 1774 even more united in their determination to protect their rights and liberties. The Boston Tea Party began a chain reaction that led with little pause to the Declaration of Independence and a bloody rebellion, after which the new nation was free to drink its tea, more or less, in peace.
Government_Declassified	The_rise_of_modern_populism_Takis_S_Pappas.txt	In the mid-1970s, after decades of political turmoil, Greece finally seemed to be on the path to stability. With the introduction of a new constitution and negotiations underway to enter European institutions, many analysts expected Greek politics to follow the pattern of the larger Western world. Then in 1981, a political party called PASOK came to power. Its charismatic leader Andreas Papandreou railed against the new constitution, and accused those in power of “national betrayal.” Opposing Greece’s membership in NATO and the European Economic Community, Papandreou promised to govern for the betterment of the “common people" above all else. He famously declared, “there are no institutions, only the people exist.” Papandreou’s rise to power isn’t a unique story. In many democratic countries around the world, charismatic leaders vilify political opponents, disparage institutions, and claim the mantle of the people. Some critics label this approach as authoritarian or fascist, and many argue that these leaders are using emotions to manipulate and deceive voters. But whether or not this style of politics is ethical, it's certainly democratic, and it goes by the name of populism. The term populism has been around since Ancient Rome, and has its roots in the Latin word “populus” meaning “the people." But since then populism has been used to describe dozens of political movements, often with counterintuitive and sometimes contradictory goals. Populist movements have rebelled against monarchies, monopolies, and a wide variety of powerful institutions. It’s not possible to cover the full history of this term here. Instead, we’re focusing on one specific type of populism— the kind that describes Papandreou’s administration and numerous other governments over the last 70 years: modern populism. But to understand how political theorists define this phenomenon we first need to explore what it’s responding to. In the aftermath of World War Two, many countries wanted to move away from totalitarian ideologies. They sought a new political system that prioritized individual and social rights, aimed at political consensus, and respected the rule of law. As a result, most Western nations adopted a longstanding form of government called liberal democracy. In this context, “liberal” doesn’t refer to any political party, but rather a type of democracy that has three essential components. First, liberal democracies accept that society is full of many, often crosscutting divisions that generate conflict. Second, it requires that society’s many factions seek common ground across those divisions. Finally, liberal democracies rely on the rule of law and the protection of minority rights, as specified in constitutions and legal statutes. Taken together, these ideals propose that tolerance and institutions that protect us from intolerance, are the bedrock of a functional and diverse democratic society. Liberal democracies helped bring stability to the nations that adopted them. But like any system of government, they didn’t solve everything. Among other issues, an ever-increasing wealth gap led to underserved communities who distrusted both their wealthy neighbors and their political leaders. In some cases, political corruption further damaged the public's trust. Growing suspicion and resentment around these politicians primed citizens to look for a new kind of leader who would challenge established institutions and put the needs of the people first. In many ways, this reaction highlights democracy in action: if the majority of a population feels their interests are underrepresented, they can elect leaders to change that using existing democratic systems. But this is where assertive, modern populist candidates can subvert democracy. Modern populists identify themselves as embodying the "will of the people," and they place those interests above the institutions that protect individual and social rights. Modern populists argue these institutions are run by a self-serving ruling minority, who seek to control the vast majority of virtuous common people. As a result, politics is no longer about seeking compromise and consensus through tolerant democratic institutions. Instead, these leaders seek to overturn what they see as a broken system. This means that where a liberal democracy has the utmost respect for institutions like courtrooms, free press, and national constitutions, modern populists disparage any establishment that disagrees with the so-called “common will." Modern populist parties have arisen in many places, but the leaders of these movements are remarkably similar. They’re often charismatic individuals who identify themselves as embodying the “will of the people." They make exorbitant promises to their supporters, while casting their opponents as traitors actively undermining the country. But whether these politicians are sincere believers or manipulative opportunists, the dynamics they unleash can be profoundly destabilizing for liberal democracy. Even when modern populist leaders don’t follow through with their most extreme promises, their impact on political discourse, the rule of law, and public trust can long outlast their time in office.
Government_Declassified	3분_권리장전_안내_벨린다_스터츠먼_Belinda_Stutzman.txt	Transcriber: tom carter Reviewer: Bedirhan Cinar The first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution -- also known as the Bill of Rights -- were ratified or passed over 200 years ago. But even though they're a bit, well, old, these first 10 amendments are still the most debated and discussed section of our Constitution today. So, can you remember what they are? Let's take a look. The First Amendment is the freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly and petition. This may be the most revered of the amendments. The First Amendment protects our rights to say and write our opinions, worship how we please, assemble together peacefully and petition our government, if we feel the need. The Second Amendment is the right to bear arms. The original intent of the Second Amendment was to protect colonists from the invading British soldiers, but it now guarantees that you have the right to own a gun to defend yourself and your property. The Third Amendment is called the "Quartering" amendment. It was written in response to the British occupation, and as a result of the colonists having to house -- or quarter -- soldiers in their homes during the American Revolution. Because of this amendment, our government can never force us to house soldiers in our home. The Fourth Amendment is the right to search and seizure. The police can't come into our home without a search warrant and take our personal property. Today, many concerns have arisen about our rights to privacy in technology. For example, can the government track your location with your smartphone, or can social media postings such as on Facebook and Twitter be used without a warrant? On to the Fifth: It's all about due process. You've probably heard the phrase "I plead the Fifth" in movies or on TV. They're talking about the Fifth Amendment, which says that you don't have to take the witness stand against yourself if you may end up incriminating yourself. OK, we're halfway done. The Sixth and Seventh Amendments are about how the legal system works. If you're accused of a crime, you have the right to a speedy public trial and an impartial jury. You also have the right to a lawyer, and the right to take the stand if you choose. This is important because it will prevent the accused from sitting in prison forever and insists that the prosecution proceed with undue delay. The Seventh says you have the right to a jury trial, where 12 impartial peers decide your innocence or guilt in the courtroom, as opposed to a judge doing it all alone. The Eight Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Is the death penalty cruel? Is it unusual? It's hard for Americans to agree on the definitions of cruel and unusual. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments are called the non-rights amendments. They say that the rights not listed in the Bill of Rights are retained by the people in the states. We have other rights that are not listed in the Constitution, and the states have the right to make their own policies, like instituting state taxes. So now you know all 10 amendments. Can you remember them all? If not, remember this: the Bill of Rights is a crucial piece of American history, and though society has undergone many changes these past 200 and some years, the interpretation and application of these amendments are as vital today as they were when they were written.
Government_Declassified	How_to_understand_power_Eric_Liu.txt	Every day of your life, you move through systems of power that other people made. Do you sense them? Do you understand power? Do you realize why it matters? Power is something we are often uncomfortable talking about. That's especially true in civic life, how we live together in community. In a democracy, power is supposed to reside with the people, period. Any further talk about power and who really has it seems a little dirty, maybe even evil. But power is no more inherently good or evil than fire or physics. It just is. It governs how any form of government works. It determines who gets to determine the rules of the game. So learning how power operates is key to being effective, being taken seriously, and not being taken advantage of. In this lesson, we'll look at where power comes from, how it's exercised and what you can do to become more powerful in public life. Let's start with a basic definition. Power is the ability to make others do what you would have them do. Of course, this plays out in all arenas of life, from family to the workplace to our relationships. Our focus is on the civic arena, where power means getting a community to make the choices and to take the actions that you want. There are six main sources of civic power. First, there's physical force and a capacity for violence. Control of the means of force, whether in the police or a militia, is power at its most primal. A second core source of power is wealth. Money creates the ability to buy results and to buy almost any other kind of power. The third form of power is state action, government. This is the use of law and bureaucracy to compel people to do or not do certain things. In a democracy, for example, we the people, theoretically, give government its power through elections. In a dictatorship, state power emerges from the threat of force, not the consent of the governed. The fourth type of power is social norms or what other people think is okay. Norms don't have the centralized machinery of government. They operate in a softer way, peer to peer. They can certainly make people change behavior and even change laws. Think about how norms around marriage equality today are evolving. The fifth form of power is ideas. An idea, individual liberties, say, or racial equality, can generate boundless amounts of power if it motivates enough people to change their thinking and actions. And so the sixth source of power is numbers, lots of humans. A vocal mass of people creates power by expressing collective intensity of interest and by asserting legitimacy. Think of the Arab Spring or the rise of the Tea Party. Crowds count. These are the six main sources of power, what power is. So now, let's think about how power operates. There are three laws of power worth examining. Law number one: power is never static. It's always either accumulating or decaying in a civic arena. So if you aren't taking action, you're being acted upon. Law number two: power is like water. It flows like a current through everyday life. Politics is the work of harnessing that flow in a direction you prefer. Policymaking is an effort to freeze and perpetuate a particular flow of power. Policy is power frozen. Law number three: power compounds. Power begets more power, and so does powerlessness. The only thing that keeps law number three from leading to a situation where only one person has all the power is how we apply laws one and two. What rules do we set up so that a few people don't accumulate too much power, and so that they can't enshrine their privilege in policy? That's the question of democracy, and you can see each of these laws at work in any news story. Low wage workers organize to get higher pay. Oil companies push to get a big pipeline approved. Gay and lesbian couples seek the legal right to marry. Urban parents demand school vouchers. You may support these efforts or not. Whether you get what you want depends on how adept you are with power, which brings us finally to what you can do to become more powerful in public life. Here, it's useful to think in terms of literacy. Your challenge is to learn how to read power and write power. To read power means to pay attention to as many texts of power as you can. I don't mean books only. I mean seeing society as a set of texts. Don't like how things are in your campus or city or country? Map out who has what kind of power, arrayed in what systems. Understand why it turned out this way, who's made it so, and who wants to keep it so. Study the strategies others in such situations used: frontal attack or indirection, coalitions or charismatic authority. Read so you may write. To write power requires first that you believe you have the right to write, to be an author of change. You do. As with any kind of writing, you learn to express yourself, speak up in a voice that's authentic. Organize your ideas, then organize other people. Practice consensus building. Practice conflict. As with writing, it's all about practice. Every day you have a chance to practice, in your neighborhood and beyond. Set objectives, then bigger ones. Watch the patterns, see what works. Adapt, repeat. This is citizenship. In this short lesson, we've explored where civic power comes from, how it works and what you can do to exercise it. One big question remaining is the "why" of power. Do you want power to benefit everyone or only you? Are your purposes pro-social or anti-social? This question isn't about strategy. It's about character, and that's another set of lessons. But remember this: Power plus character equals a great citizen, and you have the power to be one.
Government_Declassified	배심원_제도에_일어나고_있는_일들_수자_토마스Suja_A_Thomas.txt	Dating back at least to the time of Socrates, some early societies decided that certain disputes, such as whether a person committed a particular crime, should be heard by a group of citizens. Several centuries later, trial by jury was introduced to England, where it became a fundamental feature of the legal system, checking the government and involving citizens in decision-making. Juries decided whether defendants would be tried on crimes, determined whether the accused defendants were guilty, and resolved monetary disputes. While the American colonies eventually cast off England's rule, its legal tradition of the jury persisted. The United States Constitution instructed a grand jury to decide whether criminal cases proceeded, required a jury to try all crimes, except impeachment, and provided for juries in civil cases as well. Yet, in the US today, grand juries often are not convened, and juries decide less than 4% of criminal cases and less than 1% of civil cases filed in court. That's at the same time as jury systems in other countries are growing. So what happened in the U.S.? Part of the story lies in how the Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution. It's permitted plea bargaining, which now occurs in almost every criminal case. The way it works is the prosecutor presents the accused with a decision of whether to plead guilty. If they accept the plea, the case won't go in front of a jury, but they'll receive a shorter prison sentence than they'd get if a jury did convict them. The risk of a much greater prison sentence after a trial can frighten even an innocent defendant into taking a plea. Between the 19th century and the 21st century, the proportion of guilty pleas has increased from around 20% to 90%, and the numbers continue to grow. The Supreme Court has permitted the use of another procedure that interferes with the jury called summary judgement. Using summary judgement, judges can decide that civil trials are unnecessary if the people who sue have insufficient evidence. This is intended only for cases where no reasonable jury would disagree. That's a difficult thing to determine, yet usage of summary judgement has stretched to the point where some would argue it's being abused. For instance, judges grant fully, or in part, over 70% of employers' requests to dismiss employment discrimination cases. In other cases, both the person who sues and the person who defends forgo their right to go to court, instead resolving their dispute through a professional arbitrator. These are generally lawyers, professors, or former judges. Arbitration can be a smart decision by both parties to avoid the requirements of a trial in court, but it's often agreed to unwittingly when people sign contracts like employment applications and consumer agreements. That can become a problem. For example, some arbitrators may be biased towards the companies that give them cases. These are just some of the ways in which juries have disappeared. But could the disappearance of juries be a good thing? Well, juries aren't perfect. They're costly, time-consuming, and may make errors. And they're not always necessary, like when people can simply agree to settle their disputes. But juries have their advantages. When properly selected, jurors are more representative of the general population and don't have the same incentives as prosecutors, legislators, or judges seeking reelection or promotion. The founders of the United States trusted in the wisdom of impartial groups of citizens to check the power of all three branches of government. And the jury trial itself has given ordinary citizens a central role in upholding the social fabric. So will the jury system in the U.S. survive into the future?
TEDEd_World_History	Why_is_cotton_in_everything_Michael_R_Stiff.txt	Centuries ago, the Inca developed ingenuous suits of armor that could flex with the blows of sharp spears and maces, protecting warriors from even the fiercest physical attacks. These hardy structures were made not from iron or steel, but rather something unexpectedly soft: cotton. These thickly woven, layered quilts of cotton could distribute the energy from a blow across a large surface area, shielding warriors without restricting their mobility. These seemingly contradictory features— strength and flexibility, softness and durability— have their roots in the intricate biology of the nearly invisible cotton fiber. These fibers begin life deep within a cotton flower, on the surface of a seed. As many as 16,000 fibers will festoon a single seed, bulging from the seed’s surface like miniature water balloons. Each cotton fiber, no matter how large it grows, is made of just one cell. That cell has multiple layers of cell wall. After a few days, the sides of the first layer, called the primary cell wall, stiffen, pushing cell growth in one direction and causing the fiber to elongate. The fiber elongates quickly for about 16 days. Then it begins the next stage: strengthening the cell wall. It does this by making more of the carbohydrate cellulose. Cellulose will make up 34% of the cell wall at this stage and swiftly increases. This new growth also reinforces the cell wall by going against the grain of the existing wall. The strengthened wall is more rigid, restricting further growth. That means if the fiber remodels its walls too early, it will be short, and ultimately make rough, weak fabrics. But if cell wall strengthening begins too late, the wall won’t be sturdy enough— producing fibers that are too weak to hold fabrics together well. In ideal growing conditions— with the right temperature, water, fertilizer, pest control, and light— a cotton fiber can grow up to 3.6 centimeters long with only a 25 micrometer width. Long, fine fibers can wrap around one another better than shorter, less fine fibers, which means those long, fine fibers make stronger threads that hang together better as fabric. Cotton with these qualities has diverse uses— from soft textiles to the U.S. dollar bill, which is 75% cotton. The next crucial stage of the cotton fiber’s growth begins as it thickens its secondary cell wall by depositing large quantities of cellulose into the secondary layer. Cellulose goes on to make up over 90% of the fiber’s weight. The more cellulose that gets deposited, the denser that secondary layer becomes— and this determines the strength of the final fiber. This stage is essential for developing long-lasting material for the likes of, say, a t-shirt. The garment’s capacity to withstand years of washing and wear is largely determined by the density of that secondary cell wall. On the other hand, its softness is strongly influenced by the length of the fiber, established with the remodeling of the primary wall layer. Finally, after about 50 days, the fiber is fully grown. The living matter within the cell dies off, leaving behind only the cellulose. The dried cotton seed pod, or boll, that surrounds the fibers cracks open, unveiling a burst of several thousand fiber cells in a fluffy mass. The thread-like fibers we see— thinner than a human hair— are the remains of those dense, dried out walls of cellulose. Tens of thousands of these fibers spun into yarn will go on to make everything from fabric, to coffee filters, diapers, and fishing nets. And with the help of modern science, cotton might soon be softer, stronger, and more resilient than ever as researchers investigate how to optimize its growth based on nutrients, weather conditions, and genetics.
TEDEd_World_History	히틀러는_어떻게_힘을_얻을_수_있었을까_알렉스_겐들러_안토니_하자드Alex_Gendler_Anthony_Hazard.txt	How did Adolf Hitler, a tyrant who orchestrated one of the largest genocides in human history, rise to power in a democratic country? The story begins at the end of World War I. With the successful Allied advance in 1918, Germany realized the war was unwinnable and signed an armistice ending the fighting. As its imperial government collapsed, civil unrest and worker strikes spread across the nation. Fearing a Communist revolution, major parties joined to suppress the uprisings, establishing the parliamentary Weimar Republic. One of the new government's first tasks was implementing the peace treaty imposed by the Allies. In addition to losing over a tenth of its territory and dismantling its army, Germany had to accept full responsibility for the war and pay reparations, debilitating its already weakened economy. All this was seen as a humiliation by many nationalists and veterans. They wrongly believed the war could have been won if the army hadn't been betrayed by politicians and protesters. For Hitler, these views became obsession, and his bigotry and paranoid delusions led him to pin the blame on Jews. His words found resonance in a society with many anti-Semitic people. By this time, hundreds of thousands of Jews had integrated into German society, but many Germans continued to perceive them as outsiders. After World War I, Jewish success led to ungrounded accusations of subversion and war profiteering. It can not be stressed enough that these conspiracy theories were born out of fear, anger, and bigotry, not fact. Nonetheless, Hitler found success with them. When he joined a small nationalist political party, his manipulative public speaking launched him into its leadership and drew increasingly larger crowds. Combining anti-Semitism with populist resentment, the Nazis denounced both Communism and Capitalism as international Jewish conspiracies to destroy Germany. The Nazi party was not initially popular. After they made an unsuccessful attempt at overthrowing the government, the party was banned, and Hitler jailed for treason. But upon his release about a year later, he immediately began to rebuild the movement. And then, in 1929, the Great Depression happened. It led to American banks withdrawing their loans from Germany, and the already struggling German economy collapsed overnight. Hitler took advantage of the people's anger, offering them convenient scapegoats and a promise to restore Germany's former greatness. Mainstream parties proved unable to handle the crisis while left-wing opposition was too fragmented by internal squabbles. And so some of the frustrated public flocked to the Nazis, increasing their parliamentary votes from under 3% to over 18% in just two years. In 1932, Hitler ran for president, losing the election to decorated war hero General von Hindenburg. But with 36% of the vote, Hitler had demonstrated the extent of his support. The following year, advisors and business leaders convinced Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as Chancellor, hoping to channel his popularity for their own goals. Though the Chancellor was only the administrative head of parliament, Hitler steadily expanded the power of his position. While his supporters formed paramilitary groups and fought protestors in streets. Hitler raised fears of a Communist uprising and argued that only he could restore law and order. Then in 1933, a young worker was convicted of setting fire to the parliament building. Hitler used the event to convince the government to grant him emergency powers. Within a matter of months, freedom of the press was abolished, other parties were disbanded, and anti-Jewish laws were passed. Many of Hitler's early radical supporters were arrested and executed, along with potential rivals, and when President Hindenburg died in August 1934, it was clear there would be no new election. Disturbingly, many of Hitler's early measures didn't require mass repression. His speeches exploited people's fear and ire to drive their support behind him and the Nazi party. Meanwhile, businessmen and intellectuals, wanting to be on the right side of public opinion, endorsed Hitler. They assured themselves and each other that his more extreme rhetoric was only for show. Decades later, Hitler's rise remains a warning of how fragile democratic institutions can be in the face of angry crowds and a leader willing to feed their anger and exploit their fears.
TEDEd_World_History	What_makes_the_Great_Wall_of_China_so_extraordinary_Megan_Campisi_and_PenPen_Chen.txt	A 13,000 mile dragon of earth and stone winds its way through the countryside of China with a history almost as long and serpentine as the structure. The Great Wall began as multiple walls of rammed earth built by individual feudal states during the Chunqiu period to protect against nomadic raiders north of China and each other. When Emperor Qin Shi Huang unified the states in 221 BCE, the Tibetan Plateau and Pacific Ocean became natural barriers, but the mountains in the north remained vulnerable to Mongol, Turkish, and Xiongnu invasions. To defend against them, the Emperor expanded the small walls built by his predecessors, connecting some and fortifying others. As the structures grew from Lintao in the west to Liaodong in the east, they collectively became known as The Long Wall. To accomplish this task, the Emperor enlisted soldiers and commoners, not always voluntarily. Of the hundreds of thousands of builders recorded during the Qin Dynasty, many were forcibly conscripted peasants and others were criminals serving out sentences. Under the Han Dynasty, the wall grew longer still, reaching 3700 miles, and spanning from Dunhuang to the Bohai Sea. Forced labor continued under the Han Emperor Han-Wudi , and the walls reputation grew into a notorious place of suffering. Poems and legends of the time told of laborers buried in nearby mass graves, or even within the wall itself. And while no human remains have been found inside, grave pits do indicate that many workers died from accidents, hunger and exhaustion. The wall was formidable but not invincible. Both Genghis and his son Khublai Khan managed to surmount the wall during the Mongol invasion of the 13th Century. After the Ming dynasty gained control in 1368, they began to refortify and further consolidate the wall using bricks and stones from local kilns. Averaging 23 feet high and 21 feet wide, the walls 5500 miles were punctuated by watchtowers. When raiders were sighted, fire and smoke signals traveled between towers until reinforcements arrived. Small openings along the wall let archers fire on invaders, while larger ones were used to drop stones and more. But even this new and improved wall was not enough. In 1644, northern Manchu clans overthrew the Ming to establish the Qing dynasty, incorporating Mongolia as well, Thus, for the second time, China was ruled by the very people the wall had tried to keep out. With the empire's borders now extending beyond the Great Wall, the fortifications lost their purpose. And without regular reinforcement, the wall fell into disrepair, rammed earth eroded, while brick and stone were plundered for building materials. But its job wasn't finished. During World War II, China used sections for defense against Japanese invasion, and some parts are still rumored to be used for military training. But the Wall's main purpose today is cultural. As one of the largest man-made structures on Earth, it was granted UNESCO World Heritage Status in 1987. Originally built to keep people out of China, the Great Wall now welcomes millions of visitors each year. In fact, the influx of tourists has caused the wall to deteriorate, leading the Chinese government to launch preservation initiatives. It's also often acclaimed as the only man-made structure visible from space. Unfortunately, that's not at all true. In low Earth orbit, all sorts of structures, like bridges, highways and airports are visible, and the Great Wall is only barely discernible. From the moon, it doesn't stand a chance. But regardless, it's the Earth we should be studying it from because new sections are still discovered every few years, branching off from the main body and expanding this remarkable monument to human achievement.
TEDEd_World_History	A_day_in_the_life_of_an_ancient_Athenian_Robert_Garland.txt	It’s 427 BCE and the worst internal conflict ever to occur in the ancient Greek world is in its fourth year. The Peloponnesian War is being fought between the city-states of Athens and Sparta, as well as their allies. The Athenians can’t match the formidable Spartan army on land. So they’ve abandoned the countryside and moved inside the walls surrounding their city and port, now provisioned by a superior fleet and extensive maritime empire. The cramped conditions have taken a toll and a recent plague wiped out a third of the population. But city life goes on. Archias and Dexileia live in the center of Athens. As a painter of high-class pottery, Archias is relatively well-off and takes great interest in the city’s affairs. Dexileia, on the other hand, can't participate in politics or own property. The couple are grateful to the gods that three of their four children, a son and two daughters, have survived past infancy. Many parents see daughters as a liability since they require dowries to find husbands. But Archias is confident that his wealth will allow him to make good matches for them without going bankrupt. Like many Athenians, the family owns slaves. Originally from Thrace, they were captured in war. Thratta does most of the housework and helps raise the children. Philon is a paidagôgos, who supervises the son’s education, teaching him reading and writing. Archias is up early because there’s a meeting of the Ekklêsia, the assembly of citizens, taking place at dawn. Before setting out, he burns incense and pours a libation at the small shrine in the courtyard on behalf of his entire household. Dexileia will remain at home all day, teaching her daughters domestic skills. Later, she’ll retire to the inner courtyard for some fresh air. When Archias arrives at the agora, the civic and commercial heart of the city, he finds the square swarming with his fellow citizens, native-born adult males who have completed military training. Attached to the central monument is a noticeboard with the meeting’s agenda. Today, there’s only one item of discussion: what to do with the people of Mytilene, a city on the island of Lesbos where a revolt against Athenian rule has just been put down. The meeting takes place on a hill west of the acropolis known as the Pnyx. The word means “tightly packed," and the crowd of 5,000 citizens makes it clear why. The heralds purify the hill by sprinkling its boundary with pig’s blood and call for order. As everyone sits on benches facing the platform, the presiding officer opens the meeting with the words: “Tis agoreuein bouleutai?” “Who wishes to address the assembly?” One by one, citizens speak, some advising mercy, others bent on vengeance. A motion is proposed to execute all the Mytileneans and enslave their women and children because they betrayed their Athenian allies during a time of war. A majority raises their right hands in favor. Once the meeting’s over, Archias heads back to the agora to buy food and wine. Hundreds have gathered there to discuss the results, many unhappy with the decision. When Archias returns home, he tells Dexileia about the debate. She thinks that killing the innocent as well as the guilty is harsh and counterproductive, and tells him as much. Around dusk, Archias goes to a friend’s house for a symposium. The nine men drink wine and discuss the meeting well into the night. Archias shares his wife’s opinion urging mercy, and his friends eventually agree. Before dawn, something unprecedented happens. Heralds circulate throughout Athens announcing the council has called another meeting. The second debate is equally heated, but a new resolution, to execute only the leaders of the revolt, narrowly passes. Yet there’s a problem – a ship with orders to carry out the first resolution was dispatched the previous day. And so another ship quickly sets sail to countermand the order – a race of democracy against time.
TEDEd_World_History	Historys_worst_nun_Theresa_A_Yugar.txt	Juana Ramírez de Asbaje sat before a panel of prestigious theologians, jurists, and mathematicians. The viceroy of New Spain had invited them to test the young woman’s knowledge by posing the most difficult questions they could muster. But Juana successfully answered every challenge, from complicated equations to philosophical queries. Observers would later liken the scene to “a royal galleon fending off a few canoes.” The woman who faced this interrogation was born in the mid-17th century. At that time, Mexico had been a Spanish colony for over a century, leading to a complex and stratified class system. Juana’s maternal grandparents were born in Spain, making them members of Mexico’s most esteemed class. But Juana was born out of wedlock, and her father – a Spanish military captain – left her mother, Doña Isabel, to raise Juana and her sisters alone. Fortunately, her grandfather’s moderate means ensured the family a comfortable existence. And Doña Isabel set a strong example for her daughters, successfully managing one of her father’s two estates, despite her illiteracy and the misogyny of the time. It was perhaps this precedent that inspired Juana’s lifelong confidence. At age three, she secretly followed her older sister to school. When she later learned that higher education was open only to men, she begged her mother to let her attend in disguise. Her request denied, Juana found solace in her grandfather’s private library. By early adolescence, she’d mastered philosophical debate, Latin, and the Aztec language Nahuatl. Juana’s precocious intellect attracted attention from the royal court in Mexico City, and when she was sixteen, the viceroy and his wife took her in as their lady-in-waiting. Here, her plays and poems alternately dazzled and outraged the court. Her provocative poem Foolish Men infamously criticized sexist double standards, decrying how men corrupt women while blaming them for immorality. Despite its controversy, her work still inspired adoration, and numerous proposals. But Juana was more interested in knowledge than marriage. And in the patriarchal society of the time, there was only one place she could find it. The Church, while still under the zealous influence of the Spanish Inquisition, would allow Juana to retain her independence and respectability while remaining unmarried. At age 20, she entered the Hieronymite Convent of Santa Paula and took on her new name: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. For years, Sor Juana was considered a prized treasure of the church. She wrote dramas, comedies, and treatises on philosophy and mathematics, in addition to religious music and poetry. She accrued a massive library, and was visited by many prominent scholars. While serving as the convent’s treasurer and archivist, she also protected the livelihoods of her niece and sisters from men who tried to exploit them. But her outspokenness ultimately brought her into conflict with her benefactors. In 1690, a bishop published Sor Juana’s private critique of a respected sermon. In the publication, he admonished Sor Juana to devote herself to prayer rather than debate. She replied that God would not have given women intellect if he did not want them to use it. The exchange caught the attention of the conservative Archbishop of Mexico. Slowly, Sor Juana was stripped of her prestige, forced to sell her books and give up writing. Furious at this censorship, but unwilling to leave the church, she bitterly renewed her vows. In her last act of defiance, she signed them “I, the worst of all,” in her own blood. Deprived of scholarship, Sor Juana threw herself into charity work, and in 1695, she died of an illness she contracted while nursing her sisters. Today, Sor Juana has been recognized as the first feminist in the Americas. She’s the subject of countless documentaries, novels, and operas, and appears on Mexico’s 200-peso banknote. In the words of Nobel laureate Octavio Paz: “It is not enough to say that Sor Juana’s work is a product of history; we must add that history is also a product of her work.”
TEDEd_World_History	The_first_and_last_king_of_Haiti_Marlene_Daut.txt	The royal couple of Haiti rode into their coronation to thunderous applause. After receiving his ornate crown and scepter, Henry Christophe ascended his throne, towering 20 meters in the air. But little did the cheering onlookers know that the first king of Haiti would also be its last. Enslaved at birth on the island of Grenada, Christophe spent his childhood being moved between multiple Caribbean islands. Just 12 years old in 1779, he accompanied his master to aid the American revolutionaries in the Battle of Savannah. This prolonged siege would be Christophe’s first encounter with violent revolution. There are few surviving written records about Christophe’s life immediately after the war. Over the next decade, we know he worked as a mason and a waiter at a hotel in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was then known. In 1791, when the colony’s slaves rose up in rebellion, Christophe got another opportunity to fight for freedom. Led by Toussaint Louverture, the rebels fought against plantation owners, as well as British and Spanish forces seeking control of the island. Christophe quickly rose through the ranks, proving himself the equal of more experienced generals. By 1793, Louverture had successfully liberated all of Saint-Domingue’s enslaved people, and by 1801 he’d established the island as a semi-autonomous colony. But during this time, Napoleon Bonaparte had assumed power in France, and made it his mission to restore slavery and French authority throughout the empire. French attempts to reinstate slavery met fierce resistance, with General Christophe even burning the capital city to prevent military occupation. Finally, the rebellion and an outbreak of yellow fever forced French soldiers to withdraw— but the fight was not without casualties. Louverture was captured, and left to die in a French prison; a fate that Christophe’s nine-year-old son would share only a few years later. Following the revolution, Christophe and generals Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Alexandre Pétion rose to prominent positions in the new government. In 1804, Dessalines was proclaimed the emperor of independent Haiti. But his desire to hold exclusive power alienated his supporters. Eventually, Dessalines’ rule incited a political conspiracy that ended in his assassination in 1806. The subsequent power struggle led to a Civil War, which split the country in two. By 1807, Christophe was governing as president of the north in Cap-Haïtien, and Pétion was ruling the south from Port-au-Prince. Pétion tried to stay true to the revolution’s democratic roots by modeling his republic after the United States. He even supported anti-colonial revolutionaries in other nations. These policies endeared him to his people, but they slowed trade and economic growth. Christophe, conversely, had more aggressive plans for an independent Haiti. He redistributed land to the people, while retaining state control of agriculture. He also established trade with many foreign nations, including Great Britain and the United States, and pledged non-interference with their foreign policies. He even built a massive Citadel in case the French tried to invade again. To accomplish all of this, Christophe instituted mandatory labor, and to strengthen his authority, he crowned himself king in 1811. During his reign, he lived in an elegant palace called Sans Souci along with his wife and their three remaining children. Christophe’s kingdom oversaw rapid development of trade, industry, culture, and education. He imported renowned European artists to Haiti’s cultural scene, as well as European teachers, in order to establish public education. But while the king was initially popular among his subjects, his labor mandates were an uncomfortable reminder of the slavery Haitians fought to destroy. Over time, his increasingly authoritarian policies lost support, and his opponents to the south gained strength. In October 1820, his reign finally reached its tragic conclusion. Months after a debilitating stroke left him unable to govern, key members of his military defected to southern forces. Betrayed and despondent, the king committed suicide. Today, the traces of Christophe’s complicated history can still be found in the crumbling remains of his palaces, and in Haiti’s legacy as the first nation to permanently abolish slavery.
TEDEd_World_History	How_the_Normans_changed_the_history_of_Europe_Mark_Robinson.txt	In the year 1066, 7000 Norman infantry and knights sailed in warships across the English Channel. Their target: England, home to more than a million people. Theirs was a short voyage with massive consequences. And around the same period of time, other groups of Normans were setting forth all across Europe, going on adventures that would reverberate throughout that continent’s history. So who were these warriors and how did they leave their mark so far and wide? Our story begins over 200 years earlier, when Vikings began to settle on the shores of northern France as part of a great Scandinavian exodus across northern Europe. The French locals called these invaders Normans, named for the direction they came from. Eventually, Charles, the king of the Franks, negotiated peace with the Viking leader Rollo in 911, granting him a stretch of land along France’s northern coast that came to be known as Normandy. The Normans proved adaptable to their newly settled life. They married Frankish women, adopted the French language, and soon started converting from Norse paganism to Christianity. But though they adapted, they maintained the warrior tradition and conquering spirit of their Viking forebears. Before long, ambitious Norman knights were looking for new challenges. The Normans’ best-known achievement was their conquest of England. In 1066, William, the Duke of Normandy, disputed the claim of the new English king, Harold Godwinson. Soon after landing in England, William and his knights met Harold’s army near the town of Hastings. The climactic moment in the battle is immortalized in the 70-meter-long Bayeux Tapestry, where an arrow striking Harold in the eye seals the Norman victory. William consolidated his gains with a huge castle-building campaign and a reorganization of English society. He lived up to his nickname "William the Conqueror" through a massive survey known as the Domesday Book, which recorded the population and ownership of every piece of land in England. Norman French became the language of the new royal court, while commoners continued to speak Anglo-Saxon. Over time, the two merged to give us the English we know today, though the divide between lords and peasants can still be felt in synonym pairs such as cow and beef. By the end of the 12th century, the Normans had further expanded into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Meanwhile, independent groups of Norman knights traveled to the Mediterranean, inspired by tales of pilgrims returning from Jerusalem. There, they threw themselves into a tangled mass of conflicts among the established powers all over that region. They became highly prized mercenaries, and during one of these battles, they made the first recorded heavy cavalry charge with couched lances, a devastating tactic that soon became standard in medieval warfare. The Normans were also central to the First Crusade of 1095-99, a bloody conflict that re-established Christian control in certain parts of the Middle East. But the Normans did more than just fight. As a result of their victories, leaders like William Iron-Arm and Robert the Crafty secured lands throughout Southern Italy, eventually merging them to form the Kingdom of Sicily in 1130. Under Roger II, the kingdom became a beacon of multicultural tolerance in a world torn apart by religious and civil wars. Muslim Arab poets and scholars served in the royal court alongside Byzantine Greek sailors and architects. Arabic remained an official language along with Latin, Greek, and Norman French. The world’s geographical knowledge was compiled in The Book of Roger, whose maps of the known world would remain the most accurate available for 300 years. And the churches built in Palermo combined Latin-style architecture, Arab ceilings, and Byzantine domes, all decorated with exquisite golden mosaics. So if the Normans were so successful, why aren’t they still around? In fact, this was a key part of their success: not just ruling the societies they conquered, but becoming part of them. Although the Normans eventually disappeared as a distinct group, their contributions remained. And today, from the castles and cathedrals that dot Europe’s landscape to wherever the English language is spoken, the Norman legacy lives on.
TEDEd_World_History	비단길_역사_최초의_세계교역망_샤논_헤리스_카스텔로Shannon_Harris_Castelo.txt	A banker in London sends the latest stock info to his colleagues in Hong Kong in less than a second. With a single click, a customer in New York orders electronics made in Beijing, transported across the ocean within days by cargo plane or container ship. The speed and volume at which goods and information move across the world today is unprecedented in history. But global exchange itself is older than we think, reaching back over 2,000 years along a 5,000 mile stretch known as the Silk Road. The Silk Road wasn't actually a single road, but a network of multiple routes that gradually emerged over centuries, connecting to various settlements and to each other thread by thread. The first agricultural civilizations were isolated places in fertile river valleys, their travel impeded by surrounding geography and fear of the unknown. But as they grew, they found that the arid deserts and steps on their borders were inhabited, not by the demons of folklore, but nomadic tribes on horseback. The Scythians, who ranged from Hungary to Mongolia, had come in contact with the civilizations of Greece, Egypt, India and China. These encounters were often less than peaceful. But even through raids and warfare, as well as trade and protection of traveling merchants in exchange for tariffs, the nomads began to spread goods, ideas and technologies between cultures with no direct contact. One of the most important strands of this growing web was the Persian Royal Road, completed by Darius the First in the 5th century BCE. Stretching nearly 2,000 miles from the Tigris River to the Aegean Sea, its regular relay points allowed goods and messages to travel at nearly 1/10 the time it would take a single traveler. With Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia, and expansion into Central Asia through capturing cities like Samarkand, and establishing new ones like Alexandria Eschate, the network of Greek, Egyptian, Persian and Indian culture and trade extended farther east than ever before, laying the foundations for a bridge between China and the West. This was realized in the 2nd century BCE, when an ambassador named Zhang Qian, sent to negotiate with nomads in the West, returned to the Han Emperor with tales of sophisticated civilizations, prosperous trade and exotic goods beyond the western borders. Ambassadors and merchants were sent towards Persia and India to trade silk and jade for horses and cotton, along with armies to secure their passage. Eastern and western routes gradually linked together into an integrated system spanning Eurasia, enabling cultural and commercial exhange farther than ever before. Chinese goods made their way to Rome, causing an outflow of gold that led to a ban on silk, while Roman glassware was highly prized in China. Military expeditions in Central Asia also saw encounters between Chinese and Roman soldiers. Possibly even transmitting crossbow technology to the Western world. Demand for exotic and foreign goods and the profits they brought, kept the strands of the Silk Road in tact, even as the Roman Empire disintegrated and Chinese dynasties rose and fell. Even Mongolian hoards, known for pillage and plunder, actively protected the trade routes, rather than disrupting them. But along with commodities, these routes also enabled the movement of traditions, innovations, ideologies and languages. Originating in India, Buddhism migrated to China and Japan to become the dominant religion there. Islam spread from the Arabian Penninsula into South Asia, blending with native beliefs and leading to new faiths, like Sikhism. And gunpowder made its way from China to the Middle East forging the futures of the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughul Empires. In a way, the Silk Road's success led to its own demise as new maritime technologies, like the magnetic compass, found their way to Europe, making long land routes obsolete. Meanwhile, the collapse of Mongol rule was followed by China's withdrawal from international trade. But even though the old routes and networks did not last, they had changed the world forever and there was no going back. Europeans seeking new maritime routes to the riches they knew awaited in East Asia led to the Age of Exploration and expansion into Africa and the Americas. Today, global interconnectedness shapes our lives like never before. Canadian shoppers buy t-shirts made in Bangladesh, Japanese audiences watch British television shows, and Tunisians use American software to launch a revolution. The impact of globalization on culture and economy is indisputable. But whatever its benefits and drawbacks, it is far from a new phenomenon. And though the mountains, deserts and oceans that once separated us are now circumvented through super sonic vehicles, cross-continental communication cables, and signals beamed through space rather than caravans traveling for months, none of it would have been possible without the pioneering cultures whose efforts created the Silk Road: history's first world wide web.
TEDEd_World_History	A_day_in_the_life_of_an_ancient_Egyptian_doctor_Elizabeth_Cox.txt	It’s another sweltering morning in Memphis, Egypt. As the sunlight brightens the Nile, Peseshet checks her supplies. Honey, garlic, cumin, acacia leaves, cedar oil. She’s well stocked with the essentials she needs to treat her patients. Peseshet is a swnw, or a doctor. In order to become one, she had to train as a scribe and study the medical papyri stored at the Per Ankh, the House of Life. Now, she teaches her own students there. Before teaching, Peseshet has a patient to see. One of the workers at the temple construction site has injured his arm. When Peseshet arrives, the laborer’s arm is clearly broken, and worse, the fracture is a sed, with multiple bone fragments. Peseshet binds and immobilizes the injury. Her next stop is the House of Life. On her way, a woman intercepts Peseshet in the street. The woman’s son has been stung by a scorpion. Peseshet has seen many similar stings and knows exactly what to do. She must say an incantation to cast the poison out. She begins to recite the spell, invoking Serqet, patron of physicians and goddess of venomous creatures. Peseshet recites the spell as if she is Serqet. This commanding approach has the greatest chance at success. After she utters the last line, she tries to cut the poison out with a knife for good measure. Peseshet packs up to leave, but the woman has another question. She wants to find out if she is pregnant. Peseshet explains her fail-safe pregnancy test: plant two seeds: one barley, one emmer. Then, urinate on the seeds every day. If the plants grow, she’s pregnant. A barley seedling predicts a baby boy, while emmer foretells a girl. Peseshet also recommends a prayer to Hathor, goddess of fertility. When Peseshet finally arrives at the House of Life, she runs into the doctor-priest Isesi. She greets Isesi politely, but she thinks priests are very full of themselves. She doesn’t envy Isesi’s role as neru pehut, which directly translates to herdsman of the anus to the royal family, or, guardian of the royal anus. Inside, the House of Life is bustling as usual with scribes, priests, doctors, and students. Papyri containing all kinds of records, not just medical information, are stored here. Peseshet’s son Akhethetep is hard at work copying documents as part of his training to become a scribe. He’s a particularly promising student, but he was admitted to study because Peseshet is a scribe, as was her father before her. Without family in the profession, it’s very difficult for boys, and impossible for girls, to pursue this education. Peseshet oversees all the female swnws and swnws-in-training in Memphis. The men have their own overseer, as the male doctors won’t answer to a woman. Today, Peseshet teaches anatomy. She quizzes her students on the metu, the body’s vessels that transport blood, air, urine, and even bad spirits. Peseshet is preparing to leave when a pale, thin woman accosts her at the door and begs to be examined. The woman has a huge, sore lump under her arm. Peseshet probes the growth and finds it cool to the touch and hard like an unripe hemat fruit. She has read about ailments like this, but never seen one. For this tumor there is no treatment, medicine or spell. All the texts give the same advice: do nothing. After delivering the bad news, Peseshet goes outside. She lingers on the steps of the House of Life, admiring the city at dusk. In spite of all her hard work, there will always be patients she can’t help, like the woman with the tumor. They linger with her, but Peseshet has no time to dwell. In a few short weeks, the Nile’s annual flooding will begin, bringing life to the soil for the next year’s harvest and a whole new crop of patients.
TEDEd_World_History	The_history_of_the_world_according_to_corn_Chris_A_Kniesly.txt	Corn currently accounts for more than one tenth of our global crop production. The United States alone has enough cornfields to cover Germany. But while other crops we grow come in a range of varieties, over 99% of cultivated corn is the exact same type: Yellow Dent #2. This means that humans grow more Yellow Dent #2 than any other plant on the planet. So how did this single variety of this single plant become the biggest success story in agricultural history? Nearly 9,000 years ago, corn, also called maize, was first domesticated from teosinte, a grass native to Mesoamerica. Teosinte’s rock-hard seeds were barely edible, but its fibrous husk could be turned into a versatile material. Over the next 4,700 years, farmers bred the plant into a staple crop, with larger cobs and edible kernels. As maize spread throughout the Americas, it took on an important role, with multiple indigenous societies revering a “Corn Mother” as the goddess who created agriculture. When Europeans first arrived in America, they shunned the strange plant. Many even believed it was the source of physical and cultural differences between them and the Mesoamericans. However, their attempts to cultivate European crops in American soil quickly failed, and the settlers were forced to expand their diet. Finding the crop to their taste, maize soon crossed the Atlantic, where its ability to grow in diverse climates made it a popular grain in many European countries. But the newly established United States was still the corn capital of the world. In the early 1800’s, different regions across the country produced strains of varying size and taste. In the 1850’s, however, these unique varieties proved difficult for train operators to package, and for traders to sell. Trade boards in rail hubs like Chicago encouraged corn farmers to breed one standardized crop. This dream would finally be realized at 1893’s World’s Fair, where James Reid’s yellow dent corn won the Blue Ribbon. Over the next 50 years, yellow dent corn swept the nation. Following the technological developments of World War II, mechanized harvesters became widely available. This meant a batch of corn that previously took a full day to harvest by hand could now be collected in just 5 minutes. Another wartime technology, the chemical explosive ammonium nitrate, also found new life on the farm. With this new synthetic fertilizer, farmers could plant dense fields of corn year after year, without the need to rotate their crops and restore nitrogen to the soil. While these advances made corn an attractive crop to American farmers, US agricultural policy limited the amount farmers could grow to ensure high sale prices. But in 1972, President Richard Nixon removed these limitations while negotiating massive grain sales to the Soviet Union. With this new trade deal and WWII technology, corn production exploded into a global phenomenon. These mountains of maize inspired numerous corn concoctions. Cornstarch could be used as a thickening agent for everything from gasoline to glue or processed into a low-cost sweetener known as High-Fructose Corn Syrup. Maize quickly became one of the cheapest animal feeds worldwide. This allowed for inexpensive meat production, which in turn increased the demand for meat and corn feed. Today, humans eat only 40% of all cultivated corn, while the remaining 60% supports consumer good industries worldwide. Yet the spread of this wonder-crop has come at a price. Global water sources are polluted by excess ammonium nitrate from cornfields. Corn accounts for a large portion of agriculture-related carbon emissions, partly due to the increased meat production it enables. The use of high fructose corn syrup may be a contributor to diabetes and obesity. And the rise of monoculture farming has left our food supply dangerously vulnerable to pests and pathogens— a single virus could infect the world’s supply of this ubiquitous crop. Corn has gone from a bushy grass to an essential element of the world’s industries. But only time will tell if it has led us into a maze of unsustainability.
TEDEd_World_History	The_most_successful_pirate_of_all_time_Dian_Murray.txt	At the height of their power, infamous Caribbean pirates like Blackbeard and Henry Morgan commanded as many as ten ships and several hundred men. But their stories pale next to the most successful pirate of all time. Madame Zheng commanded 1800 vessels, made enemies of several empires, and still lived to old age. Madame Zheng began her life as a commoner working on one of the many floating brothels, or flower boats, in the port city of Guangzhou. By 1801, she had attracted the attention of a local pirate captain named Zheng Yi, and the two soon married. Guangzhou’s fishermen had long engaged in small-scale piracy to supplement their meager incomes in the offseason. But a successful peasant uprising in neighboring Vietnam at the end of the 18th century had raised the stakes. The victorious Tây Sơn rebels had unified their country only to face a Chinese invasion and ongoing maritime battles with the Vietnamese rulers they had overthrown. So they commissioned Guangzhou’s pirates to raid the coast and join the fight against their enemies. Serving their Vietnamese patrons turned the Zhengs and other pirates from ragtag gangs aboard single vessels into professional privateer fleets with dozens of ships able to hold their own at sea. In 1802, the Tây Sơn were overthrown and the pirates lost their safe harbor in Vietnam. But instead of scattering, the Zhengs met the crisis by uniting the rival Cantonese pirate groups into a formidable alliance. At its height, the confederation included 70,000 sailors with 800 large junks and nearly 1,000 smaller vessels. Those were organized into six fleets marked by different colored flags. The Zhengs were unlike many other historically-known privateers, such as Henry Morgan or Barbarossa, who acted on behalf of various naval powers. Instead, the Zhengs were now true outlaws, operating without support or approval from any government. Zheng Yi met an untimely end in 1807, but his widow didn’t hesitate to secure their gains. Through skillful diplomacy, Madame Zheng took charge of the confederation, convincing the captains that their best interests lay in continued collaboration. Meanwhile, she appointed Zhang Bao, the young protege of her late husband, as the commander of her most powerful squadron, the Red Flag Fleet. Zhang became not only her right-hand man, but her lover and, soon, her new husband. Madame Zheng consolidated her power through strict military discipline combined with a surprisingly progressive code of laws. Female captives were theoretically protected from sexual assault, and while pirates could take them as wives, mistreatment or infidelity towards them was punishable by death. Under Madame Zheng’s leadership, the pirates greatly increased their power, with 200 cannons and 1300 guns in the Red Flag Fleet alone. Within a few years, they destroyed 63 of Guangdong Province’s 135 military vessels, forcing their commanders to hire more than 30 private junks. Madame Zheng was so feared that Chinese commanders charged with apprehending her spent most of their time ashore, sometimes sabotaging their own vessels to avoid battle at sea. With little to stop them, the pirates were able to mount successful —and often brutal— raids on garrisons, villages, and markets throughout the coast. Using her administrative talents, Madame Zheng established financial offices in cities and villages, allowing her pirates to extract regular protection payments on land and sea alike. This effectively created a state within a state whose influence reached far beyond the South China Sea. At the peak of her power, Madame Zheng’s confederation drove five American schooners to safe harbor near Macao, captured a Portuguese brig, and blockaded a tribute mission from Thailand —all in a single day. But perhaps Madame Zheng’s greatest success lay in knowing when to quit. By 1810, increasing tension between the Red and Black Flag Fleets weakened the confederation from within and rendered it more vulnerable to attack from without. So, when the Chinese government, desperate to stop the raids, offered amnesty in exchange for the pirates’ surrender, Madame Zheng and Zhang Bao agreed, but only on their own terms. Their confederation was successfully and peacefully dismantled in April 1810, while Zhang Bao was allowed to retain 120 junks for personal use and became an officer in the Chinese navy. Now fighting pirates himself, Zhang Bao quickly rose through the ranks of military command, and Madame Zheng enjoyed all the privileges of her husband’s status. After Zhang Bao died in 1822, Madame Zheng returned with their eleven-year-old son to Guangzhou, where she opened a gambling house and quietly lived off the proceeds. She died at the age of 69—an uncommonly peaceful end to a pirate’s life.
TEDEd_World_History	The_Atlantic_slave_trade_What_too_few_textbooks_told_you_Anthony_Hazard.txt	Slavery, the treatment of human beings as property, deprived of personal rights, has occurred in many forms throughout the world. But one institution stands out for both its global scale and its lasting legacy. The Atlantic slave trade, occurring from the late 15th to the mid 19th century and spanning three continents, forcibly brought more than 10 million Africans to the Americas. The impact it would leave affected not only these slaves and their descendants, but the economies and histories of large parts of the world. There had been centuries of contact between Europe and Africa via the Mediterranean. But the Atlantic slave trade began in the late 1400s with Portuguese colonies in West Africa, and Spanish settlement of the Americas shortly after. The crops grown in the new colonies, sugar cane, tobacco, and cotton, were labor intensive, and there were not enough settlers or indentured servants to cultivate all the new land. American Natives were enslaved, but many died from new diseases, while others effectively resisted. And so to meet the massive demand for labor, the Europeans looked to Africa. African slavery had existed for centuries in various forms. Some slaves were indentured servants, with a limited term and the chance to buy one's freedom. Others were more like European serfs. In some societies, slaves could be part of a master's family, own land, and even rise to positions of power. But when white captains came offering manufactured goods, weapons, and rum for slaves, African kings and merchants had little reason to hesitate. They viewed the people they sold not as fellow Africans but criminals, debtors, or prisoners of war from rival tribes. By selling them, kings enriched their own realms, and strengthened them against neighboring enemies. African kingdoms prospered from the slave trade, but meeting the European's massive demand created intense competition. Slavery replaced other criminal sentences, and capturing slaves became a motivation for war, rather than its result. To defend themselves from slave raids, neighboring kingdoms needed European firearms, which they also bought with slaves. The slave trade had become an arms race, altering societies and economies across the continent. As for the slaves themselves, they faced unimaginable brutality. After being marched to slave forts on the coast, shaved to prevent lice, and branded, they were loaded onto ships bound for the Americas. About 20% of them would never see land again. Most captains of the day were tight packers, cramming as many men as possible below deck. While the lack of sanitation caused many to die of disease, and others were thrown overboard for being sick, or as discipline, the captain's ensured their profits by cutting off slave's ears as proof of purchase. Some captives took matters into their own hands. Many inland Africans had never seen whites before, and thought them to be cannibals, constantly taking people away and returning for more. Afraid of being eaten, or just to avoid further suffering, they committed suicide or starved themselves, believing that in death, their souls would return home. Those who survived were completley dehumanized, treated as mere cargo. Women and children were kept above deck and abused by the crew, while the men were made to perform dances in order to keep them exercised and curb rebellion. What happened to those Africans who reached the New World and how the legacy of slavery still affects their descendants today is fairly well known. But what is not often discussed is the effect that the Atlantic slave trade had on Africa's future. Not only did the continent lose tens of millions of its able-bodied population, but because most of the slaves taken were men, the long-term demographic effect was even greater. When the slave trade was finally outlawed in the Americas and Europe, the African kingdoms whose economies it had come to dominate collapsed, leaving them open to conquest and colonization. And the increased competition and influx of European weapons fueled warfare and instability that continues to this day. The Atlantic slave trade also contributed to the development of racist ideology. Most African slavery had no deeper reason than legal punishment or intertribal warfare, but the Europeans who preached a universal religion, and who had long ago outlawed enslaving fellow Christians, needed justification for a practice so obviously at odds with their ideals of equality. So they claimed that Africans were biologically inferior and destined to be slaves, making great efforts to justify this theory. Thus, slavery in Europe and the Americas acquired a racial basis, making it impossible for slaves and their future descendants to attain equal status in society. In all of these ways, the Atlantic slave trade was an injustice on a massive scale whose impact has continued long after its abolition.
TEDEd_World_History	The_mysterious_life_and_death_of_Rasputin_Eden_Girma.txt	On a cold winter night in 1916, Felix Yusupov anxiously prepared to pick up his dinner guest. If all went as planned, his guest would be dead by morning, though four others had already tried and failed to finish him off. The Russian monarchy was on the brink of collapse, and to Yusupov and his fellow aristocrats, the holy man they’d invited to dinner was the single cause of it all. But who was he, and how could a single monk be to blame for the fate of an empire? Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin began his life in Siberia, born in 1869 to a peasant family. He might have lived a life of obscurity in his small village, if not for his conversion to the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1890s. Inspired by the humbled monks that wandered endlessly from holy site to holy site, he spent years on pilgrimages across Russia. On his travels, strangers were captivated by Rasputin’s magnetic presence. Some even believed he had mystical gifts of prediction and healing. Despite Rasputin’s heavy drinking, petty theft, and promiscuity, his reputation as a monk quickly spread beyond Siberia and attracted both laypeople and powerful Orthodox clergymen. When he finally reached the capital, St. Petersburg, Rasputin used his charisma and connections to win favor with the imperial family’s spiritual advisor. In November 1905, Rasputin was finally introduced to Russian Tsar Nicholas II. Nicholas and his wife Alexandra devoutly believed in the Orthodox Church, as well as in mysticism and supernatural powers, and this Siberian holy man had them transfixed. It was a particularly tumultuous period for Russia and their family. The monarchy was barely clinging to control after the Revolution of 1905. Their political struggles were only intensified by personal turmoil: Alexei, the heir to the throne, had a life-threatening blood disease called hemophilia. When Alexei suffered a severe medical crisis in 1912, Rasputin advised his parents to reject treatment from doctors. Alexei’s health improved, cementing the royal family’s belief that Rasputin had magical healing powers, and guaranteeing his privileged place on the royal court. Today, we know that the doctors had prescribed aspirin, a drug that worsens hemophilia. After this incident, Rasputin made a prophecy: if he died, or the royal family deserted him, both their son and their crown would soon be gone. Outside the royal family, people had mixed views on Rasputin. On one hand, peasants regarded him as one of their own, amplifying their often-unheard voice to the monarchy. But nobles and clergymen came to despise his presence. Rasputin never ceased his scandalous behavior, and they were skeptical of his so-called powers and thought he was corrupting the royal family. By the end of World War I, they were convinced the only way to maintain order was to eliminate this sham of a holy man. With this conviction, Yusupov began to plot Rasputin’s assassination. Though the exact details remain mysterious, our best guess at how it all unfolded comes from Yusupov’s memoirs. He served Rasputin a number of pastries, believing they contained cyanide. But unbeknownst to Yusupov, one of his co-conspirators had a change of heart, and substituted the poison with a harmless substance. To Yusupov’s shock, Rasputin ate them without ill effect. In desperation, he shot Rasputin at point-blank range. But Rasputin recovered, punched his attacker, and fled. Yusupov and his accomplices pursued him, finally killing Rasputin with a bullet to the forehead and dumping his body in the Malaya Nevka river. But far from stabilizing the monarchy’s authority, Rasputin’s death enraged the peasantry. Just as Rasputin prophesied, his murder was swiftly followed by that of the royal family. Whether the downfall of the Russian monarchy was a product of the monk’s curse, or the result of political tensions decades in the making, well, we may never know.
TEDEd_World_History	차의_역사_슈난_텡_Shunan_Teng.txt	During a long day spent roaming the forest in search of edible grains and herbs, the weary divine farmer Shennong accidentally poisoned himself 72 times. But before the poisons could end his life, a leaf drifted into his mouth. He chewed on it and it revived him, and that is how we discovered tea. Or so an ancient legend goes at least. Tea doesn't actually cure poisonings, but the story of Shennong, the mythical Chinese inventor of agriculture, highlights tea's importance to ancient China. Archaeological evidence suggests tea was first cultivated there as early as 6,000 years ago, or 1,500 years before the pharaohs built the Great Pyramids of Giza. That original Chinese tea plant is the same type that's grown around the world today, yet it was originally consumed very differently. It was eaten as a vegetable or cooked with grain porridge. Tea only shifted from food to drink 1,500 years ago when people realized that a combination of heat and moisture could create a complex and varied taste out of the leafy green. After hundreds of years of variations to the preparation method, the standard became to heat tea, pack it into portable cakes, grind it into powder, mix with hot water, and create a beverage called muo cha, or matcha. Matcha became so popular that a distinct Chinese tea culture emerged. Tea was the subject of books and poetry, the favorite drink of emperors, and a medium for artists. They would draw extravagant pictures in the foam of the tea, very much like the espresso art you might see in coffee shops today. In the 9th century during the Tang Dynasty, a Japanese monk brought the first tea plant to Japan. The Japanese eventually developed their own unique rituals around tea, leading to the creation of the Japanese tea ceremony. And in the 14th century during the Ming Dynasty, the Chinese emperor shifted the standard from tea pressed into cakes to loose leaf tea. At that point, China still held a virtual monopoly on the world's tea trees, making tea one of three essential Chinese export goods, along with porcelain and silk. This gave China a great deal of power and economic influence as tea drinking spread around the world. That spread began in earnest around the early 1600s when Dutch traders brought tea to Europe in large quantities. Many credit Queen Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese noble woman, for making tea popular with the English aristocracy when she married King Charles II in 1661. At the time, Great Britain was in the midst of expanding its colonial influence and becoming the new dominant world power. And as Great Britain grew, interest in tea spread around the world. By 1700, tea in Europe sold for ten times the price of coffee and the plant was still only grown in China. The tea trade was so lucrative that the world's fastest sailboat, the clipper ship, was born out of intense competition between Western trading companies. All were racing to bring their tea back to Europe first to maximize their profits. At first, Britain paid for all this Chinese tea with silver. When that proved too expensive, they suggested trading tea for another substance, opium. This triggered a public health problem within China as people became addicted to the drug. Then in 1839, a Chinese official ordered his men to destroy massive British shipments of opium as a statement against Britain's influence over China. This act triggered the First Opium War between the two nations. Fighting raged up and down the Chinese coast until 1842 when the defeated Qing Dynasty ceded the port of Hong Kong to the British and resumed trading on unfavorable terms. The war weakened China's global standing for over a century. The British East India company also wanted to be able to grow tea themselves and further control the market. So they commissioned botanist Robert Fortune to steal tea from China in a covert operation. He disguised himself and took a perilous journey through China's mountainous tea regions, eventually smuggling tea trees and experienced tea workers into Darjeeling, India. From there, the plant spread further still, helping drive tea's rapid growth as an everyday commodity. Today, tea is the second most consumed beverage in the world after water, and from sugary Turkish Rize tea, to salty Tibetan butter tea, there are almost as many ways of preparing the beverage as there are cultures on the globe.
TEDEd_World_History	How_the_worlds_first_metro_system_was_built_Christian_Wolmar.txt	It was the dawn of 1863, and London’s not-yet-opened subway system, the first of its kind in the world, had the city in an uproar. Digging a hole under the city and putting a railroad in it seemed the stuff of dreams. Pub drinkers scoffed at the idea and a local minister accused the railway company of trying to break into hell. Most people simply thought the project, which cost more than 100 million dollars in today’s money, would never work. But it did. On January 10, 1863, 30,000 people ventured underground to travel on the world’s first subway on a four-mile stretch of line in London. After three years of construction and a few setbacks, the Metropolitan Railway was ready for business. The city’s officials were much relieved. They’d been desperate to find a way to reduce the terrible congestion on the roads. London, at the time the world’s largest and most prosperous city, was in a permanent state of gridlock, with carts, costermongers, cows, and commuters jamming the roads. It’d been a Victorian visionary, Charles Pearson, who first thought of putting railways under the ground. He’d lobbied for underground trains throughout the 1840s, but opponents thought the idea was impractical since the railroads at the time only had short tunnels under hills. How could you get a railway through the center of a city? The answer was a simple system called "cut and cover." Workers had to dig a huge trench, construct a tunnel out of brick archways, and then refill the hole over the newly built tunnel. Because this was disruptive and required the demolition of buildings above the tunnels, most of the line went under existing roads. Of course, there were accidents. On one occasion, a heavy rainstorm flooded the nearby sewers and burst through the excavation, delaying the project by several months. But as soon as the Metropolitan Railway opened, Londoners rushed in to ride the new trains. The Metropolitan quickly became a vital part of London’s transport system. Additional lines were soon built, and new suburbs grew around the stations. Big department stores opened next to the railroad, and the railway company even created attractions, like a 30-story Ferris wheel in Earls Court to bring in tourists by train. Within 30 years, London’s subway system covered 80 kilometers, with lines in the center of town running in tunnels, and suburban trains operating on the surface, often on embankments. But London was still growing, and everyone wanted to be connected to the system. By the late 1880s, the city had become too dense with buildings, sewers, and electric cables for the "cut and cover" technique, so a new system had to be devised. Using a machine called the Greathead Shield, a team of just 12 workers could bore through the earth, carving deep underground tunnels through the London clay. These new lines, called tubes, were at varying depths, but usually about 25 meters deeper than the "cut and cover" lines. This meant their construction didn’t disturb the surface, and it was possible to dig under buildings. The first tube line, the City and South London, opened in 1890 and proved so successful that half a dozen more lines were built in the next 20 years. This clever new technology was even used to burrow several lines under London’s river, the Thames. By the early 20th century, Budapest, Berlin, Paris, and New York had all built subways of their own. And today, with more than 160 cities in 55 countries using underground rails to combat congestion, we can thank Charles Pearson and the Metropolitan Railway for getting us started on the right track.
TEDEd_World_History	Explore_cave_paintings_in_this_360_animated_cave_Iseult_Gillespie.txt	In 1879, amateur archaeologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola and his young daughter Maria explored a dark cave in Northern Spain. When Maria wondered off by herself, she made an amazing discovery. They were standing inside a site of ancient art, the walls and roofs decorated with prehistoric paintings and engravings, ranging from 19,000 to 35,000 years old. Similar marks of our ancestors have been preserved in caves all over the world. The oldest we've found were made up to 40,000 years ago. What do these images tell us about the ancient human mind and the lives of their creators? These early artists mixed minerals, clay, charcoal, and ochre with spit or animal fat to create paint. They drew with their hands and tools, like pads of moss, twigs, bones, and hair. In many instances, their images follow the contours of the cave to create depth and shade. The most common depictions are of geometric shapes, followed by large mammals, like bison, horses, mammoths, deer, and boars. Human figures appear rarely, as well as occasional hand prints. Some have theorized that these artworks are the creation of hunters, or of holy men in trance-like states. And we've found examples created by men, women, and even children. And why did they create this art? Perhaps they were documenting what they knew about the natural world, like modern scientists, or marking their tribal territory. Maybe the images were the culmination of sacred hunting rituals or spiritual journeys. Or could they be art for art's sake, the sheer joy and fulfillment of creation? As with many unsolved mysteries of the ancient world, we may never know for sure, barring the invention of a time machine, that is. But while the answers remain elusive, these images are our earliest proof of human communication, testifying to the human capacity for creativity thousands of years before writing. They are a distinct visual language that imagines the world outside the self, just like modern art forms, from graffiti and painting to animated virtual-reality caves.
TEDEd_World_History	A_glimpse_of_teenage_life_in_ancient_Rome_Ray_Laurence.txt	Translator: tom carter Reviewer: Bedirhan Cinar It's March the 17th in A.D. 73. We're visiting ancient Rome to watch the Liberalia, an annual festival that celebrates the liberty of Rome's citizens. We're looking in at a 17-year-old named Lucius Popidius Secundus. He's not from a poor family, but he lives in the region known as the Subura, a poorer neighborhood in Rome, yet close to the center of the city. (Gong) The tenants of these apartments are crammed in, (Grunting) which poses considerable risk. Fires are frequent and the smell of ash and smoke in the morning is not uncommon. Lucius, who awoke at dawn, has family duties to perform today. (Cheering) His 15-year-old brother is coming of age. Half the children in ancient Rome die before they reach adulthood, so this is a particularly important milestone. Lucius watches his brother stand in his new toga before the household shrine with its protective deities, as he places his bulla, a protective amulet, in the shrine with a prayer of thanks. The bulla had worked. It had protected him. Unlike many others, he had survived to become an adult. At 17, Lucius has almost completed his education. He has learned to speak well, make public speeches, and how to read and write both Latin and Greek. His father has taught him the types of things you can't learn in the classroom: how to run, how to swim, and how to fight. Lucius could choose, at 17, to become a military tribune and command soldiers on the edge of the Empire. But in other ways, Lucius is still a child. He's not trusted to arrange business deals. His father will take care of that until he is 25. And Dad will arrange Lucius' marriage to a girl 10 years younger. His dad has his eye on a family with a 7-year-old daughter. Back to the Liberalia. As Lucius leaves with his family, the shops are open as the population goes about its business. The streets are full of itinerant traders selling trinkets and people bustling from place to place. Large wagons are not allowed in the city until after the ninth hour but the streets are still crowded. Fathers and uncles take the kids to the Forum Augustus to see statues of Rome's famous warriors like Aeneas, who led Rome's ancestors, the Trojans, to Italy. And Romulus, Rome's founder. And all the great generals of the Republic from more than 100 years earlier. Lovingly, we can imagine fathers and guardians with their now adult children remembering stories of Rome's glory and re-telling the good deeds and sayings of the great men of the past: lessons on how to live well, and to overcome the follies of youth. There is a sense of history in this place, relevant to their present. Romans made an empire without end in time and space. (Thump) Rome was destined to be eternal through warfare. Wars were a fact of life, even in A.D. 73. There are campaigns in the north of England and into Scotland, to the north of the River Danube into Romania, and on the frontier between Syria and Iraq to the east. It's now the eighth hour -- time to head for the baths. Lucius and his family head up the Via Lata, the wide street, to the Campus Martius, and the enormous Baths of Agrippa. The family members leave the clients and freedmen outside, and enter the baths with their peer group. Baths would change from dark, steamy rooms to light ones. The Romans had perfected window glass. Everyone moves from the cold room to the tepid room and to the very hot room. (Man) Oops! More than an hour later, the bathers leave massaged, oiled, (Whistling) and have been scraped down with a strigil to remove the remaining dirt. At the ninth hour, seven hours after they left home, the men return for a celebratory dinner. Dinner is an intimate affair, with nine people reclining around the low table. Slaves attend to their every need if the diners, through gestures, demand more food and wine. As the day closes, we can hear the rumble of wagons outside. The clients and freedmen, with a meal of robust -- if inferior -- food inside them, shuffle off to the now tepid baths before returning to their apartment blocks. Back at Lucius' house, the drinking continues into the night. Lucius and his stepbrother don't look too well. A slave stands by in case either of them needs to vomit. With hindsight, we know Lucius' future. In 20 years' time, the Emperor Vespasian's youngest son, Domitian, as emperor, will enact a reign of terror. Will Lucius survive? (Drums)
TEDEd_World_History	The_rise_and_fall_of_the_Inca_Empire_Gordon_McEwan.txt	It was the Western Hemisphere’s largest empire ever, with a population of nearly 10 million subjects. Over an area of more than 900,000 square kilometers, its people built massive administrative centers, temples, and extensive road and canal systems. They did so in an inhospitable, extreme terrain, all without the use of wheels, horses, iron, or even written language. Yet within 100 years of its rise in the fifteenth century, the Inca Empire would be no more. According to legend, the ancestors of the Inca rulers were created by the sun god Inti, and they emerged from a cave called Tambo Toco. Leading four brothers and four sisters was Ayar Manco, who carried a golden staff with instructions to find the place where it would sink into the ground, showing fertile soil. After many adventures and extensive searching, Ayar Manco and his siblings reached the Cuzco Valley, where the staff pierced the ground. After fighting off the fierce local native population, they founded their capital, and Ayar Manco became Manco Capac, the first Sapa Inca, or king of the Incas. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Incas first settled in this valley around 1200 CE. They remained a small kingdom until 1438, when they were nearly overrun by the neighboring Chanka tribe. The Inca king at this time, Viracocha, and his designated heir fled in fear, but one of his other sons remained and successfully rallied the city’s defenses. For his military skill, he became the ninth Inca ruler, assuming the name of Pachacuti, or "Cataclysm." Pachacuti expanded Inca rule throughout the Andes mountains, transforming the kingdom into an empire through extensive reforms. The empire’s territory was reorganized as Tahuantinsuyu, or "four quarters," with four divisions ruled by governors reporting to the king. Although the Inca had no writing, they used a complex system of knotted strings called quipu to record numbers and perhaps other information. A decimal-based bureaucracy enabled systematic and efficient taxation of the empire’s subjects. In return, the empire provided security, infrastructure, and sustenance, with great storehouses containing necessities to be used when needed. Great terraces and irrigation works were built and various crops were grown in at different altitudes to be transported all over the empire. And it was during Pachacuti’s reign that the famous estate of Machu Picchu was constructed. Pachacuti’s son Topa Inca continued the empire’s military expansion, and he eventually became ruler in 1471 CE. By the end of his reign, the empire covered much of western South America. Topa’s son Huayna Capac succeeded him in 1493. But the new ruler’s distant military campaigns strained the social fabric. And in 1524, Huayna Capac was stricken by fever. Spanish conquistadors had arrived in the Caribbean some time before, bringing diseases to which the native peoples had no resistance. Millions died in the outbreak, including Huayna Capac and his designated heir. The vacant throne ignited a civil war between two of the surviving brothers, Atahualpa and Huascar, greatly weakening the empire. In 1532, after finally winning the Inca civil war, Atahualpa and his army encountered the European invaders. Although greatly outnumbered, Francisco Pizarro and his small group of conquistadors stunned the king’s much larger force with guns and horses, neither of which they had seen before. Atahualpa was taken captive and killed about a year later. The Spanish conquerors were awed by the capital of Cuzco. Pizarro described it as so beautiful that “it would be remarkable even in Spain.” Though the capital had fallen and the native population had been destroyed by civil war and disease, some Incas fell back to a new capital at Vilcabamba and resisted for the next 40 years. But by 1572, the Spaniards had destroyed all remaining resistance along with much of the Incas’ physical and cultural legacy. Thus, the great Inca empire fell even faster than it had risen.
TEDEd_World_History	The_hidden_treasures_of_Timbuktu_Elizabeth_Cox.txt	On the edge of the vast Sahara desert, citizens snuck out of the city of Timbuktu and took to the wilderness. They buried chests in the desert sand, hid them in caves, and sealed them in secret rooms. Inside these chests was a treasure more valuable than gold: the city’s ancient books. Founded around 1100 CE in what is now Mali, the city of Timbuktu started out as an unremarkable trading post. But its unique location soon changed that. Timbuktu marked the intersection of two essential trade routes, where caravans bringing salt across the Sahara met with traders bringing gold from the African interior. By the late 1300s, these trade routes made Timbuktu rich, and the city’s rulers, the kings of the Mali Empire, built monuments and academies that drew scholars from Egypt, Spain, and Morocco. The city’s prime location also made it a target for warlords and conquerors. As the Mali Empire declined, one of its domains, Songhai, began to gain power. In 1468, the Songhai king conquered Timbuktu, burning buildings and murdering scholars. But in time, intellectual life in the city flourished again. The reign of the second king of the Songhai Empire, Askia Mohammed Toure, marked the beginning of a golden age in Timbuktu. He reversed his predecessor’s regressive policies and encouraged learning. The Songhai rulers and most of Timbuktu’s population were Muslim, and the scholars of Timbuktu studied Islam alongside secular topics like mathematics and philosophy. In the libraries of Timbuktu, tracts of Greek philosophy stood alongside the writings of local historians, scientists, and poets. The city’s most prominent scholar, Ahmed Baba, challenged prevailing opinions on subjects ranging from smoking to slavery. Gold and salt trade had funded the city’s transformation into a center of learning. Now, the products of that intellectual culture became the most sought-after commodity. With paper from faraway Venice and vibrant ink from local plants and minerals, the scribes of Timbuktu produced texts in both Arabic and local languages. Written in calligraphy and decorated with intricate geometric designs, the books of Timbuktu were in demand among the wealthiest members of society. In 1591, the golden age came to an abrupt end when the Moroccan king captured Timbuktu. Moroccan forces imprisoned Ahmed Baba and other prominent scholars and confiscated their libraries. In the centuries that followed, the city weathered a succession of conquests. In the mid-1800s, Sufi Jihadists occupied Timbuktu and destroyed many non-religious manuscripts. 1894, French colonial forces seized control of the city, stealing even more manuscripts and sending them to Europe. French became the official language taught in schools, and new generations in Timbuktu couldn’t read the Arabic manuscripts that remained. Through it all, the literary tradition of Timbuktu didn’t die— it went underground. Some families built secret libraries in their homes, or buried the books in their gardens. Others stashed them in abandoned caves or holes in the desert. The priceless manuscripts of Timbuktu dispersed to villages throughout the surrounding area, where regular citizens guarded them for hundreds of years. As desertification and war impoverished the region, families held on to the ancient books even as they faced desperate poverty and near-starvation. Even today, the struggle to protect the books continues. From the 1980s to the early 2000s, Timbuktu scholar Abdel Kader Haidara painstakingly retrieved hidden manuscripts from all over northern Mali and brought them back to Timbuktu. But in 2012, civil war in Mali once again threatened the manuscripts, most of which were evacuated to nearby Bamako. Their future remains uncertain, as they face both human and environmental threats. These books represent our best— and often only— sources on the pre-colonial history of the region. Many of them have never been read by modern scholars, and still more remain lost or hidden in the desert. At stake in the efforts to protect them is the history they contain— and the efforts of countless generations to protect that history from being lost.
TEDEd_World_History	The_last_chief_of_the_Comanches_and_the_fall_of_an_empire_Dustin_Tahmahkera.txt	Late one night in 1871, a group of riders descended on a sleeping army camp. In minutes they stirred the camp into a panic, stole about 70 horses, and disappeared. Led by a young chief named Quanah Parker, the raid was the latest in a long series of altercations along the Texas frontier between the indigenous people known as the Numunu, or Comanches, and the United States forces sent to steal Comanche lands for white settlers. Though the conflict was decades old, U.S. Colonel Ranald MacKenzie led the latest iteration. From summer to winter, he tracked Quanah. But Quanah was also tracking him, and each time the colonel drew near his targets, they disappeared without a trace into the vast plains. The Comanches had controlled this territory for nearly 200 years, hunting buffalo and moving whole villages around the plains. They suppressed Spanish and Mexican attacks from the south, attempts to settle the land by the United States from the east, and numerous other indigenous peoples’ bids for power. The Comanche Empire was not one unified group under central control, but rather a number of bands, each with its own leaders. What all of these bands had in common was their prowess as riders— every man, woman, and child was adept on horseback. Their combat skills on horseback far surpassed those of both other indigenous peoples and colonists, allowing them to control an enormous area with relatively few people— probably about 40,000 at their peak and only about 4-5,000 by the time Quanah Parker and Ranald Mackenzie faced off. Born around 1848, Quanah was the eldest child of Peta Nocona, a leader of the Nokoni band, and Cynthia Ann Parker, a kidnapped white settler who assimilated with the Comanches and took the name Naduah. When Quanah was a preteen, U.S. forces ambushed his village, capturing his mother and sister. Quanah and his younger brother sought refuge with a different Comanche band, the Quahada. In the years that followed, Quanah proved himself as a warrior and leader. In his early twenties, he and a young woman named Weakeah eloped, enraging her powerful father and several other leaders. They stayed on the run for a year, attracting followers and establishing Quanah as a paraibo, or chief, at an exceptionally young age. Under his leadership the Quahada band was able to elude the U.S. military and continue their way of life. But in the early 1870s, the East Coast market for buffalo hides became lucrative, and hunters slaughtered millions of buffalo in just a few years. Meanwhile, U.S. forces led a surprise attack, killing nearly all the Quahada band’s 1,400 horses and stealing the rest. Though he had vowed to never surrender, Quanah knew that without bison or horses, the Comanches faced certain starvation in winter. So in 1875 Quanah and the Quahada band moved to the Fort Sill reservation in Oklahoma. As hunter-gatherers, they could not transition easily to an agricultural way of life on the reservation. The U.S. government had promised rations and supplies, but what they provided was wildly insufficient. Quanah, meanwhile, was suddenly in a weak political position: he had no wealth or power compared to others who had been on the reservation longer. Still, he saw an opportunity. The reservation included ample grasslands— useless to the Comanches but perfect for cattle ranchers to graze their herds. He began a profitable arrangement leasing the land to cattle ranchers, quietly at first. Eventually, he negotiated leasing rights with the U.S. government, which ensured a steady source of income for the Comanches on the reservation. As Quanah’s status on the reservation and recognition from government officials grew, he secured better rations, advocated for the construction of schools and houses, and became one of three tribal judges on the reservation court. Tired of speaking with multiple leaders, the U.S. government wanted to appoint one chief of all Comanches— a role that hadn’t existed outside the reservation. Still, many Comanches supported Quanah for this role, just as several older leaders had supported him to lead them against the U.S. armed forces. Even Quanah’s former adversary, Ranald MacKenzie, advocated for his appointment. Quanah acted in Hollywood movies and befriended American politicians, riding in Theodore Roosevelt’s inauguration parade. Still, he never cut his long braids and advocated for the Native American Church and the use of peyote. He began to go by Quanah Parker, adopting his mother’s surname, and tried to track down his mother and sister, eventually learning they had both died shortly after their capture. Quanah adapted again and again— to different worlds, different roles, and circumstances that would seem insurmountable to most. Though he wasn’t without critics, after Quanah’s passing, Comanches began using the term “chairman” to designate the top elected official in the tribe, recognizing him as the last chief of the Comanches and a model of cultural survival and adaptation. In that spirit, today’s Comanche Nation looks towards the future, with over 16,000 enrolled citizens and countless descendants.
TEDEd_World_History	악명_높고_창의적이었던_호치민_길_카메론_페터슨Cameron_Paterson.txt	Translator: Andrea McDonough Reviewer: Bedirhan Cinar Deep in the jungles of Vietnam, soldiers from both sides battled heat exhaustion and each other for nearly 20 long years. But the key to Communist victory wasn't weapons or stamina, it was a dirt road. The Ho Chi Minh Trail, winding through Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, started as a simple network of dirt roads and blossomed into the centerpiece of the winning North Vietnamese strategy during the Vietnam War, supplying weapons, troops, and psychological support to the South. The trail was a network of tracks, dirt roads, and river crossings that threaded west out of North Vietnam and south along the Truong Son Mountain Range between Vietnam and Laos. The journey to the South originally took six months. But, with engineering and ingenuity, the Vietnamese expanded and improved the trail. Towards the end of war, as the main roads detoured through Laos, it only took one week. Here is how it happened. In 1959, as relations deteriorated between the North and the South, a system of trails was constructed in order to infiltrate soldiers, weapons, and supplies into South Vietnam. The first troops moved in single-file along routes used by local ethnic groups, and broken tree branches at dusty crossroads were often all that indicated the direction. Initially, most of the Communist cadres who came down the trail were Southerners by birth who had trained in North Vietnam. They dressed like civilian peasants in black, silk pajamas with a checkered scarf. They wore Ho Chi Minh sandals on their feet, cut from truck tires, and carried their ration of cooked rice in elephants' intestines, a linen tube hung around the body. The conditions were harsh and many deaths were caused by exposure, malaria, and amoebic dysentery. Getting lost, starving to death, and the possibility of attacks by wild tigers or bears were constant threats. Meals were invariably just rice and salt, and it was easy to run out. Fear, boredom, and homesickness were the dominant emotions. And soldiers occupied their spare time by writing letters, drawing sketches, and drinking and smoking with local villagers. The first troops down the trail did not engage in much fighting. And after an exhausting six month trip, arriving in the South was a real highlight, often celebrated by bursting into song. By 1965, the trip down the trail could be made by truck. Thousands of trucks supplied by China and Russia took up the task amidst ferocious B-52 bombing and truck drivers became known as pilots of the ground. As traffic down the trail increased, so did the U.S. bombing. They drove at night or in the early morning to avoid air strikes, and watchmen were ready to warn drivers of enemy aircraft. Villages along the trail organized teams to guarantee traffic flow and to help drivers repair damage caused by air attacks. Their catch cries were, "Everything for our Southern brothers!" and, "We will not worry about our houses if the vehicles have not yet gotten through." Some families donated their doors and wooden beds to repair roads. Vietnamese forces even used deception to get the U.S. aircraft to bomb mountainsides in order to make gravel for use in building and maintaining roads. The all-pervading red dust seeped into every nook and cranny. The Ho Chi Minh Trail had a profound impact on the Vietnam War and it was the key to Hanoi's success. North Vietnamese victory was not determined by the battlefields, but by the trail, which was the political, strategic, and economic lynchpin. Americans recognized its achievement, calling the trail, "One of the great achievements in military engineering of the 20th century." The trail is a testimony to the strength of will of the Vietnamese people, and the men and women who used the trail have become folk heros.
TEDEd_World_History	The_rise_and_fall_of_the_Assyrian_Empire_Marian_H_Feldman.txt	Before the sun never set on the British Empire, before Genghis Khan swept the steppe, before Rome extended its influence to encircle the Mediterranean Sea, there was ancient Assyria. Considered by historians to be the first true empire, Assyria’s innovations laid the groundwork for every superpower that’s followed. At its height, in the 7th century BCE, the Assyrian Empire stretched across modern Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and parts of Turkey, Iran, and Egypt. Its wonders included a vast library and large botanical and zoological park. But the story of Assyria’s rise to dominance began many centuries earlier, in the Late Bronze Age, in a city called Ashur. Ashur was a tin and textiles trading center located along the Tigris River in northern Iraq. It shared its name with a god thought to be an embodiment of the city and later of the entire empire. For the administration-minded Assyrians, politics and religion were closely linked. Around 1300 BCE, a high priest named Ashur-uballit I took the title of king and initiated a tradition of military campaigns, effectively transforming Assyria from a city-state to a territorial state. This meant that a single administrative entity oversaw many places, cultures, and peoples. For the next 150 years, Assyria extended its reach and thrived. In the 12th century BCE, a mysterious catastrophe that still bewilders archaeologists caused the Assyrians to lose much of their territory. A few hundred years later, however, Assyrian kings began a new round of conquests. This time, they honed their administrative system into an empire that would last generations. Assyrians were military innovators and merciless conquerors. During their conquests, they used siege tactics and cruel punishments for those who opposed them, including impalement and flaying. The growth of their empire was due, in part, to their strategy of deporting local populations, then shifting them around the empire to fulfill different needs. This broke peoples’ bonds with their homelands and severed loyalties among local groups. Once the Assyrians conquered an area, they built cities connected by well-maintained royal roads. Often, when a new king came to power, he would build a new capital. With each move, new palaces and temples were erected and lavishly decorated. Although kings claimed absolute power, we know that an extensive system of courtiers, provincial officials, and scholars influenced affairs. At least one woman, Sammuramat, ruled the kingdom. Assyrian rulers celebrated their military excursions by having representations of their exploits carved into the walls of their newly built palaces. But despite the picture of a ruthless war state projected by these records, the Assyrian kings were also interested in the cultural traditions of the region, especially those of Babylonia, a separate state to the south. Babylonia had been a cultural leader for millennia, stretching back to the beginning of writing at the end of the 4th millennium BCE. Assyria saw itself as the inheritor and protector of this tradition. Assyrian rulers supported scholars in specialties ranging from medicine to magic, and the capital cities, like Ninevah, were home to elaborate parks and gardens that housed plants and animals from around the empire. One of Assyria’s final rulers, Ashurbanipal, sent scholars throughout Babylonia to gather up and copy ancient literary works. Ashurbanipal’s library took the form of clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform in the languages of Akkadian and Sumerian. The library was lost during the final sack of Ninevah in 612 BCE. But thanks to a 19th century archaeological excavation, many masterpieces of ancient literature, including the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Babylonian Creation Epic, survive today. After centuries of rule, the Assyrian Empire fell to the Babylonians and Medes between 612 and 609 BCE. Yet the innovations that the Assyrians pioneered live on. Their emphasis on constant innovation, efficient administration, and excellent infrastructure set the standard for every empire that’s followed them in the region and across the globe.
TEDEd_World_History	A_day_in_the_life_of_an_ancient_Greek_architect_Mark_Robinson.txt	As dawn breaks over Athens, Pheidias is already late for work. The year is 432 BCE, and he’s the architekton, or chief builder, for the Parthenon— Athens’ newest and largest temple. When completed, his masterpiece will be an enormous shrine to the goddess Athena, and a testament to the glory of the Athenians. But when he arrives onsite he finds five epistatai, or city officials, waiting to confront him. They accuse Pheidias of embezzling gold designated for the temple’s sacred central statue. He has until sundown to provide all the temple’s expenses and account for every flake of gold— or face the judgement of the courts. Though he’s insulted by these false charges, Pheidias isn’t surprised. Pericles, the politician who commissioned the Parthenon, has many enemies in city government, and this project is somewhat controversial. The public is expecting a classic temple in the Doric style: simple columns supporting a horizontal entablature, crowned with a triangular roof. But Pheidias’ plans are far more radical by Athenian standards. His designs combine Doric columns with a sweeping Ionic frieze, hosting a vast panorama of the city’s Great Panathenaic festival. Not only will this sculpture show humans and gods side by side— something never before seen in a temple’s décor— it will also cost much more than the traditional approach. Praying to the Gods that his colleagues have been keeping track of their spending, Pheidias sets off to prove his innocence. First, he checks in with his architects Iktinos and Callicrates. Rather than using a blueprint, they pore over the syngraphai, or general plan, and paradeigma, a 3D model. Without an exact blueprint, the team often has to resolve issues in real time, guided only by careful calculation and their instinct for symmetry. Maintaining this symmetry has proven especially difficult. The Parthenon is built on a curve with the columns leaning slightly inwards. To project strength, and potentially keep the columns looking straight from a distance, the architects incorporated entasis, or slight bulging, in each column. For the temple’s other elements, the team calculates symmetry by employing relatively consistent proportions across the design. But their shifting plans require constant recalculations. After helping solve one such computation, Pheidias collects his colleagues’ gold records and heads off to receive a special delivery. Immense marble blocks for the Parthenon’s pediment have just arrived from quarries at Mount Pentelikon. The usual ramps would collapse under the weight of these 2 to 3 ton stone blocks, so Pheidias orders the construction of new pulleys. After recording the additional expense and supervising the construction all afternoon, he finally arrives at the sculpture workshop. His sculptors are carving 92 mythical scenes, or metopes, to decorate the temple. Every carving depicts fighting from different epic battles— each a mythical representation of Greece’s victory over Persia about 40 years earlier. No temple has ever used so many metopes before, and each scene adds to the temple’s ballooning expenses. Finally, Pheidias turns to his primary responsibility, and the focal point of the entire temple. Covered in thick layers of gold, minutely decorated, and towering above her worshippers, this will be a statue of the city’s patron and protector: Athena Parthenos. When the temple is complete, throngs will gather on its perimeter— offering prayers, performing sacrifices, and pouring libations for the goddess of wisdom. Pheidias spends the rest of the day designing finishing touches for the statue, and as the light fades, the epistatai arrive to confront him. After looming over his records, they look up triumphantly. Pheidias may have accounted for the temple’s general spending, but his records show no mention of the statue’s gold. At that moment, Pericles himself arrives to save his chief builder. The temple’s sponsor tells them that all the gold on the statue can be removed and weighed individually to prove Pheidias’ innocence. Assigning laborers to the task— and charging the officials to watch them late into the night— Pheidias and his patron leave their adversaries to the mercy of mighty Athena.
TEDEd_World_History	만사_무사_가장_부유하게_살았던_사람들_중_한_사람_제시카_스미스.txt	If someone asked you who the richest people in history were, who would you name? Perhaps a billionaire banker or corporate mogul, like Bill Gates or John D. Rockefeller. How about African King Musa Keita I? Ruling the Mali Empire in the 14th century CE, Mansa Musa, or the King of Kings, amassed a fortune that possibly made him one of the wealthiest people who ever lived. But his vast wealth was only one piece of his rich legacy. When Mansa Musa came to power in 1312, much of Europe was racked by famine and civil wars. But many African kingdoms and the Islamic world were flourishing, and Mansa Musa played a great role in bringing the fruits of this flourishing to his own realm. By strategically annexing the city of Timbuktu, and reestablishing power over the city of Gao, he gained control over important trade routes between the Mediterranean and the West African Coast, continuing a period of expansion, which dramatically increased Mali's size. The territory of the Mali Empire was rich in natural resources, such as gold and salt. The world first witnessed the extent of Mansa Musa's wealth in 1324 when he took his pilgrimage to Mecca. Not one to travel on a budget, he brought a caravan stretching as far as the eye could see. Accounts of this journey are mostly based on an oral testimony and differing written records, so it's difficult to determine the exact details. But what most agree on is the extravagant scale of the excursion. Chroniclers describe an entourage of tens of thousands of soldiers, civilians, and slaves, 500 heralds bearing gold staffs and dressed in fine silks, and many camels and horses bearing an abundance of gold bars. Stopping in cities such as Cairo, Mansa Musa is said to have spent massive quantities of gold, giving to the poor, buying souvenirs, and even having mosques built along the way. In fact, his spending may have destabilized the regional economy, causing mass inflation. This journey reportedly took over a year, and by the time Mansa Musa returned, tales of his amazing wealth had spread to the ports of the Mediterranean. Mali and its king were elevated to near legendary status, cemented by their inclusion on the 1375 Catalan Atlas. One of the most important world maps of Medieval Europe, it depicted the King holding a scepter and a gleaming gold nugget. Mansa Musa had literally put his empire and himself on the map. But material riches weren't the king's only concern. As a devout Muslim, he took a particular interest in Timbuktu, already a center of religion and learning prior to its annexation. Upon returning from his pilgrimage, he had the great Djinguereber Mosque built there with the help of an Andalusian architect. He also established a major university, further elevating the city's reputation, and attracting scholars and students from all over the Islamic world. Under Mansa Musa, the Empire became urbanized, with schools and mosques in hundreds of densely populated towns. The king's rich legacy persisted for generations and to this day, there are mausoleums, libraries and mosques that stand as a testament to this golden age of Mali's history.
TEDEd_World_History	How_Magellan_circumnavigated_the_globe_Ewandro_Magalhaes.txt	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 "Victoria" had achieved something unprecedented: the first circumnavigation of the globe. But this story really begins in 1494, two years after Columbus's voyage on behalf of Spain. Columbus's discovery had prompted the Catholic Spanish rulers to turn to the Pope to preempt any claims by Portugal to the new lands. The Pope resolved this dispute by drawing an imaginary line on the world map. Spain had the right to claim territories west of the divide, and Portugal to the east. Spain and Portugal, the two major seafaring super powers at the time, agreed to these terms in what came to be called the Treaty of Tordesillas. At the time, these nations had their eyes on the same prize: trade routes to the Spice Islands in today's Indonesia. The spices found there, which were used as seasonings, food preservatives, and aphrodisiacs, were worth many times their weight in gold. But because of Portugal's control over eastern sea routes, Spain's only viable option was to sail west. So when a Portuguese defector named Ferdinand Magellan claimed that a westward route to the Spice Islands existed, King Charles made him captain of a Spanish armada, and gave him all the resources he would need. Along with a share in the voyage's profits, he granted Magellan five ships and about 260 men. The crew included a young slave named Enrique, captured by Magellan on a previous journey to Malacca, and Antonio Pigafetta, a Venetian nobleman seeking adventure. On September 20, 1519, the fleet weighed anchor and headed southwest. After making landfall in what is now Brazil, it proceeded along the coast, exploring any water way leading inland. They were looking for the fabled passage linking east and west. As the weather worsened, the Spaniards resentment at having a Portuguese captain escalated. A full-blown mutiny soon erupted, which Magellan crushed with unspeakable cruelty. But his problems were only just beginning. During a reconnaissance mission, the "Santiago" was wrecked by a storm. Then while exploring a narrow waterway, the captain of the "San Antonio" took the first opportunity to slip away and sail back home. Magellan pressed forward, and on October 21, he started exploring a navigable sea way. 27 freezing days later, the three remaining ships emerged from what we now call the Strait of Magellan into the Mar Pacifico. The fleet never expected the new ocean to be so vast. After 98 days at sea, dozens of sailors had succumbed to scurvy and famine. When they finally reached land again, Enrique, the young slave, proved able to communicate with the natives. Their goal couldn't be far. Sailing further west, Magellan was warmly received by Rajah Humabon of Cebu. So when the ruler asked him to help subdue and convert the rebellious chief of Mactan, the captain readily agreed. The adventure would be his last. Overconfident and severely outnumbered, Magellan's force was overwhelmed, and the native's bamboo spears ended the captain's life. Yet the voyage had to continue. Magellan's will specified that Enrique should be freed, but the expedition still needed an interpreter. With his freedom at stake, Enrique is believed to have plotted with the Rajah to have about 30 of the Spaniards killed at a feast on the beach. Enrique was never heard from again, but if he ever made it back to Malacca, he may have been the first person to actually circumnavigate the globe. Meanwhile, the survivors burned the Concepcion and proceeded onward. They finally reached the Spice Islands in November of 1521 and loaded up on precious cargo. But they still had to return to Spain. The "Trinidad" sank shortly after being captured by the Portuguese. The "Victoria" continued west, piloted by Juan Sebastián Elcano, one of the pardoned mutineers. Against all odds, the small vessel made it back to Spain with a full cargo of cloves and cinnamon, enough to cover the expedition and turn a profit. An obsessive chronicler, Pigafetta described the lands and people they encountered. With the help of a humble slave, he also compiled the world's first phrase book of native languages. His journal is the reason we can tell this story. Magellan's legacy lingers. He had galaxies and space programs named after him. Elcano, too, was celebrated in Spain with a coat of arms and his face on currency and stamps. United by fate, the survivors and the hundreds who sacrificed their lives challenged conventional wisdom and completed a historic journey once thought impossible.
TEDEd_World_History	From_enslavement_to_rebel_gladiator_The_life_of_Spartacus_Fiona_Radford.txt	As the warrior slept, a snake coiled around his face. Instead of a threat, his wife saw an omen– a fearsome power that would lead her husband to either glory or doom. For now, however, he was only a slave – one of millions taken from the territories conquered by Rome to work the mines, till the fields, or fight for the crowd’s entertainment. A nomadic Thracian from what is now Bulgaria, he had served in the Roman Army but was imprisoned for desertion. His name was Spartacus. Spartacus had been brought to Capua by Batiatus, a lanista, or trainer of gladiators. And life at the ludus, or gladiator school, was unforgiving. New recruits were forced to swear an oath “to be burned, to be bound, to be beaten, and to be killed by the sword,” and to obey their master’s will without question. But even harsh discipline couldn’t break Spartacus’s spirit. In 73 BCE, Spartacus led 73 other slaves to seize knives and skewers from the kitchen and fight their way out, hijacking a wagon of gladiator equipment along the way. They were done fighting for others– now, they fought for their freedom. When the news reached Rome, the Senate was too busy with wars in Spain and the Pontic Empire to worry about some unruly slaves. Unconcerned, praetor Claudius Glaber took an army of three thousand men to the rebel’s refuge at Mount Vesuvius, and blocked off the only passage up the mountain. All that remained was to wait and starve them out– or so he thought. In the dead of night, the rebels lowered themselves down the cliffside on ropes made from vines, and flanked Glaber’s unguarded camp. Thus began the legend of Rome’s defiant gladiator. As news of the rebellion spread, its ranks swelled with escaped slaves, deserting soldiers, and hungry peasants. Many were untrained, but Spartacus’s clever tactics transformed them into an effective guerrilla force. A second Roman expedition led by praetor Varinius, was ambushed while the officer bathed. To elude the remaining Roman forces, the rebels used their enemy’s corpses as decoy guards, stealing Varinius’s own horse to aid their escape. Thanks to his inspiring victories and policy of distributing spoils equally, Spartacus continued attracting followers, and gained control of villages where new weapons could be forged. The Romans soon realized they were no longer facing ragtag fugitives, and in the spring of 72 BCE, the Senate retaliated with the full force of two legions. The rebels left victorious, but many lives were lost in the battle, including Spartacus’ lieutenant Crixus. To honor him, Spartacus held funeral games, forcing his Roman prisoners to play the role his fellow rebels had once endured. By the end of 72 BCE, Spartacus’ army was a massive force of roughly 120,000 members. But those numbers proved difficult to manage. With the path to the Alps clear, Spartacus wanted to march beyond Rome’s borders, where his followers would be free. But his vast army had grown brash. Many wanted to continue pillaging, while others dreamed of marching on Rome itself. In the end, the rebel army turned south– forgoing what would be their last chance at freedom. Meanwhile, Marcus Licinius Crassus had assumed control of the war. As Rome’s wealthiest citizen, he pursued Spartacus with eight new legions, eventually trapping the rebels in the toe of Italy. After failed attempts to build rafts, and a stinging betrayal by local pirates, the rebels made a desperate run to break through Crassus’s lines– but it was no use. Roman reinforcements were returning from the Pontic wars, and the rebels’ ranks and spirits were broken. In 71 BCE, they made their last stand. Spartacus nearly managed to reach Crassus before being cut down by centurions. His army was destroyed, and 6000 captives were crucified along the Appian Way– a haunting demonstration of Roman authority. Crassus won the war, but it is not his legacy which echoes through the centuries. Thousands of years later, the name of the slave who made the world’s mightiest empire tremble has become synonymous with freedom– and the courage to fight for it.
TEDEd_World_History	History_vs_Cleopatra_Alex_Gendler.txt	"Order, order. So who do we have here?" "Your Honor, this is Cleopatra, the Egyptian queen whose lurid affairs destroyed two of Rome's finest generals and brought the end of the Republic." "Your Honor, this is Cleopatra, one of the most powerful women in history whose reign brought Egypt nearly 22 years of stability and prosperity." "Uh, why don't we even know what she looked like?" "Most of the art and descriptions came long after her lifetime in the first century BCE, just like most of the things written about her." "So what do we actually know? Cleopatra VII was the last of the Ptolemaic dynasty, a Macedonian Greek family that governed Egypt after its conquest by Alexander the Great. She ruled jointly in Alexandria with her brother- to whom she was also married- until he had her exiled." "But what does all this have to do with Rome?" "Egypt had long been a Roman client state, and Cleopatra's father incurred large debts to the Republic. After being defeated by Julius Caesar in Rome's civil war, the General Pompey sought refuge in Egypt but was executed by Cleopatra's brother instead." "Caesar must have liked that." "Actually, he found the murder unseemly and demanded repayment of Egypt's debt. He could have annexed Egypt, but Cleopatra convinced him to restore her to the throne instead." "We hear she was quite convincing." "And why not? Cleopatra was a fascinating woman. She commanded armies at 21, spoke several languages, and was educated in a city with the world's finest library and some of the greatest scholars of the time." "Hmm." "She kept Caesar lounging in Egypt for months when Rome needed him." "Caesar did more than lounge. He was fascinated by Egypt's culture and knowledge, and he learned much during his time there. When he returned to Rome, he reformed the calendar, commissioned a census, made plans for a public library, and proposed many new infrastructure projects." "Yes, all very ambitious, exactly what got him assassinated." "Don't blame the Queen for Rome's strange politics. Her job was ruling Egypt, and she did it well. She stabilized the economy, managed the vast bureaucracy, and curbed corruption by priests and officials. When drought hit, she opened the granaries to the public and passed a tax amnesty, all while preserving her kingdom's stability and independence with no revolts during the rest of her reign." "So what went wrong?" "After Caesar's death, this foreign Queen couldn't stop meddling in Roman matters." "Actually, it was the Roman factions who came demanding her aid. And of course she had no choice but to support Octavian and Marc Antony in avenging Caesar, if only for the sake of their son." "And again, she provided her particular kind of support to Marc Antony." "Why does that matter? Why doesn't anyone seem to care about Caesar or Antony's countless other affairs? Why do we assume she instigated the relationships? And why are only powerful women defined by their sexuality?" "Order." "Cleopatra and Antony were a disaster. They offended the Republic with their ridiculous celebrations sitting on golden thrones and dressing up as gods until Octavian had all of Rome convinced of their megalomania." "And yet Octavian was the one who attacked Antony, annexed Egypt, and declared himself Emperor. It was the Roman's fear of a woman in power that ended their Republic, not the woman herself." "How ironic." Cleopatra's story survived mainly in the accounts of her enemies in Rome, and later writers filled the gaps with rumors and stereotypes. We may never know the full truth of her life and her reign, but we can separate fact from rumor by putting history on trial.
TEDEd_World_History	History_vs_Augustus_Peta_Greenfield_Alex_Gendler.txt	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 destroyed its core values? Find out in History versus Augustus. Order, order. The defendant today is Gaius Octavius? Gaius Julius Caesar/Augustus... Do we have the wrong guy? No, your Honor. Gaius Octavius, born in 63 BCE, was the grand-nephew of Julius Caesar. He became Gaius Julius Caesar upon being named his great-uncle’s adoptive son and heir. And he gained the title Augustus in 27 BCE when the Senate granted him additional honors. You mean when he established sole authority and became emperor of Rome. Is that bad? Didn’t every place have some king or emperor back then? Actually, your Honor, the Roman people had overthrown their kings centuries before to establish a republic, a government meant to serve the people, not the privilege of a ruling family. And it was Octavius who destroyed this tradition. Octavius was a model public servant. At 16, he was elected to the College of Pontiffs that supervised religious worship. He fought for Rome in Hispania alongside his great-uncle Caesar and took up the responsibility of avenging Caesar’s death when the corrupt oligarchs in the Senate betrayed and murdered him. Caesar had been a power-hungry tyrant who tried to make himself a king while consorting with his Egyptian queen Cleopatra. After his death, Octavius joined his general Mark Antony in starting a civil war that tore Rome apart, then stabbed his ally in the back to increase his own power. Antony was a fool. He waged a disastrous campaign in Parthia and plotted to turn Roman territories into personal kingdoms for himself and Cleopatra. Isn’t that what Caesar had been accused of? Well... So Octavius destroyed Antony for trying to become a king and then became one himself? That’s right. You can see the megalomania even in his adopted title – "The Illustrious One." That was a religious honorific. And Augustus didn’t seek power for his own sake. As winner of the civil war and commander of the most troops, it was his duty to restore law and order to Rome so that other factions didn’t continue fighting. He didn’t restore the law - he made it subordinate to him! Not true. Augustus worked to restore the Senate’s prestige, improved food security for the lower classes, and relinquished control of the army when he resigned his consul post. Mere optics. He used his military influence and personal wealth to stack the Senate in his favor, while retaining the powers of a tribune and the right to celebrate military triumphs. He kept control of provinces with the most legions. And if that wasn’t enough, he assumed the consul position twice more to promote his grandchildren. He was clearly trying to establish a dynasty. But what did he do with all that power? Glad you asked, your Honor. Augustus’s accomplishments were almost too many to name. He established consistent taxation for all provinces, ending private exploitation by local tax officials. He personally financed a network of roads and employed couriers so news and troops could travel easily throughout the realm. And it was under Augustus that many of Rome’s famous public buildings were constructed. The writers of the time were nearly unanimous in praising his rule. Did the writers have any other choice? Augustus exiled plenty of people on vague charges, including Ovid, one of Rome’s greatest poets. And you forgot to mention the intrusive laws regarding citizens’ personal lives – punishing adultery, restricting marriage between social classes, even penalties for remaining unmarried. He was trying to improve the citizenry and instill discipline. And he succeeded. His legacy speaks for itself: 40 years of internal stability, a professional army that expanded Rome’s frontiers in all directions, and a government still remembered as a model of civic virtue. His legacy was an empire that would go on to wage endless conquest until it collapsed, and a tradition of military autocracy. Any time a dictator in a general’s uniform commits atrocities while claiming to act on behalf of "the people," we have Augustus Caesar to thank. So you’re saying Augustus was a good emperor, and you’re saying there’s no such thing? We’re used to celebrating historical leaders for their achievements and victories. But to ask whether an individual should have such power in the first place is to put history itself on trial.
TEDEd_World_History	History_vs_Che_Guevara_Alex_Gendler.txt	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? Order, order. Hey, where have I seen that guy before? Ahem, your Honor, this is Ernesto Che Guevara. In the early 1950s, he left behind a privileged life as a medical student in Argentina to travel through rural Latin America. The poverty and misery he witnessed convinced him that saving lives required more than medicine. So he became a terrorist seeking to violently overthrow the region's governments. What? The region's governments were brutal oligarchies. Colonialism may have formally ended, but elites still controlled all the wealth. American corporations bought up land originally seized from indigenous people and used it for profit and export, even keeping most of it uncultivated while locals starved. Couldn't they vote to change that? Oh, they tried, your Honor. In 1953, Che came to Guatemala under the democratically-elected government of President Árbenz. Árbenz passed reforms to redistribute some of this uncultivated land back to the people while compensating the landowners. But he was overthrown in a CIA-sponsored coup. The military was protecting against the seizure of private property and communist takeover. They were protecting corporate profits and Che saw that they would use the fear of communism to overthrow any government that threatened those profits. So he took the lessons of Guatemala with him to Mexico. There, he met exiled Cuban revolutionaries and decided to help them liberate their country. You mean help Fidel Castro turn a vibrant Cuba into a dictatorship. Dictatorship was what Cuba had before the revolution. Fulgencio Batista was a tyrant who came to power in a military coup. He turned Havana into a luxury playground for foreigners while keeping Cubans mired in poverty and killing thousands in police crackdowns. Even President Kennedy called it the worst example of "economic colonization, humiliation, and exploitation in the world." Whatever Batista's faults, it can't compare to the totalitarian nightmare Castro would create. Forced labor camps, torture of prisoners, no freedom to speak or to leave. But this isn't the trial of Fidel Castro, is it? Che Guevara was instrumental in helping Castro seize power. As a commander in his guerilla army, he unleashed a reign of terror across the countryside, killing any suspected spies or dissenters. He also helped peasants build health clinics and schools, taught them to read, and even recited poetry to them. His harsh discipline was necessary against a much stronger enemy who didn't hesitate to burn entire villages suspected of aiding the rebels. Let's not forget that the new regime held mass executions and killed hundreds of people without trial as soon as they took power in 1959. The executed were officials and collaborators who had tormented the masses under Batista. The people supported this revolutionary justice. Which people? An angry mob crying for blood does not a democracy make. And that's not even mentioning the forced labor camps, arbitrary arrests, and repression of LGBT people that continued long after the revolution. There's a reason people kept risking their lives to flee, often with nothing but the clothes on their backs. So was that all this Che brought to Cuba? Just another violent dictatorship? Not at all. He oversaw land redistribution, helped established universal education, and organized volunteer literacy brigades that raised Cuba's literacy rate to 96%, still one of the highest in the world. Which allowed the government to control what information everyone received. Guevara's idealistic incompetence as Finance Minister caused massive drops in productivity when he replaced worker pay raises with moral certificates. He suppressed all press freedom, declaring that newspapers were instruments of the oligarchy. And it was he who urged Castro to host Soviet nuclear weapons, leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis that brought the world to the brink of destruction. He was a leader, not a bureaucrat. That's why he eventually left to spread the revolution abroad. Which didn't go well. He failed to rally rebels in the Congo and went to Bolivia even when the Soviets disapproved. The Bolivian Government, with the help of the CIA, was able to capture and neutralize this terrorist in 1967, before he could do much damage. While doing plenty of damage themselves in the process. So that was the end of it? Not at all. As Che said, the revolution is immortal. He was publicly mourned in cities all over the world. Not by the Cubans who managed to escape. And his story would inspire young activists for generations to come. Ha. A trendy symbol of rebellion for those who never had to live under his regime. Symbols of revolution may become commodified, but the idea of a more just world remains. Maybe, but I'm not sharing my coffee. Che Guevara was captured and executed by government forces in Bolivia. His remains would not be found for another 30 years. But did he die a hero or had he already become a villain? And should revolutions be judged by their ideals or their outcomes? These are the questions we face when we put history on trial.
TEDEd_World_History	도시의_성벽_콘스탄티노플_랄스_브라운워스Lars_Brownworth.txt	Translator: tom carter Reviewer: Bedirhan Cinar The most important walls in western history aren't even in the West. They surround the modern city of Istanbul, Constantinople as the Romans called it. And for a thousand years, the fate of Europe depended on them. Constantinople was designed to be the center of the world. When the frontiers of the Roman Empire began to crumble in the 4th Century, the capital was moved to the cultured, wealthy, and still stable East. There, at the crossroads between Europe and Asia, the hub of the major trade routes of the ancient world, the Emperor Constantine built his city. This was the city of libraries and universities, 20 times the size of London or Paris at the time. It contained the priceless knowledge of the classical world which was fading in the West. To protect this masterpiece from its many enemies, Constantine's successors built the finest defensive fortifications ever made. The first line of protection was a moat 60 feet wide and 22 feet deep, stretching all four miles from coast to coast. Pipes from inside the city could fill it at the first sight of the enemy, and a short wall protected archers who could fire at the soaked soldiers trying to swim across. Those who were lucky enough to clear the moat had to contend with an unceasing barrage from the 27 foot outer wall above. Arrows, spears, or far worse, Greek fire -- an ancient form of napalm that would ignite on contact and couldn't be extinguished by water -- would rain down on them. Squads of Roman defenders would carry portable flame throwers, spraying anyone trying to climb out of the moat. The terrified victims would leap back, only to find that they still burned underwater. At times, the Romans would also mount siphons onto the ramparts, and launch clay pots full of Greek fire from catapults at an invading army. The front lines would turn into an inferno, making it appear as if the earth itself was on fire. If, by some miracle, the outer wall was compromised, attackers would be faced with the final defense: the great inner wall. These walls were wide enough to have four men ride side by side, allowing troops to be rushed wherever they were needed. Attilla the Hun, destroyer of civilizations, who named himself the Scourge of God, took one look at them and turned around. The Avars battled the walls uselessly til their catapults ran out of rocks. The Turks tried to tunnel under them, but found the foundations too solid. The Arabs tried to starve the city into submission, but ran out of food themselves and had to resort to cannibalism. It took the guns of the modern world to finally bring them down. In 1453, the Turks brought their super weapon: a monster cannon that could fire a 15 hundred pound stone ball over a mile. Together with more than a hundred smaller guns, they kept up a steady bombardment day and night. A section of the old walls collapsed, but even in their death throes they proved formidable. The rubble absorbed the shock of the cannonballs better than the solid wall. It took a month and a half of continuous blasting to finally open a breach. The last Roman Emperor, Constantine the 11th, drew his sword and jumped into the gap to stop the onrushing horde, disappearing into legend. The city was taken, and the Roman Empire finally disappeared. But those broken walls had one last gift. As the survivors fled the doomed city, they brought with them their precious books and their ancient traditions. They traveled west to Italy, reintroduced the Greek language and learning to western Europe, and ignited the Renaissance. Thanks to Constantinople's walls, that pile of brick and marble that guarded them for so long, we still have our classical past.
TEDEd_World_History	역사_대_블리디미르_레닌알렉스_젠들러_Alex_Gendler.txt	He was one of the most influential figures of the 20th century, forever changing the course of one of the world's largest countries. But was he a hero who toppled an oppressive tyranny or a villain who replaced it with another? It's time to put Lenin on the stand in History vs. Lenin. "Order, order, hmm. Now, wasn't it your fault that the band broke up?" "Your honor, this is Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, AKA Lenin, the rabblerouser who helped overthrow the Russian tsar Nicholas II in 1917 and founded the Soviet Union, one of the worst dictatorships of the 20th century." "Ohh." "The tsar was a bloody tyrant under whom the masses toiled in slavery." "This is rubbish. Serfdom had already been abolished in 1861." "And replaced by something worse. The factory bosses treated the people far worse than their former feudal landlords. And unlike the landlords, they were always there. Russian workers toiled for eleven hours a day and were the lowest paid in all of Europe." "But Tsar Nicholas made laws to protect the workers." "He reluctantly did the bare minimum to avert revolution, and even there, he failed. Remember what happened in 1905 after his troops fired on peaceful petitioners?" "Yes, and the tsar ended the rebellion by introducing a constitution and an elected parliament, the Duma." "While retaining absolute power and dissolving them whenever he wanted." "Perhaps there would've been more reforms in due time if radicals, like Lenin, weren't always stirring up trouble." "Your Honor, Lenin had seen his older brother Aleksandr executed by the previous tsar for revolutionary activity, and even after the reforms, Nicholas continued the same mass repression and executions, as well as the unpopular involvement in World War I, that cost Russia so many lives and resources." "Hm, this tsar doesn't sound like such a capital fellow." "Your Honor, maybe Nicholas II did doom himself with bad decisions, but Lenin deserves no credit for this. When the February 1917 uprisings finally forced the tsar to abdicate, Lenin was still exiled in Switzerland." "Hm, so who came to power?" "The Duma formed a provisional government, led by Alexander Kerensky, an incompetent bourgeois failure. He even launched another failed offensive in the war, where Russia had already lost so much, instead of ending it like the people wanted." "It was a constitutional social democratic government, the most progressive of its time. And it could have succeeded eventually if Lenin hadn't returned in April, sent by the Germans to undermine the Russian war effort and instigate riots." "Such slander! The July Days were a spontaneous and justified reaction against the government's failures. And Kerensky showed his true colors when he blamed Lenin and arrested and outlawed his Bolshevik party, forcing him to flee into exile again. Some democracy! It's a good thing the government collapsed under their own incompetence and greed when they tried to stage a military coup then had to ask the Bolsheviks for help when it backfired. After that, all Lenin had to do was return in October and take charge. The government was peacefully overthrown overnight." "But what the Bolsheviks did after gaining power wasn't very peaceful. How many people did they execute without trial? And was it really necessary to murder the tsar's entire family, even the children?" "Russia was being attacked by foreign imperialists, trying to restore the tsar. Any royal heir that was rescued would be recognized as ruler by foreign governments. It would've been the end of everything the people had fought so hard to achieve. Besides, Lenin may not have given the order." "But it was not only imperialists that the Bolsheviks killed. What about the purges and executions of other socialist and anarchist parties, their old allies? What about the Tambov Rebellion, where peasants, resisting grain confiscation, were killed with poison gas? Or sending the army to crush the workers in Kronstadt, who were demanding democratic self-management? Was this still fighting for the people?" "Yes! The measures were difficult, but it was a difficult time. The new government needed to secure itself while being attacked from all sides, so that the socialist order could be established." "And what good came of this socialist order? Even after the civil war was won, there were famines, repression and millions executed or sent to die in camps, while Lenin's successor Stalin established a cult of personality and absolute power." "That wasn't the plan. Lenin never cared for personal gains, even his enemies admitted that he fully believed in his cause, living modestly and working tirelessly from his student days until his too early death. He saw how power-hungry Stalin was and tried to warn the party, but it was too late." "And the decades of totalitarianism that followed after?" "You could call it that, but it was Lenin's efforts that changed Russia in a few decades from a backward and undeveloped monarchy full of illiterate peasants to a modern, industrial superpower, with one of the world's best educated populations, unprecedented opportunities for women, and some of the most important scientific advancements of the century. Life may not have been luxurious, but nearly everyone had a roof over their head and food on their plate, which few countries have achieved." "But these advances could still have happened, even without Lenin and the repressive regime he established." "Yes, and I could've been a famous rock and roll singer. But how would I have sounded?" We can never be sure how things could've unfolded if different people were in power or different decisions were made, but to avoid the mistakes of the past, we must always be willing to put historical figures on trial.
TEDEd_World_History	교회이자_모스크인_아야_소피아_성당_켈리_월.txt	They say that if walls could talk, each building would have a story to tell, but few would tell so many fascinating stories in so many different voices as the Hagia Sophia, or holy wisdom. Perched at the crossroads of continents and cultures, it has seen massive changes from the name of the city where it stands, to its own structure and purpose. And today, the elements from each era stand ready to tell their tales to any visitor who will listen. Even before you arrive at the Hagia Sophia, the ancient fortifications hint at the strategic importance of the surrounding city, founded as Byzantium by Greek colonists in 657 BCE. And successfully renamed as Augusta Antonia, New Rome and Constantinople as it was conquered, reconquered, destroyed and rebuilt by various Greek, Persian and Roman rulers over the following centuries. And it was within these walls that the first Megale Ekklesia, or great church, was built in the fourth century. Though it was soon burned to the ground in riots, it established the location for the region's main religious structure for centuries to come. Near the entrance, the marble stones with reliefs are the last reminders of the second church. Built in 415 CE, it was destroyed during the Nika Riots of 532 when angry crowds at a chariot race nearly overthrew the emperor, Justinian the First. Having barely managed to retain power, he resolved to rebuild the church on a grander scale, and five years later, the edifice you see before you was completed. As you step inside, the stones of the foundation and walls murmur tales from their homelands of Egypt and Syria, while columns taken from the Temple of Artemis recall a more ancient past. Runic inscriptions carved by the Vikings of the emperor's elite guard carry the lore of distant northern lands. But your attention is caught by the grand dome, representing the heavens. Reaching over 50 meters high and over 30 meters in diameter and ringed by windows around its base, the golden dome appears suspended from heaven, light reflecting through its interior. Beneath its grandiose symbolism, the sturdy reinforcing Corinthian columns, brought from Lebanon after the original dome was partially destroyed by an earthquake in 558 CE, quietly remind you of its fragility and the engineering skills such a marvel requires. If a picture is worth a thousand words, the mosaics from the next several centuries have the most to say not only about their Biblical themes, but also the Byzantine emperors who commissioned them, often depicted along with Christ. But beneath their loud and clear voices, one hears the haunting echoes of the damaged and missing mosaics and icons, desecrated and looted during the Latin Occupation in the Fourth Crusade. Within the floor, the tomb inscription of Enrico Dandolo, the Venetian ruler who commanded the campaign, is a stark reminder of those 57 years that Hagia Sophia spent as a Roman Catholic church before returning to its orthodox roots upon the Byzantine Reconquest. But it would not remain a church for long. Weakened by the Crusades, Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453 and would be known as Istanbul thereafter. After allowing his soldiers three days of pillage, Sultan Mehmed the Second entered the building. Though heavily damaged, its grandeur was not lost on the young sultan who immediately rededicated it to Allah, proclaiming that it would be the new imperial mosque. The four minarets built over the next century are the most obvious sign of this era, serving as architectural supports in addition to their religious purpose. But there are many others. Ornate candle holders relate Suleiman's conquest of Hungary, while giant caligraphy discs hung from the ceiling remind visitors for the first four caliphs who followed Muhammad. Though the building you see today still looks like a mosque, it is now a museum, a decision made in 1935 by Kemal Ataturk, the modernizing first president of Turkey following the Ottoman Empire's collapse. It was this secularization that allowed for removal of the carpets hiding the marble floor decorations and the plaster covering the Christian mosaics. Ongoing restoration work has allowed the multiplicity of voices in Hagia Sophia's long history to be heard again after centuries of silence. But conflict remains. Hidden mosaics cry out from beneath Islamic calligraphy, valuable pieces of history that cannot be uncovered without destroying others. Meanwhile, calls sound from both Muslim and Christian communities to return the building to its former religious purposes. The story of the divine wisdom may be far from over, but one can only hope that the many voices residing there will be able to tell their part for years to come.
TEDEd_World_History	A_day_in_the_life_of_an_Aztec_midwife_Kay_Read.txt	Lord Sun dawns on the day called 7-Monkey, his fingers slowly spreading a rosy sheen that mixes softly with smoke rising from Tenochtitlan’s many hearth fires. The midwife, Xoquauhtli, has a difficult choice to make. A momentous shift from rainy season to dry season is underway. All summer, the gods have kept the people fed with corn, but the fertile summer months are disappearing. This day occurs during the festival that marks the shift between the summer season, when the gods feed the people, and the winter season, when the people feed the gods in return. Xoquauhtli owes a debt to her patron, Teteoinnan, the female warrior goddess at the center of this festival. Teteoinnan wages war both on women’s battlefields of birth and in men’s battles with Tenochtilan’s enemies. She must be kept happy or she will bring bad luck. The midwife should participate in the festival today, but one of her patients could go into labor any minute. Xoquauhtli decides to check on her patient first. The expecting mother hasn’t worked too hard, chewed gum, or lifted heavy things. Her family is taking good care of her. Surely Xoquauhtli can take a little time to honor her goddess. She leaves her apprentice in charge and heads to the center of the city. Along the way, she sees women sweeping the roads and hanging gourds in preparation for the festival. Finally, she reaches the Great Pyramid. On top are two temples: the north, where rituals honor the rain god in the summer, and the south one is where rituals honor the war god in the winter. On the equinox, the sun rises between the two sides. The ceremony begins with a mock battle between the midwives and the other physicians. Xoquauhtli’s team battles heartily, throwing nochtles, marigolds, and balls made of reed and moss. They joke, call their rivals names, and laugh. But then, a girl comes running with a message for Xoquauhtli. Her patient is in labor! She hurries back to the house. All the old women from the extended family have already gathered for the birth— their experience is very valuable if anything goes wrong. She readies herself with a prayer praising her most important tools, her fingers. Then she doses the patient with cihuapatli to help expel the baby, massages her in the sweathouse, and rubs her stomach with tobacco. Offering Teteoinnan a short prayer, she urges her patient to act like a warrior. A strong baby girl slips into her waiting hands and the old women shout triumphant cries. Xoquauhtli takes a few drops of water from a jade bowl, breaths on them, and places them on the baby’s tiny tongue. She calls her a precious greenstone, a little warrior, and tells her how the Lord and Lady of the Ninth Sky breathed life into her, sending her to this place of burden and torment. She then turns to the new mother, praising her, telling her she acted like an eagle warrior, a jaguar warrior. By the time they finish, it’s late, and the flames of the fire have died down. Xoquauhtli piles the remaining hot coals in the center of the hearth, stoking them to keep them going. She lays the baby in a woven basket, head facing the warming fire. This will warm her tonalli, an important “soul” center in the body central to health and well-being. It’s almost midnight— if Xoquauhtli hurries, she can get back to the temple for the culmination of the festival. She makes her way to the city center, where a priest carries a woman on his back to the top of the pyramid. To begin the new season and feed the gods, she will be beheaded, symbolizing how corn is cut in the fields. Afterward, she will be reborn as Lady Teteoinnan, and preside over the induction of new warriors.
TEDEd_World_History	Where_did_Russia_come_from_Alex_Gendler.txt	Where did Russia come from, why is it so big, and what are the differences between it and its neighbors? The answers lie in an epic story of seafaring warriors, nomadic invaders, and the rise and fall of a medieval state known as Kievan Rus. In the first millennium, a large group of tribes spread through the dense woodlands of Eastern Europe. Because they had no writing system, much of what we know about them comes from three main sources: archaeological evidence, accounts from literate scholars of the Roman Empire and the Middle East, and, lastly, an epic history called the Primary Chronicle compiled in the 12th century by a monk named Nestor. What they tell us is that these tribes who shared a common Slavic language and polytheistic religion had by the 7th century split into western, southern and eastern branches, the latter stretching from the Dniester River to the Volga and the Baltic Sea. As Nestor's story goes, after years of subjugation by Vikings from the north, who, by the way, did not wear horned helmets in battle, the region's tribes revolted and drove back the Northmen, but left to their own devices, they turned on each other. Such chaos ensued that, ironically, the tribes reached out to the foreigners they had just expelled, inviting them to return and establish order. The Vikings accepted, sending a prince named Rurik and his two brothers to rule. With Rurik's son, Oleg, expanding his realm into the south, and moving the capitol to Kiev, a former outpost of the Khazar Empire, the Kievan Rus was born, "Rus" most likely deriving from an old Norse word for "the men who row." The new princedom had complex relations with its neighbors, alternating between alliance and warfare with the Khazar and Byzantine Empires, as well as neighboring tribes. Religion played an important role in politics, and as the legend goes, in 987, the Rus prince Vladamir I decided it was time to abandon Slavic paganism, and sent emissaries to explore neighboring faiths. Put off by Islam's prohibition on alcohol and Judaism's expulsion from its holy land, the ruler settled on Orthodox Christianity after hearing odd accounts of its ceremonies. With Vladimir's conversion and marriage to the Byzantine emperor's sister, as well as continued trade along the Volga route, the relationship between the two civilizations deepened. Byzantine missionaries created an alphabet for Slavic languages based on a modified Greek script while Rus Viking warriors served as the Byzantine Emperor's elite guard. For several generations, the Kievan Rus flourished from its rich resources and trade. Its noblemen and noblewomen married prominent European rulers, while residents of some cities enjoyed great culture, literacy, and even democratic freedoms uncommon for the time. But nothing lasts forever. Fratricidal disputes over succession began to erode central power as increasingly independent cities ruled by rival princes vied for control. The Fourth Crusade and decline of Constantinople devastated the trade integral to Rus wealth and power, while Teutonic crusaders threatened northern territories. The final blow, however, would come from the east. Consumed by their squabbles, Rus princes paid little attention to the rumors of a mysterious unstoppable hoard until 1237, when 35,000 mounted archers led by Batu Khan swept through the Rus cities, sacking Kiev before continuing on to Hungary and Poland. The age of Kievan Rus had come to an end, its people now divided. In the east, which remained under Mongol rule, a remote trading post, known as Moscow, would grow to challenge the power of the Khans, conquering parts of their fragmenting empire, and, in many ways, succeeding it. As it absorbed other eastern Rus territories, it reclaimed the old name in its Greek form, Ruscia. Meanwhile, the western regions whose leaders had avoided destruction through political maneuvering until the hoard withdrew came under the influence of Poland and Lithuania. For the next few centuries, the former lands of Kievan Rus populated by Slavs, ruled by Vikings, taught by Greeks, and split by Mongols would develop differences in society, culture and language that remain to the present day.
TEDEd_World_History	History_vs_Napoleon_Bonaparte_Alex_Gendler.txt	After the French Revolution erupted in 1789, Europe was thrown into chaos. Neighboring countries' monarchs feared they would share the fate of Louis XVI, and attacked the New Republic, while at home, extremism and mistrust between factions lead to bloodshed. In the midst of all this conflict, a powerful figure emerged to take charge of France. But did he save the revolution or destroy it? "Order, order, who's the defendant today? I don't see anyone." "Your Honor, this is Napoléon Bonaparte, the tyrant who invaded nearly all of Europe to compensate for his personal stature-based insecurities." "Actually, Napoléon was at least average height for his time. The idea that he was short comes only from British wartime propaganda. And he was no tyrant. He was safeguarding the young Republic from being crushed by the European monarchies." "By overthrowing its government and seizing power himself?" "Your Honor, as a young and successful military officer, Napoléon fully supported the French Revolution, and its ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. But the revolutionaries were incapable of real leadership. Robespierre and the Jacobins who first came to power unleashed a reign of terror on the population, with their anti-Catholic extremism and nonstop executions of everyone who disagreed with them. And The Directory that replaced them was an unstable and incompetent oligarchy. They needed a strong leader who could govern wisely and justly." "So, France went through that whole revolution just to end up with another all-powerful ruler?" "Not quite. Napoléon's new powers were derived from the constitution that was approved by a popular vote in the Consulate." "Ha! The constitution was practically dictated at gunpoint in a military coup, and the public only accepted the tyrant because they were tired of constant civil war." "Be that as it may, Napoléon introduced a new constitution and a legal code that kept some of the most important achievements of the revolution in tact: freedom of religion abolition of hereditary privilege, and equality before the law for all men." "All men, indeed. He deprived women of the rights that the revolution had given them and even reinstated slavery in the French colonies. Haiti is still recovering from the consequences centuries later. What kind of equality is that?" "The only kind that could be stably maintained at the time, and still far ahead of France's neighbors." "Speaking of neighbors, what was with all the invasions?" "Great question, Your Honor." "Which invasions are we talking about? It was the neighboring empires who had invaded France trying to restore the monarchy, and prevent the spread of liberty across Europe, twice by the time Napoléon took charge. Having defended France as a soldier and a general in those wars, he knew that the best defense is a good offense." "An offense against the entire continent? Peace was secured by 1802, and other European powers recognized the new French Regime. But Bonaparte couldn't rest unless he had control of the whole continent, and all he knew was fighting. He tried to enforce a European-wide blockade of Britain, invaded any country that didn't comply, and launched more wars to hold onto his gains. And what was the result? Millions dead all over the continent, and the whole international order shattered." "You forgot the other result: the spread of democratic and liberal ideals across Europe. It was thanks to Napoléon that the continent was reshaped from a chaotic patchwork of fragmented feudal and religious territories into efficient, modern, and secular nation states where the people held more power and rights than ever before." "Should we also thank him for the rise of nationalism and the massive increase in army sizes? You can see how well that turned out a century later." "So what would European history have been like if it weren't for Napoléon?" "Unimaginably better/worse." Napoléon seemingly unstoppable momentum would die in the Russian winter snows, along with most of his army. But even after being deposed and exiled, he refused to give up, escaping from his prison and launching a bold attempt at restoring his empire before being defeated for the second and final time. Bonaparte was a ruler full of contradictions, defending a popular revolution by imposing absolute dictatorship, and spreading liberal ideals through imperial wars, and though he never achieved his dream of conquering Europe, he undoubtedly left his mark on it, for better or for worse.
TEDEd_World_History	What_is_the_tragedy_of_the_commons_Nicholas_Amendolare.txt	Imagine as a thought experiment that you live in a small village and depend on the local fish pond for food. You share the pond with three other villagers. The pond starts off with a dozen fish, and the fish reproduce. For every two fish, there will be one baby added each night. So, in order to maximize your supply of food, how many fish should you catch each day? Take a moment to think about it. Assume baby fish grow to full size immediately and that the pond begins at full capacity, and ignore factors like the sex of the fish you catch. The answer? One, and it's not just you. The best way to maximize every villager's food supply is for each fisherman to take just one fish each day. Here's how the math works. If each villager takes one fish, there will be eight fish left over night. Each pair of fish produces one baby, and the next day, the pond will be fully restocked with twelve fish. If anyone takes more than one, the number of reproductive pairs drops, and the population won't be able to bounce back. Eventually, the fish in the lake will be gone, leaving all four villagers to starve. This fish pond is just one example of a classic problem called the tragedy of the commons. The phenomenon was first described in a pamphlet by economist William Forster Lloyd in 1833 in a discussion of the overgrazing of cattle on village common areas. More than 100 years later, ecologist Garrett Hardin revived the concept to describe what happens when many individuals all share a limited resource, like grazing land, fishing areas, living space, even clean air. Hardin argued that these situations pit short-term self-interest against the common good, and they end badly for everyone, resulting in overgrazing, overfishing, overpopulation, pollution, and other social and environmental problems. The key feature of a tragedy of the commons is that it provides an opportunity for an individual to benefit him or herself while spreading out any negative effects across the larger population. To see what that means, let's revisit our fish pond. Each individual fisherman is motivated to take as many fish as he can for himself. Meanwhile, any decline in fish reproduction is shared by the entire village. Anxious to avoid losing out to his neighbors, a fisherman will conclude that it's in his best interest to take an extra fish, or two, or three. Unfortunately, this is the same conclusion reached by the other fisherman, and that's the tragedy. Optimizing for the self in the short term isn't optimal for anyone in the long term. That's a simplified example, but the tragedy of the commons plays out in the more complex systems of real life, too. The overuse of antibiotics has led to short-term gains in livestock production and in treating common illnesses, but it's also resulted in the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which threaten the entire population. A coal-fired power plant produces cheap electricity for its customers and profits for its owners. These local benefits are helpful in the short term, but pollution from mining and burning coal is spread across the entire atmosphere and sticks around for thousands of years. There are other examples, too. Littering, water shortages, deforestation, traffic jams, even the purchase of bottled water. But human civilization has proven it's capable of doing something remarkable. We form social contracts, we make communal agreements, we elect governments, and we pass laws. All this to save our collective selves from our own individual impulses. It isn't easy, and we certainly don't get it right nearly all of the time. But humans at our best have shown that we can solve these problems and we can continue to do so if we remember Hardin's lesson. When the tragedy of the commons applies, what's good for all of us is good for each of us.
TEDEd_World_History	역사_대_크리스토퍼_콜롬버스_알렉스_젠들러.txt	Many people in the United States and Latin America have grown up celebrating the anniversary of Christopher Columbus's voyage, but was he an intrepid explorer who brought two worlds together or a ruthless exploiter who brought colonialism and slavery? And did he even discover America at all? It's time to put Columbus on the stand in History vs. Christopher Columbus. "Order, order in the court. Wait, am I even supposed to be at work today?" Cough "Yes, your Honor. From 1792, Columbus Day was celebrated in many parts of the United States on October 12th, the actual anniversary date. But although it was declared an official holiday in 1934, individual states aren't required to observe it. Only 23 states close public services, and more states are moving away from it completely." Cough "What a pity. In the 70s, we even moved it to the second Monday in October so people could get a nice three-day weekend, but I guess you folks just hate celebrations." "Uh, what are we celebrating again?" "Come on, Your Honor, we all learned it in school. Christopher Columbus convinced the King of Spain to send him on a mission to find a better trade route to India, not by going East over land but sailing West around the globe. Everyone said it was crazy because they still thought the world was flat, but he knew better. And when in 1492 he sailed the ocean blue, he found something better than India: a whole new continent." "What rubbish. First of all, educated people knew the world was round since Aristotle. Secondly, Columbus didn't discover anything. There were already people living here for millennia. And he wasn't even the first European to visit. The Norse had settled Newfoundland almost 500 years before." "You don't say, so how come we're not all wearing those cow helmets?" "Actually, they didn't really wear those either." Cough "Who cares what some Vikings did way back when? Those settlements didn't last, but Columbus's did. And the news he brought back to Europe spread far and wide, inspiring all the explorers and settlers who came after. Without him, none of us would be here today." "And because of him, millions of Native Americans aren't here today. Do you know what Columbus did in the colonies he founded? He took the very first natives he met prisoner and wrote in his journal about how easily he could conquer and enslave all of them." "Oh, come on. Everyone was fighting each other back then. Didn't the natives even tell Columbus about other tribes raiding and taking captives?" "Yes, but tribal warfare was sporadic and limited. It certainly didn't wipe out 90% of the population." "Hmm. Why is celebrating this Columbus so important to you, anyway?" "Your Honor, Columbus's voyage was an inspiration to struggling people all across Europe, symbolizing freedom and new beginnings. And his discovery gave our grandparents and great-grandparents the chance to come here and build better lives for their children. Don't we deserve a hero to remind everyone that our country was build on the struggles of immigrants?" "And what about the struggles of Native Americans who were nearly wiped out and forced into reservations and whose descendants still suffer from poverty and discrimination? How can you make a hero out of a man who caused so much suffering?" "That's history. You can't judge a guy in the 15th century by modern standards. People back then even thought spreading Christianity and civilization across the world was a moral duty." "Actually, he was pretty bad, even by old standards. While governing Hispaniola, he tortured and mutilated natives who didn't bring him enough gold and sold girls as young as nine into sexual slavery, and he was brutal even to the other colonists he ruled, to the point that he was removed from power and thrown in jail. When the missionary, Bartolomé de las Casas, visited the island, he wrote, 'From 1494 to 1508, over 3,000,000 people had perished from war, slavery and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this?'" "Well, I'm not sure I believe those numbers." "Say, aren't there other ways the holiday is celebrated?" "In some Latin American countries, they celebrate the same date under different names, such as Día de la Raza. In these places, it's more a celebration of the native and mixed cultures that survived through the colonial period. Some places in the U.S. have also renamed the holiday, as Native American Day or Indigenous People's Day and changed the celebrations accordingly." "So, why not just change the name if it's such a problem?" "Because it's tradition. Ordinary people need their heroes and their founding myths. Can't we just keep celebrating the way we've been doing for a century, without having to delve into all this serious research? It's not like anyone is actually celebrating genocide." "Traditions change, and the way we choose to keep them alive says a lot about our values." "Well, it looks like giving tired judges a day off isn't one of those values, anyway." Traditions and holidays are important to all cultures, but a hero in one era may become a villain in the next as our historical knowledge expands and our values evolve. And deciding what these traditions should mean today is a major part of putting history on trial.
TEDEd_World_History	A_day_in_the_life_of_a_Celtic_Druid_Philip_Freeman.txt	As the sun rises on a fall morning in 55 BCE, Camma lays two pigeons on the altar at the center of her village. She offers a prayer to Matrona mother goddess of the Earth, and Lugus chief of the gods. Then, she wrings the birds’ necks and cuts them open to examine their entrails for divine messages. Camma is a druid. This means she conducts religious rites, but she also serves as a judge, healer, and scholar, teaching children and mediating conflict between Celtic tribes. She began her studies as a child, memorizing the countless details necessary to perform her many roles, since the druids’ knowledge is considered too sacred to record in writing. Like many druids, she spent years studying in Britain. Now, she is a resident Druid of the Veneti tribe in a small farming village near the western coast of Gaul, in what is now France. Since returning to Gaul, she has received many offers of marriage– but she has decided to devote herself to her work, at least for now. This morning, the omens are troubling. They tell of war and strife, as they often have in recent months. A neighboring tribe, the Redones, have raided their village and stolen cattle in broad daylight twice this fall. The children have gathered around to watch her work. Camma plays her lyre and sings to them. She weaves stories of the powerful kings who once ruled their land – brave warriors who were slain naked in combat but who will be reborn, as will all the Celts. When the children go off to help in the fields, Camma heads across the village to visit an old woman with an eye infection. On the way to the old woman’s hut, she passes men salting pigs for the winter food supply and women weaving clothing from dyed wool. She delivers a remedy for the injured eye– it’s made from mistletoe, a sacred healing plant, but deadly if used incorrectly. From there, Camma visits the chieftain to discuss the omens. She convinces him to go and talk through their problems with their neighbors. Accompanied by several warriors, they head through the forest and demand a meeting outside the Redones’ village walls. The Redones’ representatives bring their own druid, who Camma recognizes from the annual gathering in central Gaul where head druids are elected. The chieftains immediately begin to argue and threaten each other. Camma steps between the opposing sides to stop them from fighting— they must honor her authority. Finally, the Redones agree to pay Camma’s tribe several cattle. In spite of this resolution, Camma still feels uneasy on the long walk home. As they approach the village walls, a bright streak shoots across the sky— another omen, but of what? Back home, Camma sits among the elders for her evening meal of porridge, a bit of meat, and a cup of wine. While they were out during the day, an intercepted parchment arrived. Camma recognizes the writing immediately. Although the druids are forbidden from recording their knowledge, she and many other young druids can read Latin. From the message, she learns that the Romans are drawing closer to their lands. Some of the elders say that the tribe should flee to the nearby hills and hide, but Camma counsels them to trust in the gods and remain in their home. Privately, she has her doubts. Should the Romans reach them, her power to help might be limited. Unlike the other Celtic tribes, Roman legions have no regard for the druids’ sacred role as peacemakers. Before going to bed, she observes the course of the planets and consults her charts, trying to make sense of the meteor she saw earlier. The signs are converging on a larger threat than their neighbors.
TEDEd_World_History	역사에서_잊혀지면_안되는_파라오_케이트_나레브_Kate_Narev.txt	Three and a half thousand years ago in Egypt, a noble pharaoh was the victim of a violent attack. But the attack was not physical. This royal had been dead for 20 years. The attack was historical, an act of damnatio memoriae, the damnation of memory. Somebody smashed the pharaoh's statues, took a chisel and attempted to erase the pharaoh's name and image from history. Who was this pharaoh, and what was behind the attack? Here's the key: the pharaoh Hatshepsut was a woman. In the normal course of things, she should never have been pharaoh. Although it was legal for a woman to be a monarch, it disturbed some essential Egyptian beliefs. Firstly, the pharaoh was known as the living embodiment of the male god Horus. Secondly, disturbance to the tradition of rule by men was a serious challenge to Maat, a word for "truth," expressing a belief in order and justice, vital to the Egyptians. Hatshepsut had perhaps tried to adapt to this belief in the link between order and patriarchy through her titles. She took the name Maatkare, and sometimes referred to herself as Hatshepsu, with a masculine word ending. But apparently, these efforts didn't convince everyone, and perhaps someone erased Hatshepsut's image so that the world would forget the disturbance to Maat, and Egypt could be balanced again. Hatshepsut, moreover, was not the legitimate heir to the thrown, but a regent, a kind of stand-in co-monarch. The Egyptian kingship traditionally passed from father to son. It passed from Thutmose I to his son Thutmose II, Hatshepsut's husband. It should have passed from Thutmose II directly to his son Thutmose III, but Thutmose III was a little boy when his father died. Hatshepsut, the dead pharaoh’s chief wife and widow, stepped in to help as her stepson's regent but ended up ruling beside him as a fully fledged pharaoh. Perhaps Thutmose III was angry about this. Perhaps he was the one who erased her images. It's also possible that someone wanted to dishonor Hatshepsut because she was a bad pharaoh. But the evidence suggests she was actually pretty good. She competently fulfilled the traditional roles of the office. She was a great builder. Her mortuary temple, Djeser-Djeseru, was an architectural phenomenon at the time and is still admired today. She enhanced the economy of Egypt, conducting a very successful trade mission to the distant land of Punt. She had strong religious connections. She even claimed to be the daughter of the state god, Amun. And she had a successful military career, with a Nubian campaign, and claims she fought alongside her soldiers in battle. Of course, we have to be careful when we assess the success of Hatshepsut's career, since most of the evidence was written by Hatshepsut herself. She tells her own story in pictures and writing on the walls of her mortuary temple and the red chapel she built for Amun. So who committed the crimes against Hatshepsut's memory? The most popular suspect is her stepson, nephew, and co-ruler, Thutmose III. Did he do it out of anger because she stole his throne? This is unlikely since the damage wasn't done until 20 years after Hatshepsut died. That's a long time to hang onto anger and then act in a rage. Maybe Thutmose III did it to make his own reign look stronger. But it is most likely that he or someone else erased the images so that people would forget that a woman ever sat on Egypt's throne. This gender anomaly was simply too much of a threat to Maat and had to be obliterated from history. Happily, the ancient censors were not quite thorough enough. Enough evidence survived for us to piece together what happened, so the story of this unique powerful woman can now be told.
TEDEd_World_History	The_rise_and_fall_of_the_Berlin_Wall_Konrad_H_Jarausch.txt	In the early hours of August 13, 1961, East German construction workers flanked by soldiers and police began tearing up streets and erecting barriers throughout the city of Berlin and its surroundings. This night marked the beginning of one of history's most infamous dividing lines, the Berlin Wall. Construction on the wall continued for the next decade as it cut through neighborhoods, separated families, and divided not just Germany, but the world. To understand how we got to this point, we have to go back to World War II. America, Britain, and France joined forces with the Soviet Union against the Axis Powers. After they defeated Nazi Germany, each of the victorious nations occupied part of the country. The division was meant to be temporary, but the former allies found themselves at odds over their visions for post-war Europe. While Western powers promoted liberal market economies, the Soviet Union sought to surround itself with obedient Communist nations, including a weakened Germany. As their relations deteriorated, the Federal Republic of Germany was formed in the West while the Soviets established the German Democratic Republic in the East. The Soviet satellite countries restricted Western trade and movement, so a virtually impassable border formed. It became known as the Iron Curtain. In the former German capital of Berlin, things were particularly complicated. Although the city lay fully within the East German territory of the GDR, the post-war agreement gave the allies joint administration. So America, Britain, and France created a Democratic enclave in Berlin's western districts. While East Germans were officially banned from leaving the country, in Berlin, it was simply a matter of walking, or riding a subway, streetcar or bus, to the Western half, then traveling on to West Germany or beyond. This open border posed a problem for the East German leadership. They had staked a claim to represent the Communist resistance against Hitler and portrayed Western Germany as a continuation of the Nazi regime. While the U.S. and its allies poured money into West Germany's reconstruction, the Soviet Union extracted resources from the East as war reparations, making its planned economy even less competitive. Life in East Germany passed under the watchful eye of the Stasi, the secret police whose wiretaps and informants monitored citizens for any hint of disloyalty. While there was free health care and education in the East, the West boasted higher salaries, more consumer goods, and greater personal freedom. By 1961, about 3.5 million people, nearly 20% of the East German population, had left, including many young professionals. To prevent further losses, East Germany decided to close the border, and that's where the Berlin Wall came in. Extending for 43 kilometers through Berlin, and a further 112 through East Germany, the initial barrier consisted of barbed wire and mesh fencing. Some Berliners escaped by jumping over the wire or leaving from windows, but as the wall expanded, this became more difficult. By 1965, 106 kilometers of 3.6-meter-high concrete barricades had been added topped with a smooth pipe to prevent climbing. Over the coming years, the barrier was strengthened with spike strips, guard dogs, and even landmines, along with 302 watchtowers and 20 bunkers. A parallel fence in the rear set off a 100-meter area called the death strip. There, all buildings were demolished and the ground covered with sand to provide a clear line of sight for the hundreds of guards ordered to shoot anyone attempting to cross. Nevertheless, nearly 5,000 people in total managed to flee East Germany between 1961 and 1989. Some were diplomats or athletes who defected while abroad, but others were ordinary citizens who dug tunnels, swam across canals, flew hot air balloons, or even crashed a stolen tank through the wall. Yet the risk was great. Over 138 people died while attempting escape. Some shot in full view of West Germans powerless to help them. The wall stabilized East Germany's economy by preventing its work force from leaving, but tarnished its reputation, becoming a global symbol of Communist repression. As part of reconciliation with the East, the Basic Treaty of 1972 recognized East Germany pragmatically while West Germany retained its hope for eventual reunification. Although the Eastern regime gradually allowed family visits, it tried to discourage people from exercising these rights with an arduous bureaucratic process and high fees. Nonetheless, it was still overwhelmed by applications. By the end of the 1980's, the liberalization of other Eastern Bloc regimes caused mass demonstrations for free travel and demands for democracy. On the evening of November 9, 1989, East Germany tried to defuse tension by making travel permits easier to obtain. But the announcement brought thousands of East Berliners to the border crossing points in the wall, forcing the surprised guards to open the gates immediately. Rejoicing crowds poured into West Berlin as people from both sides danced atop the wall. And others began to demolish it with whatever tools they could find. Although the border guards initially tried to maintain order, it was soon clear that the years of division were at an end. After four decades, Germany was officially reunified in October 1990. And the Soviet Union fell soon after. Today, parts of the wall still stand as a reminder that any barriers we put up to impede freedom, we can also break down.
TEDEd_World_History	징기스칸_대_역사_알렉스_젠들러.txt	He was one of the most fearsome warlords who ever lived, waging an unstoppable conquest across the Eurasian continent. But was Genghis Khan a vicious barbarian or a unifier who paved the way for the modern world? We'll see in "History vs. Genghis Khan." "Order, order. Now who's the defendant today? Khan!" "I see Your Honor is familiar with Genghis Khan, the 13th century warlord whose military campaigns killed millions and left nothing but destruction in their wake." "Objection. First of all, it's pronounced Genghis Kahn." "Really?" "In Mongolia, yes. Regardless, he was one of the greatest leaders in human history. Born Temüjin, he was left fatherless and destitute as a child but went on to overcome constant strife to unite warring Mongol clans and forge the greatest empire the world had seen, eventually stretching from the Pacific to Europe's heartland." "And what was so great about invasion and slaughter? Northern China lost 2/3 of its population." "The Jin Dynasty had long harassed the northern tribes, paying them off to fight each other and periodically attacking them. Genghis Khan wasn't about to suffer the same fate as the last Khan who tried to unite the Mongols, and the demographic change may reflect poor census keeping, not to mention that many peasants were brought into the Khan's army." "You can pick apart numbers all you want, but they wiped out entire cities, along with their inhabitants." "The Khan preferred enemies to surrender and pay tribute, but he firmly believed in loyalty and diplomatic law. The cities that were massacred were ones that rebelled after surrendering, or killed as ambassadors. His was a strict understanding of justice." "Multiple accounts show his army's brutality going beyond justice: ripping unborn children from mothers' wombs, using prisoners as human shields, or moat fillers to support siege engines, taking all women from conquered towns--" "Enough! How barbaric!" "Is that really so much worse than other medieval armies?" "That doesn't excuse Genghis Khan's atrocities." "But it does make Genghis Khan unexceptional for his time rather than some bloodthirsty savage. In fact, after his unification of the tribes abolished bride kidnapping, women in the Mongol ranks had it better than most. They controlled domestic affairs, could divorce their husbands, and were trusted advisors. Temüjin remained with his first bride all his life, even raising her possibly illegitimate son as his own." "Regardless, Genghis Khan's legacy was a disaster: up to 40 million killed across Eurasia during his descendents' conquests. 10% of the world population. That's not even counting casualties from the Black Plague brought to Europe by the Golden Horde's Siege of Kaffa." "Surely that wasn't intentional." "Actually, when they saw their own troops dying of the Plague, they catapulted infected bodies over the city walls." "Blech." "The accounts you're referencing were written over a hundred years after the fact. How reliable do you think they are? Plus, the survivors reaped the benefits of the empire Genghis Khan founded." "Benefits?" "The Mongol Empire practiced religious tolerance among all subjects, they treated their soldiers well, promoted based on merit, rather than birth, established a vast postal system, and inforced universal rule of law, not to mention their contribution to culture." "You mean like Hulagu Khan's annihilation of Baghdad, the era's cultural capital? Libraries, hospitals and palaces burned, irrigation canals buried?" "Baghdad was unfortunate, but its Kalif refused to surrender, and Hulagu was later punished by Berke Khan for the wanton destruction. It wasn't Mongol policy to destroy culture. Usually they saved doctors, scholars and artisans from conquered places, and transferred them throughout their realm, spreading knowledge across the world." "What about the devastation of Kievan Rus, leaving its people in the Dark Ages even as the Renaissance spread across Western Europe?" "Western Europe was hardly peaceful at the time. The stability of Mongol rule made the Silk Road flourish once more, allowing trade and cultural exchange between East and West, and its legacy forged Russia and China from warring princedoms into unified states. In fact, long after the Empire, Genghis Khan's descendants could be found among the ruling nobility all over Eurasia." "Not surprising that a tyrant would inspire further tyrants." "Careful what you call him. You may be related." "What?" "16 million men today are descended from Genghis Khan. That's one in ever 200." For every great conqueror, there are millions of conquered. Whose stories will survive? And can a leader's historical or cultural signifigance outweigh the deaths they caused along the way? These are the questions that arise when we put history on trial.
TEDEd_World_History	흑사병의_과거_현재_그리고_미래.txt	Imagine if half the people in your neighborhood, your city, or even your whole country were wiped out. It might sound like something out of an apocalyptic horror film, but it actually happened in the 14th century during a disease outbreak known as the Black Death. Spreading from China through Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, the devastating epidemic destroyed as much as 1/5 of the world's population, killing nearly 50% of Europeans in just four years. One of the most fascinating and puzzling things abut the Black Death is that the illness itself was not a new phenomenon but one that has affected humans for centuries. DNA analysis of bone and tooth samples from this period, as well as an earlier epidemic known as the Plague of Justinian in 541 CE, has revealed that both were caused by Yersinia pestis, the same bacterium that causes bubonic plague today. What this means is that the same disease caused by the same pathogen can behave and spread very differently throughout history. Even before the use of antibiotics, the deadliest oubreaks in modern times, such as the ones that occurred in early 20th century India, killed no more than 3% of the population. Modern instances of plague also tend to remain localized, or travel slowly, as they are spread by rodent fleas. But the medieval Black Death, which spread like wildfire, was most likely communicated directly from one person to another. And because genetic comparisons of ancient to modern strains of Yersinia pestis have not revealed any significantly functional genetic differences, the key to why the earlier outbreak was so much deadlier must lie not in the parasite but the host. For about 300 years during the High Middle Ages, a warmer climate and agricultural improvements had led to explosive population growth throughout Europe. But with so many new mouths to feed, the end of this warm period spelled disaster. High fertility rates combined with reduced harvest, meant the land could no longer support its population, while the abundant supply of labor kept wages low. As a result, most Europeans in the early 14th century experienced a steady decline in living standards, marked by famine, poverty and poor health, leaving them vulnerable to infection. And indeed, the skeletal remains of Black Death victims found in London show telltale signs of malnutrition and prior illness. The destruction caused by the Black Death changed humanity in two important ways. On a societal level, the rapid loss of population led to important changes in Europe’s economic conditions. With more food to go around, as well as more land and better pay for the surviving farmers and workers, people began to eat better and live longer as studies of London cemeteries have shown. Higher living standards also brought an increase in social mobility, weakening feudalism and eventually leading to political reforms. But the plague also had an important biological impact. The sudden death of so many of the most frail and vulnerable people left behind a population with a significantly different gene pool, including genes that may have helped survivors resist the disease. And because such mutations often confer immunities to multiple pathogens that work in similar ways, research to discover the genetic consequences of the Black Death has the potential to be hugely beneficial. Today, the threat of an epidemic on the scale of the Black Death has been largely eliminated thanks to antibiotics. But the bubonic plague continues to kill a few thousand people worldwide every year, and the recent emergence of a drug-resistant strain threatens the return of darker times. Learning more about the causes and effects of the Black Death is important, not just for understanding how our world has been shaped by the past. It may also help save us from a similar nightmare in the future.
TEDEd_World_History	What_really_happened_to_the_Library_of_Alexandria_Elizabeth_Cox.txt	2,300 years ago, the rulers of Alexandria set out to fulfill one of humanity’s most audacious goals: to collect all the knowledge in the world under one roof. In its prime, the Library of Alexandria housed an unprecedented number of scrolls and attracted some of the Greek world’s greatest minds. But by the end of the 5th century CE, the great library had vanished. Many believed it was destroyed in a catastrophic fire. The truth of the library’s rise and fall is much more complex. The idea for the library came from Alexander the Great. After establishing himself as a conqueror, the former student of Aristotle turned his attention to building an empire of knowledge headquartered in his namesake city. He died before construction began, but his successor, Ptolemy I, executed Alexander’s plans for a museum and library. Located in the royal district of the city, the Library of Alexandria may have been built with grand Hellenistic columns, native Egyptian influences, or a unique blend of the two--there are no surviving accounts of its architecture. We do know it had lecture halls, classrooms, and, of course, shelves. As soon as the building was complete, Ptolemy I began to fill it with primarily Greek and Egyptian scrolls. He invited scholars to live and study in Alexandria at his expense. The library grew as they contributed their own manuscripts, but the rulers of Alexandria still wanted a copy of every book in the world. Luckily, Alexandria was a hub for ships traveling through the Mediterranean. Ptolemy III instituted a policy requiring any ship that docked in Alexandria to turn over its books for copying. Once the Library’s scribes had duplicated the texts, they kept the originals and sent the copies back to the ships. Hired book hunters also scoured the Mediterranean in search of new texts, and the rulers of Alexandria attempted to quash rivals by ending all exports of the Egyptian papyrus used to make scrolls. These efforts brought hundreds of thousands of books to Alexandria. As the library grew, it became possible to find information on more subjects than ever before, but also much more difficult to find information on any specific subject. Luckily, a scholar named Callimachus of Cyrene set to work on a solution, creating the pinakes, a 120-volume catalog of the library’s contents, the first of its kind. Using the pinakes, others were able to navigate the Library’s swelling collection. They made some astounding discoveries. 1,600 years before Columbus set sail, Eratosthenes not only realized the earth was round, but calculated its circumference and diameter within a few miles of their actual size. Heron of Alexandria created the world’s first steam engine over a thousand years before it was finally reinvented during the Industrial Revolution. For about 300 years after its founding in 283 BCE, the library thrived. But then, in 48 BCE, Julius Caesar laid siege to Alexandria and set the ships in the harbor on fire. For years, scholars believed the library burned as the blaze spread into the city. It's possible the fire destroyed part of the sprawling collection, but we know from ancient writings that scholars continued to visit the library for centuries after the siege. Ultimately, the library slowly disappeared as the city changed from Greek, to Roman, Christian, and eventually Muslim hands. Each new set of rulers viewed its contents as a threat rather than a source of pride. In 415 CE, the Christian rulers even had a mathematician named Hypatia murdered for studying the library’s ancient Greek texts, which they viewed as blasphemous. Though the Library of Alexandria and its countless texts are long gone, we’re still grappling with the best ways to collect, access, and preserve our knowledge. There’s more information available today and more advanced technology to preserve it, though we can’t know for sure that our digital archives will be more resistant to destruction than Alexandria’s ink and paper scrolls. And even if our reservoirs of knowledge are physically secure, they will still have to resist the more insidious forces that tore the library apart: fear of knowledge, and the arrogant belief that the past is obsolete. The difference is that, this time, we know what to prepare for.
TEDEd_World_History	The_rise_and_fall_of_the_Byzantine_Empire_Leonora_Neville.txt	Most history books will tell you the Roman Empire fell in the fifth century CE. But this would’ve come as a great surprise to the millions of people who lived in the Roman Empire up through the Middle Ages. This medieval Roman Empire, which we usually refer to today as the Byzantine Empire, began in 330 CE. That’s when Constantine, the first Christian emperor, moved the capital of the Roman Empire to a new city called Constantinople, which he founded on the site of the ancient Greek city Byzantion. When the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 and the Empire’s western provinces were conquered by barbarians, Constantine’s Eastern capital remained the seat of the Roman emperors. There, generations of emperors ruled for the next 11 centuries. Sharing continuity with the classical Roman Empire gave the Byzantine empire a technological and artistic advantage over its neighbors, whom Byzantines considered barbarians. In the ninth century, visitors from beyond the frontier were astonished at the graceful stone arches and domes of the imperial palace in Constantinople. A pair of golden lions flanked the imperial throne. A hidden organ would make the lions roar as guests fell on their knees. Golden birds sung from a nearby golden tree. Medieval Roman engineers even used hydraulic engines to raise the imperial throne high into the air. Other inherited aspects of ancient Roman culture could be seen in emperors’ clothing, from traditional military garb to togas, and in the courts, which continued to use Roman law. Working-class Byzantines would’ve also had similar lives to their Ancient Roman counterparts; many farmed or plied a specific trade, such as ceramics, leatherworking, fishing, weaving, or manufacturing silk. But, of course, the Byzantine Empire didn’t just rest on the laurels of Ancient Rome. Their artists innovated, creating vast mosaics and ornate marble carvings. Their architects constructed numerous churches, one of which, called Hagia Sophia, had a dome so high it was said to be hanging on a chain from heaven. The Empire was also home to great intellectuals such as Anna Komnene. As imperial princess in the 12th century, Anna dedicated her life to philosophy and history. Her account of her father’s reign is historians’ foremost source for Byzantine political history at the time of the first crusade. Another scholar, Leo the Mathematician, invented a system of beacons that ran the width of the empire— what’s now Greece and Turkey. Stretching more than 700 kilometers, this system allowed the edge of the Empire to warn the emperor of invading armies within one hour of sighting them at the border. But their advances couldn’t protect the Empire forever. In 1203, an army of French and Venetian Crusaders made a deal with a man named Alexios Angelos. Alexios was the son of a deposed emperor, and promised the crusaders vast riches and support to help him retake the throne from his uncle. Alexios succeeded, but after a year, the population rebelled and Alexios himself was deposed and killed. So Alexios’s unpaid army turned their aggression on Constantinople. They lit massive fires, which destroyed countless works of ancient and medieval art and literature, leaving about one-third of the population homeless. The city was reclaimed 50 years later by the Roman Emperor Michael Palaiologos, but his restored Empire never regained all the territory the Crusaders had conquered. Finally, in 1453, Ottoman Emperor Mehmed the Conqueror captured Constantinople, bringing a conclusive end to the Roman Empire. Despite the Ottoman conquest, many Greek-speaking inhabitants of the Eastern Mediterranean continued to call themselves Romans until the early 21st century. In fact, it wasn’t until the Renaissance that the term “Byzantine Empire” was first used. For Western Europeans, the Renaissance was about reconnecting with the wisdom of antiquity. And since the existence of a medieval Roman Empire suggested there were Europeans who’d never lost touch with antiquity, Western Europeans wanted to draw clear lines between the ages. To better distinguish the classical, Latin-speaking, pagan Roman Empire from the medieval, Greek-speaking, Christian Roman Empire, scholars renamed the latter group Byzantines. And thus, 100 years after it had fallen, the Byzantine Empire was born.
TEDEd_World_History	History_through_the_eyes_of_the_potato_Leo_BearMcGuinness.txt	Baked or fried, boiled or roasted, as chips or fries. At some point in your life, you've probably eaten a potato. Delicious, for sure, but the fact is potatoes have played a much more significant role in our history than just that of the dietary staple we have come to know and love today. Without the potato, our modern civilization might not exist at all. 8,000 years ago in South America, high atop the Andes, ancient Peruvians were the first to cultivate the potato. Containing high levels of proteins and carbohydrates, as well as essential fats, vitamins and minerals, potatoes were the perfect food source to fuel a large Incan working class as they built and farmed their terraced fields, mined the Rocky Mountains, and created the sophisticated civilization of the great Incan Empire. But considering how vital they were to the Incan people, when Spanish sailors returning from the Andes first brought potatoes to Europe, the spuds were duds. Europeans simply didn't want to eat what they considered dull and tasteless oddities from a strange new land, too closely related to the deadly nightshade plant belladonna for comfort. So instead of consuming them, they used potatoes as decorative garden plants. More than 200 years would pass before the potato caught on as a major food source throughout Europe, though even then, it was predominantly eaten by the lower classes. However, beginning around 1750, and thanks at least in part to the wide availability of inexpensive and nutritious potatoes, European peasants with greater food security no longer found themselves at the mercy of the regularly occurring grain famines of the time, and so their populations steadily grew. As a result, the British, Dutch and German Empires rose on the backs of the growing groups of farmers, laborers, and soldiers, thus lifting the West to its place of world dominion. However, not all European countries sprouted empires. After the Irish adopted the potato, their population dramatically increased, as did their dependence on the tuber as a major food staple. But then disaster struck. From 1845 to 1852, potato blight disease ravaged the majority of Ireland's potato crop, leading to the Irish Potato Famine, one of the deadliest famines in world history. Over a million Irish citizens starved to death, and 2 million more left their homes behind. But of course, this wasn't the end for the potato. The crop eventually recovered, and Europe's population, especially the working classes, continued to increase. Aided by the influx of Irish migrants, Europe now had a large, sustainable, and well-fed population who were capable of manning the emerging factories that would bring about our modern world via the Industrial Revolution. So it's almost impossible to imagine a world without the potato. Would the Industrial Revolution ever have happened? Would World War II have been lost by the Allies without this easy-to-grow crop that fed the Allied troops? Would it even have started? When you think about it like this, many major milestones in world history can all be at least partially attributed to the simple spud from the Peruvian hilltops.
TEDEd_World_History	Why_is_Herodotus_called_The_Father_of_History_Mark_Robinson.txt	Giant gold-digging ants, a furious king who orders the sea to be whipped 300 times, and a dolphin that saves a famous poet from drowning. These are just some of the stories from The Histories by Herodotus, an Ancient Greek writer from the 5th century BCE. Not all the events in the text may have happened exactly as Herodotus reported them, but this work revolutionized the way the past was recorded. Before Herodotus, the past was documented as a list of events with little or no attempt to explain their causes beyond accepting things as the will of the gods. Herodotus wanted a deeper, more rational understanding, so he took a new approach: looking at events from both sides to understand the reasons for them. Though he was Greek, Herodotus's hometown of Halicarnassus was part of the Persian Empire. He grew up during a series of wars between the powerful Persians and the smaller Greeks, and decided to find out all he could about the subject. In Herodotus's telling, the Persian Wars began in 499 BCE, when the Athenians assisted a rebellion by Greeks living under Persian rule. In 490, the Persian King, Darius, sent his army to take revenge on Athens. But at the Battle of Marathon, the Athenians won an unexpected victory. Ten years later, the Persians returned, planning to conquer the whole of Greece under the leadership of Darius's son, Xerxes. According to Herodotus, when Xerxes arrived, his million man army was initially opposed by a Greek force led by 300 Spartans at the mountain pass of Thermopylae. At great cost to the Persians, the Spartans and their king, Leonidas, were killed. This heroic defeat has been an inspiration to underdogs ever since. A few weeks later, the Greek navy tricked the Persian fleet into fighting in a narrow sea channel near Athens. The Persians were defeated and Xerxes fled, never to return. To explain how these wars broke out and why the Greeks triumphed, Herodotus collected stories from all around the Mediterranean. He recorded the achievements of both Greeks and non-Greeks before they were lost to the passage of time. The Histories opens with the famous sentence: "Herodotus, of Halicarnassus, here displays his inquiries." By framing the book as an “inquiry,” Herodotus allowed it to contain many different stories, some serious, others less so. He recorded the internal debates of the Persian court but also tales of Egyptian flying snakes and practical advice on how to catch a crocodile. The Greek word for this method of research is "autopsy," meaning "seeing for oneself." Herodotus was the first writer to examine the past by combining the different kinds of evidence he collected: opsis, or eyewitness accounts, akoe, or hearsay, and ta legomena, or tradition. He then used gnome, or reason, to reach conclusions about what actually happened. Many of the book's early readers were actually listeners. The Histories was originally written in 28 sections, each of which took about four hours to read aloud. As the Greeks increased in influence and power, Herodotus's writing and the idea of history spread across the Mediterranean. As the first proper historian, Herodotus wasn't perfect. On occasions, he favored the Greeks over the Persians and was too quick to believe some of the stories that he heard, which made for inaccuracies. However, modern evidence has actually explained some of his apparently extreme claims. For instance, there's a species of marmot in the Himalayas that spreads gold dust while digging. The ancient Persian word for marmot is quite close to the word for ant, so Herodotus may have just fallen prey to a translation error. All in all, for someone who was writing in an entirely new style, Herodotus did remarkably well. History, right down to the present day, has always suffered from the partiality and mistakes of historians. Herodotus’s method and creativity earned him the title that the Roman author Cicero gave him several hundred years later: "The Father of History."
TEDEd_World_History	A_brief_history_of_goths_Dan_Adams.txt	What do fans of atmospheric post-punk music have in common with ancient barbarians? Not much. So why are both known as goths? Is it a weird coincidence or a deeper connection stretching across the centuries? The story begins in Ancient Rome. As the Roman Empire expanded, it faced raids and invasions from the semi-nomadic populations along its borders. Among the most powerful were a Germanic people known as Goths who were composed of two tribal groups, the Visigoths and Ostrogoths. While some of the Germanic tribes remained Rome's enemies, the Empire incorporated others into the imperial army. As the Roman Empire split in two, these tribal armies played larger roles in its defense and internal power struggles. In the 5th century, a mercenary revolt lead by a soldier named Odoacer captured Rome and deposed the Western Emperor. Odoacer and his Ostrogoth successor Theoderic technically remained under the Eastern Emperor's authority and maintained Roman traditions. But the Western Empire would never be united again. Its dominions fragmented into kingdoms ruled by Goths and other Germanic tribes who assimilated into local cultures, though many of their names still mark the map. This was the end of the Classical Period and the beginning of what many call the Dark Ages. Although Roman culture was never fully lost, its influence declined and new art styles arose focused on religious symbolism and allegory rather than proportion and realism. This shift extended to architecture with the construction of the Abbey of Saint Denis in France in 1137. Pointed arches, flying buttresses, and large windows made the structure more skeletal and ornate. That emphasized its open, luminous interior rather than the sturdy walls and columns of Classical buildings. Over the next few centuries, this became a model for Cathedrals throughout Europe. But fashions change. With the Italian Renaissance's renewed admiration for Ancient Greece and Rome, the more recent style began to seem crude and inferior in comparison. Writing in his 1550 book, "Lives of the Artists," Giorgio Vasari was the first to describe it as Gothic, a derogatory reference to the Barbarians thought to have destroyed Classical civilization. The name stuck, and soon came to describe the Medieval period overall, with its associations of darkness, superstition, and simplicity. But time marched on, as did what was considered fashionable. In the 1700s, a period called the Enlightenment came about, which valued scientific reason above all else. Reacting against that, Romantic authors like Goethe and Byron sought idealized visions of a past of natural landscapes and mysterious spiritual forces. Here, the word Gothic was repurposed again to describe a literary genre that emerged as a darker strain of Romanticism. The term was first applied by Horace Walpole to his own 1764 novel, "The Castle of Otranto" as a reference to the plot and general atmosphere. Many of the novel's elements became genre staples inspiring classics and the countless movies they spawned. The gothic label belonged to literature and film until the 1970s when a new musical scene emerged. Taking cues from artists like The Doors and The Velvet Underground, British post-punk groups, like Joy Division, Bauhaus, and The Cure, combined gloomy lyrics and punk dissonance with imagery inspired by the Victorian era, classic horror, and androgynous glam fashion. By the early 1980s, similar bands were consistently described as Gothic rock by the music press, and the stye's popularity brought it out of dimly lit clubs to major labels and MTV. And today, despite occasional negative media attention and stereotypes, Gothic music and fashion continue as a strong underground phenomenon. They've also branched into sub-genres, such as cybergoth, gothabilly, gothic metal, and even steampunk. The history of the word gothic is embedded in thousands of years worth of countercultural movements, from invading outsiders becoming kings to towering spires replacing solid columns to artists finding beauty in darkness. Each step has seen a revolution of sorts and a tendency for civilization to reach into its past to reshape its present.
TEDEd_World_History	How_did_Polynesian_wayfinders_navigate_the_Pacific_Ocean_Alan_Tamayose_and_Shantell_De_Silva.txt	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. That's a body of water that covers more than 160 million square kilometers, greater than all the landmasses on Earth combined. For thousands of years, Polynesian navigators managed voyages like this without the help of modern navigational aids. Ancient Polynesians used the Sun, Moon, stars, planets, ocean currents, and clouds as guides that allowed them to see the ocean as a series of pathways rather than an obstacle. Their voyages began around 1500 B.C. when the people who would settle Polynesia first set sail from Southeast Asia. Early Polynesians eventually settled a vast area of islands spread over 40 million square kilometers of the Pacific Ocean. Some historians believe the voyagers moved from place to place to avoid overpopulation. Others, that they were driven by war. Voyages became less frequent by around 1300 A.D. as Polynesian societies became more rooted in specific locations. During the voyaging period, successful journeys depended on a number of factors: well-built canoes, the skill of navigators, and weather being some of the biggest. Voyages relied on sturdy wa'a kaulua, or double-hulled canoes, which were powered by sails and steered with a single large oar. Canoe building involved the whole community, bringing together the navigators, canoe builders, priests, chanters, and hula dancers. Navigators were keen observers of the natural world. They were abundantly familiar with trade wind-generated ocean swells, which typically flow northeast or southeast. By day, navigators could identify direction by the rocking motion of their canoes caused by these swells. But sunrise and sunset were even more useful. The Sun's position indicated east and west and created low light on the ocean that made it possible to see swells directly. At night, navigators used something called a star compass, which wasn't a physical object, but rather a sort of mental map. They memorized the rising and setting points of stars and constellations at different times of the year. They used those to divide the sky into four quadrants, subdivided into 32 houses, with the canoe in the middle. So, for example, when they saw the star Pira‘atea rising from the ocean, they knew that to be northeast. They had some other tricks, too. The Earth's axis points towards Hokupa'a, or the North Star, so called because it's the one fixed point in the sky as the Earth rotates and always indicates north. However, it's not visible south of the Equator, so navigators there could use a constellation called Newe, or the Southern Cross, and some mental tricks to estimate where south is. For instance, draw a line through these two stars, extend it 4.5 times, and draw another line from there to the horizon. That's south. But the sky also contains navigational aids much closer to Earth, the clouds. Besides being useful weather cues, under the right conditions, they can indicate landmasses. For instance, the lagoons of Pacific atolls can actually be seen reflected on the underside of clouds, if you know what to look for. And high masses of clouds can indicate mountainous islands. Once navigators neared their destination, other clues, such as the flight patterns of birds, floating debris or vegetation, and types of fish in the area helped determine the proximity of land. For example, the Manu-O-Ku had a known flight range of 190 kilometers, and could be followed back to shore. So how do we know all of this? Partially through evidence in petroglyphs, written observations of European explorers, and Polynesian oral traditions. But also by trying them out for ourselves. In 2017, a voyaging canoe called Hokulea completed a worldwide voyage using only these techniques. If that seems remarkable, remember the ancient Polynesians, who through close study and kinship with nature, were able to forge these paths across an unfathomably vast, vibrant living ocean.
TEDEd_World_History	The_historic_womens_suffrage_march_on_Washington_Michelle_Mehrtens.txt	On March 3, 1913, protesters parted for the woman in white: dressed in a flowing cape and sitting astride a white horse, the activist Inez Milholland was hard to miss. She was riding at the helm of the Women’s Suffrage Parade- the first mass protest for a woman’s right to vote on a national scale. After months of strategic planning and controversy, thousands of women gathered in Washington D.C. Here, they called for a constitutional amendment granting them the right to vote. By 1913, women’s rights activists had been campaigning for decades. As a disenfranchised group, women had no voice in the laws that affected their– or anyone else’s– lives. However, they were struggling to secure broader support for political equality. They’d achieved no major victories since 1896, when Utah and Idaho enfranchised women. That brought the total number of states which recognized a women’s right to vote to four. A new, media-savvy spirit arrived in the form of Alice Paul. She was inspired by the British suffragettes, who went on hunger strikes and endured imprisonment in the early 1900s. Rather than conduct costly campaigns on a state-by-state basis, Paul sought the long-lasting impact of a constitutional amendment, which would protect women’s voting rights nationwide. As a member of the National American Women Suffrage Association, Paul proposed a massive pageant to whip up support and rejuvenate the movement. Washington authorities initially rejected her plan- and then tried to relegate the march to side streets. But Paul got those decisions overturned and confirmed a parade for the day before the presidential inauguration of Woodrow Wilson. This would maximize media coverage and grab the attention of the crowds who would be in town. However, in planning the parade, Paul mainly focused on appealing to white women from all backgrounds, including those who were racist. She actively discouraged African American activists and organizations from participating- and stated that those who did so should march in the back. But black women would not be made invisible in a national movement they helped shape. On the day of the march, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, a ground-breaking investigative journalist and anti-lynching advocate, refused to move to the back and proudly marched under the Illinois banner. The co-founder of the NAACP, Mary Church Terrell, joined the parade with the 22 founders of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, an organization created by female students from Howard University. In these ways and more, black women persevered despite deep hostility from white women in the movement, and at great political and physical risk. On the day of the parade, suffragists assembled to create a powerful exhibition. The surging sections of the procession included international suffragists, artists, performers and business-owners. Floats came in the form of golden chariots; an enormous Liberty Bell; and a map of enfranchised countries. On the steps of the Treasury Building, performers acted out the historical achievements of women to a live orchestra. The marchers carried on even as a mob blocked the route, hurling insults and spitting at women, tossing cigars, and physically assaulting participants. The police did not intervene, and in the end, over 100 women were hospitalized. Their mistreatment, widely reported throughout the country, catapulted the parade into the public eye— and garnered suffragists greater sympathy. National newspapers lambasted the police, and Congressional hearings investigated their actions during the parade. After the protest, the "Women’s Journal" declared, “Washington has been disgraced. Equal suffrage has scored a great victory." In this way, the march initiated a surge of support for women’s voting rights that endured in the coming years. Suffragists kept up steady pressure on their representatives, attended rallies, and petitioned the White House. Inez Milholland, the woman on the white horse, campaigned constantly throughout the United States, despite suffering from chronic health problems. She did not live to see her efforts come to fruition. In 1916, she collapsed while giving a suffrage speech and died soon after. According to popular reports, her last words were, “Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?” Though full voting inclusion would take decades, in 1920, Congress ratified the 19th amendment, finally granting women the right to vote.
TEDEd_World_History	A_day_in_the_life_of_a_Peruvian_shaman_Gabriel_Prieto.txt	At the temple of the fisherman, Quexo, the village shaman, looks out over the ocean and frowns. It’s a still morning– unusually still, and the lack of wind is the latest in a series of troubling signs. The year is 1400 BCE. Quexo’s village sits in the dusty, treeless desert between the towering Andes and Pacific Ocean. The villagers live off the sea, harvesting reeds, drying them in the sun, and using them to build fishing boats. Every day in the summer, the men set out on these boats to hunt shark and other fish while the women harvest shellfish and sea urchins. In winter, storms bring powerful waves, which cross the vast ocean unobstructed to detonate on these shores. Most years, Quexo’s village catches more than enough fish. But this year, the winds have died and the fish have dwindled. Quexo has seen this pattern before: the fish disappear, then the violent rains arrive, causing flash floods that dissolve mud bricks and wash away settlements. He needs to stop the bad weather before the storms come— his only hope is a special ritual he’s been planning. Quexo spends much less time in the ocean than the other villagers. He became a shaman after seeing a sign in the sea one morning— like his father and grandfather before him. This morning, he walks to the nearby sacred mountain as the sun rises. There, he gathers ceremonial cactus and herbs like “horse tail,” “stonebreaker," and valerian, along with the mineral hematite. Back in the village, everyone is preparing to leave for a religious festival at a large temple inland. The festival marks the beginning of what is usually the season of abundance, but with the signs pointing to storms, Quexo isn’t feeling too celebratory. Whole families travel to the festival, where they camp for a few days. They’ve packed seaweed, carved bones, gourd bowls, reed mats, and other goods to trade in the market around the temple. Quexo inspects the goods to make sure everything is of the finest quality. He brings the herbs he gathered to trade for cinnabar, a mineral that comes from the highlands in the Andes. He needs cinnabar for his ritual to ward off the storms. Around lunchtime, the sprawling temple rises out of the desert ahead. People have come from all along the coast and the foothills. The women handle trade transactions— they’re looking for cotton and ceramics. Men aren’t usually allowed to do the trading, but shamans are an exception. Though Quexo is a man, during rituals he becomes half man, half woman, and this ambiguity makes his role more flexible outside ceremonies too. Quexo can’t find any cinnabar in the market, so he heads to the main temple, dodging children playing in the plaza. He puts on his ceremonial garb: red face paint, earrings, and a necklace of shark’s teeth and vertebrae. Inside, the ceremonies are already underway, and the shamans have drunk the sacred cactus drink. Many of them are Quexo’s friends from festivals over the years, but he doesn’t see the mountain shamans who would have cinnabar. He begins to panic. If the highland shamans don’t show up, his only option will be to make the long walk into the mountains. It’s a dangerous journey that takes five days, precious time he doesn’t have to waste. But perhaps he has no choice. He refuses the sacred cactus and sets off toward the mountains. As he leaves the settlement behind, he sees a group approaching. He recognizes them as highlanders by their llamas. He dashes toward their shaman. Barely pausing to say hello, he offers him hematite, dried seaweed, and empty shells to grind up for lime and chew with coca leaves. In return, the other shaman gives him the precious cinnabar. With the key to his ritual in hand, Quexo heads home to the temple of the fisherman in hopes of turning the tide.

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