Reuven Bank and Andrew Kim: When the Ocean Lost Its Stars

"We are fed things like Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs and, you know, we grow up on this stuff, that the wolf is the big, bad character. And what the real wolf is like is so totally different." - Suzanne Asha Stone A couple of months ago, we did a series on wolves. The episodes focused on the massacre of entire wolf populations in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. At the time, I said that we did enough wolf episodes. But the truth is we didn't do enough because wolves are still not on the endangered species list in those states. Until they are, I don't think I can shut up about what we're doing to wolves, its egregious and its devastating. Suzanne Stone has been on the front lines of wolf restoration in the Western USA for her entire career, since 1988. In 2008 she founded the Wood River Wolf Project to demonstrate that wolves can coexist with sheep operations on national forests when adequate nonlethal deterrents are consistently applied. She is a member of the IUCN Canid Specialist Task Force, the world's chief body of scientific and practical expertise on the status and conservation of all canid species and is also the Executive Director of the International Wildlife Coexistence Network where she is now helping to protect wolves and other imperiled wildlife with communities around the world. Suzanne has proven many times over many years that proactive non-lethal coexistence methods work. Yet for some inane reason, the slaughter continues. "If we keep going, if this is allowed to keep going, eventually we will have zero wolves. There's no way that this can be sustained. It's just brutal." – Suzanne Asha Stone LINKS: Wood River Wolf Project https://www.woodriverwolfproject.org/ International Wildlife Coexistence Network https://wildlifecoexistence.org/

29 Juni 202238min

"The idea is that we take and take and take from the planet. And we've been taking and there's all this talk about how can we get to neutral? And our company wanted to do something a little bit differently. We wanted to give back more than we were taking." – Tina Bhojwani Tina Bhojwani is the co-founder and CEO of AERA, a luxury vegan footwear brand. In a past life, she held key leadership roles at global brands including Donna Karan, Theory and was President of Dolce & Gabbana North America. Having spent over two decades in the fashion world, Tina's had front row seats to fashion's impact on the planet as well as on people and animals. AERA is her answer to how the fashion world (and those of us who frequent it) can do better. All of AERA's components are made from non-animal ingredients, they use as many eco-friendly materials as possible, ensuring that the end result is of the highest quality, and are committed to evolving their materials, with the ultimate goal to one day be able to create a shoe with zero environmental impact. "Our shoes are certified Vegan. We went to great lengths to ensure that all components are made from non-animal ingredients, yet still maintain the quality and style expected from a luxury shoe." - Tina Bhojwani They're also stunning, insanely comfortable and, as Tina likes to point out, "they don't look vegan." Please listen and share and check out AERA's shoes. AERA https://aeranewyork.com/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/aeranewyork/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/aeranewyork

23 Juni 202229min

Brown Bear, Germany, 2008 I'm aware of what you are and I'm also aware of what you're thinking. You're a human being I'm aware of what you are and I'm also aware of what you're thinking. You're a human being and you are thinking I am something else I'm aware of what you are and I'm also aware of what you're thinking. You're a human being and you are thinking I am something else put here for your entertainment. I'm aware of what you are and I'm also aware of what you're thinking. You're a human being and you are thinking I am something else put here for your entertainment, that makes it easier for you to ignore me. I'm aware of what you are and I'm also aware of what you're thinking. You're a human being and you are thinking I am something else put here for your entertainment, that makes it easier for you to ignore me and the wire mesh that surrounds me. I'm aware of what you are and I'm also aware of what you're thinking. You're a human being and you are thinking I am something else put here for your entertainment, that makes it easier for you to ignore me and the wire mesh that surrounds me; the wire mesh that separates us. I'm aware of what you are and I'm also aware of what you're thinking. You're a human being and you are thinking I am something else put here for your entertainment, that makes it easier for you to ignore me and the wire mesh that surrounds me; the wire mesh that separates us, and your way of thinking from mine. Gordon Meade Gordon Meade is a Scottish poet and animal advocate. His 10th book of poetry is called Zoo Speak. It's about the inhumane and appalling conditions for animal who live in zoos and other terrible places. He wrote it to accompany the photographs in Jo-Anne McArthur's, Captive a haunting book of photographs featuring animals in captivity. If you are unfamiliar with Jo-Anne's work, go to We Animals Media and take a look. It will change you. I read/looked at Captive years ago and I truly did not think it could get more powerful or feel more devastating then it felt right then, and then I came across Gordon's poetry. It offers an entirely new dimension to the photos, one that makes you look at the animals and really see and feel their perspective on the situation. It floored me. Please listen and share and then, read Gordon's poems. LINKS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnrR1DWog7Y&t=6s https://www.etsy.com/listing/778801047/zoospeak-gordon-meade-with-jo-anne Captive: https://joannemcarthur.com/captive/

16 Juni 202230min

"You see, most of the people in the cultured meat world are usually either biologists that are excited about the biology or physicians that work with stem cells and regenerative medicine. They're asking, "can we make a steak? Can we make a muscle?" They are not asking what is the cheapest way of making this? They're assuming somebody else is going to come and solve it. The difference between them and us is that I am an engineer. So that, yeah, I can make a muscle. I made a muscle back then. I'm pretty certain that the biology is simple. The big question is, should I? And then how much does it cost?" – Koby Nahmias Yaakov Koby Nahmias is the founder of Future Meat Technologies. Future Meat is a cultured meat company, meaning they make meat from animal cells without having to raise, harm or slaughter any animals. They are based in Israel but are coming to the US next year. Future Meat's technology is different than many other cultivated meat companies, which allows their products to be cost-effective, sustainable, and scalable. They are the first cultivated meat company to break the $5 cost barrier. They are making cultured meat for a $1.70 per pound. Their meat is made entirely from animal fibroblasts that grow in stainless steel fermenters and provides the same texture and taste as farm-raised meat. Future Meat will play a big role in the agricultural revolution that is going to allow future generations to live in a world with fewer greenhouse emissions, less land and water use, and far less cruelty to non-human animals. LINKS: https://future-meat.com/ twitter https://twitter.com/FutureMeat1

8 Juni 202244min

"I mean this is the crazy thing about it, in 35 years of doing animal protection investigations I didn't know this existed. It wasn't even a thing, because it sounds it sounds too crazy to actually believe - that you'd get blood from pregnant horses and then it helps productivity in pigs." – Gemunu de Silva Gemunu de Silva is the co-founder of Tracks Investigations. He is a filmmaker and an activist who's been investigating and documenting animal rights abuses since the 1980s. Tracks has completed over 260 investigations. 35 animal rights and protection organizations have benefited from their work in 57 countries. Gem has been on the podcast before - - in fact, he's becoming a regular. This time is is here to talk about one of Tracks most recent investigations, horse blood farms in Iceland. Yes, it's as horrific as it sounds: Semi-wild pregnant horses are corralled into restraint boxes to have their blood taken, for the hormone, Pregnant Mare Serum Gonadotropin (PMSG). The PMSG is then converted into powder and shipped to factory farms in the US, UK, and EU. It's used in pigs (mostly), to increase reproduction. We do an astonishing number of terrible things to non-human animals all over the planet, but this one really shocked me. Not only is this industry incredibly cruel but it's also really creepy. Not many people know that this industry even exists. After Track's investigation was released in Iceland, much of the country went into an uproar. It was an absolute honor to have Gem back on the show to kick of Season 8! Learn More About Tracks Investigations Follow Tracks on Instagram

2 Juni 202242min

Species Unite will be back next week, June 2nd, with a brand new season. Until then, we are re-sharing some of our favorite episodes. Today's is a conversation with Jo-Anne McArthur. Jo-Anne McArthur is an award winning photojournalist and the founder of We Animals Media. For 20 years she has been photographing and bearing witness to our complex relationship with animals. She's worked in over 60 countries in just about every industry one can imagine - including: fur farms, factory farms, bear bile farms, zoos, rodeos, circuses, and marine parks with the mission to make the lives of these invisible animals visible. Her images tell the stories of unseen suffering, the stories of what happens when we stop paying attention, of what hopelessness looks like, and of thousands of little lives that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. She is also co-founder of the Unbound Project and the author of two books, We Animals and Captive. And, she was the subject of Liz Marshall's acclaimed documentary, The Ghosts in Our Machine. I have been a super-fan of Jo-Anne's for years, so it felt like a real honor to be able to spend this time with her. I learned a lot in this conversation, about suffering, about empathy, and mostly, about grace. I hope that you will be as moved by Jo-Anne and her work as I am. Learn More About We Animals Media Learn More About The Unbound Project Jo Anne's Books: We Animals Captive Liz Marshall's Documentary, The Ghosts in Our Machine

26 Maj 202237min

Species Unite will be back on June 2nd with a brand new season. Until then, we are re-sharing some of our favorite episodes. This week's is a conversation with Lori Marino. "In a natural setting, these animals would be swimming maybe a hundred miles a day, diving deep. They have their social lives, their social networks, roles to play in very tightly-knit family groups. They raise their children. They have cultures, different ways of doing things in different populations. They can explore and play and come together. None of that is available in the concrete tank. None of it. They don't have any place to go. They don't have any place to dive… what you see is a lot of mortality, a lot of sickness, a lot of behavioral abnormalities. Everything that makes life worth living for a dolphin or whale is absent in marine parks and concrete tanks. None of it is available." – Lori Marino Lori Marino is a neuroscientist and an expert in animal behavior and intelligence. Much of her work is focused on whales and dolphins. She's currently the president of the Whale Sanctuary Project, which will be a seaside sanctuary for former performing orcas and belugas that have spent their entire lives in concrete tanks. Lori is also the founder and Executive Director of the Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy, an organization that bridges the gap between academic research and on the ground animal advocacy efforts. She has appeared in several films and television programs, including the documentaries Blackfish, Unlocking the Cage, and Long Gone Wild, which is a 2019 documentary that picks up where Black Fish left off, and is also where the Whale Sanctuary Project begins. The Whale Sanctuary Project is going to change the world for the lucky orcas and belugas that will end up there. They will also be a model for future sanctuaries for cetaceans – as we need a ton of them, there are way too many of these animals living in captivity. It stuns me that even after documentaries like Blackfish, people all over the world (including many in the US) still visit marine mammal parks. Mostly, people go because they don't know. They don't know how miserable life is for the whales and dolphins and they don't know how intelligent and emotionally complex these animals are. Keeping them in tanks is cruel, inhumane, unjust, and it needs to stop. Lori has made it her life's work to not only study their intelligence but to advocate and fight for their lives. This conversation is an important one, after listening to Lori, I think it'd be very difficult for anyone to give another dollar to a marine park anywhere on Earth. I hope that you learn as much as I did. Learn More About The Whale Sanctuary Project Like The Whale Sanctuary Project on Facebook Follow The Whale Sanctuary Project on Twitter Learn More About The Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy

18 Maj 202241min

Species Unite will be back on June 2nd with a new season. Until then, we are re-sharing some of our favorite episodes. This week's is a conversation with Aaron Gross. We all have a food story; the story that we tell ourselves about what we eat and why we eat it. It's that story that runs the show when it comes to how we shop, cook, and feed our children. It was most often taught to us by our parents and their parents, most who thought they were passing on good values and deep traditions and were only doing what was best for their kids. But our food story is more than that. It was also passed on to our parents and to us from advertisers, marketers and a food industry that uses words like values and traditions to get us to buy into a narrative that has damaged our health, destroyed the planet, and caused endless suffering to billions of animals. But once we come to terms with the fact that it's just a story and not something that we can't change, there's a whole new world waiting. And, like in so many other industries that are inherently broken in America and around the globe, the pandemic has exposed the gaping holes in our food system. But it's also given us the opportunity to take a deeper look into what and how we eat and decide that we can change the story. Aaron Gross is a professor of theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego, and he's the CEO and founder of Farm Forward. Farm Forward was founded as the nation's first nonprofit devoted exclusively to ending factory farming. Recently, Aaron and the writer, Jonathan Safran Foer published a piece in the Guardian called, We Have to Wake Up: Factory Farms are Breeding Grounds for Pandemics. There's a paragraph in there that says, "The link between factory farming and increasing pandemic risk is well established scientifically, but the political will to curtail that risk has, in the past, been absent. Now is the time to build that will. It really does matter if we talk about this, share our concerns with our friends, explain these issues to our children, wonder together about how we should eat differently, call on our political leaders, and support advocacy organizations fighting factory farming. Leaders are listening. Changing the most powerful industrial complex in the world – the factory farm – could not possibly be easy, but in this moment with these stakes it is, maybe for the first time in our lifetimes, possible." Aaron graciously joined me from his quarantine in San Diego to talk about how we do this; how we change the story around how and what we eat and ultimately, how we change our food system. Aaron is one of the smartest guys out there and it was beyond a privilege to hear his thoughts and ideas on how we forge ahead. This conversation was enlightening, inspiring, and incredibly informative. I hope that you learn as much as I did. We can change our food industry. As bad as most things across the planet are right now, there's real opportunity in front of us. Let's not waste it. Visit FarmForward.com Like Farm Forward on Facebook Follow Farm Forward on Twitter

11 Maj 202243min