The School Of Life

“It’s smart and you’ll learn a lot of things about the world,” a friend of mine said when she recommended The School of Life to me. She also said that she prefers watching these videos instead of studying the endless number of pages professors give them at Psychology university.

Don’t get discouraged by the “how to” wording, because it’s not tips & tricks that you’ll find in the videos. Whether they’re talking about shyness, suicide, rejection, flirting, self-esteem, Machiavelli, or the reasons work is boring, The School of Life explains how these concepts came into being and what they mean to us. They put the topics into context and offer multiple perspectives from which we can look at the same thing. Each episode is both an overview of the chosen topic, and a focus on how people are affected by it.

In “Why Is Work So Boring?”, for example, the video starts by describing how we related to work as children, how, in adulthood, we are pressured to specialize. Then we are walked through how the economic system works, Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” and Karl Marx’s approach on work. In the end, we’re left with a thorough understanding of work and its implications, and maybe there’s a chance we stop beating ourselves up for not doing enough.

Last, but definitely not least, the animation is a work of art. I dare you to start a video and then try to check your Facebook or Instagram accounts, while just listening. You can’t. The animation is so good that it keeps you glued to the screen.