The Animal Highlight – Details, episodes & analysis

In this episode Rosa focuses on the Oxford Dodo, attempting to trace the life history of a bird whose only trace is a fragile head and foot in the Oxford University of Natural History. She unpacks some of the competing routes the bird might have taken – from being hunted and shipped from Mauritius to being kept in an urban menagerie. She also follows the afterlife of the museum object itself once again raising questions about the interconnections between power, possession, and knowledge. 

• Pitt Rivers Museum
• Oxford University Natural History Museum
• Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland
• The Tradescants
• Murder most fowl: Oxford dodo 'shot in the back of the head'

 Credits:

• Recorded: 16 January 2024
• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor and co-host 
• Rosa Dyer, script writer, narrator and co-host
• Rebecca Shen, episode artwork and logo
• Gordon Clarke, bed music
• Other sound effects from Alice in wonderland Soundtrack, Epidemic Sound, Pixabay
• Learn more about the team here. 

Support the podcast via: 

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn 
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn 
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/ 

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

Rosa traces a Munduruku feather cap from Brazil to the museum case and discuss how tapirage was a process used to turned green parrots  feathers a blazing yellow by using frog toxins, dyes and time. Beauty and pain sit side by side as we weigh Indigenous innovation, care and the cost to animals.

• Pitt Rivers Museum

Credits:

• Recorded: 9 November 2023 Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor and co-host 
• Rosa Dyer, script writer, narrator and co-host
• Rebecca Shen, episode artwork and logo
• Gordon Clarke, bed music
• Other sound effects from BBC Sound Effects, Pixabay, Epidemic Sound
• Learn more about the team here. 

Support the podcast via: 

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn 
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn 
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/  

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

In this Animal Highlight, fellow Virginia Thomas discusses the European Wild Cat and their entangled relationships with domesticated cats. She notes how the interbreeding between these two species has conservationists worried and has resulted in a range of, oftentimes, violent interventions into their animals’ lives.

Recorded: 12 October 2023 

 Featured: 

• S5E3: Feral and Invasive Species with Lauren van Patter on The Animal Turn.
• S6E4: Violence with Dinesh Wadiwel on The Animal Turn. 
• Scottish ‘Highland Tiger’ wildcat more endangered than Asian cousin on the BBC.
• Giraffe Marius slaughtered in Copenhagen Zoo, fed to lions on Euronews. 
• The Violent Conservation of the European Wildcat by Virginia Thomas

Virginia Thomas is an environmental social scientist with a PhD in Sociology. She is interested in people’s interactions with their environment and with other animals. Virginia’s work explores the social and ethical questions in human-animal relationships. She is currently a research fellow on the Wellcome Trust funded project ‘From Feed the Birds to Do Not Feed the Animals’ which examines the drivers and consequences of animal feeding. This leads on from her previous research which examined human-animal relations in the media (as part of zoonotic disease framing) and in rewilding projects (in relation to biopolitics and human-animal coexistence). You can connect with Virginia via Twitter (@ArbitrioHumano).

Credits:

• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor and co-host 
• Virginia Thomas, script write, narrator and co-host
• Rebecca Shen, content producer and designer (logo and episode artwork)
• Gordon Clarke, bed music composer
• Sound clips taken from: BBC Sound Effects, BBC, Euronews. 
• Learn more about the team here. 

Support the podcast via: 

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn 
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn 
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/ 

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

Virginia Thomas tells us about a red-tailed hawk named Pale Male who sparked controversy and admiration when he built his nest on a luxury Fifth Avenue apartment building in New York City. Pale Male is a celebrity whose story illuminates questions about animal habitat rights in urban environments.

Recorded: 12 October 2023 

 Featured: 

• Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat by Hal Herzog.
• S6E3: Moral Imagination and Habitat Rights with Steve Cooke on The Animal Turn.
• The Legend of Pale Male, a documentary.
• Pale Male: Citizen Hawk of New York City by Janet Schulman.
• The Tale of Male by Jeanette Winter.
• Recognizing Pale Male by Virginia Thomas.

Virginia Thomas is an environmental social scientist with a PhD in Sociology. She is interested in people’s interactions with their environment and with other animals. Virginia’s work explores the social and ethical questions in human-animal relationships. She is currently a research fellow on the Wellcome Trust funded project ‘From Feed the Birds to Do Not Feed the Animals’ which examines the drivers and consequences of animal feeding. This leads on from her previous research which examined human-animal relations in the media (as part of zoonotic disease framing) and in rewilding projects (in relation to biopolitics and human-animal coexistence). You can connect with Virginia via Twitter (@ArbitrioHumano).

Credits:

• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor and co-host 
• Virginia Thomas, script write, narrator and co-host
• Rebecca Shen, content producer and designer (logo and episode artwork)
• Gordon Clarke, bed music composer
• Sound clips taken from: BBC Sound Effects, Legend of Pale Male Trailer
• Learn more about the team here. 

Support the podcast via: 

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn 
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn 
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/ 

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

Virginia Thomas introduces the red maguey worm; a caterpillar often mistakenly called the "tequila worm.” She explores their biology and ethical implications of using these metamorphosing creatures as novelty ‘items’ in alcoholic beverages.

Recorded: 18 September 2023 

 Featured: 

• Cosmopolitanism with Angie Pepper on The Animal Turn.
• Perdido Street Station by China Melville.
• The Life Cycle of Butterflies and Moths by Butterfly Conservation.
• Cosmopolitan 'Worms' by Virginia Thomas.

Virginia Thomas is an environmental social scientist with a PhD in Sociology. She is interested in people’s interactions with their environment and with other animals. Virginia’s work explores the social and ethical questions in human-animal relationships. She is currently a research fellow on the Wellcome Trust funded project ‘From Feed the Birds to Do Not Feed the Animals’ which examines the drivers and consequences of animal feeding. This leads on from her previous research which examined human-animal relations in the media (as part of zoonotic disease framing) and in rewilding projects (in relation to biopolitics and human-animal coexistence). You can connect with Virginia via Twitter (@ArbitrioHumano).

Credits:

• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor and co-host 
• Virginia Thomas, script write, narrator and co-host
• Rebecca Shen, content producer and designer (logo and episode artwork)
• Gordon Clarke, bed music composer
• Sound clips taken from: BBC Sound Effects, Pixabay, Internet Archive
• Learn more about the team here. 

Support the podcast via: 

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn 
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn 
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/ 

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

In this Animal Highlight, fellow Virginia Thomas focuses on the domestic dog and the ways in which they might be thought of as citizens. She thinks about some of dogs' history and discusses the work of Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka. 

Recorded: 18 September 2023 

 Featured: 

• Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rightsby Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka.
• Biosecurity with Steve Hinchliffe on The Animal Turn.
• Politics with Will Kymlicka on The Animal Turn.
• Cosmopolitanism with Angie Pepper on The Animal Turn.
• Canine Good Citizen with the American Kennel Club. 
• The biopolitics of animal being and welfare by Krithika Srinivasan.
• Domesticated Dogs as Citizens by Virginia Thomas.

Virginia Thomas is an environmental social scientist with a PhD in Sociology. She is interested in people’s interactions with their environment and with other animals. Virginia’s work explores the social and ethical questions in human-animal relationships. She is currently a research fellow on the Wellcome Trust funded project ‘From Feed the Birds to Do Not Feed the Animals’ which examines the drivers and consequences of animal feeding. This leads on from her previous research which examined human-animal relations in the media (as part of zoonotic disease framing) and in rewilding projects (in relation to biopolitics and human-animal coexistence). You can connect with Virginia via Twitter (@ArbitrioHumano).

Credits:

• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor and co-host 
• Virginia Thomas, script writer, narrator and co-host
• Rebecca Shen, content producer and designer (logo and episode artwork)
• Gordon Clarke, bed music composer
• Sound clips taken from: BBC Sound Effects
• Learn more about the team here. 

Support the podcast via: 

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn 
• Buy Me a Coffee:

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

The last episode of Season 4 is a review of the season “Animals and Waste.” Herre de Bondt, Rebecca Shen, and Claudia Hirtenfelder touch on some of the common themes to emerge in the season. These include how animals are valued as well as the mobility and accumulation of waste. 

Recorded: 14 August 2024. 

Herre de Bondt has done research on rats in Amsterdam, crows in Tokyo, and gulls in The Hague. His work has now brought him to London where his PhD project is concerned with urban bird feeding practices. From hanging up fatballs for chirpy robins to tossing seed to flocks of ‘flying rats’, Herre is determined to investigate the inherently multispecies practice of bird feeding. He is particularly interested in the ways non-human animals inform and shape the contemporary city in collaboration with – and in defiance of – humans. You can connect with Herre via Twitter (@HerreBondt). 

Rebecca Shen is a landscape designer and researcher as well as an Assistant Content Producer and Designer at The Animal Turn. Rebecca is inspired by design as pursuits of worldmaking, especially to advance interspecies justice and collectivity during times of challenge. She graduated with a Master in Landscape Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2023, where she completed her design thesis, Sanctuary State: California’s Cowscape in Transition, which envisions the transformation of an 800-acre industrial “cattle” feedlot into a cow sanctuary, a site for interspecies confrontation, healing, and codesigning. Through her design work, Rebecca explores human-animal relationships in the built environment, ecological restoration, and regenerative food systems. You can find out more about Rebecca on her website or connect with her via email at beccshen@gmail.com. 

Credits:

• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer and host 
• Herre de Bondt, co-host and co-editor
• Christiaan Mentz, sound editor and producer 
• Rebecca Shen, content producer and designer (logo and episode artwork)
• Gordon Clarke, bed music composer
• Learn more about the team here. 

Support the podcast via: 

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn 
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn 
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/ 

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

In this Highlight, Herre looks at how nuclear waste has impacted the lives of wild boars living in Japan. More specifically, he discusses how, following the 2011 triple disaster, boars responded to the departure of humans from the Fukushima area and how the animals are being impacted by their slow return.  

Recorded: 15 May 2024. 

 Featured: 

• Evaluation of DNA damage and stress in wildlife chronically exposed to low-dose, low-dose rate radiation from the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant accident by Kelly Cunningham et al.
• Fukushima Daiichi Accident on The World Nuclear Association. 
• Rewilding of Fukushima's human evacuation zone by Phillip C Lyons et al. 
• Disproportionately High Contributions of 60 Year Old Weapons-137Cs Explain the Persistence of Radioactive Contamination in Bavarian Wild Boars by Felix Stäger et al. 
• Radioactive Boars in Fukushima Thwart Residents’ Plans to Return Home on The New York Times. 
• The dogs of Chernobyl: Demographic insights into populations inhabiting the nuclear exclusion zone by Gabriella J. Spatola et al. 
• Rare look at the wildlife thriving in North Korea's DMZ on The Natural History Museum. 

Credits:

• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer and host 
• Herre de Bondt, co-host and co-editor
• Christiaan Mentz, sound editor and producer 
• Rebecca Shen, content producer and designer (logo and episode artwork)
• Gordon Clarke, bed music composer
• Learn more about the team here. 

Support the podcast via: 

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn 
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn 
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/ 

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

In this episode Herre de Bondt discusses Singapore’s metropolitan macaques and how they use the city and its waste as a valuable resource that is not only important for their survival but contributes to the design of the city.

Recorded: 15 May 2024.

 Featured: 

• Purity and Danger by Mary Douglas
• Catastrophic extinctions follow deforestation in Singapore by Barry W. Brook et al. 
• Characterizing human–macaque interactions in Singapore by Agustín Fuentes et al. 
• Macaque–human interactions and the societal perceptions of macaques in Singapore by John Chih Mun Sha et al. 
• Macaque too smart for anti-pilferage bin on The Dire Straits. 
• Macaquess high rise robbery on Tik Tok. 
• Waste is not “matter out of place” by Max Liboiron
• Monkeys at Northshore Drive on You Tube. 
• Waste, environmental politics and dis/engaged publics by Myra J Hird

Credits:

• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer and host 
• Herre de Bondt, co-host and co-editor
• Christiaan Mentz, sound editor and producer 
• Rebecca Shen, content producer and designer (logo and episode artwork)
• Gordon Clarke, bed music composer
• Learn more about the team here. 

Support the podcast via: 

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn 
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn 
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/ 

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

When it comes to talking about waste and its impacts on animals it is hard to not think about plastic. In this episode, Herre de Bondt tells us how sea turtles have been entangled with the politics of plastic.

Recorded: 27 November 2023. 

 Featured: 

• Dave the Diver
• Sea Turtle with straw in nostril

Credits:

• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer and host 
• Herre de Bondt, co-host and co-editor
• Christiaan Mentz, sound editor and producer 
• Rebecca Shen, content producer and designer (logo and episode artwork)
• Gordon Clarke, bed music composer
• Learn more about the team here. 

Support the podcast via: 

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn 
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn 
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/ 

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook.