Teaching Company

When a structure fails, the fallout can be frightening, disruptive, and even deadly. And yet, these disasters also teach us valuable lessons about the possibilities of engineering--and how to make our future projects safer. In the same way that a military defeat might provoke strategic changes and new approaches, engineering failures pave the way for improvement in the ways that we design, build, and maintain our technological systems. But first,...

"For those who are not already familiar with the venerable publication Scientific American, it was founded in 1845 and is the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. Devoted to covering the advances in research and discoveries that are changing our understanding of the world and shaping our lives, Scientific American provides insights and illumination about the most important developments at the intersection of science and society....

"Solving for Zero: The Search for Climate Innovation is a detailed roadmap for meeting the zero emissions target. Hosted by Bill Gates and based on his New York Times best-selling book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, the course focuses on revolutionary developments that give us good reason to believe we have the talent and technologies to escape the worst effects of climate change. More than a primer on climate change and proposed solutions, the...

"To understand the roots of personality is to understand motivations and influences that shape behavior, which in turn reflect how you deal with the opportunities and challenges of everyday life. That's the focus of these exciting 24 lectures, in which you examine the differences in people's personalities, where these differences come from, and how they shape our lives. Drawing on information gleaned from psychology, neuroscience, and genetics, Professor...

Travel through time to the golden ages of 12 of Europe's most beautiful medieval cities.

"While it's easy to get caught up-and, rightfully so-in the art of the Renaissance, you cannot have a full-rounded understanding of just how important these centuries were without digging beneath the surface, without investigating the period in terms of its politics, its spirituality, its philosophies, its economics, and its societies. Do just that with these 48 lectures that consider the European Renaissance from all sides, that disturb traditional...

"This lecture series examines the philosophical questions raised by our best scientific theories about matter, energy, space, and teime. We will set our contentious philosophical problems that arise out of our attempt to mathematically explain the nature of the universe and look at the different, often-contrasting views that seek to solve them. All of the philosophers who wrestly with these problems have extensive backgrounds in physics, and all...

"Learn how to secure your financial future and create the retirement lifestyle of your dreams with practical advice for planners of any age and income level."--The Great Courses website.

The brain is a complex and mysterious organ. When everything goes right, it is a finely tuned machine that serves as our body's central processing unit. But like computers on the fritz, things occasionally go haywire in the brain, and the effects can be crushing. What happens when things go wrong? The fields of psychology, neuroscience, and more recently neuropsychology are developing rapidly, offering more clues to unlocking the secrets of the brain....