The Animal Turn

[From the Archive - Enjoy!]
Claudia talks to Jonathan Balcombe about fishes and their varied and incredible experiences. Using the concept of ‘shoalmates’ as a launch pad, they discuss some of the intra- and inter-species relations fishes engage in from work to cuddle and play. 
 
Date recorded: 30 November 2020
 
Jonathan Balcombe is a biologist with a PhD in ethology, the study of animal behavior. His books include Pleasurable Kingdom, Second Nature, The Exultant Ark, and What a Fish Knows—a New York Times best-seller now available in fifteen languages. His next book for grown-ups, Super Fly, will be published May 2021 by Penguin Books. A children’s story book about a boy and a fish is also scheduled for publication in 2021. He has taught courses in animal behavior and sentience for the Viridis Graduate Institute, and Humane Society University. He lives in Belleville, Ontario where in his spare time he enjoys biking, baking, birding, Bach, and trying to understand the neighborhood squirrels. Learn more about Jonathan and his work here. 
  
Featured:  
A foray into the worlds of animals and humans by Jakob von Uexküll; 
Sterling murmuration by canoeists; 
The Ocean Sunfishes by Tierney Thys et al; 
The Dark Hobby by Paradise Filmworks
 
Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E) for sponsoring this podcast, Gordon Clarke (Instagram: @_con_sol_) for the bed music, and Jeremy John (Website) for the logo. 
A.P.P.L.E
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.

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.

Vivisection is an old word for a practice that still shapes modern medicine: using living bodies as tools for knowledge. Claudia talks with Lauren Stein and Richard Miller from the National Anti-Vivisection Society to unpack some of vivisection’s history, how scientists understand it and think through the ethics of it, as well as the emergence of alternatives to its use. 
Date Recorded: 22 June 2026

 Lauren Stein, Ph.D., is the Director of Science and Research Programs at the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS). She joined NAVS in 2024 after spending more than a decade in academic biomedical research focused on the interactions between the brain and body and their effects on human health. Lauren holds a Ph.D. in Pharmacology and Physiology and is dedicated to advancing humane, human-relevant research technologies that replace animal use while improving scientific outcomes. Through her work at NAVS, she helps educate the public about emerging alternatives to animal testing and the future of biomedical research. Learn more at https://navs.org.

 Richard Miller, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Pharmacology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a science adviser to the National Anti-Vivisection Society. After decades conducting biomedical research, he became a leading voice for replacing animal experimentation with modern, human-relevant research methods. He is the author of The Rise and Fall of Animal Experimentation: Empathy, Science, and the Future of Research, which examines the history, ethics, and scientific limitations of animal-based research while exploring emerging alternatives. Dr. Miller has published more than 500 scientific papers and brings both firsthand laboratory experience and historical perspective to discussions about the future of science. Learn more at https://richardjmillerscientist.com.
 
Featured: 
National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS)
The Rise and Fall of Animal Experimentation by Richard Miller
On The Revolutions Of The Celestial Spheres by Nicholas Copernicus 
De humani corporis fabrica libri septem by Andreae Vesalii Bruxellensis
A Discourse on Method by Rene Descartes. 
The Vacanti Mouse (The Ear Mouse) 
Ontario halts invasive medical testing on dogs and cats 

Other Episodes of The Animal Turn
S5E5: Animal Testing and its Alternatives with Thomas Hartung
S5E6: Brown Dog - The Forgotten Terrier Who Sparked a Movement
A.P.P.L.E
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.

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.

Claudia talks with Kathryn Gillespie about “haunting” as a way to notice how harm and care shape everyday human–animal relationships. They discuss everything, from feeding urban crows to grieving orcas and lab beagles learning what grass feels like. They consider the role of attentiveness in relations with animals and ask what becomes visible when we stop treating violence as background noise.
Date Recorded: 1 April 2026
Kathryn Gillespie, PhD, is a writer, researcher, and educator dedicated to understanding the relationships of harm and care humans have with other animals. Her work invites readers to reflect on their own connections and disconnections with animals and the natural work and imagine a path to gentler futures. She is the author of The Sound of Feathers: Attentive Living in a World Beyond Ourselves and The Cow with Ear Tag #1389. She lives at the end of the world with a wonderful human, three senior rescue horses, and a donkey with a big personality.  Learn more about Kathryn via her website. 
 
Featured: 
The Sound of Feathers by Kathryn Gillespie 
The Cow with Ear Tag #1389 by Kathryn Gillespie
The afterlives of the lively commodity by Kathryn Gillespie 
Playing Possum by Susana Monsó
Animals and the Right to Politics by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka 
Ghostly Matters by Avery F. Gordon
The Spectralities Reader edited by Maria del Pilar Blanco  and Esther Peeren 
How to do nothing by Jenny Odell
 
Other Episodes of The Animal Turn
S2E5 - Intimate Geography with Kathryn Gillespie
 
Quote: 
“Haunting is one way in which abusive systems of power make themselves known and their impacts felt in everyday life, especially when they are supposedly over and done with (slavery, for instance) or when their oppressive nature is denied (as in free labor or national security). Haunting is not the same as being exploited, traumatized, or oppressed, although it usually involves these experiences or is produced by them. What's distinctive about haunting is that it is an animated state in which a repressed or unresolved social violence is making itself known, sometimes very directly, sometimes more obliquely. I used the term haunting to describe those singular yet repetitive instances when home becomes unfamiliar, when your bearings on the world lose direction, when the over-and-done-with comes alive, when what's been in your blind spot comes into view. Haunting raises specters, and it alters the experience of being in time, the way we separate the past, the present, and the future. These specters or ghosts appear when the trouble they represent and symptomize is no longer being contained or repressed or blocked from view. The ghost, as I understand it, is not the invisible or some ineffable excess. The whole essence, if you can use that word, of a ghost is that it has a real presence and demands its due, your attention. Haunting and the appearance of specters or ghosts is one way, I tried to suggest, we are notified that what's been concealed is very much alive and present, interfering precisely with those always incomplete forms of containment and repression ceaselessly directed toward us. From Ghostly Matters (page xvi).
 
The Animal Turn is part of the  iROAR, an Animals Podcasting Network and can also be found on A.P.P.L.E, LinkedIn,Blue Sky, and Instagram
 
Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E) for sponsoring this podcast; Gordon Clarke (Instagram: @_con_sol_) for the bed music, Jeremy John for the logo, Rebecca Shen for her design work. This episode was edited and produced by the host Claudia Towne Hirtenfelder. 
A.P.P.L.E
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.

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.

John Sanbonmatsu joins Claudia on the show to discuss ‘deception,’ a concept in the title of his recently published book “The Omnivore’s Deception.” We explore how deception operates in understandings of meat and human relations with animals, including how industries actively deceive the public but also how individuals engage in practices of bad faith and self-deception.  
Date Recorded: 25 February 2026
John Sanbonmatsu is Professor of Philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, where he teaches courses in ethics, politics, and existentialism, philosophy of technology, and other topics. He is the author of The Omnivore's Deception: What We Get Wrong about Meat, Animals, and Ourselves (NYU Press) and of The Postmodern Prince: Critical Theory, Left Strategy, and the Making of a New Political Subject (Monthly Review Press). He is also editor of the book Critical Theory and Animal Liberation (Bloomsbury). His opinion essays have appeared in Christian Science Monitor, CounterPunch, Huffington Post, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch, among other places. Learn more about him on his website. 
 
Featured: 
The Omnivore’s Deception by John Sanbonmatsu
The Postmodern Prince by John Sanbonmatsu
Animal Liberation by Peter Singer
The Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan
The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith 
The Women’s Room by Marilyn French 
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Bad Faith by Jean-Paul Sartre 
The Animals versus man the king of the jinn by Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʼ
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
The Lives of Animals by J.M. Coetzee
Anti-Semite and Jew by Jean-Paul Satre
Population Balance
Half-Earth Socialism by Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass

The Animal Turn is part of the  iROAR, an Animals Podcasting Network and can also be found on A.P.P.L.E, LinkedIn,Blue Sky, and Instagram
 Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E) for sponsoring this podcast; Gordon Clarke (Instagram: @_con_sol_) for the bed music, Jeremy John for the logo, Rebecca Shen, Christiaan Menz, Herre de Bondt, and Carlo Salzani for their content creation and support. This episode was edited and produced by the host Claudia Towne Hirtenfelder. 
A.P.P.L.E
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.

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.

Claudia talks to political philosophers Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka about their latest book Animals and the Right to Politics. They discuss the differences between societal and placed based politics, unpacking why both are necessary to enable animals’ political engagement. 
Date Recorded: 30 January 2026
Featured: 
Animals and The Right to Politics by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka 
Animal agora: Animal citizens and the democratic challenge by Sue Donaldson
Environmental Ethics as Environmental Etiquette by Jim Cheney and Anthony Weston
What Comes After Entanglement by Eva Giraud
Public Things by Bonnie Honig
The Frontenac Axis
VINE Sanctuary
Other Episodes of The Animal Turn
S1E1: Animal Rights with Will Kymlicka
S2E7: Political Multispecies Communities with Sue Donaldson
S6E1: Politics with Will Kymlicka
Bonus: Koalas with Danielle Clode 
A.P.P.L.E
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.

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.