If you like this, do yourself a favor and go watch the entire Human Behavioral Biology course from Standford, it's also taught by Sapolsky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA
What I think makes the course so good is that it gives you a brief but solid introduction to many different fields:
I often bring up his lecture series as an shining example of how to explain scientific theories with a critical qualifier that almost always is otherwise missing.
He first explains a concept with logically and narrative consistency in order to explain why something occur. Then at the end he goes and demonstrate all the wholes in the theory and through that shine a light at where the narrative fails. It is only after going through multiple different competing theories that the edges start to get defined.
Cannot recommend this more! Seriously. It has been an eye opener to me. For people who loves books over video, he wrote those books where he covers the same topics:
- Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
- Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping
I read "Behave" and IIRC it covers around 80-90% of the lectures, moreover on the book you will find a couple of appendixes to refresh the reader on the basics of Biology and Neurology to better understand certain sections. I think that the lectures are a bit more entertaining than the book, but I found it more easy to follow than the lessons.
Seconded. I've only watched the first five or so, but they are absolutely worth it. They changed a lot about how I think through certain situations and have proven their worth many times.
Great lectures. He even manages to cover chaos theory. Philosophy students should look into this series for some biology orientation, in my humble opinion.
The lectures are good, the LECTURER is galaxy class. Everyone regardless of discipline should watch the lectures for their metacognitive qualities alone.
Sapolsky could literally give a lecture on shit and I'd be at the bus stop, someone would mention just a sliver of a lead and I'd intergect with, "I just saw this amazing lecture on shit by Sapolsky ..." to a complete stranger.
What I think makes the course so good is that it gives you a brief but solid introduction to many different fields:
And then combines all of those to try to make sense of human behavior, by looking at animal and human behavior from all these different lenses.