Teaching Company (Documentaries)

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2006.
The story of Africa is the oldest and most event-filled chronicle of human activity on the planet. These 36 lectures cover this great historical drama, tracing the story of the sub-Saharan region of the continent from the earliest evidence of human habitation to the latest challenges facing African nations in the 21st century.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2005.
Who exactly were the Apostolic Fathers? Why were they given that name? Most important, what windows into the shaping of Christianity's canon, church hierarchy, and creed are opened for us with an understanding of works that include the letters of Clement or Ignatius, the Didache of the Apostles, or the Letter to Diognetus? In "After the New Testament: the writings of the Apostolic Fathers", prof. Ehrman answers these and many other questions as he introduces us to what is considered the most important collection of post-New Testament writings.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2004.
The Age of Pericles uses the career of the leading Athenian politician and general from c. 450-429 B.C. as a prism through which to view this brief but remarkable era, and to ask why that echo has persisted for so long. In the generation that followed Pericles's appearance on the public stage shortly after the Persian wars, Athens rapidly transformed the alliance of Greek states - an alliance first created as a defense against the Persians - into a true Aegean empire, dominated by the Athenians and their mighty navy. But this dramatic increase in military power, cultural influence, and prestige was also accompanied by something unique: the growth of full participatory democracy.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
Albert Einstein: Physicist, Philosopher, Humanitarian, 24 lectures by award-winning Professor Don Howard of the University of Notre Dame, presents a wide-ranging intellectual biography of this iconic scientist, genius, and champion of social justice.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2000.
This series of lectures examines a crucial period in the history of the ancient world, the age ushered in by the extraordinary conquests of Alexander the Great. In all the annals of the ancient world, few stories are more gripping than that of the Hellenistic Age. Between the conquests of Alexander the Great and the rise of Rome, Greek culture became the heart of a world-historical civilization whose intellectual, spiritual, and artistic influence endures to this day.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2009.
Lecture 1. A meditation on empire -- Lecture 2. Lands, seas, and sources -- Lecture 3. Sargon and the dawn of empire -- Lecture 4. The Third Dynasty of Ur -- Lecture 5. The empire of Hammurabi -- Lecture 6. Mitanni and the Kassites -- Lecture 7. The rise of Hatti -- Lecture 8. The government of Hatti -- Lecture 9. Hatti at war -- Lecture 10. The climax and collapse of Hatti -- Lecture 11. The rise of the Egyptian empire -- Lecture 12. The Imperial Army and administration, etc.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 1998.
Clearly, the Greeks are a source of much that we esteem in our own culture: democracy, philosophy, tragedy, poetry both epic and lyric, history-writing, our aesthetic sensibilities and ideals of athletic competition, and more. Blazoned above the portal of Apollo's temple at Delphi were the words, "Know thyself." For us, this injunction to self-awareness also commands knowledge of the Greeks. With Professor Jeremy McInerney as your teacher, you'll come away with fresh knowledge on one of mankind's most golden ages.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2003.
You study the myths and cultures of Egypt, Sumer, the Hittites, Ugarit, Assyria, and Babylon. You concentrate on the relationship between Ancient Near Eastern myth and biblical accounts.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2001.
Professor Zarefsky draws on classical rhetoric reaching back to Aristotle and Cicero, and also on recent philosophers and logicians. Key concepts from the course include : Argumentation is mostly a social and cooperative enterprise by which we find truth and resolve conflict. Formal logic adds surprisingly little to argument and persuasion. Arguments and evidence fall in to a handful of patterns - and the ways to use and defeat these patterns are also few and clear.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2005.
Part I (disc 1). lecture 1. Introducing argumentation and rhetoric; lecture 2. Underlying assumptions of argumentation; lecture 3. Formal and informal argumentation; lecture 4. History of argumentation studies; lecture 5. Argument analysis and diagramming; lecture 6. Complex structures of argument, etc.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
No matter what form visual art takes - as symbolic images carefully drawn on a cave wall, thick colorful oils on wood or canvas, cold stone carved and crafted into an intricate form, or tonal qualities of a single black-and-white photograph - a single constant remains: Art speaks, and to be able to understand its language is to be privy to an artistic conversation thousands of years old - a conversation that will lead you to a better understanding not only of art but also of the time in which it was created and the humans who created it.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2010.
Presents 24 lectures by Paul Zeitz, Professor of Mathematics at the University of San Francisco and author of The art and craft of problem solving.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
Throughout the 36 lectures of The Art of the Northern Renaissance, Professor Scallen guides you through 200 years of remarkable art and artists. Although the term "the Renaissance" is most commonly associated with an era of artistic bounty in Italy, the massive cultural transformations that were remaking the world were having as significant an impact on art throughout northern Europe as well, and both traditions were highly admired at the time, with significant contact between the two. Italian artists were aware of Northern innovations. Northern artists increasingly traveled to Italy where they were exposed to the art of antiquity as well as the art of Renaissance Italy.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
45-minute lectures; released 1995.
The goals of this course are to explore the life and personality of Bach, to learn about the musical traditions and composers from whom Bach drew his inspiration, to understand Bach as a man of his time as influenced by then-current trends and traditions, and to hear a generous sampling of Bach's music.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
How did Judaism develop from its biblical roots to the highly developed system we know today? What has changed and what has remained constant? The answers to these questions are relevant to all faiths, as well as to anyone seeking to broaden their understanding of ancient history - a past that is inexorably linked to the present.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2005.
Between Cross and Crescent: Jewish Civilization from Mohammed to Spinoza presents an overview of Jewish culture and society from its rabbinic foundations in late antiquity up to the dawn of modernity in the 17th century.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
45-minute lectures; released 2003.
This course is a scholarly treatment of the Bible as literature that examines the many literary and cultural themes that originate in the Bible. Michael Sugrue and three other Princeton University professors take an analytical rather than a spiritual approach.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2009.
In his 36 lectures, Father Joseph W. Koterski talks about the body of writings from the Old Testament that have influenced theologians, philosophers, and laypeople for millennia. He presents these teachings within the Jewish and Christian traditions and compares the varying versions of these texts.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
Twenty-four lectures detailing the evolution of humanity.

Directed by Jon Leven.
30-minute lectures; released 2005.
An interdisciplinary approach to the fascinating subject of behavioral biology, a field that explores interactions among the brain, mind, body, and environment that have a surprising influence on how we behave. In 24 lectures, you will investigate how the human brain is sculpted by evolution, constrained or freed by genes, shaped by early experience, modulated by hormones, and otherwise influenced to produce a wide range of behaviors, some of them abnormal.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2003.
Focuses on the revolution of the intellect that seized Europe between 1600 and 1800, a revolution whose lights and shadows are all around us still. This course consolidates and enhances material from two of Professor Kors's earlier courses, The origin of the modern mind and The mind of the enlightenment.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2006.
The Book of Genesis, regardless of our faith, is something with which almost all of us in the Western world are familiar - a foundational work of our culture we have read and, we believe, understood. After all, its language, despite its remarkable elegance, is simple. Its powerful sentences are short. And its messages glisten with clarity. Or do they? Is it possible that the understanding of the Book of Genesis we've all grown up with isn't as complete as we'd like to believe?

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
This course provides a survey of the expanse of human development and civilization across the globe. It begins with the invention of agriculture in the Neolithic era and ends with the urbanized, technologically sophisticated world of the 21st century.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2001.
Share Professor Malcolm David Eckel's fascination with this remarkable, lively, and challenging religious tradition. In its 2,500-year history, Buddhism has grown from a tiny religious community in northern India into a movement that now spans the globe.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2009.
Professor William R. Cook explores the vast and fascinating history of one of the most influential spiritual institutions in the world. Follow the development of this powerful religious force throughout the centuries and witness its ability to move armies, inspire saints, and shape the lives and spirits of its more than 1 billion members.

Directed by Jon Leven and Jim Allen.
30-minute lectures; released 2006.
Professor Michael Starbird of the University of Texas at Austin, covers the concepts of Calculus.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
"Chaos theory," according to Dr. Steven Strogatz, Director of the Center for Applied Mathematics at Cornell University, "is the science of how things change." It describes the behavior of any system whose state evolves over time and whose behavior is sensitive to small changes in its initial conditions.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2000.
In this set of 24 lectures, Professor Elizabeth Vandiver, University of Maryland, introduces the student to the primary characters and most important stories of classical Greek and Roman mythology. She also surveys some of the leading theoretical approaches to understanding myth in general and classical myth in particular.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 1998.
Professor Weinstein reveals the vitality in each work he discusses, finding in every one the "uncanny" quality that marks a masterpiece of the American canon. He shows you that the classics of American literature are vibrant, living forces, and allows you to gain an extraordinary familiarity with each of these authors within a manageable amount of time.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
What, exactly, is religion? And why does one religious tradition often differ so markedly from another, even when you might not expect it to? Why, for example, are the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—despite their common source—often so different? And what kinds of factors separate the beliefs of a Hindu or Buddhist not only from those held by Jews, Christians, or Muslims, or by each other, but also from many who identify themselves as fellow Hindus or Buddhists?

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
Join distinguished philosopher and psychologist Daniel N. Robinson as we explore fascinating questions that get to the heart of human identity in Consciousness and Its Implications. Over the course of 12 thought-provoking lectures, you'll probe the depths of this mysterious mental state from the perspective of the philosopher, the psychologist, the scientist, and the doctor.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2009.
Pt 1. Lecture 1: What is conservatism?; Lecture 2: The glorious revolution and its heritage; Lecture 3: Burke, tradition, and the French Revolution; Lecture 4: Pitt and the wars of the French Revolution; Lecture 5: The American Revolution; Lecture 6: The Federalists; Lecture 7: Conservatives in the American south; Lecture 8: Northern Antebellum conservatism; Lecture 9: Opposing the Great Reform Act; Lecture 10: Robert Peel and the conservative revival; Lecture 11: Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, Mill; Lecture 12: Conservatism and the American Civil War, etc.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
Cosmology: The History and Nature of Our Universe introduces you to the biggest story of all in 36 lectures that cover the origin, evolution, composition, and probable fate of our universe. This detailed and accessible course, presented by award-winning Professor Mark Whittle of the University of Virginia, incorporates more than 1,700 stunning illustrations.

Directed by Tom Dunton.
30-minute lectures; released 2001.
Pt. 1. Disc 1. Reading the poem: issues and editions; A poet and his city: Dante's Florence; Literary antecedents, I; Literary antecedents, II; "Abandon every hope, all you who enter"; The never-ending storm; Disc 2. Heretics; The seventh circle: the violent; The sin of simony; The false counselors; The ultimate evil; The seven-story mountain, etc.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
Dr. Carroll explains the subject of dark matter and dark energy in 24 lectures. He explains why scientists believe we live in a smooth, expanding universe that originated in a hot, dense state called the Big Bang.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
Introduces the remarkable story of Darwin's ideas, how scientists and religious leaders reacted to them, and the sea of change in human thought that resulted. Perhaps more than any other idea in science, Darwin's theory of natural selection shows how a strikingly original concept can break the bounds of its discipline to influence society at large -- in religion, politics, philosophy, and other spheres.

Produced by The Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2001.
This video-only course considers the rich landscape of the Middle Ages by juxtaposing views of the countryside and city in medieval and modern times. This allows you to see medieval art "from the inside" view of those who originally created it.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
In a series of 24 recorded lectures, Professor Luke Timothy Johnson presents the history of the early Church and how the experience of religion caused it to become one of the fastest growing of all major religions.

Produced by The Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2004.
This course provides insight into the "Dark Ages," the era which spanned the decline and fall of Rome's western empire and lingered for centuries.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2009.
Ecology is to reveal the nature of ourselves and of our relationship with the species around us. The lectures in this course are often in pairs, with basic ecological principles discussed in the first lecture and the human role or human implications addressed in the second.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
This course of 12 lectures reviews the most up-to-date research on climate change, explaining the concepts, tools, data, and analysis that have led an overwhelming number of climate scientists to conclude that Earth is warming and that we humans are in great part responsible.

Directed by Jon Leven.
30-minute lectures; released 2005.
Economic issues are active in our lives every day. However, when the subject of economics comes up in conversation or on the news, we can find ourselves longing for a more sophisticated understanding of the fundamentals of economics. This lecture series will help you think about and discuss these and other economic issues that affect you and the nation every day--interest rates, unemployment, personal investing, budget deficits, globalization, and many more--with a greater level of knowledge and sophistication.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2000.
Now you can learn the basic ideas behind the theory of relativity and quantum physics from 24 lectures that require no special background in math or science. Professor Richard Wolfson teaches the awe-inspiring - and even, at times, mind-bending - concepts of modern physics in ways that anyone interested in learning can readily master.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
This course is a series of biographic portraits from Augustus, Julius Caesar's grandnephew, to Constantine.

Produced by The Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2003.
The Crusades have been hailed as the driving force that brought Western Europe out of the Middle Ages - and condemned as the beginning of European imperialism in the Muslim Near East. But how are they best understood? This course follows the causes, events, and effects of one of history's most protracted periods of conflict.

Directed by Tom Dunton.
30-minute lectures; released 2003.
A twenty-four lecture course that examines European history during an era of intense religious and political violence. The course is organized around five major conflicts: the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598), the Revolt of the Netherlands (1566-1609), the Thirty Years' War in central Europe (1618-1648), the English Civil War (1642-1649) and Glorious Revolution (1688), and the emergence of French absolutism (1610-1715).

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2001.
This course is an opportunity to explore the major thinkers and historic challenges that shaped the mind of Europe in the 19th century. Intellectual history emphasizes the exchanges of ideas and debates that went on among people from other places and times. But it also stresses the importance of a continuing dialogue between the present and the past. This course in intellectual history, therefore, seeks to expand our capacity for engaging in informed "dialogue" with the intellectual world of 19th-century Europe.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
Lectures by Lloyd Kramer, professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in which he examines major themes and authors in twentieth-century European thought.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2009.
Thirty-six lectures on the visual nature of ancient Rome and how it was able to so successfully communicate its civic and cultural values, or project a knowledge of Roman power, to every corner of the realm. Learn how Rome communicated in visually symbolic ways, gain insight into how similar tools are used today, and hone your ability to see them at work in the visual symbols that are part of government, the military, religion, and just about every aspect of contemporary public or private life.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2001.
An introduction to Roman history focusing on the lives of great individuals. Examines lives from the Second Punic War (218-201 B.C.) through the Empire during the first and second centuries A.D.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
Grasp History Over Thousands of Years and Vast Amounts of Territory From the latter stages of the Agricultural Revolution to the doorstep of the Scientific Revolution, your learning in this course will cover the period from roughly 3000 B.C. to A.D. 1600, when the "foundations" of the modern West come into view. Professor Noble's goal is to offer a history of what has been truly "foundational" across millennia in the West, that most unusual of world civilizations.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2006.
Americans are all, to a greater or lesser extent, inhabitants of a land shaped by the last five centuries of Western history and culture. Explores the ideas, events, and characters that molded Western political, social, religious, intellectual, cultural, scientific, technological, and economic history during the tumultuous period between the 16th and 20th centuries.

Directed by Tom Dunton.
30-minute lectures; released 2004.
This course follows the tale of early Christianity and its subplots to illuminate significant issues in the history of this major religion. It presents a history of Christianity from the time of Jesus to the end of the fourth century. It examines Jewish-Christian relationships, Christian relationships with the Roman Empire, persecution of Christians, and the development of church offices and theology.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
This series of lectures will introduce viewers to the style, subject, and function of Impressionist painting by artists including Monet, Renoir, Cassatt, Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Van Gogh. With professor Richard Brettell as your expert curator and guide, this course creates a vivid, "virtual" museum through which to appreciate the genius and enduring accomplishments of the men and women who, in but a few short decades, forever changed the art of painting.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2004.
For most of its 5,000-year existence, China has been the largest, most populous, wealthiest, and mightiest nation on Earth. And for us as Westerners, it is essential to understand where China has been in order to anticipate its future. This course answers this need by delivering a comprehensive political and historical overview of one of the most fascinating and complex countries in world history.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
Ever since modern game theory—the scientific study of interactive, rational decision making—achieved prominence in the mid-20th century, it has proven instrumental in helping us understand how and why we make decisions. Game theory plays a crucial role in our lives and provides startling insights into all endeavors in which humans cooperate or compete, including biology, computer science, politics, agriculture, and, most importantly, economics.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
"In this course, internationally recognized Michelangelo expert, author, and professor William E. Wallace provides a fresh and insightful perspective on the life and work of Michelangelo, even including the Master's poetry. The 36 lectures feature more than 900 visuals, including stunning reproductions of the his sculptures, paintings, and architecture, as well as rough sketches, preparatory drawings, and photographs of the places he lived and worked" --Publisher's website.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2004.
Course of 36 lectures introduces the art of the Italian Renaissance.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2004.
From the Book of Job and Beowulf to Pride and Prejudice and As I Lay Dying, these 84 lectures provide an overview of some of Western literature's greatest offerings. Along the way we examine the traditional rationale for studying literature and explore its ability to reveal the most profound beliefs and illusions of a culture.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2005.
A professor of classics and history at The Pennsylvania State University and the teacher of our immensely popular course, The History of Ancient Rome, Dr. Garrett G. Fagan has devoted extensive study to ancient warfare. In these 24 lectures he takes you into the thick of combat in some of the most notable battles fought in the Mediterranean region from prehistoric times to the 4th century A.D.

Directed by Thomas Dunton.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
Amy-Jill Levine, professor of New Testament at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School, examines specific biblical characters and explores how they have been assessed across the centuries by historians and artists, theologians, and worshipers.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
These lectures take a closer look at many of these characters and the reasons they still stir our imaginations. They include Adam and Eve, Noah, Moses, Abraham, Rachel, Leah, Joseph, Miriam, Aaron, Samson's women, Jezebel, Ahab, Ruth, Jonah, Esther, Judith, Susanna, Daniel, and many others. They demonstrate well Professor Levine's conviction that "each fresh reading of these texts can teach us something new."

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2004.
This extraordinary series covers more than 2,000 years of philosophical thought. Yet this course is much more than a collection of the thoughts of various geniuses; it links their concerns across centuries, thereby making their debates a part of our own.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2000.
Pt. 1. Classical origins -- pt. 2. Christian age -- pt. 3. From the Renaissance to the Age of Reason -- pt. 4. Enlightenment and its critics -- pt. 5. Age of ideology -- pt. 6. Modernism and the age of analysis -- pt. 7. Age of modernity.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
By explaining the fundamental approaches to this familiar debate, Professor Nichols thoroughly prepares you for an in-depth study of the complexities of free will and determinism. You discover what great thinkers through the ages believe about the choices we make and understand how we might deal with their implications.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
Why has science so dramatically altered how we live and how we think about ourselves? With characteristic energy and verve, Professor Steven L. Goldman declares, "One is tempted to speak of scientific discoveries as being the source of science's power to be a driver of social change - that scientists have been discovering new truths about nature, and that the change follows from that. But I argue that it is scientific ideas that are responsible for this change. Ideas are the source of science's power - not discoveries."

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2003.
Provides an overview of Buddhism and describes how Buddhism challenges some of the most important Western ideas about God, human life, and the self. Covers the Buddha's life and the development of Buddhism, explains his teachings, or Dharma, and explores the lives of well-known Buddhists such as the Dalai Lama.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2003.
Provides an overview of Christianity, the world's largest religion, and discusses why, in addition to being vast and popular, it is also extremely complex and often highly contradictory.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2003.
Provides an overview of Hinduism and discusses why Hinduism is perhaps the most diverse religion of all. Covers topics like arranged marriages and the caste system, the Indus Valley Civilization, the sacred writings in the Vedas, the Bhagavad-gita, and the Upanishads, ritual purity rites, the Aryan language of Sanskrit, and Hinduism's rejection of the notion that there is one path to the divine.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2003.
Surveys the history, traditions, and practice of Judaism from biblical times to today, with explanations of the major aspects of Jewish culture. Focuses on Judaism from within and how it is understood by its adherents, past and present. Covers topics such as the sacred books of Judaism, modes of worship, the calendar and holidays, and rites of passage such as bar and bat mitzvah and marriage.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
Most scholars are historians of either Greek or Roman history and perform research solely in that specific field, an approach that author and award-winning Professor Robert Garland considers questionable. "It's only by studying the two cultures in connection with each other that we can come to an understanding of that unique cultural entity that is 'Greco-Roman,'" he notes.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
An introduction to the work of Herodotus, the first Greek historian. Considers Herodotus' work in its cultural context, both as history and as literature.

Produced by The Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2001.
In 1000-1300, the so-called High Middle Ages, a newly invigorated medieval society experienced a revival of urban life, the birth of new philosophical, educational, and political institutions. This course reveals how and why Europe experienced this reversal of fortune.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2000.
Presents lectures on the "man behind the myth," Jesus of Nazareth. Includes an analysis of his life and times from a historical perspective.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released by 1999.
Ancient Egyptian civilization is so monumental that it is sometimes difficult to grasp: it lasted 3,000 years, longer than any other on the planet. This course spans all of ancient Egyptian history, dividing it into three periods called Kingdoms: (1) In the Old Kingdom, Egypt was united under one supreme ruler, the pharaoh. During this period, the pyramids were built and the rules of Egyptian art were established that would govern for 3,000 years. (2) In the Middle Kingdom, the nation fought to regain its greatness after the Old Kingdom collapsed. (3) The glamorous New Kingdom was when all the stars - Hatshepsut, Tutankhamen, Ramses the Great, Cleopatra, and others - appeared. The lectures cover religious practices, magic, mummies, pyramid-building, and more.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 1999.
At its height, the Roman Empire, unified in politics and law, stretched from the sands of Syria to the moors of Scotland, and it stood for almost 700 years. Rome's influence is indelible. Europe and the world owe a huge cultural debt to Rome in so many fields of human endeavor, such as art, architecture, engineering, language, literature, law, and religion. In this course you see how a small village of shepherds and farmers rose to tower over the civilized world of its day and left an indelible mark on history. Rome's story is riveting. Professor Fagan draws on a wealth of primary and secondary sources to introduce the fascinating tale of Rome's rise and decline.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
Provides an overview of the development of Christian theology, from the writings of St. Paul and the formation of doctrines in the Middle Ages, through the Protestant Reformation, to the Vatican Councils.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2001.
Professor Brad S. Gregory explores a watershed period in history, introducing the people, ideas, and events that transformed Western Christianity at the dawn of the modern age. This course is designed to give you a balanced, historical overview of the Reformation era during the epoch-making years that separated Luther's Ninety-five Theses (1517) from the end of the Thirty Years' War (1648).

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2003.
This sweeping course traces England's dynamic rise to "great power" status over the course of 229 years from the Tudor monarchy to the beginning of the 18th century. The course also contrasts the physical and social realities of England during this period with the very different experiences of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2001.
This course examines the history of the most important single idea in the Western political tradition: freedom. The lectures trace chronologically the history of liberty from its emergence in classical Greece to the modern day, considering great personalities, events, ideas, and thinkers in the context of liberty's history.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2003.
This course examines the past 300 years of Russian history through the eyes of its people; looking at historical themes by examining the lives of the men and women who were Russia.

Directed by Tom Dunton.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
This course presents a survey of the history of science in the Western world from the ancient Babylonians through the discoveries of Isaac Newton. It will enhance your understanding of what science is; how, why, and by whom it has been developed; and how our modern conception of science differs from earlier ideas. Throughout these lectures, each rich in historical context, science is revealed as a dynamic, evolving entity, tightly connected to the needs and commitments of those who pursue it.

Directed by Tom Dunton.
30-minute lectures; released 2003.
The course is organized around six main themes: inquiries into the history of the cosmos; investigations into the realm of living things; the largely successful attempt to break away from occult explanations of chemical phenomena; the contrasting persistence of such appeals in explaining natural phenomena; the proliferation of physical forces discovered and investigated; and the recurring theme of the relationship of God to nature.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2005.
The New Testament stands unchallenged, in the words of Professor Bart D. Ehrman, not only as the "bestseller of all time" but also as the most important "book (or collection of books) in the history of Western civilization." Professor Ehrman draws on the award-winning teaching skills and style that have made him one of our most popular lecturers to offer a fast-moving yet thorough introduction to key issues in the development of Christianity.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 1998.
This course offers an overview of the English language that is literary, historical, cultural, political, and scientific in its scope and designed to give you greater insight into the written and spoken word. The lectures provide a thorough understanding of the history of the English language - from its origins as a dialect of the Germanic-speaking peoples through the literary and cultural documents of its 1,500-year span to the state of American speech today.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
This course introduces the student to the history of the English language, from its origins as a dialect of the Germanic-speaking peoples, through the literary and cultural documents of its 1500 year span, to the state of American speech of the present day.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2003.
Chronicles the history of the United States from colonial origins to the beginning of the 21st century. Lectures presented by Allen C. Guelzo, Eastern University; Gary W. Gallagher, University of Virginia; Patrick N. Allitt, Emory University.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
45-minute lectures; released 1998.
After taking this course, you will hear and understand an entire language of unmatched beauty, genius, and power. Professor Greenberg provides you with an outstanding grasp of musical forms - the "grammatical" elements that make you fluent in the "language" of music. And he teaches about the powerful influence of social context on musical creation.

Directed by Jon Leven.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
This course is an introduction to the field of pathophysiology--the study of the disruptions in a normal body's functions caused by disease or injury. Beginning with an exploration of the function of cells and common forms of injury to them, the course then proceeds through examinations of inflammatory and immune responses, infectious diseases, shock, cancer, and wound healing.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 1999.
This course makes it vividly clear why, after almost 3,000 years, the Iliad remains among the greatest adventure stories ever told, as well as one of the most compelling meditations on the human condition. These lectures provide careful, detailed examinations of the most important episodes in the Iliad. They also address various critical and interpretative issues and give background information on the cultural assumptions contained in Homer's epic.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
An Introduction to Greek Philosophy beckons you to join this eternal discussion. For that is what this subject truly is: a conversation among thinkers that has continued through the centuries and remains accessible to us today. You find it constantly stimulating, sometimes controversial, and nearly always remarkably relevant.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2004.
Shai Cherry, professor of Jewish thought at Vanderbilt University, presents the unfolding of the religious aspects of the Jewish civilization from the Hebrew Bible to today, while keeping an eye on the historical background against which those changes within Judaism have occurred.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
As Professor Jones notes, many people "would say [religion] is the most important part" of their lives and participate in the practices of their faith as a means of deepening their commitment to and understanding of the world around them. Whether one acts as an individual, a local community member, or part of a broader fellowship of believers, the approach to religion remains the same: viewing religion and religious life from the inside. How do scholars proceed with studying the ways the religious experience is felt, shared, and communicated? How do they explain how this extraordinarily powerful force can define and shape the communities it creates?

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2005.
In the Italian Renaissance, Professor Kenneth Bartlett will help you appreciate the Italian Renaissance as the moment in history when culture reached a point that is still very much with us, in the way we live our modern lives and in the extant Renaissance cities of contemporary Italy.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
This course traces the development of the Italian city-states of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, showing how the modern nation of Italy was forged out of the rivalries, allegiances, and traditions of a vibrant and diverse people -- publisher's web site.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2004.
The course examines not only the canonical Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John familiar to us from the New Testament, but also the many other, apocryphal narratives and literary works that have also contributed to our perceptions of Jesus, Mary, and Christianity. All of these works are encompassed by the word "Gospel."

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
God, Torah, and Israel. These three concepts (i.e., personal belief, the meaning of Jewish ritual acts, and the purpose of continued Jewish existence) have been the focus of Jewish thought throughout history. But the last four centuries presented Jewish thinkers with difficult challenges. These lectures address the challenges to Jewish intellectual thought in the past 500 years, identifying such challenges and revealing the ways in which a small group of Jewish thinkers attempted to address these challenges.

Directed by Jon Leven and Jim Allen.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
Professor Arthur T. Benjamin is renowned for his feats of mental calculation performed before audiences at schools, theaters, museums, conferences, and in this series, he shows that there are simple tricks that allow anyone to look like a math magician. Throughout these lectures, he shows how everything in mathematics is connected--how the beautiful and often imposing edifice that has given us algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, probability, and so much else is based on nothing more than fooling around with numbers.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2001.
After considering the controversies Ulysses provoked when it first appeared and why it is considered a major contribution to 20th-century literature, the lectures show how Joyce's novel reconstructs the adventures of Ulysses, the protagonist of Homer's Odyssey. At the same time, the author is totally aware of his place in time and is determined to catch in every possible way the world of the early 20th century. After considering the amazing variety of styles and multiplicity of viewpoints in Ulysses, the course reviews the novel as a whole and shows how radically Ulysses departs from the novels that came before it.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2001.
Lucid, information-packed lectures conveying the excitement of scientific discovery and tracing the connections between discoveries over time.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
This provocative 24-lecture course introduces you to the Middle Ages' major events, personalities, and developments and arms you with the essentials you need to form your own ideas about this age of extremes - an age that, according to Professor Daileader, "experiences disasters and tragedies of such magnitude that those who survive them cannot remember the like, and doubt that subsequent generations will be capable of believing their descriptions."

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
Professor Stephen Railton of the University of Virginia explores the private persona behind the public figure through literary analysis of some of his Mark Twain's most representative works.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2010.
In this course, Dr. Anthony Goodman presents information on developing a personal path to lifelong health.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
Historian William Cook discusses the lives of prominent Christians through the ages.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2009.
No city has had as powerful and as enduring an impact on Western civilization as London. London's greatness continues to this day. The city stands as a global metropolitan center and continues to be synonymous with important developments in international business, culture, and politics.

Directed by Jon Leven.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
Lectures on the history and varieties of Christian doctrines in the early church.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2004.
He was only a humble monk and Bible professor, yet he sparked a religious rebellion that changed history. This 24-lecture course explores Martin Luther's theology and the Reformation after he posted his famous 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg, Germany in 1517.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2006.
According to Professor William R. Cook, a reading of Machiavelli that considers only those qualities that we today call "Machiavellian" is incomplete, and Machiavelli himself "certainly would not recognize" such sinister interpretations or caricatures of his writings and beliefs. Indeed, The Prince - on the pages of which so much of this image was built - was not even published in his lifetime.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
This course takes you on an exciting ride through an itinerary that samples 23 of the world's greatest short stories. The form of the genre, as well as the various ways in which it has evolved, is highlighted along the way with a display of the essential nuts and bolts of storytelling-- plot, character, setting, style, point of view, and theme.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
This course will explore the thought of three profoundly influential thinkers in the Western tradition, thinkers whose very names call to mind the spirit of philosophizing or the 'love of wisdom': Socrates (469-399 B.C.), Plato (c. 429-347 B.C.), and Aristotle (384-322 B.C.). The three are most obviously linked by their historical epoch and their common devotion to the search for the truth. But they also share a more immediate bond, for Socrates was the teacher of Plato, and Plato in turn became the teacher of Aristotle.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
A nation's identity is expressed through its art. Great painters capture the essence of a culture's brightest hopes, deepest anxieties, and most profound aspirations. They provide an aesthetic road map to a nation's history, recording the lives - and reflecting the personality - of its people. But all too often, Americans themselves are unfamiliar with the great artistic legacy of their own country. Many of us study the great artists of Europe—Leonardo and Rubens, Degas and Monet—but neglect the remarkable painters of our own national tradition.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2009.
Pt. 1. lecture 1. What's it all about?; lecture 2. You bet your life: statistics and medicine; lecture 3. You bet your life: cost-benefit analysis; lecture 4. Popular statistics: averages and base rates; lecture 5. Popular statistics: graphs; lecture 6. Popular statistics: polling and sampling; lecture 7. The birth of social statistics; lecture 8. Probability, multiplication, and permutations, etc.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
Meaning from Data: Statistics Made Clear is your introduction to a vitally important subject in today's data-driven society. In 24 lectures, you will explore the principles and methods that underlie the study of statistics. You have probably heard such terms as mean, median, percentile, quartile, statistically significant, and bell curve, and you may have a rough idea of what they mean. This course sharpens your understanding of these and scores of other statistical concepts and shows how, properly used, they can extract meaning from data.

Produced by The Teaching Company.
45-minute lectures; released 1996.
Disc 1. Lecture 1. Europe in 1300: an introduction; Lecture 2. Europe in 1300: rural society; Lecture 3. Europe in 1300: urban society; Lecture 4. Europe in 1300: church, state and learning -- Disc 2. Lecture 5. An age of crises: hunger; Lecture 6. An age of crises: war; Lecture 7. An age of crises: the Black Death; Lecture 8. An age of crises: popular rebellions.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2010.
In Meteorology: An Introduction to the Wonders of the Weather, you embark on a fascinating foray into this complex and enthralling field of study. In 24 lectures, you explore the often surprising, always intriguing workings of the weather, guided by expert atmospheric scientist and Professor Robert G. Fovell. Bringing together geography, chemistry, physics, and other scientific disciplines, the study of weather offers insights into the world around you while also providing an opportunity to grasp the complex interactions that make up our world's climate.

Directed by Jon Leven.
30-minute lectures; released 2006.
This series of lectures introduces the greatest of universal museums. Its aim is not comprehensive. The focus is narrowed to just one of the seven curatorial departments of the Louvre: the single most famous, the Department of Paintings, which is responsible for European paintings from the Middle Ages until the mid-19th century. These works of art form an encyclopedic summary of the achievements of painters that can be called the single most important such collection in the world. Alone, they require a day of walking to survey adequately; the aim of these lectures is to both prepare new viewers for this visit and to be a "study aid" for those who have been and gone before.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
In these 24 visually rich, half-hour lectures, Professor Brettell takes you through The Metropolitan Museum of Art from front to back, from bottom to top, introducing practically every department in the museum. Each is a museum unto its own, representing one of the world's finest collections in its field. You will see an astonishing number of works - more than 400 in all - focusing on Professor Brettell's favorites, and in the process touching on virtually all of the best-known pieces in the museum, and many more besides. His is a personal tour, driven by his enthusiasm and a ceaseless curiosity to see riches of The Metropolitan Museum of Art unknown even to him.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2009.
The rise of French art: Poussin and Claude; Flemish masters: Rubens and Van Dyck; A golden age of Spanish painting; Dutch history, portraiture, genre scenes; Dutch still lifes, townscapes, landscapes; The genius of Rembrandt -- Venetian and Spanish masters, c. 1740-1820; The charms of 18th-century French painting; British painting comes of age; British and French masters, c. 1785-1860; Impressionism in France; Post-impressionism: The story of the National Gallery, London, etc.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2003.
Clear introductions to essential principles of physics support these lectures, including density, quantum theory, gravity, and the General Theory of Relativity. Also includes forays into disciplines such as chemistry and biology as needed to explain events in astronomy.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
Examines the spiritual, literary, and intellectual heritage of these three religions in relation to the mystical experience.

Directed by Tom Dunton.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
Calling upon such diverse resources as the American Declaration of Independence, the Greek tragedy Antigone, Aquinas' Summa Theologica, and the stirring letter of Martin Luther King from Birmingham Jail, this course considers the argument that a higher law can be invoked to challenge written legislation. It looks at the history of natural law as the basis for the claim that acts such as slavery, torture, and blackmail are wrong because they violate the rights to which human beings, by their very nature, are entitled.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2006.
These lectures are your initiation into the geological world that lies just outside your door, introducing you to physical geology, the study of Earth's minerals, rocks, soils, and the processes that operate on them through time.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2000.
Presents a series of twenty-four lectures that examines in detail the New Testament. Professor Bart Ehrman discusses its form, the methods of composition, its authors and their original audiences, and the surrounding historical context. He focuses on questions of historical evidence and explanation rather than on issues of religious belief and theological truth.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 1999.
This lecture course by Professor Robert C. Solomon of the University of Texas explores existentialism and the leading writers and philosophers who have been associated with this philosophical movement.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 1999.
For thousands of year, readers - and, before them, listeners - have thrilled to the tale of one of the greatest journeys in all of literature. This course offers a meticulous, insightful examination of the most important episodes in the Odyssey and explains the cultural assumptions that lie behind Homer's lines. Through these lectures, you will discover the story of how Odysseus, "the man of many twists and turns", returns home from the Trojan War by the most winding and adventurous route imaginable, battling gods and monsters and even visiting Hades in his quest to get back to Ithaca and set his lands and life in order.

Directed by Thomas Dunton.
30-minute lectures; released 2001.
These lectures offer an introduction to the history, literature, and religion of ancient Israel and early Judaism as it is presented in the collection of texts called the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, and the Tanakh. Attention is given not only to the content of the biblical books but also to the debates over their meaning and the critical methods through which they have been interpreted.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2005.
Four billion years ago, the infant Earth was a seething cauldron of erupting volcanoes, raining meteors, and hot noxious gases, totally devoid of life. But a relatively short time later - 100 to 200 million years - the planet was teeming with primitive organisms. What happened? Professor Robert M. Hazen, one of the nation's foremost science educators and leader of a NASA-supported team that is studying the origins of life in the universe, leads you on a 24-lecture expedition to find the answer to this momentous question.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
Includes: The constellations and their stars; Seeing and navigating the sky: using binoculars and backyard telescopes; Observing the moon and the sun; Observing the planets with a telescope; Meteor showers, comets, eclipses, and more; The northern sky and the north celestial pole; The fall sky; The winter sky; The spring sky; The summer sky; The southern sky and the milky way.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2003.
Would you like to know how the universe works? The science that has found many of the answers to that profound and age-old question is particle physics: the study of those impossibly tiny particles with unbelievably strange names: bosons and leptons, quarks and neutrinos. In Particle Physics for Non-Physicists: A Tour of the Microcosmos, Professor Steven Pollock translates the language of the remarkable science that, in only 100 years, has unlocked the secrets of the basic forces of nature.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2006.
Twenty-four lectures on the philosophy of emotions.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 1999.
From the rise of Greek philosophy to the postmodern era, the traditions of philosophy and religion in Western thought have been, at different times: separate and non-competitive; allies; open antagonists. The course traces this historically shifting and often uneasy relationship, examining how philosophy and religion have interacted to address fundamental questions of religious belief, including existence, the concept of God, creation, sin, mercy, redemption, and man's relationship with the infinite.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2006.
Professor Erickson discusses how some of the greatest minds of the past three centuries have pondered why we are here and what journey we might be on: post-Enlightenment thinkers such as Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and other European philosophers. These ideas persist to the present day, as contemporary philosophers have taken up the intellectual route so irresistible to the likes of later intellectuals -- Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, Foucault, and Habermas.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
A thorough exploration of what we know and don't know abut our mental functioning, Philosophy of Mind is an incomparable introduction to the various issues that revolve around the question of what, exactly, the mind is. It makes you think, evaluate your own opinions, and change your mind not a few times as you grapple with the endlessly interesting phenomena of mind.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2003.
Examines religion from a philosophical point of view.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2009.
This course charts how the question of life's meaning has been pursued through the ages, highlighting the Western philosophical and religious paths in the human search for meaningful living.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2004.
"This course introduces principles of physics through their application to everyday life" -- Guidebook.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2009.
An undergraduate course for nonscience majors that treats the atom as a tool for revealing the quantitative history of everything -- from the human diet and works of art to Earth's climate and the universe.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2005.
In Plato's Republic, Professor David Roochnik leads you through the brilliant dialogue Plato crafted both to define and examine the issues with which political philosophy still grapples. Chapter by chapter - what the Republic presents as "books" - Professor Roochnik introduces you to Plato's literary recasting of his own great teacher, Socrates, and the dialogue through which Socrates and the Republic's other characters create the hypothetical "ideal city". It is by dissecting life in this presumably just city - the "Republic" of Plato's title - that the nature of justice itself can be examined.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2006.
In spite of the breadth of any pope's influence on the world stage: influence that has not only religious, but geopolitical, legal, social, artistic, and cultural repercussions unmatched by any other individual: how many of us really understand this most venerable of the world's institutions? What is the idea behind the "Petrine Office" the idea that answers the question, "Why is there a pope?" How are popes chosen? What kinds of men have been included among the 265 who have borne the title?

Produced by the Teaching Company.
45-minute lectures; released 1991.
This course contrasts two conflicting views that have long shaped political theory and practice, idealism and realism. The debate between them starts with the origins of philosophy in ancient India and Greece through the 20th century's most extreme examples of idealism and realism, Gandhi and Hitler. You also examine Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Marx, and Freud. These exceptional thinkers sculpted, piece by piece, Western political thought from its inception in 5th-century (B.C.) Athens.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
Discussions of philosophers and philosophical themes from ancient Greece and Rome.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2005.
Philosophical examination of the wide range of decisions all of us encounter in pursuing our lives. Professor Grim places the accent on individual choice covering questions about evolution and ethics, about whether punishment is justified by retribution or by deterrence and about the differing lessons drawn from life's worst horrors by both religious and anti-religious traditions.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
Are philosophy and religion - reason and faith - fundamentally at odds? From today's strict division between questions of logic and questions of belief, one might think so. But for 1,000 years during a pivotal era of Western thought, reason and faith went hand-in-hand in the search for answers to the most profound issues investigated by Christianity's most committed scholars. Questions posed by the great philosophers of the Middle Ages bear no resemblance to the stereotypical medieval dispute about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin₇a problem that apparently no one in the Middle Ages discussed. Instead, they are emblematic of an extraordinarily rich period of intellectual ferment, when the best minds of the age participated in a common struggle with transcendent questions, using reasoning in the service of faith.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2005.
This course uses ancient texts and archaeological evidence to explore the religious cultures of the ancient Mediterranean world, from the earliest indications of human religious practices during prehistoric times to the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity in the 4th century of the Common Era.

Produced by The Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2005.
Beginning in 1347, the plague in its several forms would eventually kill up to half the population of Europe, initiating a catastrophic economic depression, peasant revolts, and fierce power struggles among the nobility. Yet from this near total disaster, a new spirit arose. In this course, you will explore the political, social, cultural, and economic revolutions that transformed Europe between the arrival of the Black Death in the 14th century and the onset of the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2006.
Representing Justice: Stories of Law and Literature is a provocative examination of the rhetorical and philosophical connections that link these two disciplines.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
Discusses the evolution of the understanding of what is encompassed by the term "human rights" ; the forces and individuals which brought about changes in thought and behavior and the interconnection of human rights with history, religion, philosophy, literature, economics, science, technology, and the arts.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2009.
Professor Patrick N. Allitt, Emory University, delivers lectures on the history of the British Empire.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2004.
Tulane University's Professor Kenneth W. Harl organizes the course around two major themes: 1. The makeup of Roman society, politics, and military organization, particularly from the standpoint of how those institutions enabled the Romans not only to conquer those peoples, but assimilate them; 2. The role played by the most recent of Rome's barbarian foes - especially the Germans and the Persians - in bringing down the Roman Empire, including the question of what gave them the "military or political edge" to accomplish this.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2001.
"Dr. King explores commonalities shared by nonhuman anthropoid primates and humans without overlooking the great degree of behavioral diversity within and across species... Each of the half-hour lectures builds upon the knowledge base of the previous lectures," reports The American Journal of Primatology.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2006.
Professor Lawrence M. Principe unfolds a surprisingly cooperative dynamic in which theologians and natural scientists share methods, ideas, aspirations, and a tradition of disputational dialogue.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2004.
In this course, you learn ideas that characterize 20th -century science, organized into five themes: matter and energy, the universe, earth, life, and humanity. You discover significant developments in anthropology, archaeology, history, linguistics, sociology, political science, economics, psychology, and cognitive science - alongside physics, chemistry, mathematics, Earth science, and biology.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2006.
Professor Goldman leads you on a quest for the nature of scientific reasoning in this intellectually path-breaking lecture series. Those who have taken Professor Goldman's previous course, which is an intensive survey of the revolution in scientific knowledge from 1900 to 2000, may have wondered: if what counts as scientific knowledge can transform so dramatically within only 100 years, what exactly is scientific knowledge? Science Wars addresses this surprisingly difficult question.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
45-minute lectures; released 1995.
For almost 400 years, Shakespeare's work has been the standard against which all writers have been judged. This course acknowledges that understanding Shakespeare can be difficult because his plays were written 400 years ago.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2004.
An analysis of the classic work Confessions by St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430). Includes Roman history and Christian controversries at the time and background for understanding the book. Also discusses its ongoing usefulness and how it may serve as a guide despite the obvious difference between Augustine's world and ours.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2004.
Dr. John McWhorter, one of America's leading linguists, is your guide on an in-depth tour of the development of human language, showing how a single tongue spoken 150,000 years ago evolved into the estimated 6,000 languages used around the world today.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2006.
Since the invention of the printing press, the world's consistently bestselling book has been the Bible. Since 1815, it has been printed an estimated five billion times. By the end of 2005, it had been translated into 2,043 languages. In the Western world, the Bible is easy to find: In most hotel rooms, it is handier than the Yellow Pages. And yet, what do many of us know about this ancient and influential text? Compiled over centuries, the Bible is considered to be both a divinely inspired message and the work of human authors.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
This set of 24 lectures examines aspects of elite and popular culture in late medieval and early modern Western Europe, focusing on the way in which men and women seeking to explain, order, and escape the terrors of their lives embraced transcendental religious experiences, dreamed of and worked for the coming of the apocalypse, and seized on a widespread belief in witchcraft and Satanism.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
To a large extent, the study of human development is the study of child development, because the most significant changes take place from infancy through adolescence. This very young science not only enables us to understand children and help them develop optimally, but also gives us profound insights into who we are as adults.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
This course traces the history of evolution science, with an eye toward enhancing your understanding of the theory itself, and the roots of the controversies surrounding it. Topics include discussions of Darwin's life and work, disputes among scientists about his theory, the history of religious objections to evolution, and the unfortunate effects of social Darwinism.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2005.
Everyone has to think in order to function in the world, and this course will equip you with the tools to reason effectively in your pursuit of reliable beliefs and useful knowledge. Whether you are a budding philosopher searching for ultimate truths, a science student grappling with the nature of scientific proof, a new parent weighing conflicting child-rearing advice, or a concerned citizen making up your mind about today's issues, Tools of Thinking will help you cut through deception and faulty reasoning to get closer to the essence of a matter.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
The 36 lectures—taught by acclaimed linguist, author, and Professor John McWhorter from the Manhattan Institute—are your opportunity to take a revealing journey through the fascinating terrain of linguistics. You focus on the scientific aspects of human language that were left out of any classes you may have taken in English or a foreign language, and you emerge from your journey with a new-found appreciation of the mysterious machinery built into all of us—an appreciation likely to surface time and again in your everyday life.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 1995.
This course examines the three great forms of literary expression, drama, poetry, and narrative, in a chronological introduction to the major texts of Western culture, from antiquity onward.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
This course takes you inside this astonishingly complex organ to show you how it works. Recent decades have seen unparalleled advances in understanding how the brain does what it does. Today we can pinpoint the specific regions, or nuclei, where some of life's most mysterious processes take place.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2008.
Introduces you to complexity science. You learn how this vibrant and still evolving discipline helps you understand the nature and behavior of systems formed of financial markets, corporations, native cultures, governments, and more.

Directed by Tom Dunton.
45-minute lectures; released 2004.
These 32 lectures are your owner's manual to a remarkably complex, resilient, and endlessly fascinating structure: the human body. You guide is Dr. Anthony Goodman - surgeon, professor, and writer - who takes you step by step through the major systems of the body, explaining exactly how things work and why they sometimes don't.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
"By sidestepping the necessity to read music, these lectures represent an extremely rare opportunity in musical education--an opportunity to experience a solid introduction to music theory's basics in a way that is not technically intimidating, yet provides a substantial grounding in the fundamentals" -- Publisher.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
45-minute lectures; released 1998.
Alex Filippenko's lectures offer a non-technical description of modern astronomy, including the structure and evolution of planets, stars, galaxies, and the universe as a whole.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
45-minute lectures; released 2003.
All of the course material is integrated so that one topic builds on another as you develop the conceptual tools that allow you to explore the Universe. For example, the study of the Solar System leads naturally to the investigation of planets around other stars and the possibility of life elsewhere in the cosmos.

Produced by The Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2003.
Examines the fundamental question of our times: why was the 20th century so violent? It looks at the ideologies that promised utopias and total solutions to social problems and relates the terrible human toll of attempts to realize these ideas.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2002.
Examines how the Victorians lived with social and economic contradictions and how Britain changed between the 1830s and 1900.

Produced by The Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2005.
As explorers and traders, the Vikings played a decisive role in the formation of Latin Christendom, and particularly of Western Europe. In this course, you will study the Vikings not only as warriors, but also in other roles for which they were equally extraordinary: merchants, artists, kings, raiders, seafarers, shipbuilders, and creators of a remarkable literature of myths and sagas. Professor Kenneth W. Harl synthesizes insights from an astonishing array of sources.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
In War, Peace, and Power: Diplomatic History of Europe, 1500–2000, Professor Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius offers everyone interested in the "why" of history a remarkable look into the evolution of the European continent and the modern state system. In 36 provocative lectures, he allows us to peer through the revealing lens of statecraft to show us its impact on war, peace, and power and how that impact may well be felt in the future—an approach that historians have been using for thousands of years.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2006.
Part 1. Lecture 1. Our random world: probability defined; Lecture 2. The nature of randomness; Lecture 3. Expected value: you can bet on it; Lecture 4. Random thoughts on random walks; Lecture 5. Probability phenomena of physics; Lecture 6. Probability is in our genes, etc.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 1999.
Friedrich Nietzsche is perhaps the most mysterious and least understood philosopher. His aphorisms are widely quoted - and misappropriated by many he would have despised - but he remains an enigmatic figure. He launched powerful challenges to some of our most cherished beliefs. Much of morality is, in fact, a scheme to bring down one's superiors through guilt, and repression, religion, and rationalization often assist in this scheme. As unsettling as he can be, when viewed in full, this course finds in Nietzsche's thought a powerful argument for a fully aware and active life.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 1999.
This course introduces the plays of Shakespeare and explores what makes Shakespeare the leading playwright in Western civilization.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
Pt.1. Why we study history; World War I and the lessons of history; Hitler's rise and the lessons of history; World War II and the lessons of history; Is Freedom a universal value?; Birth of civilization in the Middle East; Ancient Israel and the Middle East; Ancient Greece and the Middle East; Athenian democracy and empire; Destiny of the Athenian democracy; Alexander the Great and the Middle East, etc.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2001.
This course investigates the transition of Mediterranean power and culture from Rome to the eastern portion of the Roman Empire in the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D. Approaching the subject both chronologically and thematically, the lectures span nearly 1,000 years and detail the cycles of rise and fall in the Byzantine world, including the impact of Christianity, the resurgent reign of Emperor Justinian, the Byzantine Dark Ages, the cultural flowering of the epoch of the Macedonian emperors, and the impact of the Crusades. A key unifying theme is the role of Byzantium in the transmission of the Classical heritage to the medieval West and to Islam.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2006.
The Professor Liulevicius has a gift for cutting through the tangle of historical data to uncover the patterns that make sense of complex events. And few events are as complex as WWI, which pitted the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Ottoman Turkey, later joined by Bulgaria, against the Allies, principally France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and, after 1917, the United States.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 1998.
This course examines the greatest conflict in human history, WWII. Between 1937 and 1945 approximately 55 million people perished in this series of interrelated conflicts. No continent was left untouched, no ocean or sea unaffected. The war: led to the eclipse of Europe and the emergence of the US and the USSR as global superpowers ushered in the atomic age and produced, in Auschwitz and elsewhere, the most grisly crimes ever committed in the long course of Western civilization led to national liberation from Europe's colonial empires around the world. In short, the Second World War has defined an entire epoch in human history, an epoch from which we are only now emerging.

Produced by the Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2007.
Distinguished mathematician Edward B. Burger begins this course by noting that "numbers are important in our everyday world, but mysterious in our imaginations." Zero to Infinity: A History of Numbers will not only give you the full and detailed story of how and why numbers are important, it will introduce you to their enduring mystery.