The Hen Report: “It’s Not All About the Food” | Shrimp Welfare, AVA Summit, and Wildlife Crossings

[00:00:14] Jasmin Singer: And this is Murray. Uh, yeah. No, Michael, we're so happy you're with us. Michael is our resident rooster. Is that weird?

[00:00:23] Michael Dorf: Uh, it's creepy, I think.

[00:00:25] Mariann Sullivan: I object to that term.

[00:00:26] Jasmin Singer: Okay.

[00:00:27] Mariann Sullivan: The term I wanna use is wingman.

[00:00:30] Michael Dorf: There you go.

[00:00:31] Jasmin Singer: That's, that's a lot

[00:00:32] Michael Dorf: Yeah.

[00:00:33] Jasmin Singer: Yeah, actually he is kind of our wingman.

[00:00:35] Mariann Sullivan: I love roosters and I think that, you know, it's really, really great that there's this like really, uh, unequal sex differentiation in the chicken world. All power to them. But I, I don't wanna reiterate that.

[00:00:48] Jasmin Singer: Okay. I mean, Hen House has a kind of feminist vibe. Like that was partly where we were coming from back in 1839 when we started the podcast.

[00:00:58] Michael Dorf: I'm happy to be an honorary hen.

[00:01:00] Jasmin Singer: Okay. You know what? Let's go with that. So you join us every now and then to talk about what's on your mind, and I like to know what's on your mind.

I just wanna say for our listeners that we had like 9,000 tech problems this morning. And one of the ways it was doing the soundcheck was asking everyone to say what they had for breakfast and you, yours was just really impressive. So before we actually get your thoughts, tell our listeners what's fueling you right

[00:01:28] Michael Dorf: now.

Well, I had some oatmeal with, some blackberries, some blueberries, soy milk, cinnamon cardamom, and cloves. And then I had a, uh, soy cappuccino to go with that.

[00:01:40] Jasmin Singer: So was today's C day 'cause it was like cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, cappuccino. Like do you go through the alphabet?

[00:01:48] Michael Dorf: Yeah, no, that's just part of my standard spice mix for my oatmeal.

[00:01:51] Jasmin Singer: Spicy. I like it. Alright, let's talk about what you are here to talk about today. I, so I watched this video that you sent me and Mariann, can you frame it for our listeners.

[00:02:03] Michael Dorf: Sure. So this was a segment on the Daily Show, which is this sort of, you know, humorous take on the news. It airs four nights a week roughly. And it was a segment hosted by Ronny Chieng, who's a comedian. He's one of their regular hosts. And it was an interview with a guy who is one of the leaders of an organization that is trying to make the harvesting and killing of shrimp for food less cruel, by focusing on various reforms.

And what struck me about it was the incredible sort of dismissiveness of Ronny Chieng, who's a comedian I like very much. And I don't think it's particular to him, but the idea that somebody who wanted to make the world a little better would waste his time caring about the welfare of shrimp struck him as so facially preposterous that it was just worth mocking without even considering.

At the same time, there was nonetheless an interesting point that Chieng made, right? Which was that, oh, but we're still eating them. Right? And I thought that that, you know, from the wrong side of the equation, nonetheless, captured some of the difficulty of working for relatively small improvements in animal welfare.

Without thinking of it as a step towards the elimination of animal agriculture or aquaculture, or in this case, harvesting from the open ocean.

[00:03:45] Jasmin Singer: So, yeah, it's just about six minutes long. We are gonna link to it in the show notes for people who wanna watch it.

[00:03:52] Mariann Sullivan: It is worth watching, even though i I didn't wanna watch it, but it's worth watching.

[00:03:56] Jasmin Singer: Yeah, I, so it's funny that you, you just explained my emotional trajectory watching it. I actually am not super keen on that particular comedian, like when he's hosting for the usual host, whose name I'm blanking on.

[00:04:08] Michael Dorf: Well, they now rotate among four of the, the four of them. Yeah.

[00:04:11] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah,

But John Stewart used to be the main host.

[00:04:13] Michael Dorf: He still does it once a week.

now. So now that, yeah, that's their new format.

[00:04:17] Jasmin Singer: What is it with these hosts doing things once a week? Do John Stewart and Rachel Maddow hang out all of the other days that they're no longer hosting? Well, in any case, I, at the beginning I was like, this is like offensive and I feel like a caricature being offended by it. And then I thought, okay, well that's kind of what humor does though.

I mean, it turns things on its head. Smart political humor and there was something, I guess, poignant about it. I just don't think that someone would come out of watching that, rethinking their choice of eating sea life.

[00:04:53] Michael Dorf: No, certainly not. You know, and I, I was, it just occurred to me, you know, thinking of other satirical interventions, The Onion very occasionally will have sort of very hard hitting pieces that, you know, I'm sure were put together by vegans or at least people who are sort of sympathetic to the movement.

Uh, this was not that, it just happened that in the course of mocking the caring about the welfare of shrimp, it also made a point that one might make about the limits of welfare reforms.

[00:05:27] Jasmin Singer: Marianne, what did you think?

[00:05:29] Mariann Sullivan: I, I first started watching it, I thought it was horrible and I hated it. And then I sort of came and I kind of wondered why, I don't remember the guy's name, but the guy who runs or founded the Shrimp Welfare Project, who's very, very wealthy and he is an effective altruist and he is using his money in that way. And then as I was watching it, I thought, if you were gonna design a way to get people who think they're completely unsympathetic to this idea, to at least listen to the fact that they gouge their eyes out, and that's horrible, this was pretty effective. I, I mean, I thought that in a way, I don't know whether he intended it that way or not, but in a way this was a pretty decent way to get people to even listen. 'cause most people, when they hear this idea are gonna immediately have the same reaction that, you know, one felt the piece was trying to convey IE this is ridiculous. These are an appetizer. As he said, we're, we're trying to protect appetizers from cruelty or something like that.

And, but it did manage to get the thought across that what we do to them is horrifying. And you know, I'm also thinking of our friend Bob Fisher who works in this area though with not with shrimp, with insects, and who makes the point that even though it is insanely hard to get people to care about cows, you actually could make some progress with these, these minor, but really important welfare reforms, considering that we're torturing trillions of creatures, and have people like make some reforms. And if so, why not? And I thought that this was not a bad approach to getting people to at least think about that.

Am I crazy? Since when have I ever been the person in the group who who, who was the most forgiving?

[00:07:08] Michael Dorf: Yeah, no, I don't. I don't. I certainly don't think you're crazy. One of the interesting things to me is, you know, I think it might have alerted some people who otherwise never would've thought about this, that shrimp have heads and eyes. because what. Right. That went because when their, you know, when, when their bodies are served for human consumption, their heads are ripped off.

There's a actually a scene in the, it's, I dunno, it's 20 years old now. The movie Shark Tale. I dunno if you remember Shark Tale, right? There's this shark who doesn't want to be a shark. and um, cause he's got a kind heart and there are a couple of shrimp pleading with him not to eat them.

And they, you know, they're anthropomorphized shrimp, but they've got the little eyes and, you know, you see them as actual creatures. And so maybe that will be a, an effect of this segment. If we can talk for a moment about the effect of altruism piece, one of the things, you know, that to me that's so interesting, but in a way, kind of off-putting about the effect of altruism movement is the, you know, the sort of utilitarian calculus of it, right? Which says that, well, we should care the most about insects, or in this case, shrimp, because we kill and exploit them by orders of magnitude more, in terms of numbers, than land animals.

And, you know, that is horrifying, but it's not clear to me that that's the right calculus. I had a conversation many years ago with somebody who at, at the time I was, I think I was on the first stage of the way to becoming vegan. And I had stopped eating mammals.

And this was someone who had no interest in animals, but he said, that's crazy. You should eat only, only big animals. You should just eat cows because you know, you'll eat one in the course of the year. If you're eating chickens, you're eating, you know, a couple of hundred of 'em or whatever, whatever it was.

And I thought, like, he's not entirely wrong, but that seems like the wrong way to think about it. And so I have a little bit of that reaction to, you know, we should care about shrimp because there are so many of them being harmed. We should care about shrimp because like any other animal, they're suffering and we could avoid doing that to them.

[00:09:16] Jasmin Singer: I just wonder if the effective altruists who aren't yet vegan would be the ones to be reached by that, which, like, now we're really talking about a niche here. You know, like a very, a subset of a subset, a wealthy niche, which is what I hope that my niche becomes a wealthy niche, so that when I'm old, she takes care of me.

Well, what were you gonna say, Mariann?

[00:09:39] Mariann Sullivan: That's an interesting idea that it could reach other effective altruists because I was sort of going to say that, that it's really hard to know what works because nothing does. And no matter what we like, we can't seem to convince people that they should be nice to cows, so why worry about, you know, whether we're focusing on insects or, or shrimp or whatever, because we can't seem to figure out what works for people. And I do think that effective altruists, God love them. And I, I also have a lot of hesitations about this is the way to go, but they have, there is, you know, it seems to be a certain kind of personality that, you know, really likes to count things and measure things and certainly. I think as much as effective altruism is criticized, it has brought into this idea that our altruism should be effective, which I think we can all agree about.

Maybe they aren't applying the same standards, but at least, I'm not sure people really used to think like, how much good would will this do? I just think that if, if those people wanna spend their money, it's usually their money, uh, and they usually have really a lot of it on making things better for shrimp. I'm all for it. Like it's

not what I would do with my money, but I'm all for it.

[00:10:55] Jasmin Singer: I know that Michael,

[00:10:56] Mariann Sullivan: I'm so nice today!

[00:10:58] Jasmin Singer: I don't know what's going on, but I, I know you have a hard a few minutes, so I just wanna bring this up real quick and we can end here if you want, but I do have some good news and a callback, which is that this made me think of when the late and great animal activist, bird activist, Karen Davis of, of United Poultry Concerns influenced Ira Glass, who talked all about it on the Tonight, uh, no on David Letterman in 2008, I think, and he went on David Letterman and talked about how he met this woman, Karen Davis, for whom chickens are individuals, and Ira then stopped eating them.

So this was on also a late night show. And then, I mean, every person stopped eating chickens, right? Like everyone who watched it stopped eating chickens. Remember those old days when people ate them and, and so now that the shrimp are being talked about in the same way, people will stop eating them.

That's what happened, right?

[00:12:00] Michael Dorf: Absolutely that is, that is the rec my recollection of the timeline in which we're actually living.

[00:12:06] Mariann Sullivan: I would like to say like long ago in the past, maybe it, not just that people used to eat chickens, but at least that chickens used to have kind of the same place in the movement that people would be like, why would you worry about chickens when we have cows and pigs to worry about?

And there was that same kind of attitude that people now talk about vis-a-vis insects and I guess people care about what they care about and if they care about any, any animals at all. And they're not eating any animals at all.

[00:12:35] Jasmin Singer: Right.

[00:12:35] Mariann Sullivan: Remember we did that. I mean, we've mentioned this before, but we did that talk on effective altruism at NYU.

At NYU with Peter Singer, and they called us up and asked us would we do this talk on the other side of effective altruism. And it was 2015. We were both like, what's effective altruism? Yeah, sure. We'll do a talk.

[00:12:54] Michael Dorf: Yeah. I, so I, I give a talk at Summerfest. I'm not giving it this year 'cause I've given it a couple times already on, uh, what I, call effective activism, which tries to bring in some of the lessons of effective altruism without going all the way in on, you know, long-termism and all of these other ideas that they have.

Yeah.

[00:13:13] Mariann Sullivan: There are good points to be made about effectiveness, and I, I wanna see that talk well, like maybe next

[00:13:19] Michael Dorf: Okay.

[00:13:19] Jasmin Singer: Well, Michael, I hope that next time you come to talk about something, Mariann is also in a nice mood. If we could arrange that, that would be great.

[00:13:28] Mariann Sullivan: My, my nice mood worked primarily to contradict what, what you were both saying. So that's as nice as I can get. Well, not exactly contradict.

[00:13:37] Jasmin Singer: But thank you for joining us, Michael. We love your brain.

[00:13:39] Michael Dorf: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

[00:14:54] Jasmin Singer: Just like that Michael has left the hen house.

[00:14:57] Mariann Sullivan: Michael has left the building.

[00:14:58] Jasmin Singer: Are you still nice Mariann? Or, or,

[00:15:01] Mariann Sullivan: I dunno, I don't know. It came upon me so suddenly and so out of character.

[00:15:06] Jasmin Singer: Maybe you're having a seizure or something.

[00:15:09] Mariann Sullivan: I think it's just that I'm contrarian. You know, Michael was criticizing somebody, so I said, no, I have to stick up. I, I just disagree. Well, I didn't I mean, I agreed with like 90% of what he said.

I just had a somewhat more charitable view.

[00:15:22] Jasmin Singer: You know, you know

[00:15:23] Mariann Sullivan: Is unlike me, but you know, like I said, I'm oppositional.

[00:15:26] Jasmin Singer: The people in my life who I am the closest to, so you, Moore, and my best friend Erica, who I just spent time with in LA, are all like that. Like you're all, it's, it's just a commonality that you have this contrarian spirit.

[00:15:42] Mariann Sullivan: When we all get together, we all get along very nicely.

[00:15:45] Jasmin Singer: It's not, they're not mutually exclusive. It's like a reaction to the world, more so than like a reaction to who you're sitting in front of, I think. Anyway, why don't we remind our listeners and viewers here on YouTube, we have now three separate podcasts. It's the our henhouse, you know, and, and love, hopefully, unless you're a masochist and are watching this to suffer.

[00:16:09] Mariann Sullivan: Well, that's a large proportion of our audience, I'm sure.

[00:16:13] Jasmin Singer: Rising anxieties is coming out on Tuesdays.

[00:16:16] Mariann Sullivan: That just came out.

[00:16:17] Jasmin Singer: The Hen Report, which is this, is coming out on Thursdays, and our long form interview is coming out on Fridays. So thank you for sticking with us during this time of transition.

And if you're listening to this, we are on YouTube now, so please subscribe and like it, even if you're not planning

[00:16:34] Mariann Sullivan: Even if you hate it, please like it.

[00:16:36] Jasmin Singer: And Mariann, you have an animal law.

[00:16:39] Mariann Sullivan: Yes, this week's interview is actually the Animal Law Podcast interview. I think that everybody will wanna listen to it. I do. Uh, Will Lowrey of Animal Partisan, who I just love, and David Rosengard of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, will be talking about a case that they basically, a case that they lost. I hardly ever interview people about cases that they lost, but there's this hope, certainly for me that this case is going to be kind of a model and they're gonna bring other cases in a very similar vein. And it's a really interesting new strategy. You know, everyday people can be part of this strategy, not just police or prosecutors. Because it does have to do with cruelty laws, and it does have to do with enforcing cruelty laws.

And as we know, that is usually up to the cops, not up to us. But in a lot of states, not just where they, they were in Minnesota, but in a lot of states there's some statute that. They're hardly ever used, especially for institutional animal abuse, they're used occasionally for, you know, dog and cat kind of cases where people can obtain warrants to investigate animal cruelty and to have the authorities investigate animal cruelty that they know is occurring, but that they can't get the authorities to respond to, which, you know, that happens all the time.

And they can go to court and ask the court to issue a warrant that it has to be investigated. This specific case involved this horrific cruelty caused by ventilation shutdown plus the plus refers to, they not only shut off the ventilation, but they also add heat, to respond to avian influenza, which, you know, the industry is using like, on just like it, it's inconceivable how many chickens are being killed and turkeys in this instance because it was at one of Jenny O's, which is a Turkey company, huge Turkey company, one of their hell holes, in Minnesota. So they were using the Minnesota law. But like I said, there are other, and even though they lost, there are other laws like this elsewhere.

There's one in New York I know, and they are. One thing that they talked about to the extent that they were able is another case that they're prepping right now to pursue this in another state. So I think it's fascinating. It's not super duper legal, you know, all of the acronyms and all of that. So even if you're not a lawyer, I think that you probably would enjoy it, just really great work being done.

[00:18:55] Jasmin Singer: Well, I'm looking forward to hearing it, and I have to tell you, I like it when we talk to people about the, you know, quote unquote losing. Remember we recently had those fantastic activists from the Animal Policy Alliance on, and one of them had just come out of what I think he more or less framed as an unsuccessful campaign in DC And I, I found it utterly fascinating.

And to talk about like what lessons were gleaned from losing a

[00:19:25] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. I agree, and this made me rethink it, but it really depends on whether there's now a plan. If it's just a loss and that's, it's over, like who wants to hear about that? That's just sad.

[00:19:37] Jasmin Singer: Right. Yeah, agreed. Well, so I was talking to my literary agent recently, and she was telling me that she was at a book event with a successful author, and he started talking about the books that didn't sell and that wound up in a drawer and. he was sort of apologizing for, say, talking about it, and she went up to him afterwards and said, we need more people talking about the books that didn't sell.

And I mean, the sad for me part is that she was making the point to me about a, a book I wrote that is in a drawer. And she was like, see, you'll have a success later. And I was thinking, I want you to take it out of the drawer!

It was like not the right

[00:20:16] Mariann Sullivan: Oh, it's so hard to get a book published. Oh my God. It's so hard to get a book published.

[00:20:22] Jasmin Singer: And this was, this was fiction, and I'll just say, uh, in case anyone is nerding out on this, that the problem that I'm having is actually a good problem that people would maybe want to have, I guess, which is that the two books that I've written, which are non-fiction, are both with an imprint of what's called the Big Five.

So the big publishers one with Penguin Random House, and one with Hachete. And so therefore my agent thinks that it would be not the best strategic move to move to a non Big five publisher. So

[00:20:53] Mariann Sullivan: And this is something, I'm sorry, but this is something you've been working on in a much bigger, uh, context, right? Not just getting your own book published, but working with other people. And we promised last week that you would talk a little bit about what happened at Ava Animal and Vegan Activism. Is that right? Um, conference and it has a lot to do with book publishing, right?

[00:21:16] jasmin-singer-_2_05-21-2025_113541: Animal and Vegan Advocacy.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good transition. Um, I don't talk about this very often, but I am the director of author strategy at World Shapers, which is a fairly new non-profit. I've been there for probably about six months now, and it's really an incredible organization.

You could check it out at worldshapers.com. I'm not gonna go too much into it right now 'cause I wanna tell you about Ava, but more or less it, it helps, for lack of a better word, thought leaders to sort of hone their skills and ideate book books and then write the books, publish them. Do the PR for them, et cetera.

And it's not only books that just happens to be a large portion of what we do. So I was at Ava with World Shapers, although of course everyone I knew, I knew by way of Our Hen House and that was lovely. Like just to run into so many of you. Uh, some listeners also, which was wonderful. So yeah, as you said, I just got back from the Ava conference while my voice is a little hoarse.

My voice is a pony. In fact. Get it. Little hoarse.

[00:22:23] Mariann Sullivan: Move on.

[00:22:24] Jasmin Singer: No. Okay. My inbox is complete chaos. My introvert battery is flashing red, but I wanna share some thoughts with you before I completely melt into my couch with my emotional support animals, one of whom is currently sitting on my lap.

This year Ava was, was really a lot, and I mean that in every sense of the word. There were a lot of sessions, a lot of people, a lot of feelings, uh, a lot of oat milk. I will never get tired of a coffee station that has only non-dairy. You know, they, they did that recently at the Climate Solutions Accelerator Summit here in Rochester, which is fully vegan and I love it.

That's so, that's nice. So I decided to present this to you in, in listicle format as a magazine person. Listicle being the stupidest word in the English language.

10 things that the AVA Conference taught me about the animal rights movement in 2025. Are

[00:23:21] Mariann Sullivan: I was, I didn't know you were gonna do this.

[00:23:23] Jasmin Singer: Yeah. Well, please interrupt me...

[00:23:24] Mariann Sullivan: I always do.

[00:23:25] Jasmin Singer: Uh, and by by which which, by which I mean, please interrupt me at any point. Okay. So. This is the first thing the movement is growing up sort of. Ava made it clear that we're not just a grassroots community anymore. We're a full-blown ecosystem of organizations and futurists and strategists and techies and media makers, and yes, still a few folks handing

[00:23:51] Mariann Sullivan: Nothing wrong with handing out leaflet. That's that is that is my, those are my people.

[00:23:57] Jasmin Singer: You know what's funny, little aside, when Moore and I were watching Rachel Maddow like about a month ago, and she was interviewing someone who was talking about Tesla, and he kind of joked and said, it's not just the old ladies protesting in front of a Tesla dealership. And Moore and I were like, he didn't.

And then at the end of his little spiel, Rachel goes. I

[00:24:22] Mariann Sullivan: She was pissed. I saw that piece too, and it was clear she wasn't just kidding around.

[00:24:28] Jasmin Singer: Yeah.

would we be without it? I mean, truly, truly, take a look at the, uh, those badass posters of the old anti vivisectionists, like those older women with the, like, you know, don't, don't mess with me face. Anyway, so yeah, I feel like especially having had been to the old AR conferences, et cetera, back in the day, this is clear as day to me, but with that growth, as we know, comes some growing pains. And there were full sessions about leadership turnover, burnout, and actually how to sustain a movement that historically runs on caffeine and outrage. Uh, and if you count the conference, oat milk. So that's my number one. We're growing up. Number two, movement building isn't just a buzzword anymore.

Almost every single conversation came back to one thing, which is how do we build power together and how do we keep it from falling apart? So from, why did you quit panels to discussions on how to build funding equity for Bipoc led groups? It did feel like the movement was finally starting to look inward.

Well, not in a naval ga gazing way, but in a, let's get our house in order if we wanna win kind of way. I see a little bit of

[00:25:44] Mariann Sullivan: Oh, I, I'm, I'm just, I, I guess I was just a little con, you know. As a general matter, working together can be good. And I really, really think that infighting has been a huge problem in the movement. But you know, I mean, there's always been a problem in this movement of expecting everybody to get on the same page and people usually want them to be on their page.

A certain amount of agreeing to disagree is required. That's all I was thinking. I didn't mean to reveal it in my face. I forgot we're on YouTube now.

[00:26:13] Jasmin Singer: I agree. Well, not only that, but you texted me like a week ago and you, you said you have to work on your YouTube face. What did you mean by that?

Um,

Oh, no. Okay.

[00:26:23] Mariann Sullivan: I mean, I, I've, I've just always been, uh, of the opinion that, we're going to disagree about other things and we're not all gonna agree about everything and learning to deal with that, I think it's an really important growth factor. So if that's what you mean by it, not getting everybody on the same page, but accepting the fact that we're a book with pages all, uh, going together.

Oh, we're back to a book metaphor. All right, we're on 0.2 and you have 10.

[00:26:51] Jasmin Singer: Okay, number three, tech is here and it's complicated.

AI was everywhere. There were sessions on using it for nonprofit operations, campaign messaging, research and social media content.

Some folks were cautiously excited. Others I would say were nervously skeptical. And I would say too, both feelings are valid. The promise is definitely there, right? Like faster data analysis, broader reach, slicker tools. But the pitfalls are equally real. There's bias, there's disconnection, there's ethical landmines.

it's like tofu. It's amazing when used well, deeply weird if you don't know what you're doing.

[00:27:33] Mariann Sullivan: well Boy, having taught a class recently, and I, I never told the students they couldn't use ai. Um, but I said, but don't let me see it. And sometimes you just really can see it. You have to write. It's a tool. It is not a substitute for For intelligence.

[00:27:51] Jasmin Singer: Uh, well, we could talk about this ad nauseum

Yeah. many thoughts about this, but I did also teach a class you know, at the U of R on writing. And I knew they were gonna use it, so I just brought it into the class and we did things.

This might have been your idea. We, we had them write an essay and had AI write an essay, and we compared and contrasted so.

Alright, number four, intersectionality is the backbone, not a side dish. So DEI wasn't tacked on this year. It was infused throughout and there were deep conversations about food sovereignty and political diversity and disability justice, faith-based activism. There were panels with Indigenous leaders, organizers of color, queer activists, folks from the global south, not as tokens, but as experts and that's about time. Because if our movement isn't actively working to include everyone, we're just replicating the same systems of harms that we say we wanna dismantle. And I'll add that it wasn't good enough. I mean, there's still a long way to go, but I did feel like there was a bit of a shift from yesteryear, so that was good. Five, forgotten animals are being remembered, and this ties into what we were just talking to Michael about insects, amphibians, aquatic animals, wild animals. They weren't just mentioned. They had panels, multiple panels. I think

[00:29:12] Mariann Sullivan: Wild, wild animals have always been an important part of the movement. I think. I mean, not the, not the main focus because the disaster of domesticated animals is so huge, but there have always been, a lot of wild animal initiatives. Yeah. The insects not so much.

[00:29:28] Jasmin Singer: I agree. But in terms of the animals who people eat, for some inexplicable reason, there has been a, and continues to be, I think, a shift toward non charismatic animals, I will say, although maybe they're very charismatic and I just am looking at it through a

[00:29:43] Mariann Sullivan: Oh, charisma is in the eye of the beholder.

[00:29:46] Jasmin Singer: It's true. Uh, our movement has for good reason long centered cows and

pigs, and, and chickens. And that's still critical.

[00:29:54] Mariann Sullivan: ' Cause we haven't gotten anywhere... as she laughs.

[00:29:59] Jasmin Singer: I thought it was interesting that the animals who we have frequently left behind because they're small or slimy or less marketable on Instagram, they, they had panels.

[00:30:10] Mariann Sullivan: No, I'm not surprised that that's definitely clear from, from watching social media and whatever that Yeah, there's a lot of money going into, um, and from a, you know, talking to our friend Bob Fisher, who we talk to all the time, and he works in that area, who I just mentioned. It's his second shout out on this, on this episode.

[00:30:29] Jasmin Singer: Bob and I had a meeting in a hot tub

[00:30:31] Mariann Sullivan: Oh, right. I saw a picture of that. It looked very suggestive.

[00:30:35] Jasmin Singer: It wasn't,

[00:30:36] Mariann Sullivan: it looked it but it was, it was a, I what's going on there? from

[00:30:40] Jasmin Singer: all meetings from here on out should be in a hot

tub.

[00:30:44] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. I I, I'm gonna pass on that. I.

[00:30:47] Jasmin Singer: Okay. Moore won't let me get anyway, even if we could afford one because they're very energy intensive.

[00:30:53] Mariann Sullivan: I would imagine. They're hot.

[00:30:55] Jasmin Singer: Yeah. They are hot. Another thing that was hot this year was this topic.

People are tired and they're saying it out loud. Now, I don't know why I'm framing that as a revelation since I've been tired for 45 years plus and have been saying it out loud for at least 43 of those years.

[00:31:13] Mariann Sullivan: The the millennials. They complain more than we do.

That's not a criticism like it, it's good that they complain, but they do.

[00:31:23] Jasmin Singer: Let's talk about those sessions on grief and trauma and emotional resilience, because for a long time, the movement treated burnout like a personal failure instead of a systemic issue, I think. But now there's a real focus on care, community care, organizational care, nervous system care.

So I think there was a shift towards sustainability of people, not just strategy. And I think that's long overdue because you can't build a liberated

[00:31:50] Mariann Sullivan: I think I feel like people have, have always talked about that. There's probably more of it, but I don't think it, it used to be absent. I think people always knew that, that it's a huge problem in our movement because the knowledge that we deal with is so devastating that, that a lot of people just, you know, fall by the wayside and can't, can't take that amount of trauma.

I mean, it's just, we exist in a traumatizing situation knowing what's happening to animals. I don't think it's new to recognize that, but I think maybe the tools that people will have to deal with it are a lot better than they used to be.

[00:32:26] Jasmin Singer: I also think this is an completely anecdotal, but I also think that nonprofits are are not always running the employees into the ground anymore. For the most part, I think that there's an understanding of taking time off, things like that. Probably because as you just said, a lot of the millennials are, are helming

[00:32:45] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, they, they don't take this shit anymore. We were a bunch of dodos.

[00:32:49] Jasmin Singer: Right, right. Uh, okay. I think you'll like the next one. Uh, number seven, the communications game is getting savvier. So there were panels on going viral, to workshops on writing books, pitching op-eds, producing documentaries. One thing in those was very clear. Storytelling is our sharpest tool and, and our dullest if we don't sharpen it.

So good ideas. Are great. But in this attention economy, if they don't stick, if they don't make people feel something, then they don't go anywhere. And the movement is leaning into this. There's less academic speak and more kitchen table conversation. So, uh, less preaching, more connecting.

[00:33:33] Mariann Sullivan: Huh? No, I, I, I mean that does intrigue me. I wouldn't say that I'm very good at that, but I, it does intrigue me to find out more.

[00:33:40] Jasmin Singer: Maybe you are great at it though, because we're in year 15 people are, at least a few people are still listening, so

[00:33:48] Mariann Sullivan: Apparently, I'm, I'm just brilliant at everything.

[00:33:52] Jasmin Singer: There was a panel on how you're brilliant at everything. Uh

[00:33:56] Mariann Sullivan: I, I do not think of myself as a great communicator, but you know, I, like we were just talking about how I'm a contrarian I don't know. Let's, let's stop talking about me.

[00:34:05] Jasmin Singer: Okay. Number eight. this hearkens back to something you just brought up a few minutes ago. There's a real hunger for collaboration across borders, sectors, and idealogies.

[00:34:14] Mariann Sullivan: Totally. Oh, this is, I could not agree more about this one.

[00:34:19] Jasmin Singer: Yeah. Uh, whether it was meetups for activists across Africa, conversations about working with conservatives, which I didn't attend, but I heard was amazing, or efforts to connect funders with on the ground organizers. The energy was less we've got it all figured out and more who else should be at this table? And yes, that sometimes results in uncomfortable conversations, but discomfort is not the enemy, as we know, complacency is. So, uh, yeah, there's a real hunger for that and I hope that that continues

[00:34:53] Mariann Sullivan: I'm not even sure of what the uncomfortable conversations are. I mean, I'm sure they occur, but, but I just think the, the sense of community, like everyone needs it and this movement should have it more than anybody. 'cause there are so few of us who get it when we meet each other and we know, We recognize, you know, another person who gets it. We immediately feel that sense of connection and everybody needs connection. But I think we need it more than anybody because, you know, so many of the, the people in our lives in general, they may love us, we may love them, but they just don't get the most important thing about us, which is heartbreaking.

[00:35:31] Jasmin Singer: Yeah, totally. Well, another thing that's heartbreaking is the next one, uh, this one is a mixed bag. Climate was present but still not fully integrated. And there were definitely sessions connecting animal ag to climate collapse, uh, and food systems change. But the climate crisis, I don't think it was as front and center as you'd expect

[00:35:57] Mariann Sullivan: That we're all gonna die.

[00:35:59] Jasmin Singer: And I am not saying center the humans. I'm saying, you know, how do we better center the animals in discussions about the climate? Because there is still quite a gap between animal advocacy and the climate movement. And if we want mainstream traction, we've got to bridge it urgently and unapologetically. And I'm not quite sure we were there yet at this conference.

[00:36:20] Mariann Sullivan: I mean, I'm not saying it's the fault of our movement, it's more choices that other movements are making and the climate movement in general. And I do think that that is shifting. It's just, you know, like there's just some human thing that until it's right in front of you, and it's, if it's all, it involves numbers and, and predictions and, and things that are, you know, not gonna happen like immediately, we just seem to be able to say, oh yeah, we will fix that.

It'll be okay. maybe not.

[00:36:55] Jasmin Singer: I mentioned the cli, the Climate Solutions Accelerator Summit a few minutes ago, which was blissfully all vegan so in that way they're a group that's walking the walk for sure.

[00:37:05] Mariann Sullivan: The climate movement is getting, I mean, it used to be completely closed to the whole food issue, and that's definitely shifted.

[00:37:11] Jasmin Singer: But it's not really being discussed that much in the climate movement. Like there's not, I would love at the Climate Solutions Accelerator Summit next year for there to be a whole talk on the animal connection and factory farming and alternatives to that. But, but since I'm talking about Ava now, the same holds true.

I mean, how can advocates bring animals into the environmental world? I think that that would be a good thing to explore at a conference like this. Alright, my 10th and sort of final thing, I do have a honorary mention afterwards, is that our movement has range and that's a good thing.

There was a lot of range there were grassroots street activism, policy, TikTok creators, scholars, spiritual leaders, startup founders. They were all there. It wasn't always cohesive, but it was undeniably alive. And that is probably my biggest takeaway and, and what gives me the most hope today, not that the movement is growing, but that it's growing out and it's making room for new voices and new tactics and new ways of showing up for animals. Because at the end of the day, it's not just a fight against injustice, it's a movement for something, for compassion, for liberation and, and for connection. Oh, and yeah, karaoke.

There was

[00:38:32] Mariann Sullivan: Wow. Glad I missed that. All right. I do have a question. Like how much, how much was taken up by companion animal issues, anything? Because companion animal issues used to be a big part of the conferences when I used to go to them. I mean, I, I went to a few of them. and there were always a lot of panels on companion animals and you haven't mentioned companion animals once.

[00:38:53] Jasmin Singer: No, I, I don't think there was anything. I mean, there, I don't have the agenda in front of me, but I don't remember any,

uh, yeah, so, and are you sure you're not referring to TAFA?

[00:39:04] Mariann Sullivan: Well, TAFA probably had, that was another, a conference Taking Action for Animals, which was sponsored by Humane Society of the United States. And that included, I mean, 'cause obviously companion animals were a huge part and still are of their brief, but also the, um, The Animal Rights Conference. That's all I remember it being called Animal Rights Conference. They, no, there were definitely companion animal panels. There was always recognition for as long as I've been involved that companion animals have always been a large area of concern for activists.

And one of the focuses of that conference was broadening that particularly to food animals also to animals captured in vivisection, you know, to broaden it. But there was also discussion of companion animal issues, and I do think that a lot of our potential audience is with people who care about companion animals.

I mean, that's how so many of us came to this movement.

[00:39:57] Jasmin Singer: Yeah, I did, I had a conversation with a woman who, she sits on the board of a farmed animal sanctuary, but she runs a dog rescue.

[00:40:04] Mariann Sullivan: I mean, this isn't a criticism. I mean, you know, I was just curious.

[00:40:09] Jasmin Singer: I get it. The honorary mention by the way, is not, is not really from me, but it's from a lot of people who I overheard or who were chatting with me about this in one of our listeners, in fact came up

to me and said, and here it comes. Are you going to be talking about how bad the food was?

[00:40:28] Mariann Sullivan: Oh no.

[00:40:29] Jasmin Singer: The reason I'm not is because I didn't eat a lot of it. I was kind of eating my own stuff that I had brought with me. Oh, funny little aside, to my aside, we have this animal rights professionals gathering once a month here in Rochester because as the movement grows, a lot of people in Rochester are working in the movement for some reason.

And one of the people said he travels with a rice cooker. One of the Rochesterians. And then by complete coincidence, an hour later I was having a conversation with another Rochesterian, and he said he travels with a tea kettle. So, the moral of the story is that if you meet a Rochestarian who works in the movement they probably have an appliance with them.

[00:41:13] Mariann Sullivan: I mean a tea kettle that like most hotel rooms have like a coffee maker you can get hot water from.

[00:41:19] Jasmin Singer: I don't know, but we'll have to ask him. Anyway, so the food was apparently not great. I had one meal there, it was fine. It was like rice,

[00:41:29] Mariann Sullivan: I think that's unfortunate, but if there's one thing I believe, and I think that you also do too, it's not all about the food.

[00:41:36] Jasmin Singer: Oh, but I do have one food shout out and you know that I'm not really a foodie at all, but I was in LA for a few days before the conference staying with my best friend. And so we got to eat at various places. And my friends, who you probably know as the Spork sisters. Heather and Jenny, who were on Our Hen House many years ago.

They've been cookbook authors as well as teachers of

vegan cooking classes. They opened a restaurant.

It's called Hello Sunshine Kitchen, and it was actually pretty close to the airport hotel where the conference was.

So I was able to go there. It's fast casual, it's healthy, like kind of secretly

healthy, like there's vegetables snuck into their macaroni and

cheese kind of thing. It was epic.

[00:42:19] Mariann Sullivan: You were in la I'm not surprised that there was good food around.

[00:42:22] Jasmin Singer: Yeah, but hello Sunshine Kitchen next level. It was amazing. So if you didn't make it to Ava this year, I hope that this gave you a sense of what's shifting and what still needs work.

It's not perfect. It won't ever be perfect, but there's momentum and there's introspection, and there's a strong sense that we're starting to ask the questions, and that to me is progress. So,

How do you feel about the fact that you there now?

[00:42:47] Mariann Sullivan: Just had mixed feelings about it. I, I don't really like to travel and those conferences you know, uh. It can be a lot. Uh, but you know, every time you mention somebody you saw something, I was like, oh, I wish I saw that. I wish I was there. It does keep you on top of things and I like, to stay on top of things. I wish it was, um, I mean, I'm saying I wish it was like, you know, video, like they everybody did during COVID, but you know, I probably wouldn't have watched it anyway, so, so I, you know, I just feel sad, but it would not have been worth like that trip. Because especially now that we live in Rochester, it's not a direct flight.

So it's too like it took you all day going each way.

[00:43:29] Jasmin Singer: Yeah. The wifi wasn't working on the

plane, so I couldn't work, which I like to do.

[00:43:34] Mariann Sullivan: Oh my god. Did, did, uh, like did you murder anybody? Because I know what you're like on planes.

[00:43:39] Jasmin Singer: I had downloaded like 9,000 things before taking off. I, I listened to like the entire first season of this podcast called the Telepathy

Tapes, and it's about nonverbal autistic adults having telepathic skills.

[00:43:53] Mariann Sullivan: I have to listen to that.

[00:43:54] Jasmin Singer: It's fascinating. Anyway, that took a lot longer than I thought. Do you still wanna talk about these articles? Cause I think...

[00:44:00] Mariann Sullivan: I did set aside a bunch of articles to recommend. I'm gonna go through them instantly. The vegan land movement, one of our favorite charities, Gina Bates was on the podcast, um, on episode seven 50. They just, they're in the uk. They just bought another piece of animal agricultural land.

And they're gonna set it aside completely for wildlife. I love those people. The us another article was the us It has to do with the dietary guidelines. You know, they, they revise them every five years and it's coming up. I don't have a whole lot of hope, but a new, proposal from people who are it supposed to be reporting to the dietary guidelines people is recommending that the guidelines should emphasize beans and lentils as protein, not as vegetables, but as protein. Let's hope that that happens. And you know, this article was saying, well, people don't really follow them anyway, but that's really not the point with the dietary guidelines.

The dietary guidelines really govern, like governmental food programs like snap, assuming we're still gonna have Snap. I think, you know, some school food things, so they really, really matter. Alright. In Michigan, In Defense of Animals put out, um, I just love this, like all these people got together, they were upset that the Michigan Department of Natural Resources was killing Canada Geese, you know, Canada Geese, you think? We think that, oh my god, this everybody hates them, everybody hates them. Well, you know, apparently a hell of a lot of people in Michigan don't hate them. They put in this big campaign and now they have canceled the, their goose gassing.

They were gassing them. They were collecting them and gassing them and trying to come up with, uh, other alternative non-lethal solutions for Canada gas poop. And. A better understanding of the fact that not all pollution, that is blamed on Canada goose poop is from actually Canada geese.

So that's great news. Good for them. Um, PCRM is highlighting a bill, a new bill that would basically just require the government to inform people of how many animals are used in government funded experiments. Well, think of that just, you don't have to do anything about it. Just tell us how many of them you're torturing and killing. Because they don't do that right now. 'cause they don't like to. And this kind of goes, um, along with an article from Vox that I just recommend people read 'cause it's fascinating. The massive stakes of the Trump administration's plans to end animal testing. This is by Rachel Fobar, it's really interesting article about the fact that, and I mean, you've, you've all heard that EPA has been cutting down on, um, or plans to cut down on animal tests.

The Food and Drug Administration announced plans to phase out animal testing for monoclonal antibodies and some other drugs. And we've reported on this before, NIH is also, shifting away from animal testing. And this article just points out that, there's a lot of discomfort.

About the fact that the Trump administration is probably doing this for, as she said, the wrong reasons. They're doing it to save money. They're doing it to benefit, these, industries, like pesticides and whatever that don't wanna have to do this kind of testing. but on the other hand, you know, I think it's really important for us to recognize is that.

We don't have to feel bad about that. Sometimes politics make strange bedfellows, and this is certainly one of those instances and we don't have to be anti research in a general matter but we can also be really, really happy to see anybody moving away from animal research. So lots of food for thought.

Uh, that's a really short description, but there's lots of food for thought there that I think is worth having. And then I'll just mention this one story because I wanna do an animal law podcast on this story, but it isn't yet because you know, I don't like to do animal law podcast interviews until the case has been percolating for a while.

But this is, the story is so insane. So insane. The law firm that is taking up the case here is Farm Stand, and I really am loving their work. Recent graduates were told they were coming to the US for cultural exchange. They ended up trapped in a factory farm. This is it's on Sentient Media and it's by Nina Elcoti . And so these three Guatemalan, either recent college graduates or college students got these J one visas, which are not the kind of visas that most people working in factory farms have. Those are, the more standard H two A, um, agricultural workers. And the industry does not like those visas because they're short term and they want people long term.

So they got these people over here on this educational visa where they're supposed to be learning about culture and, and being educated in America and had them working in factory farms And basically threatened them that, if they tried to leave, they would be arrested by ice. And it's unbelievable what they did.

I mean, unbelievable. I mean, assuming these allegations are true and I can't wait to see this case play out, and I promise you if the lawyers are willing to do it. When the case gets a little further along, I will do an interview on this and that's it. Like I covered everything I had to cover in two and a half seconds.

[00:48:52] Jasmin Singer: That was good. Two and a half seconds. That's all it was. Well, are you in the mood for uh, reading Mariann? I know you're always in the mood for reading 'cause there's piles of books.

[00:49:04] Mariann Sullivan: That's not exactly the same thing, but there's a certain book in my house that I've been meaning to read and meaning to read and haven't read.

[00:49:12] Jasmin Singer: So Vicki did for you.

[00:49:13] Mariann Sullivan: Vicki actually reads the books that she buys.

[00:49:16] Jasmin Singer: Vicki is our producer and, and the director of operations, and an introvert, like a super duper introvert, but she is going to give a review of this book in just a second.

Welcome to Our Hen House. Vicki,

[00:49:29] Vicki Beechler: Hi! This is odd.

[00:49:32] Jasmin Singer: This is you in front of the camera. Murray wants to be picked up again. Um, this is you in front of the camera now. How are you feeling about it?

[00:49:41] Vicki Beechler: Pretty good until I had to share my screen time with Murray.

[00:49:44] Jasmin Singer: Oh yeah. Well, the good news is no one is watching us, so that's why I keep him around. So I told our listeners how we forced you to talk about this book on the air, but you're a prolific reader. Um, can you say prolific reader?

[00:50:03] Mariann Sullivan: I believe so.

[00:50:04] Vicki Beechler: Yeah, that sounds right.

[00:50:05] Mariann Sullivan: Why not?

[00:50:06] Jasmin Singer: Sure. Then you're a prolific reader.

And, personally, I find it very difficult to read animal rights related things because I need my brain to take a break during the time that I read, by which, I mean listen to audio books, but you're not like that, are you, Vicki?

[00:50:21] Vicki Beechler: Sometimes, but, you know, I go through spells and generally I'll read an animal rights related book and then something really high fantasy to sort of get out of that, you know,

[00:50:33] Mariann Sullivan: Cleanse your palate.

[00:50:34] Vicki Beechler: Yes. Straight outta reality into somewhere else.

[00:50:38] Jasmin Singer: So what, what was the book that you read today? I.

[00:50:41] Vicki Beechler: So the book that I read is called Crossings by Ben Goldfarb, and I was, uh, I'm not sure where I set my copy down because I can't remember the subtitle. It's like, how road ecology... i'm sorry y'all. This is ridiculous. I had it a second ago. Let me get it.

​

[00:50:58] Vicki Beechler: Whenever you have a partner who helps you by picking up, sometimes it's annoying.

[00:51:04] Jasmin Singer: Oh my God, I'm the tidier in my household, and it drives Moore completely bananas when I tidy her shit away.

[00:51:11] Vicki Beechler: Yep. I'm like, I had that out on the table for a reason, but thanks for putting it away, I guess. Anyway.

So the book is called Crossings, how Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet by Ben Goldfarb.

[00:51:24] Jasmin Singer: That sounds like a nice romcom.

[00:51:26] Vicki Beechler: Well, you know, uh, much like anything with humans and our interaction with the natural world, it's sort of horror stories, so.

[00:51:34] Jasmin Singer: What was it about?

[00:51:36] Vicki Beechler: It's about road ecology, which I actually didn't even know was a thing. I often wonder how people discover that these careers exist. Like I've never heard of road ecology and I can't imagine being in school like, I'm gonna be a road ecologist. That's what I'm gonna do.

But you know, thankfully we have a lot of them, and this book tells many of their stories.

[00:52:01] Mariann Sullivan: I, I don't actually, I don't think I've ever heard the term either. Can you just explain what it is?

[00:52:08] Vicki Beechler: Yeah, it's literally the science of studying how roads affect the environment. Yeah. And, um you know, there's some, I. I don't want to call it positive 'cause it's absolutely not net positive, but there are some positive stories such as, you know, habitat for butterflies being left along highways and things like that.

So it's not all bad.

[00:52:33] Jasmin Singer: Yeah, I mean, this makes me think of things like, you know, those overpasses that a lot of wildlife advocates are working on to like, you know, allow the animals to safely cross and am I in the right universe?

[00:52:50] Vicki Beechler: You are and road ecologists are responsible for those crossings and for the studies that help, uh, figure out where the crossings should go, how the crossings should work, and it's not just the ones you think of that are overpasses, which is what I would've thought of before I read this book, but it's also underpasses.

So there are many, many of the culverts that we, you know, might drive over on the highway and never even notice are actually wildlife underpasses, especially for herps like frogs. You know, turtles. But he talks about several, even for deer.

[00:53:27] Jasmin Singer: There's an underpass in my next door, neighbor's under his front porch. I swear. It's like a wildlife refuge under there. I see animals going under his front porch constantly. I digress. So tell us a little bit more about the book and, and I wanna know also what you learned, what your thoughts are.

[00:53:45] Vicki Beechler: So a quick synopsis. Um, I don't know that you can actually spoil road ecology since it's not a story, but yeah, it explores just how roads impact, not only ecosystems, but specifically wildlife, he discusses quite a lot. As I said, it looks at road ecology and actually that field didn't really exist until the 1980s, so it's only as old as I am,

which is odd to think about because we started creating roads in what? 4,000 BCE. The irony of the story, I think, is that a lot of our most traveled roads started out as animals' paths, then Indigenous people started using the migration paths as well that were already tamped down from animals going across them.

And that has now evolved into this, I sorry to keep saying horror story, but it kind of is what it is of our, our modern roadways.

[00:54:46] Mariann Sullivan: always heard that this book was, you know, I, I never heard that it was horror story until you read it. And, I just thought that there would be hopeful stories about how we can improve things, or, or, I mean, obviously we all know that roadkill exists, 'cause we all see it all the time, but does the book just talk about roadkill and how awful it is?

Or is there some kind of hope for future?

[00:55:07] Vicki Beechler: There's definitely hope for the future. The horror story is of course, the history of roads and how they've come to be and sort of come to even create the world we live in. But yeah, there's a lot of hopeful things as in the wildlife crossings, the underpasses, many other things that we can do. Some of the suggestions are things that, you know, it'd be great if they would happen, but it's unlikely.

Some places do them though, such as not allowing driving on certain roads at night to save salamanders. Most of these things are not in America, so.

[00:55:48] Jasmin Singer: Shocking. That's just shocking.

[00:55:51] Vicki Beechler: Yeah. It was a little bit eye-opening to me, and this is why I keep saying it's kind of a horror story. Roads actually kill more animals than hunting, poaching, and all oil spills combined.

I was

[00:56:02] Mariann Sullivan: Wow.

[00:56:03] Vicki Beechler: surprised by that.

[00:56:05] Jasmin Singer: Wow.

[00:56:06] Vicki Beechler: What I do love about it, first of all, Goldfarb's writing is really great, and he does try to infuse some humor, you know, into the story. And I know that part of why it reads like a horror story to me is just because of my empathetic nature towards animals and and wildlife.

But I did really enjoy his sort of vision and his writing and, and the humor that he tried to put in.

[00:56:35] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, I think that I interviewed him or maybe we both interviewed him for, um, a long time ago, episode 4 68, about his previous book, which I absolutely loved cause I, you know how much I love beavers and it also has the best title in the world. 'cause it's called Eager. What a great name for a

Yeah.

eager, the surprising secret life of beavers and why they matter. Uh, so I, yeah, I have a warm spot in my heart for Ben Goldfarb.

[00:57:02] Jasmin Singer: I had actually kind of forgotten about that and now that you mention it, I loved that interview.

[00:57:08] Mariann Sullivan: Oh, actually, I think you, you did that interview? I don't think I did.

[00:57:12] Jasmin Singer: Well, you must have listened to it then. 'cause I remember loving it. I remember.

[00:57:17] Mariann Sullivan: I read the book.

[00:57:18] Jasmin Singer: I remember at the beginning being like, I'm just gonna get the beaver joke out of the way now so that we can move on.

[00:57:24] Mariann Sullivan: Oh, right. I do remember that you dwelled a lot on the beaver joke. All

[00:57:28] Jasmin Singer: Not a lot, just a little.

[00:57:29] Mariann Sullivan: So I, I'm surprised that this book was as dark as it was Vicki, but I'm glad you read it instead of me. But it does sound like there's, I mean, obviously I had no idea that the number, I mean, I, you, you gotta know the numbers are high because you see roadkill all the time, but that's staggering.

And. Oh, I'm glad at least people are thinking about it.

[00:57:49] Vicki Beechler: There were a lot of shocking statistics in it, and I honestly didn't expect it to be as horrific as it was, but, um, and he doesn't dwell on the horrific things, so that's nice. It's just, as I said, I have that sort of empathetic personality, so I'm, I keep thinking about things after I have learned about them.

So, um, but yeah, he does go into like asking us to imagine roads from animals' perspectives and things like that, that I just really enjoyed. I also enjoyed his vision for the best type of road, which was one that animals would never meet, a road the land would never notice. And I just thought that was really lovely.

He talked about how in India they even built an elevated, like they elevated the entire highway because it was crossing across tiger territory. And that just got me thinking like, why don't we do that all the time?

And I know the answer. The answer is, money, money, money. But yeah. Could you imagine if just all of our roads were elevated? It would hardly be a problem. For birds, of course, but yeah.

[00:59:01] Jasmin Singer: Or if we had like flying cars like in the Jetsons,

[00:59:07] Mariann Sullivan: I have a solution, we could all just stay home.

[00:59:09] Jasmin Singer: That's another option.

[00:59:11] Vicki Beechler: Other solutions include public transportation. He does go into a bit about creating a public, it's not like public transit, but it's more like a bussing system, I believe it was in Yellowstone, and how much it reduced the traffic on the road and the noise and how much it, it really benefited the wildlife in the area to just bring everyone through on one bus.

And of course.

[00:59:39] Mariann Sullivan: So much sense.

[00:59:41] Vicki Beechler: Yeah. And of course I am a public transit proponent, and one of the reasons I was looking forward to reading this book is that I sort of loathe car culture, um, our American car culture especially. It did give me another reason to absolutely loathe car culture, so I don't know. But yeah, I think this book is definitely worth picking up, like to understand it's kind of a hidden environmental issue though it's like right there everywhere in front of all of our faces.

[01:00:14] Mariann Sullivan: a really good point.. Like, like when you said the number, like I immediately thought, oh my God, that's insane. And then I thought, how, why do you think it's insane when you see animals killed all the time?

It's right there all the time. And you, you just don't think of it as being so huge.

[01:00:32] Vicki Beechler: Yeah. And even beyond just the animals that are killed by the road, one of the facts that was particularly shocking is that two thirds of human caused extinction happen on islands. And what we've done with roads is that we've created islands for these wild animals because a highway, you know, especially a multi-lane road of any kind.

They're not gonna cross across that usually.

[01:00:59] Mariann Sullivan: They're not gonna survive it if they try.

[01:01:01] Vicki Beechler: Exactly. And he does go into like, the different types of animals. Um, you know, like deer, they call them speeders. I can't remember all of the, the terminology for the different animals. But, he does go into how often a car can pass with those animals still taking the risk to cross the street.

And humans are, are categorized as speeders as well, because we will try to bodooloo across, across in between the cars, and so do deer. But the animals that won't, a lot of them are like anteaters, not, you know, not animals we have in the US but we do have animals in the US that won't cross. Bears are especially, um, they don't love to cross the road, especially roads that have more than two lanes, so they get trapped quite a lot. It seemed like it was a lot of the carnivores, they talk, he talks a lot, I should say about the mountain lions in California. so yeah, but I definitely think this book is worth reading.

It, you know, there's sad things, but there's so much that we can learn and so much that we can advocate for, that's offered as well.

[01:02:11] Jasmin Singer: Reiterate the name of the book and the author?

[01:02:13] Vicki Beechler: Yes. The name of the book is Crossings How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet by Ben Goldfarb.

[01:02:20] Jasmin Singer: Thank you so much Vicki. I hope that you'll come back and do, do more reviews, but before you do, you can help us close out the show today because I know that you're super excited about our upcoming panel discussion, which is called Roots and Rising, Connecting Grassroots Voices. What are you looking forward to about it?

[01:02:38] Vicki Beechler: I am looking forward to that. I, I mean, I love grassroots. I think i, I don't know anybody who didn't come from grassroots to where they are now. So I think it's so important and it's not something that we should abandon. So I'm really looking forward to hearing their perspectives.

[01:02:54] Jasmin Singer: Yeah, so we'll be talking about what absolutely anyone can do to change the world for animals, no matter your skills or experience. And we will be recording this on Sunday, June 1st at 1:00 PM Eastern Time. The live audience for the event is the Squawk Squad and above, which is $25 a month, but of course, anyone will be able to hear it on the podcast after the event.

It will air on June 6th. Sixth. So if you're, if you're in the flock and you're not sure if you're in the Squawk Squad, you can email Vicki at vicki@ourhenhouse.org. And if you'd like to join us, join the Squawk Squad 'cause we have a great time. Mariann, I know you like to do some of these reminders to our listeners.

Do you wanna take it?

[01:03:40] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, I'd love to remind everybody how grateful we are that you're tuning in and ask you to subscribe on your favorite pod catcher. And especially, especially go to YouTube and even if you hate YouTube and even if you hate looking at us, subscribe, because that really helps us out. and if you leave a comment on YouTube or a review on Apple Podcasts for the audio podcast, that is also unbelievably helpful. All of these things, I don't understand why, but apparently they matter enormously. So thanks for tuning in.