On June 13, 2009, Robert Sapolsky, world
renowned professor of neurology, neurological sciences, neurosurgery
and biological sciences gave the class day lecture in association with
commencement weekend 2009. Having been selected to talk by the Stanford
University graduating class, Sapolsky spoke about the uniqueness of
humans in relation to the rest of the animal world. A few of the topics
he spoke on include aggression, theory of mind, the golden rule and
pleasure.
As we’ve evolved, the human stress response has saved our
lives. Today, we turn on the same life-saving physical reaction to cope
with intense, ongoing stressors – and we can’t seem to turn it off.
“Stress: Portrait of a Killer” reveals just how dangerous prolonged
exposure to stress can be.
Stress. In the beginning it saved our lives. It's what made us run from predators and enabled us to take down prey. Today, humans are turning on that same life-saving stress response to cope with 30-year mortgages, four-dollar-a-gallon gas, difficult bosses and traffic jams — and we can't seem to turn it off. As a result, we are constantly marinating in corrosive hormones triggered by the stress response.
Now, scientists are showing just how measurable and dangerous prolonged exposure to stress can be. Stanford University neurobiologist, MacArthur "Genius Grant" recipient and renowned author Robert Sapolsky and National Geographic reveal new answers to why and how stress is killing us in "Killer Stress: A National Geographic Special."
Throughout the film, discoveries occur in an extraordinary range of places: with baboon troops on the plains of East Africa, in office cubes of government bureaucrats in London and in neuroscience labs at the nation's leading research universities. In each location, scientists are discovering how stress works and how lethal it can be. Years of ground-breaking research by multiple scientists are revealing surprising facts about the impact of stress: It can shrink our brains, add fat to our bellies, even unravel our chromosomes. Yet, understanding how stress works can help us figure out ways to combat it and how to live a life free of this present-day plague.
For three decades, Sapolsky has been advancing our understanding of stress, in particular how our social standing can make us more or less susceptible. Along with scientists from the University of North Carolina, the University of London, Rockefeller University and the University of California, San Francisco, Sapolsky is part of a group of cutting-edge researchers whose collective work now gives stress a new relevance.
Throughout the film, Sapolsky weaves the grim reality of the impact of chronic stress with his wry observations about life. Describing one of his most intriguing early findings, he says, "Chronic stress could do something as unsubtle and grotesque as kill some of your brain cells."
"The reality is I am unbelievably stressed and Type A and poorly coping, and why else would I study this stuff 80 hours a week? No doubt everything I advise is going to lose all its credibility if I keel over dead from a heart attack in my early 50s. I am not good at dealing with stress. But one thing that works to my advantage is I love my work, I love every aspect of it," he says.
The film is based partly on Sapolsky's best-selling book "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: Stress Disease and Coping." In addition to his professorship at Stanford, Sapolsky is a research associate with the Institute of Primate Research at the National Museum of Kenya. He is also the author of "A Primate's Memoir" and "The Trouble with Testosterone," a Los Angeles Times Book Award finalist. Sapolsky's work has been published in Science, Lancet and Journal of Neuroscience, and he has contributed articles to Discover, The New Yorker and Men's Health. He lives with his family in San Francisco.
Senior executive producer of "Killer Stress: A National Geographic Special" is John Bredar, and the producer/writer is John Heminway. Executive producer from Stanford University is Randy Bean; co-executive producer is William Free.
Dr. Robert Sapolsky discusses his work as professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and as a research associate with the Institute of Primate Research at the National Museum of Kenya. His enviable gift for storytelling led the New York Times to print, "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. He is sure to dazzle and delight with tales of what it means to be human.
Robert Sapolsky is one of the leading neuroscientists in the world, a research associate with the Institute of Primate Research Museums of Kenya, and a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. At the same time, he has been called "one of the best scientist-writers of our time" by Oliver Sacks and "one of the finest natural history writers around" by The New York Times. Prof. Sapolsky has produced, in addition to numerous scientific papers, books for broader audiences, including A Primate’s Memoir: A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among the Baboons, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: Stress Disease and Coping, and The Trouble with Testosterone. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-631455253507854324
An Updated Guide To Stress, Stress Related Diseases, and Coping
Combining cutting edge research with a healthy dose of humor and practical advice, Sapolsky explains how prolonged stress causes or intensifies mental afflictions.
Dr. Anna Dornhaus, Assistant Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, gave lecture at the College of Science The Edges of Life Lecture Series: "Life's Cognitive Edge: The Role of the Mind and What it Means to be Human." Dr. Dornhaus says " Our human mind distinguishes us from other animal life-or does it? Recent research has revealed culture and social learning, tool use, complex communication, self-recognition, and planning for the future are not unique to the human experience. With these new findings, science is finally getting closer to understanding exactly what makes us human."
This event was digitally recorded and is available for viewing on the Caltech Theater site.
Smell is, together with its cousin taste, probably the least well understood of our senses. Yet smells are the sensations we most vividly associate with memory and emotions. Thanks in great part to recent molecular discoveries, much of the beautifully ordered anatomy of olfactory circuits has recently been solved. Parallel efforts to understand the physiology of olfaction reveal subtle distributed processes, seemingly well adapted to dealing with the complexity of odor signals. Laurent will summarize some of these recent advances and show how these old brain circuits may help us understand the neuronal nature of memories. BiologyDivision -Webcasts CaltechPublicEvents
Eduardo Galeano: "El mundo se divide en indignos e indignados"
The Crime of Ecocide
http://www.pollyhiggins.com/
"... move away from property laws to trusteeship laws, so rather than I own, to I owe. I owe a duty of care to this planet."
12-year old Victoria Grant explains why Canada (her homeland) and most of the world, is in debt.
"How the Media Frames Political Issues" by Scott London
In The Emergence of American Political Issues (1977) McCombs and Shaw state that the most important effect of the mass media is "its ability to mentally order and organize our world for us. In short, the mass media may not be successful in telling us what to think, but they are stunningly successful in telling us what to think about."[13] The presidential observer Theodore White corroborates this conclusion in The Making of a President (1972):
The power of the press in America is a primordial one. It sets the agenda of public discussion; and this sweeping political power is unrestrained by any law. It determines what people will talk and think about - an authority that in other nations is reserved for tyrants, priests, parties and mandarins.[14]
McCombs and Shaw also note that the media's tendency to structure voters' perceptions of political reality in effect constitutes a bias: "to a considerable degree the art of politics in a democracy is the art of determining which issue dimensions are of major interest to the public or can be made salient in order to win public support."[15] http://www.scottlondon.com/reports/frames.html
I am just an anonymous citizen who firmly believes that we are the ones we are always waiting for. No saviors, heroes, leaders, gurus, or superior or inferior, we are all equals, and we need to think and behave as if it matters.
