Gaming is one of the most consumed forms of media globally making it an omportant space from to explore human-animal relations. In this episode, media scholars Michael Rübsamen, Osvaldo Cleger, and Keung Yoon Bae discuss the interconnections of gaming, representation, and identity and what the significance of this might be for considerations of animals. Date Recorded: 3 February 2025 Featured: The Witcher Thoughts towards an Ontology of Play by Eugene Fink ...

In this episode we animals, power, and popular media. Emily Major, Debra Merskin, and Lu Liu help to think through how animals are manufactured as “pests” and “icons” in media and how those labels shape empathy, policy, and everyday cruelty towards animals. Date Recorded: 15 January 2025 Featured: Animals and MediaMass Media and Society edited by Debra Merskin Seeing Species by Debra Merskin Media, Minorities and Meaning by Debra Merskin Communicating Nature b...

In this episode we discuss how rhetorical constructions of animality, and humanity are mobilized to serve specific power structures, including white supremacy and colonialism. Lauren Corman, David Rooney, and S. Marek Muller come on the show to talk about some of the complex networks of media influence and consumption that shape such thought. Date Recorded: 19 February 2025 Mentioned: “Pageantry of aggression”: QAnon, animality, and the violent pursuit of whiteness by Lauren...

Carrie Freeman and Christopher Eubanks join Claudia on the show to explore animal (mis)representation in media. They examine some of the ways in which animals are represented in activist messaging and the interconnections of animal rights with other social justice movements. Date Recorded: 29 February 2025 Featured: The Human Animal Earthling by Carrie FreemanCritical Animal and Media Studies by Núria Almiron, Matthew Cole, Carrie P. FreemanFraming Farming by Carrie ...

The Animal Turn podcast launches Season 8 with a dive into the intersections of media, racism, and speciesism. Tobias Linné, Ellen Gorsevski, and Natalie Khazaal join Claudia on the show to discuss how race and species intersect each other in animated film and the development of their Media Analysis of Racism and Speciesism (MARS) test to evaluate the ways in which they do. Date Recorded: 31 March 2025 Featured: Media, Racism, Speciesism: Issues and Solutions for Creatur...

Death permeates our relationships with animals, yet we rarely confront the complex ethical questions it raises. In this conversation with Katja Guenther and Julian Paul Keenan, editors of "When Animals Die," we delve into the emerging field of animal death studies - an interdisciplinary approach examining how animals experience and humans justify animal death. Date Recorded: 21 April 2025 Katja M. Guenther is Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Californ...

Thom Norman joins Claudia on the show to discuss the work of FarmKind and the tenets of effective altruism. They talk about FarmKind’s compassion calculator and how it strategically doesn’t include vegan messaging. They discuss the organizations FarmKind supports and some of the critiques levelled against effective altruism. Date Recorded: 20 March 2025 Thom Norman is the co-founder of FarmKind, a nonprofit dedicated to accelerating the end of factory farming by expanding the ...

In this crossover episode from The Deal With Animals Podcast, Marika S. Bell talks to two experts about the impacts of sensory pollution on animals. Sensory pollution from artificial light and noise has profound effects on wildlife behavior, reproduction, and survival. Brett Seymour and Jennifer Phillips share insights about how everyday choices impact everything from insect flight patterns to bird nesting success. Date Released: 7 May 2024 Dr. Jennifer Phillips is an assistant professor ...

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 breed...

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 ...

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 w...

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 Bri...

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 Ind...

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 expe...

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 2...

Anindita Bhadra joins Claudia on the show to explain what behavioural ecology is and how it has been applied to understanding the free-roaming dogs in India. They discuss the interconnections between domestication and evolution, the social organization of free roaming dogs, and dogs relationships with urban ecologies. Date Recorded: 16 August 2024. Anindita Bhadra is a behavioural biologist, working on free-ranging dogs in India. She founded The Dog Lab at the Department of Biolog...

In this episode Mariam Motamedi-Fraser joins us in the show to discuss ‘species story’ a concept she developed in her book Dog Politics. We discuss how the human-dog bond has been established and maintained through modern day practices and scientific discourses which have implications for how dogs can live. Date Recorded: 31 July 2024. Mariam Motamedi Fraser is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the interdisciplinary research group UCL Anthropocene, in the Department of Geograp...

Gwendolyn Blue and Melanie Rock join Claudia on the show to discuss ‘healthy publics.’ They explore how the idea of ‘public health’ has persistently been conceived of as human and unpack some of the opportunities and challenges with conceiving of multispecies health. From the historical roots of the ‘One Health’ to the modern challenges of public participation and representation, Melanie and Gwendolyn offer thought-provoking perspectives on stretching health frameworks beyond humans. Da...

Guillem Rubio-Ramon and Krithika Srinivasan join Claudia to kick of Season 7 which is focused on “multispecies health.” They discuss human-dog relations and how multispecies health involves components of care, indifference and violence. Date Recorded: 7 June 2024. Guillem Rubio-Ramonis a Research Associate in Human Geography at the University of Edinburgh. His research integrates more-than-human geographies and political ecologies to study the reciprocal influence of animals and h...

Claudia talks to scientist and author, Alexandra Horowitz about dogs’ cognition. They discuss everything from dogs’ sense of smell and capacity to play to how anthropomorphisms sometimes skew human understandings of what dogs are doing. Date Recorded: 15 August 2024 Alexandra Horowitz heads the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College, where she also teaches seminars in canine cognition, creative nonfiction writing, and audio storytelling. She is the author of the New Yo...