The Simple Heart w/ Wayne Hsiung

We’re trying something new: recordings of our short in-person conversations on Friday nights. These short conversations will be released on Mondays. Our usual podcast will be released on Thursdays. Let us know what you think! References: 2019 DxE Year End Video: https://youtu.be/VT61lSOP6sQ Photo of fireworks and fishnet relationships: https://i0.wp.com/www.austinweeklynews.com/wp-content/uploads/...

In my last conversation with Prof. Justin Marceau, we talked about his personal journey – from an aspiring pilot in the Air Force Academy, to Harvard-educated lawyer defending inmates on death row. What we did not get a chance to discuss, however, was Justin’s importance to the historic trial that ended with not guilty verdicts, for both me and my co-defendant Paul Darwin Picklesimer, in southern...

There were so many cliffhangers in the recent open rescue trial in Utah. The mistrial that was nearly declared on the first day, due to the court’s failure to provide us information about jurors. The decision to close our case, despite not calling all of our witnesses, because of a strategic error I had made in failing to prep one of our witnesses. And the gamble to move forward with submitting th...

It’s still a little hard to believe. But on October 8, just a few days ago, a jury in southern Utah found me not guilty on all charges. The next few podcasts will discuss the trial, and its aftermath. But this first episode will focus on what came before: the incredible mobilization of people across the nation and world to fight with us against Smithfield, and for the right to rescue. Almira Tanne...

Priya Sawhney is an organizer, poet, and co-founder of both The Sanctuary Initiative and Direct Action Everywhere (DxE). She is also one of my best friends on earth, and the person I’ve entrusted with the two beings I love more than any other – my dog Oliver and my cat Joan – as I face off with Smithfield in the trial that may change my life. For that reason, she will not be joining me in Utah. Ol...

Paul Picklesimer and Jon Frohnmayer joined me in an investigation of the largest pig farm in the nation, Smithfield’s Circle Four Farms. Now they’re joining me as we fight for our freedom – and for the the right to rescue animals from abuse – in a trial that will unfold in the next week. At risk is 11 years in prison. And we are facing unprecedented obstacles, including a local sheriff who has tol...

Amy Meyer was volunteering at an animal sanctuary near Salt Lake City, Utah when she decided, on the spur of a moment, to take a literal turn off her usual path. She had driven by a massive slaughterhouse on the way to the sanctuary many times. It always made her sad to think of the animals sent to their deaths, just a few hundred feet from the road. But one day in February 2013, she decided she w...

Almira Tanner is lead organizer of the grassroots animal rights network Direct Action Everywhere, which I co-founded in 2013. In that role, she’s been carefully watching the rise and fall of not just the animal rights movement, but movements across a whole range of social justice issues, from climate change to workers’ rights. And something has gone wrong; people seem to be losing hope. She’s seen...

Dr. Michael Martin is a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California at San Francisco. He is also President of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the United States affiliate of an organization of medical doctors that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, and the founder of Physicians Against Red Meat. And he has an important lesson for us: we have the power to make c...

We started The Green Pill Podcast in September 2020 to create a space to talk about change. Now we’re going through a major change ourselves: in about one month, I head to trial to face criminal charges that could transform the rest of my life. And it’s for that reason we’re transforming the podcast, too. There’s the obvious reason: I may not be here much longer to serve as host. Priya, Ronnie, De...

Hadar is the Thomas Miller Professor at UC Hastings College of the Law and an expert on criminal law. And the things she has discovered in the course of her research – for example, “pay to stay” schemes whereby prison inmates are forced to pay for their own incarceration, after they are released – have changed the way many view our system of criminal justice. But while Hadar has exposed all manner...

Carter Dillard was a bright law student looking to make a difference in the world. And he did what most ambitious young lawyers do: he took a job with the most prestige, the so-called “honors” program at the Department of Justice. But when 9/11 happened, everything changed. He switched to the newly-created Department of Homeland Security and started working on “terrorism busts.” But something was...

In less than 2 months, I go to trial, where I face more than 10 years in prison, for freeing animals from nightmarish abuse. It’s for that reason I thought it was particularly important to have this conversation now. Ingrid Newkirk, among animal advocates, is a household name, one of two people (along with Animal Liberation author Peter Singer) most known for the founding of the animal rights move...

Jeremy Beckham is a long-time animal rights activist who I’ve wanted to have on the show for a while. For one, Jeremy has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal rights history – and the lessons from that history for anyone who cares about social change. For another, Jeremy has an important perspective on modern progressive politics, and how our desire for safety has insulated us from the very people...

Zoe Rosenberg and Sherstin Rosenberg are two of the most inspiring people I know. Shocked by the horrors of factory farming about 10 years ago, they decided to start a sanctuary for animals that had a unique focus: giving each individual animal world-class care. Zoe, as a teenager who ultimately would choose to be home-schooled, and Sherstin, a veterinarian trained at the best schools in the natio...

Alexandra Paul was on Baywatch, the most watched television show on the planet in the 1990s. But instead of following in the footsteps of other Hollywood stars, she did something different: she turned her life toward activism. When I asked Alexandra, who is one of the happiest and most centered people I know, why she took that route, she shared something I’ve heard before: that her privileges in l...

On May 20, the Court of Appeals in Utah ruled against us in our effort to reverse a trial court order forbidding us from introducing evidence of animal cruelty in a criminal trial involving an open rescue at the largest pig farm in the nation. The decision, though not unexpected, was still a tough one. There is no factual dispute as to what happened; our defense rests on not what we did, but what...

In 1968, Doug McAdam was an aspiring basketball player and occasional anti-war activist when he heard the devastating news: Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated. He pulled over to the side of the road and started bawling. But things only got worse that year. Within months, Bobby Kennedy, who many believed would be the next President of the United States, was also murdered. And when the De...

Katie Cleary is a model, actor, entrepreneur, and documentary maker. She has not only hung out with some of the biggest names in Hollywood – but also headed out to the frontlines of animal abuse, to protect endangered wildlife from poachers who are armed to the teeth. But she’s also something else: a Christian. And while I sought Katie out for this conversation because of her work protecting endan...

Jane Velez-Mitchell is a former news anchor who created one of the biggest grassroots platforms for information on animal rights. She’s also a recovering alcoholic, who speaks openly about some of her most embarrassing experiences as an addict. And the mistakes Jane has made have, in many ways, given her the wisdom and strength to succeed. What’s true for Jane, however, is true of so many other in...

It’s not every day that a puppet dog is attacked on national television at an award’s ceremony. But that’s exactly what happened 20 years ago, when the musician Moby was insulted and threatened by the rapper Eminem, who proceeded to also assault a puppet dog on live TV. As the world processes what happened with Will Smith and Chris Rock at the Academy Awards, I thought it’d be interesting to talk...

A few weeks ago, Noah Smith, an economist who writes for Bloomberg and on Substack, wrote one of the most important blogs I’ve read about the crisis in Ukraine. And it was all about food. You see, Ukraine and Russia make up a whopping 25% of all wheat exports in the world. And while most of the world has been talking about guns and gas prices, Noah has pointed out the obvious: while we can do with...

In 2013, I co-founded a ragtag grassroots outfit called Direct Action Everywhere. We did street theater in grocery stores and silly flash mobs in Louis Vuitton and spoke truth to power wherever we could, even when our voices would shake. And while we earned some fans for our passion, most of the mainstream media, and even the world of nonprofit activism, scoffed at us. The things we were asking fo...

Professor Steven Fish is a political scientist at UC Berkeley who has spent decades studying Russia, Putin, and the rise of authoritarianism. But before he was a political scientist, he was a young student visiting Russia on a tourist visa. And while there, he noticed something odd: people were lying to him. He knew they were lying to him. They knew they were lying to him. And they knew that he kn...

Briahna Joy Gray, who served as national press secretary for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, triggered a firestorm when she announced that she would not be voting for Joe Biden in April 2020. Many, including her former boss, criticized her unwillingness to moderate her political views to fight a common enemy: Donald Trump.  This is why it’s surprising to many that Gray also has been one...