Help me learn new things! – The Recap

I wrote this back in 2010:

A couple of years ago, I was reading a biography of Albert Einstein.  I was struck by how much he, and scientists like him, we versed in philosophy.  I realized it was one of the areas in which my education was deficient.

This seemed like a big hole, especially given the rhetoric being flung around about health care reform.  People cited the values of our founders, those of America, and how they would feel about reform.  I realized I knew shockingly little about this.  I did what I usually do in that situation – I took a whole pile of books and spent many summer evenings reading in my backyard with a glass of scotch.  My wife is still making fun of me.

That summer led to this post. It also led to this paper. And then years passed.

I like learning new things. I think it’s important. It keeps me fresh. It makes me a better person. I decided, last December, that I wanted to dedicate a significant amount of time this year to learning more about topics I knew little about. I asked for your help in picking them, and in suggesting things I should read or watch. Each month, I wrote up what I learned, and reviewed the materials.

I only missed two months, which isn’t that bad considering I still had a full-time job, wrote 30 or so columns for the NYT, made a hundred videos for Healthcare Triage, wrote a handful of times for the JAMA Forum, and two dozen more for the AcademyHealth blog. Not to mention blogging for TIE. Oh, and I wrote a book.

The individual posts are still available from both The Schedule and here. I wanted to collect all of the sources together in one place, though. The bolded green entries are those I especially recommended. When I look at the list altogether, I can’t believe I managed to get it done. I’m pretty proud of this.

January – History of water and growth in So Cal (and maybe elsewhere)

February – Wine

March – Game Theory

April – Cryptography

May – Art History

June – The history of railroads in the US

July – Oceanography

August – Football (strategy and theory)

September/October – Chaos Theory

November – Linguistics

I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. I think I might try something else in 2017. More on that to come.

@aaronecarroll

Aaron Carroll

Aaron E. Carroll, MD, MS is co-Editor-in-Chief of The Incidental Economist and tweets at @aaronecarroll. He is the Chief Health Officer at Indiana University. He is also a Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics and Associate Dean for Research Mentoring at the Indiana University School of Medicine. In addition to contributing regularly to The New York Times and the Atlantic, he is the author of four books, most recently The Bad Food Bible.

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Aaron Carroll

Aaron E. Carroll, MD, MS is co-Editor-in-Chief of The Incidental Economist and tweets at @aaronecarroll. He is the Chief Health Officer at Indiana University. He is also a Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics and Associate Dean for Research Mentoring at the Indiana University School of Medicine. In addition to contributing regularly to The New York Times and the Atlantic, he is the author of four books, most recently The Bad Food Bible.

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