We study history to get a good grade, to go to a good college, to get a good job. So you can make more money than you would otherwise make and be a slightly larger cog among the 7 billion gears that turn the planet's economic engine, right? And that's fine, but if that's why you really study history, then you need to understand all the ways that the t-shirt you're wearing is both the cause and result of your ambition. This t-shirt contains the global economy, its efficiency, its massive surplus, its hyperconnectedness, and its unsustainability. This t-shirt tells one story of globalization, so let's follow it. INTRO So globalization is a cultural phenomenon. It's reflected in contemporary artwork and population migration and linguistic changes, but we're going to focus, as we so often have during Crash Course, on trade.