Simone Biles Teaches Gymnastics Fundamentals - Masterclass review

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Length: ~2hrs, 17 lessons

My rating: ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5)

My one-liner takeaway: Doing something exceptionally well doesn’t necessarily mean you can teach it well.

Despite the title, I assumed this’d be a course from Simone Biles explaining how to be a high-performing gymnast. After all, why else pay $90 to sit with a master of the craft when you can learn the basics for free on YouTube? This course is a prime example of a Masterclass whose premium is grounded in a celebrity voicing over commodity content. I found it fairly boring and regretted my personal challenge of watching all of them, but soldiered on in order to give a fair read on the lessons. I was really hoping for more of the soft skills (discipline, managing failure, etc.) essential in becoming an extraordinary athlete, and there was none of that. I would’ve gladly watched an hour more if that’s what was included.

I did earn a greater appreciation for the nuances of complex movements in Olympic gymnastics by watching the progressions of smaller exercises building up to them. To the uninitiated, it all is a blur of athleticism, without any eye for catching the subtleties in body posture. Overall, anyone watching this course would likely have (and need) access to a facility and a coach already. Save your money. A better Masterclass idea may have been learning the fundamentals from her coaches.

If you’d like to hear it directly from Simone, check out her course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!

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This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.

Will Wright Teaches Game Design and Theory - Masterclass review

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Length: ~4hrs, 21 lessons

My rating: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)

My one-liner takeaway: Successful video game design requires as much creativity as it does savviness in project management.

I haven’t played video games in almost a decade, mostly out of the guilt I’d feel when considering the hours I’d sink into what would ultimately amount to nothing. I felt the temptation arise when hearing Will Wright break down the process for designing a game. Will Wright is the genius behind Sim City, The Sims, and Spore. He deftly explains how a special kind creative process is needed from the game designer to allow for a game player to flex their creativity and externalize their imagination. While much of the course material wasn’t relevant to me, I did find a threads of relatability to my job as a product manager. Replace ‘player’ with ‘user’ (along with a few other words) and the parallels are apparent. There are phases of concept discovery, beta testing, researching the market, pitching for funding, iteration, and analysis when it’s out in the wild. One concept I loved was what he described as a local maxima, essentially optimizing your way to the wrong target, a common pitfall for my industry. I also enjoyed watching him provide real-time feedback to other game developers; it’s satisfying to hear any master of their craft explain their perspective to a young grasshopper.

If you’d like to hear it directly from Will, check out his course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!

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This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.

Dr. Jane Goodall Teaches Conservation - Masterclass review

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Length: ~5hrs, 29 lessons

My rating: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)

My one-liner takeaway: Every single one of us can make a difference to the planet, for good and for bad.

Dr. Goodall starts off by explaining what inspired her passion for studying animals and the natural world. She credits her mother for nurturing her dreams from a young age, despite how impossible it seemed for a girl in the 1930s to become a scientist out in the field. Through luck and perseverance, she find herself studying chimpanzees in Gombe National Park, Tanzania where she makes a breakthrough observation about the social nature of the animals. She describes the dismissiveness of the scientific community at her findings and the uphill struggle to embrace her research. While superficially I understood the connection humans have to these primates, I never fully appreciated it until hearing about their patterns of aggression, conflict resolution, grieving process, and more.

Much of the course is devoted to conservation and the damage inflicted by humans on the planet, and ultimately ourselves. Dr. Goodall doesn’t mince her words and is quite direct that much of the problems (e.g., feeding ourselves junk, living beyond our means, and overpopulation) are within our means to solve. Rather than ask us to think globally, she asks that we think locally lest we fall into despair at the enormous burden of turning the tide around the globe. She asks us to think about making smarter choices in what we eat, what we buy instead of repair, and even asks us if we really need to shower for that long. Dr. Goodall has reason for hope, mostly in seeing how younger people are calling for change and shifting their behaviors.

If you’d like to hear it directly from Dr. Goodall, check out her course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!

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This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.

Daniel Pink Teaches Sales and Persuasion - Masterclass review

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Length: ~3hrs, 16 lessons

My rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5)

My one-liner takeaway: Humans aren’t rational, and knowing the weak spots can help you get ahead and also protect you from yourself.

Dan starts off by emphasizing that persuasion is not about pressuring and that it’s a universal skill, encouraging us to drop our preconceived notions about pushy salesmen. In order to be effective at it, we have to first tune our minds to how the person across from us thinks. Through a few silly (and unnecessary) exercises, he makes a point about empathy and listening being the fundamental starting point. From there, he provides a broad array of tactics ranging from the “five whys”, social proof, cognitive biases like loss aversion, context framing and many others to improve our chances of success. I took more notes in this class than any other, often pausing lessons mid-way to reflect on how to practically apply them and how I’ve been convinced by smart marketing.

One lesson that stuck out for me was his advice to shift from problem-solving to problem-finding. He uses an example of someone shopping for a vacuum cleaner. Their problem may seem obvious at first, they need a vacuum cleaner, but their real problem is that they want clean floors. This opens up the possibility for up-selling the person cleaning services, carpet stain removers, etc. My personal take is was that problem-finding often is really problem-creating. All day products and services are promoted to us that we become convinced we need to have complete lives. Recently, I was shopping for a simple bike trainer for the winter season. My problem was simple: I want a cheap way to ride indoors. After reading through product reviews, my problem grew: I was convinced I needed a quiet trainer and only the expensive magnetic resistance models would do. There was an overwhelming amount of strategies presented, and I’ll likely give this course a second watch. I already have Dan’s book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, so I’m hoping to internalize as much of this as possible.

If you’d like to hear it directly from Dan, check out his course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!

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This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.

Doris Kearns Goodwin Teaches U.S. Presidential History and Leadership - Masterclass review

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Length: ~3hrs, 15 lessons

My rating: ★★★★ (5/5)

My one-liner takeaway: There’s an inexhaustible amount we can learn about our present from those who’ve come before if we understand them as people.

The driving message of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Masterclass is that what is happening today isn’t new or unique. Throughout American history we’ve seen anti-immigration sentiment, rapid industrialization making life feel out of control, struggles between different classes, and more. What she prescribes is that we look to the past and learn from how these challenges have been managed by great leaders. She draws moments from the lives of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson to make her point. Rather than turn this into a History Channel lesson, she brings these personalities to life, helping us understand them as persons with unique traits.

She notes that learning history is too often fixated on key dates, which overlooks the drama from events unfolding in real-time. Too often we gloss over the past, failing to see how much it rhymes with the present. Doris is a Pulitzer-winning biographer and a Harvard professor, so she is brilliant at teaching and getting a message across. The lessons are full of inspiring moments in history, and a reminder that there’s reason to be hopeful if we engage ourselves.

If you’d like to hear it directly from Doris, check out her course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!

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This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.

Neil deGrasse Tyson Teaches Scientific Thinking and Communication - Masterclass review

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Length: ~2hrs, 13 lessons

My rating: ★★★★ (5/5)

My one-liner takeaway: It matters little to being right if you’re not effective in communicating that message.

Neil kicks off this series by making it clear that he isn’t here to tell us cool facts about the galaxy; there’s nearly endless hours of him doing so on YouTube. Instead, he uses this as an opportunity to explain how to determine truth for yourself and then share that knowledge out effectively. It’s quite odd that an astrophysicist would become a pop culture figure, but it’s entirely due to how good he is at inspiring curiosity within listeners. It’s a very timely moment to absorb these lessons, with misinformation traveling spreading like a virus and wreaking havoc on our country.

He covers a vast set of communication tactics, even sharing how he prepares for his audience by understanding their perspective first. It may tough realization to accept but it intuitively makes sense: unless you’re willing to understand just how the other side thinks, you’re just flapping your gums. No one in history has been convinced to change a perspective by name-calling. He also warns about our inherent cognitive bias. Humans are wired poorly to understand statistics, not through any fault of our own. It’s just a weakness in our wiring. The most telling illustration is how the power of a single person’s testimony has far more influence on our behavior than the collection of data from a study. For example, you could read a thorough report on a car’s high safety and reliability scores but be totally be swayed by the single person you run into fuming over their experience with that car. Finally, another great reminder is how to use your body to double your effectiveness in communicating. Once he mentioned it, I couldn’t un-see how he goes about this. I decided to mirror his movements alone in my room. It’s not embarrassing if no one’s there to see it.

If you’d like to hear it directly from Neil, check out his course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!

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This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.

Nancy Cartwright Teaches Voice Acting - Masterclass review

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Length: ~3hrs, 14 lessons

My rating: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)

My one-liner takeaway: Acting is really hard, but not impossible if you work at it.

I have no interest in voice acting, but I’m a huge fan of mimicking voices to amuse myself. Nancy Cartwright is famous for voicing animated cartoons, most notably Bart Simpson. This class goes into the specifics of what it takes to do the job, and how to do it well. Even though 90% of it was irrelevant to me, it helped me appreciate the skills needed to bring breathe life and personality to characters on screen. The remaining 10% I found relatable was in learning how I could use my voice to tell stories. Something I love doing is reading aloud to Leah, and I insist on making the dialogue as realistic as possible by whipping up accents or distinct speech patterns. Of course, what I’m doing is quite basic but it gives me a lot of joy, the same way a parent might read a bedtime story to a child.

If you’d like to hear it directly from Nancy, check out her course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!

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This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.

Jeff Goodby & Rich Silverstein Teach Advertising and Creativity - Masterclass review

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Length: ~2hr30min, 18 lessons

My rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5)

My one-liner takeaway: Pay attention to the world around you; that's your best source for brilliant ideas.

I didn't recognize the names Goodby and Silverstein (founders of the legendary SF-based ad agency GS&P), but I certainly grew up with their work. They're responsible for iconic campaigns that have entered pop culture like 'Got milk?', the Sega scream, and the talking Budweiser lizards. I'm interested in creating an ad campaign, and fortunately that's not what this class was designed to help me do. Instead, the course serves as a highlight reel for the firm, showcasing key lessons from past campaigns. Jeff and Rich are quite goofy and absolutely love what they do. It's clear that some of their success can be credited to their strong partnership. They both believe firmly in never settling for good enough. If you’re interested in marketing, this’ll be great inspiration. If you’re not, this’ll be pretty entertaining.

If you’d like to hear it directly from them, check out their course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!

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This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.

Emily Morse Teaches Sex and Communication - Masterclass review

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Length: ~2hrs, 7 lessons

My rating: ★★★★★ (5/5)

My one-liner takeaway: You're not doing yourself or your partner any favors by quietly pretending sex is something you can't talk about.

I didn't know anything about Emily Morse. I clicked through because the of the title. There are classic books on love openly talked about in the mainstream, but very little about sex. We obviously avoid it at work and with family, and may dance around the subject with friends. As a result, with partners we often lack the language skills, worrying we'll come off as awkward and hold back on trying for fear of rejection. Emily gets right to the point by underscoring the importance of knowing what you and your partner want and how to go about having that conversation. She covers a tremendous amount of ground in just two hours, and it's clear this is only the first layer of the onion.

If you’d like to hear it directly from Emily, check out her course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!

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This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.

Malcolm Gladwell Teaches Writing - Masterclass review

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Length: ~5hrs, 24 lessons

My rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5)

My one-liner takeaway: Don't aim to be the best writer; instead, aim for interesting.

This series felt like a pleasant afternoon spent with Malcolm as he unpacks his mind. It was both fascinating and highly entertaining. He has such a quirky way of thinking about the world and despite his fame, speaks with a heavy dose of humility. He does go on frequent tangents, a few times to apologize-but-not-really for past writings (e.g., when the broken windows theory he helped popularize was used to justify over-policing). These digressions all serve to make the videos more enjoyable, almost like what he calls giving "candy" to his readers: in addition to the main point being made, you should insert some semi-related bite-sized tidbit (i.e., candy) that the reader will pick up and remember to share with others at parties.

There are some gems that stood out to me. He emphasizes not using Google to do research, since the algorithm is designed to return sources ranked by popularity. This of course means you're reading at what pretty much everyone else is reading. Instead, go to the library and look at books. Because of how they’re organized, the ones physically near the one you're interested in will be slightly related, but not the same. Move your hand a little further, and you'll take another small step away from your starting point. I also loved that he recommended striving to tell more interesting stories, which means putting yourself out there. For example, no one wants to hear you talk about how one kind of apple is like another type of apple. Instead, writing about how apples are kind of like oranges is sure to get attention. Here’s a great essay by Morgan Housel on the topic.

If you’d like to hear it directly from Malcolm, check out his course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!

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This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.