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The therapeutic benefits of gnawing on wood, beating the crap out of somebody...and having friends

Sunday, July 01, 2007

Stress can make fairy tales turn to nightmares, and it can make an enemy of your own body. Producer Ellen Horne speaks with Linda Thompson, famous folk singer whose voice one day flew away. Thompson describes her rare condition, called Hysterical Dysphonia, and how she overcame her body's silence. Dr. Robert Sapolsky explains why certain rats get ulcers and others don't - coping mechanisms that work for humans too. Finally we learn that nice guys can finish first - in the baboon world that is. Alpha male baboons fight for years to maintain their social rank, all to get the girl. It's a stressful existence, to be sure, especially when the day finally comes that they get knocked off their pedestal by some young upstart and fall to the bottom of the ladder. Cruel cruel world. But here's the silver lining: researchers have discovered that some females, rather then sitting patiently in ringside seats, get bored with all the fighting and mate with – you guessed it - the nice guy sitting on the bench.

Learn more about Dysphonia
Linda Thompson’s Fashionably Late
Dr. Robert Sapolsky’s book: A Primate's Memoir


Comments

  • [1] Christopher Deignan from Middle Village February 18, 2008 - 11:43AM

    Don't get me wrong guys, I'm a huge Brian Lehrer and Leonard Lopate fan but please, I beg you, ditch Radio Lab. It truly is the worst in wooly minded, touchy feely, liberalesque, borderline pointless, soft in the middle, la, la, la, la, edgeless, oral twinkie radio.

    Thanks for WNYC, it makes my work day tolerable,

    God bless.


  • [2] Allan Chu from Rego Park March 19, 2008 - 04:34PM

    Totally disagree with Christopher here. Radiolab educates in an entertaining way. thanks to WNYC for producing this show!


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