TELEVISION

Being Human: Life Lessons from the Frontiers of Science

Series: Great Courses
4.6
(31)
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Episodes
12
Rating
TVPG
Year
2012
Language
English
Publisher
The Great Courses

About

Why do we have bad moods? Why do we long for the foods, fashions, and music of our youths? Why do we have vivid dreams? Understanding our humanity is one of the deepest mysteries in science. But fields including biology, neuroscience, anthropology, psychology, and sociology are starting to reveal more about the mechanisms of human behavior-and just how intriguing the human species truly is.

Related Subjects

Episodes

1 to 3 of 12

1. What's So Special about Being Human?

30m

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Humans are, from an evolutionary perspective, certainly the most unique species on Earth. Start the course by learning how to approach the subject of human behavior. You may be surprised to discover that there are plenty of ways in which we have the same behavioral aspects as other animals: and also behaviors for which there is no precedent in the animal kingdom.

2. Junk-Food Monkeys

30m

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What happens when nonhuman primates get to eat like Westernized humans? And what does it say about the costs: and surprising benefits: of our diets? Find out the answers in this episode, which focuses on a fascinating study of East African baboons who abandoned their natural diet to gorge on garbage from a local tourist lodge.

3. The Burden of Being Burden-Free

30m

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Investigate the latest anthropological and scientific understanding behind a pervasive part of our everyday lives: stress. You'll discover what makes psychological stress so damaging to health, where individual differences in stress come from, the nature of disorders including toxic hostility and clinical depression, and why it's impossible to be completely free of stress.

4. Bugs in the Brain

30m

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Professor Sapolsky introduces you to parasites that exploit their hosts by altering their behavior. After looking at studies, including mites that make ants find food for them and worms that drive crickets to suicide, focus on how rabies and toxoplasmosis can literally change the wiring of the brain in mammals: including humans.

5. Poverty's Remains

30m

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Turn to an intriguing historical case of doctors who, failing to appreciate the impact of poverty on our bodies, invented an imaginary disease whose preventive methods killed thousands of people. It's a peek into an odd corner of medical history that reveals startling lessons about the socioeconomics of medicine.

6. Why Are Dreams Dreamlike?

30m

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Why does your brain generate sensory imagery while you sleep? Here, examine the neurology of sleeping and dreaming. Also, discover how the key to strange dreams lies in your frontal cortex, which, when it goes completely offline, allows the rest of your brain to run wild.

Extended Details

  • Closed CaptionsEnglish