The Great Courses

Education can be enriching and transformative. It can also be downright excruciating—even demoralizing. When it comes to learning, why are some of us lovers and some of us haters? Welcome to the world of educational psychology....

What is our species' greatest invention? Medicine, computers, space travel? Not even close. The innovation that underlies each of our past achievements and those we still aspire to is language....

In an exciting partnership with the Smithsonian, The Great Courses presents these 24 lectures that offer an unforgettable tour of Japanese life and culture....

Grammar! For many of us, the word triggers memories of finger-wagging schoolteachers, and of wrestling with the ambiguous and complicated rules of using formal language....

Over the span of 48 lectures, four experienced lawyers and teachers recreate key parts of the first-year law student experience....

In 12 fascinating lectures, you will hear the stories behind the theft and/or destruction of some of the world’s most famous pieces of art....

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....

The Years That Changed History: 1776 invites you to take a uniquely different look at the events of this famous year, in a brilliant and surprising excavation of world history.

The power of an effective speech is undeniable. It has the capacity to engage, inform, motivate, and create change in an audience - and in the world....

Homer’s Odyssey has become a foundational text of the Western literary canon. At first, its focus on the heroic journey of Odysseus appears to fit the mold of other ancient Greek e….

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

Noted Japan expert Professor Mark J. Ravina of the University of Texas at Austin covers the politics, economics, and culture of the island nation since World War II - a conflict that saw the end of Japan’s dream of regional conquest, which Professor Ravina calls Empire 1.0....

The Great Villains of History takes you into the riveting world of charisma and crime, evil and opportunity, ambition and bloodshed.

In The Great Courses’ The Story of the Mediterranean World, you’ll relive the fabulous history of a critical crossroads of human civilization.

Whether you’re looking for proof of alien life or seeking the meaning of life here on Earth, you’ll find that the domain of philosophy and the realm of the weird converge in surprising ways via the six lectures of From Aliens to Bigfoot: A Philosopher’s Guide to the Strange.

For more than 1,500 years, the literature of Great Britain has taught, nurtured, thrilled, outraged, and humbled readers both inside and outside its borders....

Think you know chemistry? Think again. In How Chemistry Surrounds You, award-winning University of Utah professor Janis Louie reveals the surprising science behind the everyday world—no lab coat required.

Barbara Millicent Roberts was born in 1959. Her image is instantly recognizable almost anywhere in the world. Who is this remarkable woman? Well, you might know her better by her nickname: Barbie.

This course offers an overview of the English language that is literary, historical, cultural, political, and scientific in its scope....

The deep-seated origins and wide-reaching lessons of ancient myths built the foundation for our modern legacies....