When We Talk About Animals
Activity Overview
Episode publication activity over the past year
Episodes
Ep. 51 – Novelist Ned Beauman on venomous lumpsuckers and the price of extinction
11 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Fiction can provide the most profound, incisive truths about the absurdities of our reality. In his most recent novel, Venomous Lumpsucker, Ned Beauma...
Ep. 50 – Australian Biologist Danielle Clode on the Extraordinary World of Koalas
21 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Upon seeing an adorable Koala sitting on an eucalyptus branch in Australia, few would expect the beloved marsupial to emit a booming bellow to alert p...
Ep. 49 – Dog Cognition Expert Alexandra Horowitz on the Quiddity of Puppies
05 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Most books on puppies are dog-improvement manuals, guiding readers ‘How to Raise the Perfect Dog’ or how to achieve ‘Perfect Puppy i...
Ep. 48 – Patrick Rose on the Fight to Save Florida’s Manatees
02 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Grazing peacefully through shallow waterways, the Florida manatee is one of the state’s most beloved creatures. Due to a multitude of compounding, h...
Ep. 47 – Poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil on writing love letters to nature
24 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s exuberant book of essays, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, & Other Astonishments, has u...
Ep. 46 – Paleobiologist Thomas Halliday on the Animals of Ancient Worlds
21 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The fossil record acts as both a memorial to life’s spectacular possibilities and as a warning to humanity about how fast dominance can become forgo...
Ep. 45 – Rob Dunn on what the laws of biology predict about our future
02 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Amid the cataclysms of the Anthropocene, an era defined by humans’ attempts to control the natural world, it’s easy to forget that we remain as su...
Ep. 44 – Rick McIntyre on the stories of Yellowstone’s greatest wolves
22 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1995, the U.S. government took unprecedented actions to restore the wolf population of Yellowstone National Park, which it had brutally destroyed s...
Ep. 43 – Cynthia Barnett on our world of seashells
22 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From tiny cowries to giant clams, seashells have gripped human imaginations since time immemorial. In her magnificent new book, The Sound of the Sea, ...
Ep. 42 – Edie Widder on the ocean’s spectacular light
16 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Most of us land-lubbers assume that light-making among ocean creatures is an exotic and rare phenomenon. But that’s wrong. The majority of animals i...
Ep. 41 – Ecologist Hugh Warwick on Loving Your Hedgehogs
27 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Hedgehogs, despite being consistently voted the most beloved mammal in the United Kingdom, have suffered great population losses as industrial agricul...
Ep. 40 – Michelle Nijhuis on the history of the wildlife conservation movement
28 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In “Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction,” science journalist Michelle Nijhuis chronicles the history of the wildlife con...
Ep. 39 – Bernie Krause on saving the music of the wild
24 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1968, Dr. Bernie Krause was leading a booming music career. A prodigiously talented musician and early master of the electronic synthesizer, Krause...
Ep. 38 – Margaret Renkl on discovering wonder, grief, and inspiration in backyard nature
09 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the long months we’ve all been confined to our homes, many people have become reacquainted with the vibrant life just outside their doors, findin...
Ep. 37 – Monica Gagliano on plant intelligence and human imagination
04 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Are plants intelligent? Can they think? Can they hear, see, feel, smell and taste? Throughout history, most Western philosophers and scientists answer...
Ep. 36 – Rebecca Giggs on the world in the whale
28 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 2013, a sperm whale washed up dead on Spain’s southern coast. In its ruptured digestive tract, scientists found an entire flattened greenhouse th...
Ep. 35 – J. Drew Lanham on finding ourselves magnified in nature’s colored hues
02 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As Dr. Joseph Drew Lanham writes in his beautiful and deeply moving memoir, The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature, from...
Ep. 34 – Daniel Pauly on why overfishing is a Ponzi scheme
20 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Born in Paris to an African-American GI and a French woman at the end of World War II, Dr. Daniel Pauly rose from a difficult and extraordinarily unus...
Ep. 33 – Valérie Courtois on Indigenous-led land and wildlife stewardship
15 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As wildlife across Canada face unprecedented pressures from climate change and industrial development, Indigenous Peoples, who have relied upon and ma...
Ep. 32 – Gene Baur on changing hearts, minds and laws about farm animals
18 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Amid the systematic cruelties and alienating conditions which define our factory farm system, Farm Sanctuary stands out as an exemplar of human kindne...
Ep. 31 – Zak Smith on ending the international wildlife trade
27 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The repercussions of the international wildlife trade, which is a primary driver of our planet’s biodiversity crisis, have recently hit close to...
Ep. 30 – Sonia Shah on how animal microbes become human pandemics
06 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Roughly two-thirds of emerging infectious diseases — including COVID-19 and almost all recent epidemics — originate in the bodies of animals. Micr...
Ep. 29 – Amanda Hitt on why the animal agriculture industry needs whistleblowers
09 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In an age where almost everything we eat is produced outside of public view, whistleblowers are critical to maintaining the integrity of our food syst...
Ep. 28 – Bathsheba Demuth on capitalism, communism and arctic ecology
10 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her acclaimed first book, “Floating Coast,” historian Bathsheba Demuth explores how capitalism, communism and ecology have clashed for over...
Ep. 27 – Ed Yong on telling the grand, urgent and surprising stories of animal worlds
13 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Nonhuman beings, and the passionate people who study them, animate Ed Yong’s vast, award-winning and kaleidoscopically varied body of journalism. Hi...
Ep. 26 – Ian Urbina on the Outlaw Ocean
16 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Over 40 percent of the Earth’s surface is open ocean that is over 200 miles from the nearest shore. These waters exist outside national jurisdiction...
Ep. 25 – Doug Kysar and Jon Lovvorn on law in the Anthropocene
18 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Professors Doug Kysar and Jonathan Lovvorn are the Faculty Co-Directors of the Law, Ethics & Animals Program (LEAP) at Yale Law School. Launched ...
Ep. 24 – Christopher Ketcham on the abuse of the American West
21 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
For the past ten years, journalist Christopher Ketcham has documented the confluence of commercial exploitation and government misconduct on public la...
Ep. 23 – David Rothenberg on playing music with whales and nightingales
23 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Philosopher and musician David Rothenberg has spent decades collecting and studying the calls of birds and whales. In the early 2000s, he began playin...
Ep. 22 – Ferris Jabr on reviving the Gaia hypothesis
27 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1970s, scientists proposed what has become known as the Gaia Hypothesis: the idea that earth is best understood not as a passive substrate or b...
Ep. 21 – David Barrie on the wonders of animal navigation
05 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Author and sailor David Barrie voyaged around the globe and through scientific literature to learn about the awe-inducing and still mysterious navigat...
Ep. 20 – Gabriela Cowperthwaite on the legacy of “Blackfish”
15 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Film director and producer Gabriela Cowperthwaite did not set out to make a film that would force a national moral reckoning over how we keep whales i...
Ep. 19 – Robert Macfarlane on being good ancestors across deep time
24 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
“Books, like landscapes, leave their marks in us,” Robert Macfarlane once wrote. “Certain books, though, like certain landscapes, stay with ...
Ep. 18 — Anthony Weston on animals, aliens and the silence of the universe
10 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1950, a physicist posed the question that has come to be known as the Fermi Paradox: given the high mathematical probability that other intelligent...
Ep. 17 – Fabrice Schnoller on free diving with sperm whales
27 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 2007, our guest, Fabrice Schnoller, was sailing off the coast of Mauritius when he had an encounter that would change his life and open a new front...
Ep. 16 — Thomas Seeley on the lives of bees
13 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the spring of 1963, when our guest Dr. Thomas Seeley was not quite 11 years old, he lived — as he still does today — in a wooded stream valley ...
Ep. 15 – Gay Bradshaw on Charlie Russell, grizzly bears, and the search for truth
29 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Bears, like other carnivores, are typically cast as unthinking, emotionless killers. But the late naturalist Charlie Russell believed this tragic misp...
Ep. 14 – David Wolfson on pioneering the field of farm animal law
15 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the United States today, 10 billion land animals are raised and killed for food annually. That’s over 19,000 animals per minute. About 1.1 millio...
Ep. 13 – Nicholas Christakis on the animal origins of goodness
01 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, researchers have debated whether or not animals make friends. “Friends” — the taboo “f word” — was generally put in quote...
Ep. 12 – Novelist Lindsay Stern on “The Study of Animal Languages”
18 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In March of 2016, a group of scientists reported a startling discovery from the forests of central Japan: syntax, the property of speech that enables ...
Ep. 11 – Diana Reiss on recognizing the dolphins in the mirror
11 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In mountainous regions of the world, there are human societies that use whistled languages to transmit and understand a potentially unlimited number o...
Ep. 10 – Dale Jamieson on love and meaning in the age of humans
25 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In their book, Love in the Anthropocene, our guest, the environmental philosopher Dale Jamieson, and his co-author Bonnie Nadzam invite us to imagine ...
Ep. 9 – Being Charles Foster being a beast
11 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What is it like to be another creature? What is it like to see, smell, hear, taste and feel the world as a different animal? Our guest today, the spec...
Ep. 8 – Charles Siebert on translating nature’s symphony
28 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
During his travels in South America at the close of the 18th century, the German explorer Alexander von Humboldt came upon a parrot speaking the words...
Ep. 7 – “Eating Animals” film director Christopher Quinn on the hidden costs of factory farming
14 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Award-winning film director, writer, and producer Christopher Quinn’s new film, “Eating Animals,” based on Jonathan Safran Foer’s accl...
Ep. 6 – Gale Ridge on bringing peace to humans’ befuddling relationships with bugs
07 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A concert pianist-turned-entomologist and bedbug expert, Dr. Gale Ridge is an insect detective. She solves mysteries and helps thousand...
Ep. 5 – Lisa Margonelli on the big ideas termites raise about science, technology, and morality
17 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Termites outweigh humans ten to one. If they went on strike, ecological chaos would ensue. We speak with science writer Lisa Margonelli, author of the...
Ep. 4 – Irene Pepperberg on revolutionizing what humans think of bird brains
10 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 2007, Dr. Irene Pepperberg said goodnight to her avian research subject, Alex, an African Grey Parrot. “You be good,” he replied. “I love you...
Ep. 3 – Sue Savage-Rumbaugh on learning from humanity’s closest living relatives
03 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Twenty minutes southeast of Des Moines, Iowa, you’ll find a large, unassuming cement complex with fenced in grounds. You’d never know it, but insi...
Ep. 2 – Peter Godfrey-Smith asks: What can the octopus teach us about consciousness?
26 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Peter Godfrey-Smith is professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney and the author of Other Minds: The Octopus, The ...
Ep. 1 – Natalie Kofler asks: What role should humans play in editing nature?
19 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A few years ago, our guest, Dr. Natalie Kofler, was completing her postdoctoral training in molecular biology at Yale University. She was actively usi...
Ep. 0 – Coming soon: When We Talk About Animals
09 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Conversations with thinkers whose work has challenged us to rethink our place in the animal kingdom. Subscribe on iTunes or Soundcloud.