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Good lecturer

Beginning Classical Era

Great explication of our evolving communication paradigms

Seems mostly presented to be accessible to the lay middle-age and older audience, or college freshman class.

Lecture 18 on Familiarity: Subconscious Plagiarism. Related TS Post: http://www.thoughtskipper.com/2009/11...

Well structured and informative, but at an introductory level. Having read other books on memory recently much of the material is still fresh in my mind and is probably influencing my assessment of the material as introductory, but I do wish Joordens would occasionally venture deeper with opinion on the most progressive ideas and break the breadth paradigm of the course.

Strategies for quickening coping with negatives, lengthening pleasure of positives. A View from Nowhere analytical approach to understand events and thereby dampen their emotional salience (for either polarity).

Method of Loci, classical version of modern Memory Palace memorization. Lecture 2 here was a tepid intro to the multiple encoding idea, Moonwalking With Einsteiin is far more interesting, perhaps because Foer became a serious practitioner.

Group theory for the Internet age. Supported well with relevant historical analogues.

8 hours in, Fugue and Baroque Opera

Into a number of lectures on the Baroque period

Just in time for Stanford Outdoor Science Talk: "Infinite Reality: The Dawn of the Virtual Revolution"

Love Plain/Gregorian chant

Makes explicit distinction between this book and non-scientific self-help genre books for approaches to personal change.

Good-ish. A bit longwinded, but a respectable philosophical introduction of the notions entwined with death, the self, and morality. Kagan is an engaging lecturer but I found the pacing slow when I found a given philosophical counterpoint essentially resolved or not germane.

Didn't care for the techno-future envisioned in the final chapter. I appreciate how Egan was trying to convey the sense of change, particularly from an aged perspective, but too much of the envisioned change is absurd. I liked the penultimate chapter much more.

Fundamental Music Theory taught with dramatic flair by Greenberg. Covers Timbre, Beat & Tempo, Meter, Pitch & Mode, Intervals, Tonality, Key Signature, Melody, Harmony, and Texture.

Chapter 12 "Great Rock and Roll Pauses" slideshow was great, especially while listening to the audiobook.

Having never read sheet music or played an instrument the lectures on intervals and keys were tough

A litany of long term outcomes opposing psychiatric drug treatment. Decidedly against Big Pharma but likewise against ineffective psychiatric drug practice itself. Not a thrilling read, but great if you're looking for material support for your suspicions, or if you still need to be disillusioned about our present capabilities with psychiatric drugs.

Chapter 9 reminds me of David Foster Wallace's "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men"

Uses the Semmelweis anecdote I just read in SuperFreakonomics too