What impresses me most is Sandel’s ability to teach esoteric points through Socratic dialog with his students, using their own reactions to illustrate the philosophical principles he wants to teach. There’s a reason this class is one of Harvard’s most popular among incoming freshman. Now you don’...

Walter Lewin’s physics lectures (both classical and electromagnetism) were the ones I followed during the MIT Challenge . They’re some of the finest classes I’ve ever taken online. Lewin manages to explain deep concepts ab...

• Intro Biology by Eric Lander — Great lectures on biology, especially those taught by Lander. The only annoyance is that this course is stitched together from multiple segments rather than comp...

While I highly enjoyed Allan Adams MIT quantum physics class , the math requirements are fairly steep. The amount of people who both have the math and physics requirements, but somehow didn’t study quantum mechanics in their undergraduate ...

Unfortunately there was a bit of a scandal on MIT’s open platform which resulted in MIT removing any affiliation with Lewin for the course. Thus the lectures are harder to find online than they used to be. But since nothing ever truly gets removed from the internet, I think they’re still worth wa...

I realized, after creating this list, how many good courses I’ve taken that couldn’t fit. So here’s a short list of some honorable mentions:

Economics is probably the subject I use most in my daily thinking. If you’re keen on learning mental models by which to see reality, economics is a really good place to start.

Cowen and Tabbarock write the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution

I’ve linked to the original Stanford class, as I prefer to embed YouTube. The Coursera version is also a little unclear as to whether it is actually free, or whether there’s a small fee. However, you may prefer the MOOC vers...

I have to admit, when this course first came out, I was a little nervous since my income depends a lot on my own, paid learning course . But, I’ve since come to appreciate that learning better is a pretty broad subject, so there’s always going to be ...

What are your favorite online courses you’ve taken? Are there any greats that I’ve missed? Share your suggestions in the comments!

Richard Feynman is my all-time intellectual hero. He does a brilliant job here of explaining quantum mechanics — without using any math. I would have thought it was impossible, but somehow Feynman manages to pull it off. (And barefoot, no less!).

• Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos by Steven Strogatz — The math behind the Butterfly Effect and why reality can be inherently unpredictable.
• Systems...

Honestly, this course is worth watching just to witness one of the best teachers of all time. Sandel teaches moral philosophy, not always known for being the most gripping topic. Yet the lectures are compelling, as students debate real-world examples that illustrate philosophical principles.

This course is the best one I’ve found on neuroscience. White gives a detailed walkthough of how the brain works. He even shows actual human brain tissue on camera, along with copious diagrams and slides.

This was a course I just finished watching recently, after a reader suggested it for my effort to learn more biology .

I found the course really engaging, especially the first semester. While organic chemistry is often one o...

Coursera’s most popular course , this one also happens to be taught by my friend, Barbara Oakley. The course is engaging and easy to follow, using neuroscience and psychology to illustrate the principles for studying better.

This course builds a great foundation for these topics. The cute illustrations of various immune cells too are also a plus, as someone who likes to communicate ideas visually can appreciate.

Considerable time is spent showing how certain ideas in chemistry were discovered, starting with Lavoisier, to Wöhler and Kekulé. I enjoy science classes that show how we managed to figure things out, rather than encouraging you to simply accept it as true just because the teacher told you so.

The immune system is much more interesting than I had realized, prior to taking this course. Just how can your body develop cells that can recognize and remove completely novel pathogens, without harming any of your own tissues? How do you defend against viruses that hijack your body’s cells or b...

A four-part course series on the immune system , I coincidentally started taking this one shortly before the coronavirus pandemic began.

This course builds a great foundation for these topics. The cute illustrations of variou...

Beautifully animated and tightly scripted, this is a course specifically developed for a YouTube audience. I enjoyed this course immensely when it first came out, giving a good overview of many different historical events.

Crash Course now has

This course started the MOOC explosion, with Ng leaving his Stanford teaching position to launch Coursera. This course has gone through multiple iterations, first as recorded lectures from an actual Stanford class, later as a simplified MOOC and now as a ful...

I tend to prefer courses to books. Although the best books definitely beat mediocre courses, there’s a few reasons why a great course can leave a lasting impression.

For starters, courses tend to teach foundational topics. Most books try to be original. But much of what’s worth knowing is