Canine Chat, Emotional Support Animals, Sniffer Dogs

Summary

Curiosity Weekly: Canine Chat, Emotional Support Animals, Sniffer Dogs

Release Date: February 5, 2025 | Host: Dr. Samantha Yamin | Guests: Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach

---

1. Introduction and Overview

In this episode of Curiosity Weekly, host Dr. Samantha Yamin delves into the multifaceted roles of dogs in modern society. From their indispensable work in disaster response to their emerging abilities in interspecies communication and their significant impact on human mental health, dogs continue to prove their worth beyond companionship.

2. Dogs in Disaster and Detection Roles

Dr. Yamin begins by highlighting the critical roles that highly trained sniffer dogs play in disaster scenarios. Referencing the devastating fires in Los Angeles County, including the Palisades and Eaton fires, she underscores how these dogs are pivotal in search and rescue operations. Trained by the Search Dog Foundation in Southern California, these teams have a proven track record, having also assisted in Hurricane Helene and the 2023 earthquake in Turkey.

Dr. Yamin explains, “Once a week, we’ll bring you the latest and greatest in scientific discoveries and break down the details so that you don’t need a PhD to understand it” (00:35).

Additionally, the episode explores dogs' remarkable olfactory abilities, which have been harnessed to detect COVID-19. Studies from the University of California, San Diego, demonstrated that dogs could accurately identify the virus by sniffing sweat, saliva, and urine samples. Dr. Yamin notes, “Dogs have been trained to detect COVID-19 with pretty high accuracy in various studies, including skin samples from air travelers in Finland and sweat samples from concert goers in Germany” (22:00).

3. Communicating with Dogs: Soundboard Research

Transitioning from detection to communication, Dr. Yamin introduces groundbreaking research on interspecies communication. She discusses a study published in Scientific Reports by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, which investigated whether dogs can use soundboards to communicate with humans.

The study involved 152 dogs trained to use soundboards with pre-recorded words. Over two years, nearly 200,000 button presses were analyzed to determine if dogs were intentionally using the soundboards to express specific needs or desires. Dr. Yamin summarizes the findings: “The data showed something exciting when dogs press buttons on these soundboards. It wasn't accidental” (03:04).

Notable researcher Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach explains, “Whether the humans selectively recorded when they were impressed with something their dog did, it's still a point where bias could be leaking in overall, the findings that these weren't just accidental presses, they weren't imitations and didn't seem random for most dogs” (04:23).

4. Emotional Support Animals: Insights from Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach

A significant portion of the episode features an interview with Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach, a licensed clinical social worker and director of Veterinary Social Work at Open Door Veterinary Collective. Dr. Gerlach elaborates on the distinctions between emotional support animals, service animals, and pets.

She clarifies, “Service animals are trained to do specific tasks to assist with or reduce impairment. The most well-known service dogs are guide dogs… They have to learn something called intelligent disobedience, which is when their person asks them, like, to go forward and let’s say they see a car or some other, they have to actually refuse the direction if it’s unsafe” (09:28).

5. The Science Behind Emotional Support Animals: Study Findings

Dr. Gerlach discusses her team's pioneering pilot study, the first of its kind to provide peer-reviewed scientific evidence on the benefits of emotional support animals. Conducted in partnership with Promedica in Northwest Ohio and the Toledo Humane Society, the study followed 11 individuals over 12 months, measuring anxiety, depression, loneliness, and biomarkers such as cortisol and oxytocin levels.

She shares, “There were statistically significant reductions in their depression, anxiety, and loneliness” (14:23). Additionally, the study found that interactions with emotional support animals led to increased oxytocin and decreased cortisol levels, indicating reduced stress and enhanced bonding.

6. Impact on Mental Health and Future Directions

The conversation deepens as Dr. Gerlach highlights the profound impact of animal companionship on mental health. She recounts, “I was working in crisis mental health response… the reason they’re still alive talking to me was because of their pets” (15:36). This personal insight fueled her dedication to scientifically validating the benefits of emotional support animals.

Looking ahead, Dr. Gerlach emphasizes the need for more comprehensive studies and the potential for policy changes. She envisions a future where healthcare systems recognize and support the therapeutic roles of animals, potentially integrating pet care into health support frameworks. Additionally, she promotes resources like www.pethelpfinder.org, which assists individuals in accessing veterinary care and pet supplies without financial strain (20:04).

7. Conclusion

Dr. Samantha Yamin wraps up the episode by summarizing the key discussions:

• Sniffer Dogs: Their vital role in disaster response and disease detection showcases their extraordinary abilities.

• Animal-Assisted Therapy: Dr. Gerlach’s research underscores the significant mental health benefits of emotional support animals, supported by both behavioral data and physiological biomarkers.

• Interspecies Communication: The study on dogs using soundboards opens new avenues for understanding and enhancing human-dog interactions.

“With dogs’ incredible sense of smell and their profound impact on our mental health, it’s clear that our four-legged companions are more than just pets—they are indispensable partners in navigating some of today’s most pressing challenges” (22:36).

For more insights into scientific discoveries and the fascinating world of animal behavior, listeners are encouraged to follow upcoming episodes of Curiosity Weekly.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach: “We had never even been told to ask about pets, let alone try to help support that person’s relationship with their pet” (16:26).

• Dr. Samantha Yamin: “Dogs have been trained to detect COVID-19 with pretty high accuracy in various studies” (22:00).

• Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach: “Having communities and housing and healthcare services that recognize and support how our relationships with our animals are part of our well being and our families” (20:04).

---

About the Host and Production

Curiosity Weekly is produced by the team at Wheelhouse DNA, with senior producer and editorial correspondent Theresa Carey, producer Chiara Noni, audio engineer Nick Karismi, and head of production Cassie Berman contributing to each episode. Hosted by Dr. Samantha Yamin, the podcast continues to explore the cutting-edge of scientific discoveries in an accessible and engaging manner.

---

*Disclaimer: This summary is based on the transcript provided and aims to capture the core discussions and insights shared during the episode. For the full experience and additional context, listeners are encouraged to tune into Curiosity Weekly. *

Transcript

[LinkedIn Advertiser]

Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void? Well, with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers. You can even target buyers by job title, industry, company seniority, skills. Wait, did I say job title yet? Get started today and see how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. We'll even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. Get started at LinkedIn.com results terms and conditions apply.

[Curious Mind]

Hello curious minds.

[Dr. Samantha Yamin]

I'm Dr. Samantha Yamin and this is Curiosity Weekly from Discovery. In the aftermath of the devastating LA fires, highly trained sniffer dogs are proving to be invaluable, assisting search and rescue teams with their incredible sense of smell. Those same amazing smelling skills were also honed during the pandemic when dogs were trained to identify Covid in people. But it isn't just their incredible sense of smell that's helpful. Their adaptability, loyalty, physical and emotional support just goes to show how important they really are to everyone's welfare.

[Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach]

They are trained to do specific tasks. I kind of think of them as like the super geniuses of the service dogs.

[Dr. Samantha Yamin]

That was Dr. Hoy Gerlach and she'll be with me later to talk about human animal interactions. So whether or not you love dogs in real life, even if that means your favorite dog can only be found on social media pressing buttons to talk, which by the way, we're going to get into in less than 20 seconds this week, our Curiosity jumps to the science and culture of dogs.

[Curious Mind]

They're a person's best friend after all.

[Dr. Samantha Yamin]

Walk, walk, walk outside. Imagine you could talk with your pet. I know, I know you probably already think you can, but I mean like really talk to them. In the long running debate on how dogs can speak with humans, new research from December says that they can at least in two word combos using buttons. Let's get into it. The team from the University of California, San Diego were inspired by people posting videos training their dogs on soundboards. They have a bunch of dog friendly buttons that recite a pre recorded word when pressed. And that's who the researchers went to for this study. They reached out to people with soundboard trained dogs and had them manually report through a phone app whenever they or their dog pressed buttons on the soundboard. They did want to focus on dogs with some reasonable experience using the soundboards, so they limited their data set to those who submitted at least 200 interactions. I know that sounds like a lot, but they had 152 dogs that were active enough to make the cut. And in just under two years, it gave the researchers a massive data set of almost 200,000 so called dog pressing events. They published their work in the journal Scientific Reports.

[Curious Mind]

Now, the dog parents didn't change anything.

[Dr. Samantha Yamin]

About how they labeled the buttons for their dog. The owners got to decide the button labels and layouts for their own soundboards. But the researchers did group the button words into broad categories when doing their analysis, like food or play, for example. Perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the most pressed buttons were for things like go outside, treat food, and play. The data showed something exciting when dogs press buttons on these soundboards. It wasn't accidental. And remember, they captured what the owners pressed too, so they could tell they were doing more than just copying their owner. But what does it actually mean to figure that out? The researchers looked at how dogs paired button presses like pressing food and play together. And then they compared those combinations to random patterns. Some combos popped up more often than others, more so than you'd expect just by random chance. But of course, not all combos were winners. Later and Love U were rare. This is called interspecies communication. When two species like human and dog find ways to talk to each other other. And the field is riddled with controversy and backtracking.

[Curious Mind]

Take parrots, for instance. They can say really impressive things.

[Dr. Samantha Yamin]

But in a lot of those cases, research points to those vocalizations being more.

[Curious Mind]

Mimics of human speech.

[Dr. Samantha Yamin]

The use of soundboards in this study helps avoid this. But whether the humans selectively recorded when they were impressed with something their dog did, it's still a point where bias could be leaking in overall, the findings that these weren't just accidental presses, they weren't imitations and didn't seem random for most dogs. Tells us there could be something going on here. But some questions remain, like how much do the dogs understand what's happening? Is it just some very lucky pattern matching? The team said. Next, they'll be testing if the dogs look at their owners for cues when pressing the buttons, indicating that they get that there's some communication going on. And if they respond with context cues that make sense and are specific, like play bowing only when they hit the play button, then that'll be a good indication too. There are some gifted word learning dogs that can learn and remember words for hundreds or thousands of objects. So maybe it'll be species specific.

[Curious Mind]

And for the cat lovers.

[Dr. Samantha Yamin]

Taylor, girl, you listening? Cats have been found to follow human pointing. They can tell whether a human is paying attention. To them and decide whether they should engage but only modestly respond to emotional cues like whether their owner is happy or angry.

[LinkedIn Advertiser]

Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void? Well, with LinkedIn ads you can know you're reaching the right decision makers. You can even target buyers by job title, industry, company seniority skills. Wait, did I say job title yet? Get started today and see how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. We'll even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. Get started at LinkedIn.com results terms and conditions apply.

[Curious Mind]

The subject of emotional support.

[Dr. Samantha Yamin]

Animals has become somewhat controversial in the past few years. You might remember the emotional support peacock that went viral in 2018 for not being allowed on a United flight, for example. Sidebar I think about that story all the time. Anyways, let's get back on track. There's a ton of anecdotal evidence that contact with emotional support animals is beneficial to mental well being. But there are still those out there who think that the registration and proliferation of emotional support animals has gone too far. And you might be thinking, Sam, this is a science show. Where is the scientific evidence to back up the need for these animals? Well, lucky you, because Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach joins Curiosity Weekly to talk about that very subject. She's a licensed clinical social worker and the director of Veterinary social work at Open Door Veterinary Collective. Just a few years ago, she and her team published a pilot study that provided the first peer reviewed scientific evidence suggesting emotional support animals may benefit people's mental health. It's kind of wild that this study was the first of its kind and it wasn't even all that long ago.

[Curious Mind]

Thanks so much for joining me, Dr. Hoy Gerlach. To kick things off, I wanna break down some key terms here. We often hear about emotional support animals, we hear about service animals and then there are just regular pets, but they're not all the same. So could you explain the differences between these and why it's important to make those distinctions?

[Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach]

So we'll start with pets or companion animals. So basically one, you have to have the condition, the health or mental health condition causing impairment and two, there has to be a connection between how that's causing difficulty for you and your animal and how the animal interacts with you. It's really the interactions and the the relationships with the animal. So it's not necessarily that the animal is doing something different, it's how that's affecting me, a service animal. There are Service animals for a range of health and mental health conditions. They are trained to do specific tasks to assist with or reduce impairment. The most well known, I think service dogs are guide dogs, where they're literally providing safe passage for people out in public. You know, safe to cross the street or not going around holes, barriers, parked cars, things like that. I kind of think of them as like the. The super geniuses of the service dogs because they not only have to learn these tasks, they have to learn something called intelligent disobedience, which is when their person asks them, like, to go forward and let's say they see a car or some other, they have to actually refuse the direction if it's unsafe. But the difference is it's a trained task. Yeah, yeah.

[Curious Mind]

So we see there's a difference in training with service animals versus emotional support animals. Can be an untrained pet who happens to have that profound impact. And I was going to ask if there are, you know, certain pets that are more suited to one task versus the other.

[Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach]

That's a great question. I love that question because it's really matchmaking, just like we match sort of with our friends, our relationships. One person's ideal emotional support animal could be another person's emotional stress animal. An example would be in the research study that we did. We partnered with a human health care system called Promedica in northwest Ohio, and then Toledo Humane Society, and people came in to adopt the animals that were going to be their emotional support animals. They were referred by their health or mental health care providers, but they worked with the shelter staff who kind of tried introducing, just like we would introduce friends that we thought, you know, would hit it off or we're trying to set up somebody.

[Curious Mind]

On that note, I want. I want to dig into your research study because there are benefits of having an emotional support animal. You know, they seem well known from a cultural, even anecdotal standpoint. But you were involved in the research that affirmed scientifically the advantages of that relationship. I think for the first time, you did a longitudinal pilot study, meaning you followed 11 people for 12 months and measured reports of anxiety, depression, loneliness, along with biomarkers, including some for stress. Can you shed some light on the empirical evidence that you found for this really important topic?

[Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach]

What we found, it was powerful, as you said, was a small pilot study. We did not have a control group, so that. That's important to Note.

[Curious Mind]

It was 11 people who received the treatment in this case.

[Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach]

Yeah. You know, most of the folks were on Social Security disability for so pretty significant and impairing mental health issues. So backing up a bit, they adopted their animals. Before we started working with, you know, to support the animal adoption process, we did preliminary data. So we got information, kind of pre tested their anxiety, loneliness, depression, get that baseline. Exactly. And then the biomarkers, which is sort of the chemicals inside our body. I was fortunate to have a colleague on this grant with me that is expert in that kind of work. And he did all of the analysis in a metabolic lab. But we looked at corporations cortisol, which is a stress marker, our body releases that oxytocin, which is actually a warm fuzzy bonding kind of chemical our body releases when we feel good. It was found to happen between people and their animals and actually on the other side of the mammals also release that. So when they measured in some shared studies, not just the person, but and.

[Curious Mind]

Prairie voles, I'm thinking when they have long term mating patterns and they found it was oxytocin that allowed them to, to bond, which is really cute. Love in rodents.

[Dr. Samantha Yamin]

Yes.

[Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach]

Yeah, very powerful cross species. Dogs interacting with us were also having that oxytocin boost. So and then we looked at another stress chemical, stress related chemical called alpha amylase. We got these by asking people to put saliva on a test tube. Next we had a drool which was even worse. So okay, it's called the passive drooling method. Live and learn. So then at 1 month, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, 12 months, me or my research assistant or both would do home visits and we would start by getting the saliva sample and then we would ask them to do 10 minutes of focused interaction with their animal. So some people would play pet talk to snuggle, but something focused so you could measure.

[Curious Mind]

Right after that interaction you got more saliva.

[Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach]

So the poor person had to get.

[Curious Mind]

They had to drool before and after.

[Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach]

And after their focused interaction with their animals. So there were statistically significant reductions in their depression, anxiety and loneliness. Standardized scale scores. They had high statistical significance. Sometimes it's just like moderate or a low level of significance. These were strong scores.

[Curious Mind]

No.

[Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach]

That's amazing what we found at the end. I mentioned the statistically significant surveys oxytocin consistently if you look at a visual graph before and after the 10 minutes it went up and then the flip for the cortisol. So wherever their cortisol was, it dropped.

[Curious Mind]

And importantly, especially in a small. It's an early study and we're hoping to see more studies follow up. But the thing for me that warrants that is you saw these positive interactions, you could see as a social worker with the expertise you can, you kind of know those cues around someone's home for what's showing progress and improvements. That really tells us that there's something meaningful here, that it aligns with what we've seen with lived experience. But of course, we need to systematically study it through the tools of science. So I wonder why is it so important to you to collect this kind of data? Will it help with insurance? Like our emotional support animals covered through insurance because we see that they're helpful? Is it to lead policy change? What drives you to do collect the data on this research?

[Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach]

I'd have to go back to very early in my career when it really hit me powerfully how important and even life saving these bonds, attachments, whatever we want to call them with our animals can be. I was working in crisis, mental health, crisis response. And I was, as a mental health, I was like, people are telling me regularly, not just me, but like my colleagues when I asked them, literally the reason they're still alive talking to me was because of their pets. And yet nowhere in our assessment forms are my education, my training nothing. We had never even been told to ask about pets, let alone try to help support that person's relationship with their pet. So that that changed everything.

[Curious Mind]

It's great to hear that a lot of the animals in the study that.

[Dr. Samantha Yamin]

You did were rescues.

[Curious Mind]

We're really excited on the show about the upcoming Puppy bowl on February 9th. It's incredibly cute and all of the animals there, it's to raise awareness for the animals are rescues and are up for adoption. It's extra cool that you have this research showing the benefit that pets can have, including adopted pets from rescue situations and otherwise. So really nice. I heard you're a fan of the Puppy Bowl.

[Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach]

I am. I wish that we could somehow measure people's oxytocin before and after the Puppy bowl because my guess is the Puppy bowl is boosting oxytocin. Not, certainly not necessarily watching.

[Curious Mind]

Oh, that's our next study.

[Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach]

Oh, my goodness.

[Dr. Samantha Yamin]

Yes.

[Curious Mind]

We gotta get people to drill into it too, while watching.

[Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach]

Hopefully we'll have better measures at some point very soon.

[Dr. Samantha Yamin]

But maybe I'll.

[Curious Mind]

I'll submit my sample.

[Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach]

Yeah, it's not, it's not every person. There's. There's cultural differences. There's folks that for, you know, other many reasons, like maybe, you know, they're, they're not comfortable with dogs or they don't have an affinity. But for folks that like dogs, love dogs, you know, just kind of, you know, neutral, but think, oh my goodness, cute like that. Oxytocin boost, especially if you're watching it for a persisting period of time, I hypothesize it's there.

[Curious Mind]

Yeah, I would, I would go in on that research study. My hypothesis would be it's there.

[Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach]

I would also. And the final piece of the study was the open ended questions that we talked with all the participants and that was before we had any of the data analyzed. And every person talked about my mental health is so much better and it is because of my animal. And they talked about several specific things. The animal being a comfort, being company, sometimes being a distraction, like funny or just needing, you know, care, motivating them. Like a couple people said, like, I take care of myself because what would happen to my animal? And actually in the program we would have done temporary fostering if they needed to go to the hospital for care. But the response was, but it would be stressful, that would be hard on my animal and I don't want to do that to them if all I need to do is X, Y and Z for myself. That's also borne out in other studies increasingly is that people are motivated to engage more in their own health care. And the study that we hope to do next was to look at health care utilization like six months before they adopted the animals and six months after and to do more with like comparison groups to see if this motivation people saying, I'm taking my meds, I'm keeping my appointments, I have a daily routine because my, my animal kind of has one. And I follow that. You know, all of these are things that we know are important for human health. And if that could be quantified, I would not be at all surprised to see some kind of support financially for having animal companionship as a health support.

[Curious Mind]

I would love to see that.

[Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach]

So I mean having having communities and housing and healthcare services that recognize and support how our relationships with our animals are part of our well being and our families. That's ultimately what I aspire to and that's what drives my work. Now I want to toss out pet help finder, you know, emotional support animals or service animals or pets once we have them, you know, one crisis can, you know, many folks are a paycheck or two away from real struggles. And it's www.pethelpfinder.org. there's resources for vet care, pet food banks and supplies. And if you can't find what you need, there is an email on there. We're partnered with United Way Meals on wheels other groups. So that is free, it's free to list, it's free to use so they don't have to pick between like okay housing or your dog, like health care or your dog. Like those shouldn't be choices people have. I guess now as I look at it, it's really recognizing the interdependence and to have a pet inclusive approach to support people and animals as a family.

[Curious Mind]

Thank you so much for chatting with me, Dr. Huygerlak.

[Dr. Janet Hoy Gerlach]

Thank you.

[Dr. Samantha Yamin]

And just as a heads up, if you're interested in learning more and seeing more about the kind of work people like Dr. Janet Hoygerlak do, check out Animal Planet this Sunday or on Social because It's Puppy Bowl 21. It starts at 2pm Eastern or if you live on the West coast, it's 11am Pacific.

[Curious Mind]

Dogs have been man's best friend for thousands of years, but their talents go far beyond companionship. Their incredible sense of smell makes them indispensable allies in solving some of today's toughest challenges, like detecting wildfires, sniffing out COVID 19, finding drugs and sniffing out bombs. Plus lots beyond that. But what makes dogs smell so remarkable? A dog's nose is incredibly powerful compared to humans. They have anywhere from 4 to 30.

[Dr. Samantha Yamin]

Times more area in their noses dedicated.

[Curious Mind]

To olfactory cells, or smell cells as I like to call them. Think of it like comparing the size of a large sticky note to a fingernail. That's the difference here. According to a study published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science, dogs can even detect odor molecules as diluted as a one and a half parts per trillion. That's like isolating one drop of perfume in over 13 Olympic sized swimming pools. It's clear that our four legged companions and their amazing sense of smell are playing an increasingly vital role in solving some of the world's toughest challenges. Take California's recent wildfires, for instance. In regions like Altadena, specially trained dogs are being deployed to assist in the aftermath of the tragic wildfires in Los Angeles county, including the Palisades fire and Eaton fire. Five highly trained teams trained by the Search Dog foundation in Southern California have been searching the rubble of homes and businesses for survivors and remains. The Search Dog foundation, based in Santa Paula, specializes in training search and rescue dogs, often rescuing energetic shelter dogs and turning them into skilled lifesavers. These teams have also assisted in disasters like Hurricane Helene in the southeast and the 2023 earthquake in Turkey. And that's just the start. Researchers began looking into sniffer dogs to help with the fight against COVID 19. Think of what this could do for screening in high traffic areas like airports and schools. When someone has Covid, there are chemical changes in their body as a result of the infection. So they create these unique odors, which are in sweat, saliva and other bodily fluids. Dogs have been trained to detect COVID 19 with pretty high accuracy in various studies, including skin samples from air travelers in Finland and sweat samples from concert goers in Germany. In some studies, their detection results nearly matched PCR tests, showing potential as a rapid, reliable tool for identifying the virus. Pretty impressive for our furry friends. Imagine not having to stick that uncomfortable cotton swab up your nose. And if you aren't a dog lover, don't worry, you don't have to cuddle the dog for this to work. In these studies, dogs typically sniffed sweat, saliva or urine samples, not the people directly. But scaling up this kind of operation isn't without its hurdles. Detection dogs need regular breaks. They're not machines, after all. And with that sharp nose, it also means they're sensitive enough that we'd need to retrain them for variants of a virus, for example. Not to mention that training enough dogs to meet global demand takes a lot of time and money. Then there's the human factor. Not everyone's a dog person. Some people might be allergic to dogs, fearful of them, or just prefer to steer clear of furry helpers altogether.

[Dr. Samantha Yamin]

Here's what we learned about today. We learned about dogs that, when trained properly, can literally sniff out COVID 19. Dr. Janet Hoygerlach shared details about the benefits and science behind animal assisted therapy for those with mental illness. And finally, we looked into what's really going on when dogs use soundboard buttons to vocalize different concepts out loud.

[Curious Mind]

For Warner Bros. Discovery.

[Dr. Samantha Yamin]

Curiosity Weekly is produced by the team at Wheelhouse DNA. The senior producer and editorial correspondent is Theresa Carey.

[Curious Mind]

Our producer is Chiara Noni. Our audio engineer is Nick Karismi. And head of Production for Wheelhouse DNA is Cassie Berman. And I'm Dr. Samantha Youen. Thanks for listening.

[Puppy Bowl Enthusiast 1]

There's a team rough and a team fluff.

[Dr. Samantha Yamin]

Can we have a draw your team.

[Puppy Bowl Enthusiast 1]

March Madness or something?

[LinkedIn Advertiser]

I don't know.

[Puppy Bowl Enthusiast 2]

I'm going to force my friends at this party. I'm going to to have a simultaneous like someone's laptop open with the puppy bowl at the same time. For those in the room that are more interested in seeing what the puppy.

[Curious Mind]

Doing, we host a party where we.

[Dr. Samantha Yamin]

Just halftime show and we watch and.

[Curious Mind]

Then it's on me again and then the puppy bowl is playing the entire. So now we'll just go to. Now we'll just go to Puppy Bowl.

[Puppy Bowl Enthusiast 1]

All I care about is that there is a puppy named Mr. Pickles.

[Puppy Bowl Enthusiast 2]

Is there one?

[Dr. Samantha Yamin]

I mean, that's.

[Puppy Bowl Enthusiast 1]

I hope he wins. Mr. Pickles.

[Boost Mobile Representative]

This tax season at Boost Mobile. When you buy six months on our Best unlimited plans, we will give you the next six months for free plus.

[Dr. Samantha Yamin]

Enter to win up to $10,000 and double your tax refund.

[Boost Mobile Representative]

Your refund your rules requires upfront payment, taxes and fees. Extra terms and exclusions apply. Visit boostmobile.com for full offer terms and sweeps details.