The Animal Turn – Details, episodes & analysis

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The Animal Turn

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Science

Society & Culture

Frequency: 1 episode/21d. Total Eps: 112

Animals are increasingly at the forefront of research questions – Not as shadows to human stories, or as beings we want to understand biologically, or for purely our benefit – but as beings who have histories, stories, and geographies of their own. Each season is set around themes with each episode unpacking a particular animal turn concept and its significance therein. Join Claudia Hirtenfelder as she delves into some of the most important ideas emerging out of this recent turn in scholarship, thinking, and being.

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S8E7: Social Media with Laura Fernández, Amanda Weiss, and Siobhan Speiran

Season 8 · Episode 7

Monday, December 15, 2025 • Duration 01:24:53

Guests Laura Fernández, Amanda Weiss, and Siobhan Speiran join Claudia to discuss case studies as wide ranging as Japanese animal cafes, Spanish bull fighting, and Costa Rican sanctuaries to unfurl the complex relations of social media and animals. Together they probe how social media packages animals as content, why that changes real lives, and where activism, policy, and platform design can push back.

Date Recorded: 11 April 2025

Featured:

Han Heroes and Yamato Warriors: Competing Masculinities in Chinese and Japanese War Cinema by Amanda Weiss
Critical Animal and Media Studies by Núria Almiron, Matthew Cole, Carrie P. Freeman
Media Theories and the Crossroads of Critical Animal and Media Studies by Debra Merskin
Wounded men of feminism: Exploring regimes of male victimhood in the Spanish manosphere by Elisa García Mingo and Silvia Díaz Fernández
A field-based Conservation Welfare Assessment Framework for Costa Rican primate sanctuaries by Siobhan Sperian
The Emotional politics of images: moral shock, explicit violence and strategic visual communication in the animal liberation movement by Laura Fernández
Animal Traffic: Lively Capital in the Global Exotic Pet Trade by Rosemary-Claire Collard
Big Cat Reporting Tool by Four Paws
About Looking by John Berger
The Philosopher and the Wolf by Mark Rowlands.
Social Media Cruelty Coalition
Seoul Zebra Escape
Stop Animals Selfie Campaign
The Civet Project
Global Federation of Sanctuaries
Earthlings
Fugitive cows in Quebec captured after months on the run
Tiger King
Chimp Crazy

A.P.P.L.E
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.

iROAR Network
iROAR brings together podcasts that aim is to make the world a better place for animals.

Georgia Institute of Technology
School of Modern Language, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, School of Literature, Media, & Commun

Pollination Project
The Pollination Project empowers volunteers across by providing the funding they need.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show

The Animal Turn is hosted and produced by Claudia Hirtenfelder and is part of the iROAR Network. Learn more on our website.

Leave a Review on Podchaser
Check out The Animal Turn Merch.
Support us on Patreon, Buy Me a Coffee, and Buzzsprout.

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S8E6: Podcasting and Education with María Carreras and Kate Acton

Season 8 · Episode 6

Monday, December 8, 2025 • Duration 01:37:22

We celebrate 100 episodes by asking how podcasting can teach, build community, and improve animal welfare across languages, disciplines, and daily routines. Guests Maria Carreras and Kate Acton share concrete changes, strategic insights, and challenges that reshape how we listen to animals and to each other.

Date Recorded: 11 April 2025

Featured:

When Animals Speak by Eva Meijer
The Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol J Adams.
Inside of a Dog by Alexandra Horowitz
Evaluating the Addition of Positive Reinforcement for Learning a Frightening Task: A Pilot Study With Horses by Camie R Heleski et al
The Ventriloquist’s Burden: Animal Advocacy and the Problem of Speaking for Others by Lauren Corman
Preliminary evidence supporting the use of equine science podcasts to bridge the gap between scientists and horse enthusiasts to improve horse welfare by Kate Acton and others.
iROAR Network
Culture and Animals Foundation
Conversations in Equine Science podcast
ECA Podcast

Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.iROAR brings together podcasts that aim is to make the world a better place for animals. The Pollination Project empowers volunteers across by providing the funding they need. School of Modern Language, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, School of Literature, Media, & CommunDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Bonus: Big Cat Trade with Vanessa Amoroso

Monday, April 14, 2025 • Duration 51:28

The global big cat trade encompasses both legal and illegal networks, with South Africa standing as the world's largest exporter of big cats including both live animals and parts. Vanessa Amoroso from Four Paws International explains how captive breeding facilities create a "conveyor belt of cubs" that fuels tourism attractions while obscuring the darker reality of what happens to these animals. Together Claudia and Vanessa discuss how loopholes in CITES allows for the large-scale legal breeding and trade of big cats, which also has numerous slippages into the illegal trade of the animals and exacerbates their exploitation.

Date Recorded: 5 August 2024

Vanessa Amoroso has been employed at FOUR PAWS / VIER PFOTEN International since September 2021 and has worked within the animal welfare sector for thirteen years. She holds a BSc in Environmental Biology and a PGCert in International Animal Welfare, Ethics and Law. Vanessa currently oversees the design and delivery of the commercial big cat trade campaign in South Africa and European trade of Tigers. She also heads up the wildlife trade component of the Pandemics and Animal Welfare campaign.

Featured:

Dethroned directed by Will Foster-Grundy
Help for Big Cats by Four Paws
Big Cat Reporting Tool by Four Paws
CITES – Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species.

The Animal Turn is part of the iROAR, an Animals Podcasting Network and can also be found on A.P.P.L.E, and

S1E1: Animal Rights with Will Kymlicka

Season 1 · Episode 1

Monday, February 24, 2020 • Duration 01:21:53

Claudia talks to Will Kymlicka about the concept of Animal Rights and how it pertains to the law. They touch on what the relationship is between law and ethics and what this means for scholarship in ‘The Animal Turn’. This episode opens-up the first season of the podcast, focusing on Animals and the Law.

Guest: Will Kymlicka is the Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy at Queen’s University, where he has taught since 1998. He has published eight books and over 200 articles, which have been translated into 34 languages. His books include Contemporary Political Philosophy (1990; second edition 2002), Multicultural Citizenship (1995), Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity (2007), and most recently Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (2011), co-authored with Sue Donaldson. He was awarded the 2019 Gold Medal from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Host: Claudia Hirtenfelder is a PhD Candidate in Geography and Planning at Queen’s University and is currently undertaking her own research project that looks at the historical relationships between animals and cities.

Featured readings: Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights written by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka; Animals and the Law by Lesli Bisgould; Social Membership: Animal Law Beyond the Property/Personhood Impasse by Will Kymlicka

Bed Music created by Gordon Clarke (Instagram: @con_sol_ )

Podcast Logo created by Jeremy John (Website)

Sponsored by Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics – A.P.P.L.E ()

S7E10: Grad Review with Rashmi Singh Rana and Priyanshu Thapliyal

Season 7 · Episode 10

Monday, February 24, 2025 • Duration 01:38:52

Rashmi Singh Rana and Priyanshu Thapliyal join Claudia on the show to discuss some of the key themes to emerge in Season 7, Animals and Multispecies Health. These include thinking beyond anthropocentric understandings of health; considering how geography and context shape health relations; and the importance of discourse in both imaginative and material impacts.

Date Recorded: 29 January 2025

Priyanshu Thapliyal is a PhD Researcher based in the school of GeoSciences at University of Edinburgh. In his project, he is thinking with and for people and street dogs living in an Indian Himalayan village to explore the everyday ethics and politics of sharing life and space on a more-than-human planet. He has an interest in cultural geography, environmental anthropology, and multispecies studies. Connect with Priya via Twitter (@priathaplial).

Rashmi Singh Rana is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Compassionate Conservation of the Transdisciplinary School, University of Technology Sydney. Her conservation research explores how the dynamic socio-ecological realities shape coexistence dynamics in the multispecies spaces of the Indian trans-Himalaya. Presently, her research interests lie in tracing the contemporary relationships between humans and dogs, and its influence on the future of safe multispecies cohabitation in agro-pastoral landscapes. Connect with her via Twitter (@RashmiSinghRana).

Featured:

Dogopolis by Chris Pearson
Conservation Beyond Biopolitics by Krithika Srinivasan

Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics for sponsoring this podcast; Remaking One Health Indies for sponsoring this season; Gordon Clarke for the bed music, Jeremy John for the logo, Rebecca Shen for her design work. This episode was produced by the host Claudia Towne Hirtenfelder.

A.P.P.L.EAnimals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.This project investigates people-dog interactions, dog ecology, and rabies prevention efforts in urbiROAR brings together podcasts that aim is to make the world a better place for animals. Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

S7E9: Dogs’ Health with Jessica Pierce

Season 7 · Episode 9

Monday, February 10, 2025 • Duration 01:19:08

In this episode Jessica Pierce joins Claudia to explicitly discuss dogs’ health. They discuss everything from end-of-life care for dogs, to breeding practices, and discourses about dogs’ purpose in society. They unfurl some of the overlapping and similar health needs of street- versus pet-dogs and surmise that in general dogs are facing a range of both physical and psychological challenges.

Date Recorded: 2 September 2024.

Jessica Pierce is an American bioethicist known for her work in the field of animal ethics and the philosophy of human-animal relationships. She has written a number of books about dogs, including Who’s A Good Dog? And How to Be A Better Human, A Dog’s World: Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World without People (with Marc Bekoff), and Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets. Her passionate advocacy for the well-being of dogs has sparked global conversations and driven positive change in the way society perceives and treats our canine companions (website).

Featured:

Who’s A Good Dog? And How to Be A Better Human by Jessica Pierce
A Dog’s World: Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World without People by Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce
Dogpedia: A Brief Compendium of Canine Curiositiesby Jessica Pierce
Bioethics with Jeff Sebo on The Animal Turn Podcast
on the Sam Harris Podcast

Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.This project investigates people-dog interactions, dog ecology, and rabies prevention efforts in urbiROAR brings together podcasts that aim is to make the world a better place for animals. Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

S7E8: Pavlov’s Dogs with Matthew Adams

Season 7 · Episode 8

Thursday, February 6, 2025 • Duration 01:26:13

Matthew Adams joins Claudia on the show to talk about the dogs who were used by Ivan Pavlov in his extensive laboratory operations in St Petersburg. They discuss the importance of psychology and psychological experimentation in debates about multispecies health, also pointing to the importance of art-based research that challenges anthropocentricism.

Recorded: 10 September 2024.

Matthew Adams is an academic in the School of Humanities & Social Sciences at the University of Brighton, UK. He teaches classes in ecopsychology, the psychology of human-animal relations, posthumanities and creative methods. Mathew’s research challenges conventional perceptions of animal experimentation and considers the nature of scientific work. From 2022-2024, Mathew worked as an Arts and Humanities Research Council Fellow on a project entitled Pavlov and the kingdom of dogs: Storying experimental animal histories through arts-based research. Matthew’s most recent book is titled Anthropocene Psychology: Being Human in a More-Than-Human World.

Featured:

Pavlov and the kingdom of dogs by Matthew Adams
Ecological Crisis, Sustainability and the Psychosocial Subject by Matthew Adams
Anthropocene Psychology: Being Human in a More-than-human world by Matthew Adams
Nature and Experience in the Culture of Delusion by David W. Kidner
When Species Meet by Donna Harraway
by Val Plumwood

S7E7: Urban Health Histories with Heeral Chhabra

Season 7 · Episode 7

Monday, January 20, 2025 • Duration 01:17:14

In this episode we delve into how urban health histories can help us to understand changing multispecies health. Heeral Chhabra tells us how the welfare of free-roaming dogs in India was caught up with the colonial history of the country and how rabies saw drastic changes in human-dog relations.

Date Recorded: 27 September 2024.

Heeral Chhabra is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate with the Remaking One Health: Decolonial Approaches to Street Dogs and Rabies Prevention in India Project at University of Liverpool. She was awarded PhD from the University of Delhi (2022) for her thesis Animal ‘Welfare’, State Regulations and Questions of Cruelty c.1900-1940s which sought to understand animal-human relationships in colonial India through the prism of law. Heeral is also a Visiting Fellow at IASH, Edinburgh University and has previously been a Global History Fellow at International Institute of Social History. She has published widely on matters related to animals in Indian history. She is currently working on her manuscript The Barking Subjects of Empire: The History of Street Dog-Human relations in Colonial India, and also co-editing two books - Animals and South Asian History: Species, People and Environment; and Writing Global History from Global South.

Featured:

Animals and Colonial Indian Archives by Heeral Chhabra
Animals, Agency, and Class: Writing the History of Animals from Below by Jason Hribal
Animals as Experiencing Entities: Theories and Historical Narratives edited by Michael J. Glover, Les Mitchell
The biopolitics of animal being and welfare: dog control and care in the UK and India by Krithika Srinivasan
by Claudia Hirtenfelder

S7E6: Compassionate Conservation with Daniel Ramp

Season 7 · Episode 6

Monday, January 13, 2025 • Duration 01:46:14

This episode dives into the principles of compassionate conservation, emphasizing the importance of recognizing individual lives and experiences in conservation efforts. Daniel Ramp outlines how traditional conservation often overlooks the welfare of specific animals, leading to harmful outcomes, and presents compelling arguments for integrating compassion into conservation policies and practices.

Date Recorded: 1 November 2024.

Daniel Ramp is a behavioural ecologist, welfare expert, and conservation biologist specializing in transdisciplinary approaches to coexistence and sustainability. He is the Founder and Director of the Centre for Compassionate Conservation at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), where he is an Associate Professor in the Transdisciplinary School. He leads the development of research, teaching, and public outreach in the centre, where the goal is to stimulate innovation, novel research, and conservation practices that promote multispecies flourishing. Dan conducts research on compassionate conservation, wild animal welfare, environmental ethics, and wildlife ecology, while also collaborating widely with other disciplines.

Featured:

Centre for Compassionate Conservation
IUCN Red List
Ecology. Whose conservation? By Georgina Mace.
Preventing extinction in an age of species migration and planetary change by Erick Lundgren et al.
Failing Forward: The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Conservation by Robert Fletcher.
The elephant (head) in the room: A critical look at trophy hunting by Chelsea Batavia et al.

S7E5: Marginalized Multispecies Collectives with Oswaldo Santos Baquero

Season 7 · Episode 5

Monday, December 23, 2024 • Duration 01:51:49

Join us for a conversation with Oswaldo Santos Baquero about marginalized multispecies collectives. He explains the complexities of biological taxonomy and challenges traditional definitions of species to instead think about how collectives operate. By critically analyzing health practices through the lens of multispecies marginalization, Oswaldo challenges us to reconsider the economic interests that often overshadow the well-being of both animals and humans.

Date Recorded: 28 August 2024.

Oswaldo Santos Baquero is a professor in the Department of Preventive Veterinary Medicine and Animal Health at the School of Veterinary Medicine of the University of São Paulo and in the Peripheries Research Group at the Institute of Advanced Studies. He coordinates the Multispecies Health Network (MUHE Network), dedicated to the (re)production of the good life (buen vivir) of marginalised multispecies collectives. He has a degree in veterinary medicine, a PhD in epidemiology, a post-doctorate in public health, and a specialisation in data science. He works on matters related to decolonisation, biopolitics, political ecology and science and technology studies.

Featured:

MUHE Network
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
Staying with the Trouble by Donna Harraway
Meeting the Universe Halfway by Karen Barad
Wildlife Conservation Society
Animal Rights/Human Rights by David Nibert

Thank you to APPLE for sponsoring this podcast; Remaking One Health Indies for sponsoring this season; and the Phoenix Zones Initiative for sponsoring this episode. Gordon Clarke or the bed music, Jeremy John for the logo, Rebecca Shen for her design work, Priyanshu Thapliyal for the Animal Highlight, and Christiaan Mentz for his audio editing.

Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.This project investigates people-dog interactions, dog ecology, and rabies prevention efforts in urbAn organization on a mission to change the policies and practices that drive the exploitation of vuliROAR brings together podcasts that aim is to make the world a better place for animals. Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

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