Excellent graduate level classes as podcast?

August 25, 2014 4:17 AM

Can you find me excellent graduate level classes provided as official Apple podcast form factor?

I'm looking for something a little meatier than the typical podcast (even RadioLab etc). It needs to be downloadable into the iPhone podcast app / iTunes with minimal work, so Youtube playlists and freely provided mp3's don't work. I guess senior level classes would be ok. Thanks!

posted by tintexas to Education (4 answers total)

This doesn't really fit your parameters, but I'm going to suggest it anyway: The Teaching Company makes audiobook courses on a variety of topics, for some outrageous fee. Some of them are better than others, some of them are really excellent. You can also get them from Audible for under their $15 per month/"book" plan.
posted by quaking fajita at 5:41 AM on August 25, 2014

For whatever it's worth, I listened to some classes from Yale's Open Courses site. I downloaded the MP3 files directly from the site, but I think they're also available on iTunes. I found the courses to be much less satisfying than listening to good audiobooks. The lectures varied in quality, and even the good ones weren't nearly as well organized or complete as an audiobook. Also, if you don't do the outside reading or complete the homework assignments, the lectures are not as meaningful.
posted by akk2014 at 6:11 AM on August 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

The teaching company courses are very good, as quaking fajita points out, especially the history ones. If you are willing to stretch a tiny bit, you can check them out from many libraries and import them into iTunes as an audiobook.
posted by bswinburn at 7:57 AM on August 25, 2014

Just to put the obvious out there: have you already tried iTunes University? You can get full (and free) courses from Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Oxford...
posted by RedOrGreen at 1:19 PM on August 25, 2014 [4 favorites]