Dr. Robert Sapolsky: Baboons, Stress Research, Connection and Determinism

Psychiatry & Psychotherapy Podcast

David J Puder

Science, Health & Fitness, Medicine

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 16 October 2023

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In today’s episode of the podcast, we are joined by neuroscientist and primatologist, Dr. Robert Sapolsky, to discuss his work with baboons, stress, and his own mental health journey. Dr. Sapolsky is professor of biology, neurology, and neuroscience at Stanford University, as well as an author of several books including, A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among the Baboons, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, and Determined. He has spent extensive time studying baboons in Kenya over the course of his career, a passion he attributes to his extensive time spent in the American Natural History Museum in New York. Joining our conversation is Alexander Horwitz, M.D., a 4th-year psychiatry resident who previously enlightened us on serotonin syndrome in an earlier episode.

Transcript

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0:00.0	All right, welcome back to the podcast. I am joined today with Robert Sapolsky. He is a world-renowned neuroscientist,
0:22.5	a primatologist, has written some amazing books, some of which I use in my IOP partial, including
0:29.0	Y. Zeebers have ulcers. He has a new book. It's called Determined. Here we go. And he has a
0:38.1	couple other books that we'll dive into as well. I'm joined with Alex Horowitz. He was on
0:42.7	prior episode on serotonin syndrome. And thanks guys for coming on.
0:48.7	Sure. Thank you for having me. So I was fascinated to learn that you were writing primatologists
0:56.7	when you were at a very young age. I think you said around 12. And I'm curious as an adult,
1:01.3	how you imagined you found this fascination. In the American Museum of Natural History,
1:10.4	a certain my experience, field biologists, majority of them grew up somewhere exotic. Their
1:18.2	parents were missionaries or researchers, who knows what. And then there are those of us who at
1:23.7	some point in our urban setting stumbled into the natural history museum and couldn't believe
1:31.2	that there's another place out there. And in my case, it was the primate exhibit hall at the
1:38.6	museum. And it's something clicked. And I decided I wanted to live inside those dioramas.
1:46.7	It's amazing. And so I imagine, you know, as you went through and you went through, you know,
1:51.6	college and graduate school, and what a huge culture shock that must have been from going from
1:56.7	these like the most prestigious institutions to like Africa being on the field with baboons.
2:02.9	Tell me about that. Well, I think prestige was not so much the issue as when I first started
2:11.4	doing field work a couple of weeks after college out in Kenya. At that point, I had been in the
2:18.9	New York to Boston axis and Philadelphia a couple of times. And that was about it. And I knew
2:26.2	nothing about anything in the world out there. And I probably would have felt just as much of an
2:34.1	alien trying to understand things if I had been plunked down in the middle of Iowa. But it happened
2:39.8	to be this serengeti instead. And, you know, I had no idea what I was doing. Yeah, I didn't want
	...

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