Zoobiquity: Animals Are More Like Us Than We Think

When physician Barbara Natterson-Horowitz received an urgent call from the Los Angeles Zoo, something remarkable happened. A professor of cardiology at UCLA's medical school, she was summoned to the aid of an ailing emperor tamarin. The experience opened her eyes to an overlooked phenomenon: the tremendous overlap in the care provided by physicians and veterinarians. As it turns out, animals suffer from some of the same maladies as humans—cancer, heart attacks, sexually transmitted diseases, and more—and treatments developed by vets can have direct implications for the ways we combat them in human patients. That's the starting point of "Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About Health and the Science of Healing," the widely hailed book Natterson-Horowitz just cowrote with The Atlantic's editor Kathryn Bowers. Join them for a fascinating conversation that will upend everything you thought about the human-animal divide. Natterson-Horowitz and Bowers are joined in conversation by Re:sound host Gwen Macsai.