"I have often asked myself, ‘why is it that wolves don't kill people?’ Every year there are records of lions, tigers, bears and other large carnivores killing people. For wolves it very rarely ever happens. They are certainly quite capable of hauling down much larger prey than ourselves such as moose and bison. I think it has a lot to do with the dramatically different way that wolves raise their young compared to most other large carnivores." - Paul Joslin Dr. Paul Joslin is a wildlife biologis...
Feb 22, 2023•32 min•Season 9Ep. 5
“I give a presentation to law students on animal law every now and then, and I tell them I can teach you everything you need to know about federal animal protection law in 10 seconds. I say there isn't really much. There are very few laws, especially at the federal level, protecting farmed animals.” - Chris Wlach Chris is an attorney and he is an animal welfare and humane education advocate. He’s a major force in New York City animal law and has advocated for many of the city’s non-human animals...
Feb 15, 2023•37 min•Season 9Ep. 4
“There is this long history, and what's important about history is history informs the present. History shows this is how we got here. Fred Colston was like a villain out of central casting. I mean… it's almost like he was twirling his mustache… And he blamed me. He blamed me for bankrupting his lab. I mean, that's in documents from the federal government, not me by name, but In Defense of Animals. The thing is, at least he was honest about his viewpoints. At least he was honest to say, ‘these c...
Feb 08, 2023•38 min•Season 9Ep. 3
“If you really do understand science and persons - such as humans and orangutans, you must realize that that love is certainly not unscientific thing to give.” -Leif Cocks In December, I spent ten days in Bukit Tigapuluh National Park in Central Sumatra. I was there with Leif Cocks, the founder of The Orangutan Project and hundreds of orangutans. We were deep in the rainforest, surrounded by all the sounds of the jungle, no phone, no wifi, no shower aside from a bucket. And even though I didn’t ...
Feb 01, 2023•43 min•Season 9Ep. 2
“These animals are being held captive in a laboratory. They have none of what they need for their own physical and mental well-being. And there is an enormous amount of research suggesting that the biology and the behavior of animals in laboratories is nothing like even those animals in the wild. I mean, right down to their heart rate and their core temperature and their microbiome. So basically, you can't trust data from a mouse in a laboratory to reflect on a mouse in a field. So it really has...
Jan 25, 2023•53 min•Season 9Ep. 1
"So then, you know, you have the Twisted Sister crew doing yoga and eating kale salad. it's so good. Like, now I'm literally known as the plant-based bassist.” -Tanya O’Callaghan Tanya O’ Callaghan, aka, the Plant-based Bassist, has toured, recorded, written and worked with legends such as Maynard James Keenan (Tool/APC), Dee Snider (Twisted Sister) Steven Adler (Guns N’ Roses) Nuno Bettencourt (Extreme), The Riverdance, The Voice, Orianthi, Michael Angelo Batio, Kevin Godley, Sharon Corr (The C...
Dec 13, 2022•45 min•Season 8Ep. 26
“I said, ‘let's go on Zappos and look up Zappos and vegan.’ And so I searched it… and I said, ‘let's see what you get when you search that.’ And they had gardening clogs, they had like a croc shoe. And I said, ‘why don't you guys go look at how many people opt out after they see that and then you might buy my shoes.’ That was a Friday and Monday they bought 18 styles.” Rebecca Mink Rebecca Mink is the founder of the very first vegan luxury shoe brand, Mink Shoes . Mink Shoes have been around sin...
Nov 30, 2022•30 min•Season 8Ep. 25
“There are written documents that talk about how the same wolf follows a flock of sheep for 300 miles and they come back again with that flock of sheep. And those shepherds can identify those wolves. And within the group, they've even given the names to those wolves… And they have this saying: Don't do something wrong, the Wolf God is watching you.” - Prabhat Sinha Prabhat Sinha grew up swimming after ducks and fish in a rural farming village in Mhaswad, India. At 13, he left for the US, learned...
Nov 23, 2022•40 min•Season 8Ep. 24
“India has done more than any other country for recovering its tigers. Nobody can deny that. But still, we could do so much more than being satisfied with what we have done. There's so much complacency and crowing about these 3000 tigers we have, and I find it very sad.” Ullas Karanth Dr. K. Ullas Karanth is emeritus scientist at the Centre for Wildlife Studies in Bangalore. Previously he led one of the longest-running (1986–2017) tiger conservation programs in the world for the Wildlife Conserv...
Nov 16, 2022•53 min•Season 8Ep. 23
“The resource allocation of global attention on China is not commiserate with the size and scale of the problem that China represents.” Albert Tseng Albert Tseng is co-founder of Dao Foods , an impact-oriented investment firm that invests in plant-based and alternative protein companies based in mainland China and focused on the Chinese market. With rapidly rising incomes and increasing meat consumption in China, Dao Foods’ aim is to introduce alternative products into the China market to reduce...
Nov 09, 2022•31 min•Season 8Ep. 22
“One of the things that we've noticed is when these animals repeatedly show up, that's when people really get frustrated, up to a point where they may leave loose electrical wires in their field. And when the herd or the animal comes back the next day, they get electrocuted. So you want to keep people from flipping out and doing something crazy, right?” - Krithi Karanth Dr. Krithi Karanth is Chief Conservation Scientist and Director at the Centre for Wildlife Studies , in Bangalore, India and is...
Nov 02, 2022•35 min•Season 8Ep. 21
“We sat down and we ordered omakase, which is essentially the chef's specialties, and they just keep bringing food out until you say I'm done. So we ate and ate and ate everything you can imagine for the better part of 3 hours before we even dared to do order whale” – Heather Rally Dr. Heather Rally spent the last decade at the PETA Foundation as a supervising veterinarian for captive animal law enforcement. What that means is she's led investigative and enforcement actions in cases of abuse of ...
Oct 26, 2022•48 min•Season 8Ep. 20
“We talk very badly nowadays about fashion, right? Because of the environmental impact and so on. But at the same time, there is also value in fashion. If not, we wouldn't be so obsessed. It’s inspirational, it makes you dream… Let's keep the good thing, the positive thing that gives you a good feeling and toss away and eliminate the bad things. It can be done.” Claudia Pievani Claudia Pievani is the founder of Miomojo , the cruelty-free and sustainable Italian fashion brand that is making some ...
Oct 19, 2022•26 min•Season 8Ep. 19
“And I'm just having this urban, agrarian, techie renaissance thing with my hipster neighbors and it's just so rich. And I think to myself, ‘wow, we've have to share this experience. How do we spread this?’ – Josh Whiton Josh Whiton is an eco tech entrepreneur and a social innovator who is helping to repair the Earth. When Josh was 23, he founded the transit tech company, TransLoc., for which he was named a champion of change by the White House and Trans Loc was later acquired by Ford. His lates...
Oct 12, 2022•37 min•Season 8Ep. 18
“One day I was leaving the animal shelter and I would always go and have lunch at this restaurant down the street and I'd get this pork barbecue sandwich. I remember it so vividly. I can remember the booth I was sitting in. I can picture the place. And I just remember thinking, I spent all day helping this one animal and now I'm eating another animal.” - Stephanie Downs on the moment everything changed Stephanie Downs is the CEO and co-founder of Uncaged Innovations . Uncaged is a biomaterials c...
Oct 05, 2022•31 min•Season 8Ep. 17
“The pets tend to be the most behaviorally disturbed, I would say. They have the hardest transition most of the time into kind of sanctuary life, because with the pet trade, infants are usually taken from their mothers within a few days or a few weeks after they're born. And most primate species in the wild will stay with their mothers for at least a couple of years, if not for most of their life. So that's incredibly damaging right off the bat, because that separation is very traumatizing.” – D...
Sep 21, 2022•36 min•Season 8Ep. 16
“We have to look at those structures. If we don't look at those structures, if we don't look at the economic structures and we don't look at the instrumentalization of animals, the use of animals, the devaluation, the lack of dignity that's given to animals, we're just going to perpetuate our sort of grotesque use of these creatures.” – Lori Gruen Philosophers, Alice Crary and Laurie Gruen co-wrote the recently released book, Animal Crisis: A New Critical Theory . The book is a deep dive into th...
Sep 07, 2022•46 min•Season 8Ep. 15
“We have this this sort of human exceptionalism or human supremacy that that is used as the kind of baseline foundational justification for exploiting animals, that humans are just more important and we're more special in some way.” – Dr. Syd Johnson Dr. Hope Ferdowsian and Dr. Syd Johnson recently published an essay in the Hastings Center Bioethics Forum called, Primates and Medical Research A Matter of Convenience, Not Sound Science. I read the essay and quickly realized how much there was tha...
Sep 01, 2022•43 min•Season 8Ep. 14
“The number one thing is to respect us as a country and a lot of people are not - people who feel privileged in their life, they own a very nice yacht, they have money, they're wealthy, they live in Florida, they live the golden life, they live a grand life. I'm not saying there's anything bad about that, I want to be that way too. But at the same time they have a responsibility to be respectful of our laws and they have to respect our marine life. They should follow [the law] and not try to hur...
Aug 24, 2022•34 min•Season 8Ep. 13
“If a bill has been passed in another state, then you know who the opposition was, you know who the supporters were. And it really helps grease the skids for another state to get something through. It builds and then eventually you get a critical mass. And then hopefully at that point, Congress takes a look at it and passes something nationwide.” – Roland Halpern Last week, Allie Taylor was on the podcast. She runs New York Voters for Animal Rights. Allie and I spoke about how real change happen...
Aug 18, 2022•45 min•Season 8Ep. 12
“We didn't do any type of advertising. We didn't do any press around it. We just did what we do well, we quietly lobbied the city council and worked until we had a majority of the council co-sponsoring the bill. And then we said, okay, now it's time to actually move this, we need a hearing, we need to bring this up for a vote. So by the time the foie gras industry realized what we had done, it was too late.” Allie Feldman Taylor Allie Feldman Taylor is the founder and president of Voters for Ani...
Aug 10, 2022•38 min•Season 8Ep. 11
“The planet is sustaining way more than just 8 billion human beings because we are consuming second-hand protein. We could have just directly, you know, eat plant-based protein. And again, if there's still any argument that, oh, we're not going to get enough strength, get enough nutrition, I mean, come on. Where do animals get their protein to start with? Right. I mean, come on. I mean, they eat plants.” David Yeung David is the co-founder and CEO of Green Monday , a movement to educate and enco...
Aug 03, 2022•54 min•Season 8Ep. 10
“If you saw a celiac bowl on a menu, you would never order that unless you have celiac disease and you're gluten free. But if you see a Thai peanut rice noodle bowl, that sounds delicious. You're not even thinking about the fact that it's gluten free. It’s the same thing with vegan for a lot of people. They think, “oh, that is only for vegans, if I'm not a vegan, that's not for me.’” - Katie Cantrell Katie Cantrell is the Director of Corporate Outreach for the Better Food Foundation and Co-Direc...
Jul 27, 2022•32 min•Season 8Ep. 9
“We need to move away from animal derived materials, but we also need to move away from petroleum based traditional materials. So what is out there, what can we do? That demand is strong and supply is where the issue is.” - Sydney Gladman On June 12th the New York Times put out an article titled, How Fashion Giants Recast Plastic as Good for the Planet . The article, written by Hiroko Takeuchi, caused quite a stir within the Species Unite and I'm sure many other vegan communities. It criticizes ...
Jul 21, 2022•27 min•Season 8Ep. 8
“The fear factor is probably one of the worst. I mean, if you've ever been deeply afraid, or had a near accident or had somebody pursuing you, if you've ever been really afraid, that's their life 24 hours a day, except when they are able to sleep. And, how they are able to sleep on metal slats with nothing that's comforting, no ability to control the temperature ever, whether it's very hot to very cold, no freedom. And studies show that when the knob on the door turns in the room they're in or t...
Jul 13, 2022•38 min•Season 8Ep. 7
“Animal agriculture can be gone tomorrow. it's not foundational. That’s why I find it very puzzling, the amount of pushback because it seems to be the actual… low hanging fruit. You write a book about socialism and no problem at all, people are like. “yeah, sure get rid of capitalism. No problem.” Get rid of animal agriculture, they get very mad.” -Drew Pendergrass Drew is a PhD student in environmental engineering at Harvard. He is also the co-author with Troy Vettessee of Half Earth Socialism ...
Jul 07, 2022•33 min•Season 8Ep. 6
"We are fed things like Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs and, you know, we grow up on this stuff, that the wolf is the big, bad character. And what the real wolf is like is so totally different." - Suzanne Asha Stone A couple of months ago, we did a series on wolves. The episodes focused on the massacre of entire wolf populations in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. At the time, I said that we did enough wolf episodes. But the truth is we didn't do enough because wolves are still not ...
Jun 29, 2022•38 min•Season 8Ep. 5
“The idea is that we take and take and take from the planet. And we've been taking and there's all this talk about how can we get to neutral? And our company wanted to do something a little bit differently. We wanted to give back more than we were taking.” – Tina Bhojwani Tina Bhojwani is the co-founder and CEO of AERA , a luxury vegan footwear brand. In a past life, she held key leadership roles at global brands including Donna Karan, Theory and was President of Dolce & Gabbana North Americ...
Jun 23, 2022•29 min•Season 8Ep. 4
Brown Bear, Germany, 2008 I'm aware of what you are and I'm also aware of what you're thinking. You're a human being I'm aware of what you are and I'm also aware of what you're thinking. You're a human being and you are thinking I am something else I'm aware of what you are and I'm also aware of what you're thinking. You're a human being and you are thinking I am something else put here for your entertainment. I'm aware of what you are and I'm also aware of what you're thinking. You're a human b...
Jun 16, 2022•30 min•Season 8Ep. 3
“You see, most of the people in the cultured meat world are usually either biologists that are excited about the biology or physicians that work with stem cells and regenerative medicine. They're asking, “can we make a steak? Can we make a muscle?” They are not asking what is the cheapest way of making this? They're assuming somebody else is going to come and solve it. The difference between them and us is that I am an engineer. So that, yeah, I can make a muscle. I made a muscle back then. I'm ...
Jun 08, 2022•44 min•Season 8Ep. 2
