The Simple Heart w/ Wayne Hsiung

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 to Moby about his experience from 2002. And the conversation gave me a new perspective on the Smith/Rock fight. While in many ways that fight is just one trivial feud, it lends insight into deeper questions about the human condition: Are the conflicts we go through biological, or cultural? Are human beings inherently violent, or can we evolve beyond it? And what hope is there for the future, when not just celebrities but entire nations can’t seem to stop themselves from literally beating and even killing one another? These and many other questions are discussed, and tentatively answered, in this conversation with Moby. And I think you’ll be as fascinated as I was by some of his responses: dark, at times; hilarious, at others; but always, above all, deep and provocative. Music by Moby: Everything That Rises

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 without gas (and might prefer to have fewer guns), the world can’t go without food. Yet that may be what the war in Ukraine forces some nations to do. And if people can’t eat, they will revolt. Noah explains why this crisis will drive the price of food up, and what we can do about it. But the conversation also goes in an unexpected direction. Because when we start discussing how we can solve the problems of the food system – including shifting people away from the ecological and ethical destruction of the meat industry – we come to what seems like an irreconcilable disagreement. Noah believes that activists, even ones as prominent as Greta Thunberg, have utterly failed. Their inability to recognize the struggles of ordinary people, and to focus on converting the elites who drive most policy, has made their efforts mostly useless. I, in contrast, believe that we live in an age where activists and movements are ascendent, precisely because movements have ignored the power of so-called elites and focused on mobilizing masses of ordinary people. Who’s right? And what does the data show? If you’re interested in questions of not just food policy, but wealth and poverty, or war and peace, this conversation will hopefully lend some insight. And, by the end, I think we reached a synthesis of sorts. Perhaps elites are the vehicle through which systemic change must be driven. But perhaps activism is the only way for us to convince the elites to give an issue – whether it’s food prices or animal rights – the importance it deserves. The Ukraine War and the price of bread - Noah Smith on Substack "Hexapodia" Is the Key Insight: by Noah Smith & Brad DeLong Noah Smith on Twitter Noah Smith - Bloomberg Opinion Column Music by Moby: Everything That Rises

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 for – a world where every living creatures is safe and free; a transformation of our political system towards compassion and away from corporate profit – seemed somewhere between stupid and delusional. Dr. Drew brought us on his new national television show at Headline News, and mocked us for being obsessed with chickens. But Donny Moss, a long-time journalist and public relations expert with blood as blue as blue can be (Ivy League credentials; Big Pharma alum), did something very different. He listened. And something odd happened: he liked what he heard. Donny and Jane Velez-Mitchell, a former news anchor who Donny partnered with in the early 2010s, gave us a platform when few others wouldn’t. And I never really understood why. Donny lived in a beautiful apartment in the best part of Manhattan. He was married to the general counsel for one of the largest corporations in the world. His life seemed so perfect and successful and normal. Why would he start associating with, well, someone like me? This conversation explains why. Donny, you see, went through a massive personal challenge (and transformation) in the years before he was a journalist and activist. He was a young gay man, in the late 80s and 90s, at the height of the AIDS pandemic. But unlike the gay men mobilizing in the streets to ACT UP and fight back, as powerful men laughed at them (and their friends and lovers wasted away and died), Donny worked for a major pharmaceutical company that was the target of protests. But, secretly, while working for their enemy, his heart was with the underdog. His heart was with the people on the streets.  I think that’s what Donny saw in me and DxE. We were earnest and angry, but we wore our hearts on our sleeves. And it’s why, a few years later, he decided he wanted to do more than just share our story. He walked with us into a massive factory farm and walked out with a sick and tortured animal in his arms – and then broadcast everything he did on his news platform, Their Turn, at great personal risk.  This is a fascinating conversation with one of my favorite people in the world. And there’s a lot to learn – about privilege, about courage, about change. Give it a listen, and let me know what you think! Read Donny Moss’ journalism on Theirturn.net Music by Moby: Everything That Rises

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 knew they were lying to him. But they told the lies anyway. It was mutually assured bulls__, lies that become so endemic and obvious that no one even bothers to point out that they are lies. That odd experience in the mid 1980s is instructive of where we are today: on the brink of nuclear war. Because it shows what can happen when a government, insistent on accepting only the “party line” – i.e., the version of the facts established by the people in power – becomes detached from reality. Driving the Russian aggression in Ukraine is a belief that Ukraine is simply a part of Russia, a false belief driven by decades of bulls__ that was never checked.  But this conversation has relevance far beyond the crisis in Ukraine. We are, after all, facing an age of unprecedented misinformation, but also unprecedented demands to follow the party line. That’s dangerous for our nation’s ability to grapple with any of the major decisions in the coming years. If people can’t speak candidly about what they actually think and believe, due to fear of reprisal, then how will we have any confidence that we’re not making a catastrophic mistake?  Steve walks us through how this all happened in Russia. A Faustian bargain with Russian oligarchs over a BBQ. A political ideology of Russian grievance that became so powerful that it drowned out opposing views. And a political elite in Russia that now lives in terror of breaking with the party line. But what he shares also has lessons for us here at home. Are we living in a society of mutually assured bulls___, where people are saying things because they’re expected to say them, and not because they believe them? And if so, what can we do about it? Democracy Derailed in Russia: The Failure of Open Politics (Cambridge, 2005) Democracy from Scratch: Opposition and Regime in the New Russian Revolution (Princeton, 1995) Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy (Princeton, 2001) Music by Moby: Everything That Rises

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 of the most powerful critics of so-called “identity politics.” Identity politics, which is defined by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as “political activity and theorizing founded in the shared experiences of injustice of members of certain social groups,” has become ascendant in modern American political life, especially on the Left. Yet, as a Black woman who was too “radical” for Joe Biden, Gray has denounced the exclusive focus on identity as, ironically, detrimental to people from marginalized identities. This conversation explains why.  It also offers a fascinating personal journey. You see, Gray could have lived a very successful and peaceful life as a corporate lawyer. She graduated from Harvard Law School and went on to work for a white shoe law firm. But she started moonlighting as a journalist and, within months, ended up sitting in a car with Bernie interviewing him about his historic 2016 campaign to be President of the United States. And when Bernie witnessed her power as a communicator, he sought her out to be his spokesperson when he ran again in 2020 – and shocked the establishment by nearly becoming the first socialist President in American history. Briahna had a front seat position on that ride, and there’s much to learn about that from anyone interested in change. Bad Faith - Briahna Joy Gray podcast Music by Moby: Everything That Rises

What happens when the full power of the state comes after you, for exposing nightmarish abuse at factory farms?  If you’re Kecia Doolittle or Matt Johnson, you fight back – and you win.  Kecia is a founder of Project Counterglow, a grassroots initiative to create a nationwide map of factory farms. Matt Johnson is a core organizer for the animal rights network Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), and lead investigator in an effort to expose the brutal extermination procedures used by pig farms at the height of COVID-19. Both Kecia and Matt’s work was discussed in the Iowa legislature when it passed a so-called “Ag Gag” law that targeted animal rights activists for, among other things, posting videos about abuses unfolding in factory farms. And both Kecia and Matt were also later charged with serious crimes for that work.  But they fought back, and they won.  This conversation will give you the story behind the story. That includes the bizarre excuses given by Iowa law enforcement for their failure to even investigate credible reports of extreme animal cruelty, including roasting animals alive. The strange motions filed by the government – including their effort to paint the image of a smiling single mother as a terrorist threat – in the days before trial. And the exhilarating moment when, after being persecuted by his own government for nearly 2 years, Matt realized that all charges would be dropped literally one day before trial. There are lessons here for anyone who’s facing unfair persecution, whether by the government or otherwise. Maybe the most important one is this: understand that your sacrifice has a purpose.  But this conversation is also interesting to me because of the personal side of things. You see, Matt and Kecia were not just an activist team when they investigated Iowa pig farming from 2019-2020. They were dating, too. And what you see in this conversation is the complexity of working together with people who are not just part of a movement, but part of a real, human community. That includes all the complexity and messiness and beauty that human communities and relationships will inevitably have.  The fact that their friendship remains so strong, years later and even in the face of criminal prosecution, has lessons for us all. Project Counterglow - A map of all factory farms in the U.S. Music by Moby: Everything That Rises

In August 2017, I received a phone call that changed my life. “Wayne, there are FBI agents here,” the voice said. “They’re searching for Lily.”  For years, DxE had been openly rescuing animals and daring the industry or government to prosecute us for rescuing dying animals from factory farms. We knew repression was going to come. What we didn’t know is that it would start with a multi-state hunt for a piglet named Lily that would end in an FBI raid at a sanctuary in Colorado.  Shaleen Shan is the owner of the sanctuary in question, Luvin Arms in Erie Colorado. And until now, Shaleen has not told his story publicly. Shaleen, you see, is not a rule breaker. And when a small armada of FBI agents descended on his sanctuary that day, he faced a choice that could change his life – and the course of the animal rights movement. Stay silent and cooperate with the government, to ensure the safety of his sanctuary, his business, and even his family. Or speak out and face the full power of the largest pig farming corporation in the world – Smithfield Foods – and its government allies.  I would have understood taking the former choice. Shaleen is a business owner, a husband and father, and a nonprofit director; he didn’t sign up for direct action or legal repression. But Shaleen did something that, increasingly, people across the world are realizing they have the power to do. He spoke out. And because he fought back and spoke out – resisting the agents’ violent efforts to “collect DNA” from Lily and her sister, then speaking to a legendary journalist to blow the whistle on what happened – millions of people were exposed to not just the corrupt influence of corporate power on our government, but on the plight of pigs like Lily.  This is a podcast I’ve wanted to do for years. And as we end one pig trial, it’s time for us to tell the story of the next one. And in the fight against Smithfield, which sought unprecedented racketeering charges against me in May 2018, Shaleen’s story will be crucial. The FBI’s Hunt for Two Missing Piglets Reveals the Federal Cover-Up of Barbaric Factory Farms - Glenn Greenwald Luvin Arms Sanctuary in Colorado Music by Moby: Everything That Rises

In just 9 days, one of the most important trials in animal rights history will begin. My friend Matt Johnson faces a felony charge for saving the life of a sick baby pig, and exposing one of the most disturbing episodes of animal torture in recent memory: ventilation shutdown (VSD) at Iowa Select Farms, or ISF. The practice of VSD, which involves shutting down the vents in a building and pumping in hot steam, leads to hours of torment before the animals die. And for working with an employee at ISF to blow the whistle on this practice, Matt is facing 8 years in prison.  This is wrong on so many levels. But to understand why this is happening, we have to understand the deep and systemic roots of animal exploitation. And that’s why this conversation I had with Matt and Jon Frohnmayer is so important. Matt and Jon, you see, are not your prototypical animal rights activists. Matt grew up in rural Iowa surrounded by pig farms, and still has family members in the industry. Jon’s dad was the Republican Attorney General of Oregon, where he prosecuted a case involving the Animal Liberation Front. Both were deeply entrenched in the system – but they got out.  This conversation will show you how and why.  Now we have to try to help an Iowa jury understand that, too. This is the make or break year, not just for animal rights defendants, but for the movement. If we can show the world that even residents of rural Iowa won’t stand for practices like VSD, it’ll send shockwaves through the system. If, in contrast, Matt goes to prison for blowing the whistle on one of the most horrific cases of animal torture in history, it’ll be a stark indication of a corrupt system. But no matter what happens in 9 days, making change will depend on a mass of people raising their voice together.  Change, in other words, depends on you.  Hidden Video and Whistleblower Reveal Gruesome Mass-Extermination Method for Iowa Pigs Amid Pandemic - The Intercept AFTER PORK GIANT WAS EXPOSED FOR CRUEL KILLINGS, THE FBI PURSUED ITS CRITICS - The Intercept Music by Moby: Everything That Rises

Around the year 2004, I decided I was going to devote myself to an immense project: veganizing the University of Chicago. I had seen one too many slaughterhouse videos and was suffering from night terrors with images of animals being torn to pieces alive. And the U of C (which is what Chicago grads call the school) was a quirky place where people believed and did weird things. I was further convinced by the conventional wisdom at the time: that around 1-2% of people who took a leaflet about veganism would be converted. It seemed like a numbers game. And so I got to work, baking vegan chocolate chip cookies and handing out vegan leaflets until the impossible happened. Sadly, the impossible was not a vegan U of C. The impossible was me getting sick of chocolate chip cookies, after baking thousands and eating hundreds myself. The people I gave to the cookies rarely if ever gave me any indication that they were going vegan. I wish I had known then what I know now about organizational change. But part of the reason I’ve learned the things I’ve learned is because of research by people like Prof. Mary McDonnell at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Management. McDonnell has done something interesting with her career: she went to business school (and now teaches at one) to understand how activists, including employee activists, can change the largest corporations in the world. That might seem strange. But McDonnell makes a good point: to truly understand how to change an organization, you need to have some understanding of how it works from the inside. And what’s she found, in her research of organizational change in corporations, is that you can’t change things if you go it alone. Forming committees, teams, or other sub-groupings of the corporation is crucial to show that this is a collective effort, and not just the fringe view of one radical individual. So what I really needed back in 2004 was not more vegan cookies. I needed to use those cookies to try to win me some friends! There are a ton of other fascinating insights from this conversation, many of which have parallels in the research on political science, e.g., understanding the “turncoat” phenomenon and how it can super chage organizational change. But I can’t really do the conversation justice in a short blog. Give it a listen, and let me know what you learned.

I went into trial in North Carolina with big ambitions: arguing in court, for the first time in my life, that animals are not property, but living creatures with rights. But that came crashing to a halt in the first few minutes of my opening statement. The judge cut me off, ordered the jurors out of the courtroom, and threatened to remove me from representing myself (and possibly send me to jail) if I continued to make the case for animal rights. The judge, you see, had ruled on Day 1 of the trial that the dire medical emergency facing the animals was not relevant to the trial. Because of that, witnesses to what happened at the farm, including even me, could not testify about the medical care needed by the animals. This was simply a case about whether a goat was stolen, the prosecution argued. How they were treated before that point was simply irrelevant. And, in direct violation of my constitutional rights, the judge agreed – and denied us a right to a full and complete defense in court. “If I can’t say why I was there, you might as well lock me up right now,” I said. And, on numerous occasions, that nearly happened. But it didn’t. And somehow, though I was convicted of two felonies, I managed to get through this trial with no prison time, and with unprecedented media attention for the right to rescue. The backstory of how this all unfolded hasn’t really been told. And that’s why I invited my friend and attorney Jon Frohnmayer – whose family has a fascinating history at the intersection of repression, environmentalism, and animal rights – onto the Green Pill podcast to discuss what happened, and why. You’ll hear about the dramatic moments where Jon and I feared we might end with a mistrial. You’ll hear about how the jurors in court were moved, either to hate us (perhaps to the point of wishing violence against me) or love us, for our compassion towards animals. And you’ll hear Jon and I engage in some philosophical speculation about why people behave how they do. Maybe, we say to one another, everything in life just comes down to the fear of death. So many have asked us what happened at trial. If you’re looking for answers, give this a podcast a listen – and share it with a friend, if you like what you hear. I went into trial in North Carolina with big ambitions: arguing in court, for the first time in my life, that animals are not property, but living creatures with rights. But that came crashing to a halt in the first few minutes of my opening statement. The judge cut me off, ordered the jurors out of the courtroom, and threatened to remove me from representing myself (and possibly send me to jail) if I continued to make the case for animal rights. The judge, you see, had ruled on Day 1 of the trial that the dire medical emergency facing the animals was not relevant to the trial. Because of that, witnesses to what happened at the farm, including even me, could not testify about the medical care needed by the animals. This was simply a case about whether a goat was stolen, the prosecution argued. How they were treated before that point was simply irrelevant. And, in direct violation of my constitutional rights, the judge agreed – and denied us a right to a full and complete defense in court. “If I can’t say why I was there, you might as well lock me up right now,” I said. And, on numerous occasions, that nearly happened. But it didn’t. And somehow, though I was convicted of two felonies, I managed to get through this trial with no prison time, and with unprecedented media attention for the right to rescue. The backstory of how this all unfolded hasn’t really been told. And that’s why I invited my friend and attorney Jon Frohnmayer – whose family has a fascinating history at the intersection of repression, environmentalism, and animal rights – onto the Green Pill podcast to discuss what happened, and why. You’ll hear about the dramatic moments where Jon and I feared we might end with a mistrial. You’ll hear about how th