The Great Courses

Inexplicable lights in the night sky. Mysterious men in black. Flying saucers. For decades, these images and ideas have intrigued and frightened us in equal measure. While humanity….

Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends have been delighting readers for generations. Filled with gentle humor, whimsy, and kindness, the stories A.A. Milne created have become classics that are as beloved now as they were when they were first published 100 years ago.

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

Here, you will meet the fascinating, ancient polytheistic peoples of the Mediterranean and beyond, their many gods and goddesses, and their public and private worship practices, as you come to appreciate the foundational role religion played in their lives....

While the lectures cover an enormous range of key thinkers and ideas, they always focus on the most important ideas....

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....

Take a journey across the ancient world, throught the traditional domains of politics and war, as well as religion, philosophy, architecture, science and the visual arts....

From the days of Freud and Skinner to the modern science of fMRIs and genetics, Introduction to Psychology is a grand introduction to one of the most captivating fields of inquiry - where the subject is you, and everyone around you....

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

While American history spans not much more than two centuries, it is filled with a wealth of leaders, wars, movements, inventions, and ideas....

The Roman Empire looms large in the history of the Western world. Despite its collapse in the 5th century CE, its legacy continues to influence everything from architecture and politics to literature and religion.

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

These 34 astonishing lectures will introduce you to the major language families of the world and their many offspring, including a variety of languages that are no longer spoken but provide vital links between past and present....

This broad and panoramic series, ripe with the telling detail on which history can turn, will help you pull an enormous sweep of history together into one coherent framework....

In Black Holes, Tides, and Curved Spacetime, you will travel to the very edges of modern physics to explore several revolutionary theories and discover that physics is just as exciting today as it was when Newton sat by that fateful apple tree....

The ancient Greeks, more than any other early culture, have given us the template for Western civilization, as seen in their achievements in the fields of architecture, political theory, philosophy, science, and art - not the least of which are their inventions of democracy and drama....

In Understanding the Old Testament, you’ll take a revelatory look at this epically impactful document, finding its deeper historical and religious meanings, as well as its sublime literary treasures....

Hidden treasures. Secret societies. War and plunder. You’ve heard the stories, seen the movies, pondered the conspiracy theories. You know that the Knights Templar are said to be connected with the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, the Freemasons—even Oak Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia.

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....

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....