Show Notes
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 Ma...
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Historian Michael Glover talks about what it takes to write animal history that treats cows as sentient subjects while still meeting the standards of rigorous scholarship. He unpacks how fieldwork with cows in the Karoo affected his writing. Topics Covered: Michael’s path into animal history through South African landscapes The methodological gap in writing historical animals as subjects Historical ethnography as a way of rebuilding past worlds from documents and ...
In this episode we continue our focus on methodology by talking with Frederick L. Brown about how he used municipal archives to conduct his more-than-human history of Seattle. We discuss everything from petitions to bylaws, pound records, council minutes, public health reports, property tax assessments, and city directories. Topics Covered: why urban animal history matters and why cities are always more than humanhow Seattle’s city archives make animal searching possible through indexin...
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Jules Skotnes-Brown joins Claudia on the show to discuss how segregating logics were used to govern humans and animals in South Africa’s history. This includes everything from Addo’s elephants being driven, enclosed, and “tamed”, to Kalahari San people being policed inside a national park and managed through rations and confinement. Topics Covered: The difference between environmental history and animal history Defining segregation as a ideological and material connect...
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