[S2E25] 😸 Pets & Animal Cafés with Brittany Rapone

Oliver is joined by Brittany Rapone, PhD candidate at the School of Social Sciences at Oxford Brookes University, to discuss attitudes towards pets and animal cafes in Japan. Brittany walks us through the cultural commonality of human-animal relationships and the “rent-a-pet” model of animal cafes in Japan, providing the iyashi, or “comfort”, of animal interaction at an hourly rate.

[S2E24] 💀 Public Opinion on Capital Punishment with Dr Viviana Andreescu

Oliver is joined by Viviana Andreescu, Associate Professor of Justice Administration at the University of Louisville, to discuss public opinion on capital punishment in Japan. Viviana’s 2020 article, ‘Public opinion and the death penalty in Japan’, took a look at over 2,500 responses of the Japanese General Social Survey to gauge who supports the death penalty and who would recommend it as a member of the relatively new Citizen Judge System.