This week, I'm going to take you down to my basement, so I can show you what happens behind the scenes with some of the best of online learning. We'll also see how a chance lunch with Warren Buffett can be your own inspiration to become the smartest person in the world by using one simple trick. Disruption that means opportunity for those who know how to effectively navigate their way into a life of learning.

Widely admired orator Robert Sobukwe who spoke so eloquently for the cause of liberation of black South Africans from the rule of apartheid was subjected to six years of solitary confinement in the same prison that housed Nelson Mandela on remote Robben Island. If you knit, sew, quilt, do plumbing or carpentry, play games, use your computer or read, for example, research shows you're more likely to have stronger cognitive ability as you age. When some synapses and neurons naturally disappear as part of the aging process, you've got others waiting in the wings that can take over the neural pathways and maintain your mental abilities.

Ronny's a freelance software engineer from Belgium who has completed dozens of MOOCs. Before enrolling in any MOOC, carefully investigate the course outline, prerequisites, syllabus, and suggested weekly workload to make sure you can manage it. You also do want to remember, however, that the more time you devote to active elements of a MOOC, like the discussion forums and projects, the more the material will stick with you.

I was even more surprised to arrive in Cambridge and see the room packed with Harvard and MIT folks, all eager to learn more about the secret sauce behind the making of our MOOC. Yet it had on the order of the same number of students as all of Harvard's dozens of MOOCs put together, made for millions of dollars with hundreds of people. Did you know, for example, that research has shown no teacher education courses have been found to have any effect on the quality of teaching?

As I mentioned earlier, originally I learned everything I needed to know about how to set up a studio and how to edit film by searching things out online. You might be surprised to learn that even top notch MOOC making facilities that I've toured around the world often don't have a full length green screen. But the truth is, a good script allows you to carefully plan a MOOC so there isn't a wasted second, and if you review and edit the writing, you can get rid of most of that yucky academic sound.

Amazingly, even as little as six seconds can allow you to form an effective snap judgement, in part based on emotional micro expressions that are too fast to truly register. Smart teachers, however, realize that metaphor and analogy can help students get an initial grasp of the materials much more quickly. It also provides the mental equivalent of a sort of ledge to temporarily rest on and regain your breath when you're climbing an intellectual mountain.

It's that mentors can help you view the world in a different way, so you can more easily discover and go in the direction you determine is best for you, not to mention that they can have ideas and context that can change your life. Arnim Rodeck, for example, was an electrical engineer who made an enormous career change when he decided to become a creative wood worker, a craft at which he would eventually become world class. For example, in learning experiences as different as acquiring a new language or training a horse, you may interact with a mentor who lives far away from you.

My friend, Jake Taylor is a professional investor who also runs a website called Five Good Questions and online series dedicated to interviewing interesting authors and creating more inspired readers. Back when he was in business school, Jake won a long shot lottery to have lunch with Warren Buffett. The truth is, is that although he and his business partner, Charlie Munger have incredibly high IQs, their real competitive advantage comes from all the books that they read.

We heard last week that the South Korean Go champion was beaten by AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence program based on deep learning that was bio-inspired. An even larger disruption is beginning to affect service industries and professions, as machine learning matures and is applied to many other problems where big data are available. A recent study applied deep learning to a medical database of dermatological images for over 2000 different skin diseases.

We even walked behind the scenes in MOOC making so you could be a better judge of how good online learning is created. Metaphors, humor, and great video editing go a long way to create optimal learning experiences, whether you're studying subjects as different as calculus or bonsai. The online combination of academia with Silicon Valley and a little bit of Hollywood can keep you interested and engaged in ways that regular face-to-face courses have trouble with.

The first is to realize that mindshift, deep changes in life that occur through learning, is something that can be done at any age with any goal in mind. That background and training from the past that might at first seem entirely useless often proves valuable in your new job or field. Sometimes it takes just that one special person, a mentor, to unlock or reframe and reveal the unseen potential.

And then the other part of it was tech related which pulled in different companies a lot in the space and science realm. But probably the best discussion I had was this woman that I spoke to who was the inspiration for Amy Adams' character in the movie Arrival. So when I was talking to this, Amy Adams character, I brought up something that I've always thought was kind of interesting.

What I was thinking is we could use a map or journey through the United States using the more familiar cities as the locations for our memory palace. Next could be Washington D.C. then Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, Buffalo, which is where Niagara Falls is, it's the middle of the country, then Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, L.A. and if we go up little bit, we have San Francisco. So maybe, to make the difference, imagine that nature's God is just like covered in grass and twigs and very treelike.