A Visual History of Man's Best Friend

Published June 9, 2026 at 10:00 PM MDT

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Portrait of a Man with a Dog, Bartolomeo Passerotti (1885-1887)

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The Finding of Moses, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1736-1738)

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Girl with a White Dog, Lucian Freud (1950-1952)

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The Dog, Francisco Goya (1819-1823)

Dogs have long stood beside us, not just in life, but in art as well. In a new book, cultural historian Thomas Laqueur explores why dogs, more than any other animal, so often figure in the way we picture ourselves.

Dogs have been ubiquitous in the visual arts since people began scrawling on cave walls, and they’ve remained a common element throughout the Western artistic tradition. Laqueur says that painters are interested in dogs seeing us because, well, we’re interested in dogs seeing us. There’s something about their gaze that draws us to them, and that in turn draws us to drawing them with us. Laqueur's book is called "The Dog's Gaze", and he joins us to discuss the remarkable bond between dogs and people and what we learn by trying to see ourselves through their eyes.

GUEST

Thomas W. Laqueur | Helen Fawcett Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley

Airdate: June 10, 2026