Species Unite

"Because we're told of so many problems and issues around the world, we get overwhelmed. And if you tell someone, okay, this is what's going on and this is what you can do. That's a bit different, people are like, okay, that's actionable." - Amanda Hearst Amanda Hearst is co-founder of Well Beings , an organization that unites animal welfare and environmental protection throughout the globe - from...

"The core of this problem in the world in many ways. is the consciousness that we bring to the world. When we think of others in the world or ourselves as being more or less worthy of being treated with respect, that very thinking is what drives many of the social problems we see in the world." – Dr. Melanie Joy Melanie Joy is a Harvard educated psychologist, specializing in the psychology of eati...

"When I moved my mom in, I certainly felt, okay, now I'm off the market. I've got a broken-down house, a crazy mother, a high-pressure job being a vegan activist at PETA… this is not really a good resume for finding Mr. Right." – Dan Mathews Dan Mathews is the Director of Campaigns at PETA. He's been there since the 80s when he was hired as a receptionist right after college. Dan's responsible for...

"…when I say people had no idea, these were investors, right? These were people who thought they had a crystal ball on the future. And I was like, look, our world has to change for so many reasons. The fact that we're slaughtering animals and doing so in really horrific ways, that is not the future. And so, if that is not the future, what is? It's embracing biotech, it's embracing food science, it...

We are on the cusp of the fastest, deepest, most consequential transformation of human civilization in history, a transformation every bit as significant as the move from foraging to cities and agriculture 10,000 years ago. James Arbib and Tony Seba, Rethinking Humanity James Arbib is co-founder of RethinkX, a nonprofit think tank that explores how technology will shape the future and disrupt all...

…not everyone can afford to donate a certain percentage of their money, not everyone can afford to volunteer their time because they're working so much. If you can, this is your generosity to the world, this is your generosity to all the people that cannot. And I think that's kind of our duty and our privilege. What is the max generosity that you can live with, with your food choices, with your ti...

There would be some mornings that the indigenous tribal leaders would take us out into virgin rainforest… [I was] like, "no human has ever stood here before." And it was alive with, I mean, you name the animal… and it was loud full and of life. And they would take us out the very next day and it was just smoldering because it had been slashed and burned illegally in the middle of the night. And it...

"Bearing witness is difficult. It does hit your emotions... I think you've got to remember, these images that you take are not yours to keep… it's your duty to put them out there or let organizations get them out there. I think that's how you cope - it's thinking, okay these aren't going to stay in my head. These are actually going to go out into the world and are going to create change."  - Gemun...

What's allowed the Beyonds and Impossibles and JUSTs of the world to do what they're doing was not subsidies, it was investment that they put into science and technology that allowed them to create things that weren't creatable before, because they just hadn't been tried before. - Michael Pellman Rowland Michael Pellman Rowland is back. He was on the podcast in the early days of the pandemic to ta...

"We kept going through this logical exercise of how do we help more and more animals. And every single time the logical end point was - it's not dogs and cats, it's animals in the food system. It's not a matter of tens of millions of animals. It's a matter of tens of billions of animals and hundreds of billions of fish." - Nate Salpeter What do you get when two tech geniuses start an animal sanctu...

The only way to help animals is to help people. Its humans that need to change, not animals. And I think it's the same way when we're talking about other issues in our society. It's about healing those who are causing violence, and it oftentimes can be easy to judge and persecute and sort of push aside people that are causing harm. It's more challenging to love them and to lead by example and to b...

Beings who've succeeded on earth for millions of years, don't seek, and should not require, our approval. They belong as well as we do. We do ourselves no favors by asking whether their existence is worth our while. We are hardly in a position to judge, hurdling and lurching along as we are with no goal, no plan except: bigger, faster, more.  If we had the courage to be honest about it, we would h...

The COVID-19 pandemic's ripple effects are broad; leaving virtually no industry, economy, or continent immune. As travel and tourism has been brought to a standstill, many wilderness areas are left vacant and workers left with the uncertainty of personal income. This "perfect storm" of conditions is leaving many endangered animals highly vulnerable to wildlife crime. – Beverly and Derek Joubert, P...

"…I checked into rehab and within 72 hours I was diagnosed with type two diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, erectile dysfunction, bipolar disorder, suicidal depression, anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive personality disorders, sleep disorder and ADHD." – Adam Sud There was a point when Adam Sud's life was completely out of control with food and drug addiction; so much so that he...

"What's sad about it is… a lot of people think it's the norm… that's what I thought. Diabetes was something my grandmother had and my mom was pre-diabetic so I thought, oh diabetes and clogged arteries and high cholesterol, they're just my destiny - that's a normal part of life because that's what I saw happening to everyone around me." -Jasmine Leyva Heart disease, diabetes, and obesity have been...

When the pandemic first hit and tourism all over the world shut down, thousands of captive elephants across Asia went from being very much in demand to being out of work, meaning they are struggling and many of them are in dire situations. Whether these elephants are from places where their lives are really good, like certain sanctuaries, or from places where their lives are incredibly difficult,...

Lauren Ornelas is the founder and the executive director of the Food Empowerment Project , a nonprofit food justice organization that spotlights the abuse of animals on farms, unfair working conditions for produce workers, and the unavailability of healthy foods in communities of color and low-income areas. She and I spoke earlier in the pandemic. She had just written an article on Medium called,...

"There's no question that Beyond Meat IPO was a watershed event. You cannot overstate enough how big of a deal that was, because before then you had a relatively small group of folks, including myself, leading the parade, cheering as loudly as we could, and largely falling on deaf ears outside of small pockets here and there. When that [IPO] happened, everybody on Wall Street started to take notic...

"…based on my personal experience and having worked with scientists and researchers most of my life, I would say that it's not too late. There are some things that are probably gone. There are places where only pockets of biodiversity may remain in the time ahead, but that doesn't mean we can't still have a healthy future. It may not be what it once was, but it's like the old saying - when's the b...

"The time to begin phasing out the intensive confinement systems in which we raise billions of animals is now. We need to accelerate society's direction of reducing demand for meat from animal factory farms and shift instead to more of an emphasis on healthier — and safer — plant-based foods. As our population grows, plant-based foods are also more sustainable and affordable for societies globally...

Rachel Nuwer has spent a decade writing about, reporting on, investigating, and going undercover in the illegal wildlife trade. She is a freelance journalist whose work often focuses on wildlife trafficking and poaching and appears in publications like the New York Times and National Geographic. She also wrote the book Poached: Inside the Dark World of Wildlife Trafficking . It's a book for anyone...

We all have a food story; the story that we tell ourselves about what we eat and why we eat it. It's that story that runs the show when it comes to how we shop, cook, and feed our children. It was most often taught to us by our parents and their parents, most who thought they were passing on good values and deep traditions and were only doing what was best for their kids. But our food story is mor...

"…This is not a surprise in many ways and, for decades, not just animal rights activists, but public health experts have been sounding the alarm bells about this kind of risk. And you know, my concern is in many ways people are referring to this as a once in a century event or the black swan or something, but it's like rolling dice and rolling snake eyes once doesn't have any effect on rolling. An...

Rich Hardy is a former undercover investigator who spent two decades working in 28 countries, exposing animal cruelty of many of the worlds worst industries – including fur trapping in North America, monkey breeding farms in Asia, and slaughterhouses and factory farms across the globe. His images and videos have been used by more than 20 international animal organizations helping to change minds a...

Justin Goodman is the Vice President of Advocacy and Public Policy at White Coat Waste Project , a two and a half million member, taxpayer watchdog group that is working to end twenty billion dollars in taxpayer funded animal experiments. Justin and I met in D C in February, pre-social distancing. And, it just so happened that on the very morning that we met, White Coat had released footage of Nat...