| 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 twenty-one, he made it to Africa and joined a troop of
baboons. Although the life of a naturalist appealed to him because
it was a chance to “get the hell out of Brooklyn,”
he never really left people behind.
In fact, he chose to live with the baboons
because they are perfect for learning about stress and stress-related
diseases in humans. Like their human cousins, baboons live in
large, complex social groups and have lots of time, Dr. Sapolsky
writes, “to devote to being rotten to each other.”
Just like stressed-out people, stressed-out baboons have high
blood pressure, high cholesterol, and hardened arteries. And
just like people, baboons are good material for stories. His
gift for storytelling led The New York Times to suggest,
“If you crossed Jane Goodall with a borscht-belt comedian,
she might have written a book like A
Primate’s Memoir,” Dr. Sapolsky’s account
of his early years as a field biologist.
The uniqueness of Sapolsky’s perspective
on the human condition comes from the ease with which he combines
his insights from the field with his findings as a neuroscientist.
For more than twenty-five years, Sapolsky has divided his time
between field work with baboons and highly technical neurological
research in the laboratory. As a result, he can effortlessly
move from a discussion of pecking orders in primate societies
(human and baboon) to an explanation of how neurotransmitters
work during stress—and get laughs doing it.
The problem for people, as Dr. Sapolsky
explains in his book Why
Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, is that our bodies’
stress response evolved to help us get out of short-term physical
emergencies—if a lion is chasing you, you run. But such
reactions, he points out, compromise long-term physical health
in favor of immediate self-preservation. Unfortunately, when
confronted with purely psychological stressors, such as troubleshooting
the fax machine, modern humans turn on the same stress response.
“If you turn it on for too long,” notes Sapolsky,
“you get sick.” Sapolsky regards this sobering news
with characteristic good humor, finding hope in “our own
capacity to prevent some of these problems…in the
small steps with which we live our everyday lives.”
The humor and humanity he brings to sometimes-sobering
subject matter make Dr. Sapolsky a fascinating speaker. He lectures
widely on topics as diverse as stress and stress-related diseases,
baboons, the biology of our individuality, the biology of religious
belief, the biology of memory, schizophrenia, depression, aggression,
and Alzheimer’s disease.
Dr. Sapolsky is a MacArthur
“Genius” Fellow, a professor of biology and neurology
at Stanford University, and a research associate with the Institute
of Primate Research at the National Museum of Kenya. In addition
to A Primate’s Memoir, which won the 2001 Bay Area
Book Reviewers Award in nonfiction, Robert Sapolsky has written
three other books, The
Trouble with Testosterone, Why
Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, and Monkeyluv
and Other Essays on our Lives as Animals. His articles
have appeared in publications such as Discover and The
New Yorker.
•••
“One of the finest
natural history writers around.”
— The New York
Times
“Dr. Sapolsky
was everything you promised and more. I have been to a number
of fine events involving distinguished science writers, but
I don’t believe I have ever seen a speaker better able
to connect with his audience.”
— Butler University
“Robert Sapolsky
is one of the best scientist-writers of our time, able to deal
with the weightiest topics both authoritatively and wittily,
with so light a touch they become accessible to all.”
— Dr. Oliver
Sacks |
