Great Courses: Biology of Human Behavior by Robert Sapolsky

In this series of 24 lectures, Dr Sapolsky walks the listeners through many the physiological of human behavior.  He starts with a simple explanation about how a neuron works.  Then he talks about neuro-networks, and the chemicals that function as neuro- transmitters.  He talks about the structure of the brain and which parts have the biggest roles in influencing Human Behavior.  Then he shifts gears and explores several "buckets" or ways that people have approached the study of human behavior, including evolution, environment, heredity and environment. 

Dr. Sapolsky is a very engaging speaker with an obvious enthusiasm for his subject matter.  He has some bias in which theories about human behavior he thinks are worthwhile and which he thinks are ridiculous, but he is always careful to acknowledge his personal bias.  He often refers to diagrams in this lecture, and I stopped the recording a couple of times to look up similar diagrams, like the structure of the brain and the parts of a neuron, but I felt like he described most of his diagrams well enough that I could picture them in my head without actually seeing them.  I found the lecture series very interesting and it answered some of my personal questions about how different systems in the body work.  It was well worth the 12 hour listening time. (2005, 12 hrs)