Harvard & UCLA Professor Barbara Horowitz on what the study of animals can teach us about human health and disease

My guest today is one sharp cookie. Barbara Horowitz is a Cardiologist and Professor at UCLA, Professor of Medicine at Harvard and Professor of Evolultionary Biology at Harvard. She’s also a trained Psychiatrist for good measure 

Today we discuss her recent focus on species-wide patterns in development in critical periods of life and her books Zoobiquity & Wildhood.  We explore what we can learn from human health and disease from the study of animals, and it’s a fascinating conversation.

Here is the link to Barbara's website and you can also click here for her Zoobiquty book and here for her new book Wildwood - both are co-written with Kathryn Bowers.

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Start:  How Barbara went from Cardiologist to studying animals

5:40 -  The blindfold of human exceptionalism

10:26 -  A fascinating whistle-stop tour of evolution (a must-listen!)

14:57 -  What studying animals can teach us about diseases in humans

26:42 -  Mental health conditions in animals

33:34 -  Implications of co-evolved fear circuitry in animals and  humans 

38:27 -  The complex biology of stress and inflammation

44:45 -  The value of testable hypothesis in evolutionary adaptation

49:30 -  Teenagers, risk-taking, impulsivity & peer influences in animals & humans

59:27 -  Evolutionary trade-offs in chronic disease

1:09:19 -  Barbara's new book Wildhood release of our first public courseHere's the highlights of the show:   

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