Penny, the Executive Director of Animal Activism Collective, has helped bring hundreds of new activists into the grassroots animal movement, as well as supporting dozens of local grassroots groups around the US. Collectively, these groups, and AAC’s network, have been responsible for securing dozens of victories for animals, including getting over 80 companies and restaurants to drop foie gras, fur and much more. That’s why I was very excited to speak with Penny today about something that fee...
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Penny, the Executive Director of Animal Activism Collective, has helped bring hundreds of new activists into the grassroots animal movement, as well as supporting dozens of local grassroots groups around the US. Collectively, these groups, and AAC’s network, have been responsible for securing dozens of victories for animals, including getting over 80 companies and restaurants to drop foie gras, fur and much more. That’s why I was very excited to speak with Penny today about something that fee...
Penny, the Executive Director of Animal Activism Collective, has helped bring hundreds of new activists into the grassroots animal movement, as well as supporting dozens of local grassroots groups around the US. Collectively, these groups, and AAC’s network, have been responsible for securing dozens of victories for animals, including getting over 80 companies and restaurants to drop foie gras, fur and much more. That’s why I was very excited to speak with Penny today about something that fee...
Lewis Bollard should be a familiar name for those trying to improve the lives of farmed animals. For almost 10 years, he’s been running the farm animal welfare program at Open Philanthropy, the largest funder in the fight against factory farming. It's hard to think of someone who's had a large positive influence on the modern farm animal welfare movement. In this conversation, we discuss the many different approaches we can take to help animals. We talk about why some strategies are les...
Cass Sunstein has one of the most impressive track records out there. He’s the author of the social change books Nudge and How Change Happens, a Harvard Law professor and former US government official in the Obama administration. He has been writing about animal rights law since as early as 1999 and has written several seminal papers on the topic. He has a forthcoming book, with the working title Animals Matter, discussing how we can normalise and popularise caring about animals in mainstream...
There are never-ending conversations in the animal advocacy movement about whether diet change is an effective ask for the public. Today, we speak with Thom from FarmKind on why he thinks asking people to donate, rather than change their diet, can be a much more promising approach. We speak about why behaviour change is difficult, the many benefits of donating, what other social movements have used as their asks, as well as the different experiments FarmKind has run in their quest to figure o...
The EU is one of the most important institutions in the world. They had amazingly ambitious plans to transform the lives of the billions of farmed animals in the EU which sadly, were put on hold last year. Today, we speak to an expert in EU animal welfare policy, Alice Di Concetto from the European Institute for Animal Law & Policy, about what happened, what animal advocates might hope to win in the next few years and how we might improve our lobbying efforts. Resources: European In...
Today, we’re sharing a different kind of episode. Not an episode of How I Learned to Love Shrimp but an appearance that I, James, made on another podcast, Changed My Mind. It's all about what causes people to change their mind and this time, I talk about my experience with changing my view on disruptive protests and social movements. This podcast is run by Aidan and Thom from FarmKind, who some listeners may know about, as a great new charity working to raise funds for animal issues.&nb...
There is an age-old debate within animal advocacy on the importance of educating the public. Is it simply enough to tell people about the harms of industrial animal agriculture and then they will change their behaviours? Sadly, not it seems. Many people have been disappointed about the amount of behaviour change that’s actually happened over the past few decades due to education, as seen in relatively stagnant numbers of people going vegetarian or vegan. That’s why I’m excited that this...
To mark our 50th episode, we're bringing you something special: Five movement leaders talking about some of the biggest developments for animals in the past two years as well as what advocates should focus on next for the next two years. Highlighting advancements in policy, corporate campaigns, alternative proteins, and investment in overlooked species, this is an information-packed episode so don't miss out! Our guests: David Coman-Hidy from The Navigation FundCarolina Galvani ...
Kelvey Vander Hart from the Wilberforce Institute joins us to share her approach to animal advocacy from a politically right-of-center view and how her Christian faith guides her activism. • The importance of bipartisan approaches to engage the masses in animal advocacy • Why animal welfare should be a cross-cutting issue that transcends political affiliation • How political coalitions can be built around specific animal welfare issues rather than comprehensive platforms • Reforming governme...
David Kay shares his experience as the first employee at Upside Foods, offering a deep dive into the cultivated meat industry's challenges, successes, and political landscape. As an animal advocate who entered the alternative protein space, he provides unique insights on depolarising the conversation around cultivated meat and building bipartisan support.› • Difference between focusing on environmental/health versus animal welfare messaging • David's journey from animal advocacy to becoming ...
A critical look at the entwined relationship between parenthood and the animal advocacy movement. Julia Reinelt shares her insights on how organisations can become more supportive to parents in the advocacy space. • Julia introduces herself and discusses her journey in the animal advocacy movement • The challenges of balancing advocacy work and parenting • Understanding the family-unfriendly aspects of the animal advocacy movement • Suggestions on creating more inclusive en...
This episode discusses the intersection of mental health and animal advocacy, highlighting the critical need for self-care among advocates. Aarti Bhavana shares her experiences with emotional tolls from animal suffering, corporate accountability, and practical strategies for sustaining passion in the long term. • Exploring the toxic mindset of 100% dedication in animal advocacy • Importance of addressing mental health in nonprofit sectors • Underlying emotions of advocates witnes...
Haven King Nobles brings us a really refreshing topic this week as we explore high agency and the importance of this particular trait when it comes to entrepreneurship and continuous innovation. We talk through Haven’s experience of being a young entrepreneur, the mistakes he made in the early days of founding the Fish Welfare Initiative, and some advice on the skills to develop to really excel in entrepreneurship. Whilst this week's topic was high-agency, we of course talk to Haven abo...
Ben Newman has had a colourful past few years, being one of Animal Rising’s co-directors and being arrested multiple times for various bits of direct action and disruptive protest. Now, Animal Rising has turned its attention to campaign against the RSPCA, the world’s largest animal charity, for running the RSPCA Assured scheme. This has been quite a divisive campaign within the animal advocacy movement, with some, including both co-hosts, having fairly big questions about the effectiven...
Join us for an enlightening conversation with Aidan from Pro Animal Future and Almira from Direct Action Everywhere. A really interesting episode about their recent US ballot initiatives which actually has a lot of cross applicable learnings about fighting strong opposition to campaigns, the benefits of loosing forward, and how frequently narrative outperforms spend when it comes to campaigns. Almira and Aidan share insights on collaboration, leadership, and the courage to experim...
Jesse Marks is the newly appointed Farm Animal Welfare Program Officer for The Navigation Fund, a new major funder in the anti-factory farming space. We spoke with him about his experience becoming a grant-maker, interpersonal dynamics in funding, new areas he is excited about, how the movement can improve corporate campaigning and much more. www.navigation.org Navigation Fund Farm Animal Welfare StrategyGood Strategy Bad StrategyThis is an uprisingHow to survive a plaguewww...
Known affectionately as the mother of animal law, this weeks guest Joyce Tischler has over 45 years of experience advocating for animal rights through the law in the US. Starting off in 1979 by co-founding the Animal Legal Defense Fund where Joyce would serve as executive director for 25 years, we hear about the first cases Joyce worked on as well as her bold decision to take on the US Navy. Joyce now lectures at the Lewis and Clark Law School in the Centre for Animal Law, specialising ...
There are not many people who have spent time in prison for their commitment to help animals, but Tom Harris is one of them. We spoke with Tom about his time in the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty campaign (SHAC), one of the most well-known animal rights campaigns of the last 20-30 years. We speak about why he thinks the campaign was so effective in applying pressure to companies, things he would do differently, common misconceptions about the SHAC campaign and the importance of grassroots adv...
Jakub Stencel is the recently appointed interim director of Anima International. A refreshingly candid conversation about organisational culture, transparency and its limits, as well as the constant journey of testing and learning that Anima undertakes. Jakub talks us through his thinking on culture in an expanding organisation, split across multiple countries and how his first important task as interim director is to assess whether Anima International should continue to exist, or, if o...
Rune-Christoffer is an impressive person. In addition to being almost 10ft tall, he led the Vegetarian Society of Denmark’s efforts in getting the Danish government to invest over 110 million Euros in plant-based foods and develop an Action Plan to boost plant-based foods in the country. Given this is one of the most significant policy wins the animal advocacy and plant-based movement has seen in recent years, we chat about how they built the political will to achieve this. We speak abo...
Penny, the Executive Director of Animal Activism Collective, has helped bring hundreds of new activists into the grassroots animal movement, as well as supporting dozens of local grassroots groups around the US. Collectively, these groups, and AAC’s network, have been responsible for securing dozens of victories for animals, including getting over 80 companies and restaurants to drop foie gras, fur and much more. That’s why I was very excited to speak with Penny today about something that fee...
