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....

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....

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

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....

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....

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....

In the six lessons of It’s Not Too Late: Optimize Your Retirement Plan Now, Professor Ramon DeGennaro will help you get back on track toward a brighter financial future.

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

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....

Many features of English sound normal to a native speaker, but linguists find them puzzling as well as revealing....

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....

The human brain is one of the most complex entities in the universe. With 86 billion neurons communicating through an intricate symphony of synaptic connections and neurochemicals,….

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

From electric lights to automobiles to the appliances that make our lives easier at work and at home, we owe so much of our world to the Industrial Revolution....

In the six lectures of A Psychologist Goes to the Movies, taught by Dr. Swan, you’ll see what films can tell us about the human mind, from the experience of amnesia to the ethics of psychological research and so much more.

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....

In the 18 fascinating lectures of Learning Medical Terminology, your professor, Elizabeth A. Murray, PhD, will share the rules for building medical terms and how to decipher them, accompanied by anatomical graphics that bring it all to life.

These lectures are your opportunity to see our nation's best-selling books as more than just popular forms of entertainment....

Even today, the influence of Ancient Rome is indelible, with Europe and the world owing this extraordinary empire a huge cultural debt in almost every important category....