Human-Animal Relationships

Karen Fine talks about practicing Chinese medicine and acupuncture on sick pets, what "ADR" stands for, and the mental health issues many veterinarians face. Her new book is The Other Family Doctor.

Science writer Ed Yong recently won the Carnegie Medal for Excellence for An Immense World, his book about the diversity of perception in the animal world. Originally broadcast June 22, 2022.

What happens when animals become criminals, at least in the eyes of humans….somebody has to deal with bears who menace campsites, Indian elephants that trample crops and kill farmers, and birds that flock in flight paths near airports. Science writer MARY ROACH's new book is Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law.

Essayist and cartoonist Timothy Kreider reflects on the relationships in his life, from past girlfriends to his beloved cat.

Karen Joy Fowler's haunting novel, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, draws on arguments she used to have with her father, a psychology professor, over how closely connected humans and animals are. Fowler is also the author of the 2004 best-seller The Jane Austen Book Club.

Temple Grandin is one of the world's greatest animal behaviorists. She is also autistic — and has put that to work for her. Grandin has written several books on animals, including Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior. This weekend, HBO will premiere a made-for-TV movie based on her life.

Straightforward and kid-friendly, Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo isn't the animation master's most complicated film. But in some ways, the film's simplicity offers a clearer look at the director's greatness. Movie critic David Edelstein explains.

Journalist Charles Siebert and wildlife biologist Dr. Toni Frohoff explain the uncharacteristically friendly behavior of gray whales off the coast of California.

Director Kelly Reichardt's new film, Wendy And Lucy, has been described as the "best art-house girl-and-dog story you're ever going to see." Reichardt joins Fresh Air to discuss her work.

Jon Katz is the author of the book, The New Work of Dogs: Tending to Life, Love, and Family It's about how attached many of us have become to our dogs, treating them more like family members and human surrogates than pets.

His new book is Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind. He’s also the author of The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions, which received the John Burroughs Medal for natural history writing. Quamman is the author of five nonfiction books, and four books of fiction. He’s been honored with the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has written for National Geographic, Outside and Harper’s.

Anthropologist Richard Nelson. His new book, "The Island Within," is an account of Nelson's explorations of an uninhabited island near his Pacific Northwest home.

David Watts continued the gorilla research of Dian Fossey after her 1985 murder. He served as a consultant on the film Gorillas in the Mist, based on Fossey's book of the same name.

Dr. Alan Beck was formerly the director of the Bureau of Animal Affairs in New York, where he helped draft that city's "pooper scooper" law. A similar was recently passed in Philadelphia. Beck currently works at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary School where he heads the Center for Interaction of Animals and Society. He has researched pet/owner relationships and stray dogs and their effect on people, including the homeless. He joins the show to discuss the new law and human-animal relationships.