Organisms across the biosphere are experiencing extinction rates so dire that scientists have marked the Anthropocene as the sixth mass extinction in the planet’s history. Accordingly, plants and animals, by and large, are not flourishing on this deathly planet. Yet, perhaps it is possible for these more-than-humans to thrive––to realize eudaimonia, an ancient Greek concept meaning to flourish by living well––when humans reimagine their relationships with the natural world. In this study, I augment critical animal and media studies with creative cultural studies to arrive at creative/critical animal and media studies. Through this framework, I utilize rhetorical criticism to analyze how the documentary My Octopus Teacher reimagines interspecies relations to offer alternative pathways for earthly eudaimonia, a life approach centered on (e)coflourishing. I find the octopus, through its entangled ethos, teaches the human sensitized compassion with a significant result: the more-than-human octopus transfers her animality to the human who evolves to become more-than-human as well. I offer two arguments: first, contemplating earthly eudaimonia through an entangled ethos creates a space for ecological reflection; this space invites audiences to approach the more-than-human world with sensitized compassion and animality; second, analyzing the documentary through a creative/critical animal and media studies lens offers a unique perspective that foregrounds exploring imaginaries for peaceful, earthly coexistence while maintaining a critical focus against speciesism.

Within climate change instruction, effective instructional crisis communication is necessary to attain cognitive, affective, and behavioral learning outcomes so students comprehensively learn the reality and implications of this planetary crisis. I locate this learning as coming to terms with climate change. This study explores how students affectively and cognitively learned to come to terms with the immense threat of the climate crisis outside their initial exposure to climate change fear appeals communicated in their classrooms. Drawing from interviews and focus groups with college students, I found students came to terms with climate change outside their classrooms by coping with the immense threat while enacting sensemaking with their peers. These findings suggest coping and sensemaking are crucial for students to come to terms with climate change after instructor-delivered fear appeals to access the efficacy needed to face this planetary threat. Ultimately, this study advances instructional crisis communication by providing insight into student to student out-of-classroom communication and how it affects cognitive and affective learning outcomes concerning climate change.