Our world is ruled by chemistry. The air we breathe is nitrogen, oxygen, and trace gases. The clothing we wear is cellulose, protein, or synthetic polymers. When we take to the road, we are propelled by the combustion of hydrocarbons or the reactions inside storage batteries. Look around and everything you see is the product of chemistry—including the sunlight pouring through the window, which originates in the fusion of atoms at the core of the sun.

Produced in partnership with the Smithsonian, this fascinating and visually-stunning course opens brand new doors onto the 4.54 billion-year history of our world.

Evolution. Relativity. The Big Bang. These and other scientific ideas have come to define our understanding of the modern world and how it works. But here’s a secret: What you learned about them in school isn’t necessarily the whole truth.

Favorite trailer magnet YEAR: 2008 | LENGTH: 48 parts (~30 minutes each)  |  SOURCE: TGC description:  Continents move. Glacial cycles…

Favorite trailer magnet YEAR: 2011 | LENGTH: 24 parts (~31 minutes each)  |  SOURCE: TGC description:  Your world is filled…

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
—Arthur C. Clarke

In 1872, a wondrous region called Yellowstone was set aside as the world’s first national park, giving adventurous travelers access to a geologist’s paradise that seethes with pent-up volcanic forces. As more and more national parks were created—not just in the United States but also in Canada and Mexico—geologists were revolutionizing their field, piecing together a detailed understanding of how the world works. National parks have made these magnificent reminders of the awe-inspiring power of our planet accessible to everyone. Today, there is no better education in the remarkable forces that formed our world than a tour of the national parks of North America. These parks capture a special place in our hearts and draw millions of tourists each year.

Few global challenges touch humanity with as much immediacy or ubiquity as cancer. Over the course of their lifetime, one in three people in North America, Europe, and Australia will develop a malignancy, and in the United States alone, the direct and indirect costs of cancer amount to billions of dollars a year. The sad truth is that almost every family in the Western world will be affected by cancer at some point in their lives.

He was the quintessential genius whose brainpower rewrote the laws of the universe. Albert Einstein may have died decades ago, but his immense legacy continues. Who has not heard of Einstein’s theory of relativity, which revolutionized our understanding of space, time, and matter? His other discoveries are themselves titanic achievements that on their own would have made him a famous scientist.

Writing the final pages of his masterpiece The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin looked ahead to the work yet to be done on his groundbreaking theory of evolution by natural selection. “In the distant future,” he predicted, “I see open fields for far more important researches.”

The year is 8000 B.C. A man wanders across a field of prairie grasses in search of edible berries and roots and wild game to feed his family. As he walks, the tips of the grasses brush against him, releasing seeds. He collects a few of these seeds and brings them back to his camp. Later, he notices that when they fall on earth, they begin to sprout, and a new plant grows.

The great theories of physics are like great works of art. And much like the greatest works of art, you don’t need to completely understand them in order to appreciate them. The unifying theories of physics are among the greatest and most complex in all of science; they stand as incomparable masterpieces in the gallery of modern thought. As you experience them, you will witness their progression toward ever-grander insights, pointing towards an as-yet-unfinished ultimate synthesis that will transform our understanding of the universe. Anyone, no matter what their training in science and mathematics, can appreciate this quest, which is nothing less than a search for the theory of everything.