{"podcast":{"title":"Many Minds","slug":"many-minds-510509","podcast_index_feed_id":510509,"rss_url":"https://manyminds.libsyn.com/rss","website_url":"https://disi.org/manyminds/","image_url":"https://static.libsyn.com/p/assets/c/e/a/6/cea6fe4093035db1/DISI_Many_Minds_tile_art_screen_resolution_vfinal.png","author":"Kensy Cooperrider","episode_count":166,"summary":"Our world is brimming with beings—human, animal, and artificial. We explore how they think, sense, feel, and learn. Conversations and more, every two weeks.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-18T22:18:52.865257+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/many-minds-510509"},"episode":{"title":"Of breeds and brains","slug":"of-breeds-and-brains","published_at":"2025-11-06T00:41:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/many-minds-510509/of-breeds-and-brains","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/many-minds-510509","url":"https://manyminds.libsyn.com/of-breeds-and-brains","audio_url":"https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/manyminds/Of-breeds-and-brains.mp3?dest-id=1868261","summary":"It's hard to say exactly when, but some tens of thousands of years ago, our best friends were born. I'm referring, of course, to dogs. This didn't happen overnight—it was a long process. And it not only changed how those canids behaved and what they looked like, it also changed their brains. As wolves gave way to proto-dogs, and proto-dogs gave way to dingoes and dalmatians and Dobermanns and all the rest, their brains have continued to change. What can we learn from this singular saga? What does it tell us about dogs, about domestication, and about brains? My guest today is Dr. Erin Hecht . Erin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard, where she directs the Canine Brains Project . Here Erin and I talk about how dogs are the most anatomically diverse species on the planet—and how their brains are no exception. We sketch the different waves in the dog domestication saga and discuss scenarios for how that saga got underway. We talk about how brains change as they get bigger and about how they change during domestication. We discuss a recent study by Erin and colleagues comparing the brains of modern dogs with the brains of pre-modern dogs like village dogs and New Guinea singing dogs. We also talk about a new study from Erin's lab finding that domestic dogs share with humans a key language-related structure. Along the way we talk about the Russian Farm Fox experiment, the stereotype of the gentle giant, the left lateralization of language, the respiratory condition known as BOAS, the dog personality inventory known as C-BARQ, the limitations of the idea of a \"domestication syndrome,\" and the puppy kidnapping hypothesis. Longtime listeners will recall that we had Erin on the show to talk about her work on fermentation and brain…","meta_description":"It's hard to say exactly when, but some tens of thousands of years ago, our best friends were born. I'm referring, of course, to dogs. This didn't happen…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":4064,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/many-minds-510509/episodes/of-breeds-and-brains/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/many-minds-510509/of-breeds-and-brains.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}