Biology That Makes Us Tick: Free Stanford Course by Robert Sapolsky

in Online Courses, Science, Stanford, Video - Science | March 28th, 2011

First thing you need to know: Before doing any­thing else, you should sim­ply click “play” and start watch­ing the video above. It does­n’t take long for Robert Sapol­sky, one of Stan­ford’s finest teach­ers, to pull you right into his course. Bet­ter to watch him than lis­ten to me.

Sec­ond thing to know: Sapol­sky is a MacArthur Fel­low, a world renowned neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gist, and an adept sci­ence writer best known for his book, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. Much of his research focus­es on the inter­play between the mind and body (how biol­o­gy affects the mind, and the mind, the body), and that rela­tion­ship lies at the heart of this course called “Human Behav­ioral Biol­o­gy.”

Now the third: Human Behav­ioral Biol­o­gy is avail­able on YouTube and iTunes for free. The course, con­sist­ing of 25 videos span­ning 36 hours (watch them all below), is oth­er­wise list­ed in the Biol­o­gy sec­tion of our big list of Free Online cours­es (now 1,700 cours­es in total).

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Athe­ist Stan­ford Biol­o­gist Robert Sapol­sky Explains How Reli­gious Beliefs Reduce Stress

Stanford’s Robert Sapol­sky Demys­ti­fies Depres­sion, Which, Like Dia­betes, Is Root­ed in Biol­o­gy

Robert Sapol­sky Explains the Bio­log­i­cal Basis of Reli­gios­i­ty, and What It Shares in Com­mon with OCD, Schiz­o­phre­nia & Epilep­sy

How Bud­dhism & Neu­ro­science Can Help You Change How Your Mind Works: A New Course by Best­selling Author Robert Wright

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Dopamine Jackpot! Robert Sapolsky on the Science of Pleasure

in Biology, Science, Stanford | March 8th, 2011

Robert Sapol­sky, Pro­fes­sor of Biol­o­gy at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, famous­ly focus­es his research on stress above all else. (Don’t miss his book, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers.) The video above fea­tures Sapol­sky pre­sent­ing the Pritzk­er Lec­ture at the Cal­i­for­nia Acad­e­my of Sci­ences on Feb­ru­ary 15, 2011. The full lec­ture can be seen here. In this excerpt, Sapol­sky amus­ing­ly tells the audi­ence how mon­keys and humans com­mon­ly gen­er­ate the high­est lev­els of dopamine when plea­sure is antic­i­pat­ed, not when plea­sure is actu­al­ly expe­ri­enced. But humans, as opposed to mon­keys, can “keep those dopamine lev­els up for decades and decades wait­ing for the reward.” And for some, Sapol­sky adds, that per­ceived reward lies beyond this life – in the after­life. (Sapol­sky was raised in an ortho­dox Jew­ish fam­i­ly, but is an athe­ist now.) The Stan­ford pro­fes­sor talks about sim­i­lar issues (what sep­a­rates us from pri­mates) in anoth­er cap­ti­vat­ing talk, “What makes us human?”

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Discovering Sherlock Holmes

in Books, History, Literature, Stanford | February 7th, 2011

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first con­ceived of Sher­lock Holmes in 1887, he prob­a­bly did­n’t antic­i­pate that the “con­sult­ing detec­tive” would become the world’s favorite fic­tion­al inves­tiga­tive logi­cian and even­tu­al­ly infil­trate every­thing from aca­d­e­m­ic cur­ric­u­la to Hol­ly­wood. Just last year, the BBC pro­duced a fan­tas­tic three-part mod­ern­iza­tion of the clas­sic, which accord­ing to many crit­ics eclipsed Guy Ritchie’s effects-dri­ven block­buster of the same name, released sev­er­al months ear­li­er.

So mas­sive and wide-reach­ing is the cult of Holmes that Stan­ford ded­i­cat­ed an entire project to the study of Sher­lock Holmes. Dis­cov­er­ing Sher­lock Holmes fea­tures 12 of the great­est sto­ries of the Sher­lock Holmes canon from The Strand Mag­a­zine, where Sher­lock first made his appear­ance, down­load­able as free anno­tat­ed, illus­trat­ed PDF’s. A his­tor­i­cal essay on Holmes’ epoch con­tex­tu­al­izes the sto­ries and fea­tures rare vin­tage art­work by Sid­ney Paget, the orig­i­nal Sher­lock illus­tra­tor.

Note: You can also find The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes in Open Cul­ture’s col­lec­tions of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks. Plus, the Free Movies col­lec­tion hous­es three vin­tage Sher­lock Holmes films — Dressed to Kill (1941), Sher­lock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943) and Ter­ror by Night (1946).

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of cross-dis­ci­pli­nary inter­est­ing­ness. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Mag­a­zine and Desig­nOb­serv­er, and spends a great deal of time on Twit­ter.

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Developing Apps for iPhone & iPad: A Free Stanford Course

in Apple, iPad, iPhone, Stanford | November 26th, 2010

Look­ing to design apps for the iPhone or iPad? Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty now has a course online that will help you do just that.

Sim­ply called Devel­op­ing Apps for iOS, the course fea­tures 20 video lec­tures (the last install­ment was uploaded just this week) and, some­what fit­ting­ly, they’re all avail­able on Apple’s iTune­sU.

Paul Hegar­ty teach­es the course, and he assumes that you have expe­ri­ence pro­gram­ming in C, and some famil­iar­i­ty with UNIX, object-ori­ent­ed pro­gram­ming and graph­i­cal toolk­its.

You can find Devel­op­ing Apps for iOS in the Com­put­er Sci­ence sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es, along with two pre­vi­ous Stan­ford app devel­op­ment cours­es, both called iPhone Appli­ca­tion Devel­op­ment.

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The Stanford Mini Med School: The Complete Collection

in Science, Stanford | July 8th, 2010

Image by King of Hearts, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Through­out the past year, Stanford’s School of Med­i­cine and Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies (my day job) teamed up to offer The Stan­ford Mini Med School. Fea­tur­ing more than thir­ty dis­tin­guished fac­ul­ty, sci­en­tists, and physi­cians, this year­long series of cours­es (three in total) offered stu­dents a dynam­ic intro­duc­tion to the world of human biol­o­gy, health and dis­ease, and the ground­break­ing changes tak­ing place in med­ical research and health care. Now you can watch these lec­tures for free. The fall and win­ter lec­tures (20 lec­tures in total) are com­plete­ly avail­able online. And the spring lec­tures are get­ting rolled out start­ing this week. You can access the full lec­tures series in mul­ti­ple for­mats below:

  • Fall 2009, The Dynam­ics of Human Health — iTunes — YouTube — Web Site
  • Win­ter 2009, Human Health and the Fron­tiers of Sci­ence — iTunes — YouTube — Web Site
  • Spring 2010, Trans­form­ing Our Under­stand­ing of Human Health and Dis­ease — iTunes — Web Site

The entire series also appears in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

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The Stanford Mini Med School: Visit the Web Site

in Science, Stanford | February 18th, 2010

Back in Jan­u­ary, we gave you a heads up about a new course avail­able online: The Stan­ford Mini Med School. Now it’s time for a quick update: the Stan­ford School of Med­i­cine has launched a hand­some web site that con­ve­nient­ly cen­tral­izes the video lec­tures in one place. 10 lec­tures (from the Fall term) now appear. Even­tu­al­ly, anoth­er 20 lec­tures will get post­ed. You can start watch­ing here.

For more cours­es, vis­it this big list of Free Online Cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties.

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The History of the Seemingly Impossible Chinese Typewriter

in History, Stanford, Web/Tech | January 26th, 2010

The Chi­nese lan­guage has tens of thou­sands of char­ac­ters, and many have con­sid­ered it near­ly impos­si­ble to fit these char­ac­ters onto a sin­gle work­able type­writer. But that has­n’t stopped inven­tors from try­ing … and, to a cer­tain degree, suc­ceed­ing. Stan­ford his­to­ri­an Thomas Mul­laney is now writ­ing the first his­to­ry of the Chi­nese type­writer, and he has found evi­dence for numer­ous patents and pro­to­types that incor­po­rate the most com­mon­ly used char­ac­ters. In addi­tion to mak­ing a polit­i­cal impact in Chi­na, these machines have also poten­tial­ly influ­enced inno­va­tions in mod­ern com­put­ing. You can read more about Mul­laney’s work on Stan­ford’s Human Expe­ri­ence web­site, and also watch him dis­cuss his work in this YouTube clip.

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The Stanford Mini Med School: A Free Course Now Online

in Science, Stanford | January 20th, 2010

Image by King of Hearts, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Start­ing this past fall, Stanford’s School of Med­i­cine and Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies (my day job) teamed up to offer The Stan­ford Mini Med School. Fea­tur­ing more than thir­ty dis­tin­guished fac­ul­ty, sci­en­tists, and physi­cians, this year­long series of cours­es (three in total) offers stu­dents a dynam­ic intro­duc­tion to the world of human biol­o­gy, health and dis­ease, and the ground­break­ing changes tak­ing place in med­ical research and health care. 250 life­long learn­ers (like your­self) attend­ed the first course on Stan­ford’s cam­pus this fall. And you can now access it on iTunes. We’ve post­ed the first two lec­tures (in video), and eight more lec­tures will soon be com­ing online. (Update: You can now find the videos on YouTube too.) Below, I’ve added the course descrip­tion for the fall course, and you can also find it list­ed in the Biol­o­gy Sec­tion of our ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. When the win­ter and spring cours­es arrive, I’ll be sure to give you a heads up.

This Fall, the Stan­ford Mini Med School will get start­ed with a jour­ney inside human biol­o­gy. We will start by famil­iar­iz­ing our­selves with the world of very small things. We will take a close look at DNA, stem cells, and microbes, and see how these and oth­er small play­ers form the build­ing blocks of the human body. This will allow us to under­stand how human organs devel­op (and can also regen­er­ate), how our ner­vous and immune sys­tems work, and how dis­eases can afflict us. From there, the course will move beyond the indi­vid­ual and take a more glob­al view of health. How do pan­demics take shape? How does the envi­ron­ment affect our col­lec­tive health? And how can we final­ly imple­ment a health­care sys­tem that makes sense for our nation? Var­i­ous experts from the Stan­ford School of Med­i­cine will address these and oth­er big pic­ture ques­tions dur­ing the first course in the Stan­ford Mini Med School.

For a descrip­tion of the cur­rent Mini Med School course (which we will even­tu­al­ly post online) please

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