The Great Courses

Even after deciphering its hieroglyphs, and marveling at its scarabs, mummies, obelisks, and sphinxes, Egyptian civilization remains one of history's most mysterious....

Most of us have a limited understanding of the powerful role economics has played in shaping human civilization. This makes economic history a vital lens through which to think....

Learn how a single tongue spoken 150,000 years ago evolved into the estimated 6,000 languages used around the world today....

How the Earth Works takes you on an astonishing journey through time and space. In 48 lectures, you will look at what went into making our planet - from the big bang, to the formation of the solar system, to the subsequent evolution of Earth....

The past truly comes alive as you take a series of imaginative leaps into the world of history's anonymous citizens....

Eating is an indispensable human activity. As a result, whether we realize it or not, the drive to obtain food has been a major catalyst across all of history....

This series of lectures offers detailed analyses of the strategic and tactical dimensions of the Civil War's most important campaigns....

These 36 lectures bring you the answers that the latest scientific and archaeological research and theorizing suggest about human origins....

Everything we now know about the universe - from the behavior of quarks to the birth of galaxies - has come from people who've been willing to ponder the unanswerable....

Was King Arthur a real person? What about Robin Hood? Is the Holy Grail a cup, or something else altogether? Did Europeans really burn millions of people at the stake for witchcraft? These are just a few of the questions you will explore with the help of medieval scholar Dorsey Armstrong....

Distilled to its essence, the ancient Greco-Roman philosophy known as Stoicism is a philosophy of personal betterment. Professor Pigliucci has designed these 25 lessons as an enlightening introduction to the basics of Stoic philosophy....

With this series of lectures, you can encompass 3,000 years of philosophical debate - by the end of next month....

In 20 captivating lectures, Professor Suzanne Pilaar Birch shares her expertise and passion for discovery as she peels back the years to expose the emergence and lives of early humans....

Acqiure a new appreciation of how our Western world came to be and detailed knowledge about the individuals from royalty to "barbarian" who played key roles in that process....

How do the histories of China and Japan, or Russia, India, and the remote territories of Sub-Saharan Africa fit in with commonly known accounts of Western traditions?....

Science is such a vast arena of knowledge that people looking for a better grasp of its secrets often wonder where to begin....

How is it possible for the disciplines of cosmology, geology, anthropology, biology, and history to fit together?....

Step into the real world of the spy with this detailed and unforgettable tour of the millennia-long history and enduring legacy of espionage and covert operations....

We understand the stars at a much deeper level, not as legendary figures connected with constellations, but as engines of matter, energy, and the raw material of life itself. The Life and Death of Stars introduces you to this story in 24 half-hour lectures....

These 24 lectures trace a journey from Scandinavia across central Europe to the farthest reaches of the Byzantine and Islamic empires, providing insight to this one-lost era....