1. Introduction to Human Behavioral Biology

Stanford · 20.6M views · 2011-02-01 · 57:15

Open on YouTube ↗

If playback is restricted in your region, try opening the original video. Use Mark watched to add it to your marked videos.

Overview

The opening lecture of Robert Sapolsky's Stanford course on Human Behavioral Biology, explaining the course premise and how to avoid categorical thinking. It starts a roughly 25-lecture series on how biology, genes, hormones and environment shape behavior.

On Hacker News

One of the most consistently recommended lecture series on HN, praised as fascinating, funny and eye-opening about human behavior across many scales.

Recommended by 15 HN people across 15 months · HN mentions 2012–2026

Topics

University lectures & courses Neuroscience & the brain Psychology & human behavior

What people said

culi · 2023-04 · Strong recommendation
for anyone unaware, this is a book by Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky: [LINK] The book is about stress and the impact of glucocorticoids on the body. The chemical stress response used in "the wild" by animals is actually the same as the stress response we have when worrying about losing our job, not being able to complete a paper for school, dealing with poverty, etc. It's a partial explanation for why modern humans have so many chronic diseases that are rarely seen in other animals (or even archeological/anthropological evidence of non-industrial societies but he doesn't really go there much in the book) I also highly recommend Sapolsky's Human Behavior Biology course which he taught for Stanford but published on YouTube: [VIDEO]
Read the original HN comment ↗

nomilk · 2023-01 · Strong recommendation
Bob Sapolsky's Stanford Biology lecture series is... amazing. A rare combination of both extremely important and extremely interesting. If you watch just 3 or 4 minutes, you'll struggle to stop watching. [VIDEO]
Read the original HN comment ↗

jmcqk6 · 2019-03 · Strong recommendation
If people are interested in exploring this topic, I would highly recommend Robert Sapolsky's course "Human Behavioral Biology" from stanford. The lectures are all available on YouTube and I learned so much from them: [VIDEO]
Read the original HN comment ↗

Sources

Video by Stanford, played through YouTube.

HN Library · Source license

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

Views, duration and playback status refresh separately from the published catalog. When an update fails, existing data remains visible.

Selection checks

SaaS & AI candidates: Topic keywords do not match
Editor-approved picks: Editorial review is required

Rule matches identify candidates. They do not guarantee video quality or financial results.

About the library and its sources