Henry Carter Hull

Continue a look a Buddhist approaches to death, this time focusing on Tibetan Buddhism’s deep, extensive teachings on the actual process of death and rebirth. Central to this lecture: the fascinating Bardo Thodol (or the Tibetan Book of the Dead), whose lessons are applicable both to Buddhists and non-Buddhists.

We call them o-rang-u-tans, which literally means "forest persons" in the Malay and Indonesian languages. They are the only great apes native to Asia. Of all the apes, they are the closest to man in genetic makeup. And they face extinction. Two years in the making, The Disenchanted Forest is an intimate portrayal of the world of orangutans, the threats to their survival and the people committed to help them thrive. The film focuses on a recent discovery...

Unlike other faiths, Confucianism and Daoism focus almost entirely on life in this world, not the next. So how do followers find meaning and consolation in the face of their deaths? The answers can be found in the distinct approaches of the great Chinese thinkers Confucius and Zhuangzi.

Find Me is a profoundly moving documentary that tells the stories of three families who adopt children from China as well as the stories of those who loved these children first; The biological parents who feel they can’t keep their children and the orphanage nannies or foster-families who must say goodbye to the children they’ve raised for months…or years..

As it became clear the South Vietnamese security forces would not provide adequate security for the US Air Force bases in Southeast Asia, President Lyndon Johnson authorized the beginning of the ground war..

Unlike Pakistan and Bangladesh, India became a secular state after its 1947 independence, and it is now the world’s largest democracy. This examination of the nation’s early years examines Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s vision to transform the nation and some of his successful economic programs.

Now turn from the subcontinent inlands to the sea, where European traders began arriving on the Indian coast to establish global companies, including several East India companies. After surveying Portugal’s 200-year dominance of trade, Professor Fisher shows how the English eventually established their own foothold in the market.

Shift your attention to India’s other major epic, the Mahabharata, which is the longest major text in human history (clocking in at a whopping 1.8 million words). After examining the sources and style of this epic, Professor Fisher surveys its plot and shows what it means from the "emic"perspective of Indians as well as the "etic"perspective of outsiders.

Because South Asia is such a large and diverse region, it has seldom been unified under one ruler. But around the time Jainism and Buddhism began challenging the old social order, Chandragupta was able to consolidate and form the subcontinent’s first major empire. Uncover the trajectory of his life and the conditions that allowed him to build the Mauryan Empire.

The political costs for the war began to add up for the Nixon Administration, and the South Vietnamese were now on their own. The American troops were home, but there was little celebration. The scars of the war would linger in American culture for decades to come..