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Audiobook
(13)
The Soul and the City: Art, Literature, and Urban Living
by Arnold Weinstein
read by Arnold Weinstein
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
These eight lectures are a celebration of humanity and the rich texture of human experience. They are a fascinating focus on the complex artistic representations of city life from the 18th to the 20th century. Join Professor Weinstein as he reveals the portraits of humanity that came from several of the period's greatest artists, writers, and thinkers.
Among them:
Painter Edvard Munch, who depicts the emptiness of urban living,
Poet Charles Baudelaire, who celebrates how crowds impact his imagination,
Author Daniel Defoe, who dramatizes the freedom the city offers people who want to change their identities, Author Theodore Dreiser, who views the city as a huge, brutal, industrial machine that systematically grinds up individuals, and Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who believes that the city is like the mind: a receptacle for the past, as well as for hidden lives and passions.
These lectures reveal several vital themes that appear in artists' subjective renderings of urban living: orientation (finding our way), the marketplace (exchanging goods and services), anonymity (experiencing solitude or freedom), encounters (fearing or connecting with others), history (maintaining contact with other times), and cultures (entering the cities' ever-changing cultural forms).
Why use art as a guide to city life? According to Professor Weinstein, "Art usually supports what we learn from scientific studies of urban life. Art provides us with something social science cannot: a subjective rendering of city experience that is not quantifiable. Such a depiction includes our fears, desires, and dreams. Art serves as a record for these experiences."
Audiobook
(18)
How Digital Technology Shapes Us
by Indre Viskontas
read by Indre Viskontas
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Most adults are concerned that children have much too much technology in their lives these days and are spending way too much time on screens. But as Professor Indre Viskontas points out in How Digital Technology Shapes Us, we are not the first to worry that new technology will harm our children and future generations. At least since the beginning of recorded history, we have been underestimating the capacity of the human brain to adapt to and take advantage of emerging technologies. In this course, Professor Viskontas shares some of the most exciting research into this relatively new topic, providing a scientific approach to judging the true pros and cons of our interaction with technology in the digital age.
Many of us believe we are adjusting well to this new digital technology with its constant demands on our time and attention by increasing our multitasking. But multitasking cannot save us because our brain is not capable of true multitasking. What we experience as multitasking is actually our brain flitting back and forth from this task to the next to the next to the next. That we can do, but in the process, we could be losing the ability-and opportunity-to perform deep work, the opportunity for deep reading, and the empathy that builds up when we think deeply about people who are different from us, to truly expand the tribe rather than reinforce tribalism.
The good news is that just recognizing the significance of deep work and deep reading, we can make it a priority and arrange some time to focus on just that without distractions. If we do, those pathways that lead to deeper cognition can become reinforced. We can also help our children focus on the positives of digital media, empowering them to connect with others to find purpose, motivation, and support. We can spend time with them to encourage them to find opportunities for deep reading and deep work in age-appropriate ways.
Digital technology definitely shapes us. But once we learn how it does so, we can make good decisions for our ourselves and our children.
Audiobook
(3)
The Power of Storytelling With Ari Shapiro
by Ari Sharpiro
read by Ari Sharpiro
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
In The Power of Storytelling with Ari Shapiro, the award-winning host of NPR's All Things Considered reveals the storytelling secrets he's learned during his career, from finding a good story and choosing the right characters to conducting interviews and even delivering a story effectively out loud.
Audiobook
(10)
Must History Repeat the Great Conflicts of This Century?
by Joseph S. Nye Jr.
read by Joseph S. Nye Jr.
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Twice in the first half of the last century, the great powers engaged in wars that killed nearly 70 million people, with the aftermath of each shaking the international political system, changing the maps of the world, and setting the scene for the next great conflict. And for most of the past 50 years, the Cold War dominated international politics. Is this the history we are condemned to repeat?
This series of eight lectures about international politics will hone your ability to approach that question with knowledge and insight. It reveals how concepts such as the balance of power and the international system interweave with and help shape history, showing you what actually happened in the great conflicts and why. The lectures will help you answer many of the key questions those concerned with creating a stable peace must answer every day; did the end of the Cold War bring peace and harmony or war and chaos? Does the United States play a dominant role in international affairs or is its role declining? Is military power still the key to world leadership, or has economic power become more important? Should the United States attempt to play the role of global police force, or should it withdraw from its overseas military commitments?
Audiobook
(88)
An Introduction to Infectious Diseases
The complete course contains all 24 lectures
by Barry C. Fox
read by Barry C. Fox
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Infectious diseases touch the lives of everyone on the planet. Whether it's something as minor as a brush with the common cold or as serious as Ebola, we all have grappled with infections and will continue to encounter them as we age. On a worldwide scale, infectious diseases account for 26 percent of all deaths, second only to cardiovascular diseases. And unlike chronic diseases, infectious diseases are unique in their potential for explosive global impacts. Now, in the 24 engaging lectures of Introduction to Infectious Diseases, you can get a comprehensive overview of diseases from the mundane to the fatal from renowned physician and award-winning professor Dr. Barry Fox. Begin with an overview of the microscopic particles responsible for disease: bacteria, fungi, hybrid germs, and viruses. You will see how they invade the body; look through the microscope at pathogens to identify their inner components; follow germs through to different body systems and see what effects they have; and learn why we may be losing the battle against some germs. Cut through the medical myths and get a solidly scientific guide to keeping yourself and your loved ones as protected as possible from pathogens, including a no-nonsense guide to vaccinations, tips on keeping a healthier home environment, and valuable advice for world travelers. Whether you have a love for biology, a curiosity about the world's many infectious diseases, or a certain amount of trepidation about what the future holds, you will enjoy Dr. Fox's impeccable bedside manner, insider knowledge, and humorous personal stories. And, most importantly, you will be empowered to make the best choices for yourself, your loved ones, and future generations.
All Lectures:
1. The Dynamic World of Infectious Disease
2. Bacteria: Heroes and Villains
3. Viruses: Hijackers of Your Body's Cells
4. Moldy Menaces and Fungal Diseases
5. Milestones in Infectious Disease History
6. Antibiotics: A Modern Miracle Lost?
7. Which Germs in Your Daily Life Matter?
8. Six Decades of Infectious Disease Challenges
9. Vaccines Save Lives
10. The Immune System: Our Great Protector
11. Zoonosis: Germs Leap from Animals to Humans
12. Tick-Borne Diseases: A Public Health Menace
13. Food-Borne Illness: What's Your Gut Feeling?
14. Respiratory and Brain Infections
15. Flesh-Eating Bacteria and Blood Poisoning
16. STDs and Other Infections below the Belt
17. Stay Out of the Hospital!
18. The Nemesis of Mankind: HIV and AIDS
19. Malaria and Tuberculosis: Global Killers
20. Global Travel, War, and Natural Disasters
21. Influenza: Past and Future Threat
22. Bioterrorism: How Worried Should We Be?
23. Emerging and Reemerging Diseases
24. Outbreak! Contagion! The Next Pandemic!
Audiobook
(27)
Great Masters: Shostakovich - His Life and Music
by Robert Greenberg
read by Robert Greenberg
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Dmitri Shostakovich is without a doubt one of the central composers of the 20th century. His symphonies and string quartets are mainstays of the repertoire. But Shostakovich is also a figure whose story raises challenging and exciting issues that go far beyond music: they touch on questions of conscience, the moral role of the artist, the plight of humanity in the face of total war and mass oppression, and the inner life of history's bloodiest century. And though he was not without flaws, he was a faithful witness to the survival of the human spirit under totalitarianism. And now you can discover the extraordinary life, times, and music of Shostakovich in a probing series of eight lectures from an acclaimed conductor, teacher, and music historian. Drawing on both the flood of declassified documents from the Soviet Union that began in 1991 and Shostakovich's own extraordinarily frank posthumous reminiscences, Professor Greenberg shows how Shostakovich, who, in the words of a friend, "did not want to rot in a prison or a graveyard" was still unwilling to become a docile instrument of the Soviet regime. You'll learn how what he would not say publicly in words, he instead said through his music - messages from a buried life of his experiences during the terror of Stalin, the Nazi destruction of his country, postwar reconstruction, and the arms race. In work after work, often composed under crushing difficulty and anxiety, you'll hear how he used a brilliant arsenal of ironic conceits, musical quotes from un-Soviet sources such as American jazz or Jewish klezmer tunes, and other techniques to assert the integrity of his art in the face of totalitarian oppression, and to pay, as he said, "homage to the dead."
Audiobook
(31)
Great Masters: Mozart - His Life and Music
by Robert Greenberg
read by Robert Greenberg
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Even from the perspective of time, it is nearly impossible to grasp the full contribution made to music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in his brief and glorious life. He composed his first symphony at the age of 8 and reached full artistic maturity by the time he was only 20. And when he died at the age of 35, he left a legacy of more than 600 works of brilliance - symphonies, chamber music, operas, and more - most composed during an incredibly productive 20-year period. But even though it can well take a lifetime to fully grasp the achievement of the man described by Rossini as "the only composer who had as much knowledge as genius and as much genius as knowledge", every step of that journey toward understanding will be a joy - one you can begin with this fascinating eight-lecture series, which can serve as both a stand-alone introduction to this extraordinary composer or as the gateway to a lifetime of appreciation and pleasure. Beginning with an examination of the many myths that surround Mozart to this day, Professor Greenberg offers not only an understanding of his music, but also a realistic view of Mozart the boy and man, from his emergence as youthful prodigy to his posthumous deification.
You'll learn about his difficult and ultimately doomed relationship with his father, his troubled marriage, his relationships with luminaries like Haydn, Emperor Joseph II, and his operatic librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte, and the triumphs and disappointments that marked his career - including the astonishing and inexplicable creative recovery that enabled him to create his great Masonic opera, The Magic Flute, only months before his death.
Audiobook
(30)
The Passions: Philosophy and the Intelligence of Emotions
The complete course contains all 24 lectures
by Robert C. Solomon
read by Robert C. Solomon
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Conventional wisdom suggests there is a sharp distinction between emotion and reason. Emotions are seen as inferior, disruptive, primitive, and even bestial forces. These 24 remarkable lectures suggest otherwise-that emotions have intelligence and provide personal strategies that are vitally important to our everyday lives of perceiving, evaluating, appraising, understanding, and acting in the world. Take a tour of Professor Solomon's more than three-decade-long intellectual struggle to reach an understanding of emotions, which he argues are, "the key to the meaning of life." A distinguished philosopher himself, Professor Solomon's lectures unfold as a rich dialogue with other philosophers, including Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Adam Smith, Nietzsche, William James, Freud, Heidegger, and Sartre. In your exploration, you'll address such questions as: how do we distinguish emotions from feelings, such as heartache? What is the meaning of our emotions, and how do they serve to enrich and guide our lives? Are there a determinable number of basic emotions that serve as building blocks for the range of emotions we experience? Is an emotion such as jealousy a genetic trait shared by all humans - or is it something learned? As you listen to these lectures, prepare to think: Think about your own emotions; think about what you observe in others; think about the enormous body of research and conjecture on this fascinating topic as Professor Solomon takes you on a challenging and stimulating journey. The more we puzzle over the nature of emotions, the deeper the mystery becomes. It is a mystery that is by no means solved, but one that repays in careful, philosophical analysis.
All Lectures:
1. Emotions as Engagements with the World
2. The Wrath of Achilles
3. It's Good to Be Afraid
4. Lessons of Love - Plato's Symposium
5. We Are Not Alone - Compassion and Empathy
6. Noble? or Deadly Sin? Pride and Shame
7. Nasty - Iago's Envy, Othello's Jealousy
8. Nastier - Resentment and Vengeance
9. A Death in the Family - The Logic of Grief
10. James and the Bear - Emotions and Feelings
11. Freud's Catharsis - the Hydraulic Model
12. Are Emotions "in" the Mind?
13. How Emotions Are Intelligent
14. Emotions as Judgments
15. Beyond Boohoo and Hooray
16. Emotions Are Rational
17. Emotions and Responsibility
18. Emotions in Ethics
19. Emotions and the Self
20. What Is Emotional Experience?
21. Emotions across Cultures - Universals
22. Emotions across Cultures - Differences
23. Laughter and Music
24. Happiness and Spirituality
Audiobook
(25)
Great Masters: Haydn - His Life and Music
by Robert Greenberg
read by Robert Greenberg
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Almost from the moment it was first set to paper, the music of Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) - technically superb, rich in quality, and widely imitated - has exemplified the Classical style, creating not only the Classical-era symphony but setting the standard, through his own 68 string quartets, against which that form has ever after been judged. And yet Haydn, despite the influence left by more than 1,000 works, seems to no longer get his due, often thought of as an aged figure surpassed and overshadowed by Beethoven and Mozart, who actually credited Haydn, the only contemporary he admired, and with whom he formed a lasting and artistically fruitful friendship, with teaching him how to write string quartets. Even Beethoven, whose relationship with his compositional teacher was troubled and stormy, would never have been able to write his triumphant Ninth Symphony without the influence of Haydn's crowning achievement, the towering 1798 oratorio, Creation. Now, in a series of eight vivid lectures, you can learn to understand and appreciate the music of one of the most original and influential composers of all time as you explore his origins, influence, and greatest works.
Audiobook
(27)
How We Learn
by Monisha Pasupathi
read by Monisha Pasupathi
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Learning is a lifelong adventure. It starts in your mother's womb, accelerates to high speed in infancy and childhood, and continues through every age. Whether you're actively engaged in mastering a new skill, intuitively discovering an unfamiliar place, or even sleeping - which is fundamental to helping you consolidate and hold on to what you've learned - you are truly born to learn around the clock. But few of us know how we learn, which is the key to learning and studying more effectively. This series of 24 vibrant and accessible lectures has been designed to change that. Designed by an award-winning psychology teacher and expert on how people of all ages master new skills and information, it sheds light on what's going on when we learn and dispels common myths about the subject. Professor Pasupathi's many examples cover the modern history of research on learning, from behaviorist theory in the early 20th century to the most recent debates about whether IQ can be separated from achievement - and even whether a spectrum of different learning styles and multiple intelligences really exists. The lectures are also a rich source of readily implemented tips on how to excel in many different learning situations, including mastering difficult material, motivating children to learn, and preserving learning aptitude as we grow older.
Audiobook
(10)
Theories of Human Development
The complete course contains all 24 lectures
by Malcolm W. Watson
read by Malcolm W. Watson
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
"Human development" is the science that studies how we learn and develop psychologically from birth to the end of life. 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.
In Theories of Human Development, Professor Malcolm W. Watson, the George and Frances Levin Professor of Psychology at Brandeis University, introduces you to the six theories that have had perhaps the greatest influence on this field. You will meet the people who formulated each theory, become familiar with their philosophical backgrounds and the historical contexts in which they worked, and study the specific processes of human development that each theory describes.
The lessons of this course are not only about learning, behavior, and relationships in our youth - they apply at any age. Taken as a whole, they provide our best answers to the questions of human nature - how we learn, adapt, and become who we are at every stage in life.
All Lectures:
1. Introduction - The Value of Theories
2. The Early History of Child Study
3. Two Worldviews - Locke vs. Rousseau
4. Later History - Becoming Scientific
5. Freud's Psychodynamic Theory
6. How We Gain Contact with Reality - The Ego
7. Freud's Psycho-Sexual Stages
8. Erikson's Psycho-Social Theory
9. Erikson's Early Stages
10. Identity and Intimacy
11. Erikson's Later Stages - Adult Development
12. Bowlby and Ainsworth's Attachment Theory
13. How Nature Ensures That Attachment Will Occur
14. Development of Secure and Insecure Attachments
15. Early Attachments and Adult Relationships
16. Bandura's Social Learning Theory
17. Bandura's Self-Efficacy Theory
18. Piaget's Cognitive-Developmental Theory
19. Piaget's Early Stages
20. Concrete Operations
21. Piaget's Last Stage
22. Vygotsky's Cognitive-Mediation Theory
23. Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development
24. Conclusions - Our Nature and Development
Audiobook
(13)
Science in the 20th Century: A Social-Intellectual Survey
by Steven L. Goldman
read by Steven L. Goldman
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
As the 19th century drew to a close, the age-old quest to understand the physical world appeared to be complete, except for a few minor details. In fact, Albert Michelson, the first American to win a Nobel Prize in the sciences, noted that, "It seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established." And he was far from alone among his peers. Scientists in 1900 had no inkling of the other mind-boggling developments that lay in wait: plate tectonics, genetic engineering, space probes, nanotechnology, big bang theory, electronic computers, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence, and many other astounding products of the human mind. Indeed, by the end of the 20th century, nearly every 19th-century theory of natural and social phenomena would be overthrown or superseded. This dynamic transformation has not been a matter of revolution, but of evolution, as you'll learn in this fascinating 36-lecture exploration of scientific growth filled with ideas, anecdotes, and insights. You'll see how 20th-century scientists have built on crucial 19th-century concepts such as energy, natural selection, atoms, fields, and waves to assemble a body of knowledge to stun even the most farsighted scientific thinkers of that not-too-distant past. You'll come away with a new appreciation of how scientific knowledge expands, as Professor Goldman addresses a tremendous range of scientific and technological topics, including science and society, physics, mathematics, psychology, cosmology, telecommunications, meteorology, and archaeology.
Audiobook
(59)
Death, Dying, and the Afterlife
The complete course contains all 24 lectures
by Mark Berkson
read by Mark Berkson
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
After thousands of years of pondering it, we still find death one of life's most perplexing mysteries. Many cultures view death as a window into the true meaning of life.
These 24 lectures looking at this often feared subject are an uplifting, meaningful, and multidisciplinary exploration of life's only certainty. Bringing together theology, philosophy, biology, anthropology, literature, psychology, sociology, and other fields, they are a brilliant compendium of how human beings have struggled to come to terms with mortality. You'll encounter everything from ancient burial practices, traditional views of the afterlife, and the five stages of grief to the question of killing during wartime, the phenomenon of near-death experiences, and even 21st-century theories about transcending death itself.
With personal and cultural enlightenment as the overarching goal, Professor Berkson provides you with eye-opening answers to several major questions surrounding death, including: How do we think about death? How do religions approach death? When (if ever) is it justified to take a life? You'll also hear a chorus of voices from multiple disciplines, cultures, and ages as they offer sometimes shocking and sometimes refreshing perspectives on death. These voices include the Buddha, St. Paul, Albert Camus, Dylan Thomas, and Elizabeth Kübler-Ross.
"Many religious traditions teach that a form of regular death reflection can deepen one's appreciation for life," Professor Berkson notes. "And in some traditions, it can actually lead to spiritual transformation or awakening. As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, 'Whoever rightly understands and celebrates death at the same time magnifies life.'"
All Lectures:
1. Death's Place in Our Lives
2. Defining Death
3. Death, Illusion, and Meaning
4. Is It Rational to Fear Death?
5. Understanding and Coping with Grief
6. Death Rituals and the Corpse
7. American Death Rituals
8. Approaches to Dying Well
9. Judaism on Death and the Afterlife
10. Death and Hope in Christianity
11. Islam on Returning to God
12. Death, Rebirth, and Liberation in Hinduism
13. Buddhism on Impermanence and Mindfulness
14. The Process of Dying in Tibetan Buddhism
15. Confucian Remembrance, Daoist Forgetting
16. Death and Syncretism in China
17. Suicide Examined
18. The Choice of Euthanasia
19. Killing in War and the Pacifist Challenge
20. Considering Capital Punishment
21. Killing Non-Human Animals
22. Near-Death Experiences
23. The Pursuit of Immortality
24. The Value of Death
Audiobook
(8)
Written Communications: Being Heard and Understood
by Allison Friederichs
read by Allison Friederichs
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
We've all encountered bad writing at some point in our lives. We've possibly even authored some ourselves. And it's pretty clear when writing is bad. Whether you're writing business letters, memos, emails, reports, announcements, or some other professional communication, the pragmatic communicator can be far more effective than the multiloquent one.
Because we are judged by our ability to communicate with direction, focus, and confidence-along with inspiration and empathy, no matter who you are and what your goal is-getting the right message across is absolutely essential to achieving your objectives.
In the 12 rewarding lectures of Written Communications: Being Heard and Understood, Professor Allison Friederichs, Associate Teaching Professor and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Denver, University College, will share the secrets to sharpening your written, oral, and interpersonal communications skills.
Bringing plenty of humor and enthusiasm, along with dozens of tools, examples, and exercises, Professor Friederichs takes you through each component of writing a successful business communication-from picking the right words, to ensuring the grammar and punctuation are correct, to analyzing, crafting, and editing your message.
Most important, she will show you how impactful communication isn't about you: It's about your reader. Once you understand your audience, she'll show you how to target the message, make appropriate word choices, incorporate sound logic, and untangle complex syntax using a combination of examples and activities.
Audiobook
(5)
Albert Einstein: Physicist, Philosopher, Humanitarian
by Don Howard
read by Don Howard
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
These 24 lectures present a wide-ranging intellectual exploration of this iconic scientist, genius, and champion of social justice. More than just a biography of Einstein's life, Albert Einstein provides you with an inside look at how this brilliant thinker arrived at his various revolutionary breakthroughs. According to Professor Howard, retracing the thought processes that led to Einstein's ideas is the key to understanding them. Guided by him, you'll reason your way to historic insights such as these: Light has both wave- and particle-like properties; absolute space and absolute time are meaningless concepts; and gravity is caused by the curvature of space-time. Each of these ideas sparked a scientific revolution. The first led to quantum physics; the second and third are conclusions from the special and general theories of relativity, which this lecture series explains in nontechnical detail. In addition to the groundbreaking scientific concepts, you'll learn how Einstein's dynamic life reflected a range of interests and passions that extended into fields like religion, international relations, and social justice. Indeed, as you'll discover, Einstein frequently engaged with many of the leading social and political issues of his day. These lectures are the perfect introduction to Einstein, putting his scientific discoveries into the context of his personal life, his philosophical views, and his outlook on the world. By the final lecture, you'll have become better acquainted with the whole Einstein: his ideas, his thought processes, and his impact on both his own time and ours.
Audiobook
(9)
Language and Society: What Your Speech Says About You
by Valerie Fridland
read by Valerie Fridland
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Language is not a passive means of communication. In fact, it's the active process through which we construct societies, and, within them, our own social lives and realities. Language - as we use it in our day-to-day interactions - fundamentally shapes our experience, our thinking, our perceptions, and the very social systems within which our lives unfold. Nowhere is the social role of language revealed more clearly than in the fascinating field of sociolinguistics. Among many eye-opening perspectives, the work of sociolinguistics points out that: Language is strong social capital, and our linguistic choices carry both costs and benefits we rarely consider. Our identity is strongly tied to the speech we use and our perceptions of the speech we hear. Our children are raised, our relationships are made, and our careers succeed, in large part, through how we use language. Language embodies a worldview: Your linguistic system reflects and affects the way you organize and understand the world around you. In these 24 thought-provoking lectures, you'll investigate how social differences based on factors such as region, class, ethnicity, occupation, gender, and age are inseparable from language differences. Further, you'll explore how these linguistic differences arise, and how they both reflect and generate our social systems. You'll look at the remarkable ways in which our society is a reflection of our language, how differences in the way people use language create differences in society, how people construct and define social contexts by their language use, and ultimately why our speech reveals so much about us. Join a brilliantly insightful sociolinguist and teacher in a compelling inquiry that sheds light on how our linguistic choices play a determining role in every aspect of our lives.
Audiobook
(9)
How the Spanish Civil War Became Europe's Battlefield
by Pamela B. Radcliff
read by Pamela B. Radcliff
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
How the Spanish Civil War Became Europe's Battlefield surveys the Spanish Civil War, which was fought in the lull between the two World Wars. On the one hand, it was a local conflict on the margins of Europe. On the other hand, the conflict can also be seen as a microcosm of war in the 20th century, with roots in the modern era's central divides.
Audiobook
(38)
The Economics of Uncertainty
The complete course contains all 24 lectures
by Connel Fullenkamp
read by Connel Fullenkamp
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Economies are deeply complex systems. The marketplace involves many economic actors behaving in rational and irrational ways, sustaining a dizzying array of interconnected activity. Because of the number of participants involved, the unpredictability of their actions, and the sheer variety of possible actions, some degree of economic uncertainty is inevitable.
In one of the most dramatic displays of economic uncertainty in our times, a wave of toxic loans almost brought down the American financial system in 2008-2009, and with it jobs and savings. Few experts forecast this catastrophe, which stands as a lesson in the power of economic forces to defy our predictions. This event may have been exceptional, but every day we are all at the mercy of economic uncertainty in matters such as the stock market, insurance, and career and retirement planning.
Uncertainty also plagues us in smaller ways. For example, everyone is familiar with rising prices, but the Internet now makes it possible for online shoppers to be charged more based on their buying history, adding a new level of unpredictability to pricing. And anytime you hire someone for a service - from roofing to dentistry - you face the principal-agent problem, in which the person hired may take unethical advantage of your lack of expertise.
Indeed, these large and small risks are so pervasive that it is all too easy to conclude that nothing can be done. But economic uncertainty is like the weather: You can't stop storms from happening, but understanding how and why they happen allows you to be prepared. In the same way, economic uncertainty is beyond our control, but we're in a much better position to respond if we know what's happening and why.
In 24 practical and empowering half-hour lectures, The Economics of Uncertainty takes the mystery and dread out of uncertainty, giving you the tools to deal with risk in every phase of your life.
All Lectures:
1. Man, Nature, and Economic Uncertainty
2. Turning Uncertainty into Risk
3. Five Ways to Face the Unknown
4. Probability: Frequency or Belief?
5. How We Misjudge Likelihood and Risk
6. The Reward in Risk
7. Decision Science Tools
8. Gambling Economics
9. Game Theory: Reveal or Conceal?
10. Adverse Selection: Hiding in Plain Sight
11. Moral Hazard: Whom Do You Trust?
12. The Principal-Agent Problem: When Mice Play
13. Compensation Traps
14. Caring, Sharing, and Risk Bearing
15. Mayhem! Insurance Protection
16. Uncertainty in the Numbers
17. The Business Cycle's Wheel of Fortune
18. The Danger of Inflation
19. Extreme Markets
20. Regulation, Innovation, Excess
21. Global Trade in Employment
22. No Limits to Growth
23. Hedging Business and Personal Risks
24. Stress Testing Your Finances
Audiobook
(34)
What Einstein Got Wrong
The Complete Course Contains All 12 Lectures
by Dan Hooper
read by Dan Hooper
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
These twelve half-hour lectures are about what Einstein got wrong. He may have kindled a scientific revolution with his famous theory of relativity and his proof that atoms and light quanta exist, but he balked at accepting the most startling implications of these theories-such as the existence of black holes, the big bang, gravity waves, and mind-bendingly strange phenomena in the quantum realm. In a course that assumes no background in science and uses very little math, research physicist Dan Hooper of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the University of Chicago focuses on Einstein's personal qualities that made him a heavy hitter with relativity but also a strikeout king in many of his other ideas. You start with two lectures on Einstein's special and general theories of relativity, and in a later lecture you cover his founding role in quantum theory. All are titanic achievements. The balance of the course deals with his false starts, blind alleys, and outright blunders, which are fascinating for what they reveal about the give-and-take conduct of science. Dr. Hooper closes with a lecture on the missteps of other great physicists-Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton-proving that Einstein is in good company. Even geniuses struggle to find the truth.
All Lectures:
1. What Einstein Got Right: Special Relativity
2. What Einstein Got Right: General Relativity
3.Einstein's Rejection of Black Holes
4. Einstein and Gravitational Waves
5. Cosmology and the Cosmological Constant
6. The Cosmological Constant and Dark Energy
7. What Einstein Got Right: Light Quanta
8. Does God Play Dice with the Universe?
9. Quantum Entanglement
10. The Search for a Unified Field Theory
11. Problems with Time Travel
12. What Other Giants Got Wrong
Audiobook
(22)
Understanding Genetics: DNA, Genes, and Their Real-World Applications
The complete course contains all 24 lectures
by David Sadava
read by David Sadava
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
We use DNA routinely - to cure diseases, solve crimes, and reunite families. Yet we've known about it for only 60 years. And what we're continuing to learn about it every day has the potential to transform our health, our nutrition, our society, and our future. But what, exactly, is DNA, the self-replicating material present in nearly all living organisms? You'll learn the answer - and much more - in this briskly paced series of 24 easily understood lectures from an award-winning teacher, author, and scientist. Professor Sadava unlocks DNA's mysteries as he explains what the science of genetics is and guides you through decades of cutting-edge research, scientific discovery, and genetics' weighty implications for us as individuals and as a society. Professor Sadava draws on examples from his own research to show how understanding genetics allows us to improve medical treatment and nutrition, vastly improving our health and quality of life. You'll also learn how understanding genetics is a critical step toward understanding human identity, itself. For examining our DNA - how it works and what happens when something goes wrong - enables us to see the roots of how our bodies work, why we get sick, and how traits are passed through families. Enjoy this rare opportunity to peer over the shoulder of a working scientist, learning how he puzzles through the problems of genetics to find meaningful, real-world solutions that can not only save an individual life but also enhance the quality of life for everyone.
All Lectures:
1. Our Inheritance
2. Mendel and Genes
3. Genes and Chromosomes
4. The Search for the Gene-DNA
5. DNA Structure and Replication
6. DNA Expression in Proteins
7. Genes, Enzymes, and Metabolism
8. From DNA to Protein
9. Genomes
10. Manipulating Genes-Recombinant DNA
11. Isolating Genes and DNA
12. Biotechnology - Genetic Engineering
13. Biotechnology and the Environment
14. Manipulating DNA by PCR and Other Methods
15. DNA in Identification - Forensics
16. DNA and Evolution
17. DNA and Human Evolution
18. Molecular Medicine - Genetic Screening
19. Molecular Medicine - The Immune System
20. Molecular Medicine - Cancer
21. Molecular Medicine - Gene Therapy
22. Molecular Medicine - Cloning and Stem Cells
23. Genetics and Agriculture
24. Biotechnology and Agriculture
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(24)
Great Masters: Mahler - His Life and Music
by Robert Greenberg
read by Robert Greenberg
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
More than many other composers, Gustav Mahler's works are highly personal expressions of his inner world, a world of overwhelming alienation and loneliness - "thrice homeless," in his own words, "as a Bohemian in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, as a Jew throughout the world - everywhere an intruder, never welcomed." Incredibly, Mahler was able to draw upon the diversity of this world that offered him no true home, as well as his often tortured inner world, to create rich and original music. It's a music whose power you will be able to appreciate fully after experiencing this eight-lecture exploration of the life and work of this titan of post-Romantic musical history, a complex, anxiety-bound visionary whose continual search for perfection and the answers to life's mysteries is profoundly reflected in his symphonies and songs. You'll learn, through both lectures and musical excerpts, how his symphonies are vast repositories of his intellectual, emotional, and spiritual expression that made him the first exponent of Expressionism, the early 20th-century art movement that celebrates inner reality as the only reality - but explored by Mahler using the musical language of the century just ended. And you'll learn how Mahler's music is, ultimately, about himself: the lonely, isolated individual.
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(16)
36 Revolutionary Figures of History
by Various Authors
read by Various Readers
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Alexander the Great, Jesus, Darwin, and Churchill are just a few of the many politicians, religious leaders, scientists, philosophers, authors, inventors, and generals who transformed our world in ways that still resonate today. Now, with this unique collection of 36 lectures from our extensive course catalog, meet the remarkable people without whom the world would never be the same. You'll examine the world that was dramatically reformed by a particular individual, or plunge into a defining moment in an individual's life, or learn how an individual went on to influence some of history's other great revolutionaries. Most importantly: you'll come away with a thorough understanding of why history is so indebted-for better or, in some instances, for worse-to these 36 epic figures, including Socrates, Queen Victoria, Abraham Lincoln, and Mohandas Gandhi. You'll also encounter figures that you may not have considered to be so revolutionary. It takes a great professor to help you understand what makes a single person change the world. To that end, we've assembled individual lectures from some of our most highly rated and beloved professors and instructors. Drawn from a range of academic fields (including military history, science, literature, religious studies, and philosophy), each professor lends his or her expert knowledge and teaching skills to making this an authoritative learning experience. Countless adventures await you with this carefully crafted look at titanic historical figures. If you have a friend who is new to The Great Courses, this collection makes for an accessible and rewarding first step into lifelong learning.
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(4)
The Lives and Works of the English Romantic Poets
by Willard Spiegelman
read by Willard Spiegelman
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
The verse of the English Romantic poets is as daunting in its scope and complexity as it is dazzling in its technique and beautiful in its language. Now, in a series of 24 incisive lectures by an honored and distinguished teacher, scholar, and author, you can grasp how England's finest Romantic voices created their masterpieces, as Professor Spiegelman illuminates poems by Byron, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, as well as by female Romantic poets like Felicia Dorothea Hemans and Charlotte Turner Smith, who were, in their time, as admired as their male counterparts.
You'll learn how the generalizations so often applied to the Romantic poets - who never even identified themselves as "Romantic" - were misleading as a group description, but that there were some common concerns among them: they wrote about Man's relationship to nature, which, with the universe, they considered active, dynamic entities. There is, though, a counter-desire to escape from nature and to deny Man's connection to it. There is a concern with society and politics, and an idealistic notion that humanity can transcend its enslaving traditions. The Romantics were conscious of consciousness itself - of the power of the mind as a force for self-glorification and a seed of self-destruction.
Professor Spiegelman's emphasis on analyzing the poems is on technique - on how a poem accomplishes its objectives - and to this end he meticulously dissects them, directing you to points of interest that deserve close observation.
And though the lectures focus on the poems themselves, they also tell the story of these great poetic souls and their impact on their age.
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(19)
The History and Archaeology of the Bible
by Jean-Pierre Isbouts
read by Jean-Pierre Isbouts
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
The findings of historians and archaeologists open a thrilling world of discovery as they bring their methods and insights to the iconic stories of the Bible. These 24 content-rich lessons take you on a multidimensional journey through the Bible, from Genesis to the Crucifixion, seen through the lens of the latest historical and archaeological research, and enriched by 47 specially filmed video sequences of many of the sites where the narratives of the Bible unfolded.
Through Professor Isbouts's enthralling commentary, you'll uncover eye-opening perspectives on biblical events such as:
Genesis-Examine evidence from ancient Sumer of a monumental flood that happened 5,000 years ago and study Mesopotamian architectural forms that may correlate with the story of the Tower of Babel;
The Exodus from Egypt-Follow the actual path of Moses and the Israelites, a well-traveled artery through mining regions, oases, and trade routes from Egypt to the Midian, the region southeast of Sinai;
The Kingship of David-Relive David's divisive rule as king of the Hebrews and visit structures excavated in the "City of David," which may be the core of David's residential and administrative complex;
Israel under the Assyrians-Learn how an ancient Assyrian clay document confirms the Bible's account of the Assyrian invasion of Judah and view the magnificent Assyrian tableaux that depict the siege of the city of Lachish, described in the Bible; and
The Early Life of Jesus-Take a penetrating look at the peasant revolts and bloodshed in Galilee during the youth of Jesus, after which Joseph and Jesus were likely to have been conscripted laborers for the Romans.
Deeply fascinating for those who have an interest in the Abrahamic faiths, ancient civilizations, and archaeology, The History and Archaeology of the Bible throws fresh and revealing light on the iconic scriptures that-in far-reaching ways-have shaped our world.
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(25)
The Life and Writings of C. S. Lewis
by Louis Markos
read by Louis Markos
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
What can we still learn from C.S. Lewis? Find out in these 12 insightful lectures that cover the author's spiritual autobiography, novels, and his scholarly writings that reflect on pain and grief, love and friendship, prophecy and miracles, and education and mythology. This is your chance to explore a canon of literary work that speaks volumes about the imaginative, emotional, and spiritual power of literature. As you delve into the depths of enduring works such as the Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity, and Till We Have Faces, you'll consider a range of questions central to truly understanding why C.S. Lewis has had such a profound impact on 20th-century readers. From the magisterial Oxford History of English Literature to children's fantasy series, how did Lewis write with such brilliance and coherence in so many distinct fields? What were the people, events, and influences that shaped his thought, his character, and the spiritual drama at his life's core? What do Lewis's fictional and factual autobiographies reveal about his conversion and his efforts to explain and defend Christianity? How do his writings help readers come to grips with perennial spiritual questions involving miracles, suffering, sin, and salvation? Join Professor Markos for an eye-opening examination of why Lewis - the Oxbridge don and self-described, "very ordinary layman of the Church of England," touches millions of readers so deeply and is considered the most widely read Christian spokesman of our time.
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(11)
Reason & Faith: Philosophy in the Middle Ages
by Thomas Williams
read by Thomas Williams
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Today we tend to separate questions of logic from questions of belief, philosophy from religion, reason from faith. 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. In 24 ambitious lectures, Professor Williams examines the great Christian philosophers from Augustine to Ockham, following their efforts to illuminate the full scope of Christian doctrine using philosophical tools inherited, in large part, from the ancient Greeks. Far from being a "dark" age, this was an era when faith was not blind and reason was not godless, when the great philosophers and the great theologians were the very same people, and no one saw anything surprising about that. Building on the work of Plato and Aristotle, medieval philosophers worked diligently to show how the Christian faith is consistent with what can be demonstrated by reason, asking such questions as: Can God's existence and attributes be established by reason alone? Are there Christian doctrines that are beyond the scope of logical demonstration? How can Christian beliefs be defended and shown to be internally consistent? During this extraordinarily rich period of intellectual ferment, philosophers participated in a common struggle with transcendent questions, using reasoning in the service of faith. This course serves as a fascinating philosophical backdrop to illuminate the stimulating debates that occupied many of the greatest minds of the era.
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(21)
The Search for Exoplanets: What Astronomers Know
The complete course contains all 24 lectures
by Joshua Winn
read by Joshua Winn
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
As recently as 1990, it seemed plausible that the solar system was a unique phenomenon in our galaxy. Thanks to advances in technology and clever new uses of existing data, now we know that planetary systems and possibly even a new Earth can be found throughout galaxies near and far.
We are living during a new golden age of planetary discovery, with the prospect of finding many worlds like Earth. Most of the thousands of planets we've detected can't be imaged directly, but researchers are able to use subtle clues obtained in ingenious ways to assemble an astonishing picture of planetary systems far different from our own. We are in the midst of an astronomical revolution, comparable to the Copernican revolution that established our current view of the solar system - and we invite you to take part.
Embark on this unrivaled adventure in 24 lectures by a veteran planet hunter. Designed for everyone from armchair explorers to serious skywatchers, The Search for Exoplanets follows the numerous twists and turns in the hunt for exoplanets - the false starts, the sudden breakthroughs, and the extraordinary discoveries. Explore systems containing super-Earths, mini-Neptunes, lava worlds, and even stranger worlds. You also get behind-the-scenes information on the techniques astronomers used to find evidence of planets at mind-boggling distances from our home base. Learn how astronomers determine how many planets are in a system as well as how large they are and the characteristics of their atmospheres. You will feel like Dr. Watson in the presence of Sherlock Holmes as Professor Winn extracts a wealth of information from a spectrum, a light graph, a diffraction pattern, and other subtle clues.
All Lectures:
1. Why Study Exoplanets?
2. How to Find an Exoplanet
3. Doppler and Transit Planet-Finding Methods
4. Pioneers of Planet Searching
5. The Misplaced Giant Planets
6. Explaining the Misplaced Giant Planets
7. The Transits of Exoplanets
8. Sniffing Planetary Atmospheres
9. Stellar Rotation and Planetary Revolution
10. Super-Earths or Mini-Neptunes?
11. Transiting Planets and the Kepler Mission
12. Compact Multiplanet Systems
13. Planets Circling Two Stars
14. Lava Worlds
15. Earthlike Planets
16. Living with a Dwarf Star
17. Living with a Giant Star
18. Our Nearest Exoplanetary Neighbors
19. Finding Planets with Gravitational Lensing
20. Finding Planets with Direct Imaging
21. Near-Term Future Planet-Finding Projects
22. Long-Term Future Planet-Finding Projects
23. The Search for Life on Exoplanets
24. Coming Soon: Biosignatures, Moons, and More!
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(14)
Philosophy, Religion, and the Meaning of Life
by Francis J. Ambrosio
read by Francis J. Ambrosio
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
What is the meaning of life? Is human existence meaningful or absurd? If you've ever pondered these questions, you have an extraordinary adventure in store, as an award-winning teacher presents a boldly revealing inquiry into these most fundamental of human concerns. In this inspiring series of 36 lectures, Professor Ambrosio charts how these questions have been pursued and grasped through the ages, providing you with the understanding and the tools to come to terms with them in a direct, practical way. Using the key metaphorical figures of the Hero and the Saint, he leads you through the history and evolution of two Western traditions that address the question of meaning: The Greek-derived, Humanist philosophical tradition and the Judeo-Christian/Islamic theistic tradition, tracking the two archetypes as they react to and evolve with cultural changes across the centuries. But these lectures go far beyond an exercise in intellectual understanding. From the very beginning, Professor Ambrosio aims the philosophical problem of meaning squarely at the student, inviting you to actively engage with it by asking you to grapple with universal questions like, How should I live my life? What is the relationship of death to life? Is there some deep, sustainable connection between the two? Drawing on the work of thinkers from Plato and Epictetus to Simone Weil and Viktor Frankl, you'll probe the existential choices about meaning and value that exist as potentials in the fabric of our experience and that call forth the dignity and possibility of our own living.
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(18)
Great Masters: Liszt - His Life and Music
by Robert Greenberg
read by Robert Greenberg
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
More than anyone before him - more than Beethoven, Byron, even the preternatural Paganini - it was Franz Liszt who created one of the most enduring archetypes of the Romantic era: that of the artist, "who walks with God and brings down fire from heaven in order to kindle the hearts of humankind." An innovative composer both for his own instrument and on an orchestral scale, Liszt was without a doubt the greatest pianist of his time and perhaps the greatest of all time, stunning even the most jaded critics and listeners everywhere he went with his sheer virtuosity and almost unbelievable musical gifts - even while playing whatever instrument was available in whatever hall he could find during his arduous travels by mail coach throughout Europe. Yet even though his fame and achievement make him one of the most written about composers of the 19th century, musically he remains the least understood. And as for his life, perhaps a good place to begin is with Felix Mendelssohn's observation that Liszt's character was "a continual alternation between scandal and apotheosis." Still, for every lover of music, Liszt remains someone you must understand, and this eight-lecture series is an ideal place to begin your acquaintance with both the man and his music.
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(24)
Freedom: The Philosophy of Liberation
by Dennis Dalton
read by Dennis Dalton
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Professor Dalton explores the meaning of freedom and examines the progress of both personal and political freedom. These eight lectures are a guided tour along the byways of the philosophy of liberation, beginning with its ancient roots and ending in 20th-century America.
Throughout these lectures, you'll follow the progress toward personal liberation and spiritual freedom found in the lives of those who were often consumed by fierce and difficult struggles for political freedom. And you'll see that the results achieved along the way are not separate mysteries but truths linked by the same path.
But you'll also learn that the philosophy of freedom was never intrinsically American and has its roots in diverse ancient cultures. For example, you'll learn about the ancient Hindu philosophy of dual freedom as described in the Bhagavad Gita, the Greek philosopher Plato's study of freedom in the republic of Athens, and the major contributions Christian philosophy has made to the ideal of freedom. Traveling from the ancient world to the modern, you'll consider the lives and work of John Stuart Mill (the 19th-century philosopher who defined the meaning of freedom with extraordinary clarity), Mahatma Gandhi (the political leader who led the Indian subcontinent out of British domination), Martin Luther King, Jr. (who synthesized the teachings of Jesus and Gandhi to create a method of nonviolent resistance), and others.
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(15)
Becoming a Great Essayist
by Jennifer Cognard-Black
read by Jennifer Cognard-Black
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
If you have a clever anecdote, an interesting memory, a new way to explain how something works, or an opinion on a social or political issue, then you have an essay in you. Unlike a novel, history book, or scientific publication, essays provide you with the versatility to express all the various facets that make you you. The concise and direct nature of an essay means that you may tap into your sense of wit, share your individual point of view, persuade others to your perspective, and record a part of your memories for future generations in as many distinct essay forms as you wish. The essay is, above all else, one of the most profoundly personal outlets for writing.
Discover the keys to unlocking your potential in essay writing with Becoming a Great Essayist. These 24 illuminating lectures explore numerous genres or types of essays, challenge you with stimulating writing prompts, and provide insights into how to get to know yourself like never before so that you may write honest, compelling, and GREAT essays. And because essays are so flexible in their style and function, the skills you build writing great essays may be applied to almost all other forms of writing.
While the goal of this course is to provide you with fundamental abilities that will improve your essays, the skills you will learn also provide a foundation to develop any writing project you undertake. This is an unrivalled opportunity to advance your critical and creative thinking skills, enhance your ability to master a strong and persuasive style, and most importantly, allow you to get to know your own inner voice.
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(0)
Searching for People and Places of the Bible
by Jean-Pierre Isbouts
read by Jean-Pierre Isbouts
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Join best-selling author and biblical scholar Jean-Pierre Isbouts as he explores the stories of the Bible in their actual locations that brings fascinating new dimensions to the texts. In the 16 lectures of Searching for People and Places of the Bible, you'll walk the ancient sites where some of the Bible's most notable events happened and meet some of its most well-known figures in a new light.
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(10)
Rise of the Novel
Exploring History's Greatest Early Works
by Leo Damrosch
read by Leo Damrosch
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Thousands of novels are published around the world every year. There are so many readily available, it would take multiple lifetimes for a single person to even read a fraction of them. But it hasn't always been that way.
While humans have always been storytellers, the novel as we recognize it today is a relatively new art form in the timeline of human culture. Of all the ways we tell stories, why has the novel become such a perennial favorite? How did the novel go from a narrative experiment with a low-brow reputation to a cultural touchstone and focal point of modern literature?
In the 24 lectures of Rise of the Novel, you will take a journey from the birth of the novel to the height of the form in the mid-19th century-and better understand what this literary form can tell us about human nature and our unquenchable thirst for great stories. With Professor Emeritus Leo Damrosch of Harvard University as your guide, you will dive into some of the most notable works that helped create and shape the novel over the course of more than three centuries, looking at the social and historical influences that coincided with shifts in literary taste along the way.
Beginning with Don Quixote-held up by many scholars as the foundational text from which the novel form would spring-Professor Damrosch will lead you through works both tragic and comic, brief and diffuse, epic and domestic. From early works like La Princesse de Clèves and Robinson Crusoe to pinnacles of the form in the 19th century such as Emma and Middlemarch-along with a few novels that are less familiar today but well worth knowing-you will dive into works with different perspectives and intentions that have all impacted our culture in their own way.
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(36)
War and World History
The Complete Course Contains All 48 Lectures
by Jonathan P. Roth
read by Jonathan P. Roth
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
This fresh and challenging inquiry into human societies takes a deep look at the effects and roles of war. As the most complex of all human endeavors, warfare - from ancient to modern - has spurred the growth of essential new technologies; demanded the adoption of complex economic systems; shaped the ideology and culture of nations; promoted developments in art and literature; and spread faith across the globe. Over the course of 48 highly provocative lectures, Professor Roth explores armed conflict across five continents. Far from a traditional approach to military events, this panoramic series is not the history of battles or military campaigns, but the story of the intimate interconnections of war with human cultures and societies and how these connections have shaped history. You'll study the complex effects of culture, economics, politics, and religion on war - and war's influences on them. In this context, you chart the colorful history of the practice and methodology of warfare. Among many other things, you'll learn about the development and evolution of history-making military weapons such as bows, horses, swords, and gunpowder; the interface of warfare with religion, which has bred some of the most unusual and poignant conflicts in history; the 17th-century European nation-state, where militaries were "nationalized" into central governments and military service was imbued with ideology of citizenship and loyalty to state; the crucial military underpinnings of nationalism, Communism, Fascism, and other political movements from the modern era. Probe these pivotal and revealing features of history and deepen your understanding of our extraordinary, evolving world.
All Lectures:
1. What Is War?
2. The Historiography of War
3. The Stone Age War
4. Peace, War, and Civilization
5. The Chariot Revolution
6. The Sword Revolution
7. Steppes, Standing Armies, and Silver Trade
8. Pirates and Hoplites
9. Great Empires of West and East
10. War and the Rise of Religion
11. The Greek Way of War
12. An Age of War throughout the Core
13. New Empires and an Armed Peace
14. Monotheisms and Militaries
15. Barbarians and the Fall of Three Empires
16. Conquest Links the Core
17. The Middle Ages and a Common Way of War
18. Armored Horsemen and Global Feudalization
19. Crusade, Jihad, and Dharma Yuddha
20. The Mongols Conquer a World
21. The Business of War in Medieval Europe
22. The Gunpowder Revolution
23. War at the Margins
24. A World Apart - War in the Americas
25. Renaissance and Military Revolution
26. Conquest and Colonies
27. The Gunpowder Empires
28. More Holy Wars
29. The Rise of the Regiment
30. The Wooden World
31. The Global War to Control Trade
32. Warfare and the Nation-State
33. War and the Making of the Americas
34. War and the Unmaking of Africa and Asia
35. The Industrialization of War
36. The Nationalization of War
37. Race and Class at War
38. Imperialism and the Triumph of the West
39. The 19th-Century Culture of War
40. A Common Way of War - The 20th Century
41. War and 20th-Century Ideology
42. War and the Persistence of Nationalism
43. Economies and Economics at War
44. Culture and War in the 20th Century
45. The Weaponization of Information
46. Guerrilla War and Terrorism
47. The Struggle for Peace and Justice
48. Warfare at the Turn of a New Century
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(16)
Between Cross and Crescent: Jewish Civilization from Mohammed to Spinoza
by David B. Ruderman
read by David B. Ruderman
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Experience the evolution of all of Jewish life during the 10 critical centuries from its rabbinic foundations in late antiquity until the dawn of modernity in the 17th century. During this time, Judaism was forever affected by its encounters with the surrounding social, economic, political, and intellectual environments of both medieval Islam and Christendom. As a result of those encounters, new pathways of philosophical inquiry and religious spirituality would be formed. The Hebrew language would find new ways of artistic expression. And the role of Jews in the life of the surrounding community would be changed forever, sometimes even increased, as was the paradoxical case in Italy, by the very ghettoization meant to keep them isolated. These 24 insightful lectures give you a unique perspective from which to examine the three major Western religions as they interact over time, and noting especially their ability or inability to tolerate and even appreciate the "other", as viewed from the vantage point of the Jewish minority. They also feature the emergence of two distinct intellectual threads: the rise of medieval Jewish philosophy and the appearance of Jewish mysticism and piety as the faith's primary expressions of religiosity. These lectures span an enormous disciplinary range, moving back and forth among history, philosophy, religion, and art. No previous familiarity with Jewish, Islamic, or Christian history is necessary to enjoy this broad and detailed examination of the leading Jewish communities of the period, their political and economic structures, the social relations between Jews and non-Jews, and Jewish cultural and intellectual achievements in a premodern world dominated by two other faiths.
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(23)
The History of World Literature
by Grant L. Voth
read by Grant L. Voth
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Whether around the campfire, between the covers of a great book or in the theater, the desire to tell stories has been a common human impulse for thousands of years. These 48 lectures take you on a journey through time and around the world, from the enormous auditoriums of ancient Greece to a quiet study in the home of a 19th-century New England spinster, to introduce the history of world literature.
In this course, you'll sample some of the greatest literary expressions the world has known and experience storytelling in its many forms, including poetry, drama, and narrative. You'll explore: the ancient world, where tribal bards created national myths and founded religious texts out of legends, history, philosophy, and local lore; the countryside and aristocratic courts of India and the Middle East, collecting stories and folklore of magical men, terrifying beasts, alluring women, and conniving tricksters that live on in today's fairy tales and bedtime stories; the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment to trace the evolution of storytelling from the poetic masterpiece of Dante's Inferno to the great drama pioneered by Shakespeare to sophisticated narratives such as Wu Ch'eng-en's Monkey and Voltaire's Candide; and the rise of Realism in the works of Flaubert, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov and the development of experimental modes by Brecht, Beckett, and Borges.
Offering concise summaries and thought-provoking interpretations of some of the world's greatest literary masterpieces, this course gives you the tools you need to appreciate these great literary works and understand how authors, playwrights, and poets throughout the centuries have practiced their craft.
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(11)
Understanding Your Inner Genius
by Laura Helmuth
read by Laura Helmuth
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
In Understanding Your Inner Genius, presenter Laura Helmuth reveals the latest scientific thinking on genius and intelligence-from the making of a genius, to the increase of worldwide IQ scores, and the mysteries of acquired savantism. With Dr. Helmuth as your guide, you'll explore the groundbreaking work conducted by distinguished psychologists, psychiatrists, neuroscientists, and educators. With myth-busting exhilaration and more than a bit of controversy, scientific studies point the way to increasing the intellect.
We all start learning automatically from the moment we're born, if not before; our brains are made for it. But it's also normal for parents to want to help their children in their intellectual development. In this course, you'll learn the results of scientifically sound studies that suggest you encourage your child to try new tasks and praise your child for persistence and resilience.
Learning new skills and working puzzles are both great ways to keep your mind active and have a lot of fun. But scientists warn that companies are often marketing mind-exercising products with strong claims about their effectiveness-claims that have not been backed up by scientific studies. What does work? Research shows you can best maintain a mental edge as you age by physical exercise, having a positive attitude, and social engagement.
In Understanding Your Inner Genius, you'll be surprised to discover the myths that many, if not most, of us take as fact, including the left brain/right brain dichotomy, among others.
But if you still believe some of these myths, don't worry. Understanding Your Inner Genius will introduce you to the new, scientifically valid concepts that take the place of these myths-concepts you can use to your advantage when educating your children, your students, or yourself.
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(10)
Francis of Assisi
by Various Authors
read by Various Readers
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
These 12 lectures by Professors Cook and Herzman will give you a rounded, fully informed introduction to the luminous Francis of Assisi and will tell the intellectually and spiritually rewarding story of how his influence has glowed across the centuries. Just who was Assisi? Despite his continuing influence and the fairly ample writings about him that date from his own time, Francis remains somewhat elusive in history. It is not easy to meet the man who, at about the age of 25, renounced his family and inheritance to serve his God in poverty, simplicity, and obedience. Yet these lectures, with their mastery of history, theology, art, and literature, expertly unlock two sources that are the most revealing and plentiful-written narratives of Francis's life and the images created for Franciscan churches. In charting the life, times, and legacy of Francis, Professors Cook and Herzman include a great deal about the world around Francis as well as on the artwork, the ministries, and the religious communities that he inspired. But through it all shines their deeply human sense of the man himself and what he stood for-things which, they argue, are needed as much today as ever they were when Francis trod the byways of Italy to show what it means to live life to the full in faith, hope, and love. By the time you finish the last lecture, you'll find yourself in agreement that, whatever your background or beliefs, Francis of Assisi remains as fascinating and inspiring a man today as he was more than 800 years ago.
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(41)
The Great Trials of World History and the Lessons They Teach Us
The Complete Course Contains All 24 Lectures
by Douglas O. Linder
read by Douglas O. Linder
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
No understanding of the past is complete without an understanding of the legal battles and struggles that have done so much to shape it. Inside a survey of world history's greatest trials are the key insights to critical issues we still talk about today, including freedom of speech, the death penalty, religious freedom, and the meaning of equality.
Join Professor Linder for these 24 lectures that investigate important legal cases from around the world and across the centuries. From the trials of Socrates in ancient Athens and Thomas More in Henry VIII's England to the Nuremburg Trials in the wake of World War II and the media frenzy of the O. J. Simpson murder case, you'll discover what each of these trials has to teach us about ourselves and our civilization.
Professor Linder takes you back in time to revisit some of history's most famous trials from fresh perspectives that ground them in the evolution of human ideas of law and justice, including the Salem Witch Trials, and the Scopes "Monkey" Trial. You'll also encounter less familiar (but equally important) legal battles, including medieval trials by ordeal and the Trial of Giordano Bruno, which would impact the later trial of Galileo.
For years, Professor Linder has studied the fascinating intersection between history and jurisprudence. Now he's crafted these lectures to share that fascination with you.
All Lectures:
1. The Trial of Socrates
2. The Trial of Gaius Verres
3. Three Medieval Trials
4. The Trial of Sir Thomas More
5. The Trial of Giordano Bruno
6. The Salem Witchcraft Trials
7. The Boston Massacre Trials
8. The Aaron Burr Conspiracy Trial
9. The Amistad Trials
10. The Dakota Conflict Trials
11. The Lincoln Assassination Conspiracy Trial
12. The Trial of Louis Riel
13. The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde
14. The Trial of Sheriff Joseph Shipp
15. The Leopold and Loeb Trial
16. The Scopes Monkey Trial
17. The Trials of the "Scottsboro Boys"
18. The Nuremberg Trials
19. The Alger Hiss Trial
20. The Rivonia (Nelson Mandela) Trial
21. The Mississippi Burning Trial
22. The Trial of the Chicago Eight
23. The McMartin Preschool Abuse Trial
24. The O. J. Simpson Trial
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Alexander the Great and the Macedonian Empire
The complete course contains all 36 lectures
by Kenneth W. Harl
read by Kenneth W. Harl
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Alexander the Great - one of the most renowned figures in antiquity - has inspired everything from medieval romances to blockbuster movies, and military leaders from Julius Caesar to Napoleon to the U.S. general Norman Schwarzkopf. But who was this great king of Macedon? And why is he so legendary? Go beyond the myth and learn about the man who changed the face of the ancient world and laid the foundation for the great traditions of the Roman Empire - all in fewer than 12 years. These 36 spellbinding lectures take you deep inside the world of Alexander to witness the astonishing feats of military genius that made his name renowned for millennia after his death. Through this detailed portrait, you'll go beyond the legends and the myths to truly understand what made Alexander great. Along the way, several Alexanders emerge: the military general, Macedonian king, Persian emperor, Egyptian pharaoh, and leader of the Hellenic League. You learn about the many aspects of this extraordinary individual - his passions, extraordinary talents, and the training that helped mold his character. You'll learn how battles were fought and won in the ancient world and examine Alexander's great martial achievements within this larger military history. You'll also head onto the battlefield to analyze some of Alexander's greatest triumphs, including the Battle of the Granicus River and the Battle of the Hydaspes River. Alexander's empire did not survive beyond his lifetime, but his legacy has cast a long shadow on the history of the West. Join Professor Harl for this journey into the world of Alexander and see how the Western world - and, indeed, our world - still bear the marks of this legendary conqueror.
All Lectures:
1. Alexander the Great - Conqueror or Tyrant?
2. Greece in the Age of Hegemonies
3. Achaemenid Persia
4. The World of Early Macedon
5. Philip II and the Macedonian Way of War
6. The Third Sacred War
7. The Macedonian Conquest of Greece
8. The League of Corinth
9. Alexander, Heir Apparent
10. Securing the Inheritance, 336 - 335 B.C.
11. The Invasion of Asia
12. The Battle of the Granicus
13. The Turning Point - Issus and Tyre
14. Alexander, Pharaoh of Egypt
15. Heroes, Oracles, and the Gods
16. The Campaign of Gaugamela
17. The Conquest of Iran
18. Alexander on the Rim of the World
19. Governing and Taxing the Empire
20. Alexander and the Macedonian Opposition
21. The Invasion of India
22. The Battle of the Hydaspes
23. Mutiny and Withdrawal
24. The Gedrosian Desert and Voyage of Nearchus
25. Deification and Succession
26. Alexander and the Macedonians - Opis
27. Alexander and the Greeks - The Lamian War
28. The Diadochoi, 323 - 316 B.C.
29. The Partition of the Empire, 316 - 301 B.C.
30. The Hellenistic Concert of Powers
31. Macedonian Courts in the Near East
32. The Hellenization of the Near East
33. The Monetization of the Near East
34. Hellenization and the Gods
35. The Limits of Hellenization
36. Alexander the Great and the Shadow of Rome
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Synthetic Biology
by Milton Muldrow Jr.
read by Milton Muldrow Jr.
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Synthetic Biology: Life's Extraordinary New Worlds is an introduction to synthetic biology for non-scientists, covering the exciting field that is transforming healthcare, agriculture, environmental science, and many other areas. Using the molecules of li
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(3)
The Evolution of American Federalism
by Joseph Hoffman
read by Joseph Hoffman
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Over 250 years, the pendulum of federal versus state power has swung back and forth, and it continues even today with some of our most hot-button issues. The Evolution of American Federalism is your opportunity to step back and examine American political history through this eye-opening lens. These 24 insightful lectures will take you into the heart of American law and political theory.
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(20)
Mystical Tradition: Judaism, Christianity, Islam
by Luke Timothy Johnson
read by Luke Timothy Johnson
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Each of the great three Abrahamic religious traditions holds the seeds for deep mystical contemplation. But what do most of us know about these mystics and the tradition they sustained? Explore this spiritual, literary, and intellectual heritage in these great faiths of the West as it unfolds over three millennia with these 36 enlightening, thought-provoking lectures that offer nearly unprecedented access to these seldom-studied traditions. By laying the mystical traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam side by side, Professor Johnson offers a unique opportunity to compare and contrast the many forms of religious experience in the West. Starting with the most ancient texts of the Hebrew Bible, Professor Johnson traces the emergence, growth, and persistence of mystical thought in many countries and in many ages. Bringing together the disciplines of philosophy, history, literature, and religious studies, these lectures offer a nuanced and insightful examination of Western spirituality-one that contributes not only to a fuller understanding of our religious traditions, but to our shared culture and history as well. As you examine the mystical experience, you'll see how, again and again, Western mystics have sought the answers to a few fundamental questions: What is the nature of reality? What is the relationship between humankind and the divine? Can human beings ever attain full knowledge of creation? What emerges from exploring these potent spiritual and intellectual questions is a picture of Western mysticism as diverse, multifaceted, and ever-developing.
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Understanding the Secrets of Human Perception
The complete course contains all 24 lectures
by Peter M. Vishton
read by Peter M. Vishton
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Your senses aren't just a part of you-they define you. Nothing you experience would be possible without the intricate power of your senses. But how much about them do you really know? Your ability to sense and perceive the world around you is so richly detailed and accurate as to be miraculous. No tool in the entire universe of scientific exploration can come close to matching the ability of your brain to use information sensed by your eyes, ears, skin, tongue, and nose to produce a rich sensory experience in just milliseconds. In recent years, neurobiologists and other scientists have uncovered new insights into how your senses work and the amazingly complex and fascinating things they can do. And now you can share in what they've discovered-through this intriguing series of 24 lectures from an award-winning teacher. Knowing how your senses work and the ways they shape how you see, interact with, and understand your life will help you think more critically about everything you sense and perceive, strengthen your appreciation of the senses that make this possible, prepare you to be an active consumer of new scientific evidence on how our senses work, and much more. With Professor Vishton as your guide, you'll. consider each of your senses from multiple perspectives: Explore how your brain processes different sensory information Consider how your senses work together and within the context of the environment around you discover how your senses connect you to the world and other people. Using both cutting-edge research and simple experiments, tests, and demonstrations to hone your understanding, he has created a world-class learning experience that will change the way you think about your senses.
All Lectures:
1. Your Amazing, Intelligent Senses
2. The Physiological Hardware of Your Senses
3. Neuroimaging - The Sensory Brain at Work
4. Brain Modules - Subcomponents of the Senses
5. Perceiving a World in Motion
6. Seeing Distance and Depth
7. Seeing Color and Light
8. Your World of Taste and Olfaction
9. Hearing the World around You
10. Speech and Language Perception
11. Touch - Temperature, Vibration, and Pressure
12. Pain - How It Works for You
13. Perception in Action
14. Attention and Perception
15. Kinesthetic Perception
16. Seeing, Remembering, Inferring Infants
17. How Infants Sense and Act On Their World
18. Illusions and Magic
19. Perceiving Emotion in Others and Ourselves
20. Sensing the Thoughts of Others - ESP
21. Opponent Process for Perception and Life
22. Synesthesia - Tasting Color and Seeing Sound
23. How Your Sensory Systems Learn
24. Fixing, Replacing, and Enhancing the Senses
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How to Turn Your Passion into Profit
by Tara McMullin
read by Tara McMullin
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Most Americans these days consider entrepreneurship to be a good career. More than half of all American adults will start at least one business during their working life. Due to the shutdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home became a common practice that many Americans would like to see as a permanent work option. This means that if you're like most Americans, you've either already started your own business or you're seriously considering it. If so, you've definitely come to the right place.
In How to Turn Your Passion into Profit, business expert Tara McMullin will guide you through the process of creating your own business, turning some commonly held ideas completely upside down in the process. For example, you might think your first task would be to identify what you want to sell. Not so fast, Tara says. You think your goal should be to make as much money as possible, as quickly as possible? Think again.
Instead of rushing headlong into selling a product, Tara suggests you take a step back to ask what you want to get out of this business. Yes, you certainly want to make money. But as Tara explains in five modules, there are some more important basic questions to ask yourself. For example, what are the guiding principles you live by and how can they be incorporated into your new business? Do you become animated with excitement when talking to groups of people or do you prefer one-on-one communication? Do you want to develop a business that can be supported by your local community face to face or would you be more excited by international sales? With Tara's guidance, your answers to these and other questions will lead you to the appropriate business model and development of a successful, long-term endeavor you will enjoy.
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Understanding Nonverbal Communication
The complete course contains all 12 lectures
by Mark G. Frank
read by Mark G. Frank
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Vocal tone and pitch. Posture. Eye contact and blinking. Gestures. Gait. Body type and clothing choices. How much of our communication is nonverbal?
In Understanding Nonverbal Communication, you’ll discover that nonverbal communication is less intentional and harder to control than the words you choose to speak. Because you are less aware of it than you are of your words, it provides better clues to what you are feeling and thinking. You can deliberately decide what to say, but from the deeper subcortical regions of your brain come your involuntary nonverbal expressions, including sweat, pupil dilation, facial movements, or blushing cheeks - any of which can speak more about your intentions or emotions than your actual words might. In 12 revealing lectures, you’ll explore the history, evolution, and context of both the outright obvious and the sublimely subtle nuances of personal expression.
The science of nonverbal communication has revealed intriguing insights into everything from how aspects of your reactions are biologically hardwired to how you are subconsciously influenced to vote by political speakers. You’ll come to realize that the “invisible” world of nonverbal communication was always visible to you. You will explore the role of nonverbal communication as it relates to understanding other people’s worldviews and interaction styles. With careful observation, you can capitalize on this science to further appreciate human expression, smooth social interactions, and strengthen relationships - helping to make the world a better and more accepting place.
All Lectures:
1. The Science of Nonverbal Communication
2. The Meaning of Personal Space
3. Space, Color, and Mood
4. What Body Type Doesn't Tell You
5. Evolution's Role in Nonverbal Communication
6. Secrets in Facial Expressions
7. Hidden Clues in Vocal Tones
8. Cues from Gestures and Gait
9. Interpreting Nonverbal Communication
10. Cultural Differences in Nonverbal Communication
11. Spotting Nonverbal Deception
12. Communicating Attraction
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(50)
Why Evil Exists
The complete course contains all 36 lectures
by Charles Mathewes
read by Charles Mathewes
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
Whether we view it in theological, philosophical, or psychological terms, evil remains both a deeply intriguing question and a crucially relevant global issue. Now, Professor Mathewes offers you a richly provocative and revealing encounter with the question of human evil - a dynamic inquiry into Western civilization's greatest thinking and insight on this critical subject. With the inspired guidance of these 36 lectures, you'll engage with how both individual thinkers and larger trends of thought have faced evil, studying the work of major theologians, philosophers, poets, political theorists, novelists, psychologists, and journalists. You'll study the psychology of evil in Islamic theology, as well as the weighty meditations of St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Anselm of Lyon, and Martin Luther. And among contemporary views, you'll grasp Arthur Cohen's extraordinary post-Holocaust reformulation of faith in a God whose reality "is our prefiguration" - the promise of what we may become. Parallel with the theological accounts, you'll also study primary currents of Western secular thinking on evil in the work of key philosophers and social theorists. You'll investigate Thomas Hobbes's proposition that good and evil are invented constructs of human language, and Kant's conception of morality as located in the human will. You contemplate Freud's hypothesis of the "death drive," an innate, destructive force of the psyche, and Hannah Arendt's highly influential analysis of the "moral inversion" of Nazism. So why does evil exist in the world? Join a deeply insightful teacher in facing this fascinating, primordial question - a chance to bring your own most discerning thought to a crucial challenge for our world.
All Lectures:
1. The Nature and Origins of Evil
2. Enuma Elish - Evil as Cosmic Battle
3. Greece - Tragedy and The Peloponnesian War
4. Greek Philosophy - Human Evil and Malice
5. The Hebrew Bible - Human Rivalry with God
6. The Hebrew Bible - Wisdom and the Fear of God
7. Christian Scripture - Apocalypse and Original Sin
8. The Inevitability of Evil - Irenaeus
9. Creation, Evil, and the Fall - Augustine
10. Rabbinic Judaism - The Evil Impulse
11. Islam - Iblis the Failed, Once-Glorious Being
12. On Self-Deception in Evil - Scholasticism
13. Dante - Hell and the Abandonment of Hope
14. The Reformation - The Power of Evil Within
15. Dark Politics - Machiavelli on How to Be Bad
16. Hobbes - Evil as a Social Construct
17. Montaigne and Pascal - Evil and the Self
18. Milton - Epic Evil
19. The Enlightenment and Its Discontents
20. Kant - Evil at the Root of Human Agency
21. Hegel - The Slaughter Block of History
22. Marx - Materialism and Evil
23. The American North and South - Holy War
24. Nietzsche - Considering the Language of Evil
25. Dostoevsky - The Demonic in Modernity
26. Conrad - Incomprehensible Terror
27. Freud - The Death Drive and the Inexplicable
28. Camus - The Challenge to Take Evil Seriously
29. Post - WWII Protestant Theology on Evil
30. Post - WWII Roman Catholic Theology on Evil
31. Post - WWII Jewish Thought on Evil
32. Arendt - The Banality of Evil
33. Life in Truth - 20th-Century Poets on Evil
34. Science and the Empirical Study of Evil
35. The "Unnaming" of Evil
36. Where Can Hope Be Found?
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Earth's Changing Climate
The Complete Course Contains All 12 Lectures
by Richard Wolfson
read by Richard Wolfson
Part of the Great Courses Audio series
In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-representing a global consensus of hundreds of scientists-concluded that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal," citing observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level. And they noted that human activity is "very likely" the cause. Whatever your views on climate change, it's important to understand how the current scientific consensus on global warming evolved out of basic physical principles and a broad range of observations. This lucid series of twelve lectures is designed to do exactly that-reviewing the most up-to-date research and explaining the concepts, tools, data, and analysis that have led an overwhelming number of climate scientists to conclude that Earth is indeed warming and that we humans are in great part responsible. In clear and accessible lectures designed for nonscientists, you'll learn about the "fingerprints" of global climate change-ranging from borehole temperatures to melting glaciers to the altered behavior of plant and animal species and other indicators-that convince scientists that our Earth has been warming at an unprecedented rate in recent decades. The lectures address only scientific issues and make no policy recommendations. Instead, they have been designed to serve as your personal scientific briefing to equip you to engage knowledgeably in one of the most important environmental issues of our time.
All Lectures:
1. Is Earth Warming?
2. Butterflies, Glaciers, and Hurricanes
3. Ice Ages and Beyond
4. In the Greenhouse
5. A Tale of Three Planets
6. Global Recycling
7. The Human Factor
8. Computing the Future
9. Impacts of Climate Change
10. Energy and Climate
11. Energy - Resources and Alternatives
12. Sustainable Futures?