Human Behavioral Biology by Robert M. Sapolsky

Human Behavioral Biology Reviews

• 
  Morgan Blackledge

  The greatest college lecturer of all fucking time.
• 
  Murtaza Hasan

  The greatest lecture series of all time!
  
  It could be that this is the most-watched lecture series of all time too. On YouTube, these 25 lectures(~1:30 hours each) have a combined total of around 25 million views, individual lectures are among the most-watched videos on the Stanford channel.
  
  Truly remarkable knowledge.
• 
  JakeR

  Bizarrely, the person who introduced this course to me was my old art teacher (?). Since then I've spent easily over 50 hours obsessing over these lectures (most of those hours were spent rewinding because this guy speaks too fast for human comprehension sometimes). I used to think I was more of a humanities person but this guy decided to convert me to biology at the crux of life choices eleventh grade, but I guess it's better now than never (¿).
  
  With every lecture, Sapolsky tracks the timeline from the occurrence of a behavior back to the hormonal irregularities of the previous day to the testosterone exposure in one's prenatal environment to the various selective pressures that led to evolution. And what the course comes to, is this mechanistic view that all behaviors are the results of an unfathomably complex chain of causes and effects, that there is no free will. Yet the idea is simultaneously profoundly humanist, because it suggests that every sin and every mistake is understandable by a universal system, that we are participating in a fascinatingly complex dance that always contains the possibility of falling into the arms of salvation.
  
  He ended the lecture with this sentence:
  
  "You don’t have to choose between being compassionate and being scientific. So go and do both. And good luck. "
• 
  Cav

  Wow, this one was epic!
  
  Author
  Robert M. Sapolsky is an American neuroendocrinology researcher and author. He is currently a professor of biology, and professor of neurology and neurological sciences and, by courtesy, neurosurgery, at Stanford University.
  
  Robert M. Sapolsky:
  
  
  
  The course consists of 25 lectures, each ~2hrs. It is a videotaping of his course at Stanford University.
  Prof. Sapolsky covers so much ground here. He lectures on neurobiology, neurochemistry and endocrinology, ethology, sexual behaviour, aggressive behaviour, schizophrenia, and many, many others in this course.
  
  This was a huge course, in terms of both its scope and breadth. I thoroughly enjoyed every lecture. Sapolsky is such an effective communicator and teacher. He is the perfect example of what profs should strive for; covering complicated material in an interesting, engaging, and effective way. He is an excellent lecturer and speaker. Rarely do you see him even look at his notes, and he never peppers his thoughts with "uh's" and ah's." He knows his course material inside and out. He is an excellent teacher and communicator.
  
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  For those interested in behavioural biology, I can't recommend this course enough. The only negative I would add in my review is that the videotaping left a bit to be desired; namely the camera is very shaky, and moves around a lot, and the editor has a nasty habit of cutting him off mid-sentence (and thought) at the end of almost every lecture. But considering that this is a free lecture series posted for anyone on You Tube, you can't be too upset...
  5 stars.
• 
  Aman Upadhyay

  Extremely highly recommended!
• 
  Dasha

  I think everyone should know about this.
• 
  Ahmad Hossam

  "The purpose of science is not to cure us of our sense of mystery and wonder, but to constantly reinvent and reinvigorate it." -Robert Sapolski
  
  In teaching, more than many other professions, the notion that "the medium is the message" rings most true. Everyone who has ever been in a class knows that it matters little "what you teach" compared to "how you teach it". More importantly, it is how you teach that speaks for who you are.
  
  Having watched these 30-40 hours of advanced biology lectures when they are nowhere remotely near to my own field of specialty, what kept me hooked was Sapolski himself. This utter awe at what a competent lecturer looks like, even if you can't grasp a lot of the small details.
  
  The well-researched content, the elegance of simplifying and providing examples, the constant focus on what is essential rather than the minutiae, the humor (way more than jokes, it's the sense that the guy is having great fun), the open-mindedness, the awareness of how complex life is and how similar we all are, the genuine care for students, and having a genuine, unshakable sense of wonder. It's all there, and that doesn't even begin to describe it. I have only seen a handful of lecturers of this calibre.
  
  In the first lecture, Sapolski boldly claims that everyone should take this subject at gunpoint.
  
  So, should everyone learn human behavioral biology at gunpoint? Eh, not really.
  Should everyone watch Human Behavioral Biology by Robert Sapolski at gunpoint? Absolutely!
• 
  Ihsan Mahbub

  Mind melting stuff. Professor Sapolsky explains human behaviour biology starting from a neuro chemistry evolutionary perspective and moves into a more macro lens of socio-political settings, environmental factors and controversially parallelism between religion and mental illness. Basically he explains how the human brain functions or more aptly how much of it we can explain.
• 
  Indy Reads

  I truly love him so much… his lectures were so fascinating, the way he connects with people is brilliant and his sense of humour combined with his neuro knowledge is just perfect!!! I will start reading his book next week!
• 
  Gabriel

  Very interesting lecture. See all the other reviews for the pros. However, be weary that many of the studies presented have failed to be replicated, or have been replicated but with weaker results.
  
  I will give one example. In one lecture Sapolsky mentions the "Stanford marshmallow experiment". This experiment suggests that children that cannot contain themselves from eating a marshmallow for a set amount of minutes tend to do worse in life. This study has been recently debunked.
  
  Like that study there are many others, too many to list. This is what is called the replication crisis and is an on-going problem in experimental science and psychology.
• 
  Trung Nguyen Dang

  It's fantastic. The course material is good but the best thing is the professor is so enthusiastic and so good at telling stories. He's very funny and capitvating.
  Despite it's 36 hours, listening at 1.5x, it took me only a few days. Really cannot wait to listening to it when I have the free time.
  The author has become one of my fav authors now. I look forward to reading his other books.
• 
  Tonko Carić

  I was surprised seeing this on Goodreads since this is a 25+ hour video lecture. It is a fantastic lecture, at times a bit complex and hard to grasp considering my background, but Sapolsky excels at presenting hard science facts to a layman terms without losing too much information. Fantastic lecturer, I want to meet him not to shake his hand but to give him a hug.
• 
  Stephanie

  I frequently run this lecture series in the background. This series gets highest recommendations from me. I am always amazed and grateful that I live in an age where Stanford makes this available free on YT and I can access it at any time. I absolutely love Sapolsky, he is one of the best lecturers out there.
• 
  Julie Bowen

  Incredibly informative. I learned a massive amount that complements all of the reading I've done in social psychology (and history and anthropology). What I particularly appreciated was how he covered the benefits and limits to different approaches of research. Sapolsky is a wonderful teacher and communicator.
• 
  Kirina van der Bijl

  Loved it
• 
  Zineb El Malki

  An excellent course.
• 
  Hridya Rao

  My favorite neuro primer.
• 
  Uliana

  Watched it for the second time and I think the most accurate rating would be 7/5.
• 
  Loredana

  Just the best!!
  How he explaines everything and the examples gives. He is just extraordinary
• 
  Pham Giang

  He is the best stand up comedian I have ever watched.
  The course is really interesting and informative.
• 
  Franta

  Amazing lecturer, important content.
• 
  Ozlem

  Easy entry into science of what, how and why "we" are. I didn't want the youtube lectures to end...