New Books Network Podcast

Nomads, Past and Present May 22, 2023

Embracing Landscape

Living with Reindeer and Hunting among Spirits in South Siberia

Selcen Küçüküstel

Hosted by Maggie Freeman

Examining human-animal relations among the reindeer hunting and herding Dukha community in northern Mongolia, Embracing Landscape: Living with Reindeer and Hunting among Spirits in South Siberia (Berghahn Books, 2021), focuses …

Critical Theory May 5, 2023

What Comes After Entanglement?

Activism, Anthropocentrism, and an Ethics of Exclusion

Eva Haifa Giraud

Hosted by Catriona Gold

By foregrounding the ways that human existence is bound together with the lives of other entities, contemporary cultural theorists have sought to move beyond an anthropocentric worldview. Yet as Eva …

Critical Theory April 27, 2023

Oil Beach

How Toxic Infrastructure Threatens Life in the Ports of Los Angeles and Beyond

Christina Dunbar-Hester

Hosted by Dave O'Brien

How can we stop infrastructure from damaging the planet? In Oil Beach: How Toxic Infrastructure Threatens Life in the Ports of Los Angeles and Beyond (U Chicago Press, 2023), Christina Dunbar-Hester …

Environmental Studies April 26, 2023

This is Environmental Ethics

An Introduction

Wendy Lynne Lee

Hosted by Özlem Yilmaz

Wendy Lynne Lee's This is Environmental Ethics: An Introduction (John Wiley & Sons, 2022) provides students and scholars with a comprehensive introduction to the growing field of environmental philosophy and ethics …

Animal Studies April 21, 2023

Edibility and in Vitro Meat

Ethical Considerations

Rachel Robison-Greene

Hosted by Kyle Johannsen

Consumers and policy makers have unprecedented choices to make in the years to come about how and what we eat. If we continue down our current path of food production …

Nordic Asia Podcast April 21, 2023

The Promise of Multispecies Justice

A Discussion with Sophie Chao

Sophie Chao, Karin Bolender, and Eben Kirksey

Hosted by Terese Gagnon

How might we imagine justice in times of ecological harm? How are human struggles for social justice entangled with the lives of other beings including plants, animals, fungi, and microbes …

Academic Life April 13, 2023

What Do Bees, Ants, and Dragonflies Get up to All Day?

A Discussion with Jessica L. Ware

Jessica L. Ware

Hosted by Christina Gessler

Bugs are everywhere: in every corner of the world, even the Artic. But of the estimated 10 million species of bugs worldwide, only a million have been studied or described …

Intellectual History April 12, 2023

Kant on the Human Animal

Anthropology, Ethics, Race

David Baumeister

Hosted by David Kunsman

While Immanuel Kant’s account of human reason is well known and celebrated, his account of human animality (Thierheit) is virtually unknown. Animality and reason, as pillars of Kant’s vision of …

Animal Studies April 12, 2023

Meat Me Halfway

How Changing the Way We Eat Can Improve Our Lives and Save Our Planet

Brian Kateman

Hosted by Kyle Johannsen

We know that eating animals is bad for the planet and bad for our health, and yet we do it anyway. Ask anyone in the plant-based movement and the solution …

German Studies April 11, 2023

Our Gigantic Zoo

A German Quest to Save the Serengeti

Thomas M. Lekan

Hosted by Eric Grube

How did the Serengeti become an internationally renowned African conservation site and one of the most iconic destinations for a safari? In Our Gigantic Zoo: A German Quest to Save …

Animal Studies April 8, 2023

Tenacious Beasts

Wildlife Recoveries That Change How We Think about Animals

Christopher J. Preston

Hosted by Callie Smith

The news about wildlife is dire—more than 900 species have been wiped off the planet since industrialization. Against this bleak backdrop, however, there are also glimmers of hope and crucial …

Biology and Evolution April 4, 2023

Whale Music

Thousand Mile Songs in a Sea of Sound

David Rothenberg

Hosted by Frances Sacks

Whale song is an astonishing world of sound whose existence no one suspected before the 1960s. Its discovery has forced us to confront the possibility of alien intelligence--not in outer …

Medieval History April 2, 2023

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts

Elizabeth Marshall

Hosted by Latoya Johnson

Two perceptions about wolves are inherited from ancient and medieval European lupine motifs: the superstition that the wolf could steal a person's speech, and the perceived contiguous natures of wolves …

Nomads, Past and Present March 31, 2023

The Transformation of Livestock Herding in Socialist Mongolia

Kenny Linden

Hosted by Maggie Freeman

Between 1956 and 1960, leaders in the Mongolian People’s Republic embarked on a collectivization campaign to change the way in which Mongolians interacted with animals and the environment. Collectivization in …

Irish Studies March 24, 2023

Animals and Sacred Bodies in Early Medieval Ireland

Religion and Urbanism at Clonmacnoise

John Soderberg

Hosted by Danica Ramsey-Brimberg

Clonmacnoise was among the busiest, most economically complex, and intensely sacred places in early medieval Ireland. In Animals and Sacred Bodies in Early Medieval Ireland: Religion and Urbanism at Clonmacnoise (Lexington …

MIT Press Podcast March 9, 2023

Animal Tongues

A Conversation with Jan Harrison

Jan Harrison

Hosted by MIT Press

Artist Jan Harrison's work explores the connections between human and animal psyches and takes the form of painting, pastel, sculpture, and performance. Jan's essay in the current (January 2011) issue …

Animal Studies March 4, 2023

What We Fed to the Manticore

Talia Lakshmi Kolluri

Hosted by Kyle Johannsen

Through nine emotionally vivid stories, all narrated from animal perspectives, Talia Lakshmi Kolluri’s debut collection explores themes of environmentalism, conservation, identity, belonging, loss, and family with resounding heart and deep …

Language February 25, 2023

What It All Means

Semantics for (Almost) Everything

Philippe Schlenker

Hosted by Malcolm Keating

In What It All Means: Semantics for (Almost) Everything (MIT Press, 2022), Philippe Schlenker takes readers on tour of meaning, from the animal kingdom to human culture, arguing that semantics …

Medieval History February 12, 2023

Hawking Women

Falconry, Gender, and Control in Medieval Literary Culture

Sara Petrosillo

Hosted by Jana Byars

Fantastic and informative talk with Sara Petrosillo of the University of Evansville about her new book, Hawking Women: Falconry, Gender, and Control in Medieval Literary Culture (Ohio State University Press, 2023) …

Animal Studies January 28, 2023

Animals in Irish Society

Interspecies Oppression and Vegan Liberation in Britain's First Colony

Corey Lee Wrenn

Hosted by Kyle Johannsen

Irish vegan studies are poised for increasing relevance as climate change threatens the legitimacy and longevity of animal agriculture and widespread health problems related to animal product consumption disrupt long …