Lately, I've been spending more and more time watching YouTube. Not the part of YouTube where cats jump into boxes, but the part I wish I had in high school and struggling through biology, world history, or physics. Short, fast-paced educational videos like these are all over YouTube and yet, I can't seem to find any for anthropology. Why not? We see the media always blowing up new archaeological finds, especially if it involves a "huge shake-up" of our current models of human evolution.
These sort of stories pique the interest of people like my older brother, who took an introductory anthropology course at his university because he was interested in finding out where humans came from. I remember him complaining that he had to go through so much material that didn't interest him before they even started talking about human origins--he could have saved the money spent on that class if there were an easier way for him to access the knowledge he wanted.
I don't think the physical classroom can be replaced by a video. But I think having an accessible, entertaining, and accurate introduction to a subject is necessary to capture the interest of future anthropologists. It's great to see these channels popping up to explain the stereotypically difficult courses, but I also think it's time that the social sciences get a YouTube presence.
Edit: I forgot this video existed, but my point that there should be more of these still stands:
"Something tells me that playing Mario party with a Neanderthal would be, like, a dozen different kinds of awesome, but, I guess I'll never know." Hank pretty much sums up my feelings on the subject.
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