#21: Bird-Brains, Nature | Robert Sapolsky Father-Offspring Interviews 

Sapolsky is one of the most fascinating people to listen and learn from

I could listen to him for days. Thank for doing this. Thank for all your beautiful work! It has changed my life for the better. ❤

This series is absolutely the best! Thank you, Dad and Offspring!

"Nature is great, but screw it when the mosquitos are coming out" - Sapolsky in the end perfectly described my attitude towards everything after I recognized there's no free will! 😄

It must be cool having such an awesome dad. You wouldn't need a TV... After dinner dad lectures :)

This may be my favorite Sapolsky lecture. I have been watching Corvids my whole life for some unknown reason.

I have a tendency for low moods at times, and following Dr. Sapolski for years, and now these treasured episodes with offspring Sapolski, and your beautiful dogs , just bring joy! Thank you! That’s on a personal/ individual level, but more importantly, I believe your education on humans not having free will is revolutionary, and will in time make our world better ❤

Never I have enough of listening to Dr Sapolsky😍

Your dinner conversations must be really interesting!

Robert Sapolsky the GOAT 😎

Certain music can leave me with a sense of awe and it’s wonderful.

When one speaks of Big Brains, especially amongst primates, Dr. Sapolsky’s brain has got to be YUUUUUGE! 🔥 great episode! 💙

Thank you for these podcasts 🙏 it's fascinating to hear Robert Sapolsky's ideas on these topics

The new setting is 🔥

Thanks for another great video! The discussion about birds and their brains is so fascinating!

Love you guys! Please keep up the chats. Thank you very much for Determined. It was awe inspiring!

Fabulous lecture. I certainly learned a bunch of new information on the constraints that help different brains converge at a similar point. That is fascinating. I also love the change in lecture venue! Keep up the great work!

This was great.. didn’t know any of this lol! Enjoy the vacation.. thank you for thinking of us:)

Another brilliant mini scientific lecture. Thank you.

AWEsone video - as always ! Thank you.

Thank you so much! Love your interviews!❤

the deeper the fractal goes; the more awesome the connective experience;

I adore these two. Dr. Sapolsky is the teacher's teacher!

the water looks so pure

legendary as usual, thank you!!!

Calling someone a 'birdbrain' is actually a compliment.

Your mentioning of the ability of some animals to display self-recognition is very timely. Today I was reading a book written by Frans de Wall, and in this book he wrote about this very topic. A question came up as I was reading through this material, a question that wasn't answered by the information he provided. My question is this: If an animal, upon seeing its reflection in a mirror, realizes that someone has placed a white dot on its forehead, wouldn't this indicate that the animal has seen its reflection before, presumably numerous times, perhaps in the smooth surface of a body of water, so it can then recognize that something new has been added to the image this animal associates as itself? Otherwise if an animal has never seen its reflection before, how can it recognize the white dot as being additive?

Funny, for me. At the start of this fascinating interview I was thinking "where are the mozzies?"....they soon made their entrance! 😊

Love, love, love. Please keep these sessions coming. I took evolutionary biology from dr sapolsky many moons ago. It is hands down my favorite class ever. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom. ❤

Wooaaa I am in awe! Question: is hoarding behavior a type of OCD? What did we recently discover about hoarding?

the best of you Tube

Looks nice. I've spent a disproportunate amount of time in the country, partially grew up in it, seen some awesome sights on the road, etc. and I'd never associate any of those experiences with a sense of, or lack of a sense of entitlement. Entitlement had nothing to do with it. It did make me feel a part of something bigger than myself. Perhaps it's a relative experience. Am curious what's one of your most "awesome" experiences? Enjoy your vacation - thanks for sharing.

thankyou!

Psilocybin and DMT are the only things that elicited awe in me.

Huge fan ever since your stanford series!! In the case of aphantasia(decreased function in parietal/occipital lobes, increased function in anterior cingulate)why does the anterior cingulate increase its function rather than other sensory input-hearing, etc. Thanks, Allan from eastern canada

As I was writing THE JESUS FIASCO (on the ordinary madness of genital cutting) while reading Determined, Robert got a couple of mentions. Available on Amazon.

Love your content. It's so incredibly fascinating. SUGGESTION: For future videos, if you are able I would recommend, rather than having the captions permanently embedded in the video, to give the OPTION of turning them on or off. I find I am able to engage and really LISTEN more fully to you both, when I'm not reading the text of what is being said. Thank you.

The feeling of Awe can also be derived from infantile feelings of omnipotence in which the child believes itself able to project its control into the surroundings but only to find however these doubles of itself turn round to threaten and attack it, so causing dread as counter point to any authentic awe like state simulation through set and setting.

Good morning sir sapolsky Shahid from India

Exceptional synthesis of relevant concepts, of course. Parallel coexistence conglomerations.., like the bringing together of a Philharmonic Orchestra that you then use a digital Fairlight electronic instrument Electron-photon-phonon-Proton emitter-receiver log-antilog synthesizer is a very useful model for Engineers to realize in particular circuit elements, how holographic nucleation occurs, following up on Euler's e-Pi-i 1-0-infinity superposition terminology. Ie the Universe is a self-defining operating principle of relative-timing condensation modulation superposition-quantization, and the incidental Circuitry of coherence-cohesion objectives is self-defining AM-FM Communication In-form-ation, the Mind-Body Manifestation/Measurement Problem.

That’s making a request with the dog, not actual question. Dogs do ask questions tho we just cannot prove it. My dog would be wondering about where I go. They have a tail waging that is a sign of them wondering about an action or something but it all relates to immediate environments. No inference question as far as I can figure

If I was there you wouldn't have to worry. They'd all be on me.

in this summer i am awwwwww struck by mosquitos

Thanks for great episode 🤘. But I got perplexed here about 3% brain weight in humans/primates at 10:48. Sources give us 2% 🤔 Adult human brains have averages around 1.3 kg for males and 1.2 kg for females. Body weights averaged around the globe round 70 kg and 60 kg. That gives 1.8-2%. For chimps ratio even less than 1%. What's correct?

I wonder what direction human evolution might take once our own tech has begun to influence us more than natural selection.

I’ve long wondered why discussions about intelligence and brain size reference the brain size relative to body size rather than the absolute brain size. Can anyone reading this explain that?

OMG SHOES!! 🤭

Mosquitoes find me irresistible.

Well, you know, the transience of constituent atoms, molecules, and any component, is greater than you may believe. isotope and related sudies show that, just as your intestinal epithelia arise from their stem cells, migrate up villi and are shed by about 3 days, so so every mineral and other constituents of your bones. 11 years is the apparent median during which the MOST persistent part of your body, your femur, changes constituents completely. Meanwhile VERY important atoms are pretty active, with both food and common atmospheric constituents of metabolism really spending a little time as "you" , fo r example, oxygen. you need it, it's grabbed by the iron compound in your platelets, delivered, is used in various funcitios, with SOME being linked to carbon, SOME being linked to hydrogen (macronutrients are C, H, and O, and N, and these atoms are making so many temporary associations that it is futile even to attempt listing), and much carbon from food, ending up as CO2, which itself induces your brain to become desperate to reduce and therefore exhale. So, here we are among the massive redwoods, who undergo a different metabolism, excreting oxygen from photosynthesis, et cetera, even though also excreting CO2 by respiration. You get the recognition that what we exhale, is used to make part of their huge bodies - we actually feed them. and they actually feed us, as we pass, laboring upwards, or witness them in awe. (i bicycle among them, realizing that I am passing food to them by merely breathing heavily) H2O goes here and there, sometimes maintaining its bonds, from snow to sea, and sometimes becoming part of the immense phytoplankton, but either way, traveling. evaporation, fish, come around, and we tiny beings watch it fall, thundering noisily, round and round. So. You get not only hormonal jolts of awe, also transient, passing. Every scale you imagine is atoms, eagerly moving about.You are composed of different things in microseconds or less, but not completely. Though your femur , never having reached puberty, is you, and NOT you.

I noticed in my 30's that the awe would turn to meh quicker and quicker, so that even one of the most spectacular places in Australia that I came to live in recently, left me underwhelmed, and I realised I have reached the age of meh, in my 50's.

Is Robert Still a professor?

Why does Mr. Sapolsky have gray hair on his beard and beautiful brown hair?

Algorithm

spirituality, religion and the ineffable? to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever discussed the limits of what might awe someone. right from the start he makes a statement that awe is traditionally from… , but without any supporting evidence. he simply moves forward as if it’s true, which is a style of argument that depends entirely upon you believing whatever he says. weak. btw, the answer to your question, why is nature awesome? it’s because everything in nature is so close to perfect for it’s environment that we are left in awe, especially since we are so poorly suited to survive without our tools. it’s not that hard to understand. but people who think that religion is anything other than organized delusion will believe just about anything.

Question… Why is it so difficult, for a LOT of people, to have an open mind? Think working class MAGA types. Why do they refute common sense? Cognitive dissonance? Is there a way to reach them? I’ve been completely unsuccessful.

These are some great insights, the bird brings me awe. I got goose bumps the other day when I was contemplating bird intelligence, they truly are advanced animals. Awe really is the function of (sensing differentials between objects that were previously hidden or missed [observation of new differentials within a system]) it's the apes scientific compass for observation and realization of new dynamics.