Knowing Animals

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

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.

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.

Episode 243: Future animal rights declarations with Doris Schneeberger

Today's guest is Dr Doris Schneeberger of the Vienna University of Economics and Business. Doris's academic background is in animal ethics and animal organizational studies. We're discuss her 2024 Palgrave Macmillan book Envisioning a Better Future for Nonhuman Animals: Towards Future Animal Rights Declarations. This is one of the three books shortlisted for the Australasian Animal Studies Association's inaugural Siobhan O'Sullivan Book Prize. (The others are Josh Milburn's Food, Justice, and Animals: Feeding the World Respectfully and Yamini Narayanan's Mother Cow, Mother India: A Multispecies Politics of Dairy in India.) The winner will be announced this month. In her answers to her quick questions, Doris mentioned Peter Singer, Pablo Castelló, Claudia Hirtenfelder, and Nico Dario Müller.

Episode 242: Animals and DEI with Jack Waverley

This episode's guest is Dr Jack Waverley, a Senior Lecturer in Fashion Marketing in the Department of Materials at the University of Manchester in the UK. His academic background is in marketing and consumer research, and he’s interested in exploring how these disciplines can promote the interests of all animals, and not just humans. In this episode, we discuss his article ‘Organs or bodies? Toward an equitable, embodied, and animal-inclusive diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda’, which appeared open access in the journal Consumption Markets & Culture in 2024. This episode is proudly sponsored by the Animal Politics book series, from Sydney University Press. In his answers to the quick questions, Jack mentioned Peter Singer's Animal Liberation and Tom Regan's Case for Animal Rights, as well as the 2008 article 'Figuring companion-species consumption: A multi-site ethnography of the post-canine Afghan hound', by Shona Bettany and Rory Daly.