Forgive me if the answer to this is obvious (I skimmed the linked page), but how much Rails/general programming experience do I need to be able to follow this?
If you're already familiar with MVC and have a basic background in scripting languages, 30 minutes or so of rails experience should allow you to follow the screencasts without a problem.
What is the best way to familiarize oneself with MVC, if one hasn't been exposed to it? I am an embedded programmer ("C"), learning web programming now.