Species Unite

“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. She's currently PETA's Senior Vice President of International Affairs. Poorva’s second book, Survival at Stake, was just released. 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 we exploit them 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.     

"The stonefish is the most toxic, venomous fish on the planet. The stonefish is one of the only fish stings that has been known to kill people. Now, I knew this going in, right? I did my homework. So that was one where I went on a limb, perhaps? Maybe too far." - Mark Vins  Mark Vins is an Emmy Award winning wildlife and adventure filmmaker, and the co-founder of the Brave Wilderness YouTube channel. Mark and his co-founder, Coyote Peterson, created the Brave Wilderness Channel to bring people closer to animals and nature and crazy encounters all over the world. Some of them include things like watching Mark and Coyote get stung and bitten by some of the most painful stings and bites out there. Brave Wilderness has 21 million subscribers and their videos have had more than 4 billion views. Mark is also one of the leading ambassadors for Leonardo DiCaprio's organization Re:wild. Mark made a documentary with Re:wild called Brave Mission. It's about Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the mountain gorillas who live there and the women and men who protect them. This single video has raised over $700,000 to help the rangers in Virunga. Please listen, share and watch Brave Wilderness but don’t attempt any of those bites or stings at home. Brave Wilderness: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6E2mP01ZLH_kbAyeazCNdg Brave Mission https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gynj76XsUQ&list=PLbfmhGxamZ80F53Ezr5CPifRPmiSzm_a7&index=1 Mark Vins:  https://www.youtube.com/@BraveMarkVins

“You're seeing young men going to prison or getting buried in the ground because they're out there poaching rhinos. And, it just drove a bigger wedge between conservation efforts and the communities. There’s only so many times you can look into the eyes of a woman who’s lost a brother or a husband or a father or an uncle and expect that we’re going to have some sort of relationship with that community.  It was the same as Iraq, you've got an occupying force there, which is what we were as a conservation body, and there were no hearts and minds. So, we started doing a lot of research into, what was the most effective tool in community development in Africa. And what we found was an overwhelming body of evidence that said empowering women was the single greatest force for positive change, not only in Africa but across the world.” - Damien Mander     Damien Mander is the founder and CEO of Akashinga, an organization that is changing everything we ever thought we knew about how conservation works. Formerly known as the International Anti-Poaching Foundation (IAPF), Akashinga is a nature conservation organization that creates resilient ecosystems where nature, wildlife and communities will thrive together for years to come.   Akashinga Rangers are Africa's first plant-based all women anti-poaching unit, and they are revolutionizing the ways that animals are protected, the communities are supported and that wilderness landscapes are restored and safeguarded.   Damien is an Iraq war veteran who served as a Naval clearance diver and special operations sniper for the Australian Defense Force. In 2009 he founded the IAPF which later became Akashinga.   Damien is the winner of the 2019 Winsome Constance Kindness Gold Medal. He was featured in the James Cameron documentaries “The Game Changers” and National Geographic’s “Akashinga – The Brave One’s’” about his work with the women of Akashinga.    LINKS:  AKASHINGA.org https://www.instagram.com/weareakashinga/ https://twitter.com/weareakashinga https://www.facebook.com/weareakashinga

"In Montana they allow using dogs to chase down wolves, which essentially becomes like state sanctioned dog fighting. You have this horrible scenario where the packs of dogs are surrounding the wolf pack, and it just comes to a bloody end. These are blood sports. This is something that we should be way beyond as a society." - Collette Adkins Collette Adkins is the carnivore conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity. She focuses on combating the exploitation and cruel treatment of wolves and other rare wildlife. I wanted to talk to Collette because it's been a while since we've talked about wolves on here, and unfortunately their situation is as dire as ever. Idaho, Montana and Wyoming are killing them as fast as they can and in more horrific ways. One of those ways is that in Idaho, they're shooting wolves from helicopters. And Collette is the primary author of a petition to get this banned.  Please listen and share. In gratitude, Elizabeth Novogratz  

“In the US alone, there are 100 million people with prediabetes or diabetes, 33 million people with some kind of chronic or various stages of kidney disease, 122 million people with cardiovascular disease, 10 million with GI issues, and 50 million people have food allergies. And, as you know, the food insecurity and malnourishment in the country is growing, unfortunately, particularly with our kiddos.” – Brett Matthews   Brett Matthews is the CEO of Kate Farms, organic plant-based nutrition shakes and formulas that have helped hundreds of thousands of children and adults along their journeys towards health.    Brett’s son had severe health issues in high school, and proper nutrition was critical in his healing. Brett learned about the power of food to heal and invested in Kate Farms in 2014, became Chairman and later CEO.   There are thousands of stories of children and adults whose lives have been dramatically improved because of Kate Farms. They are a game-changer for bringing healthy nutrition into our hospitals and our homes.   katefarms.com

“I was at a restaurant and the veil dropped in an instant. The curse broke and I could see for the first time. ‘Oh, wow, I'm eating body parts.’ And I turned around and I saw my bag and it was an expensive Fendi bag. And I looked at it and I'm like, ‘this is not leather. This is the skin of an individual. This is a scam.’” – Rebecca Cappelli    Rebecca Cappelli is an award-winning filmmaker and an animal rights activist. Her most recent film, SLAY is a hugely powerful documentary that follows Rebecca through seven countries as she uncovers the dark side of the fashion industry. What she finds will leave you thunder-struck. At least, it did me.    With her, we learn what the industry is doing to our planet, to its workers and to the animals that are killed for fur, leather and wool. I think that most people have seen or heard stories in the media about the harms that fashion causes to both the planet and the people in the industry, but it’s rare to hear about the animals, even though 2.5 billion of them are killed every year for our shoes, bags and clothing. Somehow and not by accident, they’ve remained invisible. Until now.    SLAY will change you, I promise.   Please listen, share and go watch SLAY.    LINKS: SLAY.film Letusbehereos.com SLAY is available on: Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/SLAY-Bandana-Tewari/dp/B0B8MG6B1T/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2DL14WZ5RK9EZ&keywords=slay+documentary&qid=1700070198&sprefix=slay+documentary%2Caps%2C74&sr=8-1 Apple TV and iTunes: https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/slay/umc.cmc.14tluhp4jkjzjxaj5w7juyn79 See SLAY for free on WaterBear @waterbearnetwork https://join.waterbear.com/slay

“I call the act a poison pill, because really, what it is, is if it ever gets inserted into the farm bill or if it gets passed on its own, it prevents all of the animal centered organizations, all the environmental organizations, all the family farm and rural community organizations that push back against factory farming. It wipes out all of the progress that they've made.”   Aaron Cohen is the senior director of advocacy at Farm Sanctuary. I asked Aaron to come on the show because I wanted to talk about some important things happening in our government right now. Starting with the delayed passage of the Farm Bill.   The Farm Bill covers laws that govern food and farming and has a tremendous impact on farming livlihoods, how food is grown, and what kinds of food are grown.    A group of Congressional lawmakers are pushing to include the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act as part of the 2023 Farm Bill. If passed, the EATS Act would have serious implications for animal welfare and every ounce of progress that the animal protection movement has made against factory farming. It could also have a huge effect on farmer well-being, worker safety, the spread of zoonotic diseases and pollution. It’d be disastrous.  

“I really felt like I turned into a bird. The way I was playing was changed. Like I played the way nobody would play a clarinet unless they had spent weeks listening to nightingales.” – David Rothenberg   David Rothenberg is, amongst many other things, an interspecies musician. That means he makes music with whales and birds and insects and even with many plants and animals that reside in ponds.   He's also a writer, he's written many books, including Why Birds Sing, Whale Music and Nightingales in Berlin, which was also made into a film. And he is a professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.   Please listen, share and then go outside and listen to the music being made by the many non-human animals around you.