This article originally appeared on The Creators Project.When you need a heaping pile of perspective, count on the millions upon millions years of history and planetary evolution to ground all your personal problems. Bill Wurtz, former Vine idol and general bottomless pit of existential thought, has arrived back on the cult video circuit to produce an astounding short animated film covering, gloriously, the history of the entire world, i guess. The results condense 4.5 billion years of history into the visually tight space of a 20-minute video essay. "I know it's possible because everything is here and probably already happened," Wurtz intones at the video's beginnings. "I just don't know where to start."
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With editing fast enough to give you whiplash, the short is a feat of intense historical study and insight into the developments that culminated in, well, today. Using large text and sing-songy interstitials, Wurtz is a man who doesn't love capitalization but loves a good joke about ancient civilization. "Ah the Buddha was just enlightened. Who's the Buddha? This guy, who sat under a tree for so long he figured out how to ignore the fact we're all dying—you can make a religion out of this," he intones.Many a fleeting factoids you haven't heard since seventh grade await in Wurtz's latest. Watch the complete video below:
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