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. These 36 lectures tell the all-embracing story of life on Earth - its origins, extinctions, and evolutions - in a manner that assumes no background in science. At half an hour per lecture, you’ll cover the entire 4.54-billion-year history of Earth in 18 hours, averaging 70,000 years per second!

Dr. Catherine Kleier invites us to open our eyes to the phenomenal world of plant life and to the process she calls “Natura Revelata”, the joy of celebrating and learning from the secrets of nature. As Dr. Kleier shares her knowledge with contagious excitement for her subject, she emphasizes the middle ground: Instead of focusing on cell microbiology or the study of ecosystems and habitats, she stresses the basic biology, function, and the amazing adaptations of the plants we see all around us. 

In these 24 lectures, The Great Courses teams up with the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, to take you behind the scenes of the animal world. Dr. Moore has crafted a wonderful introduction to zoology that brings you up close and personal with a breathtaking variety of animal species through the eyes of a trained zoologist.

Locked inside the DNA of every species that ever lived are endless stories - about origins, ancestors, fate, and much more. Until recently, these secrets were completely inaccessible. But with the help of new technologies, scientists are now reading the hidden history of DNA, making remarkable discoveries about ourselves and our fellow species. Your gateway to this treasure trove of information is Unlocking the Hidden History of DNA, 12 informative and accessible lectures delivered by New York Times best-selling author Sam Kean.  

No subject is bigger than reality itself, and nothing is more challenging to understand, since what counts as reality is undergoing continual revision and has been for centuries. The quest to pin down what's real and what's illusory is both philosophical and scientific, a metaphysical search for ultimate reality that goes back to the ancient Greeks. For the last 400 years, this search has been increasingly guided by scientists, who create theories and test them in order to define and redefine reality.

Imagine a world without bees, butterflies, and flowering plants. That was Earth 125 million years ago. Turn back the clock 400 million years, and there were no trees. At 450 million years in the past, even the earliest insects had not yet developed. And looking back 500 million years, the land was devoid of life, which at that time flourished in a profusion of strange forms in the oceans. These and other major turning points are the amazing story of evolution.

Consider these commonly held scientific beliefs: Planetary orbits are fixed ellipses; we only use 10 percent of our brains; nothing travels faster than light; a thrown object’s trajectory is a parabola. They seem correct, but they’re all misconceptions that aren’t entirely accurate. There’s much more to the story than you think. These magnificent 24 lectures are devoted to busting myths, clearing up confusion, and giving you scientific epiphanies that could change how you think about your everyday world.

One of the greatest scientific feats of our era is the astonishing progress made in understanding biology-the intricate machinery of life-a progress to which the period we are living in right now has contributed the most.As you read these words, researchers are delving ever deeper into the workings of living systems, turning their discoveries into new medical treatments, improved methods of growing food, and innovative products that are already changing the world.

Mesopotamia is the ancient name for the region that is now Iraq, a remarkably advanced civilization that flourished for two-thirds of the time that civilization has existed on Earth. Mesopotamians mastered irrigation agriculture; built the first complex urban societies; developed writing, literature, and law; and united vast regions through warfare and diplomacy. While civilizations like Greece and Rome have an unbroken tradition of written histories, the rich history of Mesopotamia has only been recently rediscovered, thanks to the decipherment of Mesopotamia's cuneiform writing less than 200 years ago.

In 24 thought-provoking lectures designed for nonscientists, this course explores today's exciting field of genomics, the study of the vast storehouse of information contained within chromosomes. Your professor is Princeton University biologist Lee M. Silver, an acclaimed teacher, scientist, and author of popular books on biotechnology, genetics, and their impact on society.   

Chemistry and Our Universe: How It All Works is your in-depth introduction to this vital field, taught through 60 engaging half-hour lectures that are suitable for any background or none at all. Covering a year’s worth of introductory general chemistry at the college level, plus intriguing topics that are rarely discussed in the classroom, this amazingly comprehensive course requires nothing more advanced than high-school math. Your guide is Professor Ron B. Davis, Jr., a research chemist and award-winning teacher at Georgetown University.

Since the publication in 1859 of Charles Darwin's remarkable On the Origin of Species, the modern science of biology and genetics has added surprising new dimensions to evolutionary theory. In this course, you’ll discover what Darwin didn’t know, covering much of the curriculum of an introductory college course in evolutionary biology. No background in science is needed to follow these engaging lectures, delivered by Professor Scott Solomon of Rice University, a gifted teacher and widely traveled field biologist.

The Science of Information: From Language to Black Holes covers the exciting concepts, history, and applications of information theory in 24 challenging and eye-opening half-hour lectures taught by Professor Benjamin Schumacher of Kenyon College. A prominent physicist and award-winning educator at one of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges, Professor Schumacher is also a pioneer in the field of quantum information, which is the latest exciting development in this dynamic scientific field. 

Your nervous system is you. All the thoughts, perceptions, moods, passions, and dreams that make you an active, sentient being are the work of this amazing network of cells. For many centuries, people knew this was true. But no one was sure how it happened. Now, thanks to the exciting new field of neuroscience, we can chart the workings of the brain and the rest of the nervous system in remarkable detail to explain how neurons, synapses, neurotransmitters, and other biological processes produce all the experiences of everyday life, in every stage of life.  

In this 24-lesson course aimed at non-scientists, noted particle physicist Dr. Don Lincoln of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory covers more than a century of progress in physics, describing exactly how scientists reach the conclusions they do. He starts with the atom, which was long hypothesized but wasn’t definitively proven until a paper by Albert Einstein in 1905. That was just the beginning, as researchers probed ever deeper into the atom’s complex structure, leading to the weird findings of quantum mechanics.

In the 24 engaging lectures of The Nature of Matter, no scientific background is needed to appreciate such miracles of everyday life as a bouncing rubber ball or water's astonishing power to dissolve. Moreover, the study of matter has led directly to such inventions as semiconductor circuits for computers, new fabrics for clothes, and powerful adhesives for medicine and industry.

Locked inside the DNA of every species that ever lived are endless stories - about origins, ancestors, fate, and much more. Until recently, these secrets were completely inaccessible. But with the help of new technologies, scientists are now reading the hidden history of DNA, making remarkable discoveries about ourselves and our fellow species. Your gateway to this treasure trove of information is Unlocking the Hidden History of DNA, 12 informative and accessible lectures delivered by New York Times best-selling author Sam Kean.  

In these 24 lectures, The Great Courses teams up with the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, to take you behind the scenes of the animal world. Dr. Moore has crafted a wonderful introduction to zoology that brings you up close and personal with a breathtaking variety of animal species through the eyes of a trained zoologist.

Consider these commonly held scientific beliefs: Planetary orbits are fixed ellipses; we only use 10 percent of our brains; nothing travels faster than light; a thrown object’s trajectory is a parabola. They seem correct, but they’re all misconceptions that aren’t entirely accurate. There’s much more to the story than you think. These magnificent 24 lectures are devoted to busting myths, clearing up confusion, and giving you scientific epiphanies that could change how you think about your everyday world.

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-only 100 million to 200 million years-the planet was teeming with primitive organisms.What happened? Now you can find out-in a series of 24 vibrant lectures from a leader of the NASA-supported team studying the origins of life in the universe and also one of the nation's foremost science educators.

Gravity controls everything from the falling of an apple to the rising of ocean’s tides to the motions of the heavens above. If you’ve ever wondered how this most puzzling force works across our entire universe, you will be delighted by this 24-part course that is accessible to any curious person, regardless of your science education. No other product on the market presents the subject of gravity in as much detail as this course, which will follow the past 400 years of research and experimentation in the field.

Imagine a world without bees, butterflies, and flowering plants. That was Earth 125 million years ago. Turn back the clock 400 million years, and there were no trees. At 450 million years in the past, even the earliest insects had not yet developed. And looking back 500 million years, the land was devoid of life, which at that time flourished in a profusion of strange forms in the oceans. These and other major turning points are the amazing story of evolution.

The Science of Information: From Language to Black Holes covers the exciting concepts, history, and applications of information theory in 24 challenging and eye-opening half-hour lectures taught by Professor Benjamin Schumacher of Kenyon College. A prominent physicist and award-winning educator at one of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges, Professor Schumacher is also a pioneer in the field of quantum information, which is the latest exciting development in this dynamic scientific field. 

Classical physics is about how things move, why they move, and how they work. It's about making sense of motion, gravity, light, heat, sound, electricity, and magnetism, and seeing how these phenomena interweave to create the rich tapestry of everyday experience. It is, in short, the hidden order of the universe.

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. But new theories have created a new range of philosophical concerns: What is the shape of space? Is time travel possible? Is there a grand unified theory that unites all of physics?