Get Smarter Without Leaving Home: Here's a Free Month of the

If you like The Great Courses, you can let the clock run out on the trial, after which you'll be billed for whichever plan you chose when you signed up. You can opt to be billed $20 per month, or pay $30 once every three months. Yes, $20 per month is pretty pricey, but the quarterly billing plan is half that cost -- pretty reasonable, especially if you find yourself binging on education.

I honestly can't say enough good things about The Great Courses. It's not like watching a YouTube video of a college lecture; these are polished and highly informative, often accompanied by an (optional) PDF guidebook that's sort of like a textbook custom-made for the class you're watching. And the professors are credible public speakers with credentials in their subject matter. Randomly clicking around the science curriculum, for example, one of the first classes I ran across was an astronomy survey course taught by Neil deGrasse Tyson. And not everything is economics and rocket science; you can find classes on yoga, mindfulness, how to draw and a survey of the wines of California.

You can watch The Great Courses in a browser, or using a Roku player, Apple TV or Amazon Fire TV.

If you're spending more time at home than you used to because of, you know, the global pandemic, there's probably never been a better time to give The Great Courses a shot. Watch some lectures for the simple joy of learning something new.