The Great Courses

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....

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....

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....

One of the greatest scientific feats of our era is the astonishing progress made in understanding biology-a progress to which the period we are living in right now has contributed the most....

While we may hear about it most often in relation to children and academics, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) isn’t just about distraction, or restlessness, or struggling in school.

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

Words. We use them all the time, every day, mostly without giving them much thought at all. We take for granted that they’re here at our disposal whenever we need them. But if you’ve ever wished you could communicate more effectively, words are the place to start....

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

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

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....

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....

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.

As you will discover in The History of Grocery Stores and Food Access in America, we shouldn’t take the neighborhood grocery store for granted.

You'll explore the ideas behind modern philosophy's most important movements and thinkers....

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

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

In the six lectures of How to Bring Your Creative Ideas to Life, Dr. Sharon Kim will dig into how creativity emerges and evolves, how individuals generate and refine ideas, and what it takes to bring yours to life.

Classical physics is about how things move, why they move, and how they work. And if that sounds complicated to you, Professor Pollock hopes you will think again....

Beginning with the Renaissance, the culture of the West exploded....

This course chronicles the history of Earth and life on Earth from the point of view of the minerals that made it all happen....