Hi all, this is Professor Martinez-Davila from the University of Colorado! The question you pose on online courses is a really interesting one because some academic scholars like myself think that engaging "citizen scholars" in online courses is a huge opportunity for advancing discoveries. On June 15th, my "Deciphering Secrets: Unlocking the Manuscripts of Medieval Spain" free, online course (a MOOC) is opening at https://www.coursera.org/course/medievalspain .

I think we are at a really interesting point in historical studies because scholars like myself are not only interested in sharing their passion for history (in my case, medieval Spanish Jewish, Catholic, and Muslim coexistence) but also want to harness the power of crowdsourcing to rebuild medieval worlds -- even digital 3d worlds!

And, I've often found that professionals in the work world do some pretty amazing historical research themselves! Equal to or better than traditional university scholars. One of my Spanish friends, a computer scientist by training, is one of the best paleographers (a reader of old handwriting scripts) I know.

Thanks for sharing this post, Roger :-)

http://oyc.yale.edu/courses

Yale's open courses. Awesome quality but limited selection.

Hey! The so called MOOCs are huge nowadays. They are basically an online university courses from various universities across the globe. The most famous are edX and coursera. There were some really interesting Chinese history and culture courses on edX this year. I highly recommend checking them out, see if they have any history related courses you are interested in. I think they are great. The difference between them and the ones you mentioned is that these are not just lectures put on YT/iTunes, but it's a course specifially designed for online use, it has some assignments, tests, study groups on forums, etc.

Do you mind paying for it? The Teaching Company has two series about Chinese history that I really enjoyed. "From Yao to Mao" and "Fall and rise of China".

They are both very vivid presentations of the ancient and recent history of Chia. However, this "vididness" comes with both pros and cons. Something that I feel is ever present in the field of history (as in, popular history) is the need to tell a great story, even when you are not actually quite sure. Both these courses have this characteristic and you have to decide if that is for you.

There is a great history of philosophy podcast by Prof. Peter Adamson, a lecturer at Munich & Kings College London. It is very detailed, almost to a fault, and offers a different prospective than you would normally find in a traditional history resource. http://www.historyofphilosophy.net/ There is also `In Our Time with Melvin Bragg', which offers one hour podcasts with a panel of experts. All episodes are free (thanks to the BBC) and it is available here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl . Radio 4 also hosted a series on British Prime ministers called (surprisingly) 'The Prime Ministers'. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01083zj . Although it is presented by Nick Robinson, the research was done by an LSE political scientist.

Otherwise, the complete BBC Civilization series by Sir Kenneth Clarke is on youtube and is one of the best pieces of television I have seen. Although his views are old fashioned and now somewhat dated, his erudition and enthusiasm make the series required viewing.

Otherwise, I would recommend that you look at open culture for free video lectures and lessons. There are currently 1,000 courses listed in various forms and is worth bookmarking: http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses

A little sideways (and maybe more in line with my own obsessions), but you might look into Yale's open courses from the religion department - Christine Hayes' class on the Hebrew Bible was excellent, and I've just started listening to the corresponding course on the New Testament.

Very entrenched in the history.

Along similar lines, Bart Ehrman has some New Testament lectures online, although he's slightly more... contentious? His own site is way heavier on the radio interviews and debates.

The Hebrew Bible is going to overlap with some of your Bronze Age stuff, I bet. Hayes starts out talking about pre-Jewish Near Eastern religions and the Enuma Elish.

Not a course, but the BBC and British Museum's History of the World in 100 Objects program is pretty excellent as a podcast series of lectures. It jumps all over the place historically but is usually pretty rewarding no matter what they're talking about.

American civil war course. This has been my favorite from the yale site. http://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-119

UCBerkeley has a course on European History called "Europe and the World: Wars, Empires, Nations 1648-1914".

List of other courses, though some are repeats, are here.

I swear I'm not getting paid to shill here, but audible has some of "The Great Courses" series at a really decent price. The two that I would really recommend are "From Yao to Mao" (lecture series by Prof. Kenneth J. Hammond, who also is an affiliate of the Confucius Institute 孔子学院, which is a great overview of Chinese history and starting point) and "Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition" (by Prof. Grant Hardy, lecture series that covers lots of Indian, Chinese, and Japanese philosophical history as well as some Korean and others).

As you didn't specify that you are looking for free courses, I would recommend the history lectures of The Great Courses. I get them via audible.com subscription and basically pay 15$ per lecture instead of the ridiculously high 100-400$. They should cover most or all the topics you are interested in.

I can only speak for Fall and Rise of China, which was fantastic, but mainly deals with modern times and From Yao to Mao: 5000 Years of Chinese History, which ,as the title suggest, gives a whole overview of Chinese history; the lecturer and his delivery wasn't great though, but still good enough.