Harvard Science Book Talk: Daniel Lieberman, "Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding"

Date: 

Tuesday, January 5, 2021, 7:00pm

Where Online: https://www.harvard.com/event/virtual_event_daniel_lieberman/
Organization/Sponsor Harvard Division of Science, Cabot Science Library, and Harvard Book Store, in partnership with the Leakey Foundation
Speaker(s) Daniel Lieberman (Harvard)     
Cost free
Contact Info science_lectures@fas.harvard.edu

Daniel Lieberman, professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University, a pioneering researcher on the evolution of human physical activity, and the acclaimed author of The Story of the Human Body, will present his new book, Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding.

Does running ruin your knees? Should we do weights, cardio, or high-intensity training? If exercise is good for you, why do many people dislike or avoid it? Exercised tells the story of how humans never evolved to exercise—to do voluntary physical activity for the sake of health. Using his own research and experiences throughout the world, Lieberman recounts without jargon how and why humans evolved to walk, run, dig, and do other necessary and rewarding physical activities while avoiding needless exertion. Drawing on insights from evolutionary biology and anthropology, he suggests how we can make exercise more enjoyable, rather than shaming and blaming people for avoiding it. He also tackles the ques­tion of whether you can exercise too much, even as he explains why exercise can reduce our vul­nerability to the diseases mostly likely to make us sick and kill us.

Daniel Lieberman portrait and book cover

Leakey Foundation's logo
The Leakey Foundation is a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco that advances human origins research and offers educational opportunities to cultivate a deeper, collective understanding of what it means to be human. The Foundation’s mission is to increase scientific knowledge, education, and public understanding of human origins, evolution, behavior, and survival.