Think Forum: Robert Sapolsky (2017): About

The Kelvin Smith Library provides the campus community with access to world-class research collections, technology-equipped classrooms and meeting spaces, state-of-the-art digital resources, and even a café. In support of the Think Forum lecture series, the library offers a selection of resources accessible in this “research guide.”

As a boy in New York City, Robert Sapolsky dreamed of living inside the African dioramas in the Museum of Natural History. By age 21, he made it to Africa and joined a troop of baboons to learn about stress and stress-related diseases in humans—because, like stressed-out people, stressed-out baboons have high blood pressure, high cholesterol and hardened arteries.

And like people, baboons are good material for stories. Sapolsky’s 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,” Sapolsky’s account of his early years as a field biologist.

Sapolsky’s recently published book, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (2017), explores the question of why humans are the way we are, and relates to the subject of his talk, “The Biology of Good and Evil.”

These guides were created to support the previous Town Hall series and the current Think Forum Lecture Series. They are listed in the order of newest first.