Species Unite

I think you could probably go back and track the stages of grief, probably that is what I went through. But I think if you do it right, you end up at acceptance. And that's where I ended up. And that's not to say that I've fully accepted the idea that the golden toad is extinct. Personally, I do still hold out hope that it could still be out there in those forests." - Trevor Ritland    This conversation is with Trevor Ritland, who—along with his twin brother Kyle—authored The Golden Toad. The book chronicles their remarkable journey into Costa Rica's cloud forest, once home to hundreds of brilliant golden toads that would emerge for just a few weeks each year—until, one day, they vanished without a trace. What began as a search for a lost species soon became something much more profound: a confrontation with ecological grief, a meditation on hope, and a powerful call to protect the natural world while we still can.   Links: SpeciesUnite.com Kyle and Trevor: https://kyleandtrevor.com/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adventureterm/ Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222249677-the-golden-toad Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Toad-Ecological-Mystery-Species/dp/163576996

"72 juveniles is 28% of the current population of sunflower stars under human care in California. More than a quarter of them are at our facility. If you had asked us that question about a year and a half ago. The answer would be zero at our facility, and the answer across California would be six total." - Andrew Lee In 2013, one of the largest marine disease outbreaks on record, sea star wasting syndrome swept through echinoderm populations, laying waste to sunflower stars across their historic range. Once common in California, sunflower stars are now functionally extinct there. This devastating population crash is one of the leading drivers of the 96% decline in kelp forest cover in Northern California in the last decade, as sunflower stars are no longer prowling rocky reefs and scaring purple urchins, who graze on kelp.   Sunflower Star Laboratory was founded by a group of concerned citizens who watched California's kelp disappear before their eyes and were inspired to take action.   This conversation is with Reuven Banks and Andrew Lee from Sunflower Star Laboratory, where they are actively growing sunflower stars with the aim to bring the stars and the kelp forests back to the ocean.   

“We don't actually know how many animals we're testing on in this country, because most of them are not protected by any laws. There's not even a requirement that you track their numbers.” – Delcianna Winders Today, I have the pleasure of sharing some genuinely promising news. For decades, the FDA and NIH have required or relied on animal testing as the gold standard for drug development and biomedical research. But that's beginning to change. Both agencies have just announced significant steps to reduce animal testing—moves that could mark a turning point in how science is done. The FDA is beginning to phase out animal testing requirements for certain new drug applications, starting with monoclonal antibody therapies, and is pushing forward the use of more ethical, human-relevant technologies—like organ-on-a-chip systems and advanced computer modeling. At the same time, the NIH is prioritizing human-based approaches and creating a new office dedicated to accelerating the development and adoption of these new methods across biomedical research. To help us understand what all of this means, what led to these changes, and what still needs to happen, I'm joined by Delci Winders, director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law and Graduate School. Delci is one of the leading voices at the intersection of law, science, and animal protection—and she's here to walk us through this historic shift.  

"It is a scientific fact that these macaques, like all other primates, including humans, are communicating. They communicate in much the same way we do - facial expressions, vocalizations, body postures, those kinds of things." - Jeff Kerr Jeff Kerr is PETA foundations Chief Legal Officer. I asked him to come on the show to talk about one of PETA's current lawsuits against the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Nathional Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). PETA is arguing that the monkeys being tested on in a government run facility are capable of communication (or “are communicating”). And that we have a constitutional right under the First Amendment to receive their communications. This could be a game changer in allowing us to see what's really going on in labs that are funded by taxpayer money, and which have so far been censored from public view. PETA's lawsuit follows years of NIH's attempts to deny Freedom of Information requests banning PETA executives from its campus and illegally censoring animal advocates' speech on NIH's public social media pages. Through the lawsuit, PETA is seeking a live audio-visual feed to see and hear real-time communications from the macaques who have been kept isolated, used in fear experiments, and had posts cemented into their heads. Anthropologists and other scientists have studied macaque and other primate communications for decades and know that the monkeys communicate effectively and intentionally through lip smacking, fear grimaces, body language, and various cries and sounds—all of which constitute speech under the law. Primatologists can analyze that speech on a deeper level to share their stories with the world.

"The one that really surprised me was the organic humane Certified Egg Farm. I thought Humane Certified would at least mean that I would see some chickens running around somewhere, but it looked exactly the [00:00:30] same as any other egg facility. They were just big warehouses. You don't see a chicken anywhere in sight. And then I learned, of course, that, um, you know, the this whole free range, pasture raised terminology doesn't really mean anything." - Isabella La Rocca Gonzalez Isabella LaRocca Gonzalez is an artist, author, and activist. Her work is part of a long tradition in art and photography to bring to light and find beauty in the hidden, unconscious or disregarded. Her most recent book is called Censored Landscapes. It's a long term photographic project that unveils the hidden reality of animal agriculture.   

John Kinder is the director of American studies and a professor of history at Oklahoma State University. And he is an author. His most recent book is called World War Zoos: Humans and Other Animals in the Deadliest Conflict of the Modern Age. John's book tells a story most of us have never heard: what happened to the world's zoos—and the animals inside them—during World War II. It's a sweeping, deeply researched look at how zoos became sites of propaganda, patriotism, and survival, often at the expense of the animals themselves. But World War Zoos isn't just about the past. It's also a mirror, showing how many of the ethical blind spots that existed during wartime remain with us today. In an age of climate crisis and mass extinction, this conversation asks: what do zoos really stand for—and who are they really serving?      

“I used to be the largest dairy consumer on the planet. I used to eat so much dairy and meat. The more that I looked into the dairy industry, the more that I saw that it was the singular, most inhumane industry on the planet, that we've all been lied to, including myself, for years. I always believed that the picture on the milk carton, the cow standing next to her calf in the green field with the red barn in the back was true. It's certainly the complete opposite.” – Richard (Kudo) Couto   Richard (Kudo) Couto is the founder of Animal Recovery Mission (ARM), an organization solely dedicated to investigating extreme animal cruelty cases. ARM has led high-risk undercover operations that have resulted in the shutdown of illegal slaughterhouses, animal fighting rings, and horse meat trafficking networks. Recently, they released a damning investigation into two industrial dairy farms outside of Phoenix, Arizona supplying milk to Coca-Cola's Fairlife brand. What they uncovered was systemic animal abuse, environmental violations, and a devastating betrayal of consumer trust. While Fairlife markets its products as being sourced "humanely," ARM's footage tells a very different story—one of suffering, abuse, and corporate complicity. Despite the evidence, this story has been largely ignored by mainstream media—likely due to Coca-Cola's massive influence and advertising dollars.

“There's a drug called vioxx that was found to be safe and effective in animal trials, so they moved it on to preclinical trials in humans. Once on the market, that drug caused 88,000 people to have heart attacks and killed 38,000 people.” Meredith Blanchard   We have some big news at Species Unite. In January and February, our team traveled to Bainbridge, Georgia to begin filming our first documentary. Bainbridge is a small Southern town facing a truly chilling threat: a company called Safer Human Medicine is planning to build the largest monkey breeding facility in the United States right in their backyard. If approved, this facility would hold up to 30,000 long-tailed macaques at a time—monkeys who would be bred in captivity, then sold to pharmaceutical companies for use in painful and outdated animal experiments. It's a nightmare for the animals. But it's also a nightmare for the people of Bainbridge: from threats to their water and soil, to dangerous zoonotic disease risks, to the loss of wildlife and community health. The people of Bainbridge are fighting back. And they're not alone. One of our partners on this film is the National Anti-Vivisection Society, or NAVS—an organization dedicated to ending the exploitation of animals in science. Today's guest is Meredith Blanchard, the Senior Manager of Advocacy and Policy at NAVS. I spoke with her about what's why animal testing doesn't work and what it will take to finally bring it to an end.   Links:  National Anti-Vivisection Society https://navs.org/  

 “One year, we actually offered the Faroe Islanders One million pounds to stop the hunts. 1 million pounds, which would go to promoting whale and dolphin tourism to the islands and marine conservation education to Faroese kids in schools. And the Faroese response to our offer was the most emphatic no you've ever had in your life. They actually held a hunt on the 1st of January. On the first day of that offer, they went out and deliberately killed pilot whales as their official no to us.” – Rob Read  Rob Read is the leader of the Captain Paul Watson Foundation UK, otherwise known as Neptune's Pirates UK. He and his team have been working for years to end the suffering of many marine animals. Rob has initiated campaigns as well as actively operating boats, coordinating crew and flying drones, working on issues that include everything from seal shooting by wild salmon net fishermen around Scotland, in Japan against the Taiji dolphin hunts, in the Faroe Islands, against the drive hunts of pilot whales and dolphins, in Iceland against commercial fin whaling, and in Namibia, exposing the Namibian seal hunt.  I asked Rob to come on the show to talk about the places in the world where whaling is still the norm. There are not that many left, but there shouldn't be any left. And that's what Rob and Captain Paul Watson Foundation are working to achieve. Links https://neptunespiratesuk.education/about/the-team/rob-read https://www.neptunespirates.uk/

“If we march into that village and we start trying to persecute people for using poison, something that's very illegal, nobody's going to talk to us. We're not going to find out where the poison came from. We're not going to be able to shut anything down. We should take the approach that people are using poison because they're desperate, because they see no other alternative.” – Andrew Stein   Andrew Stein is a wildlife ecologist who spent the past 25 years studying human carnivore conflict from African wild dogs and lions in Kenya and Botswana to leopards and hyenas in Namibia. His work has long focused on finding ways for people and predators to coexist. He is the founder of CLAWS, an organization based in Botswana that's working at the intersection of cutting-edge wildlife research and community driven conservation. Since its start in 2014 and official launch as an NGO in 2020, CLAWS has been pioneering science-based, tech-forward strategies to reduce conflict between people and carnivores. By collaborating closely with local communities, especially traditional cattle herders, CLAWS supports both species conservation and rural livelihoods—making coexistence not just possible, but sustainable.  

"But it makes a lot of sense especially when you think about how traditional healers and shamans have worked, they haven't felt that separation from nature like Western medics do. And so to rely on the knowledge of other species actually makes a lot of sense. It's probably a lot more than we know at the moment." - Jaap de Roode  Jaap de Roode is a biology professor at Emory University, and he is the author of an astonishing new book called Doctors by Nature How Ants, Apes, and Other Animals Heal Themselves. I say astonishing because I had no idea about so much of what he explores in his book. It never occurred to me to consider that other species use medicine and have been healing themselves forever.  Jaap tells stories of animals across nature, from bumblebees to chimpanzees, how they use plants and natural substances to treat infections, to ward off parasites, to self-medicate. There's so much that we have learned from them, and there's so much more that we still can.     

“I mean, organoids in general are very exciting replacements for animal research because you could model a kidney or a liver or a or a heart without taking them from a real animal, which it's very important to support that kind of thing. But yes, when it's the brain, there's this fear that you might end up creating another sentient being. And then and then you've just replaced one sentient being with another and maybe not made things better at all. So it seems really, really important to guard against that risk.” – Jonathan Birch   Dr. Jonathan Birch is a professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics and is Principal Investigator on the “Foundations of Animal Sentience” project, a European Union-funded project to develop better methods for studying the feelings of animals and new ways of using the science of animal minds to improve animal welfare policies and laws. In 2021, he led a review for the UK government that shaped the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022. In 2022-23, he was part of a working group that investigated the question of sentience in AI. Jonathan is here today to talk about his most recent book, The Edge of Sentience Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI. The Edge of Sentience is an open access book published under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, meaning it can be distributed for free in any format. 

"The basic premise of the event is that hunters hunt rattlesnakes from the surrounding environment all across West Texas, and bring them into the roundup for the weekend. And during the roundup, these snakes are kept in a pit and then, one by one, beheaded and skinned in front of in front of audiences." - Elizabeth MeLampy  Elizabeth MeLampy is a lawyer dedicated to animal rights and protection, and her passion for this work shines through in her latest book, Forget the Camel, the Madcap World of Animal Festivals and What They Say About Being Human. To research the book, Elizabeth traveled across the country, immersing herself in a wide range of animal festivals — from the Iditarod dog sled race to the rattlesnake roundup in Sweetwater, Texas. Elizabeth examines these festivals as revealing microcosms of our broader relationship with animals. Whether it's rattlesnake hunts, frog-jumping contests, ostrich races, or groundhog celebrations, these events reflect the ways humans use animals to express cultural identity, community pride, and historical traditions. Yet beneath the pageantry and excitement lies a deeper question: Is our fascination with these spectacles worth the toll it takes on the animals involved? With compassion and insight, Elizabeth invites readers to consider whether there's a more ethical and empathetic way to honor our stories — one that respects both animals and the traditions they inspire. Please listen, share and read, Forget the Camel. It will be released on April 8th, 2025. https://apollopublishers.com/index.php/forget-the-camel/

"When we arrived, we had no records, we had nothing. We had no documentation. And one of one of the first things that you have to actually prove to all of these international government parties and so on, you need to you need to say, where did you get this elephant? And we had no idea. We were actually government officials, and we had this elephant, and we had no real idea of where this elephant came from." -Tom Sciolla  In 2012, during a scorching heatwave in Buenos Aires, a polar bear named Winner died in the city zoo. His tragic death ignited outrage—not just for him, but for all the animals suffering in the zoo's dire conditions. The protests grew, and the city listened. Instead of just making small improvements, Buenos Aires did something extraordinary: they took over the zoo. That's when Thomas Sciolla, the new wildlife and conservation manager, stepped in. But he and his team didn't just aim to make life better for the animals still trapped there—they decided to set them free. Over the past decade, they have relocated hundreds of animals to sanctuaries, giving them the lives they deserve and the closest thing to freedom they could ever have after lifetimes in captivity. The very last animal to be translocated will be moving in the next few weeks. Pupy, a female African elephant who has been at the zoo since 1993 will be moving across South America to Global Sanctuary for Elephants in Brazil. This is one of the most inspiring stories I've heard in a long time—a story of hope for animals, and a blueprint for how real change can happen. Please listen, share and follow Pupy's journey here: https://globalelephants.org/project-pupy/        

“That's taxpayer's money that is going to support research and development and pilot projects to develop a food system that is based on environmental destruction and greed and disregard for animals, fish, and any of the other marine mammals that might be around it.” - Andrianna Natsoulas Andrianna Natsoulas is the campaign director for Don't Cage Our Oceans, an organization that exists to keep our oceans free from industrial fish farms. Offshore finfish farming is the mass cultivation of finfish in marine waters, in underwater or floating net pens, pods, and cages. Offshore finfish farms are factory farms that harm public health, the environment, and local communities and economies that rely on the ocean and its resources.  Don't Cage Our Oceans are a coalition of diverse organizations working together to stop the development of offshore finfish farming in the United States through federal law, policies, and coalition building. And, although it is not yet happening, right now the US Administration and Congress are promoting this kind of farming, which would be nothing short of disastrous for the oceans, the planet and the people and animals who live here.   dontcageouroceans.org

“It is a little bit terrifying, because it means that AI systems are going to be entering this uncanny valley where we are not sure how to experience them in five or ten years. You might be talking to Siri on your phone, or ChatGPT on your laptop, or your Roomba, vacuuming your floor. You might be talking to these beings and genuinely be unsure whether they think and feel things when they talk back to you, and that is going to be an uncomfortable place to be.” Jeff Sebo   Jeff Sebo works primarily on moral philosophy, legal philosophy, and philosophy of mind; animal minds, ethics, and policy; AI minds, ethics, and policy; global health and climate ethics and policy; and global priorities research. He is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Affiliated Professor of Bioethics, Medical Ethics, Philosophy, and Law, Director of the Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, Director of the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy, and Co-Director of the Wild Animal Welfare Program at New York University. He is also an author. His most recent book is called The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why? Here he argues that we should extend moral consideration to a much broader spectrum of beings, including insects and even artificial intelligence. After reading his book, I couldn't agree more.

 “I think it's really the amounts of money that they're able to offer people paired with the violence that they're willing to put on people. It's very much like the drug cartels in Mexico, just more focused on poaching of wildlife.” – John Jurko John Jurko is a director and producer of the film, Rhino Man, an award winning documentary which highlights the courageous field rangers who risk their lives every day to protect rhinos and our natural world. The film follows Anton Mzimba, the head ranger of the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve, as he and his team battle to protect the rhinos. Anton faces long deployments away from family, dangerous working conditions, and constant threats to his life until he was  assassinated for his work protecting the rhinos – this was while they were making the film. John is continuing to advocate to bring justice to his killers who have yet to be arrested. John also created and hosts The Rhino Man Podcast to further build awareness of the importance of rangers, the rhino poaching crisis, and our need to connect local communities to protected areas.

“I know that one day for me in Antarctica, one morning for me in Antarctica is a dream for someone who will never get there. Because it's hard to get to. So, I don't waste those opportunities. I don't sit there and go, ‘I'm in Antarctica again.' No, my brain will not go to that space because I know that people would kill [to be there]. I am the portal sometimes, through which some people will experience different parts of the world.” Jason Edwards Jason Edwards is an award-winning photographer, TV host, and conservationist. His image portfolio ranks among the largest of any photographer in the National Geographic Society's long history, and he has a new book out called, From Icebergs to Iguanas. It's a large format series of books illustrating his National Geographic imagery and his behind-the-scenes tales. It's stunning and it makes you feel very lucky to live on this planet. Through his commissioned assignments and as the face of National Geographic Channel's Pure Photography, Jason has taken his storytelling to televisions and streaming networks in dozens of countries and to every continent. His imagery has appeared in hundreds of publications including National Geographic Magazine, BBC Wildlife, Australian Geographic, Sports Illustrated, Conde Nast Traveler, and The New Yorker.

“We don't want Idaho to have a bad reputation. This is our home state. We love our home state. It's beautiful. We pride ourselves on our nature. We pride ourselves on our wildlife. And instead, we are continuing to do things that are… that are sickening.” - Ella Driever   In 1995, wolves were reintroduced to central Idaho, and in 2003 a Boise High school called Timberline officially adopted a local wolf pack. Throughout the 2000, students went on wolf tracking trips and in their wolf packs range. But in 2021, Idaho's legislature passed Senate Bill 1211, 1211 allows Idaho hunters to obtain an unlimited number of wolf tags, and it also allows Idaho's Department of Fish and Game to use taxpayer dollars to pay private contractors to kill wolves. That means bounties on wolves, including on public lands. And in 2021, the Idaho Fish and Game Commission expanded the wolf hunting season and hunting and trapping methods. So it's not too surprising to learn that also in 2021, the Timberline pack disappeared. The students, the ones that cared about wolves, at least, were devastated. Last summer I went to D.C. with some of the Species Unite team for a wolf rally on Capitol Hill. While I was there, two young women gave a talk about what happened at Timberline in 2021. Their names are Ella Driver and Sneha Sharma. They both graduated from Timberline High School and were there when their wolf pack disappeared. Please, listen and share.

“I know that veganism can be a little daunting for some, and they feel like it's either you go fully vegan or you're not allowed in the club.” – Cheryl Martinez   Because it's January and because a lot of people may have made some big resolutions a few weeks ago, we are going to talk about one of them – plant-based eating. Because, well I think it's a really good resolution to do all year long.  I think one of the big resistance points for even trying plant-based for a month, is that many people seem to worry that switching their diet to vegan means there's a lot of food they can't eat anymore, but, I think it's the opposite. Eating vegan has led to so many options and flavors that I had never knew existed. This episode is with Cheryl Martinez. Cheryl is the founder of Veginner Cooking, which is all about making plant-based eating accessible and exciting for everyone – whether they're doing vegan til dinner, or meatless Mondays or are making the shift to full on vegan.  Cheryl's built a community of over 200,000 Veginners, that is vegan beginners, and she shares with them delicious recipes, tips, advice, and all sorts of really good info on how to make easy, delicious and healthy plant-based foods. Please listen, share and check out Veginner Cooking. Veginner Cooking: https://www.veginnercooking.com/ Veginner Recipes: https://www.veginnercooking.com/blog

Text “Do people even want to know about some of these issues? Because I think some of the meat production concerns, it's kind of like people would rather in some cases, I think some people might not really want to know all the nitty gritty. They don't want to know how the sausage is made. That poses an interesting question and challenge about how you communicate about some of these issues, when maybe there's a resistance among a subset of people who don't want to know more.” - Patti Truant Anderson    Today's episode is the final installment in our special four-part series where we take a deep dive into the food system with experts from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. Our guest is Patti Truant Anderson, a senior program officer at the Center and a faculty associate in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Patti's work focuses on public health risks, environmental challenges tied to food production, and how to communicate these critical issues more effectively. Patti and I explore how polling helps uncover public perceptions around food systems and why the country isn't as polarized on these issues as we might think. We also talk about the challenge of engaging people who may resist learning about the harsh realities of our food system. This episode is not just about data—it's about how we can foster a shared understanding and move forward, even in times of deep political division.   Links: Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future  - https://clf.jhsph.edu/ Patti Truant Anderson - https://clf.jhsph.edu/about-us/staff/patti-truant-anderson

“People in the animal welfare world, I think, should broaden their purview to the human parts of it and sort of work in coalition. Like if you can really expose the labor conditions, you're weakening the industry, and if you can increase labor regulations, if you can make it to where workers don't routinely get repetitive stress injuries and they're not breathing in harsh chemicals, and if you slow the kill line down, that hits their profits and you are weakening the industry. And, also remember, this industry doesn't just slaughter billions of animals a year, it also makes life hell for the people who work in it. Expand your level of solidarity to those people.” – Tom Philpott     This is the third episode in a special for part series, where we go deep into the food system with some of the brightest minds at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. In this episode, we dive into one of the many hidden and hideous aspects of our food system: the exploitation of workers in industrial meat production. Tom Philpott is a senior research associate at the Center. He joined in 2022 after a distinguished three-decade career in journalism, reporting on the injustices and ecological ramifications of the industrial food system. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book, Perilous Bounty. I asked Tom to shed some light on the grueling conditions faced by meatpacking workers, from dangerous line spades to repetitive injuries and the shocking lack of basic protections, and even though much of this was exposed during the covid 19 pandemic, to explain how it's all still happening. Tom also hosts the Center for a Livable Future's podcast, it's called Unconfined. It's really good. Take a listen to learn a whole lot more about the impacts of food animal production.   Links Center for a Livable Future: https://clf.jhsph.edu/ Tom Philpott: https://www.tomphilpott.net/ Perilous Bounty: https://bookshop.org/p/books/perilous-bounty-the-looming-collapse-of-american-farming-and-how-we-can-prevent-it-tom-philpott/8555300?ean=9781635578454&gclid=Cj0KCQjw48OaBhDWARIsAMd966DtJTjYQl6nh5J9Gk9ib9f3SXgKnCfTwujd-YMhRK-UC1X-ihdAiyIaAsm3EALw_wcB Unconfined Podcast: https://clf.jhsph.edu/unconfined-podcast

“I remember during my training having professors tell me, ‘one day you might do something important and you'll tick off a vested interest, and they're going to come into a meeting with you, and they're going to bring a copy of your dissertation and slam it on the table and start challenging you.' And that is exactly what happened.” – Keeve Nachman   This is the 2nd episode in a special four-part series about where we go deep into the food system with some of the brightest minds at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future.  This conversation is Dr. Keeve Nachman, a powerhouse in the fields of environmental health, risk assessment, and food systems research. Keeve is the Robert S. Lawrence Professor and Associate Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. He's also a leading voice on issues like antibiotic resistance and industrial agriculture's impact on public health. I asked Keeve to come on the show to talk about how his work helped ban the use of arsenic in our food system—a fight that spanned 15 years and had a ripple effect around the globe.  Keeve's story is a masterclass in persistence and the power of science-driven policy change. We also explore his ongoing efforts to address antibiotic misuse in industrial agriculture, a growing threat to global public health, and discuss what it will take to create lasting change in our food system.   Links : Keeve Nachman: https://clf.jhsph.edu/about-us/staff/keeve-nachman Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future:  https://clf.jhsph.edu/ Unconfined Podcast https://clf.jhsph.edu/unconfined-podcast  

“My colleague and I went out to Arizona because there was a community that was concerned about the expansion of an egg laying operation, essentially in their backyard. At full capacity, that operation was slated to house 12 million birds. 12 million birds. It's like New York City, but with chickens.” – Brent Kim   We know that what we eat has an enormous impact on billions of animals, our health and the health of the planet. If we fail to change our diets and the food system, the planet will face increasingly severe environmental, social, and economic consequences, many of which are already beginning to unfold. We know this, we know that there is much we could be doing about it, on large and small scales, yet the urgency is not there.  I think the more knowledge we have, the more we are willing to demand change and even change ourselves. So, I wanted to go deeper into the food system to get a better understanding of its impact on public health, the planet, ecosystems and social justice, and mostly - to hear about how we change it. This episode marks the beginning of a special four-part series with some of the experts from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future.   This conversation is with Brent Kim. Brent is a program officer for the Center's Food Production and Public Health program. His research spans issues from farm to fork with published works on sustainable diets, climate change and industrial food, animal production, food and agriculture policy, soil safety, and urban food systems. He and I talk about much of it, how to change it and solutions for a much better future. Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future https://clf.jhsph.edu/ Brent Kim https://clf.jhsph.edu/about-us/staff/brent-kim Unconfined Podcast (from the Center for a Livable Future) https://clf.jhsph.edu/unconfined-podcast  

"In the case of lions, they're not easy neighbors. They're also not the worst neighbors. I think in in most cases, it's a matter of learning how to live next to nature, next to other animals and animals that can potentially be dangerous." - JG Collomb JG Collomb is the CEO of Wildlife Conservation Network, an organization that connects global donors with community based conservationists, and they're changing the way the world finds and funds often overlooked projects in the field and helps foster coexistence between communities and the animals who live among them.  Please listen, share and check out the Wildlife Conversation Network.    

“I think there's a lot of people out there who feel the way I felt for many years, which is, ‘look, I feel a bit guilty, I know in some sense that having the diet I have makes me complicit in some things that I don't like. It makes me a bit uncomfortable, but it doesn't feel like there's anything I can do about it right now. I have this guilt. I'd like to do something about it, but just all the options I'm presented with seem a bit shit.' So, when we present people with something else that they can do, many of the people we've spoken to say it's quite a relief to know that they don't have to sit with this tension. You know, psychologists call it the meat paradox, the thing where we love animals, but we also eat them. How can we resolve this? Well, one thing that can maybe help us resolve this kind of cognitive dissonance is to actually be a part of helping animals even whilst you still haven't changed your diet.” - Aidan Alexander   The animals that need our help the most are animals that live on factory farms. Yet charities protecting farmed animals receive 28 times less donations than pet charities. There are all sorts of reasons for this, which we get into in this episode. This conversation is with Aidan Alexander and Tom Norman. Aidan and Tom have started an organization called FarmKind. It is a way to support your favorite charities, that is, nonprofits that you're already supporting - pet charities, conservation charities, etc. but also at the same time to help animals that are living on factory farms. Why? Because factory farming is the biggest source of suffering for animals on the planet. Helping to protect these animals and bring factory farming to an end is one of the biggest ways to help animals in need. FarmKind makes it easy to make a difference for millions of factory farm animals when you donate to the causes you care about. FarmKind helps people who feel compassion for animals to help the animals most in need and support their favorite charities at the same. OR FarmKind helps anyone be a part of the solution to factory farming, regardless of their diet. Because diet change isn't the only way to help farmed animals. Donating is an incredibly powerful way to express our compassion for animals. When we donate to the charities that have been shown to make a difference and use our money wisely, it can make an even bigger difference than changing your diet. Farmkind collaborates with experts to identify some of the most effective charities combating factory farming's impact on animals and the planet. They enable users to split their donations between these expert-recommended, super-effective charities and their personal favorite causes, like your local shelter. And they provide a bonus to both, allowing donors to do the most good to combat factory farming while supporting causes close to their hearts.   Please listen, share and if you are able, please consider donating to FarmKind: https://www.farmkind.giving/split-and-boost?utm_source=speciesunite&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=speciesunite

"We may think that we're just eating our dinner tonight, but when you multiply it by all of that food every day, every day of the year, everyone in the country, everybody in the world, it's a tremendous production. Just to give you a sense, in the US, we slaughter about 18,000 animals every minute for food just in the United States." - Peter Lehner  Agriculture and our food system are responsible for about a third of greenhouse gas emissions. Yet the food system gets left out of too many climate conversations and the industry is rarely held accountable. I asked Peter Lehner to come on the show and explain what agriculture's role is in climate, and how and why they are so often left off the hook. Peter is one of the leading experts on the impact of agriculture and climate change. He directs Earth Justice's Sustainable Food and Farming program, developing litigation, administrative and legislative strategies to promote a more just and environmentally sound agriculture system and to reduce health, environmental and climate harms from the production of our food. He is also the author of farming for Our Future The Science, Law and Policy of Climate Neutral Agriculture. He also teaches at Columbia and Yale Law schools. Please listen and share.    

"Why do we need large carnivores? Obviously as a scientist, I like talk about the biological roles that they play and the ecological roles, but I will drift and say that I think they're important for spirit and sort of human health more broadly, whether that be mental health, spiritual health, whatever, that sense of wildness that they bring to a landscape, that they force you to listen when you're in the woods, that you hear sticks break around you, that you hear what the birds are doing so that you know whether there's something coming around the next bend. These are all, in my opinion, truly enriching moments and necessary for human spirit and really for human health." - Mark Elbroch    Mark: [00:12:23] These are all, in my opinion, truly enriching moments and necessary for human spirit and [00:12:30] really for human health   Mark Elbroch is an ecologist and author, storyteller and the director of the Puma Program for Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organization.   Mark has been on the podcast before to talk about cougars, but something has changed since the last time he was on. For years, many people in the scientific community, and this is backed by research, have claimed that cougars would return to their historic range in the eastern US in the next 10 to 20 years.   But there's a new study from Panthera that says that this is not true, that they won't make it to the East Coast even by 2100, which means, if we want cougars in the east we're going to have to help them.   This is a big deal because we do want cougars in the east. Large predators make fragile ecosystems strong. Mountain lions interact with nearly 500 other species and their reintroduction could lead to healthier forests, less zoonotic disease, and many other benefits.    Let's bring cougars home!

“And so I've been doing this for about 40 years, and I still don't get tired of seeing parrots. I see a parrot or I see a bird and I go, I belong. There is such beauty in the world. Oh my gosh. It's like everything is okay for a minute you're intrigued, you're curious, you're seeing beauty, you're seeing flight. But at the same time, you've trained yourself to hold the tragedy because there aren't nearly as many as there used to be and there's all kinds of complex threats against them, and there's little we can do. So you see a wild parrot that is also the internal conversation, they're in trouble, it's not like it was or it should be or could be. So that's what it's like to see a parrot is to see the beautiful and the tragic.” – Rev. Dr. LoraKim Joyner   I only learned recently that parrots are the most endangered group of birds on the planet. As with so many other species, our tendency to take and take is what is driving parrots toward extinction. We've been stealing them from the wild for 60 years to live these pitiful lives in cages, in people's kitchens. That, combined with habitat loss and climate change is pushing these spectacular birds to the brink of extinction. This conversation is with Rev. Dr. LoraKim Joyner, a wildlife veterinarian, a conservationist, a Unitarian minister, and co-founder of One Earth Conservation. LoraKim has spent the last 40 years in Latin and South America, working with communities to save their parrots – by building their capacity to transform poachers into protectors.  One Earth Conservation grows conservationists of all ages by empowering and standing in solidarity and resistance with the people of the Americas. They have projects in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Guyana, Paraguay, and Suriname.   To learn more: https://www.oneearthconservation.org/  

“In terms of specialized AI within these industries. They're years and years ahead of where the animal movement currently is. Factory farms are increasingly using AI as well to do things like predicting the growth rate of chickens so that they can set the environmental variables up perfectly to exploit these animals as efficiently as possible.” – Sam Tucker   Sam Tucker is the founder of Open Paws, a nonprofit aimed at creating ethically aligned AI systems and he's the creator of Veg 3, an AI chatbot promoting animal rights.   Sam's expertise in AI development and animal protection provides both a practical and theoretical understanding of how to create technologies that benefit all species.   I asked Sam to come on the show because I want to understand how we, Species Unite and other organizations like us can be using AI to be way more effective.

“We enacted what's called the Beagle Freedom Project Bill. Basically, what it said was, if you're a facility that tests on dogs and cats, when the testing is over, you are mandated to release those animals to give them a second chance at life to a 501C3 charity like Beagle Freedom Project or any other type of facility like that, like a rescue facility. You wouldn't believe how hard that was to pass.” – Shannon Keith   The story sounds like a dream: hundreds of animals used for research and testing are now free and the former prison that they were forced to call home has been torn down to become a safe and loving animal sanctuary.  This conversation was done as a live interview a few weeks ago. It's with me and Shannon Keith, the president and founder of the Beagle Freedom Project. I invited her on to discuss the shutdown of a massive dog and cat testing laboratory in Nowata, Oklahoma. Not only did the Beagle Freedom Project and Shannon shut down this laboratory, but they rescued all of the dogs and cats that were being tested on there, and they took over the laboratory and it's grounds and are in the process of transforming it into a 30-acre sanctuary called Freedom Fields.   The closure of this laboratory ends one-third of the toxic flea and tick testing industry in the United States, sparing the lives of thousands of dogs and cats. Beagle Freedom Project is the world's leading organization for rescuing and rehoming animals used in experimental research. Since 2010, they have liberated thousands of animals while working to end their abuse through education, advocacy, and legislation. We talk about the shutdown, the rescue of hundreds of animals that were being tested on, and the magic of transforming a dark and terrifying animal research lab into a beautiful sanctuary. And, we discuss not only how to help these former research animals, but also the more than one hundred million still being used for testing and research in the United States.      

"And the thing that really makes me sad is that we humanize them when they're little, by putting them in diapers and feeding them bottles and dressing them in clothes. And then we demonize them when they grow up and act like the wild animal that they are, because people think if they neuter them, if they get their teeth removed - not my chimp, my chimp is not going to act like that." - Angela Scott    Last week we released an episode with Brittany Peet, PETA's general counsel for captive animal law enforcement, who is featured in the HBO docuseries, Chimp Crazy. If you haven't seen it, please see it. It's made by Eric Goode, the guy who made Tiger King, and it is equally shocking.  It also shines a light on the need to pass the Captive Primate Safety Act and there are many high hopes that that act could get passed this year because of Chimp Crazy.    Chimp Crazy focuses on chimpanzee owners, private owners that buy cute baby chimps, dress them up and treat them like human children until they are 5 or 6 years old, when the chimps become large, and very strong wild animals. This part usually ends badly. Well, it always ends badly for the chimps but quite often it does for the humans too. This conversation is with Angela Scott, the whistleblower in Chimp Crazy, and for this entire case. A little background: Angela volunteered at a place called Chimp Party for a woman named Connie Casey. Connie and her husband Mike bred and sold chimpanzees and other primates for decades. PETA got involved because of the horrific conditions these chimps were living in. Angela was the whistleblower who worked with PETA. But before the case could fully go through, Connie gave her chimps to a woman named Tonya Haddix. And the chimps were in Tanya's care when they were rescued, all except for one, a chimp named Tonka. Tanya tried to keep Tonka for herself and she hid him from PETA for months in a cage in her basement. All of the chimps, including Tonka, were eventually saved because of Angela's willingness to go back to Connies and film what she saw. Angela's stories of what these chimps went through are astonishing and I am so grateful to her for sharing them with us. 

“I mean, it's an addiction, an obsession, a sickness that these people seem to have that they don't think that it could happen to them. And even when it does, they are still in denial about it.” - Brittany Peet   There's a new docuseries on HBO called, Chimp Crazy. If you haven't seen it, see it. It's made by Eric Goode, the guy who made Tiger King, and it is equally shocking .   Chimp Crazy focuses on chimpanzee owners, private owners that buy cute baby chimps, dress them up and treat them like human children until they are 5 or 6 years old, when the chimps become large, and very strong wild animals. This part usually ends badly. Well, it always ends badly for the chimps but quite often it does for the humans too. This conversation is with Brittany Peet, PETA's general counsel for captive animal law enforcement. Brittany makes quite a few appearances in Chimp Crazy - she is one of the PETA lawyers who freed the captive chimps in the show, and has spent her career working to free many other captive, chimps, primates and other wild animals throughout the US. Please listen, share and if you haven't seen it, please watch Chimp Crazy.

"So this relationship to ourselves, to other people, to other animals - whether farm animals or wild animals, it's very bizarre how we have gotten it so twisted in what we expect and what we feel entitled to over here in the the Global North." - Katherine Baxter  Katherine Baxter is the CEO of the Africa Network for Animal Welfare-USA (ANAW). ANAW-USA works to advance the welfare of animals, humans and the environment by facilitating mutually beneficial and reciprocal exchanges between the United States and Africa. Their mission is to work with their sister organization in Kenya, ANAW, and other partners, to advance the inseparable welfare of animals, humans, and the environment by facilitating mutually beneficial exchanges of resources and knowledge between the United States and Africa. I asked Katherine to come on the show to talk about ANAW and some of ANAW's coexistence programs in Kenya, including an incredible sunflower project has solved huge problems with human-elephant conflict. It makes me crazy that we in the US are incredibly resistant to many (or most) coexistence programs yet our stakes are pretty low. In the US, if a wolf kills a sheep, the rancher is reimbursed and except for the poor sheep, life goes on. Whereas in villages close to Tsavo National Park in Kenya, people lose entire crops to elephant herds, are financially ruined, and some even lose their lives - yet they are much more willing to explore and try coexistence programs that benefit all - the crops, the people and the elephants.  If we want to live in a country where wildlife and predators still roam, then we need to put the guns down and start paying attention to ideas and initiatives like the ones that Katherine talks about here. We have much to learn.         

“There are more native crocodiles living in cages and concrete pens that are owned by Hermes or supplying Louis Vuitton than live in their natural habitat. So, that is so clearly not conservation. And we're talking like hundreds of thousands of crocodiles.” – Emma Hakansson   We are destroying the planet, killing billions of animals and making life insufferable for humans all over the world, all in the name of fashion. But, Emma Hakansson is on a mission to change all of it. She is the founding director of Collective Fashion Justice, an organization dedicated to creating a total ethics fashion system which prioritizes the wellbeing of people, our fellow animals and the planet, before profit.   And some of the bags are even like Nile crocodile and crocodiles from different parts of the world and the level of exclusivity is based on like how rare that skin is. And it seems to not even connect in their mind that, like, maybe if an animal is rare, it means that they should be being protected rather than made into a bag that you think is special. And I think that's where a disconnect from nature comes into play. Like if we really connected with nature and saw the beauty of it, we would want to protect it more in its natural state, and we would see higher value in fashion that appreciates nature and takes inspiration from nature, but that doesn't take from it and destroy it or kill it.  – Emma Hakansson   Emma has consulted on passed progressive fashion legislation in New York City, spoken at the European Parliament, been invited to provide expertise in Parliament inquiries in Australia, and offered her expertise to global brands and fashion councils seeking to improve their ethics and sustainability. Her latest book, Total Ethics Fashion, explores the namesake term that she coined to guide the fashion industry forward. Please listen and share and if you do purchase something this week, please shop consciously. 

"I cannot put enough emphasis on this. I have seen so many things that are so weird that even when I would show it to law enforcement at first, before there were like a lot of these cases coming out, law enforcement would look and they'd be like, “what? Why would someone do this?” Right? As if what I'm showing them wasn't real. And what I learned to say to get past that is, I would say to cops, “how many times have you seen someone do something for reasons they can't even explain to themselves?" - Pete Paxton  For the past 23 years, Pete Paxton has been working undercover in puppy mills, factory farms, slaughterhouses, pet stores, and on-board commercial fishing boats to document horrific cruelty. Some of these high-stress, horror show jobs last for weeks while others go on for months at a time - months of ten-hour days, doing hard, heavy labor, witnessing animals being abused or killed and watching your co-workers hurt the already abused animals even more.  Pete does it because he is good at it, because he loves animals and because his work has often resulted in big change for animals.  What perplexes me the most about Pete, is that after 23 years of working in hellish places like slaughterhouses and factory farms, he hasn't become dark and dour. Instead, he is the opposite. He's extremely funny, super engaging and seriously joyful. He doesn't allow this work to take him down. Most people I know, me included, would be a shell of a human being after a couple of hours in his world. Pete is also the author of Rescue Dogs and has had two HBO documentaries made about him and his work, Dealing Dogs and Death on a Factory Farm.

“You asked what kind of army we are. Cleveland Amory once said it. He said, “the army of the kind.”  And that's it. If there's anything going on, we find it irresistible not to speak out, to do something, to say something, to enlist other people to help because we're not some superhuman force, we're a collection of humans.” Ingrid Newkirk   Ingrid Newkirk co-founded People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in 1980, and since then, I don't think there has been a single day that she has not fought against injustice toward animals. She is not only a hero for millions of animals but also for humans, for showing all of us how to make change happen and for inspiring us to do it. Since it was founded, PETA has exposed horrific animal abuse in laboratories, leading to many firsts, including canceled funding, closed facilities, seizure of animals, and charges filed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. PETA has also closed the largest horse-slaughter operation in North America, convinced dozens of major designers and hundreds of companies to stop using fur, ended all car-crash tests on animals, helped schools switch to innovative animal-free dissection tools, and provided millions of people with information on being vegan, companion animal care, and countless other issues. Ingrid just celebrated her 75th birthday, so we got together to take a look back at her life and the life of PETA. Happy Birthday, Ingrid!

“50% of clothing that gets created ends up in a landfill in the first year. When we're using way too much resource in the first place, the fact that half of that is going directly to landfill in the first year is insane. And then, what actually makes it into our closets, we wear about 20% of on a trailing 12 month basis. So if you think about just the actual amount of utility that we get out of this massive system is insane. And that's just the waste part of it.” – Vanessa Barboni Hallik Vanessa Barboni Hallik is the founder and CEO of Another Tomorrow, a luxury brand that is doing fashion better. Much much better. They're a B Corp Certified end-to-end sustainable design company with a mission to model a new future for fashion with a fully digitized product eco-system delivering technology-enabled transparency and authenticated recommerce. If other brands would follow Another Tomorrow's lead, humans, the planet and billions of animals would benefit enormously.   Vanessa is also an investor in early-stage companies positioned to catalyze systemic change. And she serves on the Advisory Board for Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, where current work focuses on the ethics of AI. Prior to founding Another Tomorrow, Vanessa was a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley, where she held several leadership roles in the emerging markets institutional securities business. Throughout her career she has worked across global markets and managed culturally diverse and cross-border teams.   Vanessa is an active speaker on innovation, digitalization and new business models built for resilience. She has been featured in The New York Times, Fast Company, Bloomberg, Forbes and Vogue for her work, and is one of Wallpaper* Magazine's USA300 and Worth Magazine's Worthy100. Please listen and share.   In gratitude, Elizabeth Novogratz

“I think one of the reasons dignity matters to animals is that they are objectified. They are stripped of their agency very often, and they're also caught up in power relations with human beings that do not go in their favor in, in the overwhelming number of cases. But it's also grounds why they have a right to be subjects of justice, doesn't it? So, it is the fact that they are subjects, that they are agents, that they their voices matter in a political sense.” – Melanie Challenger     Melanie Challenger wears a lot of hats— she's an artist, philosopher, poet and writer, deputy co-chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and a Vice President of the RSPCA UK. She is the author of On Extinction: How we became estranged from nature (2011), How to Be Animal: What it means to be human (2021), and anthology editor of Animal Dignity: Philosophical Reflections on Non-human Existence (2023).   Melanie is bringing her decades of experience in both science and the arts to come up with a solution to a big question: how can non-human animals be represented in the process of making crucial decisions that affect their lives? This project is called Animals in the Room. It began during the pandemic and is an international collaboration of philosophers, scientists and animal welfare specialists who are working together to devise and test models for representing non-human.    Links: Melanie Challenger: https://www.melaniechallenger.com/about/ Animals in the Room: https://animalsintheroom.org/

“Anybody with half a heart could understand that this is a very bad deal for these feeling beings. Waking up every day at the same place where these horrible things happened, it's not right.” – Gene Grant   It's been almost a decade since the National Institutes of Health ended the use of chimpanzees for biomedical research. But today we still have scores of chimpanzees sitting in labs. They're not being tested on, but they are still waiting to be moved into a sanctuary. This is happening even though there is a law in place that established a federal sanctuary system to provide lifetime care for chimpanzees retired from medical research.   26 of these former research chimpanzees live in the Alamogordo Primate Facility on Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. I asked Gene Grant, the chief program and policy officer for Animal Protection New Mexico, to come on the show and talk about why all these years later, these chimps have still not been moved to a sanctuary. And how that changes.   LINKS Animal Protection New Mexico https://apnm.org/ Chimp Haven https://chimphaven.org/donate/ https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/23/science/chimpanzees-research-retirement.html

“There was a farmer who I met. He had the craziest [story], but not crazy because it's happening everywhere. A hog horn rammed into him and he got a disease. No one had any idea what it was. He went septic. He almost died. And he figured out that his herd had gotten an antibiotic resistant bug because of the way he was farming.” – Chloe Sorvino   Chloe Sorvino leads coverage of food and agriculture as a staff writer at Forbes. She writes the newsletter, Mind Feeder, and founded the Forbes newsletter Fresh Take.   Chloe is also the author of Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed and the Fight for the Future of Meat, an exposé into the power and corruption of America's meat industry.   Nearly a decade of reporting at Forbes has brought her to In-N-Out Burger's secret test kitchen, drought-ridden farms in California's Central Valley, burnt-out national forests logged by a timber billionaire, and Costco's rotisserie chicken slaughterhouse in Nebraska. Sorvino serves as a steward on the Forbes Union unit council. Her work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, NPR, Fast Company, the Financial Times, the New York Times, New York Magazine, Civil Eats, Modern Farmer, Salon and many more.   Chloe Sorvino: https://www.chloesorvino.com/  

“We want to know that we're not separate from all beings - because most of our grief, our fear, our anger comes from feeling separate, not feeling connected, we're constantly finding ways to connect.” – Nina Rao   Nina Rao runs an organization called Saving Wild Tigers, a project that raises funds and supports conservation efforts for tigers throughout India. Three of the eight tiger subspecies that roamed Asia only 50 years ago are gone. And the remaining population is under severe threats from habitat loss, hunting of its prey and poaching. The future is uncertain for tigers.   Saving Wild Tiger's supports the immediate needs of the wild tigers: protecting the tiger, its habitat, its prey and its protectors; supporting the surrounding villages (community-based conservation), scientific studies to understand the needs of the tigers and control of poaching and international trade of tiger parts.   Nina also is a chantress. She learned traditional chants (bhajans) from her grandfather in a village in south India when she was nine years old. The chants quietly stayed with her until she rediscovered chanting with Krishna Das, in New York in 1996. Krishna Das is a singer/chanter  known globally or his performances of Hindu devotional music called kirtan. Nina is Krishna Das' business manager and accompanist as well as a chant leader on her own.   Nina is also a podcast host on the widely-heard Be Here Now Network, exploring spirituality, practice, and conservation of wilderness and Nature.    Links: https://www.savingwildtigers.org/ https://www.ninaraochant.com/

"I think that's often the solution when feeling sort of bogged down in the issues of our day is when you zoom out and you look at sort of the whole arc of change, you can sort of get inspired that, yeah, we've come a long way." - Monica Murphy  Bill Wasik is the editorial director of The New York Times Magazine and Monica Murphy is a veterinarian and writer. Their latest book, Our Kindred Creatures: How Americans Came to Feel the Way They Do About Animals, comes out today, April 23rd. It's a book about moral change and a moral revolution, one that took place from the 1860s to the 1890s in the United States. Over those three decades, the way we treated animals completely changed. It was the time of the birth of the ASPCA, of many SPCAs, of the anti-vivisection movement, and of the first animal shelters. It was a time of massive change. Even though I think most people who listen to this podcast know that we need a much larger moral revolution in terms of how we treat animals, this book gave me so much hope that it can actually be done. Please listen, share and read Our Kindred Creatures. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/634494/our-kindred-creatures-by-bill-wasik-and-monica-murphy/

“Wouldn't it be amazing if you went into Nike Town and the same pair of shoes or the same style [but]each pair was different because it had been grown and was not the result of a plastic, you know, a plastic polymer or an animal that had been so heavily finished that they all look the same. That, or me, would be mind blowing, where you and I could have the same handbag, but they're from the same brand, in the same shape, it's the exact same model, but the material is slightly different on every single one, like the leaves on a tree.” – Suzanne Lee Suzanne Lee is the Founder & CEO of BIOFABRICATE, a global network that serves the needs of bio innovators, which are material makers, consumer brands and investors. BIOFABRICATE is where design meets biology. Suzanne is a pioneer in this space. She started growing materials from microbes for the fashion industry in 2022, coining the term 'Biocouture™'. She is also the author of Fashioning the Future: Tomorrow's Wardrobe. She is a special advisor to Parley For The Oceans, The Mills Fabrica and Fashion for Good on biomaterials, a TED Senior Fellow, and a Launch Material Innovator - an initiative of NASA, Nike, USAID and the US State Department. Formerly Suzanne was the Chief Creative Officer of Modern Meadow, a biomaterials start-up in New York (2014-2019).

“He called me into his office and he said, ‘you see that picture above my desk?' I said, ‘yes.' It kind of looked like an animal that reminded me of a squirrel. He said, ‘that is a lemur that we think is extinct in the wild. If you can, please go to Madagascar and find out if it's extinct or not.'” – Patricia Wright   Dr. Patricia Wright is an anthropologist, a conservationist, and a professor at Stony Brook University in New York, and she's probably the world's leading expert on lemurs.  There are over 100 species of lemurs, which are prosimians - a type of primate and they only exist on the island of Madagascar. Patricia spends half her time, six months a year in Madagascar studying lemurs, and has done so since the 80s, when she discovered a new species of lemur, the Golden Bamboo Lemur, and she also established Ranomafana National Park. It is almost an understatement to say that Patricia is a trailblazer— she has done the impossible again and again. Her story is will astound you.        

“When those fires happened, it was about 8 o'clock in the morning. It goes completely black, so the sky is completely black. There's no light. The sound is like being under a train. It's unbelievably loud. And of course, the heat. You are right in the heat of the fire and the smell and the taste. So, every one of his senses was taken from one world. A world where it was light, where he could move around to another world without the meta narrative that human beings have, that we're in an age of climate catastrophe.” – Danielle Celermajer   Danielle Celermajer a professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Sydney. She's deputy director of the Sydney Environment Institute and lead of the Multispecies Justice project. Her research focus is on Multispecies Justice, or how the concepts, practices and institutionalization of justice needs to be transformed to take into account ecological realities and the ethical standing of all earth beings.   Danielle lives on a multi-species community in rural Australia. She lived through Australia's Black Summer fires in 2019/2020 and wrote a book about them called, Summertime: Reflections on a Vanishing Future. It's a book that should be required reading for the entire world.   Please listen, share and read Summertime: Reflections on a Vanishing Future.   To learn more go to speciesunite.com  

“There's this hidden curriculum, right? With dissection you're supposed to be learning the anatomy, the physiology of a particular animal. But really, what students are learning is that these animals are meaningless. They're basically just a tool for you to cut into and then discard after you're done with your so-called learning.” – Nicole Green   In US schools, kids dissect on millions of frogs, dogs, cats, pigs - countless animals, and it's not necessary. We have solutions and alternatives that are far better than cutting up dead animals.   Nicole Green is the director of Animalearn, a national advocacy program that helps educators and students find innovative, non-animal science teaching resources. For over 20 years Nicole has worked to enlighten the public about the latest technology that is available in the science education sector, including AR/VR.   Nicole and Animalearn are bringing these solutions to teachers, schools and kids all over the country.   If you want to learn more, or rent free, humane alternatives for your classroom, go to the Science Bank.  

“We live so disconnected from the natural world, and many people live much more disconnected than I am because I've made the natural world my life, my work. But if it's still surprising me and we live so disconnectedly, why is that? Because these owls have been here, all these other creatures have been here since before we got here. They're a normal part of the world. And yet what they do and what they can do, what they're capable of, is so surprising. Why is it so surprising? Why don't we know? Is it a limitation of our human intelligence and our human emotional capacity, or are we taught our disconnection?” - Carl Safina   Carl Safina is an ecologist and author who writes extensively about our human relationship with the natural world and what we can do to make it better.  His most recent book is called, Alife and Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe. It's about rescuing a baby owl, watching her grow up, and what he learned from her and himself in the process. His writing has won several awards, including a MacArthur Genius Prize, Pew and Guggenheim fellowships, and the John Burrows, James Beard, and George Rabb metals. He is the first Endowed Professor for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University and the founding president of the not for profit, The Safina Center.

“One after another, citizens came up. And they just hammered that council with additional concerns. You know, one of the guys, his place is 500ft from there. He's like, ‘what do you think this is going to do to me, to my family? How dare you expose me and my family and this community! None of you all live around there. How could you have not brought this to a vote?' A woman got up and started talking about the research modernization deal. Another woman got up and started talking about land values. A man got up and started talking about malaria. I mean, it's just one after another. They came up and I just, I don't know… I could have just started levitating because I was so buoyed by what this community was doing. And it has not stopped since then.” – Lisa Jones-Engel   There's a small town in Georgia called Bainbridge. It has 15,000 residents, and recently those 15,000 residents were duped by their city and county officials. What happened was that some people came in and proposed a deal to build a $400 million monkey breeding facility, and city and county officials not only agreed to do it, but they gave them almost $60 million in handouts, a 20-year tax abatement, and hundreds of acres of public land. And when the people of Bainbridge found out, they reached out to PETA's Senior Science Advisor, Dr. Lisa Jones Engel. Lisa spent many years working with primates in biomedical laboratories. She knows more about the industry than just about anyone. In 2019, when she couldn't take it anymore, she left the biomedical world and joined forces with PETA with the aim to take the primate testing industry down. And that is exactly what she's doing.    

Dr. Faraz Harsini has been advocating for animal rights for over a decade. He is the CEO and founder of Allied Scholars for Animal Protection (ASAP), a non-profit organization that supports students who are interested in advocating for animal protection and pursuing careers that can make a difference.   He is also a Bioprocessing Senior Scientist at the Good Food Institute, where he works on advancing scientific and technological methods to produce alternative proteins on a large scale. Dr. Harsini's educational background includes a Bachelor's degree in chemical engineering, with a focus on process design and nanobiotechnology. He also has a Master's degree in biotechnology and cancer research, as well as a PhD in Cell Physiology and Molecular Biophysics. Before joining GFI, he worked in the biopharmaceutical industry, developing therapeutic proteins for diseases such as Covid19, influenza, cancer, and inflammatory diseases. Dr. Harsini collaborates with organizations like PCRM to promote alternatives to animal testing and to combat animal exploitation. He speaks at colleges about his personal experience as an immigrant, a first-generation college student, and a member of the LGBT community, connecting the oppression of animals to other forms of oppression. Dr. Harsini believes that the root cause of many global issues affecting humans and animals is linked to the food system. Therefore, he aims to change the food system through his work at GFI and to train and support students to become future leaders in animal protection through ASAP. LINKS: alliedscholars.org instagram.com/alliedscholars/ gfi.org

“…but what's happening lately is that mink on fur farms have been starting to be infected with H5n1 bird flu. So, the World Health Organization is worried that this disease is now changing to better infect mammals. Of course, we are mammals. And of course, if it's on fur farms, there's human mammals on the fur farms who can be infected by the bird flu, just the same way that COVID kept pinging back and forth between animals and fur farms and the humans who work there. And so this is a real concern because it's a 60% mortality rate, I mean, that can wipe out most of humanity.” – Poorva Joshipura   Poorva Joshipura has spent her entire career at PETA and is currently, Senior Vice President of International Affairs. Poorva's second book, Survival at Stake, was released a couple of weeks ago. It's about how we treat animals and how our current ways of doing things, from factory farming to animal testing to the use of animals in materials and everywhere else greatly affects us all.   Our treatment of animals is linked to pandemics, epidemics, antibiotic resistance, climate change, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and many other horrors that humans and the planet are currently facing. It's all connected and unless we change how we treat animals, and remove them from all of the systems that they're innocent victims of, things don't look so good for our survival as a species.