The fact that Leonardo and Michelangelo could exist at the same time, in the same place, making historically great art simultaneously, but Michelangelo hated him is both fascinating and sad.

PowerPoint is the opium of corporate culture.

I want a dramatic series on the years that young Michelangelo was in the Medici household at the same time as Lorenzo the Magnificent.

The fact that they halt the trumpet every time at the note when he was (allegedly) shot in the throat by an arrow is incredible. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Mar...

Had an email exchange of ideas for a live talk with a scholar I hold in very high esteem today. It was so collegial and mutually creative, sometimes disagreeing but always respectful, and the end result was so great. Why can’t all conversations be like that?

Learned today about the many lives of the Orlando Column in Dubrovnik. Love how they reoriented its direction in the 19th C toward France and Austria to warn them off attacking. www.atlasobscura.com/places/orlan...

Had no idea oc (Occitan) and oui (modern French) were linguistically and historically related and that Languedoc meant “language of oc.” I can’t wait to annoy my wife with this fact later.

Current Greek history book made Heinrich Schliemann 10 yrs younger than he really was when he married his arranged-marriage child bride. I think I’m done with this book.

Checking on streaming numbers for Great Villains and in the 2 weeks it’s been live it’s possibly st(r)eaming toward a record pace. Who knew it could be viewed as a current events piece?

If you like the Grimkés including the nephews, I’ve got an episode of “Forgotten America” for you! Check it out on The Great Courses or Audible. bit.ly/4omm0oi & definitely read Kerri Greenidge’s book. 🗃️ #HATM

Just learned that those heretical Cathars were pescatarian, anti-war, anti-capital punishment, and were so highly literate that the Dominican friars in northern France actively discouraged education to prevent Catharism’s spread.

Fun may be a stretch but I was absolutely spellbound learning of 3 notorious villains of the Old West I’d never heard of: Joaquin Murrieta, Alferd Packer, and Arthur Rockford Manby. Packer inspired Cannibal: The Musical.

Was pleased to see Henry Kissinger make the list of Great Villains of World History. He had solid credentials to make that list.

Reading a history of Greece in a well-known franchise of brief national histories and the number of factual errors is absolutely astounding. Wrong century, timelines wrong, people influencing others who died a century before them. So frustrating.

"Footprints that represent actions of people over minutes, thousands of years ago, were destroyed within days," Britton said. www.livescience.com/archaeology/...

If you’re a writer looking for inspiration for a horror plot or an evil character, please watch Great Villains of History on The Great Courses Plus. It is a rogue’s gallery of men and women that is at turns horrifying, thought-provoking, and baffling.

So, a comrade and fervent champion of Joan of Arc was…also a grotesque, eventually convicted child serial killer? What a strange, horrific historical footbote. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_...

the best part of KU's Pink Game is granny ball at halftime!! #RockChalk

Amazing archaeological find: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/s...

Running through NoVa’s snowcrete hellscape listening to Great Villains lectures on Marquis de Sade, Fred Crisman (new to me), Peter the Hermit, Charles Manson, and Jim Jones was bizarrely enthralling

Very excited to read this new story by @coyhall.bsky.social.

Loved the ending for Dr. Andrew Wilson’s Art of War Great Course: “May your chi be keen and your shi abundant.”

Next best thing to archaeological mysteries are archaeological mysteries being solved. archaeology.org/news/2026/02...

Yes, we talked to a geologist who curls about the very special geology of curling's stones, please enjoy

Behind the Scenes of filming Great Tours: The Silk Road with Great Courses favorite Dr. Eamonn Gearon.

So much fun that my Art of War Great Course has made connections to Thermopylae, Gettysburg, George Washington (several times), D-Day, the Schleiffen Plan, football, basketball, and his father’s poor business decisions.

@joelbaden.bsky.social Just wanted to tell you that I am ADORING your Great Courses series!!!! Bravo!!!!

Calling all history nerds! Interested in a FREE live online lecture on the rise of the Venetian maritime empire by Great Courses Prof Thomas Noble on 2/26 2 pm EST? Lecture + live Q&A. Register here: streamyard.com/watch/Td7J2f...

This historian is amazing. I feel like watching her documentary series has given me more insight into America than countless hours of modern news media.

Thank you so much! I’m thrilled you liked the series & found it enlightening. “Forgotten America: Rediscovering Events that Changed the Nation” is available through The Great Courses Plus or Audible. 🗃️ bit.ly/4omm0oi

The professor for Art of War walking you thru a line-by-line translation of Chp 1 is both insanely ambitious and thrillingly satisfying.

I’m at that point in my career where I supervise and “direct” writing more than I actually do it myself. But, my god, when I do get to write - even something brief - for an audience, I really freaking love it. ❤️

My entire YouTube algorithm is niche social histories. I have been radicalized to pay for The Great Courses Plus, which I do not regret to inform you is 100% worth the money.

Omg I’m watching the chat absolutely blow up for @carterhaughschool.bsky.social on the Great Courses Journeys Live event and it hasn’t even officially started yet. Love it!!!

New favorite nonfiction writing criticism: “There’s too much throat clearing… .” I can’t wait to use that. (Just don’t use it on me pls.)

I do, too. Outstanding course by an outstanding professor, Dr. Eren Taser.

Went for a long run in 15-degree weather to try and forget about the news for a while. Didn’t work. I’m more angry and sad than when I left.

So glad I squeezed in a late run before the temperature plummets. Got to learn that both Mozart and Beethoven were inspired by music of Ottoman janissaries. Beethoven even features it in his Ode to Joy.

Travel with me to Panama and Costa Rica! Ill be hosting an amazing trip for The Great Courses in Jan 2027. We will be transiting the Panama Canal, visiting the spectacular San Blas Islands, and exploring Darién National Park, among the many highlights! www.thegreatcoursesjourneys.com/panamacanalp05

Did Napoleon write this?

I highly recommend joining this live talk. History, myth, literature, and two outstanding and fascinating professors FOR FREE. And you can ask them questions. Register at the link below.

A horrifying thought: AI’s best comp for a previous technology that fundamentally changed information creation and access was the printing press, which was wielded for spreading violently polarizing views in the Wars of Religion.

I discussed this in the lecture on Asian Exclusion (covering Chinese Exclusion & Japanese Incarceration) in Forgotten America for the Great Courses and Audible. bit.ly/4omm0oi #HATM

The history of AI is filled with appearances by so many great thinkers: Babbage, Lovelace, Russell, Chalmers, Gardner, Turing (Turing, Turing, Turing), Darwin, Asimov, and others. The human aspects are as interesting as the science itself.

🦷 “analysis of tooth enamel samples collected from the remains of people buried in England b/w the end of Roman rule in Britain around A.D. 400 & the arrival of the Normans around 1100 indicates that migration to the island was continuous throughout the period” 🦷 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Drinking game: Do a shot every time a Great Courses philosophy professor mentions John Searle’s Chinese Room.

I’m fully locked into the new Great Courses AI course because the content is 🤯 but also because Prof Patrick Grim is a complete vocal doppelgänger of Peter Coyote (probably another German word for that).

Me every time I hear an archaeologist shredding Schliemann’s “digs” at Troy

Crazy to think that parchment was invented in Pergamon because Egypt embargoed shipments of papyrus for use in the rival library. Parchment in fact derives from the name Pergamon.

Ok Great Courses fans, get ready. You’ve been asking for it. Friday 1/16 we release a course on AI. Understanding Artificial Intelligence: Of Minds and Machines, taught by longtime TGC philosophy prof Patrick Grim.