Michael Pellman Rowland: The Next Big Plant Based IPO

"My family was really suffering from all types of diet related health issues. I had an aunt who had multiple amputations before it took her life because of type two diabetes. I had a 40-year-old uncle who had a heart attack. My grandpa, who helped raise me, died of complications in a triple bypass surgery. All over the place there was suffering and it's really hard to, not feel like you have not the answer, but the direction to go in to reclaim your health, and not be taken seriously." – Toni Okamoto Species unite is starting our 30 Day Vegan Challenge tomorrow. So, if you haven't signed up for it, sign up (you can actually sign up any time during October and it will start you at day one). It's 30 days of recipes, tips, information on all things plant-based and if you're already vegan sign up anyway, because there's really good information and recipe ideas. If you have no interest in ever being vegan, sign up and do it for 10 days. See what it's like. To kick off the 30 Day Vegan Challenge, we couldn't think of a better guest than Toni Okamoto. She is the founder of Plant-Based on a Budget, the website and meal plan that shows you how to save money while eating plant-based. Check it out, there are close to a thousand incredible recipes and delicious weekly meal-plans that will make the Vegan Challenge a whole lot less challenging. Toni is also the author of the Plant-Based on a Budget cookbook and the coauthor of the Friendly Vegan Cookbook with Michelle Kane. She and Michelle also hosts the Plant Powered People Podcast. Toni is a regular on local and national morning shows across the country, where she teaches viewers how to break their meat habit without breaking their budget. She was also featured in the popular documentary What the Health.

30 Syys 202128min

"Let me tell you, there were no bounties when wildlife management became a discipline and it's never been a part of wildlife management, but, but these are the crazy kooks at the absolute extreme of the hunting spectrum. And they got together and held fundraisers and started giving out thousand-dollar bounties on wolves." – Erik Molvar Eric Molvar is the executive director of the Western Watersheds Project. He was on the podcast recently to talk about the wild horse crisis in the American West. Today, he is back to talk about wolves and the wolf wars that are happening in the West, especially in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Eric and the Western watersheds project recently authored a petition to the U S Fish and Wildlife service that was jointly submitted by 70 conservation and wildlife groups, to relist wolves back on the endangered species list. And, it made it through the first pass – meaning Fish and Wildlife will initiate a comprehensive status review, but it could last a year or more. Let's hope it passes because in the meanwhile its open season on wolves in the West….

23 Syys 202147min

"So, the irony is that meat that people are so obsessed about their cat needing… Yeah, in the wild cats needs meat because in the wild, that meat is a source of the nutrients that a cat needs. But on a commercial bag of pet food, those nutrients, those core key nutrients that the cat needs, they're not coming from the meat, they're coming from the pre-mix that is largely a synthetic mix of vitamins and minerals that have been lost from the meat." – Shannon Falconer Shannon Falconer is the CEO and co-founder of Because, Animals, a pet food company that is making cultured meat for our cats and dogs. Their first cultured meat product, Harmless Hunt Mouse Cookies for Cats, will be on the market in 2022. They are made with real mouse meat that is grown in a lab. No mice are hurt in the process. In fact, the cells that were used to make these cookies and all mouse treats at Because, Animals going forward are the only cells that they will ever need. The original mice are happily living as pets with one of the Because, Animal's scientists. Cats and dogs eat more than 25 percent of the meat consumed in the US; which also means that petfood is responsible for more than quarter of the environmental impact caused by animal agriculture. There are plant-based pets foods but most American pets eat commercial dog and cat food, which often and mostly uses byproduct - meaning the parts of animals that people don't want, the heads, the bones, the blood or they use the meat that can't legally be sold for human consumption because the animal was dying or diseased. Because, Animals is going to change all of that one product at a time. Their mouse cookies are just the beginning. Nothing excites me more than cellular agriculture. And, it might take longer than most of us would like, but it's happening… Eat Just's chicken nuggets are being sold in Singapore and now, here comes the pet food. It's the very beginning of a whole new food system, one that will eventually take down every last factory farm and slaughterhouse on Earth. Here we go…

16 Syys 202129min

"…because animal advocacy has now escaped advocacy and is entering different types of work, really science-oriented work… maybe that was all it took in the first place. We just had such limited roles in the traditional sense of animal advocacy before. Because it was so communications driven… And so that's another reason why I'm so proud of how this field has developed is I think we've turned people into animal advocates by creating jobs that let that happen. It's such a special thing to be part of." Isha Datar Isha Datar is the executive director of New Harvest, the global nonprofit that Isha is executive director of New Harvest, a nonprofit research institute that funds open, public cultured meat research. In 2010 while still an undergrad, Isha wrote a paper called "Possibilities for an in vitro meat production system." This was among the few papers to ever discuss cultured meat in academic literature and a few years before anyone had tasted the world's first cultivated meat ball. It was the beginning of Isha's quest to establish the field of animal products made without using any animals. Isha has been executive director of New Harvest since 2013. She's also co-founded Muufri (now Perfect Day Foods), where they make milk without cows and Clara Foods, where they make eggs without chicken. In 2015, Isha coined the term "cellular agriculture" — officially creating a category for agriculture products produced from cell cultures rather than whole plants or animals. Cellular agriculture is the future of food and Isha is one of its greatest pioneers.

9 Syys 202137min

"…based on my personal experience and having worked with scientists and researchers most of my life, I would say that it's not too late. There are some things that are probably gone. There are places where only pockets of biodiversity may remain in the time ahead, but that doesn't mean we can't still have a healthy future. It may not be what it once was, but it's like the old saying - when's the best day to quit smoking cigarettes? Today - if you don't quit today, when's the next best day? Tomorrow. So, it's not too late. We may have lost 50% of the world's coral reefs, but that means there's 50% left. We may have taken 90% of the big fish in the ocean, but maybe there's 10% left. We don't have to kill 100 million sharks every year. We don't have to rollback legislation that determines how much carbon we pump into the atmosphere. We can speak out against that and tell our elected leaders that we care. The ocean doesn't have to turn acidic because we're dumping so much carbon into it that its chemistry is changing. These are things that we can change and can control. So, I do remain cautiously optimistic. I realize that the battle lines are drawn and we have to fight hard, but I do think that it's worth fighting for. It's not too late. And we can see a reversal in the places that have been protected. You do see that resilience. The ocean does know how to take care of itself. We just need to leave it alone…" -Brian Skerry Since it's the last week of summer, not officially but for most of us, we are re-sharing this very important and compelling conversation with Brian Skerry. Brian Skerry is one of the world's greatest and most accomplished underwater and marine wildlife photographers. He's also one of the most prolific: he's been a contract photographer for National Geographic since 1998, his work has been featured in scores of publications including Sports Illustrated, The New York Times and BBC Wildlife, and he's the author of 11 books including the acclaimed monographs Ocean Soul and Shark. In that time he's won so many awards that it would take a second email to list them all, but particular highpoints include Brian becoming an 11-time award winner in the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, and when National Geographic magazine named one of his images among their 50 Greatest Photographs Of All Time. In his four decades exploring the world's oceans, Brian has experienced things that very few humans will ever get to experience, like diving with a population of southern right whales who had never before encountered human beings dropping down into their underwater universe. Brian dives eight months of the year, often in extreme conditions - beneath Arctic ice or in shark-infested waters. His work brings us the beauty and the majesty of our oceans, but it also shows us the devastation and the destruction that we've caused them. His stories raise awareness, promote conservation, and ultimately create change. Today, June 8th, is World Oceans Day, the day to celebrate the world's combined efforts to protect the one ocean that we all share. And that ocean is in bad shape - between dead zones, loss of apex predators, rising sea levels affecting tidal ecosystems, the bleaching of coral reefs, oil spills polluting the waters and decimating habitats, overfishing and hunting of marine species, climate change, rising acidity levels, and plastic, plastic and more plastic - the ocean's future seems extremely bleak. But, as I learned from Brian, there's still time. Our ocean is resilient and there is so much left that we can save, but we have to act now. And, I can't imagine a better day to begin than World Oceans Day. So, start by listening to Brian, one of the best tellers of ocean stories out there.

2 Syys 202142min

This week we are re-sharing one of our favorite episodes - a conversation with Carl Safina about beauty, wonder and why animals matter. "Beings who've succeeded on earth for millions of years, don't seek, and should not require, our approval. They belong as well as we do. We do ourselves no favors by asking whether their existence is worth our while. We are hardly in a position to judge, hurdling and lurching along as we are with no goal, no plan except: bigger, faster, more. If we had the courage to be honest about it, we would have to admit that whales and birds and apes and all the rest live fully up to everything of which they are capable. And we, regrettably, fall short of doing that. For them, to be is enough. For us in the isolating alienation of our title retreat from Life, nothing is enough. It is strange how dissatisfied we insist on being, when there is so much of the world to know and love." Carl Safina, Becoming Wild Carl Safina grew up raising pigeons on a rooftop in Brooklyn and hasn't stopped interacting with the wild since. He 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. First step: we need to care. Carl's books make us care. He advocates for every living creature out there, and is always graciously pointing out why animals matter, not only why they matter to us, but why they matter to themselves - something I'm pretty certain that most humans don't think about often enough. In his most recent book Becoming Wild, How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty and Achieve Peace, Carl travels around the planet, exploring the cultures of chimpanzees in Uganda, sperm whales in the Caribbean, and Scarlet macaws in Peru. He shows us how other species teach and learn, and what life looks like in their animal societies, which is often as astonishing as it is spectacularly beautiful. 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, Safina Center. He also hosted the PBS series, Saving the Ocean.

26 Elo 20211h

"It made me feel like I wished that I had some sort of a super power, so that I could just picked them up and take them somewhere safe. But unfortunately, I'm not strong enough to have done that. So what I did was decide, at 11 years old, that I was going to commit my life to safeguarding the species… that I'll do everything in my power." – Jamal Galves Jamal Galves grew up in a small village in Belize that's famous for its Manatee population. When he was 11 years old, he saw a research boat near his home and got curious. He asked the scientists if he could tag along on their expedition, and for some reason they said yes. And, they let him come back the next day and again and again for next five years, until finally, when he was 16, they gave him a job. Now, 20 years later, he is the program coordinator for the Belize Manatee Conservation Program at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute. Jamal sees it as his life's mission to protect and save these gentle giants. Antillean manatees are a vulnerable species and their population is dwindling. They face numerous threats, from habitat loss, hunting, boat collisions, fishing gear, and natural disasters. Jamal's work provides science and education to conserve them and provides the data for establishing sanctuaries, reducing watercraft speed limits, and fighting poaching. Jamal made a promise to the manatees when he was a little kid and not a day has passed since that he hasn't lived up to it.

19 Elo 202128min

"It's kind of like light… you flick a light switch on in the room and when you flip that switch, what you want is the experience of a lit room. You're not thinking about whether it comes from renewable energy or fossil fuels. You just want light. Well, I think most people just want meat. They don't care if animals are slaughtered. In fact, they probably would prefer that they not be slaughtered for it." – Paul Shapiro Paul is the founder and CEO of the Better Meat Co., an alternative protein company that is replacing animals in our food supply. He's also the author of, Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World. Paul spent the first two-plus decades of his career in animal protection. First, he founded and ran the animal protection organization, Compassion Over Killing, which is now called Animal Outlook, and then he spent 13 years at the Humane Society of the United States, working to give farmed animals better lives. He changed laws and the world for massive amounts of animals across this county. And then he had a realization… that food technology would save far more lives than anything else possibly ever could.

12 Elo 202140min