World History Audio & Video

Human history defines the people we are, the way we think, and how we prepare for the future. It is a river with punctuated periods that forever changed the course of social evolution.

The world is comprised of regions—this basic contention, as old as Western civilization, is at once commonsensical and problematic.

In this talk from 2015, Professor Yuval Noah Harari addresses many of the ideas in his first bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. He is interviewed at Intelligence Squared U.K..

In this first interview from the PBS series Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth, Bill Moyers questions Joseph Campbell on the role of the hero. Using his vast mythological knowledge, Campbell describes archetypes of heroes that arise in cultures throughout human history.

With lessons from the Norse of Iron Age Greenland, deforested Easter Island and present-day Montana, Jared Diamond talks about the signs that collapse is near...

Having coined the phrase "the war that will end war," H.G. Wells was disillusioned by the World War I peace settlement. Convinced that humanity needed to awaken to the instability of the world...

Everywhere around us are echoes of the past. Those echoes define the boundaries of states and countries, how we pray and how we fight.

With storytelling brio and evenhanded sympathy to all sides of the story, Ansary clarifies how the Muslim world sees the history of the world and what they therefore make of our own version of events.

The story of the forging of India, the world's largest democracy, is a rich and inspiring one.

Join comedian, musician, and pirate geek Phil Johnson as he explores the history and pop culture of pirates.