The Teaching Company

As I've grown older, more and more I've come to realize how much there is in the world to know and how little of it I know. There's probably more new knowledge being created every year than one person could learn in an entire lifetime.

But I believe it's not how much you know - It's how fast you learn. That's why for the past four years or so, I've been hooked on The Teaching Company.

I've downloaded over 50 of their audio courses, covering university level course topics in history and other humanities, philosophy, religion, the sciences, and more. I feel like I've gained a second four-year college degree.

My first degree back at Stanford was one I designed myself, called Science, Technology, and Society. My second one was a MBA from Berkeley in Marketing and Finance. They've served me well in my business career, but I've always felt a bit incomplete when it came to my knowledge of the humanities.

I started with what are still perhaps my two favorite Teaching Company courses, the 96 lecture Foundations of Western Civilization, and the 60 lecture Great Ideas in Philosophy. The lectures are each 30 minutes, so it's really surprising quickly you can get through a course listening to one lecture on the way to work and another on the way home.

Plus throw in some plane flights and long weekend bike rides, and soon your delving into more specialized courses like No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life and Biological Anthropology: An Evolutionary Perspective.

I think the mind is the key agent we use to process what our senses encounter. The richer the mind, the richer and more fulfilling our engagement with our world.