Thread for sharing good free or cheap learning or study stuff

Been getting into this a bit lately, like free college courses or lectures or similar. Would also be interested in offline stuff that's cheap, like I know some museums do little learning days or similar.

I'll start by sharing this list of free Yale courses with YouTube lectures etc: https://oyc.yale.edu/courses

I've been doing a philosophy module about death which I'm really enjoying. Feels great to just sit down and immerse yourself in something, and to buy a couple of the books on the reading list. There must be so much stuff like this out there.

paul fry’s literary theory course is my favourite of the yale open courses i’ve watched. he’s a great lecturer

that sounds worth a watch, ty!

I enjoyed Harvard's CS50 computer science course during the pandemic. Not as forbidding as it might sound.
When I listened to a lot of this stuff, my favourite was probably Dale Martin's New Testament course from Yale (it's on the list you shared). Just incredibly educational about the roots of Christianity.

there's defo a bit of the joy to be had in the feeling of the lecture hall in the videos, and the sense of what the lecturer is like or their viewpoints. makes me wish i was back at uni. if i won the lottery tomorrow i'd just study forever.

I've been doing a philosophy module about death which I'm really enjoying.

Is that the Shelly Kagan course? He is an amazing lecturer.

That course apparently made him a celebrity in China.

MIT has tons of semester-length courses online too. I love Gilbert Strang's linear algebra lectures.

Is that the Shelly Kagan course? He is an amazing lecturer.

yes, i love him so far!

Kenneth Hammond's "From Yao to Mao" series of lectures on Chinese history used to be on YouTube and I loved them but I think they're gone ffs

Anyway bookmarked thread i love this stuff

for all the shit the internet has brought it is sort of amazing we can just self-educate like this.

maybe this is a middle aged thin to say but it feels great to exercise the mind, haha.

Yeah, it's basically an amazing thing - I haven't actually probed around in ages so this thread is a good reminder.
And this space feels less visible than it was about 5-10 years back, eg I'd completely forgotten about iTunes U and of course Apple killed it.

Is this the sort of thread where I ask if anyone knows a good free youtube/website for learning the piano/keyboards from scratch?

But also if not I am still intrigued by the premise of the thread, bookmarked.

There’s some good Robert Reich lectures at UC Berkeley online too

For getting into self-paced web development, The Odin Project seems like a great thing.

The Odin Project is one of those "What I wish I had when I was learning" resources. Not everyone has access to a computer science education or the funds to attend an intensive coding school and neither of those is right for everyone anyway. This project is designed to fill in the gap for people who are trying to hack it on their own but still want a high quality education.

Is this the sort of thread where I ask if anyone knows a good free youtube/website for learning the piano/keyboards from scratch?

For sure! I didn't even know how to title it to make it as broad as possible, as there's so much stuff out there.

i sometimes splash out on a humble bundle on a complete topic

never actually use em but they tend to be great value for lots of foundation and more specific material on stuff

I tried Coursera through a work subscription last year, and I really strugged to find high quality curriculum on there. The vetting process, if any, doesn't seem to be doing much. (I needed specific Salesforce admin stuff--unfortnately that's an area rife with grifty "trainers.")

Is that the Shelly Kagan course? He is an amazing lecturer.

yes, i love him so far!

― LocalGarda, Thursday, July 30, 2026 9:38 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

He's so good at going really slowly through the arguments without it feeling like the pace is dragging. He wants to show how many moves and counter-moves are possible at every step. I had a few philosophy profs who could do that, and it's part of what made philosophy so cool to me.

https://www.sugarmtn.org/ba/index.php

Neil Young zine that ran from the 80s through 10s

He's so good at going really slowly through the arguments without it feeling like the pace is dragging. He wants to show how many moves and counter-moves are possible at every step. I had a few philosophy profs who could do that, and it's part of what made philosophy so cool to me.

Yeah to be able to set out symmetrical logic or idk verbal philosophy that touches on mathematical proof and only pick up the chalk once every few lessons is mad impressive in itself.

I love watching it as much as the learning you are gleaning.

What I mean is to establish an idea as if he's writing it down, and to conjure that in the listener also, and to keep doing that over an hour, it's not easy!

i sometimes splash out on a humble bundle on a complete topic

never actually use em but they tend to be great value for lots of foundation and more specific material on stuff

― Wichita Referee's Assistant (darraghmac), Thursday, July 30, 2026 9:35 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Same - I've got a ton of stuff I barely use but I've spent a while learning about electronics and at least a couple of the bundles have been really handy - nice to have PDFs of Charles Platt's Make: Electronics guides & his Encyclopedias of electronic components, & it's cool to be thinking that it's time to learn to mess with a particular microcontroller and find you have a basic guide for it.

Platt's Make: Electronics might be one of the greatest educational books I've read tbh, but I worked through it from a physical copy.

I’ve been wanting to get into electronics repair as a hobby. Would that be a good start for a newbie? I see on Amazon they also sell kits to go along with the book.

It's a really really good grounding if you're a learn-by-doing person - you're constantly wiring stuff up while learning about the principles of electricity and electronic components. It's not super in-depth & deliberately doesn't go into equations outside the essentials but that's fine for me, a v humanities dude - he puts his time into getting you to practically understand.

I didn't go for a kit - just got parts as needed - makes sense to have a box of caps, box of resistors etc. There are odd parts but not that often - there's a relay early on that takes a little hunting but tbh learning to shop for components is part of the process.

(I think he does mention but is slightly hesitant about kits in the book)

I think for repair Platt would give very useful principles but it might need a supplement, or work in parallel - he doesn't really cover AC until the second volume and fault-tracing is its own skill. My favourite thing for that is learn electronics repair, a slightly grumpy old expat in Spain who is constantly taking you round faulty disco power amps while making odd 'mmm' noises. He does a lot of product test/review/clickbait now but his big 'learn' playlists are v educational.

The entertainment repair channels (stezstixfix, Joeydoestech etc) are good fun and tbh you learn a lot by watching people who aren't 50-years-behind-the-soldering-iron muddle through and get better at repairing consoles.

not sure whether language learning resources are in the spirit of the thread but this is a free spanish language course that’s phenomenal. he does other languages but I can’t vouch for those. this is the best free resource (in fact probably the best resource full stop) I’ve found on my spanish journey - https://www.languagetransfer.org/

Been using Pimsleur a lot for Spanish but I'll definitely investigate this.

Recently finished this short but awesome course from HarvardX about the opening night of The Rite of Spring. Hit "Audit Course" for the free version. Knowledgeable & passionate lecturer! Every time he sat down at the piano to play and discuss something from the score, my face would melt. Great diagrams of the structure of certain movements too.