The Animal Turn

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

Save the World Podcast
In-depth lectures and interviews on issues affecting the continued survival of human...

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

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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. 

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. 

Save the World Podcast
In-depth lectures and interviews on issues affecting the continued survival of human...

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

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. 

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. 

Save the World Podcast
In-depth lectures and interviews on issues affecting the continued survival of human...

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

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. 

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 

Save the World Podcast
In-depth lectures and interviews on issues affecting the continued survival of human...

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

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. 

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: 

• Zoological Lacan: A Lacanian Framework for Animality and Humanness by Teddy Duncan
• For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factorby Slavoj Žižek
• The Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol Adams 
• Mythologiesby Roland Barthes 
• Powers of Horror by Julia Kristeva
• Animal to Edible by Noilie Vialles
• Ecrits: A Selection by Jacques Lacan
• Human, All Too Human: "Animal Studies" and the Humanities by Cary Wolfe 
• “Eat More Chicken” – Chick-Fil-A-Cows Ad Campaign

Save the World Podcast
In-depth lectures and interviews on issues affecting the continued survival of human...

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

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. 

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: 

• Creature Conserve
• Creature Needs: Writers Respond to the Science of Animal Conservation Edited by Christopher Kondrich, Lucy Spelman and Susan Tacent
• Animals and Sound on The Animal Turn
• Feral Atlas by Anna Tsing 
• What is it like to be a bat? By Thomas Nagel
• The Animal Highlight
• Compassionate Conservation with Daniel Ramp, The Animal Turn

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. 

Save the World Podcast
In-depth lectures and interviews on issues affecting the continued survival of human...

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

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. 

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

Save the World Podcast
In-depth lectures and interviews on issues affecting the continued survival of human...

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

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. 

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

Save the World Podcast
In-depth lectures and interviews on issues affecting the continued survival of human...

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

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. 

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
• Dairy Farming Investigations
• Pandas on the New York Times

Save the World Podcast
In-depth lectures and interviews on issues affecting the continued survival of human...

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

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. 

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 (Short)

Save the World Podcast
In-depth lectures and interviews on issues affecting the continued survival of human...

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

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.