The Great Courses

What did you eat at your last meal? Can you recall the flavor, the aroma, the temperature, the texture? Could you describe it in detail? If any of the specifics of that meal elude you now, then you were probably eating mindlessly....

Meet Agatha Christie, the best-selling novelist in human history. Her writing career spanned six decades, during which time she wrote 66 crime novels, 6 non-crime novels (including romances), and over 150 short stories....

Professor Thad A. Polk takes you on a fascinating tour of the latest discoveries in the relatively new field of cognitive science. In 24 exciting lectures, Professor Polk shares dozens of the most challenging questions in cognitive science today.

As you will see, age-old traditions, contemporary history and culture, and “big” human questions are key ingredients of Tolkien’s success. You will join Dr. Dimitra Fimi to delve into Tolkien’s complex and multilayered mythology, examining all these ingredients and more....

These 36 in-depth lectures explore the fundamentals of good nutrition and offer a practical guide for applying these fundamentals to your lifestyle....

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....

These 24 provocative lectures introduce you to the Late Middle Age's major events, personalities, and developments....

Over the centuries, orchestral music has given us a category of works that stand apart as transcendent expressions of the human spirit....

In this series of 24 fascinating lectures you'll investigate how the human brain is sculpted by evolution and other factors....

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?....

Often, much of what is misunderstood about Islam is the result of a lack of information - and some dangerous and prolific myths....

Professor Greenberg of San Francisco Performances returns with a fascinating and provocative premise: Despite the abstractness and the universality of music it is a mirror of the historical setting....

There is a common misconception that sex, love, and marriage in medieval and early modern Europe followed very specific, inflexible rules and expectations that remained unchanged for centuries....

Economic forces are everywhere around you. But that doesn't mean you need to passively accept whatever outcome those forces might press upon you....

Stravinsky forged a new "musical language" to portray the sense of the ballet's primitive and earthy theme....

These lectures are an invaluable resource and a helpful introduction to the grandest adventure story in Western literature....

Dr. Shumway and Dr. Wendler will help you understand the nature of neurodiversity, a growing school of thought that seeks to embrace the range of differences in individual brain function and behaviors rather than “correct” them, with a focus on empathy, acceptance, and accommodation.

Many of us know the Black Death as a catastrophic event of the medieval world. But the Black Death was arguably the most significant event in Western history....

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

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....