91.5 Chapel Hill 88.9 Manteo 90.9 Rocky Mount 91.1 Welcome 91.9 Fayetteville 90.5 Buxton 94.1 Lumberton 99.9 Southern Pines 89.9 Chadbourn

What Does Animal Madness Teach Us About Our Own?

Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 audio

Part 4 of the TED Radio Hour episode Animals And Us.

About Laurel Braitman's TED Talk

From compulsive bears to self-destructive rats, science historian Laurel Braitman studies animals with mental health issues and asks what we can learn from them.

About Laurel Braitman

Laurel Braitman is a science historian who wants to know: Why is your cat so sad? For her book Animal Madness, she delves into the history of mental illness in animals, revealing a world of parrots that pluck themselves, cats with PTSD and donkeys with deep neuroses. Braitman holds a Ph.D in history and anthropology of science from MIT and works as an affiliate artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
NPR/TED Staff
Stories From This Author
  1. Joy Buolamwini: How Do Biased Algorithms Damage Marginalized Communities?
  2. Colette Pichon Battle: How Can We Prepare For The Next Hurricane Katrina?
  3. Brent Leggs: How Can Seeing Black History As American History Begin To Make Amends?