Knowing Animals

Josh Milburn

Knowing Animals is a regular 20 minutes podcast about all things related to animals and ethics; animals and the law; animals and politics; and animal advocacy. It features interviews with academic and animal advocates. It is available free so enjoy!

  1. 3 days ago

    Episode 250: China's forest frogs with Jin Qian

    On the 250th episode of Knowing Animals, the guest is Jin Qian, a PhD candidate at Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands. She researches China's environmental governance and its global implications, with a focus on the intersection of food, animals, and the environment. Her multidisciplinary PhD project focuses on wildlife in Chinese food systems. She's also involved in the animal movement in China, including hosting a podcast called Slightly Tofu. In the episode, we focus on her open access 2026 paper 'More-than-human practices in wild animal farming: The case of China's forest frogs', which was published in the Journal of Rural Studies and co-authored with Annah Zhu, Arjen Buijs, and Simon Bush. The paper we discuss is here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0743016726001749 If you want an overview of Jin's research area, see https://www.cell.com/one-earth/abstract/S2590-3322(25)00102-2  Jin's podcast is here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/%E6%9C%89%E7%82%B9%E8%B1%86%E8%85%90-slightly-tofu/id1794418651. It's also available on Spotify, YouTube, etc. It has two special series; Tofu International (with international guests, in English) and Tofu Across the Strait (with Taiwanese animal activists and podcasters) Jin's 'Lettuce Know' directory is here: https://lettuce-know.pages.dev/ The works she mentioned in her regular questions were Garner and Francione's The Animal Rights Debate (https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/fran14954), Wadiwel's 'Do fish resist?' (https://doi.org/10.5130/csr.v22i1.4363), and Wadiwel's Animals and Capital (https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/jj.9941275). Jin is happy to talk to people interested in her research area: jin.qian[at]wur.nl The cover image is a photo Jin took of a free-living forest frog

    43 min

  2. 4 May

    Episode 249: Veganarchafeminism with Nathan Poirier

    On this episode, we speak to Nathan Poirier. Nathan is an interdisciplinary critical animal studies scholar with a background in anthrozoology, sociology, and mathematics. He currently teaches at Lansing Community College in Michigan. He's the co-editor of the 2022 collection Emerging New Voices in Critical Animal Studies: Vegan Studies for Total Liberation, the 2023 collection Expanding the Critical Animal Studies Imagination: Essays in Solidarity and Total Liberation, and of the 2024 collection Veganarchism: Making Veganism and Anarchism Dangerous Again. We talk about the 2025 Lantern Publishing collection Exploring Topics in Non/Human Coexistence: Passion, Praxis, and Presence, which Nathan co-edited with Sarah Tomasello, Erin Jones, and Mark Suchyta. In particular, we dig into one of Nathan's chapters: 'Veganism as an overlooked component of anarchafeminism?' In the quick questions, Nathan mentioned; Ignoring Nature No More, edited by Marc Bekoff. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo14398472.html His paper (with Sarah Tomasello) 'Polar Similar': https://animaliajournal.wordpress.com/2017/03/25/polar-similar-intersections-of-anthropology-and-conservation/ John Tallent, author of How to Unite the Left on Animals (see an interview with Kim Stallwood here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/how-to-unite-on-101030529) His 'A6' Against Cultured Meat, co-authored with Richard Giles: https://www.activedistributionshop.org/product/against-cultured-meat-a6/

    40 min

  3. 4 May

    Episode 249: Veganarchafeminism with Nathan Poirier

    On this episode, we speak to Nathan Poirier. Nathan is an interdisciplinary critical animal studies scholar with a background in anthrozoology, sociology, and mathematics. He currently teaches at Lansing Community College in Michigan. He's the co-editor of the 2022 collection Emerging New Voices in Critical Animal Studies: Vegan Studies for Total Liberation, the 2023 collection Expanding the Critical Animal Studies Imagination: Essays in Solidarity and Total Liberation, and of the 2024 collection Veganarchism: Making Veganism and Anarchism Dangerous Again. We talk about the 2025 Lantern Publishing collection Exploring Topics in Non/Human Coexistence: Passion, Praxis, and Presence, which Nathan co-edited with Sarah Tomasello, Erin Jones, and Mark Suchyta. In particular, we dig into one of Nathan's chapters: 'Veganism as an overlooked component of anarchafeminism?' In the quick questions, Nathan mentioned; Ignoring Nature No More, edited by Marc Bekoff. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo14398472.html His paper (with Sarah Tomasello) 'Polar Similar': https://animaliajournal.wordpress.com/2017/03/25/polar-similar-intersections-of-anthropology-and-conservation/ John Tallent, author of How to Unite the Left on Animals (see an interview with Kim Stallwood here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/how-to-unite-on-101030529) His 'A6' Against Cultured Meat, co-authored with Richard Giles: https://www.activedistributionshop.org/product/against-cultured-meat-a6/

    40 min

  4. 6 Apr

    Episode 248: Sentientist political liberalism with Eze Paez and Pablo Magaña

    This episode features two guests. Dr Eze Paez is a returning guest; he first appeared on the podcast back in 2018. Eze is Tenure-Track Professor in Jurisprudence and Bioethics of Pompeu Fabra Universityin Barcelona. He works on questions in moral and political philosophy, and is perhaps best known for his work on wild animal suffering and animals in republican political theory. Dr Pablo Magaña, however, is a new guest. Pablo is an Irish Research Council postdoctoral fellow at Trinity College Dublin. He's a political philosopher, with particular interests in questions about animals in democratic theory. We discuss a paper that Eze and Pablo co-authored: 'Sentientist political liberalism'. This paper was published open access in the Pacific Philosophical Quarterly in 2026. This episode is proudly sponsored by the Animal Politics book series at Sydney University Press. In answer to the regular questions, Pablo mentioned: Jesús Mosterín's book El triunfo de la compasión: Nuestra relación con los otros animales [or, in English: Triumph of Compassion: Our Relation with the other Animals]; learn more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jes%C3%BAs_Moster%C3%ADn His early work on animals and the all-affected interests principle; for his published work on this topic, see https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13698230.2022.2100962. Various forthcoming work, including a collaboration with          Adrià Moret (https://www.adriamoret.com/)

    36 min

  5. 2 Mar

    Episode 247: Animal activism on film with Claire Parkinson

    This episode's returning guest is Professor Claire Parkinson, Professor of Culture, Communication and Screen Studies at Edge Hill University in the UK. She's also the Co-Director of the university's Centre for Human Animal Studies, which she established in 2014. Her books include 2011's Popular Media and Animals and 2020's Animals, Anthropomorphism and Mediated Encounters. Today, however, we're going to talk about her 2024 Sydney University Press collection Animal Activism On and Off Screen, which she co-edited with Lara Herring. In particular, we're going to look at Claire's chapter 'Anti-capitalism, animal rights and advocacy in Okja'. Knowing Animals is proudly sponsored by the Animal Politics series at Sydney University Press, the publishers of Animal Activism On and Off Screen!

    34 min

  6. 2 Feb

    Episode 246: The Uncanny Gastronomic with Zara-Louise Stubbs

    Today's guest is Zara-Louise Stubbs. Zara is a researcher at the University of York, where she is reading for a PhD in Contemporary Literature. Her thesis is entitled Eating Bodies, Assembling Selves: The Uncanny Gastronomic in Contemporary Women's Literature. As that title suggests, she's interested in questions around food, the uncanny, and gender across a range of literary genres. Those are exactly the kind of topics we talk about in this episode, where we look at Zara's anthology The Uncanny Gastronomic: Strange Tales of the Edible Weird, which gathers a range of short stories and other works – some famous, some comparatively obscure – about the 'uncanny gastronomic', along with introductions to the texts from Zara. The book was published in 2023 British Library Publishing, part of their British Library Tales of the Weird series. This episode is proudly sponsored by the Animal Politics book series, from Sydney University Press

    28 min

  7. 5 Jan

    Episode 245: Animal consciousness with Walter Veit

    Dr Walter Veit is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Reading in the UK. His research concerns the philosophy of science, the philosophy of mind, and applied ethics, and his books include Modelling Evolution and What Are Zoos For?, the latter co-authored with Heather Browning. On this episode, we discuss his 2023 book A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness, which was published by Routledge. This episode is proudly sponsored by the Animal Politics book series, from Sydney University Press.

    37 min

  8. 01/12/2025

    Episode 244: Insect farming with Dustin Crummett

    Dr Dustin Crummet is an Affiliate Instructor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Tacoma and the Executive Director of the Insect Institute, a non-profit organization that critically explores insects in the food system. Dustin's academic background is in philosophy, but he today writes more broadly than this, contributing to research around various aspects of insect farming, as well as questions concerning animals in ethics and the philosophy of religion. In this episode, we talk about his recent paper 'Have the environmental benefits of insect farming been overstated? A critical review', which was published open access in Biological Reviews in 2025. Dustin was one of six authors on the piece. The others were Corentin Biteau, Tom Bry-Chevalier, Katrina Loewy, Ren Ryba, and Michael St. Jules. This episode is brought to you by the Animal Politics book series, from Sydney University Press.

    37 min
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About

Knowing Animals is a regular 20 minutes podcast about all things related to animals and ethics; animals and the law; animals and politics; and animal advocacy. It features interviews with academic and animal advocates. It is available free so enjoy!

Information

  • Creator
    Josh Milburn
  • Years Active
    2015 - 2026
  • Episodes
    308
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    Knowing Animals

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