Here’s a holiday season deal worth mentioning. The Great Courses (formerly The Teaching Company) is offering every course on sale for $60 or less in DVD format, including free shipping (in the US and Canada). Instant video formats go for $40 across the board. The deal lasts through midnight on Black Friday.
If you’re not familiar with it, the company provides a very nice service. They travel across the U.S., recording great professors lecturing on great topics that will appeal to any lifelong learner. They then make the courses available to customers in different formats (DVD, CD, Video & Audio Downloads, etc.). The courses are very polished and complete, and they can be quite reasonably priced, especially when they’re on sale, as they are today. Click here, or on the banner above, to explore the offer.
Note: The Great Courses is a partner with Open Culture. So if you purchase a course, it benefits not just you and Great Courses. It benefits Open Culture too. So consider it win-win-win.
I subscribe to The Great Courses Plus, which is a streaming service for these classes and basically like a Netflix for interesting subject matter. I highly recommend it! Each class also comes with a guidebook which is like getting a free textbook along with your class; I often refer to them apart from the classes. So far I have learned so much—from classes on the Middle Ages and ancient history, to philosophy (the course entitled “Why Does Evil Exist?” is quite good), to now astronomy as I have just been given a telescope that I don’t know what to do with. I am also now making my way through Ancient Greek! And I hope to do German next. This library of classes is truly an amazing resource. I only wish they offered a few more subjects—an introduction to poetry course would be nice, and I’d like something on basic music theory (they’ve got loads of music courses, but not music theory). Science isn’t my area of interest but they’ve got lots on that as well. I’m not affiliated with the Great Courses at all, just very enthusiastic and want people to support them so I can enjoy them for years to come!