When We Talk About Animals Yale Podcast Network

Fiction can provide the most profound, incisive truths about the absurdities of our reality. In his most recent novel, Venomous Lumpsucker, Ned Beauman, a master of finding the humor and the fantastical in even the most devastating facets of human nature, has crafted a chilling—and deeply funny—look into what our future relationship with animals might hold. Imagining a not-so-distant future world, in which ‘extinction credits’ allow companies to eradicate entire species for a minor cost, Beauman’s novel explores where complacency and indolent market approaches to saving the world’s biodiversity might lead. In the process, through the voices of his two engaging protagonists, Beauman explores the depths of humans’ relationship to animals, and what cost, or even penance, we should pay for the eradication of Earth’s miraculous biodiversity. In our latest episode, Beauman tells us about his career-long fascination with the systems that entrap us, how animal conservation became the centerpiece for his book, and the future implications of humanity’s self-centered perception of consciousness and worth.

Upon seeing an adorable Koala sitting on an eucalyptus branch in Australia, few would expect the beloved marsupial to emit a booming bellow to alert potential mates or rivals of its presence. But this powerful roar is just one of koalas’ many surprises, which delight and astonish in Australian biologist Danielle Clode’s new book, “Koala: A Life in the Trees.” Clode explores the enigmatic koala’s 24 million years-long saga of evolutionary adaptations, conservation triumphs, and endangerment catastrophes, and the prospects for their future following the 2019 bushfires that devastated Australia’s koala populations. We speak with Clode about the ancient ancestors, ecology, evolving relationship with humans, and uncertain fate of Australia’s bellowing marsupial.

Most books on puppies are dog-improvement manuals, guiding readers ‘How to Raise the Perfect Dog’ or how to achieve ‘Perfect Puppy in 7 Days.’ Alexandra Horowitz’s profound and totally delightful new book is not that type of book. It’s an unprecedented look at the complex, chaotic, fascinating, and often hilarious journeys of puppies becoming themselves. “Instead of following an instruction manual for a puppy, I wanted to follow the puppy,” she writes. The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget famously watched his own kids grow into adults as both a parent and a scientist. His observations of his kids inspired and served as the basis for many of his theories about how young human minds develop. Horowitz, a world-renowned expert in dog cognition, set out to do the same for her spectacularly eye-browed, exquisitely sensitive, and rambunctious new family member, Quiddity. In ‘The Year of the Puppy,’ Horowitz follows Quid from her birthday through the puppy equivalents of infancy, childhood, and adolescence. We spoke with Horowitz about the science of early dog development, how Quid is enjoying her big literary debut, and what we have to learn from trying to understand how puppies encounter and make meaning of the world.

Grazing peacefully through shallow waterways, the Florida manatee is one of the state’s most beloved creatures. Due to a multitude of compounding, human-caused crises, the last couple years have been some of the deadliest on record for manatees. Years of worsening water quality from Florida’s unfettered agricultural pollution and real estate development have resulted in increased toxic algae blooms that block sunlight from reaching the seagrass meadows upon which the manatees depend. In 2021, Florida’s manatees died in massive numbers, with a record 1,100 manatees – more than 12 percent of the state’s total manatee population – perishing. Most died by starvation. In this episode, we speak with aquatic biologist Patrick Rose, the ‘MVP of manatee protection,’ who has worked for more than four decades to propel manatees to public prominence and to translate manatees’ popularity into enforced protections for these animals and their habitat. Rose, the executive director of the Save the Manatee Club, tells us about the heartbreaking cost to these gentle giants of human derelictions, the critical importance of cleaning up Florida’s waterways, and what it is about manatees that has inspired Rose and countless others to fight tirelessly for their future.

Poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s exuberant book of essays, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, & Other Astonishments, has unlocked protective passion for nature among readers since its release in 2020. In the book’s thirty dazzling essays, Nezhukumatathil weaves love stories about being a daughter, a partner, a mother, and a teacher with reverence for a delightful catalogue of wild animals and plants and what they give us: their ability to expand our imaginations, to connect us with others, to unearth memories, to break habits of thinking, to teach us lessons, and to simply leave us awed that we co-exist with such wildly magical creatures as frogs and fireflies. In this episode, Nezhukumatathil reads from her collection, tells us about animals who have shaped her experiences and understanding of the world, and discusses the power of wonder and astonishment to expand our empathy.

The fossil record acts as both a memorial to life’s spectacular possibilities and as a warning to humanity about how fast dominance can become forgotten history, according to our guest, Scottish paleobiologist Dr. Thomas Halliday. Halliday’s research investigates long-term patterns in the fossil record, particularly in mammals. In his magnificent and daring new book “Otherlands: A Journey through Earth’s Extinct Worlds,” Halliday translates cutting-edge science into vivid portraits of sixteen fossil sites and their inhabitants extending back 550 million years. We speak with Halliday about his travel guide to the history of multicellular life on Earth, how an animal fossil can be read as a character description, how entire extinct worlds are reconstructed from remnants in the Earth’s crust, and the importance of realizing that our lives and the worlds we know were preceded by hundreds of millions of years of other life and other worlds, “simultaneously fabulous yet familiar.”