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Comment by jkhdigital | Hacker News Reader

+1 for The Great Courses, at least the few that I’ve picked up on Audible. I listened to a course entitled Law School for Everyone that is 25 hours of four different law professors giving a very clear and coherent introduction to law. It was worth at least 10x the cost of the Audible credit, and I probably only used 1/2 credit after picking it up during a 2-for-1 sale.

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+1 Great Courses. Often taught by university professors and academically respected people.

I just went through the Hinduism course and it was an amazingly deep insight into how the country of India works and worked in the past when it comes to social fabric as religion is quite tightly weaved into the culture.

It is much much better than any of this fancy high production value celebrity tabloid thing we call "MasterClass". Nothing masterful about it.

I don't know about this particular course but almost anything on Hinduism comes with huge biases from western institutions. This is explained in the book 'Academic Hinduphobia' available recently as a free PDF.

I would recommend reading the book 'Being Different' by Rajiv Malhotra to balance out any such courses on Hinduism.

Disclaimer - Indian hindu

I don't think this deserved to be downvoted. Foreign analysis of a local phenomenon always has a slant. It can't be avoided.

Explication of local culture in a foreign language for the benefit of foreigners will also have a slant. But it will be a very different slant, and it's a lot more accessible than the native materials. If the goal is "deep insight into how India works [today]", then Being Different is probably a pretty valuable thing to read even if the scholarship is shoddy. (On which question I have no opinion whatever.)

I'm quite skeptical that any kind of deep insight can come from reading a prototypical Bharat Tyagi[0]. Reading Swami Vivekananda or even Gandhi would be a far better use of time.

0: https://devdutt.com/articles/hiss-of-the-pio-bharat-tyagi/

I think when the comment said basically "[I have no exposure to or experience with the course you're referring to but let's assume it's biased]", it attracts downvotes. This isn't "foreign analysis", in context it's just a proudly uninformed opinion.

> Rajiv Malhotra

I would very strongly recommend staying away from anything written by this person. Here's a sample: https://www.reddit.com/r/badlinguistics/comments/2t8ze3/a_fe...

One offering from The Great Courses that the HN crowd might appreciate is "Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature":

https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/great-utopian-and-dy...

The professor is excellent.

I'll chime in for The Great Courses too! I have learned history, how to cook, literature, music theory, among other topics from it. I highly recommend them.

My local library has tons of Great Courses available as audio books. Check the Libby app and Overdrive (same company).

Thanks, didn't realize the great courses were available on audible. Reduces the friction just that much more.

They also have a Roku channel and an iPhone app. The iphone app lets you do audio only to cut down on BW. But with a course like Understanding Greek and Roman Technology (one of my all-time faves), the video is pretty invaluable. https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/understanding-greek-and-...

Wow, same here. I have an audible membership and several unused credits. After browsing the great courses (which I hadn't heard of before this), definitely going to try one.

The Great Courses is also available on Kanopy, if your library or university has a subscription.

+1 for this. Use your library. They are awesome.

This is a game changer! Thank you for letting me know. Kanopy is a deeply underapprciated gem.

I had no idea I had access to this, thank you!

It also doesn't use your Kanopy credits, which is an added bonus also, so you can basically watch however many as you want at any time.

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