One of the high points during research for “How to Make Democracy Work” was coming across the work of Robert Sapolsky.

Robert Sapolsky is a Stanford neuroscientist and primatologist. In Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, Sapolsky works through how a stress response that evolved for fast, fight-or-flight situations on the savannah continuously wears on our bodies and brains in modern life.

You can hear Ezra Klein interview Sapolsky, where they discuss  how poverty and stress exist in a doom loop together, each amplifying the other’s effects on the brain and body, deepening their harms.