Death in The Garden

On this episode of “Death in The Garden”, Jake and Maren share their interview with Dr. Tro Kalayjian, a board certified Internal Medicine and Obesity Medicine Physician. He co-hosts the podcast Low Carb MD. Dr. Tro had a long journey of obesity throughout his life and career as a physician, and was finally able to tackle obesity and lose 150 lbs with a low-carb diet. Now he treats patients using an incredibly holistic model, remotely monitoring his patients biometrics with CGMs and other technologies that allow him to see clearly the complexity of each individual’s needs. Find out more about his practice here.We talk with Tro about the journey he took from following all of the nutritional guidelines, yet failing to manage his obesity, where he decided to get into the weeds of the research himself and found that a low-carb animal based diet was the most effective diet in reversing diabetes and obesity – even though that didn’t conform with the mainstream narratives of “eat less, move more” or being plant-based. We talk about the importance of animal foods in diet, the fallacy of “calories in, calories out”, the true culprit of obesity and diabetes - processed foods with high amounts of sugar and vegetable oils (not meat and eggs like animal rights activists want us to believe), and why the medical industry so often fails at helping people lose weight.Please follow Dr. Tro on Instagram and Twitter for more information, and check out his website.If you are enjoying the podcast, please rate, review, and subscribe.Sign up for our free Substack publication and join our Patreon for as little as $1 a month!Editing: Parker BurninghamOutro music: “Truth” by Alex Ebert This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit deathinthegarden.substack.com/subscribe

On this episode of “Death in The Garden”, Jake and Maren share their interview with author and science journalist, Nina Teicholz. She is also a member of the Global Food Justice Alliance, an amazing organization that advocates for the rights of all people to have access to nutrient dense animal foods. Nina’s book, The Big Fat Surprise, is an instrumental compilation of scientific research, interviews, and history which describes how we’ve been profoundly misled about dietary fat for over 100 years. In this episode, we break down all of these ideas, talking about the vilification of meat and saturated fat, the dubiousness of epidemiology as a basis for scientific research, the dangers of pushes toward a global diet, the disastrous consequences of food policy, the abysmal state of current health, the horrors of vegetable oils, and so much more.Please give Nina a follow on Twitter and Instagram, and be sure to read her book, The Big Fat Surprise.Please help support our transition from Instagram by signing up for our Substack publication, which will always be free, but if you’d like to support us financially, you can pay to subscribe. Another way to support us is by joining our Patreon for as little as $1 a month! Join a Discord community of like-minded people, access bonus content, and get hand-crafted merchandise made by Maren. Editing: Jake Marquez and Parker BurninghamIntro: “Revelations” by Tristan Barton, sequence created by Jake Marquez and Maren Morgan with archival soundbites from Charlie Chaplin, George Orwell, Carl Sagan, Alan Watts, Robert Oppenheimer, and Terrence McKenna.Outro music: “I’ve Got A Feeling” by The Beatles This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit deathinthegarden.substack.com/subscribe

On this episode of “Death in The Garden”, Jake and Maren share their interview with Simon Counsell, executive director of the Rainforest Foundation UK, an organization “which supports indigenous and traditional peoples of the world's rainforests in their efforts to protect their environment and fulfill their rights.” We were lucky enough to meet Simon at the Our Land, Our Nature congress in Marseille, France. Simon breaks down for us the fallaciousness of “nature-based solutions” and how they serve to consolidate wealth and power and allow polluting industries to continue polluting. We go into detail about how fossil fuel companies, like Shell, Chevron, and Total have been instrumental in pushing this narrative that originated from the Nature Conservancy and the “forgotten solution.” Simon breaks down the impossibility of the climate goals, and how the implementation of such extreme measures like 30x30 or “Spatial Planning” will most negatively affect those who harm the land the least, and will only serve commodify nature and infringe upon human rights due to the dubious efficacy of such proposals. Please give the Rainforest Foundation a follow on Twitter and Instagram, and please rate, review, and subscribe if you are enjoying the show. Editing: Parker BurninghamIntro music: Daniel OsterstockOutro music: “DLZ” by TV On The Radio This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit deathinthegarden.substack.com/subscribe

On this episode of “Death in The Garden,” as COP26 ends in Glasgow, Jake and Maren share their second interview with Dr. Mordecai Ogada, carnivore ecologist, activist for the Decolonization of Conservation, and co-author of The Big Conservation Lie. In our previous conversation with Mordecai, he mentioned the “Our Land, Our Nature” congress in Marseille, which we were lucky enough to attend and acquire this interview in person. This time we go deep into speculating about the more nefarious side of the global climate change narrative, including the obsession with the fertility of African women, the prospect of protected areas being refuges for elites, the establishment of decentralized colonies headed by colonizing NGOs, and conservation being a smoke screen for extraction and industry.In a time where there are so many “solutions” being thrown up in the air about climate change, we feel it is very important to question everything and consider every detail. Where is the money coming from, and where is it going? Listen to Mordecai Ogada make the case for increasing our scrutiny of conservation NGOs, and demanding accountability and transparency for their dealings, as well as the narrative of climate change as a whole.Please rate, review, and subscribe if you are enjoying the show, and give Mordecai a follow on Twitter, and be sure to check out his website.For more information about “Death in The Garden,” follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and our website.Editing: Parker BurninghamIntro music: Daniel OsterstockOutro music: "Walk the Walk" by Gaz Coombes This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit deathinthegarden.substack.com/subscribe

On this episode of "Death in The Garden", we share our interview from early September with Fiore Longo, Director of Survival International France and Spain, and fearless leader of the campaign to Decolonize Conservation through the Our Land, Our Nature congress we were lucky enough to attend in Marseille. We talk with Fiore about a number of prescient topics, most notably exposing the fallacies and human rights violations that are rampant in global conservation, the overall lack of scientific basis that claim global conservation efforts combat climate change (which largely include language like "net zero", "nature based solutions", and "carbon offsets"), the corporate capture of environmentalism, the hidden agendas in COP 15, COP 26, the UNFSS, and the IUCN Congress, and we talk about how imperative it is that we reframe biodiversity as including human beings – and that humans are an integral part of nature. Please follow Fiore on Twitter, and find Survival International on Twitter, Instagram, and their website. If you are finding value in what you learn from the show, please rate, review and subscribe, and share with your friends! For more information, check out our Instagram, Twitter, and website.Editing: Parker BurninghamIntro music: Daniel OsterstockOutro music: "Tornado" by Jónsi   This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit deathinthegarden.substack.com/subscribe

On this episode of “Death in The Garden”, we interview biophilic author and attorney, Will Falk. Will began his career as a public defender and eventually transitioned to environmental law and activism, participating direct action encampments at the Wet’suwet’en Nation in Canada and Mauna Kea, protecting the sacred lands from pipelines and a telescope respectively. Recently, Will has been working with the People of Red Mountain, the coalition of indigenous peoples from the Duck Valley and Fort McDermitt reservations, to fight against the lithium claims in Thacker Pass, or Peehee Mu’huh, “Rotten Moon”, which is a massacre site of Paiute people. In this episode, Will explains the details of his case against Lithium Nevada and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the ecological and cultural devastation that will occur if this mine is given clearance to be created, the challenges of being attacked by both environmentalists and capitalists, the importance of direct action, the problem of civilization, a phenomenon called “shifting baseline syndrome”, and we end by discussing the true costs of defending the Earth, and the price we may have to be willing to pay.Find Will on Twitter, Instagram, and at his website. Read his book, How Dams Fall. And please, if you can, support the efforts at Thacker Pass.If you are enjoying the show, please rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you for listening.Editing: Parker BurninghamIntro music: Daniel OsterstockOutro music: “Lampshades on Fire” by Modest Mouse This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit deathinthegarden.substack.com/subscribe

On this episode of “Death in The Garden", we interview Dr. Sylvia Karpagam, a public health doctor with an MD in Community Medicine in India. Sylvia is a champion at advocating for the rights of all people to have access to quality nutrition, a sharp critic of the caste system, and an advocate for food sovereignty. She is a member of the Global Food Justice Alliance, an organization pushing back against the unjust and unethical campaigns against animal food availability being perpetuated by the global elite. In this episode, we talk about the downsides of a vegan/vegetarianism, the politics around food in India, the globalist/elitist agendas that are being exported to India, the impact of ISKCON on children who rely on “midday meals”, anemia and malnutrition, the BJP and the violence being perpetrated on meat-eaters, the impact of the caste system on people’s health, and so much more.Please give Dr. Sylvia Karpagam a follow on Twitter, and read her published work for more information about her, and the impact she is having in her country and around the world.If you are enjoying the show, please rate, review, and subscribe. Check out our Instagram and website for more information about the project.Editing: Jake MarquezIntro music: Daniel OsterstockOutro music: “Can’t Say No” by The Helio Sequence This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit deathinthegarden.substack.com/subscribe

On this episode of “Death in The Garden”, Jake and Maren break their two month hiatus with an update about the events of the past months during production of the film. We talk more about being robbed in Ecuador, the Ancestral Health Symposium that we attended in Los Angeles, the protest against the proposed lithium mine in Thacker Pass, the Our Land, Our Nature counter-congress to the IUCN World Conservation Congress in France, our time at Fjällbete in Sweden, and deeply personal encounters with death and grief that have punctuated the last month, which have informed the rest of our lives.Specific topics discussed in the show:Ancestral Health SymposiumWebsiteLecturesProtect Thacker Pass/Peehee Mu’huhWebsiteTwitterInstagramOur Land, Our Nature Part 1 videoPart 2 videoSurvival International Twitter and Instagram.Please rate, review, and subscribe if you enjoy the show. Thank you all for your patience, and thank you for being here. For more information about the project, check out our Instagram and website.Editing: Jake MarquezIntro music: Daniel OsterstockOutro music: “Death with Dignity” by Sufjan Stevens This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit deathinthegarden.substack.com/subscribe

On this episode of “Death in The Garden,” we interview human rights lawyer, Terry Collingsworth. Terry has worked for decades as an advocate for people all around the world who have suffered human rights abuses by corporations, and is the Executive Director for International Rights Advocates, an organization that promotes human rights and corporate accountability through legal advocacy. Terry and his organization have worked tirelessly to hold cocoa companies accountable for the child labor and slavery that is occurring in Côte d'Ivoire, as well as other human rights violations such as the flagrant disregard for human life in cobalt mines. We talk about the economic structures that reinforce a system of slavery, and how ultimately consolidating wealth for corporations is the driving force behind these atrocious working conditions throughout the developing world. We discuss how the true costs of our technologies and commodities, such as coffee and chocolate, are never paid by us, the consumers. Terry recently spoke at the UN Food Systems Pre-Summit about the crimes against humanity being committed by Nestle, Cargill, Mars, Hershey, and others, and we discuss the elite corporatism that has infiltrated what is meant to be a democratic conversation that includes all voices.This episode is devastating and illuminating. We are honored to have been given the opportunity to have this conversation with Terry. Please read this article which describes the cases of Nestlé USA, Inc. v. Doe I and Cargill Inc. v. Doe I, a case representing plaintiffs who were kidnapped and trafficked from Mali and enslaved in Côte d'Ivoire.IRAdvocates posted an update on this case on August 2, 2021.On July 30, 2021, Nestle, Cargill, Mars, Hershey, Mondelez, Olam and Barry Callebaut responded to the TVPRA Complaint with a Motion to Dismiss (PDF below). The companies’ response is a remarkable collection of objectively verifiable lies. Twenty years after they acted collectively and signed the Harkin-Engel Protocol in 2001 and promised to end their admitted use of the “worst forms of child labor,” they argue to a U.S. federal judge that they are mere purchasers of cocoa, they don’t have sufficient knowledge of forced child labor to be liable, they have no control over the cocoa farmers in Cote D’Ivoire, because they are so far removed from cocoa harvesting operations, holding them liable for using cocoa harvested by enslaved children would be akin to holding consumers of chocolate liable, and, by the way, they “strongly condemn the use of forced labor.”The lack of accountability from these companies is horrifying. Please share this podcast widely and support the work done by Terry Collingsworth and IRAdvocates.For more information about the project, check out our website and Instagram. Editing: Jake MarquezMusic: Daniel Osterstock This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit deathinthegarden.substack.com/subscribe

On this episode of “Death in The Garden,” Jake and Maren interview carnivore ecologist and conservation writer Dr. Mordecai Ogada. He is the Executive Director of Conservation Solutions Afrika, which aims to transform conservation in Africa to a model that includes humans in relationship to the land and wildlife. Ogada, alongside journalist John Mbaria, wrote the book The Big Conservation Lie in 2017, which details the problems in African conservation that stem from a racialized hero system that favors Western foreigners over Black Africans. These problems have deep taproots in Christian colonization, and continue to infiltrate the psyches of Africans as well as people in the West, perpetuated by narratives that suggest that philanthropy, conservation, and tourism are necessary to “protect” wild animals in Africa. Underlying these assumptions is that wildlife needs to be protected from Black African locals who have lived in equilibrium with this wildlife since humanity began. Meanwhile, white Westerners are encouraged to go on safaris all over Africa and kill big game animals for sport, yet there is no paramilitary outfits that will hunt and kill these foreigners, let alone burn down their villages, and disallow them from accessing their sacred forests as organizations such as WWF (World Wildlife Fund) have done alongside so many other multinational conservation organizations.A deeply complex issue, we dive into the intersections between conservation and food systems, the racist assumptions underpinning conservation in Africa, the Disney-fied myths that perpetuate problems in Western perception of Africa and its wildlife, the fallacy of tourism and capitalism being necessary to protect wildlife, the removal of the sacred during Christian colonization, how conservation today reinforces the institutions of colonialism, and how the language of crisis maintains these dubious institutions. We also talk about death in the circle of life as it relates to carnivores, and the necessity of allowing natural processes to continue unobstructed. Highlighting the necessity of indigenous interaction with the landscape, Ogada paints a detailed picture of how we might better move forward with conservation in an integrated, context based way, and to not apply global homogenizing rules to complex systems.Please rate, review, and subscribe if you are enjoying this podcast. Check out our website and Instagram for more information about “Death in The Garden.” Keep reaching out – we love to hear from our listeners!Editing: Jake MarquezMusic: Daniel Osterstock This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit deathinthegarden.substack.com/subscribe