Laurel Braitman is a science writer, the author of Animal Madness: Inside Their Minds, and the founder of Writing Medicine. Her new book is What Looks Like Bravery: An Epic Journey Through Loss to Love.

“My life was becoming unmanageable, in a way. I was using success in many ways like a drug, and I’d say like an analgesic on the sorts of difficult feelings I hadn’t wanted to face truly since childhood. And we are rewarded in this culture for these kinds of outward forms of success that often have nothing to do with what’s going on inside of you.”

Show notes:

• @LaurelBraitman
• laurelbraitman.com
• 01:00 Pop-Up Magazine
• 01:00 Animal Madness (Simon & Schuester • 2015)
• 05:00 “The Strange Tale of Echo, the Parrot Who Saw Too Much” (Atlas Obscura • March 2016)
• 07:00 Braitman’sTED archive
• 11:00 “Birds & Bees” (Ira Glass • This American Life • May 2015)
• 32:00 “Duck Syndrome” (Arifeen Rahman • KQED • July 2019)
• 40:00 Dear Sugar archive

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