The Deal with Animals with Marika S. Bell
Aug 24, 2026 · 55 min · 12 segments
Episode 5 of Series 16: The Captivity Conversation- Transcript Victoria Stilwell joins me to talk about how we shape dogs’ lives through training…
Victoria StilwellGuest
Marika BellHost
Maybe you previously lived in a home or on the street where you received minimal human attention, but enough that you enjoyed human company.
You come and you go as you please, but after your daily rounds with the other local dogs, you spend the day on a small hill just observing your surroundings.
Eventually, you find yourself in a shelter, then adopted, and now your surroundings are a backyard, a nice family.
What do you do? Do you escape the containment, or does your new family notice your restlessness? What can we do as humans to make sure the furry members of our family are happy captives?
Everything.
Over the last five episodes, I've found that captivity has turned out to be far bigger than cages, tanks, or sheds, and each conversation has really widened the frame.
From behavior to systems, to cognition, and finally biology, or how captivity is engineered into the body.
The next stretch of the series moves captivity into everyday life, the home, the ethics of companionship, the design and language that shapes public perception, and finally, the policies that decide what captivity looks like at scale.
It's a shift from the internal lives of animals to the culture and political forces around them.
Victoria Stilwell joins me to talk about the less discussed forms of confinement built into training culture, household expectations, and the way we interpret dog behavior.
Read the full transcript.
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