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Take a journey through fascinating outer worlds that lay beyond the earth's sphere.
We begin with a unifying overview of the Universe that provides a broad context into which we place the objects of our planetary system. The course then divides into four overlapping portions, exploring the Earth and the layout of the sky, examining the physical laws that control what we see, learning the natures of the celestial bodies, and examining the planets...
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The Supreme Court of the United States represents our most unusual and least understood branch of government. Unlike the other branches, the high court marches to an overtly legal drummer, one that demands there be cases and controversies, there be lawyers who function as adversaries, and that all arguments be made in open court. On the other hand, its justices, unlike the president and the members of Congress, are appointed. They enjoy independence...
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During the early years of the Cold War, the anticommunist witch hunt that we now call McCarthyism swept through American society. As we will discover, McCarthyism was much more than the career of the blustering senator from Wisconsin who gave it a name. It was the most widespread and longest-lasting episode of political repression in American history. Dozens of men and women went to prison, thousands lost their jobs, and untold numbers of others saw...
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The history of Western civilization can be divided neatly into pre-Darwinian and post-Darwinian periods. Darwin's 1859 treatise, On the Origin of Species, was not the first work to propose that organisms had descended from other, earlier organisms, and the mechanism of evolution it proposed remained controversial for years. Nevertheless, no biologist after 1859 could ignore Darwin's theories, and few areas of thought and culture remained immune to...
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Winston Churchill was seen even in his own lifetime as a historic figure, one of the great men of world history, commemorated all across the world (but especially among the English-speaking peoples) in statues, memorials, streets and schools named after him, and in a plethora of stamps, medals, plates, and other such memorabilia. By his own effort and willpower, Churchill inspired the West in the fights against Fascism and Communism in the 1940s,...
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Through the ages, mankind has pursued questions of faith in something beyond the world of ordinary experience. Is there a God? How can we explain the presence of evil? Do humans, or human souls, live on after death? Is there a hell? The following lectures examine these eternal questions and present the most compelling arguments for and against God's existence, the seeming conflicts between religion and science, and the different truth-claims of the...
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For over 400 years, crusaders ("those signed by the cross"), out of Christian zeal, a declared love for their fellow man, and, in many cases, a simple desire for fortune, glory, and heavenly reward, marched to the Holy Land to battle both a real and perceived threat to their way of life and their religious beliefs. The story of the many crusades are filled with an unremitting passion to keep or return the home of Christianity to Christians. It is...
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It is during the Middle Ages that modern Europe, indeed, modern Western culture as we know it, comes to be. Classical Mediterranean culture drew from the ancient Middle East, and more directly, from the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans. The Middle Ages add the Northlands, Celts, and Germans, and ultimately, Slavs as well, to the mix. And the Middle Ages saw the birth of the immediate predecessors of our own ideas about love and marriage as important concerns...
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We all need some help in understanding the world, and that is the starting point for political theory itself. The great works of other times and places can speak to us today, wherever we are. Political theory does this better than other subjects, in part because the theorist wants us to look around and think about the specifics of the world around us, but also to lift our heads and see farther than we normally do. The theorists we will study in this...
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In Empire of Gold: A History of the Byzantine Empire, esteemed university professor Thomas F. Madden offers a fascinating series of lectures on the history of the remarkable culture and state that developed out of the ancient Roman Empire, particularly its eastern portion, throughout the Middle Ages. The story here therefore begins at an ending, that of the Roman Empire, in the third century AD, and continues over the next one thousand years. This...
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Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett: These four masters of Irish literature created works of startling innovation and unparalleled literary merit. They defied popular expectations and confounded critics with unique masterpieces that one might think of as puzzles, the solution of which lies at the heart of the modern age. Understanding the works of these greats, all associated to some degree with the Irish Literary Revival, is...
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Professor Eric H. Cline - The George Washington University
In this intriguing series of lectures, prolific researcher, author, and professor Eric H. Cline delves into the history of ancient Greece, frequently considered to be the founding nation of democracy in Western civilization. The history of this remark- able civilization abounds with momentous events and cultural landmarks that resonate through the millennia. Professor Cline touches on the...
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The overwhelming success of the Lord of the Rings films and the Harry Potter series aptly demonstrates that the fantasy genre is alive and well in the new millennium. The names of authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Terry Brooks evoke ripe tales of heroism and the clash of good versus evil in magical, faraway lands. The rich collection of King Arthur tales have also captured the imagination of millions and resonates with audiences...
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In Understanding the Holocaust, Professor David Engel of New York University examines the encounter between Germany's Third Reich and the Jews of the twenty European countries that fell under Nazi domination between 1933 and 1945. The results of this encounter stretch human comprehension to the limit and raise frightening questions about the human condition. When it was over, two-thirds of Europe's Jews, some 5.8 million people, had died-and their...
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In this compelling series of lectures, widely esteemed author and professor Thomas F. Madden illustrates how the papacy, the world's oldest institution, gave birth to the West. Since Jesus Christ instructed the foremost of his Apostles, Peter, that he would be the rock upon which Christ would build his church, the papacy has survived the rise and fall of empires while continuing to assert an undeniable influence on world events. The men who have served...
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Dinosaurs-the word means "fearfully great reptile"-have been a source of fascination ever since their discovery in England early in the nineteenth century. Aside from birds, all dinosaurs have been extinct for 65 million years, yet, before then, they dominated Earth's terrestrial habitats for about 160 million years, far longer than primates, or humans, have been around. Dinosaurs present the ultimate puzzle in forensic science, but we have learned...
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Esteemed history professor Thomas F. Madden explores the reformations that swept across Christendom in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The impact of these reforms affected government, popes, and kings as well as commoners, for at this time the Church was an omnipresent part of European identity-and the import of Church reforms on every level of life at this time simply cannot be underestimated. Involved in this fascinating era are such notable...
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Have you ever gone outside at night to admire the stars? And wonder what they all are, and what stories they have to tell? Esteemed professor and astronomer James B. Kaler guides the listener through the sights of the naked eye sky, wherein we directly witness the effects of the turning and revolving of the Earth, the artistry painted by the human mind using the sky and stars, and how the view changes with time and with our place on the planet.
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This course is an interdisciplinary series of connected lectures delivered by eminent scholars from several colleges and universities. Each professor addresses an area of personal expertise and focuses not only on the matter at hand but on the larger story, on the links between the works and the figures discussed. The lectures address, in chronological sequence, a series of major works that have shaped the ongoing development of Western thought both...
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Odyssey of the West I and II explored timeless works from the ancient world that shaped, and continue to shape, the culture and philosophies of life today. In part three of this fascinating series, Professor Timothy B. Shutt of Kenyon College is joined by Professors Thomas F. Madden (Saint Louis University) and Monica Brzezinski Potkay (College of William & Mary) as they examine the most influential thinkers and works of the medieval world. The Odyssey...
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