ESP Biography

Reading is dangerous! Many of the world's most significant written works, at their core, ask some truly dangerous questions! Taking a crash course through the curriculum of the Structured Liberal Education program at Stanford, we'll look at some of the most controversial, boggling, and influential ideas of intellectual history. In this discussion-based class, we'll tackle questions on purpose, death, consciousness, religion, and politics. Whatever you think is simple and obvious, I'm hoping (with the help of the ideas of some of history's greatest philosophical minds) to shake that up. An introduction to the big questions of philosophy and how they influence us today!

Are you bored that school is teachers telling you what to think and then you writing it down? This class is the opposite! With the Socratic question-and-answer method of learning, this discussion-style class engages the students' beliefs as we explore challenging questions like "What is right?" and "What is true?" An introduction to various philosophical and ethical theories, as well as thought-provoking thought experiments!

Love film and/or television? Interested in writing it? Want to know its secret structure (and what makes almost all movies/episodes the same)? This is the class for you! Inspired by FILMPROD 105 at Stanford, this class analyzes film and tv from a writer's perspective, covering topics including stakes, tension, act breaks, Hero's Journey, sub-plot, and theme. As case studies, we'll watch a comedy episode we watch in class, and break down well-known Pixar films as examples.