I took Aliens Psychics and Ghosts with Shorter and it was one of the coolest classes I've ever taken at UCLA. His lectures are interesting and the subject material (as you can imagine) is interesting/freaky/thought provoking. Shorter is a very engaging character who will keep you awake the entire time (guaranteed). Lectures are a combo of discussion of the reading, lecturing, and video/audio clips. There was a lot of reading that you'll have to do to take a lot out of this class, but it is worthwhile. It makes you want to keep reading. There were some short reading pop quizzes. The class focused upon a final research paper that counts for both a midterm and a final. He is a major stickler for writing, but I assure that you will end up writing one of the best research papers of your UCLA career. Anyhow, if you want to challenge yourself to learn about something you probably haven't thought about much, definitely take Shorter's class.