Interviews with scholars and activists on animals and animal-human relations.
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Rebecca Heisman, "Flight Paths: How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration" (Harper, 2025)
Episode 386
Tuesday, April 8, 2025 ⢠Duration 41:59
In Flight Paths (HarperCollins, 2023), Rebecca Heisman illuminates the stories and methods of the scientists who unlocked the secrets of bird migration. How and why birds navigate the skies has continually fascinated the human imagination, but only recently have we been able to fully understand these amazing journeys. Flight Paths is the never-before-told saga of how a group of passionate scientists in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries engaged nearly every branch of science to understand bird migration. Heisman traces the development of each technique used for tracking migratory birds, from the early practice of banding birds to the recent use of DNA markers.
Rebecca Heisman is an award-winning science writer in ornithology and bird conservation, based in Walla Walla, Washington.
This interview was conducted by Renee Hale, who holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and works in R&D for the food and beverage industry. She is the author of The Nightstorm Files, a voracious reader, and enjoys sharing the joy of new perspectives with listeners.
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Will Potter, "Little Red Barns: Hiding the Truth, from Farm to Fable" (City Lights Books, 2025)
Episode 173
Sunday, April 6, 2025 ⢠Duration 38:18
Little Red Barns: Hiding the Truth, from Farm to Fable (City Lights Books, 2025) is a groundbreaking investigation of factory farms and the unprecedented measures being taken to hide their impact -- on animals, public health, and the environment -- from the public.
Hiding behind the little red barns that dot the landscape of rural America and decorate so many of the animal-based products we consume is a dangerous truth and a very real threat.
Little Red Barns is the record of a harrowing journey that took investigative journalist Will Potter from factory farms to international climate summits, from congressional hearings to neo-Nazi fascist groups.
As Potter uncovers the frightening truth about animal agriculture's role in accelerating climate collapse, he shows how the authoritarian measures being taken to maintain control over this key aspect of the global food supply chain are directly linked to the proliferation and empowerment of far-right militias.
Writing in an engaging, personal style, he invites his reader to accompany him on the journey as he confronts a maelstrom of disturbing information, asking searching questions along the way about the role of a journalist and the impact of "bearing witness" in a world where we're bombarded with images, real and faked.
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Chris Pearson, "Collared: How We Made the Modern Dog" (Profile Books, 2024)
Episode 75
Saturday, January 25, 2025 ⢠Duration 46:43
Dogs are our constant companions: models of loyalty and unconditional love for millions around the world. But these beloved animals are much more than just our pets - and our shared history is far richer and more complex than you might assume.Â
In Collared: How We Made the Modern Dog (Profile Books, 2024), historian and dog lover Chris Pearson reveals how the shifting fortunes of dogs hold a mirror to our changing society, from the evolution of breeding standards to the fight for animal rights. Wherever humans have gone, dogs have followed, changing size, appearance and even jobs along the way - from the forests of medieval Europe, where greyhounds chased down game for royalty, to the frontlines of twentieth-century conflicts, where dogs carried messages and hauled gun carriages. Despite vast social change, however, the power of the human-canine bond has never diminished. By turns charming, thought-provoking and surprising, Collared reveals the fascinating tale of how we made the modern dog.
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Sillies: Horses
Episode 126
Monday, August 7, 2023 ⢠Duration 19:22
In our new summer series of âSillies,â Saronik and Kim ask each other how simple things will achieve the grandiose task of saving the world. In this episode, Kim asks Saronik about how horses will save the world.
The texts we mention (or meant to mention) in the episode are (in some vague order):
Peter Shaffer, Equus, 1973
Girish Karnad, Hayavadana, 1971
Sharon Patricia Holland, an other: a black feminist consideration of animal life (Duke UP, 2023)
Mackenzie Cooley, The Perfection of Nature: Animals, Breeding, and Race in the Renaissance (Chicago UP, 2022)
Raymond Malewitz, âOn the Origin of âOops!â: The Language and Literature of Animal Diseaseâ Critical Inquiry 45 (Summer 2019).
In this episode we used sound effects from freesound.org. To make the episode we downloaded sounds created by the following users:Â BUNCHA SOUNDS BOI!;Â InspectorJ;Â felix.blume. Click the link to hear the sound.
This episodeâs silly image was created by Saronik Bosu. It is a distortion of âWhistlejacketâ (1762) by George Stubbs.
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Arin Greenwood, "Your Robot Dog Will Die" (Soho, 2019)
Episode 54
Monday, July 31, 2023 ⢠Duration 01:03:12
Today I talked to Arin Greenwood about her new book Your Robot Dog Will Die (Soho, 2019).
When a global genetic experiment goes awry and canines stop wagging their tails, mass hysteria ensues and the species is systematically euthanized. But soon, Mechanical Tail comes to the rescue. The company creates replacements for âmanâs best friendâ and studies them on Dog Island, where 17-year-old Nano Miller was born and raised. Nanoâs life has become a cycle of annual heartbreak. Every spring, she is given the latest robot dog model to test, only to have it torn from her arms a year later. But one day she makes a discovery that upends everything sheâs taken for granted: a living puppy that miraculously wags its tail. And there is no way sheâs letting this dog go.
Arin Greenwood is an animal writer and former lawyer living in St. Petersburg, Florida, with her husband, Ray, and their beloved pets. Arin was animal welfare editor for The Huffington Post. Her stories about dogs, cats, and other critters have appeared in many publications including The Washington Post, The Dodo, The Today Show's website, Slate, Creative Loafing, the American Bar Association Journal, Best Friends Animal Society's magazine, and more. She now writes and edits for animal nonprofits. Arin is also the author of Tropical Depression and Save the Enemy.
Kyle Johannsen is a philosophy instructor at Trent University and Wilfrid Laurier University. His most recent book is Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering (Routledge, 2021).
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Tom Mustill, "How to Speak Whale: A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication" (Grand Central Publishing, 2022)
Episode 132
Thursday, July 13, 2023 ⢠Duration 53:45
What if animals and humans could speak to one another? Tom Mustillâthe nature documentarian who went viral when a thirtyâton humpback whale breached onto his kayakâasks this question in his thrilling investigation into whale science and animal communication.
âWhen a whale is in the water, it is like an iceberg: you only see a fraction of it and have no conception of its size.â
On September 12, 2015, Tom Mustill was paddling in a two-person kayak with a friend just off the coast of California. It was cold, but idyllicâuntil a humpback whale breached, landing on top of them, releasing the energy equivalent of forty hand grenades. He was certain he was about to die, but they both survived, miraculously unscathed. In the interviews that followed the incident, Mustill was left with one question: What could this astonishing encounter teach us?
Drawing from his experience as a naturalist and wildlife filmmaker, Mustill started investigating humanâwhale interactions around the world when he met two tech entrepreneurs who wanted to use artificial intelligence (AI)âoriginally designed to translate human languagesâto discover patterns in the conversations of animals and decode them. As he embarked on a journey into animal eavesdropping technologies, where big data meets big beasts, Mustill discovered that there is a revolution taking place in biology, as the technologies developed to explore our own languages are turned to nature.
From seventeenth-century Dutch inventors, to the whaling industry of the nineteenth century, to the cutting edge of Silicon Valley, How to Speak Whale: A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication (Grand Central Publishing, 2022) examines how scientists and start-ups around the world are decoding animal communications. Whales, with their giant mammalian brains, virtuoso voices, and long, highly social lives, offer one of the most realistic opportunities for this to happen. But what would the consequences of such human animal interaction be?
Here are some recordings of whale songs:Â
Humpback
Orca
Blue
Frances Sacks is a graduate of Wesleyan University where she studied in the Science and Society Program.
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The Future of Oceans: A Discussion with Chris Armstrong
Episode 68
Monday, July 3, 2023 ⢠Duration 34:46
Amidst all the talk of a green revolution what about the blue stuff? There are the seas that will wash over inhabited land, thereâs the sea economy with fisherman and cargo crews facing hard times and, amidst all the debate about animal rights, where do sea creatures fit in? Professor Chris Armstrong author of A Blue New Deal: Why We Need a New Politics for the Ocean (Yale UP, 2022) with Owen Bennett Jones.
Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press.
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The Killer Whale Journals: Our Love and Fear of Orcas
Episode 166
Thursday, June 29, 2023 ⢠Duration 58:34
Like wolves, orcas have been loved and loathed throughout history. What created this complicated relationship between humans and whales? And have we changed our attitudes toward them and their habitat needs in time to save them? Science writer and biologist Hanne Strager joins us to share:
How a conversation in a cafeteria led her to remote corners of the world.
Why her sister helped her be in two places at once.
How she learned about whale dialects.
Why the loss of a pod member matters so much.
A discussion of the book The Killer Whale Journals: Our Love and Fear of Orcas (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023).
Todayâs book is: The Killer Whale Journals: Our Love and Fear of Orcas, by Hanne Strager, which opens as intrepid biology student Hanne Strager volunteers to be the cook on a small research vessel in Norway's Lofoten Islands. This trip would inspire a decades-long journey to learn about the lives of killer whalesâand an exploration of people's complex relationships with the biggest predators on earth. In The Killer Whale Journals, Strager brings us along with her as she battles the stormy Arctic seas of northern Norway with fellow biologists intent on decoding whale-song and dialects, interviews First Nations conservationists in Vancouver, observes Inuit hunters in Greenland, and witnesses the dismantling of black market "whale jails" in the Russian wilderness of Kamchatka. Featuring photographs from Paul Nicklen, The Killer Whale Journals reveals rare and intimate moments of connection with these fierce, brilliant predators.
Our guest is: Hanne Strager, who is a biologist, whale researcher, and the future Director of Exhibitions and Visitor Experience at The Whale, a museum in Norway set to open in 2025. She cofounded a whale center in Norway and has served as the Director of Exhibitions at the Natural History Museum of Denmark. She is the author of A Modest Genius: The Story of Darwinâs Life and How His Ideas Changed Everything, and The Killer Whale Journals: Our Love and Fear of Orcas.
Our host is:Â Dr. Christina Gessler, who holds a PhD in American history. She has served as creator and producer of the Academic Life since she launched it in 2020. The Academic Life is proud to be an academic partner of New Books Network.
Listeners to this episode may also be interested in:
This episode on wasps with Seirian Sumner
This episode on Climate Change with Dr. Shuang-ye Wu
This episode on why time spent in nature is good for you
This episode on how our pets are family members
This episode on gender bias in the study of science
This episode on gender bias in medical school and the ER
Welcome to the Academic Life! Join us here each week to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world, and embrace the broad definition of what it truly means to live an academic life. Missed any of the 150+ Academic Life episodes? You can find them all archived here. And check back soon: weâre busy in the studio preparing new episodes for your academic journeyâand beyond!
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Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa, "The Celluloid Specimen: Moving Image Research into Animal Life" (U California Press, 2023)
Episode 53
Sunday, June 18, 2023 ⢠Duration 01:19:52
In The Celluloid Specimen: Moving Image Research into Animal Life (U of California Press, 2023), BenjamĂn SchultzâFigueroa examines rarely seen behaviorist films of animal experiments from the 1930s and 1940s. These laboratory recordingsâincluding Robert Yerkes's work with North American primate colonies, Yale University's ratâbased simulations of human society, and B. F. Skinner's promotions for pigeonâguided missilesâhave long been considered passive records of scientific research. In SchultzâFigueroa's incisive analysis, however, they are revealed to be rich historical, political, and aesthetic texts that played a crucial role in American scientific and cultural historyâand remain foundational to contemporary conceptions of species, race, identity, and society.
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Pressâs Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.
Dr. BenjamĂn Schultz-Figueroa is Assistant Professor in Film Studies at Seattle University. His research focuses on the history of scientific filmmaking, nontheatrical film, and animal studies. Among other venues, his writing has been published in JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Film History, Millennium Film Journal, The Brooklyn Rail and Journal of Environmental Media.
Callie Smith is a poet and museum educator with a PhD in English. She currently lives in Louisiana.
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Josh Milburn, "Food, Justice, and Animals: Feeding the World Respectfully" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Episode 52
Thursday, June 15, 2023 ⢠Duration 01:16:00
How would we eat if animals had rights? A standard assumption is that our food systems would be plant-based. But maybe we should reject this assumption. Indeed, this book argues that a future non-vegan food system would be permissible on an animal rights view. It might even be desirable.
In Food, Justice, and Animals: Feeding the World Respectfully (Oxford University Press, 2023), Josh Milburn questions if the vegan food system risks cutting off many people's pursuit of the 'good life', risks exacerbating food injustices, and risks negative outcomes for animals. If so, then maybe non-vegan food systems would be preferable to vegan food systems, if they could respect animal rights.
Could they? The author provides a rigorous analysis of the ethics of farming invertebrates, producing plant-based meats, developing cultivated animal products, and co-working with animals on genuinely humane farms, arguing that these possibilities offer the chance for a food system that is non-vegan, but nonetheless respects animals' rights. He argues that there is a way for us to have our cake, and eat it too, because we can have our cow, and eat her too.
Josh Milburn is a British philosopher and a Lecturer in Political Philosophy at Loughborough University. He has previously worked at the University of Sheffield, the University of York, and Queen's University (in Canada), before which he studied at Queen's University Belfast and Lancaster University. He is the author of Just Fodder: The Ethics of Feeding Animals (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022), and the regular host of the animal studies podcast Knowing Animals.
Kyle Johannsen is a philosophy instructor at Trent University and Wilfrid Laurier University. His most recent book is Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering (Routledge, 2021).
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