When seized with the desire to learn where their food comes from, many of today’s readers turn to Michael Pollan, author of books like The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food, and Food Rules. Perhaps you know him as the guy who popularized the guiding words, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

You can’t dabble in the world of philosophy very long without encountering John Searle.

Last week, the launch of Stanford Engineering Everywhere, featuring 10 free computer science and engineering courses, got no shortage of buzz on the net. This led me to think, why not highlight other major collections of free university courses/resources.

Richard Muller teaches one of the most popular undergraduate courses at UC Berkeley: Physics for Future Presidents. You can download the course in audio (iTunes) or watch it on YouTube (see first lecture above and get full course here). And now you can buy Muller’s new book. Just published by W.W.

How does modern neuroscience make sense of the current McCain-Obama race? Have a listen to Christopher Lydon’s fascinating conversation with George Lakoff, a professor of cognitive linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley (iTunes – MP3 – Feed – Web Site).

Just a quick fyi that we’ve added a popular UC Berkeley course, Physics for Future Presidents, to our collection: Free Online Courses from Great Universities. You can download the complete course to your MP3 player. Just scroll down the page and look under “Physics.

Updated: See full collection of University Video Collections on YouTube.
I heard rumors something like this was coming, and now it’s here. YouTube has struck deals with major universities, creating dedicated channels from which schools can distribute their media content.

Not long ago, we wrote a popular piece about UC-Berkeley’s iTunes initiative which, to sum it up,allows anyone, anywhere, to download complete university courses to their iPods for free. Amazing. Today, we want to point out that Berkeley also makes available full-fledged courses via video/webcast.

This is nothing short of impressive. Last April, UC Berkeley, one of the premiere universities in the country, announced its plan to put complete academic courses on iTunes. Fast forward nine months, and you can already find 59 full courses available as podcasts.

Not long ago, we talked about UC Berkeley’s ambitious podcasting initiative, about how the university is currently distributing a large number of courses over iTunes.