The Animal Highlight is an exciting sister podcast that serves to compliment the animal-related topics addressed in The Animal Turn podcast. Specifically, each The Animal Highlight podcast highlights the species discussed in The Animal Turn to focus and explore aspects of their lives and discuss the extraordinary and amazing attributes of such species. These 5-15 minute podcasts follow at the end of each The Animal Turn podcast hosted by Claudia Hirtenfelder.
In this Animal Highlight, fellow Virginia Thomas discusses the European Wild Cat and their entangled relationships with domesticated cats. She notes how the interbreeding between these two species has conservationists worried and has resulted in a range of, oftentimes, violent interventions into their animals’ lives.
Recorded: 12 October 2023
Featured:
Virginia Thomas is an environmental social scientist with a PhD in Sociology. She is interested in people’s interactions with their environment and with other animals. Virginia’s work explores the social and ethical questions in human-animal relationships. She is currently a research fellow on the Wellcome Trust funded project ‘From Feed the Birds to Do Not Feed the Animals’ which examines the drivers and consequences of animal feeding. This leads on from her previous research which examined human-animal relations in the media (as part of zoonotic disease framing) and in rewilding projects (in relation to biopolitics and human-animal coexistence). You can connect with Virginia via Twitter (@ArbitrioHumano).
Credits:
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A.P.P.L.E
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.
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The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.
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Virginia Thomas tells us about a red-tailed hawk named Pale Male who sparked controversy and admiration when he built his nest on a luxury Fifth Avenue apartment building in New York City. Pale Male is a celebrity whose story illuminates …continue
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Virginia explores how the recovery of red kites in Britain has been shaped by international efforts and cross-border collaborations between governments and NGOs. Thinking about these birds, Virginia raises questions and concerns about translocation, culture, and species conservation. Recorded: 14 December …continue
Proudly brought to you by: 28 July 2025
Virginia tells us how grey wolves are reclaiming territories across Europe and North America through a process known as auto-rewilding—autonomously returning to lands from which humans once drove them out. This powerful expression of nonhuman agency challenges our conventional approach …continue
Proudly brought to you by: 21 July 2025
