Professor Fears of The Teaching Company lectures like no one else. His goal is to try to make his listeners understand, how past events influence us today and how history can be both an inspiration as well as a source of knowledge in our world. Here is what the TTCs web site says about this particular lecture:

January 10, 49 B.C.: Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon River into Rome, igniting a civil war that leads to the birth of the worlds greatest ancient civilization.

October 12, 1492: The Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus, weary after months at sea, finally drops anchor at the island of San Salvador and takes Europes first steps into the New World.

September 11, 2001: On a calm Tuesday morning, a series of terrorist attacks on the United States of America ignites a global war on terrorism that continues to this day.

History is made and defined by landmark events such as thesemoments that irrevocably changed the course of human civilization. While many of us are taught that anonymous social, political, and economic forces are the driving factors behind events of the past, acclaimed historian and award-winning Professor J. Rufus Fears believes that its individuals, acting alone or together, who alter the course of history. These events have given us

spiritual and political ideas,
catastrophic battles and wars,
scientific and technological advances,
world leaders both influential and monstrous, and
cultural works of unparalleled beauty.

Without them, human history as we know it today would be shockingly unfamiliar. In short, because of these events, our world would never be the same again.