I just browsed through a few, including topics in which I know very well. These seem to be ~hour long talks on specialized topics. They seem comparable to a keynote address one might see at a scientific seminar. The topics are fairly niche, like an upper level college course. Picture of you just walked in on a grad level lecture of some random course you didn't know existed, like "The economic impact of health law and policy."

If you want to learn more, I'd recommend something like Khan academy, as it's designed for the general audience, and have topics that are a bit more introductory or general. Also, the production quality is better at keeping you engaged. The Gresham lectures are simply that: a lecture by a professor on a particular topic. They sometimes have a little bit of "death by PowerPoint" going on.

Although some lectures are interesting to everyone, like "life in the universe", many of the lectures have a less broad audience. Like unless you are into the history of technology you might not want to listen to an hour long lecture about Victorians' conception of space and time. It's very dry.

It's unsurprising that so few people are aware of these lectures. They aren't really marketed or aimed at the general public.

>i wanna learn stuff, but i am bad at assessing quality of information.

Lots of great universities have been trying to make their education accessible for free. Universities get paid for the credit courses - for gatekeeping quality and the prestige of the degree. So they don't mind as much letting people take the class for free when there's no credit attached.

Youtube has tons of recorded university classes available. For instance, here is a truck load of classes from MIT on their channel. You won't enjoy the benefit of a classroom with peers and access to the teacher to ask questions, but you can receive the same lectures the students get in the classroom.

Much easier than finding courses on Youtube, Coursera has tons of classes that have been contributed by universities, even top ones like Stanford and Yale. You can take most classes for free, and they ask for money if you want to receive an optional certificate at the end.

MIT has a similar program.

There's no shortage of free, high quality college course content out there. Sometimes it's just video lectures, sometimes you get all the homework, tests, etc. too. EdX and Coursera are the big names, but MIT OCW has a lot of MIT course materials and lectures available for download (varies from only lecture notes to all materials depending on the course).

Put on an eye-patch and snag some of the Great Courses series.

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See if anything interests you. Watch the class. Look up the subject matter and read about. Keep an open mind!

I've been watching them for years and they are excellent.

I have attended a few in person and enjoyed them.

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I have been watching the for a few years now. All are good though some presentation styles are not the same as others, so YMMV. I haven't come across any with shockingly great multimedia presentation, but then, these are for those who don't fall for fancy cartoons with swooshing sounds every 5 seconds.

First row of theatre there is a seat reserved for Ted

oh i thought they were classes. turns out it's one hour lectures on random topics. that's almost completely useless for learning anything. might as well watch a youtube video about said topic.

Nothing like that - the lectures are given by serious well regarded experts.

It's existed since 1597, and was founded by a man who has a law of economics named after him, I imagine it has been using the word 'college' long before wherever you teach existed. It doesn't claim to endow mastery - most college courses and lectures do not - but material delivered by the likes of John Bercow or John Guy today or Christopher Wren in the past is doubtlessly of use to anyone interested in a given topic.

But it doesn't have courses so the amount you deliver on your courses is neither here or there. It also doesn't claim to support any specific learning path towards "mastery" - simply that it provides lectures at (UK) level 4 and above.

They don't expect mastery of subjects, and they don't issue degrees. It's the OG TED Talk.

But if my fake diploma says it's from Gresham College, London... that sounds pretty fancy.

For someone who delivers lectures, your reading comprehension seems a little patchy.

Or maybe you are just knee-jerk defensive about an organization dispensing knowledge for free since that’s your livelihood?