I will happily answer your questions when I can get a chance — by email or otherwise.
I would love to give these topics justice, which is simply not achievable in a one hour talk.
Workingmouse offers 2 — 3 day hands-on workshop sessions that cover these topics and more in thorough detail. In particular, we go deeper into answering why this foreign mumbo-jumbo is important.
The training sessions cover language basics all the way to advanced high-level programming concepts, primarily using Scala or Haskell.
To talk to myself or Brad Clow if you are interested in becoming a better and highly proficient software developer training@workingmouse.com.
Most people have had an "aha! moment" on day 2 or 3 and have started rewriting all their legacy Java using Scala.
Who wants to know what a monad is and why it matters?
These slides are available on the Workingmouse Wiki http://wiki.workingmouse.com/.