Species Unite

“So, we had 87 women come in for what we call pre-selection, the interviews... And I can say that after all the shit that I've been through in my life, that was some of the hardest two days of my life, listening to those stories. And, it was hard in a way because they were genuinely tough stories, but it was also hard in a way to know that even though I hadn't done anything directly to these women, I was part of a culture that had kept women just like this oppressed, the boys club, the macho club, all that sort of thing. And just part of, I suppose, this macho culture.” - Damien Mander Damien was on the show in December and the sound was horrendous. He was in the bush in Zimbabwe and I was in NYC and our connection was bad. We redid the interview last week, in person, in NYC - and it’s sounds like a dream… Damien Mander is the founder and CEO of the International Anti-Poaching Foundation (IAPF). He is a former Australian Royal Navy clearance diver and a special operations military sniper who became an anti-poaching crusader and an environmental and animal welfare activist. In 2009, while travelling through Africa, he was inspired by the work of rangers and the plight of wildlife. He liquidated his life savings and established the International Anti-Poaching Foundation. Over the past decade the IAPF has scaled to train and support rangers which now help protect over 20 million acres of African wilderness.  In 2017 Damien founded ‘Akashinga - Nature Protected by Women,’ an IAPF program that has already grown to over 240 employees with 7 nature reserves in the portfolio. They are the only group of nature reserves in the world to be protected by women. And, these women are changing the game in terms of what it means to fight poaching. Damien was featured in the James Cameron documentary The Game Changers and has now released another documentary with James Cameron and National Geographic about his work with the women of Akashinga – “The Brave One’s.” He is a resident on the National Geographic Speakers Bureau, has spoken at the United Nations, featured in June 2019’s National Geographic Magazine, and has been featured three times on 60 Minutes. And, if you haven’t seen it, watch his TEDx Talk at the Sidney Oprah House, it’s just awesome.   It was an honor to spend time with Damien. He is a warrior, a hero and a man who understands what it means to never stop evolving.

Planted. Not Buried. That is how Eric Adams has chosen to see himself through the darkest moments of his life. The first occurred at age 15, when he and his brother were beaten by the police. Four years later he became a police officer and spent the next 22 years on the force, working to help reform NYC policing from the inside. He retired as a captain and now he serves as the President of the Borough that I call home - Brooklyn. Yes, Brooklyn has a President, an incredibly busy and very much in demand President. Eric has spent most of 2020 on the frontlines; most recently the frontlines of the protests against police brutality and systemic racism and, during the months that Brooklyn was a COVID-19 hotspot, he spent his days handing out PPE to hospital workers and plant based meals to residents in need of a meal. Plant based because he has personally experienced the health benefits of a vegan diet. In 2016, he cured his own diabetes and partial blindness by making the switch. Since then he's been on a mission to implement plant based diets and nutrition in hospitals, schools, prisons, and communities all over New York City. Eric is a man who gives much more to the world than he takes from it. After my brief time with him, I found myself wanting to be and do much better. His graciousness, generosity, and desire to look for the opportunities are qualities that this world could use a whole lot more of. As a resident of Brooklyn, I feel extremely lucky and proud to have Eric running the show around here.

  “…by the way, today, there might be an ick factor associated with it, but there might come a day that people will wonder, why are we drinking other species milks… If you have access to the real thing or the stuff that's in the real thing. I mean, it's these special proteins…  these amazing different complex sugars and proteins that are found in human milk that are super valuable.” - Max Rye Max Rye spent more than 15 years helping businesses scale with technology. He was the CEO of a Silicon Valley tech company and at the time, had no plans to nor thoughts of being at be at the forefront of transforming the entire global dairy industry. But, that’s what happened… He was speaking at Google headquarters in Singapore, when someone from the audience said to him, “I’m looking for milk that doesn’t come from cows and I know that people in San Francisco are making things with cells, why not milk?” That someone was Fengru Lin and she and Max are now the co-founders of Turtle Tree Labs. Turtle Tree labs is using cell-based technology to create all kinds of milk, from snow leopard and elephant milk to cow and human milk. And they have big plans for the human milk, bigger than just infant formula. As you can imagine, human milk is like a superfood with a lot of special proteins and complex sugars that just can’t be found anywhere else. And Turtle Tree Labs is working around the clock to put it on the market. The future is here and it’s getting kinder by the day.

Edwina Von Gal is a landscape designer and an indomitable steward of the planet.  She spent her career designing landscapes for the rich and famous and collaborating with architects and artists like Maya Lin, Richard Serra, and Frank Gehry. A little over a decade ago, Edwina had an epiphany about the chemicals that we are pouring into our lawns, landscapes, and backyards. She decided right then that it would become her life’s mission to change the way that we treat our land and founded the Perfect Earth Project, a nonprofit that promotes toxin-free lawns and landscapes. A few years ago, she expanded the mission. We are losing our birds at an alarming rate. Since the seventies, the United States has lost a third of our bird population. So, to combat the great bird decline, Edwina started Two-Thirds for the Birds, a campaign to bring our birds back. And the way to do that is to dedicate two thirds of all plantings to native plants and to commit to going toxin free. This conversation took place at Edwina’s spectacular home that sits on stilts atop a salt marsh. It was a gift to speak with Edwina about her mission, to learn about the history of chemicals and what we’ve done to our land, and to hear her remarkable stories, all while being surrounded by many many birds.

Derek Sarno is a chef and a rockstar in the vegan world and he’s on a mission to inspire you to cook and eat more plants. He’s the Director of Plant-Based Innovation for Tesco PLC, and the Developer/Co-Founder of Wicked Kitchen. He helps lead Tesco’s plant-based team and the initiative to bring delicious, unpretentious plant-based foods to mainstream market. Derek and his brother Chad are the founders of Wicked Healthy, LLC., Wicked Foods inc. and Good Catch Foods. Prior to Tesco, Derek served as the Senior Global Executive Chef for Whole Foods Market, where he oversaw global recipe development for the company’s healthy eating initiative, worked with suppliers and leadership to develop and promote plant-based foods across the organization, and served as Culinary Director for the Whole Foods Academy for Conscious Leadership. Derek is a serial entrepreneur, founding several award-winning restaurants and food service companies in the United States.  Derek is the co-author of the Whole Foods cookbook, and the Wicked Healthy Cookbook. His journey has been fueled by curiosity and compassion, some of which he gained while living in a Buddhist monastery in Upstate New York, where he served as resident Chef & Gardener. Derek’s story is all about expansion and his life is an example of what it means to never stop evolving.

“If we fast forward, let's say to 2025, I think you're going to see a lot of companies in the marketplace using mushroom-based products to create alternatives to things like meat and chicken and within food. And then also alternatives within textiles to things like silk, leather and packaging for things like Styrofoam and plastic and so on. So, I’m very much a… what do you call it? Maybe, a fungo fanatic. I don’t know if there’s a phrase for that, but I am totally a believer in all things fungi.” -Michael Pellman Rowland Michael Pellman Rowland is a financial advisor. He’s made many appearances on Species Unite - this was his fourth time coming on the show. He and I spoke about the Oatley IPO - amongst many other enormous wins in the plant, cell, and mushroom-based worlds. Swedish vegan company, Oatly went public on May 20th. The company’s initial public offering (IPO) raised $1.4 billion and its share prices (which were initially set at $17 per share) spiked by 30 percent on the first day of trading. This is the second milestone for plant-based companies going public, after Beyond Meat a few years ago. The future of food is already here and fortunately, it’s happening much faster than many predicted. Michael is our go-to guru when it comes to the big wins for meat and dairy alternatives. He’s a wealth of knowledge and information and he’s a stellar human being. I learned a ton in this conversation, I hope that you do too.

“During the time he was on the run, Stark did this Facebook live where he railed against the judges, officials, animal rights, activists. He claimed that together, all of these people had conspired to deny him the right to own and breed exotic animals. He taunted law enforcement. He waved a hand grenade in front of his phone. Keep in mind, he's driving down the highway during this hour-long Facebook live. And he was also saying that he was willing to die for what he believed in.” – Sharon Guynup Sharon Guynup is a journalist, author and a National Geographic Explorer. Her most recent article in National Geographic, ‘Tiger King’ stars’ legal woes could transform cub-petting industry, focuses on the five stars of the docu-series, The Tiger King and what’s happened to them since the show premiered last March. Sharon’s been on the podcast before, the last time was a couple of months before the pandemic and before the Tiger King took over the world. She and her partner, photographer, Steve Winter had spent two years investigating tigers in the United States, for a 30 page piece called, The Tiger Next Door, for December 2019’s issue of National Geographic. It involves the criminal underworld, wildlife trafficking, murder, and thousands of captive tigers living sad pathetic lives all over the USA. America has a serious problem with captive wildlife, and what we’ve done to tigers is cruel, dangerous, and absolutely unnecessary.  Since then, and since the Tiger King, much has changed, not only for tigers in the US, but for the majority of the stars of the show. Most of them are either in court, prison, or have had their animals seized or are dealing with a combination of all three. Sharon is a hero for tigers. She has been reporting on them for years, mostly tigers in the wild, until 2016, when her investigation into the famed Thai Tiger Temple for National Geographic published strong allegations of illegal wildlife trade, causing Thai officials to confiscate the 147 tigers living at the temple and shut the operation down.  From there, she moved onto to the tiger disaster in the US. Every time one of these owners of roadside zoos and tiger petting attractions go down, the future looks better for tigers, but it’s not over. There are ways to combat the crisis right now. The first is to not participate in any wildlife tourism that includes selfies with wildlife or any type of handling of wild animals, and the second is to get behind and support The Big Cat Safety Act.

“There isn't going to be chicken farming on the moon or on Mars, but there could be cellular agriculture. And, so if people are going to eat meat in space, it's going to be produced like this…” – Michael Selden Michael Selden is the CEO and co-founder of Finless Foods, the world's first cellular agriculture company. Meaning they make fish without the fish and without the mercury, plastic, herbicides, ocean habitat destruction and cruelty. Finless Foods grows fish and other seafood products from cells. In 2017 they produced the first fish ever that was grown outside of a fish and eaten. Since then, they have produced 13 other types of fish, including bluefin tuna - with the goal to make bluefin that’s healthier, better tasting, more affordable, more sustainable, much more ethical and will allow the bluefin to stay in the ocean and not go extinct. The goings on at Finless are astonishing. They are creating the future of seafood, and it’s a future that will be better for the animals, for the planet and for all of us.

“I can drive my car off a cliff and just leave it where it lay, the most I'll get is a littering fine, and if you throw your dog off the cliff the punishment is actually pretty similar. That's because they're the same type of thing to the law. So, unless you change that status, and you have people of course, who are thinking that there should be a status of kind of living property that might give them more attributes than my car has or my chair has; and then there are individuals who think they should be given the status of legal persons, which isn’t to say being people, but having rights of some sort. I think both of those are pretty intriguing offers. I think we're a little ways off from doing that, but boy, either of those would be a massive improvement in our societal treatment of these creatures.   And of course, I don't think it's just restricted to dogs… It's been terrific to work with dogs for all these years, but I think this way about lots of non-human animals that we interact with, were we kind of get to use them sort of, for our sake. I would love to see some kind of sea change in thinking such that we don't get to use animals in the ways we do now, which are really abuses of animals.” – Alexandra Horowitz If you have any questions for your dog, Alexandra Horowitz is a pretty good place to start. She’s spent much of her life researching and writing about what it’s like to be a dog. She is the #1 New York times bestselling author of Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know; Our Dogs, Ourselves, Being a Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell; and On Looking. She is a professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, where she teaches seminars in canine cognition, creative nonfiction writing, and audio storytelling. As Senior Research Fellow, she heads the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard. I wish this conversation had lasted all day long as I had about 5 thousand more questions for Alexandra - mostly, everything I’ve ever wanted to ask my dog. Although, the time we did have together was pretty amazing and felt like an absolute gift.  

“…there's this disconnect between our beliefs and our behavior and part of what can be useful for overcoming that is to change the behavior first, which sounds really counterintuitive.”                  - Jo Anderson Jo Anderson is the Research Director at Faunalytics, an organization that empower animal advocates with access to research, analysis, strategies, and messages that maximize their effectiveness to reduce animal suffering. Jo is an advocate for animals and empirical research. For over ten years, Jo has investigated key social psychological issues such as persuasion, judgment, and decision-making, exploring how these concepts can be used to make the world a better place for humans and animals. That is what happens at Faunalytics, they do the research and enable real change.   I learned a lot from Jo – mostly, that research changes the story and so often, reveals that the opposite of what seems obvious is in fact the truth.