ipod lecture circuit los angeles times

The iPod lecture circuit - Los Angeles Times

Cool... See the full article for more details

Baxter Wood is one of Hubert Dreyfus' most devoted students. During

lectures on existentialism, Wood hangs on every word, savoring the

moments when the 78-year-old philosophy professor pauses to

consider a student's comment or relay how a meaning-of-life

question had him up at 2 a.m.

But Wood is not sitting in a lecture hall on the UC Berkeley

campus, nor has he met Dreyfus. He is in the cab of his 18-wheel

big rig, hauling dog food from Ohio to the West Coast or

flat-screen TVs from Los Angeles to points east.The 61-year-old

trucker from El Paso eavesdrops on the lectures by downloading them

for free from Apple Inc.'s iTunes store, transferring them to his

Hewlett-Packard digital media player, then piping them through his

cabin's speakers. He hits pause as he approaches cities so he can

focus more on traffic than on what Nietzsche meant when he said God

was dead, then shifts his attention back to the classroom.