The Great Courses Lending Library

THE MEDIA PROGRAM CATALOGUE

 NUTRITION MADE CLEAR   Professor Roberta Anding, Baylor College of Medicine

This course includes 36 one half hour lectures with illustrations and examples that comprise a comprehensive study of normal nutrition.  Topics included are:  General ideas about nutrition and nutrition practices, vitamins, minerals, fat, protein, carbohydrate, water, fiber, obesity and weight control, diet and hypertension, nutrition and cancer, probiotics, food safety, food labels, functional foods, and others.  This is an ideal course to share with a group of interested friends and view three sessions per week.

 

THE EVERYDAY GOURMET:  HOW TO MASTER OUTDOOR COOKING   Culinary Institute of America  Chef Bill Briwa and Chef Patrick Clark,

These twelve one half hour programs cover everything!  Vegetables, flatbreads, seafood, poultry, lamb and beef;  Mediterranean style grilling, Latin American style grilling, Asian Style  grilling, American tradition of barbequing and pizza.

 

THE EVERYDAY GOURMET:  REDISCOVERING THE LST ART OF COOKING  Chef Bill Briwa, The Culinary Institute of America

These 24 lessons are well suited for the person who wants to learn the professional approaches to the more common cooking methods with a variety of foods.  Topics include dry-heat cooking methods, poaching, braising, stewing, grilling, broiling, stocks, broths, stir-fry, herbs and spices, sauces, grains and legumes, salads, eggs, soups, pastas, means, seafood, vegetables, desserts.

 

MODERN ECONOMIC ISSUES     Professor Robert Whaples,   Wake Forest University

This is an extensive course comprising thirty six half hour lectures.  Topics include productivity, inflation, unemployment, inequality, trade barriers, trade imbalances, budget deficits, taxes and the tax code, social security, impact of an aging population on our economies, supply and demand, effects of pollution and global climate change, wage and poverty, immigration, labor unions in contemporary economies, impact of terrorism on economies, and others.

 

UNDERSTANDING INVESTMENTS   Professor Connel Fullenkamp  Duke University 

This extensive course of 24 one half hour lectures is for the serious investor.  Dr. Fullenkamp covers basic and detailed insights for evaluating and selecting stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, Options, and Real Estate.  He provides analytical tools using financial data for making decisions to buy and sell.

 

ARGUMENTATION:  The Study of Effective Reasoning   Professor David Zarefsky, Northwestern University. 

This twenty four half hour session course addresses how one can develop the ability for evaluate and form a convincing thought that will persuade others.  Topics include reasoning, correlations, cause and effect, inference, validity, arguments, among others.

 

THE ART OF CRITICAL DECISION MAKING   Professor Michael Roberto  Bryant University. 

This twenty four half hour session course addresses manners of thinking through a problem to arrive at a decision.  Considered as such topics as creativity, procedural justice, normal accident theory, normalizing deviance, Allison’s Model, Practical Drift, Ambiguous Threats and the Recovery Window, and posing questions.

 

UNDERSTANDING THE BRAIN       Professor Jeanette Norden,  Vanderbilt School of Medicine

This course includes 36 one half hour lectures with illustrations that address neuroscience, parts and function of the central nervous system, the function of neurotransmitters, stroke, sensory organs and the nervous system; the motor system, Parkinson’s disease, the limbic system, depression, anxiety, the reward system in the brain, brain plasticity, emotion, music and the brain, sleep and dreaming, consciousness and self, Alzheimer’s disease, and others.

 

THE SCIENCE OF MINDFULNESS      Assistant Professor of Psychiatry Ronald D. Siegel, Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Health Alliance  

These twenty four half hour sessions present helpful and interesting research and practices on the importance of mindfulness, attention and empathy, compassion, solitude, sadness and depression, fear, worry, anxiety, transforming chronic pain, the power of belief, overcoming trauma, enlightenment, and new science of happiness.  There is a special section for those interested in learning about breathing awareness practice, mountain meditation, and confronting fear.

 

SHAKESPEARE’S TRAGEDIES   By Professor Clare R. Kinney ,  University of Virginia

This is a good course for someone to organize a literature group study; there are twenty four half hour lectures.  These plays are discussed:  Othello, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Coriolanus, and Antony and Cleopatra.

 

MIND-BODY MEDICINE   The New Science of Optimal Health.  Jason Satterfield, University of California, San Francisco.  

This course comprises thirty six one half hour sessions.  Dr. Satterfield presents research-based findings on the physiology of the mind and how various ways of thinking, living, and behaving can affect health.  Some of the topics include:  The neuroendocrine system and health; immunology, cognition and memory, emotions and emotional quotient, personality,  stress and coping skills, relationships that affect health, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, sleep, depression, anxiety and others.

 

COMPARATIVE RELIGION    Professor Charles Kimball, University of Oklahoma

These twenty four half hour sessions investigate the methods of comparative religions.  This course examines theological and spiritual themes from a variety of faith traditions, including the role of faith in life, religious symbols, daily, weekly and annual rituals, signs and sacraments, beliefs about sin and forgiveness, sacred texts and teachings.

 

CULTURAL LITERACY FOR RELIGION:  Everything the Well-Education Person Should Know.  Professor Mark Berkson, Hamline University. 

These twenty four half hour sessions present a diverse treatment of world religions’ beliefs and practices, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Daosim,  Confucianism, Judaism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, and Religion and Law in the United States.

 

THE NEW TESTAMENT   Professor Bart Ehrman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

These twenty four half hour sessions address the early Christians and their lives and cultures, ancient Judaism, ancient traditions and teachings about Jesus of Nazareth, the apostles and the gospels, the epistle writers, and Acts of the Apostles, and the Book of Revelation.

 

EXPERIENCING AMERICA    A Smithsonian Tour through American History.   Dr. Richard Kurin, Smithsonian’s Undersecretary for History, Art and Culture. 

This twenty four half hour sessions take the viewer through a panorama of Americana with an expert!  The tour includes historical insights into the American flag, U.S. presidents, slavery, the wild west and expansion of the country, native Americans, the American contribution to transportation and communication advances, the Cold War, Pearl Harbor, American music, and other points of interest . . . you may have never known before.

 

FUNDAMENTALS OF PHOTOGRAPHY   Joel Sartore, National Geographic Photography Fellow

This 24 lecture course covers these topics: Camera Equipment – what do you need; Lenses and Focal Length, Shutter Speeds, Aperture and Depth of Field, Light, Composition, Landscapes, Wildlife, People and Relationships, Research and Preparation; Macro Photography, and the Photo Essay.

 

THE ART OF TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHY   Joel Sartore, National Geographic Photography Fellow

This short course of six lessons covers light, faces, places, attractions and the unexpected, interiors and exteriors, storytelling.

 

PRIVACY, PROPERTY, AND FREE SPEECH:  Law and the Constitution in the 21st. Century.     Professor Jeffrey Rose, the Geroge Washington University Law School.

This is a twenty four session course that covers very topic issues in the news today.  What are our privacy issues at home, work,  courtroom, police station, cell phones and computers, internet, advertising, health, right to die, property, eminent domain, Google, Facebook, and other social media and the Roberts Court and economic rights.

 

ASTRONOMY.   Professor Edward Murphy, University of Virginia

These twelve one half hour lectures are beautifully illustrated with photographs and graphics to see our universe – and especially our galaxy – with an astronomer’s eye.  He covers using telescopes and binoculars to view and read the sky, the moon, meteors, comets, eclipses.  The appearance of the sky in the four seasons should help the viewer appreciate the constellations.