With the new normal of social distancing and staying home as much as possible, we are always on the lookout for new and interesting things to occupy our time. If you are like us, you have binge watched your brains out and are thinking that there just has to be something better to do.
While we don’t have anything against a little mindless entertainment now and then, we certainly feel that feeding our minds rather than snacking through eight seasons of Game of Thrones might be a good idea. You know, stuffing our brains instead of our faces.
Maybe we could use some of this time to gain some real knowledge. We have certainly considered going back to college from time to time, but that hardly seems practical these days. Well, I believe we may have found an alternative that is not only practical, its practically perfect, One Day University.
For those of us who aren’t really looking for a degree program, but more of a program to expand our understanding of the world around us, this may be exactly what the doctor, or professor, ordered.
ODU offers daily live streaming lectures from faculty at over 100 of America’s top universities, including many Ivy League schools. And don’t worry if you miss the live event, they can also be watched later on demand.
In fact, there is an extensive video library available at any time with categories covering Art, Music, Film, History & Politics, Psychology & Lifestyle, and Science.
The lectures range all across the spectrum of subjects. History is covered all the way from the ancients to timely investigations into today’s most news worthy events. There are stimulating examinations into where we are and how we got here, along with in depth discussions of many of the milestone events and significant heroes through time.
In the first lecture we chose, Our Broken Two-Party System: Gridlock, Dysfunction, and Incivility, Robert Watson, a professor of American History from Lynn University, covered our uniquely American system from its very beginnings up to the forthcoming election.
As unsettled as things seem, perhaps we can take some solace in the facts he delivered showing that the fractured politics we see these days is nothing new. We have experienced similar circumstances, sometimes arguably even worse, many times before.
After that, we decided that maybe something more calming and uplifting would be better. So we browsed through the Arts library and we found Beethoven and The Beatles: Hearing the Connection. In this we discovered Michael Alec Rose from Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music taking a deep dive into the similarities between Hey Jude and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Wow! This was not only incredibly informative, but also extremely entertaining and humorous.
Speaking of humor, that tickling of our funny bones led us to the Psychology & Lifestyle section where we found The Psychology of Humor, along with a ton of other insights that can help us to better understand ourselves such as The Science of Pleasure: Why We Like What Like, and Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness.
Obviously we love to travel, so the title A Grand Tour of Italy jumped out at us as well and the next thing we knew we were off on a virtual Italian vacation.
By this time we had definitely descended into a whole new category of binge watching. Maybe we should call it mind blowing educational expansion watching.
Veronica wasn’t ready to dive into the science section, but I couldn’t seem to stop. My long dormant inner physics geek was enthusiastically awakened by NYU professor Matthew Stanley’s lecture on Unexplained Science: What Scientists Still Don’t Understand.
After that my brain needed a break.
So that gives us a chance to pass along this free one-month trial offer that One Day University has been kind enough to let us give to our readers. Just follow this link, click on SIGN UP NOW, then enter GYPSYNESTER in the Coupon Code box and off you go for a free month of all these live and on demand lectures. After that, just $7.95 per month keeps you enrolled. As any of us who have put kids through college can tell you- that’s a pretty remarkable deal!
I know we sound pretty excited about this, but really, this is the same kind of learning about our world that makes us love traveling so much. So these days, while gallivanting around the globe is not an option, this is without a doubt the best alternative that we have found.
Now… what are we going to learn about next?
David & Veronica, GypsyNester.com
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