New Books in Animal Studies
Episodes
Sezai Ozan Zeybek, "Animals, Justice, and the Politics of Violence: Shared Struggles in Turkey" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)
09 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Animals, Justice, and the Politics of Violence: Shared Struggles in Turkey (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) by Dr. Sezai Ozan Zeybek explores the intricate...
The Vet at the End of the Earth: Adventures with Animals in the South Atlantic
05 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The role of a resident vet in the remote islands of the Falklands, St. Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha encompasses many wonderful complexities...
Anne Mendelson, "Spoiled: The Myth of Milk as Superfood" (Columbia UP, 2023)
22 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Why is cows' milk, which few nonwhite people can digest, promoted as a science-backed dietary necessity in countries where the majority of the populat...
Thomas Zeitzoff, "No Option But Sabotage: The Radical Environmental Movement and the Climate Crisis" (Oxford UP, 2026)
19 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
An authoritative history of the radical environmental movement in the United States, No Option But Sabotage explores how far activists are willing t...
Beth A. Berkowitz, "What Animals Teach us About Families: Kinship and Species in the Bible and Rabbinic Literature" (U California Press, 2026)
16 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Reading the Bible and rabbinic literature to reimagine the bonds between animals. Moving beyond debates about the ethics of animal consumption to focu...
Digestive Belonging, Trans-Species Sensing & Care in America’s Dairyland
13 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we speak with Assistant Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Copenhagen, Katy Overstreet. Katy is coordinator f...
Nancy Castaldo, "Squirrel: How a Backyard Forager Shapes Our World" (Island Press, 2025)
09 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Squirrels are a common sight, seemingly everywhere in wild and urban nature. Their chattering antics in city parks delight us while their raids on our...
Oren Harman, "Metamorphosis: A Natural and Human History" (Basic Books, 2025)
08 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A search for the meaning of one of nature's greatest riddles: why do so many creatures transform? “How many creatures walking on this earth / Have ...
Andrew Billing, "Animal Rhetoric and Natural Science in Eighteenth-century Liberal Political Writing" (Routledge, 2023)
04 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Animal Rhetoric and Natural Science in Eighteenth-century Liberal Political Writing: Political Zoologies of the French Enlightenment (Routledge, 202...
Sara Petrosillo, "Hawking Women: Falconry, Gender, and Control in Medieval Literary Culture" (Ohio State UP, 2023)
19 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Fantastic and informative talk with Sara Petrosillo of the University of Evansville about her new book, Hawking Women: Falconry, Gender, and Control ...
Ambika Kamath and Melina Packer, "Feminism in the Wild: How Human Biases Shape Our Understanding of Animal Behavior" (MIT Press, 2025)
13 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In Feminism in the Wild: How Human Biases Shape Our Understanding of Animal Behavior (MIT Press, 2025), Ambika Kamath and Melina Packer reveal how s...
Danielle Alesi, "Eating Animals in the Early Modern Atlantic World: Consuming Empire, 1492-1700" (Taylor & Francis, 2025)
09 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Eating Animals in the Early Modern Atlantic World: Consuming Empire, 1492-1700 (Amsterdam University Press, 2025) by Dr. Danielle Alesi examines how ...
Kevin J. Mitchell, "Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will" (Princeton UP, 2023)
01 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Scientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior and how neural circuits weigh alternatives and initiate actions. As w...
Yossi Yovel, "The Genius Bat: The Secret Life of the Only Flying Mammal" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)
16 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
With nearly 1500 species, bats account for more than twenty percent of mammalian species. The most successful and most diverse group of mammals, bats ...
Jerry Moore, "Cat Tales: A History" (Thames & Hudson, 2025)
14 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For as long as cats have coexisted with humans, they have been feared, revered and respected. They appear as dynamic hunters in Palaeolithic carvings ...
Living Night: On the Secret Wonders of Wildlife After Dark
11 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When the sun sets, things start to get interesting among wild animals. Wherever we live, whether in the city or suburbs or country, darkness conjures ...
Ludovic Orlando, "Horses: A 4,000-Year Genetic Journey Across the World" (Princeton UP, 2025)
20 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2016, Ludovic Orlando, a genetics researcher, embarked on the Pegasus Project, an ambitious endeavor to use genetics to discover the origin of the ...
Eduardo Mercado III, "Why Whales Sing" (JHU Press, 2025)
11 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
With breathtaking complexity and haunting beauty, the songs of whales have long fascinated scientists. Whales are the only mammals that can sing conti...
Thomas Fleischman, "Communist Pigs: An Animal History of East Germany's Rise and Fall" (U Washington Press, 2020)
09 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The pig played a fundamental role in the German Democratic Republic's attempts to create and sustain a modern, industrial food system built on communi...
Karine Gagné, "Caring for Glaciers: Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas" (U Washington Press, 2019)
09 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Caring for Glaciers: Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas (University of Washington Press, 2019), Karine Gagné explores how...
Anastasija Ropa, "The Medieval Horse" (Reaktion Books, 2025)
05 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Anastasija Ropa joins Jana Byars to talk about The Medieval Horse (Reaktion, 2025), a book that explores the role of horses across the medieval wor...
Graeme Rigby, "Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring" (Hurst Publishers, 2025)
04 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring: Adventures with the King of Fishes (Hurst, 2025) by Graeme Rigby contains almost everything you didn’t know...
Rebecca van Laer, "Cat" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
03 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Rebecca van Laer and her partner purchase a home and move in with their senior cats, Toby and Gus. Their loved ones see this as a step toward an i...
A Song for the Horses: Musical Heritage for More-than-Human Futures in Mongolia
27 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As permafrost in Siberia continues to melt and the steppe in the Gobi turns to desert, people in Mongolia are faced with overlapping climate crises. S...
Tami Parr, "Goats in America: A Cultural History" (Oregon State UP, 2025)
23 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The humble goat has played a surprising and important role throughout the history of the United States. Despite this, goats are often overlooked by ma...
Eva Meijer, "Multispecies Assemblies" (Vine Press, 2025)
21 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Animals speak. Plants do too. Seas and mountains are not a mute background to human actions, but have interests and agency. Many more-than-human being...
Ron Broglio, "Animal Revolution" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
20 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Animals are staging a revolution—they’re just not telling us. From radioactive boar invading towns to jellyfish disarming battleships, Animal Rev...
Gerta Keller, "The Last Extinction: The Real Science Behind the Death of the Dinosaurs" (Diversion Books, 2025)
04 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The story behind Dr. Gerta Keller’s world-shattering scientific discovery that dinosaur extinction was NOT caused by asteroid impact, but rather by ...
Kenneth R. Valpey, "Yoga and Animal Ethics" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)
25 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This open access book, Yoga and Animal Ethics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) offers a comprehensive understanding of yoga theory and practice as it ...
Paying Attention with Anya Daly
19 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode Pat speaks with Dr Anya Daly. Dr Anya Daly investigates the intersections of phenomenology with philosophy of mind, the philosophy of...
Daniel Horowitz, "Bear With Me: A Cultural History of Famous Bears in America" (Duke UP, 2025)
05 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From teddy bears and Winnie-the-Pooh to Smokey Bear, Yogi Bear, and Cocaine Bear, American popular culture has been fascinated with real and fictional...
Joshua Specht, "Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America" (Princeton UP, 2019)
31 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why do Americans eat so much beef? In Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America (Princeton University Press, 2019), the h...
Timothy Barnard, "Imperial Creatures: Humans and Other Animals in Colonial Singapore, 1819-1942" (NUS Press, 2019)
26 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Imperial Creature: Humans and Other Animals in Colonial Singapore, 1819-1942 (National University of Singapore Press, 2019), Timothy Barnard explor...
Paul Thagard, "Bots and Beasts: What Makes Machines, Animals, and People Smart?" (MIT Press, 2021)
09 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Octopuses can open jars to get food, and chimpanzees can plan for the future. An IBM computer named Watson won on Jeopardy! and Alexa knows our favo...
Heather Browning and Walter Veit, "What Are Zoos For?" (Policy Press, 2024)
05 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Are zoos an anachronism in the 21st century when we can watch animals in their natural habitat, close-up from our couches without worrying about cruel...
David Chaffetz, "Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires" (Norton, 2025)
03 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
No animal is so entangled in human history as the horse. The thread starts in prehistory, with a slight, shy animal, hunted for food. Domesticating th...
Emma Marris, "Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
13 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021), Emma Marris wrestles with big ethical questions facin...
Julia Brock, "Closed Seasons: The Transformation of Hunting in the Modern South" (UNC Press, 2025)
06 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In a unique and personal exploration of the game and fish laws in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi from the Progressive Era to the 1930s, Julia Brock...
Todd May "Should We Go Extinct?: A Philosophical Dilemma for Our Unbearable Times" (Crown, 2024)
29 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
These days it’s harder than ever to watch TV, scroll social media, or even just sit at home looking out of the window without contemplating the ques...
Barbara Allen, "Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds: Stories of Extinction" (Reaktion, 2025)
16 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds: Stories of Extinction (Reaktion, 2025) by Reverend Barbara Allen presents thirty-one extinct species through the p...
Amie Souza Reilly, "Human/Animal: A Bestiary in Essays" (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2025)
09 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Amie Souza Reilly bought an old house in the suburbs. She had just gotten remarried and was looking forward to a new start with her new husband and he...
Agustín Fuentes, "Sex Is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary" (Princeton UP, 2025)
02 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Being human entails an astonishingly complex interplay of biology and culture, and while there are important differences between women and men, there ...
Jaap de Roode, "Doctors by Nature: How Ants, Apes, and Other Animals Heal Themselves" (Princeton UP, 2025)
28 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ages before the dawn of modern medicine, wild animals were harnessing the power of nature's pharmacy to heal themselves. Doctors by Nature: How Ants...
Nicole C. Nelson, "Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
16 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Mice are used as model organisms across a wide range of fields in science today--but it is far from obvious how studying a mouse in a maze can help us...
Jeff Sebo, "The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why" (Norton, 2025)
26 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today, human exceptionalism is the norm. Despite occasional nods to animal welfare, we prioritize humanity, often neglecting the welfare of a vast num...
Doctors by Nature: How Ants, Apes, and Other Animals Heal Themselves
24 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ages before the dawn of modern medicine, wild animals were harnessing the power of nature’s pharmacy to heal themselves. In Doctors by Nature (Pri...
Insects as a Natural and Cultural Resource across Southeast Asia
15 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Every year, World Wildlife Conservation Day is observed on 4 December. It reminds us of the importance of protecting our biodiversity, a message that ...
Rebecca Heisman, "Flight Paths: How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration" (Harper, 2025)
08 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Flight Paths (HarperCollins, 2023), Rebecca Heisman illuminates the stories and methods of the scientists who unlocked the secrets of bird migrat...
Will Potter, "Little Red Barns: Hiding the Truth, from Farm to Fable" (City Lights Books, 2025)
06 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Little Red Barns: Hiding the Truth, from Farm to Fable (City Lights Books, 2025) is a groundbreaking investigation of factory farms and the unprecede...
Surekha Davies, "Humans: A Monstrous History" (U California Press, 2025)
23 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Monsters are central to how we think about the human condition. Join award-winning historian of science in Humans: A Monstrous History (University o...
Leigh Ann Henion, "Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark" (Algonquin, 2024)
11 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“Almost every storyline we’re familiar with suggests that we should banish [darkness] as quickly as possible—because darkness is often presented...
Eliot Schrefer, "Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality" (Clarion Books, 2022)
06 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I talk to Eliot Schrefer about his book Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality (Katherine Tegen Boo...
Webb Keane, "Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination" (Princeton UP, 2025)
03 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Revolutions in technology are fundamentally transforming what it means to be human. Or are they? As Webb Keane points out, before humans consulted C...
Paul G. Keil, "The Presence of Elephants: Shared Lives and Landscapes in Assam" (Routledge, 2024)
02 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How to dwell in a forest alongside giants, avoid disturbing a living god, assist an animal with their manners, and help an elephant cross the road. T...
Dawn Day Biehler, "Animating Central Park: A Multispecies History" (U Washington Press, 2024)
01 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From deer and beavers to “free range” pigs and goats in and around Seneca Village, what we now know as Central Park has long been home to an abund...
Helen Louise Cowie, "Animals in World History" (Routledge, 2024)
01 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Animals in World History (Routledge, 2024) by Dr. Helen Cowie provides a concise synthesis of human-animal relations over time, charting shifting att...
Chris Pearson, "Collared: How We Made the Modern Dog" (Profile Books, 2024)
25 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dogs are our constant companions: models of loyalty and unconditional love for millions around the world. But these beloved animals are much more than...
Petya Andreeva, "Fantastic Fauna from China to Crimea: Image-Making in Eurasian Nomadic Societies, 700 BCE-500 CE" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)
25 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Across Iron Age Central Eurasia, non-sedentary people created, viewed, and considered animal-style imagery, creating designs replete with feline bodie...
Rafael Rachel Neis, "When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven: Rabbis and the Reproduction of Species" (U California Press, 2023)
20 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven: Rabbis and the Reproduction of Species (U California Press, 2023) investigates rabbinic treatises relating to an...
Mariam Motamedi Fraser, "Dog Politics: Species Stories and the Animal Sciences" (Manchester UP, 2024)
15 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Do dogs belong with humans? Scientific accounts of dogs' 'species story,' in which contemporary dog-human relations are naturalised with reference to ...
Brett Bannor, "American Sheep: A Cultural History" (U Georgia Press, 2024)
14 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why did Thomas Jefferson write that he would be happy if all dogs went extinct? What economic opportunity did attorney John Lord Hayes envision for th...
David Strayer, "Beyond the Sea: The Hidden Life in Lakes, Streams, and Wetlands" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)
12 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Beyond the Sea: The Hidden Life in Lakes, Streams, and Wetlands (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024) is an exciting foray into Earth's inland waters, the remarka...
Brandon Keim, "Meet the Neighbors: Animal Minds and Life in a More-than-Human World" (Norton, 2024)
01 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What does the science of animal intelligence mean for how we understand and live with the wild creatures around us? Honeybees deliberate democraticall...
Peter Singer, "Consider the Turkey" (Princeton UP, 2024)
26 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A turkey is the centerpiece of countless Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Yet most of us know almost nothing about today’s specially bred, commer...
Jordan D. Rosenblum, "Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig" (NYU Press, 2024)
24 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jews do not eat pig. This (not always true) observation has been made by both Jews and non-Jews for more than three thousand years and is rooted in bi...
Veronica Strang, "Water Beings: From Nature Worship to the Environmental Crisis" (Reaktion, 2023)
20 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jana Byars talks to Veronica Strang about her new book Water Beings: From Nature Worship to the Environmental Crisis (Reaktion, 2023). Looking to t...
Other Minds with Peter Godfrey-Smith (EF, JP)
19 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Godfrey-Smith knows his cephalopods. Once of CUNY and now a professor of history and philosophy of science at University of Sydney, his truly c...
Stephanie Rutherford, "Villain, Vermin, Icon, Kin: Wolves and the Making of Canada" (McGill-Queen's Press, 2022)
18 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A wolf’s howl is felt in the body. Frightening and compelling, incomprehensible or entirely knowable, it is a sound that may be heard as threat or i...
Jarrett Zigon, "How Is It Between Us?: Relational Ethics and Care for the World" (HAU Books, 2023)
17 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How Is It Between Us?: Relational Ethics and Care for the World (HAU Books, 2023) offers a new theory of relational ethics that tackles contemporary...
A. L. McClanan, "Griffinology: The Griffin's Place in Myth, History and Art" (Reaktion, 2024)
14 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A. L. McClanan's Griffinology: The Griffin's Place in Myth, History and Art (Reaktion, 2024) is a fascinating exploration of the mythical creature'...
Recall This Story: Ivan Kreilkamp on Sylvia Townsend Warner's "Foxcastle" (JP)
05 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ivan Kreilkamp, Indiana University English professor and no stranger to Recall This Book, is the author of two books on Victorian literature and on...
Victoria Soyan Peemot, "The Horse in My Blood: Multispecies Kinship in the Altai and Saian Mountains" (Berghahn Books, 2024)
03 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A fascinating interspecies relationship can be seen among the horse breeding pastoralists in the Altai and Saian Mountains of Inner Asia. Growing up i...
Peter Singer, "Consider the Turkey" (Princeton UP, 2024)
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A turkey is the centerpiece of countless Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Yet most of us know almost nothing about today’s specially bred, commer...
David Peña-Guzmán: Animals Dream and that Makes Them Morally Considerable (JP)
31 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In his marvelous new book, When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness (Princeton UP, 2023), David Peña-Guzmán (SF State as well...
Nicolas Delsol, "Cattle in the Postcolumbian Americas: A Zooarchaeological Historical Study" (UP of Florida, 2024)
28 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Cattle in the Postcolumbian Americas: A Zooarchaeological Historical Study (University Press of Florida, 2024), Nicolas Delsol compares zooarch...
Larisa Jasarević, "Beekeeping in the End Times" (Indiana UP, 2024)
26 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Every hundred years, as the story goes, two angels wonder out loud whether the bees are still swarming. For as long as the bees are swarming, the ange...
Himanshu Upadhyaya, "Critical Insights on Colonial Modes of Seeing Cattle in India (1850–1980)" (Springer, 2024)
25 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Critical Insights on Colonial Modes of Seeing Cattle in India: Tracing the Pre-history of Green and White Revolutions (Springer 2024) traces the cont...
William T. Taylor, "Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History" (U California Press, 2024)
17 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Which society was the first to domesticate the horse? It’s a difficult question. The archaeological record is spotty, with only very recent advancem...
Peter Joshua Atkins, "The Animalising Affliction of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4: Reading Across the Human-Animal Boundary" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
16 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Animalising Affliction of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4: Reading Across the Human-Animal Boundary (Bloomsbury, 2022) is a detailed investigation int...
Roberta L. Millstein, "The Land Is Our Community: Aldo Leopold’s Environmental Ethic for the New Millennium" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
10 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic has been both hugely influential in the environmental conservation movement – and also often misinterpreted. In The Lan...
William T. Taylor, "Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History" (U California Press, 2024)
29 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From the Rockies to the Himalayas, the bond between horses and humans has spanned across time and civilizations. In this archaeological journey, Willi...
Thomas White, "China's Camel Country: Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier" (U Washington Press, 2024)
14 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
China today positions itself as a model of state-led environmentalism. On the country’s arid rangelands, grassland conservation policies have target...
Whitney Barlow Robles, "Curious Species: How Animals Made Natural History" (Yale UP, 2023)
13 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dive into the world of animals with Whitney Barlow Robles in her captivating new book, Curious Species: How Animals Made Natural History (Yale UP, 2...
David Zeitlyn, "Mambila Divination: Framing Questions, Constructing Answers" (Routledge, 2021)
07 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Professor David Zeitlyn’s book offers a major contribution to the study and analysis of divination, based on continuing fieldwork with the Mambila i...
David Chaffetz, "Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires" (Norton, 2024)
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After reading David Chaffetz’s newest book, you’d think that the horse–not oil–has been humanity’s most important strategic commodity. As Da...
Faizah Zakaria, "The Camphor Tree and the Elephant: Religion and Ecological Change in Maritime Southeast Asia" (U Washington Press, 2023)
04 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Recurring tropes about fragmented communities living on frontier forestlands living in Southeast Asia are that they are either guardians of flora and ...
Julia Kindt, "The Trojan Horse and Other Stories: Ten Ancient Creatures That Make Us Human" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
04 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What makes us human? What, if anything, sets us apart from all other creatures? Ever since Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, the answer to these q...
Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: : The Horse and the Rise of Empires
30 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
No animal is so entangled in human history as the horse. The thread starts in prehistory, with a slight, shy animal, hunted for food. Domesticating th...
Hope Bohanec, "The Humane Hoax: Essays Exposing the Myth of Happy Meat, Humane Dairy, and Ethical Eggs" (Lantern Publishing, 2023)
26 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As consumers become increasingly aware of the animal agriculture industry’s cruelty and environmental devastation, clever industry marketers are ada...
Nick Haddad, "The Last Butterflies: A Scientist's Quest to Save a Rare and Vanishing Creature" (Princeton UP, 2019)
23 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Butterflies have long captivated the imagination of humans, from naturalists to children to poets. Indeed it would be hard to imagine a world without ...
Gavin Steingo, "Interspecies Communication: Sound and Music Beyond Humanity" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
10 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Interspecies Communication: Sound and Music Beyond Humanity (U Chicago Press, 2024), music scholar Gavin Steingo examines significant cases of at...
Paul Koudounaris, "Faithful Unto Death: Pet Cemeteries, Animal Graves, and Eternal Devotion" (Thames & Hudson, 2024)
09 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Losing a pet has always been a unique kind of pain. No set rituals exist to help provide closure when pets die, there are no readily shared passages f...
Ellie Laks, "Cow Hug Therapy: How the Animals at the Gentle Barn Taught Me about Life, Death, and Everything in Between" (New World Library, 2024)
02 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Cow Hug Therapy: How the Animals at the Gentle Barn Taught Me about Life, Death, and Everything in Between (New World Library, 2024), Ellie Laks ...
Fantastic Fauna from China to Crimea: Image-Making in Eurasian Nomadic Societies, 700 BCE-500 CE
14 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Numerous Iron-Age nomadic alliances flourished along the 5000-mile Eurasian steppe route. From Crimea to the Mongolian grassland, nomadic image-making...
Kathryn Hughes, "Catland: Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)
07 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1900, Britain and America were in the grip of a cat craze. An animal that had for centuries been seen as a household servant or urban nuisance had ...
Timothy Barnard, "Singaporean Creatures: Histories of Humans and Other Animals in the Garden City" (NUS Press, 2024)
06 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Singaporean Creatures: Histories of Humans and Other Animals in the Garden City (NUS Press, 2024), historian Tim Barnard and his colleagues offe...
John Soluri, "Creatures of Fashion: Animals, Global Markets, and the Transformation of Patagonia" (UNC Press, 2024)
03 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today, the mention of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego conjures images of idyllic landscapes untouched by globalisation. Creatures of Fashion: Animals,...
Samuel Dolbee, "Locusts of Power: Borders, Empire, and Environment in the Modern Middle East" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
03 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I talk to Samuel Dolbee, Assistant Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. His book, Locusts of Power: Borders, Empire, and ...
Animal Control
01 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we examine the sounds humans make in order to monitor, repel, and control beasts. Author Mandy-Suzanne Wong’s Listen, We All Bleed is...
Joshua Schuster, "What Is Extinction?: A Natural and Cultural History of Last Animals" (Fordham UP, 2023)
28 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Life on Earth is facing a mass extinction event of our own making. Human activity is changing the biology and the meaning of extinction. What Is Exti...