The Animal Turn

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

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

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 tduncan15@valenciacollege.edu
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

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

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

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.