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Mysteries of the Microscopic World
An invisible world of astonishing complexity is all around you. A world so small you can't see it with the naked eye. A world so crowded that its population staggers the mind. A world in which you participate every day—often without even knowing it.
Published January 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 24, 2024
I really enjoyed Mysteries of the Microscopic World. The course professor did a great job with this one. I have watched, listened, and read many courses from the folks over at The Great Courses through the years. IMO, this is one of the better courses they offer.
Course presenter Dr. Bruce E. Fleury (1950–2020) was a Professor of the Practice in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Tulane University. He earned a BA from the University of Rochester in Psychology and General Science and an MA in Library, Media, and Information Studies from the University of South Florida. His career as a college reference librarian led him to Tulane University, where he became head of the university library's Science and Engineering Division.
Bruce E. Fleury:
Professor Fluery has a great teaching style. His lectures are delivered in an easy-going, natural fashion, with him cracking some mildly humourous asides in between the course material. This can be very difficult to pull off effectively. Fortunately, I feel that he made it work in this presentation.
The formatting of this course is fairly typical of courses from The Great Courses. It is broken into 24 lectures, each ~30mins.
I took the course over a few weeks while on the cardio machine at the gym, so unfortunately I did not take detailed notes like I usually do.
When I was writing this review, I was saddened to hear of his recent passing, aged 69 of a heart attack, only about ~a year after he filmed the course... Damn, RIP. Life is short.
Although most of what he presented was super interesting, one thing stuck out to me. He says that AIDS managed to spread so rampantly in Africa due to "promiscuity." He either doesn't know, or doesn't say that much of this "promiscuity" is actually rape. Rape; as a weapon of war, or otherwise. Rape is a huge problem in most of Sub-Saharan Africa. I also remember reading somewhere that as many as up to ~25% of Africans have AIDs in some countries, and that ~70% of the world's AIDs cases are in Africa...
The 24 lectures here are:
1 The Invisible Realm
2 Stone Knives to Iron Plows
3 The Angel of Death
4 Germ Theory
5 The Evolutionary Arms Race
6 Microbial Strategies
7 Virulence
8 Death by Chocolate
9 Bambi's Revenge
10 The Germ of Laziness
11 The 1918 Flu—A Conspiracy of Silence
12 The 1918 Flu—The Philadelphia Story
13 The 1918 Flu—The Search for the Virus
14 Immunity—Self versus Non-Self
15 Adaptive Immunity to the Rescue
16 AIDS—The Quiet Killer
17 The Deadly Strategy of AIDS
18 Autoimmunity—Self versus Self
19 Allergies and Asthma
20 Microbes as Weapons
21 Pandora’s Box
22 Old World to New
23 Close Encounters of the Microbial Kind
24 Microbes as Friends
********************
Mysteries of the Microscopic World was an interesting course. The prof did a great job of putting this one together. Too bad he recently passed. RIP.
I would easily recommend it to anyone interested.
5 stars.
Course presenter Dr. Bruce E. Fleury (1950–2020) was a Professor of the Practice in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Tulane University. He earned a BA from the University of Rochester in Psychology and General Science and an MA in Library, Media, and Information Studies from the University of South Florida. His career as a college reference librarian led him to Tulane University, where he became head of the university library's Science and Engineering Division.
Bruce E. Fleury:
Professor Fluery has a great teaching style. His lectures are delivered in an easy-going, natural fashion, with him cracking some mildly humourous asides in between the course material. This can be very difficult to pull off effectively. Fortunately, I feel that he made it work in this presentation.
The formatting of this course is fairly typical of courses from The Great Courses. It is broken into 24 lectures, each ~30mins.
I took the course over a few weeks while on the cardio machine at the gym, so unfortunately I did not take detailed notes like I usually do.
When I was writing this review, I was saddened to hear of his recent passing, aged 69 of a heart attack, only about ~a year after he filmed the course... Damn, RIP. Life is short.
Although most of what he presented was super interesting, one thing stuck out to me. He says that AIDS managed to spread so rampantly in Africa due to "promiscuity." He either doesn't know, or doesn't say that much of this "promiscuity" is actually rape. Rape; as a weapon of war, or otherwise. Rape is a huge problem in most of Sub-Saharan Africa. I also remember reading somewhere that as many as up to ~25% of Africans have AIDs in some countries, and that ~70% of the world's AIDs cases are in Africa...
The 24 lectures here are:
1 The Invisible Realm
2 Stone Knives to Iron Plows
3 The Angel of Death
4 Germ Theory
5 The Evolutionary Arms Race
6 Microbial Strategies
7 Virulence
8 Death by Chocolate
9 Bambi's Revenge
10 The Germ of Laziness
11 The 1918 Flu—A Conspiracy of Silence
12 The 1918 Flu—The Philadelphia Story
13 The 1918 Flu—The Search for the Virus
14 Immunity—Self versus Non-Self
15 Adaptive Immunity to the Rescue
16 AIDS—The Quiet Killer
17 The Deadly Strategy of AIDS
18 Autoimmunity—Self versus Self
19 Allergies and Asthma
20 Microbes as Weapons
21 Pandora’s Box
22 Old World to New
23 Close Encounters of the Microbial Kind
24 Microbes as Friends
********************
Mysteries of the Microscopic World was an interesting course. The prof did a great job of putting this one together. Too bad he recently passed. RIP.
I would easily recommend it to anyone interested.
5 stars.
April 21, 2021
Great Courses lectures "Mysteries of the Microscopic World" were recorded in 2010, so this course might seem hopelessly outdated in the Covid era. Surprisingly, I found this "outdatedness" strangely fascinating and revealing.
"Which virus will be the cause of the next global pandemic?", "Will the mankind be able to survive it?", "Where it will come from, the next pandemic?" (surprise, surprise, from China or other country where lots of humans are in close contact with lots of animals, and so the viruses are more likely to evolve to jump from one habitat to another) -- these and similar questions are a constant leitmotif of the course. The Covid pandemic might have seemed sudden and unpexpected for everybody except specialists, but the writing was on the wall all the while, in capital letters accompanied by exclamation points.
This makes other, not Covid related, questions raised in "Mysteries of the Microscopic World" even more poignant and sinister. For example, it might be only a matter of time until AIDS virus evolves to become airborn. And what would happen then?
The 1918 flu pandemic is covered in great detail and gives rich food for thought, especially in Covid times. It's amazing to hear statements like "Unlike either kinds of flu, 1918 flu had neurological consequences" in a course recorded in 2010. This is followed by the discussion of Woodrow Wilson' s peculiar behavior when in 1918, after having recovered from flu, he suddenly "became a different person" and gave up on his previous disagreements with Clemenceau about the peace treaty. At the time it was thought he had suffered an insult, but guess what, it might have been the flu after all. Some unpleasant parallels with our times come to mind.
Other parallels are difficult not to notice when Bruce E. Fleury discusses the global transmission of the virus, the belated quarantine measures, the lockdown in Philadelphia etc. And also, as awful as 1918 pandemic trully was, how come it had been so quickly erased from collective memory? How come it had left practically no trace in the literature of the period? I don't think this is likely to happen with the current pandemic but who knows...
As the Great Courses go, this one is among those that are aimed at an audience without any previous knowledge of any scientific subject. Actually, at first I was rather annoyed by the lecturer mentioning genes, proteins, DNA etc without going into any kind of detail about what they are and how they work (and definitely not because he thought his audience had any idea). But he did get to explaining this in the later lectures, and did a pretty good job.
All in all, informative and thought-provoking.
"Which virus will be the cause of the next global pandemic?", "Will the mankind be able to survive it?", "Where it will come from, the next pandemic?" (surprise, surprise, from China or other country where lots of humans are in close contact with lots of animals, and so the viruses are more likely to evolve to jump from one habitat to another) -- these and similar questions are a constant leitmotif of the course. The Covid pandemic might have seemed sudden and unpexpected for everybody except specialists, but the writing was on the wall all the while, in capital letters accompanied by exclamation points.
This makes other, not Covid related, questions raised in "Mysteries of the Microscopic World" even more poignant and sinister. For example, it might be only a matter of time until AIDS virus evolves to become airborn. And what would happen then?
The 1918 flu pandemic is covered in great detail and gives rich food for thought, especially in Covid times. It's amazing to hear statements like "Unlike either kinds of flu, 1918 flu had neurological consequences" in a course recorded in 2010. This is followed by the discussion of Woodrow Wilson' s peculiar behavior when in 1918, after having recovered from flu, he suddenly "became a different person" and gave up on his previous disagreements with Clemenceau about the peace treaty. At the time it was thought he had suffered an insult, but guess what, it might have been the flu after all. Some unpleasant parallels with our times come to mind.
Other parallels are difficult not to notice when Bruce E. Fleury discusses the global transmission of the virus, the belated quarantine measures, the lockdown in Philadelphia etc. And also, as awful as 1918 pandemic trully was, how come it had been so quickly erased from collective memory? How come it had left practically no trace in the literature of the period? I don't think this is likely to happen with the current pandemic but who knows...
As the Great Courses go, this one is among those that are aimed at an audience without any previous knowledge of any scientific subject. Actually, at first I was rather annoyed by the lecturer mentioning genes, proteins, DNA etc without going into any kind of detail about what they are and how they work (and definitely not because he thought his audience had any idea). But he did get to explaining this in the later lectures, and did a pretty good job.
All in all, informative and thought-provoking.
August 4, 2023
In 2011 Professor Bruce Fleury, a tenured Professor at Tulane University, conducted a 24 lecture course for The Teaching Company entitled “Mysteries of the Microscopic World.” The course begins with the history of microbiology in 5,000 BC Neolithic tribes. At this time, diseases were carried by insects and animals. Following this period, pathogens and diseases expanded and by the Early Ice Age of 1he 14th century these dirt based microbe pathogens triggered the Black Death that killed half of the population of Europe. The Black Death pandemic began in Asia and spread by bat fleas from China, through India and Africa, to Europe and Great Britain. During this period, over 100 million people died. Prof Fleury also discussed how microbe based organisms evolved from organisms that interact with their genetic variations. He then discussed how microbes invade hosts, and how their bacteria cause viruses. In addition, his lectures included presentations about the virulence of microbe pathogens; their impact on American Civil War germ warfare; and how the microbes triggered the 1918 American flu pandemic. The course concludes with discussions of how microbes cause AIDS, allergies, and asthma. His concluding presentations also talk about how germs can be mutated to fight infectious diseases, bioterrorism, and killer viruses. Prof Fleury’s presentations are exceptional, very captivating, and at times humorous. His guidebook is well done. (P)
May 31, 2022
Almost a 12hr audio book. This book is about the history of the Microscopic world, it is a great book for anyone wanting to learn a little about the big subject of the small world around us. I very much liked this book, my only question to the author is why did I feel like there was no clear path for this class? It felt like you kept jumping around from different eras, terms, and types of micro-organism's. Would it not have been more understandable to play the class in either how things were discovered or maybe how we currently think of the evolution of these species evolved from simple and continuing on to more complex. Any way, I think this was a great book.
April 11, 2024
This is my second Great Course with this author. I very much enjoyed the clarity of this work. Some things were quite detailed & over my head. (like the HIV virus and some of the immunology.) Recommended for all interested in science, medicine, and the study of small life.
May 28, 2024
Immensely informative, wide-ranging, concise and entertaining as are many of the courses in the Great courses series. The one shortcoming that surprised me is that Fleury spent virtually no time on the gut biome.
December 27, 2022
Watch a detailed review along with my favorite ideas and takeaways at:
https://youtu.be/22oOVqHRUK0
https://youtu.be/22oOVqHRUK0
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews