Our Survival is at Stake with Poorva Joshipura

[00:00:06] Mariann Sullivan: I am so delighted to have you. I was telling you right before we started recording, but then I decided it would make so much more sense to wait until the recording, that I think your book is extremely important. I mean, nothing has struck me quite this much in a very long time. And there was loads of information.

I suppose that there was loads of information in there that I didn't know, but it was that it brought it all together, how crucial it is for our own survival, which is exactly the title of your book, Survival at Stake, How our Treatment of Animals is Key to Human Existence. And just bringing it all together, how unbelievably obvious and important it is that what we're doing to animals is harming us.

And as we all know, it's sometimes hard to reach people with a message that isn't about them, but you have decided to do that. You are obviously an animal advocate through and through. You've spent your career at PETA. Why, when you decided to write this book, when you first had the idea, did you decide to take this particular tact and talk about the harm to humans caused by animal exploitation?

And you also get the animals in there, but that is the main focus, is the harm to humans.

[00:01:13] Poorva Joshipura: It is. I mean, I wrote the book because, you know, as animal advocates, we're often confronted by people who ask the question, "Well, why don't you help humans first?" Or, you know, "what about humans? Humans have all these issues that we need to resolve. What about the planet?" You know, what about everything else, basically?

And, animals matter because they inherently matter. This is what I believe. You know, they have thoughts, they have feelings, and they don't matter because of how they relate to us. They matter because they matter as individuals. But, having said that, I was asked that question so many times that, you know, I wrote the book because many people don't realize that human well being is intertwined with that of other animals.

And of course it would be because we are animals too, so what affects them affects us as well. And as you say, yes, there is a lot of information out there about, for instance, the climate catastrophe and how it relates to meat, egg, and dairy production, but it's not going to be found in the same book that also talks about how leather is the most polluting material in fashion or how our use of animals for experimentation puts us at risk of contracting or bringing diseases that are new to human beings into our human world. And so there's, you know, the book exactly, as you said, the idea of it was to bring all of these issues together so that people can see, in a much more comprehensive way, how our treatment of animals intertwined with that of other animals.

It talks about the climate catastrophe, various forms of pollution, as well as public health threats from zoonotic disease like bird flu, swine flu, so on. Talks about antibiotic resistance because of the overuse of antibiotics in meat, egg, and dairy production. You know, it talks about animal experimentation, public health risks, it even has a chapter on violence in society and how that's linked to allowing cruelty to animals to happen, without much consequence.

And there's more, there's a chapter on even, our use of animals for entertainment and how that affects society. Dogfighting, for instance, and that's linked to gambling and considered a co crime with other types of crime. So, yes, the book covers a lot of ground, but it really was because I was asked that question so many times.

I mean, and like other humans, I was also affected by COVID, which of course there's a lab leak theory, but there's also the other theory that it originated from a wildlife meat market. I have faced consequences of the climate catastrophe. I was in Mumbai when there was extreme flooding.

And I think people, you know, nowadays have so many examples of how these issues have affected them personally. So that was there too, but really I felt there was a missing link. I felt that not enough people do think about how the way we treat other animals, impacts our own well being.

[00:04:20] Mariann Sullivan: I think even those of us who do know a bit of it, and talking about climate, you know, most of us are familiar, even though a lot of people still aren't of the impact of meat production. But it's, it's exactly what you were talking about. It's kind of piecemeal.

It was putting it all together and really giving a lot of detail. And there was a lot of stuff in here I didn't know, but there was some stuff I did know. But it was putting it all together that it was almost like, I don't even know how to put it. It's almost like a philosophical revelation that, Oh my God, the way we're living on this planet and the way we're relating to all of the other creatures, like we can never get ourselves out of this unless we fix this, because this is a global problem that's rooted in almost everything we do. Everything you write about is fairly terrifying. I don't know how you pulled this off.

[00:05:13] Poorva Joshipura: I'm good at writing about really, really scary, horrible stuff. That's what I seem to do best, but I think we all need to know about it, so.

[00:05:22] Mariann Sullivan: But the way you do it is really good because the chapters are, they're thorough, but they're each on a different subject and they're not that long and they're not like heavily into a lot of detail. They give you enough information and then you move on and I think that's really helpful in being able to absorb, like, really, really troubling information.

I found the book, considering what the subject matter is, extremely readable.

[00:05:47] Poorva Joshipura: Thank you. Thank you so very much. And, I did write the book exactly with that idea in mind, that I wanted it to be a resource. You know, I wanted people to be able to flip through to the chapter that they wanted to learn about at the moment, for whatever might be going on.

For instance, right now, bird flu is a big story. Well, I have a whole chapter on bird flu, swine flu. I wanted people to be able to more easily access the information that they may need from it. And also, read it sort of like in an essay kind of format. So, you know, you have, for instance, the chapter on bird flu and swine flu.

You have the chapter on oceans and how our treatment of animals in the oceans affects our own well being and what the wonderful animals in the ocean have to do with controlling the climate catastrophe. You know, the service, in a way you can say, that they provide to the planet and to the oxygen that we breathe and so on.

So, yes, that that was a kind of deliberate way of writing the book and I start the book out with, I'm not religious myself But I start the book out with a quote from the prophet muhammad that says, "Whoever is kind to the creatures of God is kind to himself," and I thought that was so perfect about what the entire book is about really and It's just so apt, I thought. That this is exactly it.

[00:07:16] Mariann Sullivan: And proof that people have known this for a long time, even though we have proceeded to not pay attention to it.

[00:07:23] Poorva Joshipura: Well, that's just it. I thought, you know, this is a quote from thousands of years ago. And, it makes sense today. And I think it makes sense today, perhaps more than it does at any other time in human history. We're right now living in a time where about 75 percent of new emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic.

That means that they come from animals and that they're infecting humans, and it's not just that, the frequency of such events and the variety of pathogens that have been infecting humans has been accelerating.

[00:08:03] Mariann Sullivan: Even since you've, I mean, thank God you incorporated it really well into the book. But even since then, things have really, like, accelerated to even an, I mean, I've been worried about it for a long time, but all of a sudden, it's going crazy.

Is that one of your current focuses of things that are particularly terrifying you?

[00:08:23] Poorva Joshipura: Absolutely, 100%, and I think it should be terrifying everybody because it's so directly linked to the abnormal way that we treat and rear chickens and other birds used for meat and eggs around the world. You know, right now, some 70 billion chickens are killed every year for foods we don't need.

Over, I think it's, if you calculate it every day, it's almost 300, 000 chickens per day that are killed. Um, oh no, sorry, that's just in the UK where I am. 70 billion, it was 70 billion chickens annually around the world though, and all of these animals, almost all of them, are reared in extremely crowded conditions in which they cannot get away from their own filth.

When one bird gets sick, it just spreads like wildfire. And we're talking about, you know, there isn't a country in the world right now where chickens are not raised in this type of way. And so, we are creating a situation. We're basically handing bird flu an opportunity on a platter, you could almost say, because these farms are allowing different types of bird flu to spread, different types of flus to even emerge. One of the biggest threats right now is the H5N1 variety of bird flu. It has a 60 percent mortality rate in humans who've been unfortunate enough to catch it. But what's scary right now is that it's increasingly infecting mammals.

Mink on mink farms have become sick with bird flu. As we've seen in the United States, cows on dairy farms. And the humans who are near these animals have become sick with bird flu. The World Health Organization warns that this is terrifying because the fact that mammals are now more easily and increasingly becoming infected with bird flu means that we're pretty much at one or two steps away from the virus mutating to become more readily able to infect human beings and go from human to human.

And if that happens, I mean if we thought COVID was bad, this is one of those types of things that could essentially decimate more than half of the population.

[00:10:53] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, it could be like Bubonic plague, just wipe out half the people, wipe out whole towns, whole cities.

[00:10:59] Poorva Joshipura: It would, it would. And I think we have these false assurances that we give to ourselves that, "oh, someone will figure out a vaccine or someone..." Maybe, but they haven't yet, it's not guaranteed, and it's not just bird flu, you know, the more that we meddle with nature, the sicker we're becoming.

Swine flu, you know, in 2009, the first year that it circulated, the H1N1 variety, it killed, by one estimate, over 500, 000 people around the world. That wasn't that long ago, and then we've had COVID, before that we had SARS, and now we're having bird flu. I mean it's coming at us now at a rapid rate, and it's directly linked to what we now do to animals.

It's directly linked to factory farming, when it comes to diseases that we're getting from chickens and pigs. Or it's coming from our increased meddling with nature. You know, cutting down forest, oftentimes to make room for animals used for food and the crops to feed them, or going into the forest and bringing monkeys into laboratories and that sort of thing.

There's been a number of viruses from monkeys that we never knew about until humans got sick with them from a laboratory setting. So, it's not sci fi. It's happening right now.

[00:12:25] Mariann Sullivan: No, it's not even remotely sci fi. It's happening all the time. And so far, we've sort of managed to, like, avoid the really, really big disaster, but the idea that we're going to continue to just seems crazy. Obviously, you know a lot about animal exploitation, like, probably more than most of us, more than most of us want to, but was there anything that you learned about coming at the issue from this particular direction that shocked you or at least surprised you and that you think our listeners here at Our Hen House, who also know a fair amount about factory farming and the horrors of what we do to animals, was there new information? I will say and we can go into this a little more if you have something different, but I was surprised very much by your ocean chapter.

Were there things for you as well that were like, "Oh god, I never knew that one"?

[00:13:14] Poorva Joshipura: It's funny that you say Ocean's Chapter. I think, out of the book, my favorite two chapters is the Ocean's Chapter as well as the chapter on insects.

[00:13:23] Mariann Sullivan: The insects. Yeah.

[00:13:25] Poorva Joshipura: And obviously, I wrote the book because I knew a little bit about all of these things and I knew there was enough information to share, but the oceans chapter, what I like so much about that chapter myself is it really talks about the circle of life really. How the largest animals in the ocean are reliant on the tiniest creatures in the ocean for their own survival.

And it's, you know, a circlical thing, but it's also about how we need the animals in the ocean for our own survival. I didn't know myself how much of a service, for example, whales do to planet Earth.

[00:14:08] Mariann Sullivan: I was really shocked by that. Yeah.

[00:14:10] Poorva Joshipura: Much more than trees. You know, they're such excellent carbon stores that they accumulate carbon throughout their very long lives, huge amounts, and when they die, it sinks to the bottom of the ocean alongside with them.

And I think not only are they so very important, but I think a lot of people think that the biggest threat to whales is hunting them directly, whaling. But it's not. It's bycatch. It's us trying to capture fish we think are legitimate to eat and then capturing all these other species of animals alongside with them.

Whether it's the large fish directly, whether it's whales, sharks, and so on directly, all of the large animals are excellent carbon stores. Or whether it's creating an environment in the ocean where it's hard for those animals to survive because of the issue of bycatch. We are greatly impacting the planet's health by eating fish, and greatly impacting our own health.

And of course, the other service that whales do, is help provide the oxygen that we breathe, keeping the oceans clean and manageable for all the other life that lives in the ocean, not just whales, but, you know, all of the, the large animals, you know, as they move around in the ocean, it helps create a healthier environment in the ocean.

So all of these animals need each other, but it's not just that they need each other. We need them as well.

[00:15:41] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, we sure do. And I mean, as you point out, like, there's no easy fix here. It's not like you can just stop hunting whales. And it would be great if we stopped hunting whales. I mean, that would be a nice first step, but it's much more complicated than that. I mean, when are we going to realize that there are no easy fixes?

We can't just like pick this species and say, we want to save this species, so we don't have to worry about anything else that's going on around them. We have to save the whole thing.

[00:16:08] Poorva Joshipura: Yes, and I believe it was a British journalist, who had written about Seaspiracy, a review of Seaspiracy, and he described the killing of fish in the sea as, as like hunting, like hunting on land. And people do have a kind of misconception or sort of an idea that as if the fish in the sea are just endless, that there are always going to be fish in the sea and there's not, despite that old saying.

And that we can just hunt these animals to whatever amount of fish that we desire. And that's just not the case. So land animals already, we kill about over 92 billion land animals a year, but fish, if you add fish in that equation, it's trillions. Trillions of fish we kill every year, they're not counted really even anyway, there's lots of fish who wouldn't even make it into that count.

And for every fish that's caught, the chances are there has been another animal who's also been killed as bycatch, whether that's a seabird, whether that's a turtle, a shark, a whale. And so by eating fish, a type of meat that sadly a lot of people think is benign to eat, it's wreaking havoc on the environment, on the ocean's ability to be healthy, and therefore our ability to be healthy.

Yes, it was a surprise to me, even as I was writing the book, just how vital marine animals are to the planet's health.

[00:17:43] Mariann Sullivan: A lot of animal advocacy work, as we all know, whether we're talking welfare reforms or vegan education, whatever it is we're doing, like, always feels like a drop in the bucket against the behemoth of animal agriculture and, and all the other types of exploitation, but, you know, animal agriculture being the big one.

And yet we all know that a really a lot of people care about animals. That people would not do this to animals themselves. It's this quandary we, we are facing all the time. Alright, in order to have, like, some hope here, do you think it's possible, particularly given the information in your book, so, which could wake people up to say, "well, we can't wait any longer to do anything about it," that it might be possible to really turn this around fast?

I mean, obviously, it's a big thing to turn around, but it's what most people would want, in very real ways. Not everybody, obviously, not everybody, but people usually go along with the flow. Do you think it's even possible that we, we can pull this out that we can fix this before we all kill ourselves?

[00:18:46] Poorva Joshipura: Well, we don't have a huge amount of time to do it in. And so I think I would say my answer to that question is, is, Well, we have to. And I can only hope that we do, and that's the whole reason why I've written the book, is because, you know, I care about animals, I care about the planet, I care about humans, and we are really at a crisis point now where we are so close to getting to a future from which there's no turning back. That we will, from a climate perspective, really start doing damage that we cannot undo. And that's going to affect the survival of ourselves. It's going to affect the survival of other animal species. Now is the time to act and what I try to do in the book is at the end of the book I give a roadmap for things that we can do to turn our trajectory around and I try to help readers realize really how easy it is to do. For instance, just by going vegan, we reduce our carbon footprint from food by some 73 percent as individuals, just by going vegan.

And so what scientists say is that the single biggest thing that we can do as individuals for the planet perhaps is to eat vegan.

It is not hard to do.

[00:20:10] Mariann Sullivan: But, I think that everybody in the movement realizes that Individual change is important, but it's not enough. And you also talk about that, talk about getting active. Can you talk a little bit about your thoughts on the best ways for people to become more active, both through their veganism, you know, spreading that, and for animals more directly.

And I particularly liked thinking about, you know, even that seems like hopeless, especially if you're working on a local level, but local activism can really be very powerful, can't it?

[00:20:41] Poorva Joshipura: Oh, absolutely. And I think we often forget how far we've come as well, when we start feeling that way. I mean, things were so different, just some years ago. We have really come a long way when it comes to vegan foods, vegan fashions.

Even in the animal experimentation industry, there's so many scientists now, and even governments, that are talking about moving away from the use of animals for experimentation. We have entire industries and businesses that have been set up to meet the demand now for more ethical foods, more ethical fashions.

So, you know, we have really come a long way, and I think that is so important for us to remember.

[00:21:25] Mariann Sullivan: I like to think of it almost as like the work that has been done in this movement, and of course, you've been working for PETA for a long time, one of the leaders of the movement, has been setting the stage and it's now time to actually put the play on and make the real progress.

All of this work has just been like creating the possibility, you know, when I got started and probably when you did too, we didn't have all these alternative foods. Like, we, we didn't have the possibility of producing them at scale. It was kind of just quixotic to think about how we could change the world.

It's not anymore. The stage is set, but now the play has to go on.

[00:22:05] Poorva Joshipura: The stage is set and, you know, we have a lot more people now thinking about the solutions to these problems. So, you know, we have people in government thinking about it. We have scientists thinking about it, you know, teachers thinking about it. And so one of the things I talk about in the book and at the end of the book is, okay, well, what do you do for your day job?

You might be a doctor, you might be somebody who works in an office, whatever it is that you do, think about how you can incorporate sharing information about the importance of animal rights and how our treatment of animals is linked to the well being of the planet, the well being of our own health, and so on, and share that.

Figure out ways to share that. So, for instance, if you're a doctor, you can talk to your patients about the importance of eating vegan. If you're a teacher, you can talk to children about the importance of being kind to animals. You might be somebody who works in the government office, a policy maker, you could be a rockstar. You could be anything and still incorporate activism into what it is that you do. And I think that is so important for all of us to do. It shouldn't be left to only those of us who work in the animal rights movement, or only, you know, a few of us, because it really has to be all of us putting in something.

So that we can progress as quickly as what we need in our society to tackle some of these very crucial problems.

[00:23:31] Mariann Sullivan: I couldn't agree more. That's like, basically our ethos here at Our Hen House is do something. When you do something, then you meet other people who are doing something. And when you put people together, they are incredibly more courageous and powerful than when working on their own. So, it can grow like that.

And yeah, and PETA obviously is one organization that has encouraged people to do that for a long time. And PETA is now, of course, all over the world. And that's your area, right? Is the whole international scene for PETA?

[00:24:01] Poorva Joshipura: Yeah, that's right. So I'm called the Senior VP of International Affairs, and so I look after some of the PETA projects around the world right now. I'm largely focused on our work in India, and also our work in Jordan, but what, what you may have noticed, for instance, is that, in the book, I go to all corners of the planet to talk about what we do to animals and, and how we can, can treat animals better.

For instance, I'm in China when I talk about SARS or when I talk about the possibility of COVID having come from a wildlife meat market. I go to Africa, so to speak, in the book when we talk about the hunting of primates for meat or traditional medicine or voodoo and so on.

And how this is what scientists think, uh, that, HIV and Ebola jumped to humans and jumped to humans several different times for it to start infecting humans and then going from human to human. The United States, you know, we talk about factory farming chickens and pigs and, and so on, and I think I, I try to bring in the experiences and the lessons I've learned from right the way around the world because it is, it's not, you know, China's issue, or it's not just the United States, or it's, it's really every single country is contributing to, whether it's a climate catastrophe, whether it's antibiotic resistance, all of these things.

And we all need to turn this trajectory around. Antibiotic resistance, I mean, that, that is a, another huge public health crisis being caused from our overuse of antibiotics in animals used for food, especially because if we didn't pump them full of antibiotics, then factory farming really couldn't exist.

We've seen in India, and I know that this happens, it's not just India, it's many, many different countries around the world where they were feeding chickens, still, there's been a level of curb on it, but still, feeding chickens antibiotics that are necessary for human medicine.

The chicken farm workers, where some investigations have been done, didn't even know what really they were giving to these chickens or why. They almost thought of it as kind of like vitamins, but here they are pumping these birds full of antibiotics that humans need. And so India is going through a huge public health crisis in terms of antibiotic resistance.

It's creating issues like supercharged tuberculosis, which becomes essentially impossible to treat. Making the problem even worse is that a lot of the tuberculosis in India and other countries is thought to come from bovines. So because the drinking of raw milk and so on is still common in some parts of the world, so bovine tuberculosis.

And then, to compound the problem even more is the drugs needed to treat this disease, being fed to chickens and then becoming less effective. So it's all just...

amazingly, so many of the issues that we face points to meat, egg, and dairy production.

[00:27:16] Mariann Sullivan: Absolutely.

You talk about a lot of different things, but I really like the way you characterize it as, it's not just about anything. It's about our attitudes towards animals, but so many, I mean, because all of the animals are in the meat, dairy and egg production world.

That's where most of the disease is.

And the fact that it's in India doesn't mean it's, I mean, if we don't know this by now after COVID, the fact that it's in India does not mean it's going to stay in India, in case there are people out there who don't care if it's in India and as long as it's not here, like, it's not going to stay there.

Remember in the beginning of COVID and it was everybody was like, oh, well, it's in China.

[00:27:51] Poorva Joshipura: Oh, absolutely. I mean when I was researching the book and you know, especially this tuberculosis in India, I mean, people travel all the time now.

[00:28:02] Mariann Sullivan: Everywhere. We all know that!

[00:28:04] Poorva Joshipura: What happens in Asia, absolutely affects the whole rest of the world. So, this supercharged tuberculosis is really, you can consider it an export from India, thanks to dairy industry and egg industry practices. And also in the US, more than 35, 000 people already die as a result of antimicrobial resistant infections each year. That is also from the overuse of antimicrobial and, you know, antibiotics and so on in animals used for meat, eggs, and dairy.

So it creates a difficulty in treating these, when we need those drugs, they become less and less effective. But it also, the overuse of these drugs is contributing to antimicrobial resistance and the development of superbugs. So that means, not only when medicines needed to treat illnesses from bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites in humans become less effective, but it is also creating new resilient forms of infections.

In other words, you know, using these drugs is just making stronger infections that are harder to

[00:29:12] Mariann Sullivan: It's like creating an experiment and the animal's body is just this laboratory where you're putting in these antibiotics and giving the animal's body an, an opportunity to develop all these bacteria that can overcome them. And you're doing it by the trillions. So, sooner or later, it's inevitable that the bacteria will evolve to overcome whatever we were, these miracle drugs that were invented that saved so many lives.

We're just destroying them. Destroying their usefulness. Sorry.

[00:29:39] Poorva Joshipura: Absolutely.

Absolutely. And that is a huge, huge public health crisis, and it's linked to all the other public health crises we're facing today. It's obviously linked to the bird flu, swine flu, it's linked to everything.

[00:29:54] Mariann Sullivan: Well, that's the great thing about your book. Is that it makes clear that fundamentally, it's all the same thing. It's like ignoring the fact that we're connected to all of these creatures and we can't just do willy nilly whatever we want to them and have it not affect us.

But I do want to make clear. I mean, obviously people know you work for PETA and you're an animal person first and foremost, and you don't leave animals out in this book. I mean, you do talk about how horrible this is for the animals, but that's not really the focus. How did you strike that balance between focusing on harms to humans, appealing to people who that's what they're reading the book for, but still getting the animals in there and, you know, just enough to let people know what they're going through.

[00:30:36] Poorva Joshipura: So I talk a lot about speciesism in the book, and I point to speciesism as the fundamental culprit for all of these other issues. That the book talks about, right the way from whether it's zoonotic disease, whether it's violence in society in the form of school shooters, because so many school shooters have a history of cruelty to animals.

Whatever it is, the core culprit is speciesism. And I start the book off by helping people draw a link or draw a parallel between other animals and ourselves. So I talk about the fact that we are animals. That's what the entire introduction of the book is about, how we are animals and how today ethologists confirm a lot of resemblances between humans and other animals, whether it's whales or invertebrate creatures also like bees.

The scientists tell us that these and other animals are sentient, that they're intelligent, that they express emotional states. Even bees. Even bees appear to dream. Chickens are clever, they can be cunning. We've all heard that pigs can be taught to play video games, of course in a laboratory setting, so that's awful.

Fish form friendships.. Animal behaviorists tell us that cows grieve and that octopuses experience even emotional pain. And we've all seen so many videos on the internet of animals helping each other, like dogs will risk their own lives to save that of a loved one. And so by establishing similarities between humans and other animals in my book, I hope readers will then be less surprised that the well being of other animals is intertwined with our own.

[00:32:29] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. I do think that this is the perfect book. You know, as I said before, it's not the easiest book in the world to read. I mean, it's very, very readable, but obviously it has a lot of information in there, as it's obvious, that it's not like light reading, but because and the way you did it, like, as you put it, each section is not that long, and it's like an essay and you can kind of take it like one a night, like, like, without overwhelming yourself. And it's such unbelievably important information for any animal advocate to have, not so much because it tells us what the animals are going through, but because it gives us that information of what this is doing to humans, which gives us that opening to talk to people who, you know, we all know how closed down people can be when we're talking about animals, but it gives you that information that kind of opens the door and then allows them to also think about what's happening to animals.

Speaking of which, writing this book has... I mean, reading it, as I said, it's not hard. I mean, you know, I don't want to sound that way, but you know, don't feel that you don't want to get this book because it's too much bad information because it's definitely manageable.

But writing it must have been pretty tough because it really embeds you in the knowledge of so much horror, and also working for PETA, I mean, is also something that, anybody who works in this field has to know a lot of stuff that causes us a lot of pain to just know. So what are the resources that you use to help keep you going?

[00:33:54] Poorva Joshipura: You know for me, I think if I was just collecting this information and then not doing anything about it, I think I would feel a lot worse than what I feel. So I say to people, you know people ask me that question a lot and I say well get active, you know. You can go into the PETA website.

There's lots of ideas on ways that you can get active. There's ideas in the back of my book on how you can get active. You can be a philanthropist, or you can, you know, yourself become an activist. You can get together a group of like minded people in your community and identify issues that need to be tackled.

So I would say, you know, the number one thing is to get active. First things first, examine your own habits and what you can do. And then, expand that, share that experience with others. Get them also on board. And I think that is really key and that's the thing that's kept me going and I think it's the also the I can't stop. I can't stop because there's there's still so much to do.

[00:35:01] Mariann Sullivan: I know, I, I always wonder what people mean when they say they burn out. I mean, I understand people becoming exhausted and overwhelmed and depressed, but you can't really walk away from it.

[00:35:11] Poorva Joshipura: Well, no, and and if you do need to I would say, you know, take a break go to the beach, but then come back.

[00:35:16] Mariann Sullivan: Absolutely. And, and, and treat yourself nicely and get a massage or whatever. But then, yeah, that's all that's fine. But totally go in a different direction? I don't know how people do that. It's still happening.

[00:35:29] Poorva Joshipura: Yeah, and, and we need you. And even if you do decide to go in another direction, you know, again, think about how you can still bring the animal message into that other direction. Because you can, you can do it even if you fly a plane for a living, you can still do it. You can bring it into anything, really.

Because a lot of times we also need allies to work from the inside, you could even say. You know, you might even work for a corporation that's not so kind to animals. Well, you can try to change that.

[00:35:57] Mariann Sullivan: Well, even it's even more important to be out there, like, in the quote, unquote, real world talking to people and the amazing thing about this book is that .And that's, I think, what would make people particularly eager to read it and able to read it, even though it's not fun in some places. Though it is very well written and enjoyably written.

I don't want to make it sound worse than it is, but the reason to get there is the most amazing tool to talk to people, and to be active because it gives, I mean, I was shocked by some of this information. So it's just so interesting and if you can just throw out these facts to people, and it's all about human welfare, it is an amazing tool to be able to become active with.

[00:36:36] Poorva Joshipura: Yes, and I wanted to equip activists, you know, as well with ways that you can find common ground, or draw parallels between the experiences of, you know, say someone who cares about the environment or human rights, and you can say, well, I care about that too.

And this is how we share this common ground. And this is why you also need to care about animal rights..

[00:37:01] Mariann Sullivan: Absolutely. It's an amazing tool and I think it will open many conversations and it's a lot of it's super interesting too. I don't want to make it sound too difficult to read. Survival At Stake, how our treatment of animals is key to human existence, published by HarperCollins. Really impressive.

That's just a good sign about what's going on that a publisher of that repute considers this an important topic. And, you can, as they say, get it wherever books are sold.

[00:37:28] Poorva Joshipura: Yes. And I started thinking about writing the book during the COVID 19 pandemic and I think the COVID pandemic, even if one day it is confirmed that, okay, it's come from a lab leak, well the whole reason that they were studying coronaviruses was because of SARS.

[00:37:47] Mariann Sullivan: It's so crazy that people are like, as if it could have come from a wet market. Like, Yeah, it would be interesting to know. We're probably never going to know. And it's really not very important because it could have come from a wet market. It could have come from loads of places. That's the problem.

Sorry.

[00:38:06] Poorva Joshipura: That's it. You know, I completely and in fact, I even say in the book that okay, you know at the time of writing, most of the fingers are pointing to covid having come from animals at a wildlife meat market, but even if it did or even if it didn't it in many ways, it's so irrelevant, you know, the even the lab leak theory.

That laboratory in Wuhan was studying coronaviruses because of the risk that humans face from SARS. SARS definitely came from animals at a wildlife markets and restaurants. And, you know, and as you say, it could have, it's a whole possibility. That's the whole reason why it's another leading theory.

[00:38:51] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

[00:38:52] Poorva Joshipura: And it's not just limited to COVID and SARS. You have maris, which has come from camels. And, you know, oftentimes it's thought to be transmitted to humans through things like camel milk and not just only being around camels who are often so mistreated for their milk and their meat and their skin.

And then you also have countless other zoonotic diseases that we are facing because of our treatment of animals. So, it still comes back to the very same point, the very same lesson, but I think COVID gave a lot of people food for thought. And it's when I got inspired to write the book.

I've also had, I've lost a friend to HIV. He developed AIDS, this is years ago, who I also talk about in the book. I have another friend who has HIV. So there's all of these issues that I talk about in the book. It would be hard to find somebody now on planet Earth who hasn't been at least directly affected by at least one of the issues I cover in the book.

And so, it is happening now, all of these things, it's happening now, as I speak. And so I think HarperCollins also recognized the importance of getting this information out.

[00:40:08] Mariann Sullivan: Clearly, I think it's really a sign of the times and I'm so glad that they published it. I'm so glad it's out there. I encourage everybody to buy it. Thank you so much for joining us today to talk about it, Poorva.

[00:40:19] Poorva Joshipura: My pleasure.