Melanie Kaplan’s work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and National Parks magazine. She’s a former Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT. Her new book, Lab Dog, tells the story of Hammy — a beagle rescued from a research lab — and follows Melanie’s journey to uncover what really happens to the thousands of dogs used in biomedical and consumer testing in the United States.

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We discuss…

• The first non-humans we fell in love with.
• What have we gotten from testing lab animals?

Charles Herbert Best (left) und Frederick Grant Banting (right) with one of their experimental dogs (probably summer 1921).

• Trump admin. moving us away from animal research?
• What products are still being used on lab dogs? (Bug spray)
• How to write a book about hard things (animal torture) and make it readable.

• What’s so special about beagles?
• I share my own non-human love stories.
• How my parents didn’t curate my boyhood media consumption, leading to scenes like this one being forever burned into my memory:

Melanie recommends

• Should there be a memorial for all the lab animals?
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• Ken wonders if Melanie has a long roster of correspondents, thereby possibly rendering their penpalship insignificant.
• Who would Melanie be penpals with, living or dead, if she had the choice?
• Who is the grand-mommy of book blurbers?
• What is the real America (grocery stores vs. newsfeeds)?
• Marc Maron’s final podcast with Barack Obama.
• What’s in a “Canadiano?”