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.

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

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:

•  What Comes After Entanglement by Eva Giraud
• The Birth of Korean Cool by Euny Hong
• The Omnivore’s Deception by John Sanbonmatsu
• Animals and the Rights to Politics by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka
• An analytical framework to understand the problematization of urban (historical) animals by Claudia Hirtenfelder
• Black Fish 
• Finding Nemo 
• Flow
• The Cove
• Cowspiracy
• Earthlings

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.

In this episode we bring together a photojournalist from India, a Canadian columnist, and a political scientist/reporter to discuss animals and the news. We discuss different types of news as well as some of the challenges that come with creating news content that focuses on animals.   

 

Date Recorded: 4 June 2025

 

Featured: 

• How to Spot Misinformation and Bias About Climate and Food in the News by Jessica Scott-Reid
• Meatsplaining by Jason Hannan
• Feed the People by Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel N. Rosenberg
• Mother Cow, Mother India by Yamini Narayanan 
• Netflix’s Liver King  Doc skips the meat of the story by Jessica Scott-Reid
• An animal rights activist was in court on criminal charges. Why was the case suddenly dismissed? On The Guardian
• Sentient Media
• Free Willy
• We Animals
• Future Perfect on Vox
• Animal Rights on The New Republic
• Animals on The Guardian  
• Animals Rights Activism on The Intercept
• Animals on Wired
• Animals on New York Times
• Animal Justice

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.

In this episode Ankita Rathour and Lynda Korimboccus join Claudia to discuss the interconnections of film, tv, and animals. Together they touch on everything from the Peppa Pig paradox in children’s media to the shifting role of animals in Hindi cinema, nationalism and caste politics. 

Date Recorded: 2 May 2025 

 

Featured: 

• The Subaltern Gazes: Commentary on Amit Masurkar's Sherni by Ankita Rathour.
• Pig-ignorant: The Peppa Pig Paradox. Investigating Contradictory Childhood Consumption by Lynda M Korimboccus
• Animal representation on UK children’s television by Lynda M Korimboccus
• Can the Subaltern Speak by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
• From Symbolic to Agential: The Evolution of Natural Representation in Indian Eco-Sensitive Filmsby Rakesh Kumar Pankaj and Dibyakusum Ray
• The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slaveryby Spiegel, Marjorie
• Human supremacism: why are animal rights activists still the “orphans of the left”?by Will Kymlicka
• When different is ambivalence: Strategic ignorance about meat consumptionby Marleen C. Onwezen and Cor N. van der Weele
• Humane Jobs: A Political Economic Vision for Interspecies Solidarity and Human–Animal Wellbeing by Kendra Coulter 
• Advertising oppression: the reproduction of anthroparchy in UK children's and" family" television by Kate F. Stewart and Matthew Cole
• Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell.
• Animal Farm by George Orwell.
• Mother Cow, Mother India by Yamini Narayanan
• The Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol J Adams
• The Desi Gaze, a podcast by Ankita Rathour.
• Tribe Animal Sanctuary 
• Peppa Pig
• RRR (Rise, Roar, Revolt)
• Tigress Sherni 
• Alvin and the Chimpmunks
• Haathi Mere Saathi
• The Elephant Whisperers
•  Matilda and the Brace Escape
• Earthlings
• Blackfish
• Wicked
• Azaad
• Article 15
• War Horse
• Babe
• The Last Pig
• Deliverance (

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

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

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

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.

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 Sanctuar

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.

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 Ethics Review
• Journal for Critical Animal Studies
• Derercho Animals podcast 

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.

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

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

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.

Gaming is one of the most consumed forms of media globally making it an important 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 
• Without morals in a moral world - the expanding moral circle of The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt by Magnus Johansson and Michael Rübsamen
• Thoughts towards an Ontology of Play by Eugene Fink 
• Homo Ludens: A Study of Play Element in Culture by Johan Huizinga
• Why Animals can’t get enough of touch screen technology by Jason Goldman
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Westworld
• Grand Theft Auto
• Assassin’s Creed
• Disco Elysium
• Death Stranding 
• Borderlands
• The Lend of Zelda
• Unravel
• Dungeons and Dragons

 

Remember to Leave a Review on  Podchaser and to check out

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.

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 Media
• Mass Media and Society edited by Debra Merskin 
• Seeing Species by Debra Merskin 
• Media, Minorities and Meaning by Debra Merskin 
• Communicating Nature by Julia B. Corbett. 
• Projecting on Predators by Debra Merskin
• Slayers, rippers, and blitzes: dark humor and the justification of cruelty to possums in online media in New Zealand by Emily Major.
• Brushtail possums and species-inclusive social work in Aotearoa New Zealand by Emily Major 
• Slayers, rippers, and blitzes: dark humor and the justification of cruelty to possums in online media in New Zealand by Emily Major 
• Playful Killing: Animals and Socialist Childhood in 1950s People's Republic of China by Lu Liu
• Panda Politics by Rosemary-Claire Collard
• We Animals
• Sentient Media  

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

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.

iROAR Network
iROAR 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.

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.

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 Corman
• Long live the Liver King: right-wing carnivorism and the digital dissemination of primal rhetoric by Marek Muller, David Rooney, and Cecilia Cerja
• Interspecies Subjectivity with Lauren Corman on The Animal Turn
• Dangerous Crossings by Claire Jean Kim
• Decolonization is not a Metaphor by Eve tuck and K. Wayne Yang
• Nature's Wild by Andil Gosine
• Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol Adams
• Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire by Cara Daggett
• The Animal ThereforeI I am by Jacques Derrida
• Animals and Capital by Dinesh Wadiwel
• Multispecies Disposability: Taxonomies of Power in a Global Pandemic by Darren Chang and Lauren Corman
• Becoming Hum

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.

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 Freeman
• Critical Animal and Media Studies by Núria Almiron, Matthew Cole, Carrie P. Freeman
• Framing Farming by Carrie Freeman
• What a Fish Knows by Jonathan Balcombe 
• Animals in Media on The Animal Turn. 
• Animal Activism Starter Guide Advocacy Guide for BIPOC Activists – by APEX Advocacy 
• In Tune to Nature with Carrie Freeman
• Animals and Media Style Guidelines by Carrie Freeman and Debra Merskin
• Human supremacism: why are animal rights activists still the “orphans of the left”? by Will Kymlicka
• Crossings by Ben Goldfarb 
• Social Movement Mobilization and Feminism with Corey Lee Wrenn on The Animal Turn

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.