5 Fascinating Video Lectures from Academic Earth

The recently launched AcademicEarth.org is a video site that features full length lectures by professors at prestigious universities. Like rival video site BigThink, it shares the goal of spreading ideas and intellect around the web.

Although the amount of content on the site is still relatively low, in a few hours of exploration we were able to find many interesting talks on a wide range of subjects. For your learning enjoyment, here is the best of what we found:

Learning from and Responding to Financial Crisis

Who better to learn about the financial crisis from than Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury Secretary and one of Barack Obama’s top economic advisors.

See also: Part 2

Legacies of the Civil War

This course explores the causes, course, and consequences of the American Civil War, from the 1840s to 1877. The primary goal of the course is to understand the multiple meanings of a transforming event in American history.

Evolution, Emotion, and Reason: Emotions

What do your dreams mean? Do men and women differ in the nature and intensity of their sexual desires? Can apes learn sign language? Why can’t we tickle ourselves? This course tries to answer these questions and many others, providing a comprehensive overview of the scientific study of thought and behavior.

See also: Part 2

Learning From Failure

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz talks about how people who failed within Buzzsaw, were often given new projects to work on. Failure was valued, she says. Rather than criticizing projects that failed, Bartz notes how people wanted to apply the knowledge they learned from mistakes into new projects.

Social Entrepreneurship

Famed venture capitalist Vinod Khosla argues the traditional model of giving is broken. Social entrepreneurship and ways to leverage money are very important. Although there is not enough money in the world to solve the world’s problems, if you apply and multiply, there are, in fact, solutions to some of these problems.

If you enjoyed these videos, make sure to check out what else is available on Academic Earth.