The Great Courses

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....

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....

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

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

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....

Philosophers have long puzzled over the nature of space, time, and matter. These inquiries led to the flowering of physics with the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century. Since then, the spectacular success of modern physics might appear to have made philosophy irrelevant....

"It doesn't take an Einstein to understand modern physics," says Professor Wolfson at the outset of these twenty-four lectures....

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....

Get a time-travelling tour of world history with these 30 brilliant lectures that cover the full story of human civilization, analyzing geography, technology, economies, social institutions, and cultural achievements....

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

Far from being a time of darkness, the Middle Ages was an essential period in the grand narrative of Western history. Discover what it was like to actually live in this extraordinary era....

The 21st century has seen remarkable technological advances, with many wonderful benefits. But with these advances come new questions....

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

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....

As the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, the Holy Land (the area in and around modern-day Israel) is one of the most important regions in the world and the setting for defining events in religious history....

Building a Better Vocabulary offers an intriguing look at the nuts and bolts of English, teaches you the etymology and morphology, and delves into the cognitive science....

Sleep researcher and clinical psychologist Dr. Jade Wu will uncover the truth about napping and its amazing benefits for both mind and body. Across six revealing lectures, you’ll examine what science tells us about the benefits—and, yes, the potential downsides—of napping.

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

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