Ted Audio Collective.

Are you curious about the hidden side of everything that I have the podcast for you?

I'm Stephen Dubner, host of Freakonomics Radio.

Every week we hear from some of the world's most fascinating scholars and thinkers

as we tackle a variety of topics like why the best employees can make the worst bosses,

why the banana is the most interesting fruit in the world,

and why we dread air travel even though it's a miracle.

Go ahead, listen to Freakonomics Radio wherever you get your podcast.

Hey everyone, it's Adam Graham. Welcome back to Rethinking, my podcast on the Science of What Makes us Take.

I'm an organizational psychologist and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people

to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking.

My guest today is Justin Greg, an expert on animal cognition and behavior and a star science writer.

He did his doctorate on dolphin social intelligence and asked delightfully big and bold questions about whether

we're really smarter than animals.

Justin teaches a course on animal minds, voices characters in animated movies, and hosts the dolphin pod.

I loved his book If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal.

What Animal Intelligence reveals about human stupidity?

Let me start by asking how did you get interested in studying animals?

I was always interested in animals. My whole life, my mom worked for the Humane Society as it my grandmother,

and so we always had animals in our lives.

But when I went to university, I ended up studying linguistics.

I wasn't that good at science, like I wasn't good at math.

...