Jeremy Loeb

Elle Fleming, also known as Vegan Gaze, has been one of my favorite activists to follow over the years. There are several reasons for that. One is her no-nonsense, consistent and strong animal rights message. Second is her hilarious and biting wit. I have also appreciated how supportive she has been in directing her viewers to other activists' work, especially smaller channels. But what mainly dra...

I've worked with a lot of impressive people over the course of my life, many of them during my time working for NPR member stations. But I never met more hard-working people until I joined the animal rights movement, and began to work more closely with people like Direct Action Everywhere's press coordinator Cassie King. Cassie blows my mind away with her fastidious attention to detail, de...

Mac Thompson spent about three years in the sled dog racing industry, and it took a psychological toll on him. As someone who cares for animals, he struggled with how to process the deplorable conditions the dogs were kept in. He already described some of that to me in our last conversation , but told me we had only scratched the surface, so I invited him back to delve deeper into the topic. Links...

Zoe Rosenberg was just 11 years old when she started an animal rescue that would become Happy Hen Animal Sanctuary. She's since become one of the boldest animal rescuers and investigators I've ever met. She now faces years in prison in Sonoma County, CA for rescuing ducks and chickens from factory farms. But while the authorities in Sonoma may bend a knee to the animal agriculture industry...

In part two of my conversation with my friend Liesel Appel, we discuss how she rejected Nazism in her home country of Germany only to find racial bigotry in America. In Part 1 , Liesel tells how as a baby, she was dedicated to Hitler at two weeks old by her Nazi parents. But she didn't learn who the Nazis were or what they stood for until a fateful visit by a Jewish man to her home when she wa...

One recent afternoon I was finishing Charles Patterson's book "Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust" when I came across an eye-catching chapter. But it wasn't the title: "Hitler's Baby," which caught my eye. It was the name immediately following it: Liesel Appel. Liesel Appel? Where had I heard that name before? I thought I remembered the na...

YouTube video of this conversation. Upon my arrival in Berkeley, California for my first look into Direct Action Everywhere's press operation, one of the first people to greet me was Michelle Del Cueto. DxE's international coordinator and I were easy friends. She, along with DxE's press coordinator at the time, Matt Johnson, were my two steady companions during that first visit. And de...

Just as Hunter S. Thompson put it in his seminal 1970 article about the Kentucky Derby, sled dog racing is decadent and depraved. Decadent: characterized by or reflecting a state of moral or cultural decline. Depraved: morally corrupt; wicked. (Oxford Languages) So apt is this title that the whistleblower describing to me in vivid detail the deplorable treatment of dogs he witnessed during his tim...

Almira Tanner is someone who makes me optimistic that we will achieve animal liberation. Almira is the lead organizer of the global animal rights organization Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) , a role she's occupied for around five years. I feel deeply honored to have been able to work alongside her on several occasions, and I personally witnessed how dedicated and hardworking she is. I witnesse...

I was a subscriber to Daynesh's YouTube channel long before I reached out to him for support for the Ridglan beagle rescue trial. And when I did, I already felt like he was an old buddy of mine. That's the strength of Daynesh. He has a powerfully relatable approach to vegan activism that just makes you feel like you've known the guy for years. But not only is he friendly and humble, he...

I joined the worst sex cult ever, and chose his birthday to interrogate him and finally bring him down. It took years, but I finally got him. In all seriousness, Wayne Hsiung is actually the co-founder of animal rights groups Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) and The Simple Heart Initiative . He doesn't run a sex cult, as some people would choose to believe. Or if he does, I wasn't invited to...

Justin Jacobs, Debug Your Brain on YouTube, makes outreach videos that are useful not just for the casual viewer, but for activists as well. He often describes in text what he's doing, or attempting to do during outreach, and why. Justin gets a lot of bang for his buck during outreach. A simple conversation with a passerby can turn into a useful tool for activists and the public in general. An...

Activists notched a huge win over the fur industry this week when Marc Jacobs announced he was dropping fur after weeks of relentless pressure from Animal Activism Mentorship (AAM) and the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade (CAFT). I mark the occasion with some foxy co-hosts. I also joined a long list of activists from Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) disrupting a celebrity chef on his book tour.

Politicians are standing in the way of progress for animals, so activists are bypassing them and going directly to voters. One of them is Natalie Fulton , who is working with Pro-Animal Future on Denver ballot initiatives to ban fur and slaughterhouses. Listen now or watch the video .

What do Moby Dick and Haruki Murakami novels share in common? What does a Chinese pianist share in common with a Danish string quartet? What does an ancient palace garden and an enigmatic tattoo parlor share in common? What does any of this have to do with a Korean slaughterhouse? Nothing. Or everything. In any case, they're all part of this story.

My first interview in six years! James Aspey was one of the biggest names in animal rights activism around the time I got my start in activism. Since then, he's taken a pummeling from, sadly, the animal rights community. While I believe James has made some mistakes (mainly dwelling too much on the hate he has received), I have always found him to be someone who treated me with kindness and res...

In this maiden episode of the podcast, I tell my story of going from respectable-ish radio host and reporter, to less respectable street pianist, to being side-by-side with animal rights activist/attorney Wayne Hsiung and giving him invaluable legal advice that landed him in jail for a month, to co-producing a podcast with him and launching my own.