• 1 hour 37 minutes
    S9E1: Animals' Cultural Histories with Sandra Swart

    Claudia speaks with historian Sandra Swart about the importance of recognising animals’ cultural histories. They discuss the maturation of animal history as a field and focus on the cultural histories of baboons and elephants in South Africa. 

    Topics covered: 

    • Working definition of animal culture 
    • Fuffification and disnification of wildlife 
    • The deep and urban history of baboons 
    • A lone elephant in the Knysna Forest 
    • ‘Rogue’ elephants in the Pilanesberg
    • Animal Highlight: Elephant history in Kingston, Ontario

    Sandra Swart is Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. She is Director of the African Anthropocenes Research Centre, Guest Professor of Anthropocene History at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, and co-Vice President of European Society for Environmental History. She received her DPhil in Modern History from in 2001, and simultaneously an MSc in Environmental Change and Management, both at Oxford University. She studies the more-than-human history of southern Africa. She is an editor of the Brill book series African and Asian Anthropocene: Studies in the Environmental Humanities. She is the co-author with Greg Bankoff, of , Breeds of Empire: The ‘invention’ of the horse in the Philippines and Southern Africa, 1500-1950 (Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press 2007); co-editor, with Lance van Sittert, of Canis Africanis: a dog history of southern Africa (Brill, 2008), co-editor of Gender and Animals in History (Amsterdam University Press, 2024), and co-editor with Emily O’Gorman, Mark Carey and William San Martín, The Routledge Handbook of Environmental History (Routledge, 2023). She is sole author of Riding High – Horses, Humans and History in South Africa (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 2010) Her most recent book is The Lion’s Historian – Africa’s Animal Past (Ohio University Press, 2025), winner of the Southern African Historical Prize 2025. Learn more. 

    Date Recorded: 20 May 2026

    Featured: 

    Other Episodes of The Animal Turn Mentioned:

    Quotes: 

    “Until the lion has the opportunity to tell the story of the hunt it will aways be a story of the hunter” (West African Proverb).

    “I would be proud to call myself ‘the lion’s historian.’ I hope I have many years ahead exploring social and environmental history in a way that takes the other animals seriously. But let us not concede that we historians are more like baboons than lions. Of course, I mean this in the nicest possible way. A good historian is baboonesque – a trickster figure, adept at shapeshifting and boundary-crossing, unconstrained and omnivorous in our intellectual pleasures. We diligently and delicately pick the lice from the archival armpit. We are not afraid to grasp the nettle or to pluck the prickly pear of public polemic. We are strangers on the rocks, the watchers on the krantzes, the sentinels on the wall. We see and remember” (Swart, The Lion’s Historian, 2023, 294).

    “We need to write histories taking a broader view beyond that of the hunter. We need accounts that connect deep history to the present moment. We need stories in which gender and generational context are not forgotten. These new histories will allow us to understand our own past as more complete in a multi-species and more-than-human context. But I would go much further and suggest that the other animals have their own histories too, both entangled in and independent of our human histories. Our understanding that animals have their own ‘cultures’, their ‘having history’ becomes irrefutable. What, after all, is history if not cultures changing over time?” (Swart, The Lion’s Historian, 2023, 83).

    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. Thank you Rebecca Shen, Christiaan Menz, Herre de Bondt, and Carlo Salzani for back of house and content 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. 

    7 September 2026, 11:00 am
  • 1 hour 10 minutes
    From the Archive: Extraterritorial Jurisdiction with Charlotte Blattner

    Charlotte Blattner discusses how international law, specifically Extraterritorial Jurisdiction, might provide a useful and productive way in which to build legal protections for animals. 

    Date recorded: 10 April 2020

    Guest: Charlotte E. Blattner is a senior researcher and lecturer at the Institute for Public Law, University of Bern. She earned her PhD in international law and animal law from the University of Basel, Switzerland, as part of the doctoral program Law and Animals. From 2017-2018, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Philosophy at Queen’s University, Canada, working on animal labour as part of Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law, and Ethics (APPLE). From 2018-2020, Blattner was a  postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Law School’s Animal Law & Policy Program, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, to explore critical intersections of animal and environmental law. She is the author of Protecting Animals Within and Across Borders (2019, available open access here) and Animal Labour: A New Frontier of Interspecies Justice? (2020, coedited with Will Kymlicka and Kendra Coulter), both published by Oxford University Press. Blattner has argued several cases in court, including the “Primate Rights Case” currently pending at the Swiss Federal Supreme Court. Find out more about Charlotte here. 

    Featured:  

    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. 

    24 August 2026, 11:00 am
  • 1 hour 7 minutes
    From the Archive: Shoalmates with Jonathan Balcombe

    [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:  

     

    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. 

    10 August 2026, 5:00 am
  • 1 hour 27 minutes
    Bonus: (Anti)Vivisection with Lauren Stein and Richard Miller

    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: 


    Other Episodes of The Animal Turn

    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. 

    3 August 2026, 1:00 pm
  • 1 hour 20 minutes
    Bonus: Haunting with Kathryn Gillespie

    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: 

     

    Other Episodes of The Animal Turn

     

    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. 

    30 July 2026, 9:00 am
  • 1 hour 19 minutes
    Bonus: Deception with John Sanbonmatsu

    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 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. 

    20 July 2026, 3:00 am
  • 1 hour 31 minutes
    Bonus: Animals and the Right to Politics with Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka

    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: 

    Other Episodes of The Animal Turn

    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. 

    25 May 2026, 10:00 am
  • 1 hour 21 minutes
    Bonus: Psychoanalysis and the Meat-Commodity with Teddy Duncan Jr.

    In this episode Claudia talks Teddy Duncan Jr. who departs from the Marxian consideration of the meat-commodity to think about how psychoanalysis, especially Lacanian psychoanalysis, might be useful in understanding human relations with meat. They discuss the interconnections of language, disavowal, symbolism, jouissance, and ‘the Real’ in this discussion. 

    Date Recorded: 12 November 2025

    Teddy Duncan Jr is a professor at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. Teddy’s academic writing on subjects such as animality, psychoanalysis, pedagogy, and philosophy has been published in Between the Species, Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, the International Journal of Zizek Studies, The Latin American Literary Review, and The Midwest Quarterly. His freelance writing on art, politics, and literature has appeared in publications such as The Observer, Compact Magazine, Document Journal, and Washington Independent Review of Books, among others. His first academic book, Interpreting Meat, was released in late 2024.  Get in touch with Teddy Duncan via [email protected]

    Featured: 


    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. 

    18 May 2026, 7:00 am
  • 1 hour 28 minutes
    Bonus: Creature Needs with Lucy Spelman, Susan Tacent, and Christopher Kondrich

    A scientific abstract can tell you a species is declining. A story can make you feel what that loss means and why it should change how you live. In this episode Claudia talks to Lucy Spelman, Susan Tacent, and Christopher Kondrich, the co-editors behind Creature Needs, a striking book that juxtaposes conservation science with poems, essays, and fiction written in response. They discuss the book, writing as a means of connection, and the politics of conservation.  

    Date Recorded: 29 June 2025

    Featured: 

    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. 

    11 May 2026, 6:00 am
  • 1 hour 10 minutes
    S8EB: Monstrous Others with Rachel Dean-Ruzicka

    We explore how Stranger Things signals a new monstrous moment, moving from unknowable creatures to human-made villains, and what that shift says about power, identity, and culture. Along the way, we ask how animals get coded as monsters and when their agency is reclaimed or removed in film and TV.


    Date Recorded: 22 April 2025

     

    Featured: 

    • Tolerance Discourse and Young Adult Holocaust Literatureby Rachel Dean-Ruzicka 
    • Paranormal Maturation: Uncanny Teenagers and Canny Killers by Rachel Dean-Ruzicka 
    • Of Scrivens and Sparks: Girl Geniuses in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction by Rachel Dean-Ruzicka 
    • Monster Culture (Seven Theses) by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen
    • The Monster Theory Reader by  Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
    • The Angel of Indian Lake by  Stephen Graham Jones
    • Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
    • Stranger Things
    • Cocaine Bear
    • Mickey 17
    • Okja
    • Random Number Generator Horror Podcast No. 9
    • Nature Trail to Hell
    • Monsters, Heroes, and Others: Unpacking Power in Media and Politics through Race or Species
    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. 

    29 December 2025, 7:00 am
  • 1 hour 28 minutes
    S8E10: Grad Review with Gina Song Lopez and Taylor Jobling

    Gina Song Lopez, researching vegan movements in Taiwan and China through the lens of local culture and social media, and Taylor Jobling, a law lecturer unpacking how Australia’s legislation categorises animals, come on to the show to discuss the main themes and tensions to emerge in Season 8, Animals and Media 

     

    Date Recorded: 8 December 2025


    Featured:

    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. 

    29 December 2025, 6:00 am
  • More Episodes? Get the App