Robert Sapolsky

Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: Stress, Disease and Coping

Thursday, April 8, 2010, 8 p.m.

Tickets: Free, no ticket required
Location: Finney Chapel (directions)

As a boy in New York City, Robert Sapolsky dreamed of living inside the African dioramas in the Museum of Natural History. By the age of 21, he made it to Africa, studying the behavior of baboons. Now a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University, Dr. Sapolsky has received a MacArthur “genius” grant and considerable acclaim for his research and writing. As he explains in his book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, our bodies’ natural response to psychological stress (our “fight or flight” instincts), can cause disease. With characteristic humor, Sapolsky illuminates the reasons stress and stress-related diseases are so prevalent in our species and the small steps we can take to adapt, as taught by the animal kingdom.

“How many hippos worry about whether Social Security is going to last as long as they will, or what they are going to say on a first date? Viewed from the perspective of the evolution of the animal kingdom, sustained psychological stress is a recent invention.”

Robert Sapolsky, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

 

Select Video: