Sapolsky says our body's stress response evolved to help us escape short-term physical emergencies: If a lion chases you, you run. But such reactions, he points out, compromise long-term physical health in favor of immediate self-preservation. Unfortunately, when faced with purely psychological stressors, like troubleshooting the fax machine, modern humans respond to stress in the same way. /"If you turn it on too long/," Sapolsky notes, /"you get sick./" Sapolsky regards this sobering news with his characteristic good humor, finding hope in /"our own capacity to prevent some of these problems in the small steps with which we live our daily lives./"
This talk was recorded on September 22, 2016 at the Colwell Playhouse at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts as part of Pygmalion TechFest.
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