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I keep meaning to do this when I'm not in the middle of any, but I always am. So, since people often express surprise when I mention it, here is an as-now list of all the podcasts from Berkley I've been listening to in the order I listened to them.
Spring 2007: History of Europe: This was great, filled in a lot of gaps for me and tied everything together, and was at a much deeper level than the sort of stuff you get on telly. Having things from an american perspective was kind of odd but meant I learned some american history too :) It was great getting a (relatively) unglamourised understanding of feudalism, the rise of the nation as an idea, colonialism, etc, it's given a much deeper underpinning to my understanding of how things work.
Spring 2007: Nonviolence today: More smugness than I could stand.
Fall 2007 Biology A: So it turns out that cell biology is just as boring at a university level as it was in highschool. Well, it was worth a shot.
Fall 2006: History of Information: This isn't as good as the european history unit, and they have an annoying tendency to gloss over stuff outside europe/america etc because "They don't know much about it" (in my opinion being an academic implies a certain ability to research, though acknowledging your ignorance is the first step). But I'm still really enjoying it, they do a good job of showing the way the same trends have repeated throughout history and debunk a lot of the technological determinism of a lot of popular accounts of this sort of thing (including showing and then deconstructing an episode of my favourite documentary show from childhood)
Fall 2007: General Psychology: Nothing life changing, but competently run and quite interesting, and engaging enough that I finished it quite quickly. The first few lectures are on the biology of the brain and I basically ignored them, I really don't think biology is my thing :)
Rhetoric 10: Spring 2008: This is a weird course, the lecturer is one of those arrogant men totally full of his own brilliance, but he's also very charismatic and has interesting (if often infuriating) things to say, and I'm determined to stick it out if only to convince myself he really is wrong :) Pokes at the idea of truth, community, and objectivity with a very big stick, which is making my brain twist itself in interesting knots. Here is the course blog. I'm only a few episodes in.
Spring 2008: Social Psychology: I've only listened to like 2 podcasts, which is hardly enough to get past the "So, here's how you sign up for labs" bit, but it's ok so far.
Overall it's been fun basically giving myself the foundations of the sort of arts degree I was set up to do before science ate my brain mid-highschool. And I don't have to do any of the annoying reading or essays which are what put me off ever studying the humanities properly :) Lacking the context of images and readings etc does mean I had to think a bit harder than the students would, but google helped a lot and c'mon, if I can't keep up with with first year arts students...It's also interesting seeing the common approaches the lecturers use, a lot of them try to play on the kid's egos about being at a Great College.
Note that not every course runs every semester (or of they do they may change lecturers etc) and I don't think they have much if anything past first year.
Spring 2007: History of Europe: This was great, filled in a lot of gaps for me and tied everything together, and was at a much deeper level than the sort of stuff you get on telly. Having things from an american perspective was kind of odd but meant I learned some american history too :) It was great getting a (relatively) unglamourised understanding of feudalism, the rise of the nation as an idea, colonialism, etc, it's given a much deeper underpinning to my understanding of how things work.
Spring 2007: Nonviolence today: More smugness than I could stand.
Fall 2007 Biology A: So it turns out that cell biology is just as boring at a university level as it was in highschool. Well, it was worth a shot.
Fall 2006: History of Information: This isn't as good as the european history unit, and they have an annoying tendency to gloss over stuff outside europe/america etc because "They don't know much about it" (in my opinion being an academic implies a certain ability to research, though acknowledging your ignorance is the first step). But I'm still really enjoying it, they do a good job of showing the way the same trends have repeated throughout history and debunk a lot of the technological determinism of a lot of popular accounts of this sort of thing (including showing and then deconstructing an episode of my favourite documentary show from childhood)
Fall 2007: General Psychology: Nothing life changing, but competently run and quite interesting, and engaging enough that I finished it quite quickly. The first few lectures are on the biology of the brain and I basically ignored them, I really don't think biology is my thing :)
Rhetoric 10: Spring 2008: This is a weird course, the lecturer is one of those arrogant men totally full of his own brilliance, but he's also very charismatic and has interesting (if often infuriating) things to say, and I'm determined to stick it out if only to convince myself he really is wrong :) Pokes at the idea of truth, community, and objectivity with a very big stick, which is making my brain twist itself in interesting knots. Here is the course blog. I'm only a few episodes in.
Spring 2008: Social Psychology: I've only listened to like 2 podcasts, which is hardly enough to get past the "So, here's how you sign up for labs" bit, but it's ok so far.
Overall it's been fun basically giving myself the foundations of the sort of arts degree I was set up to do before science ate my brain mid-highschool. And I don't have to do any of the annoying reading or essays which are what put me off ever studying the humanities properly :) Lacking the context of images and readings etc does mean I had to think a bit harder than the students would, but google helped a lot and c'mon, if I can't keep up with with first year arts students...It's also interesting seeing the common approaches the lecturers use, a lot of them try to play on the kid's egos about being at a Great College.
Note that not every course runs every semester (or of they do they may change lecturers etc) and I don't think they have much if anything past first year.
