624. The Animal No One Loves, Until They Do

Summary

Freakonomics Radio Episode 624: "The Animal No One Loves, Until They Do"

Release Date: February 28, 2025
Host: Stephen Dubner
Guests: Jan Pinkova, Julia Zichello, Bethany Brookshire

---

Introduction

In episode 624 of Freakonomics Radio, Stephen Dubner delves into the complex and often misunderstood relationship humans have with rats. Contrary to their widespread negative reputation, this episode explores the nuanced roles rats play in our lives, from beloved pets to invaluable research subjects, and even as unexpected protagonists in popular culture.

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Ratatouille: A Paradigm Shift in Portraying Rats

Guest: Jan Pinkova, co-creator of the animated film Ratatouille

Jan Pinkova provides an in-depth look at how Ratatouille redefines the image of rats in media. The film centers on Remy, a rat with a passion for cooking, who teams up with a human chef, Linguini, to create culinary masterpieces. Pinkova emphasizes that the film serves as an allegory for overcoming prejudice and embracing diversity.

• Notable Quote:
  "[Ratatouille] is an allegory. It's not about rats and cooking, it's about prejudice. It's about overcoming the limitations imposed on you by misrepresentation, by misunderstanding."
  (04:39)

Pinkova discusses the challenges of bringing a rat protagonist to life, highlighting the meticulous research conducted to portray rats authentically and sympathetically. She reflects on the film's success, noting its critical acclaim and massive box office returns as indicators of society's readiness to embrace a different narrative about rats.

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Personal Encounters: Julia Zichello’s Relationship with Rats

Guest: Julia Zichello, Evolutionary Biologist at Hunter College

Julia Zichello shares her personal experiences with both wild and domesticated rats, offering a perspective that bridges scientific understanding and emotional connection. Her story begins with an unexpected encounter when wild rats infested her car, leading to a deeper contemplation of their lives and behaviors.

• Notable Quote:
  "Rats are creatures in the world that have every right to be here."
  (47:26)

Zichello recounts adopting pet rats, Sylvie and Pelle, and how their personalities helped her develop a fondness for them. She contrasts this with the harsh reality of wild rat infestations, suggesting that empathy towards pet rats could foster better relationships and possibly mitigate public antagonism toward wild populations.

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Rats in Scientific Research: Insights from Bethany Brookshire

Guest: Bethany Brookshire, Author of How Humans Create Animal Villains and former scientist at Wake Forest School of Medicine

Bethany Brookshire discusses the pivotal role rats play in biomedical research, outlining their significance compared to mice. She explains the biological and behavioral traits that make rats suitable for certain types of studies, particularly in neuroscience and pharmacology.

• Notable Quote:
  "Rats are much sweeter than mice, by the way. If you're going to have one as a pet, have a rat."
  (25:21)

Brookshire highlights the ethical considerations involved in using rats for research, acknowledging the emotional toll it takes on scientists. She advocates for a more compassionate view of rats, emphasizing their intelligence and social nature, which often goes unrecognized due to cultural biases.

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Cultural Perceptions and Changing Narratives

The episode references research by Kuhn Bohmer from Utrecht University, which explores the diverse representations of rats in 20th-century media. Contrary to their vilified image, many portrayals depict rats in a more complex and sometimes positive light, indicating a shift in societal attitudes.

• Notable Quote:
  "I absolutely think the way we see animals in media can strongly affect our perception. Rats could be something else."
  (26:43)

The conversation underscores the power of storytelling in reshaping perceptions, as seen with Ratatouille. By presenting rats as intelligent and sympathetic characters, the film challenges entrenched stereotypes and encourages audiences to reconsider their views on these often-misunderstood animals.

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Reflections and Conclusions

Jan Pinkova reflects on the broader implications of Ratatouille, hoping it opens doors to more empathetic and diverse representations of animals in media. The episode concludes by affirming the importance of challenging preconceived notions and embracing a more nuanced understanding of rats, both in fiction and reality.

• Notable Quote:
  "Rats are a part of our life that we need to get used to. They are creatures in the world that have every right to be here."
  (47:26)

Stephen Dubner wraps up the episode by encouraging listeners to rethink their relationships with rats, suggesting that appreciation and respect can lead to more harmonious coexistence.

---

Key Takeaways:

1. Ratatouille as an Allegory: The film serves as a metaphor for overcoming societal prejudices and embracing diversity through its rat protagonist.
2. Personal Connections: Individual experiences with rats can significantly influence perceptions, fostering empathy and understanding.
3. Scientific Significance: Rats are invaluable in research due to their biological similarities to humans and their suitability for specific studies.
4. Cultural Shifts: Media representations play a crucial role in shaping societal attitudes towards rats, with potential for positive change.
5. Ethical Considerations: There's a growing recognition of the need for compassionate treatment of rats, whether as pets or research subjects.

---

Credits:
This summary was crafted using the transcript of Freakonomics Radio Episode 624, featuring insights from Jan Pinkova, Julia Zichello, and Bethany Brookshire.

Transcript

[Stephen Dubner]

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[Stephen Dubner]

Are you a chef? Are you a home cook? I can cook, he says reluctantly.

[Jan Pinkova]

I sometimes cook. Well, not always.

[Stephen Dubner]

Do you happen to make a nice ratatouille?

[Jan Pinkova]

Yeah, I've made ratatouille before, but I don't have the skill, taste and feeling to make a great ratatouille. The thing is, it's just a bunch of vegetables, right?

[Stephen Dubner]

Well, yes, but no.

[Jan Pinkova]

Yes, but no. Exactly. And that's the thing. Ratatouille as a theme and a title for the film that was there from the beginning for a number of reasons. First of all, it's about rats. And ratatouille, it tells you it's a comedy because it's a silly word. And ratatouille as the quintessential peasant dish, it's just vegetables. It's stuff that you can find easily if you know how to cook it well. It's beautiful.

[Stephen Dubner]

I'm speaking here with Jan Pinkova.

[Jan Pinkova]

I worked on a couple of the early feature films of Pixar, including A Bug's Life and Monsters, Inc. And Toy Story 2, and I got a break to develop my own feature film.

[Stephen Dubner]

That feature film was Ratatouille. It's about a rat named Remy who lives in a farmhouse in the French countryside and dreams of becoming a chef. You found cheese. And not just any cheese, Tom de chevre de paix. That would go beautifully with my mushroom. But then Remy, his family, and his entire rat tribe are chased into exile, and he winds up in the sewers of Paris. As he explores the city above ground, Remy comes across the legendary Gusteau's Restaurant. The late chef Auguste Gusteau was Remy's hero. His famous book is called Anyone Can Cook. But Remy sees That Gusteau's restaurant is now run by a corrupt, tyrannical chef. And there's a new garbage boy in the kitchen named Linguini.

[Jan Pinkova]

You are cooking.

[Stephen Dubner]

How dare you cook in my kitchen? Linguini does want to cook, but he doesn't have much talent. Remy has talent, but he's a rat. So the two of them become secret collaborators. One look, and I knew we had the same crazy idea. Luigi hides on top of Linguini's head, under his chef's toque, and becomes his puppet master chef. Together, they make beautiful potato leek soup, the perfect French omelet, and a twist on sweetbread's a la gusto. It turns out that Linguini is the son of the great Gusteau. And the secret collaboration between Linguini and Remy turns out to be a big hit, as was the film itself. Ratatouille, released in 2007, won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, and it grossed over half a billion dollars. That made Ratatouille a big outlier in Hollywood. And Remy the Rat was an outlier too. As we've been learning in this series on rats, it is a rare day when a rat is the hero of any story. Since the days of the bubonic plague, rats have been associated with death and disease. To call someone a rat is a special kind of insult. It suggests they've behaved so badly as to be subhuman. But is it time to reassess the rat's reputation? Perhaps even rehabilitate it? Today on Freakonomics Radio, we dissect Ratatouille with Jan Pinkova.

[Jan Pinkova]

In a way, Ratatouille is like ballet dancing with Nazis.

[Stephen Dubner]

We look at why rats have been so valuable to human science, like right.

[Bethany Brookshire]

All the way down to DNA.

[Stephen Dubner]

And we hear a love story.

[Julia Zichello]

Not to say anything negative about the hamsters of the world, but I think it's a different relationship.

[Stephen Dubner]

Come along for this third and final episode in our series, Sympathy for the Rat.

[Bethany Brookshire]

This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host, Stephen Dubner.

[Stephen Dubner]

We humans really love some animals. Two thirds of American households have at least one pet, most of them dogs or cats. We often treat them like members of the family. When we hear about an animal being mistreated or killed, the outcry can be as loud as if it happened to a fellow human, if not louder. And yet, in 2022, when New York City Mayor Eric Adams declared war on rats and appointed a rat czar to get rid of them, there was almost no Outcry. The rat seems to have crossed some invisible border from animal to pest, even menace. But it wasn't always thus the first.

[Julia Zichello]

Rats that were domesticated. They were pets in Victorian England, and they were not thought of as negatively as we think about even pet rats today. So it was revered to have a rat on your shoulder.

[Stephen Dubner]

This is Julia Zichello. She lives on the Upper west side of Manhattan and is an evolutionary biologist at Hunter College. But her rat experience is not just academic.

[Julia Zichello]

During the pandemic, I got a car for the first time because alternate side of the street parking was relaxed. I kept it in one for too long. I also don't really drive that often. So, yes, when I went to start it, it didn't start, and I had to get it towed. And the mechanic told me that there was bedding in there connected with rats and also orange peels.

[Stephen Dubner]

This was in the engine.

[Julia Zichello]

This was in the engine. It was the late fall, early winter, which is just the time that they would be looking for a warm place. I thought it was really funny at first before I got the bill from the mechanic.

[Stephen Dubner]

What did it look like inside the engine?

[Julia Zichello]

The wires were gnawed. You can see shards or pieces of the wire and then the orange peels and some dry leaves and other things that they were using for nesting material.

[Stephen Dubner]

I know that rats are extraordinarily fertile. They have really short gestation. They have a lot of pups. Do you know if maybe your car was also a rat baby hospital as well?

[Julia Zichello]

I don't know, but it may have been, which is, you know, kind of cute.

[Stephen Dubner]

Zichello had never thought deeply about rats until they moved into her car. And even then, her attitude was relaxed. She wasn't strongly anti rat, nor did she find a reason to become pro rat. But soon after the car incident, things changed.

[Julia Zichello]

Yeah, so I inherited rats from a family member who moved to a building that could no longer have pets. The rats were already, I believe, 18 months old. I felt the same way. Most people would feel the, like, oh, no way kind of thing, like, oh, my gosh, they're tails. Everyone's so upset about their tails because they're so gross. But, you know, then I warmed to them over time, eventually, because you're feeding it because it's a little bit lovely, then you end up feeling some warmth towards it.

[Stephen Dubner]

What kind of rats were your pet rats?

[Julia Zichello]

They were two different breeds. One was agouti, and that was sort of silver colored. The other was a hooded rat, which was white with just a little bit of black. On their head and striped down their back.

[Stephen Dubner]

Can I have some names, please?

[Julia Zichello]

One was named Sylvie and the other was Pelle. They were both males.

[Stephen Dubner]

So you didn't have any breeding, obviously.

[Julia Zichello]

Correct. No offspring. You know, they were fun to watch. They were interactive. They eat a lot of different things. We had some fun feeding them the circular corn chips. They would take the corn chip like you would a steering wheel of a car and turn it, turn it around and eat it around the edges. One thing I noticed about the two pet rats is that they. They had different personalities from one another. Sylvie was much more bold and Pelle was much more cryptic. They ate food in different ways. Pelle would take the food and go into this little hidey box and Sylvie would just unabashedly eat the food out there in front of you.

[Stephen Dubner]

Do they vocalize?

[Julia Zichello]

They did not a lot. Technically, rats do vocalize.

[Stephen Dubner]

It was only when they were socializing with each other. Would they vocalize when they were hanging with you?

[Julia Zichello]

Only when we were socializing with each other. They were not super vocal that I heard. And I think there are sounds we can hear.

[Stephen Dubner]

Can you imitate the sounds that you did hear?

[Julia Zichello]

Mm, I don't know about that.

[Stephen Dubner]

Is it like a squeaking kind of thing?

[Julia Zichello]

Yes, very, very light squeaking. Not like long vocalizations. They were not singing. There's been some research showing that rats can laugh when they're tickled. Those are things that you can't hear with the human ear, though. There were special recordings that were showing that.

[Stephen Dubner]

Here's what those special recordings sound like.

[Julia Zichello]

They also were very responsive to all of the sounds in the environment in the apartment. Things like the coffee grinder. I was noticing that the hooded rat was really stressed out when I was grinding coffee.

[Stephen Dubner]

So what would you do about that?

[Julia Zichello]

I mean, I couldn't do anything. I had no room to move them and I couldn't stop drinking coffee.

[Stephen Dubner]

Did you take your grinder into the bathroom or a closet or something?

[Julia Zichello]

No, no, I just noted it and continued on with the grinding. You know, their sensory systems are so acute. Obviously they're old fashioned. Their sense of smell is really good, Their hearing is really good, and they seem very sensitive to things in their environment. It did also make me think about the rats in New York City. There aren't a lot of studies about the behavior of wild rats from the perspective of the rats. One of the things I thought about after having the pet rats is that I wonder if the rats in New York City are very, very stressed. They like to be underground when you See them skittering across the sidewalk. It stresses you out. But I'm pretty sure that they're also highly stressed.

[Stephen Dubner]

Is it possible that one partial solution to the infestation of wild rats in a city like New York would be the widespread embrace of pet rats?

[Julia Zichello]

I don't know about the widespread embrace of pet rats, but I think the rat czar in New York, I think that she should have a pet rat. If you want to control them or if you want to love them, you have to know about them.

[Stephen Dubner]

I first came across Julia Zucchella when I read a piece she wrote for a hyperlocal news site called the west side Rag. If you live on the Upper west side and don't read the Rag, well, I don't even know what to say. Here is the first line of Zecchello's piece. Almost a year has passed, and I can finally write about it.

[Julia Zichello]

So they both passed away. Sadly. One of the things that happened towards the end of their life, which also is something that's relevant to all rats, is that they aged so quickly and they started to show signs of aging, like being hunched over, losing body fat. One month in a rat's life is equal to three years in human years. People know this because there's a lot of people, obviously, who use rats in the lab trying to study aging and trying to make that equivalent. So they aged very rapidly. We don't really exactly know why they died. They didn't show any signs of disease that we could see. But one of the things that happened that was very sad is that Sylvie died first, and then for Pele. He was alone, so we bought him a little toy that was the shape of a rat because I knew that he would be lonely. It was a cat toy. He was not interested in the cat toy. And then he died less than a week later. This is typical of rats because they're so social. They really like to have other rats around.

[Stephen Dubner]

So Pele died. You think of heartbreak, essentially?

[Julia Zichello]

I think maybe, yeah. We knew that the lifespan of domestic rats is around two years, and they were two and a half years old. So, you know, they lived a good life. We certainly appreciated them and learned a lot.

[Stephen Dubner]

I want to read a couple sentences from the piece you wrote. I regularly walk the Upper west side and spot swashbuckling rats at all hours, but other times I find them squirrel. I don't exactly feel sad about the dead rats, but I also don't feel nothing. The dead rats make me think about life, death, and somewhere stuffed between the pavement and the pelage, I guess pelage is the fur of the rat. Yes.

[Julia Zichello]

Correct. Yeah.

[Stephen Dubner]

There is something about love in there, too. Can you say more about that? Love?

[Julia Zichello]

I will never see a squashed rat in New York City again and not think about our pet rats. I know that they are different. The rats in the wild are more aggressive. It wouldn't be the same thing as the pet rats that I experienced. But, I mean, of course you'd think about your pet.

[Stephen Dubner]

Are you going to replace them? Maybe. That's unfair to say. Are you going to get more rats?

[Julia Zichello]

Definitely not. I'm definitely not getting pet rats again because.

[Stephen Dubner]

Why?

[Julia Zichello]

It's too heartbreaking. Their lifespan is too short, and the relationship between their charm and their lifespan is too asymmetrical.

[Stephen Dubner]

Julia Zichello, as a scientist living in New York, is by now familiar with what you might call the three main categories of rat. The wild ones who live on the streets, the domesticated ones who live in your home, and the rats that are bred to live and die in research labs.

[Julia Zichello]

There are many studies across neuroscience and pharmaceuticals and psychology that used rats for decades. The rats that are lab rats are more genetically homogenous than wild rats. Rats and humans shared a common ancestor 90 million years ago. That's not super close, but it's close enough to have revealed things about the brain and behavior and genetics that have ultimately helped humans. So I wonder about how many people have technically been helped by that versus the number of people who have been harmed by diseases they may have acquired from a ratio.

[Stephen Dubner]

What was the common ancestor?

[Julia Zichello]

The common ancestor was an animal that lived in the late Cretaceous, around the time of the dinosaurs. There's not a specific name, but we use genetics to understand how far back these common ancestors lived. The anatomy and behavior of that common ancestor was much more rat like than it is human like. They were likely nocturnal. Some of them may have been insectivores, and their basic anatomy was much more rat like than humans.

[Stephen Dubner]

For all the parallels there may be between a rodent like a rat and humans, one gigantic difference is fertility and lifespan. Is that meaningful in any significant way to us?

[Julia Zichello]

Yeah. So that makes rats good model organisms because you can have many offspring within your human life as a scientist studying them so you can see how things translate from one generation to the next. One rat female can have up to 72 pups per year.

[Stephen Dubner]

Wow.

[Julia Zichello]

And if we think about a rat pair, a male and a female, and you think about them having offspring and those offspring having offspring within one year, there can be like 1,200 rats born just from that pair. From the perspective of controlling rats in the wild, that's a problem. But from the perspective of using rats in the lab, that's a virtue.

[Stephen Dubner]

Coming up after the break, what other virtues does the labor lab rat have?

[Bethany Brookshire]

If you want an animal to press a lever and receive a drug, a rat is generally the better choice.

[Stephen Dubner]

And how did the rat become a lab animal in the first place? I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We'll be right back. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by LinkedIn. As a small business owner, you don't have the luxury of clocking out early. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that works just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn jobs. They make it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network, and get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. LinkedIn's new feature helps you write job descriptions and quickly reach the right candidates with detailed insights. At the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is the quality of your candidates. And with LinkedIn, you can feel confident that you are getting the best. Post your job for [e-mail] freak that's LinkedIn.com freq to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Empower. Say you've always wanted to take a spontaneous trip to the Caribbean. By getting smart with your money, you can do things like that. With Empower, you can start making the most of your money so you can go out and live a little. So use Empower and get good at money so you can be a little bad. Join their 19 million customers [e-mail] not an Empower client, paid or sponsored. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by AllModern. Have you met AllModern? AllModern thinks making your home modern with fresh furniture and decor should be easy. That's why their team of modern obsessed experts hand vets each design for quality. Plus, Allmodern's fast and free shipping lets you upgrade your home in days, not weeks. So whether you're updating your living room or reimagining your dining area, AllModern has the very best of Modern all in one place. That's modern made for real life. Shop [e-mail] in one recent year, the market for laboratory rats in the US was estimated at $1.5 billion, and that number is expected to rise as biomedical research keeps expanding. The cost of a lab rat can range from around $25 a piece to a few thousand dollars for a specially bred or genetically engineered specimen. But as many lab rats as there are, they are outnumbered by lab mice.

[Bethany Brookshire]

Oh, they're cheaper, they're smaller.

[Stephen Dubner]

That is Bethany Brookshire. We heard from her in part one of this series. She's the author of a book called How Humans Create Animal Villains.

[Bethany Brookshire]

Especially now with the advent of CRISPR technologies that allow us to alter adult genetics and fetal genetics. We established that first in mice. We can do it in rats now, but it's very, very well established in mice. So that really took off.

[Stephen Dubner]

Are there research projects or experiments for which rats are prima facie better than mice?

[Bethany Brookshire]

Yes, in my experience, rats are better for self administration of drugs. So if you want an animal to press a lever and receive a drug, a rat is generally the better choice because of size. Because mice are so small, it's really hard to make a lever that they can press.

[Stephen Dubner]

Well, I thought you were gonna say that mice, their hands are too small to hold a joint. And that rats somehow, if you could.

[Bethany Brookshire]

Teach them to roll joints, I imagine that the mice would just roll a smaller one.

[Stephen Dubner]

Before she was a science writer, Brookshire was a practicing scientist at the Wake Forest School of Medicine, where she got a PhD in physiology and pharmacology.

[Bethany Brookshire]

I studied primarily drugs of abuse in graduate school, and then I studied antidepressants for my postdoc.

[Stephen Dubner]

What were some drugs that you were giving to mice and rats?

[Bethany Brookshire]

Ritalin, cocaine, methamphetamine, ecstasy, alcohol, Prozac, if you want to be really nerdy about it. I studied the dopamine serotonergic interactions in the ventral tegmental area, nucleus accumbens circuit of the mouse brain.

[Stephen Dubner]

That was going to be my guess, but you know.

[Bethany Brookshire]

Yeah. So I was interested in drugs that primarily targeted dopaminergic systems.

[Stephen Dubner]

And what were you looking for?

[Bethany Brookshire]

I was interested in chronic high dose administration of methylphenidate, which is Ritalin. You know, humans, we give people Ritalin starting at very young ages. So I was very interested in what chronic exposure to these drugs means for the brain as you get older. Does it make you more or less susceptible to drug addiction?

[Stephen Dubner]

And what'd you learn?

[Bethany Brookshire]

It's tough to say. I did show that in some animals you get tolerance to other drugs that are similar. In some you get sensitization, so they're more sensitive to the effects. You also get transferal. So different drugs that don't necessarily primarily hit that pathway will begin to hit that pathway.

[Stephen Dubner]

I've read that the mouse or rat model in research can be really fruitful for certain kinds of research, but unfruitful for others. What can you tell me about that?

[Bethany Brookshire]

I can say that, for example, in the area where I was looking, which is a group of structures that we call the basal ganglia, there's a lot of similarity between basal ganglias across all mammals, heck, across, like, reptiles. It's when you get into kind of higher order stuff that things get more different. Certainly there are drastic differences in things like the immune system. But I do strongly feel that rats and mice are really essential to our understanding of the human body and the human brain.

[Stephen Dubner]

What are the other things that make mice and rats still really popular subjects of this kind of research? Is it that they're available, cheap, docile, that they breed quickly, that they respond quickly?

[Bethany Brookshire]

Mice and rats have become very popular research animals, in part because they were actually sold that way. CC Little, who founded the Jackson Laboratory in Maine, which is one of the world's biggest pervasive surveyors of mice for scientific purposes, he wrote a piece in Scientific American selling the mouse as a lab animal to the public. The opening line was, do you like mice? Of course you don't. He basically said, mice are awful and we hate them, but they could be heroes of medicine.

[Stephen Dubner]

Wow.

[Bethany Brookshire]

It can be a replacement for other animals that we are currently using. At that time, dogs were a really big research animal. He proposed mice as being, you know, cheaper, faster. They do have all of those things. We have amazing abilities to alter their genetics now. But all of that stems from the fact that we consider them pests, we consider them expendable.

[Stephen Dubner]

And how do you feel about that as a human? It's complicated, says the woman who, as a scientist, did her share of rat and mouse experiments.

[Bethany Brookshire]

Sure did.

[Stephen Dubner]

And I'm guessing a bunch of them died in the process of that.

[Bethany Brookshire]

Yes, yes, hundreds. And I feel bad about it at the same time. You know, they worked really hard for me. They worked hard for me. I liked working with them. Rats are much sweeter than mice, by the way. If you're going to have one as a pet, have a rat. Mice I like, because mice are honest. Mice don't like you. They're never going to like you. Rats like you. You pick one up and after a while, they snuggle into you. They'll, like, snuggle in your armpit or your elbow or they'll get on your neck. They're sweet and they're smart. They make great pets, honestly.

[Stephen Dubner]

Okay, for the record, I'm looking here at your author photo, where you're looking like a regular human, right? Dressed nicely, standing in a nice place, but then you've got this rat kind of curled, not even curled up, like luxuriating in the crook of your arm.

[Bethany Brookshire]

Yeah, that's Magrat is her name and she is not mine. And sadly, she has since passed away because rats don't live very long. But she was a wonderful model. She did not pee on me the entire time. I was shocked.

[Stephen Dubner]

This kind of affection toward the rat expressed here by Brookshire and earlier by Julia Zecchello would seem to be rare. Anti rat sentiment is widespread and it is vocal. Let's not forget New York Mayor Eric Adams calls rats public enemy number one. But there are other voices out there and other sentiments. A researcher at Utrecht University in the Netherlands named Kuhn Bohmer published a paper called Catching the Rat, in which he examines the portrayal of rats in 20th century novels, movies, comics and more. In this analysis, Bomer found an extraordinarily diverse spectrum of human rat relations. He argues that for many people, rats are no longer seen chiefly as villains. And here's Bethany Brookshire again.

[Bethany Brookshire]

I absolutely think the way we see animals in media can strongly affect our perception. I've been able to learn from my own research that rats are absolutely not public enemy number one everywhere.

[Stephen Dubner]

You may remember the story that Brookshire told us in part one of this series about the temple in India where rats are worshiped.

[Bethany Brookshire]

They don't have to be the villain that we see them as. They could be something else. And the good news is that humans can change their minds. We do it all the time. So we could do it with rats, too. I love the movie Ratatouille. I love that movie because not only do I like rats, I love food. I've never yet been able to make that picture perfect Ratatouille that Remy makes. It never looks that good.

[Stephen Dubner]

Coming up, we go back to Jan Pinkova to find out the real mission of the film Ratatouille.

[Jan Pinkova]

Really to help us get along with each other.

[Stephen Dubner]

I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We'll be right back. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Audi. You know that feeling when you get behind the wheel of a truly special car? Everything just clicks? Well, the all new fully electric Audi Q6E Tron is more than a new EV. It's a new way to experience drive driving. Embrace the thrill of the drive with effortless power and serious acceleration. This car is fun to drive. And it looks good, too. A bold design makes for a sleek and sporty exterior and inside it's all about comfort and control. If you own an Audi, then you know what it's all about. The Q6E Tron is all that and more. With legendary Audi performance, an all new panoramic digital stage, and the most advanced tech of any Audi ever. It's a great time to check out the all new fully electric Audi Q6E Tron. The next chapter of Audi starts now. Learn [e-mail] that's audiusa.com Freakonomics Radio is Sponsored by Rosetta Stone Whether you're traveling, advancing your career or just love learning, speaking a new language can create incredible opportunities. Rosetta Stone makes it easier and more immersive than ever. Rosetta Stone immerses you in your new language naturally with choices like Spanish, French, Italian, German, Korean and more to help you think and communicate confidently. It's designed for long term retention so what you learn sticks with you and their built in true accent speech recognition technology provides real time feedback helping you sound more natural. Don't wait, unlock unlock your language learning potential now. Freakonomics Radio listeners can grab Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership for 50% off. That's unlimited access to 25 language courses for life. Visit rosettastone.com freakonomics to get started and claim your 50% off today. Don't miss out. Go to rosettastone.com Freakonomics and start learning today. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by the Financial Times. When it comes to voicing or acting on our opinions, why are some of us more confident than others? The Financial Times tackles global issues with an impartial and rigorous mindset, providing the analysis you need to make up your own mind. By reading the Financial Times, you can form your own opinions with conviction based on unbiased and trusted reporting. Visit FT to read free articles and save 40% on an annual subscription. When the film Ratatouille was released in 2007, the New York Times critic A.O. scott described it like this, a nearly flawless piece of popular art as well as one of the most persuasive portraits of an artist ever committed to film. The screenwriter and director was Brad Bird, who a few years earlier had made the Incredibles. Bird was also one of three people credited with original story. The other two were Jim Capo, Bianco and the man we met earlier, Jan Pinkova.

[Jan Pinkova]

I came up with the original idea and wrote a treatment, came up with the name Ratatouille and the basic bones and outlines of the concept and the Story and then co wrote a script with Jim Capo Bianco. And there were many versions of the script with various people on the way, as is always the case, and we began developing the movie.

[Stephen Dubner]

Pinkova was born in what was then Czechoslovakia, but after the Soviet invasion of 1968, his family moved to England. He was six years old. He was interested in film from early on. When he was 12, he got an 8 millimeter camera. For Christmas he won a national competition for young filmmakers run by the BBC. He was good at finding ideas in unusual places. For instance, watching his grandfather play chess by himself.

[Jan Pinkova]

His name was Tony Antonin and he was a very serious man. He was the first of 10 children, the son of a village cobbler and he had perfect grades at school. He was an engineer who designed railway engine braking systems. He was a man who had a hard life. When he did something, he did it seriously. So when he played chess, he would take as long as it took to make the next move. And that's how he won a lot of games, by boring the other side to death. But when he was playing with himself, he would just stare at the board and just keep on thinking and thinking and thinking as far and deeply as he could until he could make the move he wanted. And then he turned the board around and then he did it again. Did it again. And yeah, it took a while.

[Stephen Dubner]

Jan Pinkova studied computer science as an undergraduate and he got a PhD in robotics. This led to a career as a computer animator and in 1993 he landed a job at Pixar. They were then starting pre production on Toy Story and Pinkova was assigned to the commercials group. After a few years, he made an animated short called Jerry's Game, about an old man who plays chess against himself. Jerry's Game earned Pinkova an Academy Award and a chance to pitch a feature film to the Pixar brain trust.

[Jan Pinkova]

I'm pitching to John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton and Pete Docter and Joe Ranft, the head of story, and Ed Catmull, the head of the studio. These are just the early concepts for a film. One of the ideas was, ah, this is a story about a rat who wants to become a chef. Everyone laughs, everyone gets it, you're sold.

[Stephen Dubner]

The idea had come to him at home while he and his wife were in the kitchen.

[Jan Pinkova]

You know, how can a rat become a chef? You can immediately see the central problem of the story right there. It is obviously a disaster and it's going to be funny if you can.

[Stephen Dubner]

Make it work, but the making it Work part would be difficult.

[Jan Pinkova]

We were developing this film for quite a while. You're working on story, you're working on designs, characters, scenes, environments and so on. We did several versions of the story reel. Story reel is drawings edited with sound and music to basically be a movie you can watch in the form of drawings. That's how an animated film is prototyped. It's a way of making the movie before you've made the movie. Because in animation, you do not want to cut animation out just because it's.

[Stephen Dubner]

So time intensive and expensive. Yes.

[Jan Pinkova]

Yeah. And because you're creating everything, you're making a whole world come to life artificially. Every blade of grass, every gesture of the character. Somebody has put a lot of work into it. This film had a longer gestation period. By the time it was made, it was six years into it.

[Stephen Dubner]

So what happened then? I mean, I know the end of the story, but just give me the shortish version of what happened over the next couple years between the full prototype, let's say, and the film being released.

[Jan Pinkova]

We worked on it, had a bunch of versions. In making a movie like that, it goes up and down, you're continually changing. One of the wonderful things that everyone should remember and understand is that Pixar didn't happen because of computer graphics. Pixar happened because of story. At least half the effort on any one of these movies, at least half, is story, story, story, story, and making sure that the thing that's being made is an appealing, engaging story with characters that you care about, that really makes sense to an audience. We got into the character development and the designs and the environments, the kitchen being in Paris and so on. And it involved also some fabulous experiences of research. That's a thing that Pixar's famous for, getting in depth research to feed the process of making the movie authentic. We ended up going twice to Paris to dine in the finest restaurants and meet with the chefs. The artist has to suffer, right? So you have to do your work.

[Stephen Dubner]

Was there rat research as well?

[Jan Pinkova]

Yeah, there was rat research.

[Stephen Dubner]

Was that something that you were personally involved in or were you having researchers feed you information? And what was the information? Was it the biology, the history, the personality of rats?

[Jan Pinkova]

We spoke to a bunch of people with different attitudes to rats. For instance, I remember the national president of the Rat Fanciers association of the United States, the people who like to keep rats as pets. She was wonderful. She was really insightful and knowledgeable about who rats are as characters, real rats. One of the lovely things she told us Was there's the old cliche that dogs look up to you and cats look down on you. If you have a rat as a pet, that's a peer to peer relationship. A rat looks you in the eye and doesn't feel inferior or superior. It's just, you are like me, I'm like you.

[Stephen Dubner]

That's so interesting. Do you believe that to be true?

[Jan Pinkova]

You know, she certainly has that expertise. One of the things that makes it believable to me is that in the history of organized human life, rats have been right there with us all along.

[Stephen Dubner]

You know, what else did you learn about rats?

[Jan Pinkova]

Biologically, they have some interesting traits, like rats are incontinent. They don't know when to not do it. That's just being a rat. You poop and pee whenever. So actually keeping a real rat on your head would not be such a good idea.

[Stephen Dubner]

Okay. And that was a piece of real rat biology you chose to not include in the film?

[Jan Pinkova]

No, no. It didn't seem to have a good story point there for our main character, the guy in the kitchen doing the cooking, to be doing that too much.

[Stephen Dubner]

What's it like to see a film like this have such great success knowing that you gave birth to it and you raised it, but weren't around to, let's say, see it graduate?

[Jan Pinkova]

I was around a long part of the way, not right to the very end. And that's normal for the film industry. I was a first time feature director coming up with an idea and getting it made, which in the grand scheme of things is a pretty great result. And I have tremendous respect for Brad Bird as a writer and director. And he took great pains when it was time to take over to talk to me and the crew and especially to sit down and listen to what my intentions had been, making the story and what I was hoping for and to really understand where the whole thing came from and what it meant so that he could then take it his way, which you have to do as a director. So overall I'm really very happy and grateful that it turned out to be such a successful movie.

[Stephen Dubner]

Pinkova left Pixar soon after and he worked on a few other features and shorts. But none have achieved as much acclaim or prestige as Ratatouille or the other projects he worked on at Pixar. And where is Jan Pinkova today?

[Jan Pinkova]

I'm now here in Germany, of all places, at the Film academy Baden Wurtemberg in the Animation Institute.

[Stephen Dubner]

What is the primary mission? Is it education? Is it outreach?

[Jan Pinkova]

It's filmmaking. It's very much learning by doing. It's about let's make movies and fail miserably sometimes and succeed wonderfully sometimes. There's very little sitting and cogitating and theorizing and philosophizing. It's about practical doing and a lot about working together. Because the bigger the project, the more of a team sport filmmaking is.

[Stephen Dubner]

This reminds me of hearing Werner Herzog talk not that long ago about when he was in film school. And mostly he just stole cameras from school and went out and shot.

[Jan Pinkova]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he did. If you got to do it, you've got to do it. You'll figure out a way somehow.

[Stephen Dubner]

I've heard you speak about the mission of filmmaking and storytelling generally, which is to give people not just an opportunity to be engaged and entertained, but an opportunity to change their perspective on something. When you began thinking about and writing Ratatouille, what perspective were you thinking about.

[Jan Pinkova]

Changing, really, to help us get along with each other? There are lots of beautiful examples of stories like this Billy Elliot, for instance, that's about a Miner's son in 1980s strike ridden Northern England who has to figure out how to be a ballet dancer, which is the most unmanly thing he can possibly be doing in the middle of this. So in a way, Ratatouille is like ballet dancing with Nazis. We're not only doing the thing you're not supposed to be doing, you're doing it with people who are ready to kill you as soon as they see you. I was immediately drawn to the character of Remy as stuck between these two worlds. You know, he's going somewhere where he cannot possibly be. The kitchen, where everyone just from the get go hates him, will kill him, and on the other side, he's betraying his people, his family. He wants to work with the enemy, with the people who will kill us if they see us. So he's stuck there on his own. Ratatouille as an idea, as a story, it's an allegory. What's it about really? It's not about rats and cooking, it's about prejudice. It's about overcoming the limitations imposed on you by misrepresentation, by misunderstanding. It's about racism, sexism, everything. All those different forms of prejudice in the form of a rat cooking story.

[Stephen Dubner]

I didn't think about the Nazis until the scenes well along in the film after Remy gets reunited with his rat family and his rat tribe in the sewers. And then later he gets lost on the streets of Paris and he runs into some humans who plainly hate Rats, they scream when they see him. They literally kick him to the curb and he's made to feel disgusting, dirty, worthless, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, that was the first time that the allegory really hit me. I'm curious, when you grow up in Europe, as you did, you have a different relationship to the war, plainly, than Americans do, and different relationship to Germany and Nazism. It's interesting that you're now living in Germany. Obviously, so much has changed. But I am curious about, you know, the way Remy in that moment was seen as an outcast, as dirty, as ruinous.

[Jan Pinkova]

Well, it's always been a slur to call someone a rat. That's an epithet that's used to paint them as the other, the thing that you should hate and kill and push away. Any story that sees the world from the perspective of the shunned and the hated hopefully gives us an opportunity to open up our feelings for each other.

[Stephen Dubner]

And Remy tries to convince his father that the course of events can change the course of events, in this case being rat relations with humans. In your film, it's hard to say whether the rats hate the humans more or the humans hate the rats more. It's intense on both sides. And the father argues that, you know, son, nature is nature. What were you going for there?

[Jan Pinkova]

Well, Jango, the father, he has a point, right? Everything the world tells him is he's right. There's no arguing against him. Remy gets it. And you hope that the whole thing adds up to that moment when Remy finally has to come out, reveal himself as the cooking rat, step off that ledge with no one to catch him, and take that ultimate risk with the risk of his own life. It's a real crisis. It's a life or death choice, and he chooses to be himself. And hopefully the story adds up to that feeling with the audience going, what will happen? How will this go? Because your job as the story writer is to get to that ending that really has to happen in the movie. There's only one way to end it. He has to find a way to be himself.

[Stephen Dubner]

Was your original ending, even if just in your head, as happy an ending as the film ultimately had?

[Jan Pinkova]

Yeah. He ends up being able to cook. That was always going to happen.

[Stephen Dubner]

And interacting with humans.

[Jan Pinkova]

Yeah, because there are some humans that he can interact with, the humans who care about cooking and who don't care who's doing the cooking because they recognize genius when they see it. What I do love is this dramatized contrast of the world's attitudes to cooking and rats in one with Ego, the critic Brad did a fantastic thing of casting Peter O'Toole, which was one of his last roles and really a beautiful performance. And this whole zoom in to his childhood when he tastes the ratatouille. And suddenly this cold, cadaverous, disappointed critic, whose entire career has been being judgmental is returned to his early childhood in just one moment.

[Stephen Dubner]

And we feel for him in that moment. It will remind many of us of that Proustian rush when Proust eats the madeleine and his entire, you know, childhood life philosophy comes. It all comes rushing back to him and provokes this unbelievable examination of his own life. In your case, when Anton Ego tastes the ratatouille and has this reverie and trip back to a very different place in time for him, in that case, is the ratatouille the food itself an allegory as well, or is it just food?

[Jan Pinkova]

It's love, isn't it? The scene, if you remember, he's fallen off his bike and he's a kid. He's been crying, he's had a bad time. And his mother serves him this simple peasant dish, and through that shows her love for him. It's love.

[Stephen Dubner]

So the restaurant critic loves the rat's ratatouille. The rat loves to cook. And Jan Pinkova loves to tell stories about the human condition, sometimes in the form of an animated rat. I asked him if he thinks ratatouille may have shifted the public's perception of rats.

[Jan Pinkova]

I hope it opens a door to just thinking differently about a species that you might otherwise just dismiss as a category. People want to put rats on their head, in their imagination. That's something, right? That's a door opening to another way of thinking.

[Stephen Dubner]

I often wonder whether the demonization of the rat is a little bit random and. Or driven by earlier pop culture references, because I think about the mouse. We had Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse, whereas rats, you know, we had Templeton from Charlotte's Web, voiced by Paul Lynn, who is sinister. We had the film Willard. Rats are never the heroes.

[Jan Pinkova]

Look, you put a mouse next to a rat and you go, okay, who's the bad guy? It's a fairly easy choice because the rat's bigger, it's scruffier, it's got a longer nose, and it has that slightly disturbing bald tail.

[Stephen Dubner]

But these are all cosmetic differences. They are.

[Jan Pinkova]

They are.

[Stephen Dubner]

None of them are about the soul or the mood or the abilities.

[Jan Pinkova]

They are. Now, what is wrong with us that we judge by appearances? Hmm.

[Stephen Dubner]

That's a big question, isn't it, Jan Yeah. I mean, do you have any solutions for that exposure?

[Jan Pinkova]

You gotta see the thing that you judge as other early in life as just there and it's okay.

[Stephen Dubner]

And what's your personal feeling today about rats?

[Jan Pinkova]

I think rats are a part of our life that we need to get used to. They are creatures in the world that have every right to be here.

[Stephen Dubner]

Okay. We have to remind ourselves that Jan Pinkova's view of the rat, despite all his research, is a fictional rat. Remy is a chef, after all. And none of the rats in Ratatouille seem bound by the rat's real lifespan of just two or three years. But is Pinkova's view of the rat any less realistic than New York Mayor Eric Adams viewers? He seems to see the rat as intentionally evil rather than as just another animal hustling to survive, much like New Yorkers hustle to survive and thrive. Neither of those views is very realistic. So what is a realistic view? Having now made these three episodes, I would put it this way. The rat is the animal no one loves until they do. So what's your view of the rat? Let us know what you think about this series, Sympathy for the Rat, or any of our episodes. You can reach [e-mail] Big thanks to Jan Pinkova and everyone else who helped tell this story. Bethany Brookshire, Kathy Karate, Bobby Corrigan, Ed Glazer, Neil Stenseth, Robert Sullivan, Jessica Tisch, Karen Wickerson and Julia Zucchello. Coming up next time on the show.

[Unnamed Beverage Company Representative]

If you tally up our wins and losses, we have done better than prior administrations, even while taking bigger shots and putting together more ambitious cases.

[Stephen Dubner]

Lina Khan was just 32 years old when Joe Biden appointed to lead the Federal Trade Commission. With Donald Trump back in the White House, Khan is gone, but Trump has let stand one of Khan's signature achievements, an updated set of merger guidelines that is designed to modernize antitrust. Why would a new administration that seems to be reversing everything from the old one want to keep those guidelines? We'll find out next time on the show. Until then, then, take care of yourself. And if you can, someone else, too. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. You can find our entire archive on any podcast app. It's [e-mail] where we publish transcripts and show notes. This series was produced by Zach Lipinski with help from Dalvin Abuaji. The Freakonomics Radio Network staff also includes Alina Coleman, Augusta Chapman, Eleanor Osborne, Ellen Franklin, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippon, Jasmine Klinger, Jeremy Johnston, John Schnars, Morgan Levy, Neal Carruth, Sarah Lilly and Teo Jacobs. Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by the Hitchhikers and our composer is Luis Guerra. As always, thank you for listening.

[Jan Pinkova]

Can I say I'm not a snob?

[Stephen Dubner]

I think if you say that, that means you are.

[Jan Pinkova]

Yeah, that was bad. Can you cut that out for me?

[Bethany Brookshire]

The Freakonomics Radio Network the Hidden side of Everything Stitcher.

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