The Crash Course: One-Year Anniversary

Friday, October 23, 2009, marks the one-year anniversary of the completion of the Crash Course.  The Crash Course video seminar is my attempt to synthesize—in a coherent, rigorously factual, and easily digestible form—the information that I have gathered over the past five years relating the interdependence of our economy, environment, and energy systems.  

My goal is to shed light on the limits of our present economic model of infinite growth as we increasingly face the realities of a planet with finite resources. I seek to lay out possible paths for our future and to provide people with tools and information so that they will be better able to make informed choices.

The Crash Course has met with rousing success over the past year. Here are some of the highlights:

• Roughly 1.5 million views of the Crash Course (via our site, YouTube, Torrent downloads, DVD purchases, and external sites hosting the video)
• 26,000 DVDs sold
• Currently available in English, Spanish, and French, with Italian, Portuguese, German, Polish, and Chinese translations on the way; all translations completed exclusively by volunteers
• 3 million site visits
• Alexa ranking of 45,155 as of October 23, 2009 (the top 0.03% of website traffic worldwide)
• Featured in the Washington Post, on PBS, and on Financial Sense Newshour with Jim Puplava, among others

I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who is a member of the ChrisMartenson.com community for helping to build awareness about the Crash Course among your family and friends and within your local communities.  I have been continually amazed by the stories I hear of those who have shared Crash Course DVDs with all of their loved ones or have decided to take the initiative to conduct Crash Course screenings for friends and neighbors.  Our team would not have been able to accomplish so much within one year without your dedicated efforts. 

To commemorate our one-year anniversary, I'm pleased to announce that I am posting a free, condensed, 45-minute version of the Crash Course for your viewing enjoyment.  The presentation it contains is part of a public talk delivered in Boulder, Colorado, this past summer.  If it has been a while since you watched the Crash Course, please take the time to experience this new format.
 
We hope that this condensed version of the Crash Course will be able to traverse the web, the airwaves, and the networks of your friends and families more speedily and effectively than the original version.  In the time we spend engaged in our careers, family lives, and personal activities, it can be hard to set aside the three hours needed to take in the full version.  We hope this shorter format will allow viewers to absorb the key concepts of the Crash Course more immediately, and that it will whet their appetites to view the full version when the opportunity presents itself.
 
I am also pleased to announce that the 45-minute DVD will soon be available for purchase in an elegant cardboard sleeve for a competitive price through the Marketplace on this site.  

It has been an honor to be a part of the community here at ChrisMartenson.com as it has blossomed around the material of the Crash Course.  I hope the 45-minute version will reawaken our energies and interest, and, in contributing to a tipping point of awareness, allow us to collectively build towards an enlightened and resilient future.