The Great Courses

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.

The past truly comes alive as you take a series of imaginative leaps into the world of history's anonymous citizens....

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....

While the lectures cover an enormous range of key thinkers and ideas, they always focus on the most important ideas....

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

What happened before the Big Bang? Why does time flow only forward? Do we live as part of a multiverse? Could the universe vanish in an instant? These questions and more are at the forefront of physics, cosmology, and quantum theory.

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

Follow 24 fascinating lectures that trace the history of the New Testament and the early Christian faith community....

The story of our world and the different living things that have populated it is an amazing epic with millions of species, exotic settings, planet-wide cataclysms, and surprising plot twists....

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

How the Earth Works takes you on an astonishing journey through time and space. In 48 lectures, you will look at what went into making our planet - from the big bang, to the formation of the solar system, to the subsequent evolution of Earth....

Hidden treasures. Secret societies. War and plunder. You’ve heard the stories, seen the movies, pondered the conspiracy theories. You know that the Knights Templar are said to be connected with the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, the Freemasons—even Oak Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia.

The Roman Republic is one of the most breathtaking civilizations in world history....

These lectures consistently deliver a fresh level of understanding about medieval England, its rulers and subjects, and their significance....

We understand the stars at a much deeper level, not as legendary figures connected with constellations, but as engines of matter, energy, and the raw material of life itself. The Life and Death of Stars introduces you to this story in 24 half-hour lectures....

Since the start of recorded history, and probably even before, people have been interested in answering questions about why we behave the way we do....

Approximately 66 million years ago, an asteroid struck the Earth, triggering a chain of events that would end the reign of the dinosaurs and usher in the age of mammals. Despite its colossal scale, this incident was not the only event of its kind—in fact, it wasn’t even the first.

Most people picture archaeologists digging through dirt in search of ancient artifacts and lost cities. And sometimes that’s exactly right—as at the mound of Troy, where excavations suggest there may be truth behind Homer’s tales. But archaeology is much more than excavation.

Twenty-four captivating lectures from The Roman Empire: From Augustus to the Fall of Rome traces the breathtaking history from the empire’s foundation by Augustus to its Golden Age in the 2nd century CE through a series of ever-worsening crises until its ultimate disintegration....

Albert Einstein was pursuing a dream far more ambitious than the theory of relativity. He was trying to find an equation that explained all physical reality - a theory of everything. Experimental physicist and award-winning educator Dr. Don Lincoln takes you on this exciting journey....