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Hi there my name’s John Green; this is Crash Course: World History and today we’re gonna
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talk about Alexander the Great, but to do that we’re going to begin by talking about
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ideals of masculinity and heroism and Kim Kardashian and the Situation.
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Mr Green, Mr Green, Mr. Green! Which Situation?
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Oh, me from the past, I forgot you wanted to go to Columbia. Me from the present regrets
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to inform you that you do not get in.
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But since you live in the past, you have no way of knowing who I’m talking about, and
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it occurs to me that this video may be watched in some glorious future when Kim Kardashian
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and the Situation have mercifully disappeared from public life, and the supermarket tabloids,
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instead of talking about celebrities talk about Foucault and the Higgs-Boson particle,
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so Kim Kardashian is a professional famous person who rose to notoriety by scoodilypoopin
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with someone named Ray Jay, and Mike “The Situation” I forgot his last name is a professional
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stupid person with big muscles.
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They’re both known by millions, lives in luxury, and people literally pay to own their
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odors.
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Why do these people crave fame? Why do any of us? Well, I’d argue it’s not about
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money. If it were our tabloids would be devoted to the lives and times of bankers.
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I think we all want to leave a legacy. We want to be remembered. We want to be Great.
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For a long time, history was all about the Study of Great Men, and it was common to call
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people as “the Great,” but these days historians are less likely to do that, because
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they recognize that one man’s Great is generally another man’s Terrible.
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And also “the Great” has some misogynistic implications, like, it’s almost always associated
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with men. You never hear about Cleopatra the Great or Elizabeth the Great. There was, of
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course, Catherine the Great of Russia, but for her masculine Greatness she was saddled
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with the completely untrue rumor that she died trying to scoodilypoop with a horse.
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Saddled? Get it? Anybody? Saddled with the rumor?
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Anyway, they could’ve soiled Catherine the Great’s name just by telling the truth:
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which is that like so many other Great men and women, she died on the toilet. Get it?
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soiled? Toilet? Yes? Yes!
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So, quick biography of Alexander of Macedon, born in 356 BCE, died in 323 BCE at the ripe
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old age of 32.
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Alexander was the son of King Philip the 2nd, and when just 13 years old he tamed a horse
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no one else could ride named Bucephalus, which impressed his father so much he said:
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“Oh thy son, look thee at a kingdom equal to and worthy of thyself, for Macedonia is
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too little for thee.”
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By that time he was already an accomplished general, but over the next decade he expanded
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his empire with unprecedented speed and he is famous for having never lost a battle.
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Today we’re going to look at Alexander of Macedon’s story by examining three possible
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definitions of greatness.
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First, maybe Alexander was great because of his accomplishments.
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This is an extension of the idea that history is the record of the deeds of great men. Now,
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of course, that’s ridiculous. For one thing, half of people are women for another, there
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are lots of historic events that no one can take responsibility for, like for instance
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the Black Plague.
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But still, Alexander was accomplished. I mean, he
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conquered a lot of territory. Like, a lot.
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No, not a lot, A LOT. Yes.
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His father, Philip, had conquered all of Greece, but Alexander did what the Spartans and Athenians
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had failed to do: He destroyed the Persian Empire. He conquered all the land the Persians
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had held including Egypt, and then marched toward India, stopping at the Indus River
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only because his army was like, “Hey, Alexander, you know what would be awesome? Not marching.”
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Also, Alexander was a really good general, although historians disagree over whether
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his tactics were truly brilliant or if his army just happened to have better technology,
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specifically these extra long spears called sarissas.
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Much of his reputation as a general, and his reputation in general, anybody? Puns? I should
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stop? OK. Is because of Napoleon.
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Napoleon like many other generals throughout history, was obsessed with Alexander the Great,
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but more on that in a moment.
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That said, Alexander wasn’t very good at what we might now call empire-building.
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Alexander’s empire was definitely visually impressive, but it wasn’t actually much
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of an empire. Like, Alexander specialized in the tearing down of things, but he wasn’t
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so great at the building up of institutions to replace the things he’d torn down.
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And that’s why, pretty soon after his death, the Greek Empire broke into three empires,
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called the Hellenistic Kingdoms.
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Each was ruled by one of Alexander’s generals, and they became important dynasties. The Antigones
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in Greece and Macedonia, the Ptolemies in Egypt, the Selucids in Persia, all of which
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lasted longer than Alexander’s empire.
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A Second Greatness: Maybe Alexander was great because he had an enormous impact on the world
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after his death. Like King Tut, Alexander the great was amazingly good at being a dead
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person. Let’s go to the Thought Bubble.
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So, After Alexander of Macedon died, everyone from the Romans to Napoleon to Oliver Stone
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loved him, and he was an important military model for many generals throughout history.
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But his main post-death legacy may be that he introduced the Persian idea of Absolute
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Monarchy to the Greco-Roman world, which would become a pretty big deal.
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Alexander also built a number of cities on his route that became big deals after his
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death, and it’s easy to spot them because he named most of them after himself and one
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after his horse.
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The Alexandria in Egypt became a major center of learning in the classical world, and was
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home to the most amazing library ever, which Julius Caesar probably “accidentally”
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burned down while trying to conquer a bunch of land to emulate his hero, Alexander the
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Great.
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Plus, the dead Alexander had a huge impact on culture. He gave the region its common
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language, Greek, which facilitated conversations and commerce.
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Greek was so widespread that archaeologists have found coins in what is now Afghanistan
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with pictures of their kings and the word “king” written beneath the pictures—in
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Greek. This is also why, incidentally, the New Testament was eventually written in Greek.
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Although Alexander was mostly just conquering territory for the glory and heroism and greatness
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of it all, in his wake emerged a more closely connected world that could trade and communicate
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with more people more efficiently than ever before.
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Alexander didn’t make those things happen, but they probably wouldn’t have happened
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without him. But here’s a question:
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If you’re watching Keeping Up With the Kardashians and get so involved in Kim’s marital travails
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that you leave the bathwater running, thereby flooding your house and necessitating a call
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to a plumber, and then you fall in love with the plumber and get married and live happily
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ever after, does that make Kim Kardashian responsible for your marriage?
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Thanks, Thought Bubble. Okay, a third definition of greatness: Maybe Alexander is great because
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of his legend:
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Since no accounts of his life were written while he lived, embellishment was easy, and
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maybe that’s where true greatness lies.
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I mean the guy died at 32, before he ever had a chance to get old and lose battles,
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He was tutored by Aristotle, for God’s sakes. Then there’s Alexander’s single-minded
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Ahab-esque pursuit of the Persian king Darius, who he chased across modern-day Iraq and Iran
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for no real reason except he desperately wanted to kill him, and when Bessus, one of Darius’s
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generals, assassinated him before Alexander had the chance, Alexander chased Bessus around
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until he could at least kill him.
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These almost-comical pursuits of glory and heroism are accompanied in classical histories
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by stories of Alexander walking through the desert, and then suddenly raining, and these
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ravens coming to lead him to the army he’s supposed to fight, and stories of his hot
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Persian wife Roxanna, who supposedly while still a teenager engineered the assassinations
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of many of Alexander’s fellow wives.
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And even at his death, people tried to make Alexander live up to this heroic ideal. Like,
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Plutarch tells us that he died of a fever, but that’s no way for a masculine, empire
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building awesome person to die! So rumors persist that he died either of alcohol poisoning
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or else of assassination-y poisoning.
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I mean, no great man can die of a fever.
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Speaking of Great Men, it’s time to strip down for the Open Letter.
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So elegant.
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But first let’s see what’s in the Secret Compartment today. Oh. It’s Kim Kardashian’s
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perfume. Thanks Stan. I’ll wear this. I’ll check it out, I’ll give it a try.
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[sprays self with super nasty crap]
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C’ah. Wow. That is... mmm...it’s like all the worst parts of baby powder and all
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the worst parts of cat pee.
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An Open Letter to the Ladies:
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Hello, Ladies,
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You’ve really been unfairly neglected in Crash Course World History and also in World
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History text books everywhere. Like, there will be a whole chapter exploring the exploits
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of great men and then at the end there will be one sentence that’s like “also women
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were doing stuff at the time and it was important, but we don’t really know what it was, so
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back to Alexander the Great...”
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HIStory has been very good at marginalizing and demeaning women and we’re going to fight
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against that as we move forward in the story of human civilization.
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Ladies, I have to go now because my eyes are stinging from the biological weapon known
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as Kim Kardashian’s Gold. Seriously, don’t wear it.
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Best wishes, John Green
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So in Alexander the Great we have a story about a man who united the world while riding
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a magical horse only he could tame across deserts where it magically rained for him
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so that he could chase down his mortal enemy and then leave in his wake a more enlightened
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world and a gorgeous, murderous wife.
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But of course it’s not just Assassin’s Creed and Call of Duty that celebrate the
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idea that ennobled violence can lead to a better world.
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And that takes us to my opinion of how Alexander really came to be Great. Millennia after his
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death in 1798, Napoleon invaded Egypt, not because he particularly needed to invade Egypt
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but because he wanted to do what Alexander had done.
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And long before Napoleon, the Romans really worshipped Alexander particularly the Roman
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General Pompey, AKA Pompeius Magnus, AKA Pompey the Great.
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Pompey was so obsessed with Alexander that he literally tried to emulate Alexander’s
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boyishly disheveled hair style.
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In short, Alexander was Great because others decided he was Great. Because they chose to
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admire and emulate him.
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Yes, Alexander was a great general. Yes, he conquered a lot of land. The Situation is
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also really good at picking up girls...of a certain type.
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And Kim Kardashian is good at- Stan, what is Kim Kardashian good at? Oh. Ah. I guess
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just a body type then. Something...
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We made Alexander Great, just as today we make people great when we admire them and
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try to emulate them.
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History has traditionally been in the business of finding and celebrating great men, and
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only occasionally great women, but this obsession with Greatness is troubling to me.
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It wrongly implies, first, history is made primarily by men and secondly, that history
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is made primarily by celebrated people, which of course makes us all want to be celebrities.
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Thankfully we’ve left behind the idea that the best way to become an icon is to butcher
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people and conquer a lot of land, but the ideals that we’ve embraced instead aren’t
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necessarily worth celebrating either.
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All of which is to say we decide what to worship and what to care about and what to pay attention
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to. We decide whether to care about The Situation. Alexander couldn’t make history in a vacuum,
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and neither can anyone else. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you next week.
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Crash Course is produced and Directed by Stan Muller, the show is written by my high school
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history teacher Raoul Meyer and myself. Our script supervisor is Danica Johnson and our
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graphics team is Thought Bubble.
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Last week’s phrase of the week was "Thinly Sliced Trees". If you want to take a guess
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at this week’s phrase or suggest new ones you can do so in comments. If you have questions
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about today’s video you can also ask those in comments and our team of historians will
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attempt to answer them.
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Thanks for watching Crash Course and as they say in my hometown, don’t forget to be awesome.