The Great Courses

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

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

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....

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

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....

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

Changing Body Composition Through Diet and Exercise presents the latest scientific research about changing your body composition, along with diet and exercise recommendations in incremental steps that men and women of all ages and fitness levels can follow....

For most of its 5,000-year existence, China has been the largest, most populous, wealthiest, and mightiest nation on Earth....

These 36 gripping lectures bring to life the many emperors of Rome from the turn of the 1st century to the transition to the Middle Ages....

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....

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?....

Each lecture will give you a refreshing new understanding of what made the British Empire both great in its achievements and vulnerable to its eventual downfall....

Even if you have listened to many of these illustrative pieces throughout your life you will never hear them the same way again after experiencing these lectures....

The Middle Ages was a time of major historical shifts and transformations. This amazing era reverberates with discoveries, events, and processes integral to the world we know now. In these 24 lectures, Professor Salisbury leads you on a sumptuous tour of this incredible historical epoch....

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

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....

Your nervous system is you. All the thoughts, perceptions, moods, passions, and dreams that make you an active, sentient being are the work of this amazing network of cells. For many centuries, people knew this was true. But no one was sure how it happened....

Since the start of recorded history, and probably even before, people have been interested in answering questions about why we behave the way we do....

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