For the past decade, Leonard Susskind, one of America’s pre-eminent physicists, has taught a series of six courses in Stanford’s Continuing Studies program.

Tina Seelig serves as the Executive Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, a center that teaches students entrepreneurial skills needed to solve major world problems.

If you’re applying to Stanford, this is what you’re up against. Undergrads like Ravi Fernando (Class of 2014) who can solve a Rubik’s Cube … while juggling. You might want to have a safety school! 

via @palafo

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Last spring, Ken Auletta wrote a profile of Stanford University in the pages of The New Yorker, which started with the question: “There are no walls between Stanford and Silicon Valley. Should there be?” It’s perhaps an unavoidable question when you consider a startling fact cited by the article.

Just a quick fyi. In the past week, Stanford has launched the latest version of Coding Together, the popular course that teaches Stanford students — and now students worldwide — how to build apps for the iPhone and iPad.

Are you on the hunt for a free, open source platform that will let you deliver free online courses? We’ve already told you about one option: Google Course Builder. Now here’s another: Stanford’s Class2Go. The platform is open, meaning that you can grab the code base for free and run it on your very own server.

First thing you need to know: Before doing anything else, you should simply click “play” and start watching the video above. It doesn’t take long for Robert Sapolsky, one of Stanford’s finest teachers, to pull you right into his course. Better to watch him than listen to me.

Worth a quick mention: Stanford’s Election 2012 course (previously mentioned here) wrapped up with a post-mortem. It starts with Steve Schmidt, a former John McCain and George W Bush advisor, giving a fairly blunt assessment of where the Republican Party stands right now. (The video above starts with his assessment.

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Jennifer Burns

www.colbertnation.

Intelligence comes at a price. The human species, despite its talent for solving problems, has managed over the millennia to turn one of its most basic survival mechanisms–the stress response–against itself.