Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry and this is
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know, Part two about animals rare sweet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: good one. And you wrote this for your buddies at
Speaker 1: Primer Yeah. Yeah, let's give a little shout out to
Speaker 1: Primer Stories. Um So, Primer Stories are basically doing for
Speaker 1: uh the interactive medium, the same thing that podcast did
Speaker 1: for radio and Ted Talks did for speaking engagements. And
Speaker 1: I wrote an essay for him for season four and
Speaker 1: you can check it out at Primer Stories dot com
Speaker 1: slash s y s K go go check it out.
Speaker 1: It's pretty neat, but it ties into animal rights and
Speaker 1: uh humans. But you you did put this together, right.
Speaker 1: I've put together this episode and then I wrote a
Speaker 1: separate essay based on my research that, um is, it's different. Nice.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark and I did my book report on Yeah.
Speaker 1: Luckily the primary dudes, Joe and Tim kept it from
Speaker 1: devolving into that. Well, this was fantastic. I just want
Speaker 1: to say that, thanks man, I appreciate it. Uh So,
Speaker 1: I guess we don't need to set anything up. If
Speaker 1: you haven't listened to the one on animal testing, yes,
Speaker 1: stop right here, Yeah, just go do that and then
Speaker 1: welcome to part two. Yeah, how awkward was that? I
Speaker 1: thought it was pretty succinct. Okay, not awkward. Uh. So
Speaker 1: tell me a little bit about your buddy Aristotle. So Aristotle,
Speaker 1: we mentioned him in the last episode. We're gonna say
Speaker 1: that a lot. But Aristotle was one of the first
Speaker 1: dudes to experiment on animals. I think I called him
Speaker 1: a big dummy, you did, and as a joke, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and yeah, no, he's fine. Yeah he Uh. He was
Speaker 1: a smart dude, he was. But one of the things
Speaker 1: that he did not only um experimenting on animals, he
Speaker 1: also came up with a hierarchy of animals based on
Speaker 1: the souls he anticipated each possessed. He said, kitty got
Speaker 1: pretty good, dog much better? What is that? Is he? Checkoslovakia?
Speaker 1: I have no idea, No, I guess it'll just be
Speaker 1: check now. Yeah, I don't know what that was unless
Speaker 1: he's from like the fifties. It was It was not
Speaker 1: Greco Roman? Uh, maybe Albanian. Okay, So Aristotle the Albanian
Speaker 1: comes up with this hierarchy UM. And at the top
Speaker 1: of the hierarchy, guess who humans And humans have all
Speaker 1: three kinds of souls, the vegetative soul, the sensitive soul,
Speaker 1: and the rational soul. We possess all three of those souls. Therefore,
Speaker 1: we're at the top of the hierarchy of all the
Speaker 1: organisms on planet Earth. Below us are animals, and they've
Speaker 1: got the first two. They've got the vegetative soul and
Speaker 1: the sensitive soul, which means that like they like to
Speaker 1: lay around and read UM romance novels, that's right. And
Speaker 1: then you've got plants, and plants obviously have the vegetative soul.
Speaker 1: So what he's describing are the different um I guess
Speaker 1: life forces that he expected UM organisms to have. And
Speaker 1: because of that, there was a hierarchy that was established.
Speaker 1: And because of that hierarchy that Aristotle came up with,
Speaker 1: we still view animals in a certain way today, like
Speaker 1: we still basically follow that same hierarchy that he made,
Speaker 1: uh hundred years ago or so. Yeah, And and the
Speaker 1: whole kind of point of this episode is kind of
Speaker 1: based on that whether or not animals have a soul
Speaker 1: and where they rank or maybe should rank, and UM
Speaker 1: it's sort of that's sort of going down the rabbit
Speaker 1: hole myself of what a soul is and human even Well,
Speaker 1: you're not the first to do that, of course, Um,
Speaker 1: would you come up with? Would you come up with?
Speaker 1: Everyone wants to hear, including me and Jerry? Nah, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm still struggling with what I believe,
Speaker 1: even at my advanced stage, and I think I will
Speaker 1: till the day I die and become worm dirt. Right.
Speaker 1: So that's one indication of what I believe. Your last
Speaker 1: words are oh no, Um, But that that idea whether
Speaker 1: or not animals do have a souls is nothing new. Um.
Speaker 1: You point out very astutely that, Um, Judeo Christian wise,
Speaker 1: they do not think that animals have souls and have
Speaker 1: long held kind of a brutal attitude toward animals, like,
Speaker 1: forget animals, just kick them in the face. I don't care.
Speaker 1: That's a little harsh. But um, there the idea that
Speaker 1: humans have dominion over animals very much a part of
Speaker 1: the Judeo Christian ethic. Yeah, and should have dominion yea.
Speaker 1: And that animals don't have souls, and that's reason what's
Speaker 1: one reason why humans have dominion. That's right. It turns
Speaker 1: out the Mormons actually are one of the few groups
Speaker 1: in the West religiously speaking, that do believe that animals
Speaker 1: survive into the afterlife. Mormons and then um seeks Muslims, Hindus,
Speaker 1: big time Hindus, and Jane's Jainists. Um. They believe that
Speaker 1: the best way to to um save your soul is
Speaker 1: to protect other souls. So like you'll see a jainistum
Speaker 1: with a little they they have little brooms and they'll
Speaker 1: like wipe down or they'll they'll brush off a seat
Speaker 1: before they sit on it because they don't want to
Speaker 1: accidentally sit on any bug and take its life. Well
Speaker 1: that's nice, that's uh. That's protection of other souls for sure.
Speaker 1: Not like the cockroach, right, they'll still kill a kukara.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I had a funny cockroach that incident last night.
Speaker 1: Like I laugh, belly laughed for ten minutes. What did
Speaker 1: the cock roads laugh? Well, there was a cockroach in
Speaker 1: the room at some point that got away and um.
Speaker 1: Later on that night, Emily and I were in bed
Speaker 1: and I was on my computer and she was reading
Speaker 1: or something, and she looked up and on the ceiling
Speaker 1: it was right above her and she, oh, there's that cockroach,
Speaker 1: which I was shocked that she was that lazy fair
Speaker 1: about it. I went, why are you not freaking out?
Speaker 1: I was like, that thing's about to fall on you?
Speaker 1: And right when I said you, he moved and fell
Speaker 1: right on her. And it's so funny, like she's she
Speaker 1: shrieked like a small child and jumped off the bed
Speaker 1: quicker than I've ever seen her move. She scared my dogs.
Speaker 1: I jumped and ran, but I didn't shriek, which I
Speaker 1: just thought was very interesting dichotomy. Um and I killed it.
Speaker 1: And it was just very very funny that she was
Speaker 1: just like, oh, there's that cockroach, Like who are you?
Speaker 1: You're not the Emily I know exactly, Like why aren't
Speaker 1: you running? And she's super tired or something she was,
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's just very strange. I think she learned
Speaker 1: the lesson that a cockroach on the ceiling is not
Speaker 1: on the ceiling for long means you roll out of bed, yeah, immediately.
Speaker 1: So anyway, that's my cocorad story. Uh. Judaism they believe that,
Speaker 1: um well, it's a lot of debating in the Jewish community.
Speaker 1: Some scholars say that they do have souls. Yeah, lately
Speaker 1: they've been saying that, but only here while they're alive,
Speaker 1: and they don't carry into the afterlife. Big work around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh it is Uh. Pope John Paul the Second said, yeah,
Speaker 1: you probably you you probably are going to see your
Speaker 1: your little dog in the afterlife. Maybe it's possible. I'm
Speaker 1: Pope John Paul. Everybody loves me. Would you like my autograph? Right? Me?
Speaker 1: Gorby and Ronald Reagan rule the world? Uh. During the Enlightenment,
Speaker 1: things change a little bit from the religious aspects to
Speaker 1: more of a uh science based or philosophical and our
Speaker 1: old buddy Descartes said animals have no internal experience, which
Speaker 1: is very cold way of putting it. Yeah, he called
Speaker 1: them automatons kind of famously actually, and he said that, um,
Speaker 1: they are capable of ex of responding to pain, but
Speaker 1: because they don't have any internal experience, they can't actually
Speaker 1: experience the pain. Therefore, when you, um are cutting open
Speaker 1: a live dog and you're seeing it squirm and and
Speaker 1: wrythe and agony strictly responding to a stimulus, it's not
Speaker 1: actually going on. Like when Lucas testing out his new
Speaker 1: hand and he's poking the like the different nerves or
Speaker 1: the artificial nerves or whatever making the fingers move. He's
Speaker 1: getting poked on the finger, but he doesn't feel that.
Speaker 1: It's just a response to a stimuli. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: very much like that. It's the same thing as like
Speaker 1: with robots too. Yeah. I mean that's that's how essentially
Speaker 1: they cart decreed that animals were And that's some thing
Speaker 1: that stuck out to me, like throughout researching this whole thing.
Speaker 1: Humans have long just decreed that things are a certain way,
Speaker 1: and that those decrees tend to fit whatever the human
Speaker 1: wants to do to an animal at that time of course, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that idea is sort of the basis was and still
Speaker 1: kind of is for for scientists who experiment on animals.
Speaker 1: They're trained to um to detach themselves emotionally and just say, no,
Speaker 1: this is just a stimuli reaction. This is not an
Speaker 1: animal that's actually feeling pain. Dogs don't have that. Dogs
Speaker 1: don't have internal experience or internal lives, so you can't really,
Speaker 1: I can't really feel pain or suffering. It's not true. Uh.
Speaker 1: Jeremy Bentham was a philosopher in England. Correct, Yeah, a
Speaker 1: big one and actually he's still around. They bring his
Speaker 1: mummified body out for um dinners of the the guys
Speaker 1: who run the college what, every once a year, and
Speaker 1: he sits at the head of the table and his
Speaker 1: head has actually been separated from his body, and they
Speaker 1: bring that out too. It's in a case. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Holy cow. Yeah, as far as philosophers go, it's pretty neat.
Speaker 1: So he had a pretty neat idea, which was, um,
Speaker 1: you know what, it's not just about whether you can
Speaker 1: reason with an animal, but can they suffer? He's he's
Speaker 1: the one that kind of brought about this idea of
Speaker 1: animals suffering in the same way that a human might,
Speaker 1: which is a huge change. It was a big sea
Speaker 1: change in the way that we saw animals, because up
Speaker 1: to that point, the idea was that animals couldn't suffer,
Speaker 1: and even if they could suffer, nobody was taking that
Speaker 1: into account. But they couldn't suffer because they couldn't talk
Speaker 1: or they couldn't rationalize. And he said, no, we I
Speaker 1: think they can suffer. And he used his um philosific calculus,
Speaker 1: which takes into account all of the suffering and all
Speaker 1: of the happiness or pleasure produced by an event and
Speaker 1: you weighed against one another and it's really involved. Actually,
Speaker 1: but if you carry out Bentham's calculations, uh, you can
Speaker 1: take any any event, any action, and determine whether it's
Speaker 1: ethically like, morally correct or morally repugnant. And uh, he
Speaker 1: came to the conclusion that experimenting on animals was morally
Speaker 1: repugnant because animal suffering wasn't taken into account. And he
Speaker 1: took it into account, and it wasn't just a one
Speaker 1: off where he wrote an essay about it like this
Speaker 1: is a well he went back to a lot and
Speaker 1: was kind of an agitator for animal welfare early on. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of money in it, right. Uh So
Speaker 1: moving on to and I think you make a very
Speaker 1: good point here that the protectionism for animals really starts
Speaker 1: around the time where we made the transition um in
Speaker 1: in farming and how we raised in eight animals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you sue like you be like I feel like
Speaker 1: some beef for dinner. I'm gonna go kill old Bessie
Speaker 1: r Cow. Yeah, And you love Bessie, and your little
Speaker 1: boy or a little girl might cry about Bessie, but
Speaker 1: then the parents would explain that you know, We raised Bessie,
Speaker 1: and we loved and cared for Bessie, treated Bessie very nicely. UM.
Speaker 1: And the reason Bessie is here so Bessie can eventually
Speaker 1: feed us, and we should um honor that in every
Speaker 1: way possible by using as much of this animal as
Speaker 1: we can and honor the life that she led. You know,
Speaker 1: or if you had a bad parent, they just kind
Speaker 1: of wheeled that cleaver in your direction and shut up
Speaker 1: just as fast. This could be you. But that was
Speaker 1: a huge sea change when things started to change and
Speaker 1: industrialization took off, UH, and people were no longer connected
Speaker 1: to the animal on their farm that they ate. It
Speaker 1: was a sea change and how people I mean it
Speaker 1: directly coincided with how people felt about animals. When you
Speaker 1: could buy something in the store that looked nothing like
Speaker 1: that animal. Yeah, it's not even called pig, it's called
Speaker 1: pork or bacon or ham. Um. And then not only
Speaker 1: that chuck something I left out here that came across later. Um.
Speaker 1: This is at the same time when people move from
Speaker 1: the farm to the factory, from rural um in interactions
Speaker 1: with animals to UH to urban settings without animals. This
Speaker 1: is when people started to keep pets. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I never realized what you just said there about pork
Speaker 1: and beef. That never really dawned on me. It's never
Speaker 1: called pick that. If it said ground cow, right instead
Speaker 1: of ground beef, people would be like, reveal, yeah, some
Speaker 1: baby cow, ground baby cow. Yeah, yeah, that makes total sense.
Speaker 1: And such a dummy that that never occurred to me, Like,
Speaker 1: is that where that came from? Calling them different names?
Speaker 1: I would guess veal is probably like Latin for baby
Speaker 1: calf or something. I don't think it was a purposeful obfuscation.
Speaker 1: I don't know, would not surprise me. This is before
Speaker 1: the advent of pr, so I think much more innocent,
Speaker 1: naive back then. Chicken is but who gives? Who cares
Speaker 1: about chicken? I was saying that, Um, this is also
Speaker 1: the time when people began keeping pets around the house,
Speaker 1: so animals, so we're removed from food production, and we're
Speaker 1: we were starting to see animals not as commodities but
Speaker 1: as sweet little things that we want to care for
Speaker 1: and protect and like give food to and like let's
Speaker 1: sleep in the bed with us. And it developed this
Speaker 1: dichotomy of how we view animals today, which is, um,
Speaker 1: animals are to be protected by humans, but we can
Speaker 1: also eat them. It's totally cool. Uh. And that's a
Speaker 1: really if you step back and look at it. It's
Speaker 1: so easy to take for granted because that's how almost everybody,
Speaker 1: except for vegans um view animals. It's really easy to
Speaker 1: take it for granted. But if you step back and
Speaker 1: look at it, it's a very bizarre contradictory um paradigm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sort of a deal people have made with themselves mfortually,
Speaker 1: I think, and society is made with itself too. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a break and we're gonna come back
Speaker 1: and talk a little bit about the fact that, as
Speaker 1: of yet, there were still no laws on the books
Speaker 1: about protecting animals. All right, before we left, I teased
Speaker 1: about the laws of the land and while things were
Speaker 1: changing maybe attitude in le Uh. In England. You point
Speaker 1: out in the mid nineteenth century, it was still legal
Speaker 1: to beat your horse to death if he was tired,
Speaker 1: or to kill your cow if it didn't produce milk.
Speaker 1: There were no laws in place or like a your
Speaker 1: dog did something you didn't like, you could kick it
Speaker 1: to death. Like It's just some people did that. I
Speaker 1: think some people are still like that today, but are
Speaker 1: restrained by laws that developed out of this era, out
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century, and where before there weren't any laws.
Speaker 1: So if you were in impulsive puts, you could kick
Speaker 1: a dog to death. You know. I can't even go
Speaker 1: there with those stories that happened today, but that happened
Speaker 1: even more then. That's a very important point though, is
Speaker 1: like society as a whole wasn't just beating horses and
Speaker 1: dogs to death. UM for the most part, right, I
Speaker 1: think it was sociopath back then, and I think it
Speaker 1: still is now, you know. UM, for the most part,
Speaker 1: people did not do that, and people didn't even like
Speaker 1: they didn't necessarily even turn a blind eye too it.
Speaker 1: I think they did more because there wasn't a lot
Speaker 1: you could do. UM. But it's probably along the lines
Speaker 1: of where if you, UM don't agree with spanking your kid,
Speaker 1: and you see somebody in the store like grab their
Speaker 1: kids and spank them, you might want to say something,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, you probably won't because you
Speaker 1: don't know if that's a crazy person and or whatever.
Speaker 1: You don't get involved. For the most part, most people don't.
Speaker 1: I think that was probably very much the same lines
Speaker 1: like where you um, you might see something like that happening,
Speaker 1: but you weren't gonna say anything. I think that was
Speaker 1: the social status quo at the time. But that said, if, if,
Speaker 1: if the circumstances were right in the act was particularly egregious,
Speaker 1: some someone might say something. There was a guy in
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty four who in the middle of Washington, d c.
Speaker 1: Beat his cow to death, and he was arrested and
Speaker 1: charged with um not beating the cow to death because
Speaker 1: again there was no law protecting that cow, but um
Speaker 1: with creating a public nuisance because he subjected all the
Speaker 1: passers by to the site of his cow being beaten
Speaker 1: to death, and people objected to it. So even even
Speaker 1: at the time when there wasn't any legal protection for animals,
Speaker 1: there was still there was a line that was drawn.
Speaker 1: You know, people weren't cool with it, you know. Interesting, So,
Speaker 1: legislatively speaking, it was about the turn of the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century in England when Lords Erskine and Morton got together
Speaker 1: and they a bunch of times to try and actually
Speaker 1: amend the code, the legal code and UH. One of
Speaker 1: the first things they tried to outlaw with something called
Speaker 1: bull baiting UH and I imagine bear baiting, which was
Speaker 1: also a thing. And we'll get to this in a second,
Speaker 1: but it's like Roman gladiator stuff. Yeah. It's when they
Speaker 1: put a bull or a bear and they chain them
Speaker 1: to a steak and a pit. Yeah, and put dogs
Speaker 1: in there to fight and kill. Yeah. And bulldogs used
Speaker 1: to be way, way more vicious and aggressive than they
Speaker 1: are today. They actually had that stuff bred out of
Speaker 1: them and they looked a lot different to um. But
Speaker 1: that's where they got their name from. Bulldogs. Bear baiting
Speaker 1: is still going on in Pakistan. Yeah, it's it's disgusting,
Speaker 1: it's um there's a big push to stop it now.
Speaker 1: There's a group called World Animal Protection International and that's
Speaker 1: one of their big causes is to stop bear baiting
Speaker 1: in Pakistan. But UM, I would encourage you not to
Speaker 1: look that up and and look at pictures and stuff
Speaker 1: un once you want your heartbroken. But um, it's amazing
Speaker 1: that in s that's still going on in the world
Speaker 1: at all. But it is uh and then Uh Martin
Speaker 1: and Uh Martin and Erskin the great comedy duo was
Speaker 1: going to say, too, what is it is? Because of
Speaker 1: Martin Rohan and Martin is that where I'm thinking Uh,
Speaker 1: in eighteen twenty two they actually were enabled to get
Speaker 1: the first law pass in the West that made it
Speaker 1: a criminal act to abuse animals, called Martin's Act after
Speaker 1: Martin and Uh it was the technical name was an
Speaker 1: act to prevent the cruel and improper treatment of battle
Speaker 1: and it was specifically for livestock. And it was a
Speaker 1: ten shilling fine three months in the pokey if you
Speaker 1: didn't pay the fine. But what it did was set
Speaker 1: a precedent for the future. It was very important it did.
Speaker 1: It was only there was a law, right, there was
Speaker 1: a law in the books protecting animals. And again, like
Speaker 1: you said, it was pretty specific and technically there have
Speaker 1: been a law in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Puritans
Speaker 1: had a law in their Body of Liberties, but apparently
Speaker 1: it wasn't ever enforced. But this is the first real law. UM.
Speaker 1: And UH. The fact that Parliament was responding to this
Speaker 1: um kind of aroused the public. Uh. We talked about
Speaker 1: in the animal animal Testing episode the last one. UM.
Speaker 1: How I think in eight seventy six there was a
Speaker 1: law that passed that was passed like protecting animals during
Speaker 1: experimentation thanks to Charles Darwin Um, that that came fifty
Speaker 1: years after the first animal protection laws in the UK.
Speaker 1: So they've been there have been niche people. Groups who
Speaker 1: had been agitating for this got actually the parliament involved,
Speaker 1: and then the public became involved, which is usually the
Speaker 1: opposite rum. Usually it's like these groups agitate, get the
Speaker 1: public involved, and then the public get government to do something.
Speaker 1: This actually kind of went out of order a little bit.
Speaker 1: But the people who were agitating, these niche people were
Speaker 1: usually very interesting people like Henry Berg is a really
Speaker 1: good example. Boy, I love this guy. Yeah, you talked
Speaker 1: about an agitator. He founded the created the A s
Speaker 1: p C A, and um, he was a little rich
Speaker 1: kid and he basically said, you know what, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: kind of dedicate my life too walking the streets because
Speaker 1: one of the things in eight sixty six when the
Speaker 1: SPC A SPC I was founded was in New York.
Speaker 1: They said, you know what, you have the power to
Speaker 1: go out and police these things. We're not really enforcing it,
Speaker 1: but you can do so, and great, I'll do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He was a true believer for sure. Um. I think
Speaker 1: the first instance, as the legend goes, he saw he
Speaker 1: was a Russian diplomat or a diplomat to Russian American
Speaker 1: diplomat in Russia. Um, during the reign of the Tsar still,
Speaker 1: he saw a Russian peasant beating his horse, and he
Speaker 1: threatened to beat the man, and the guy responded very
Speaker 1: in in a way that Henry Berg was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do this all the time. Now he
Speaker 1: was like, I'm so sorry. Apparently the guy started crying
Speaker 1: he was being talked down to by someone of a
Speaker 1: higher station. Then when Henry Bird got back to America
Speaker 1: and tried it, he found that people of the middle
Speaker 1: or lower classes beneath him socially did not respond the
Speaker 1: way the Russian peasantry did. They said, this is New York,
Speaker 1: so he had to kind of So he would um
Speaker 1: sometimes actually follow through on his threats and like beat
Speaker 1: people he saw beating their horses. Um, I have no
Speaker 1: problem with that. Yeah, I think most people didn't. But
Speaker 1: he would also he'd go and break up like underground
Speaker 1: bullfight or underground bull baiting that underground bullfight to both
Speaker 1: going a uh. And he is buried in Greenwood Cemetery
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn. If you want to go by and uh
Speaker 1: lay some flowers at his grave and pay your respects.
Speaker 1: I think I might do that next time in New York. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean even if you're not in the animal rights.
Speaker 1: He was also a huge children's crusader, and he very
Speaker 1: wisely never allowed, uh, the children's organizations that he funded
Speaker 1: and supported, to merge with the animal organizations, because he
Speaker 1: knew full well that the little children would take the
Speaker 1: wheel and they would very quickly overwhelmed the sentiments in
Speaker 1: the UM. The efforts on behalf of the animals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was pretty smart to keep it uh separate.
Speaker 1: You got to keep them separated. You point out in
Speaker 1: this article very astutely that um abusing an animal is
Speaker 1: it could be an indicator of violence toward humans. And
Speaker 1: I know that. You know, uh a lot of serial
Speaker 1: killers started out like killing animals first as their first try.
Speaker 1: That is, from what I can tell, most likely a
Speaker 1: pop psychology urban legend, what that they did that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's Jeffrey Dahmer did for sure. There's okay, yes,
Speaker 1: but that the idea that it's a predictor of future
Speaker 1: serial killing. Oh yeah, yeah. The triad of evil, which
Speaker 1: is bed wedding, harming, farming animals, and setting fires. If
Speaker 1: you have your kid doing those three things allegedly under
Speaker 1: this triad of evil, you can bet that there's a
Speaker 1: pretty good chance they're going to grow up to harm humans.
Speaker 1: I went to bed. I uh, I didn't set harmful fires,
Speaker 1: but I did play with fire a little bit. I
Speaker 1: think this is more like you're intentionally setting fires like
Speaker 1: harmiting or burning burned down the woods. No, I didn't
Speaker 1: do that. Um. And then you know, my dog died
Speaker 1: and I sat in his doghouse for two days and cried.
Speaker 1: So I was it's not harming animals, clearly not. I
Speaker 1: was on the other side of the coin from early
Speaker 1: on when Huggy Bear died. But that whether or not
Speaker 1: that's true that that's been used. The Huggy Bear, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was my German Shepherd. Great name for a dog. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was like the first dog that I really bonded with.
Speaker 1: That was the dude from the like the street Wise
Speaker 1: start from start, right, Huggy Bear. That's great. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was awesome. I get a little sad thing about him today,
Speaker 1: which Huggy Bear not the TV show. Okay, I just
Speaker 1: remember my mom literally came home from work and like
Speaker 1: I was in the doghouse crying, like laying down and crying.
Speaker 1: That is sweet. You know, I was such a little boss.
Speaker 1: How old? How long was Huggy Bear around? Uh? You know,
Speaker 1: I don't remember, like your whole life. Was he alive
Speaker 1: when you were born, not when I was born? His
Speaker 1: mom Daisy was And then Daisy died when I was
Speaker 1: really young, so it didn't have a super big impact.
Speaker 1: But then Huggy Bear was one of the puppies we kept.
Speaker 1: How old were you when he died? I want to
Speaker 1: say I was like eight or nine maybe, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right there. Yeah, first big loss. You know. Um
Speaker 1: r I p Huggy Bear. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll drink one in your honor tonight. Hb uh. But anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny all the time.
Speaker 1: But if you're torturing and killing animals, it's it's not
Speaker 1: a good sign. No, And and the people who have
Speaker 1: agitated for animal rights have long used this. Whether it's
Speaker 1: true or not, people think it's true. So the whole,
Speaker 1: the whole premise for a lot of people has been
Speaker 1: if a human harms an animal, there's a good chance
Speaker 1: they're gonna harm a human. So if you protect animals
Speaker 1: and prevent people from harming animals, you're preventing somebody from
Speaker 1: possibly harming human. I'm fine with that line of thought.
Speaker 1: Or you're also by drawing a line before animals, you're
Speaker 1: rooting out people who might harm humans down the road
Speaker 1: by having them exposed themselves as harmers of animals. That
Speaker 1: one's a little morally trickier. If harming animals doesn't lead
Speaker 1: to harming humans. If you assume that it doesn't treat
Speaker 1: the person like that like, oh, you're a serial killer
Speaker 1: because you just certifire Peter Pants and Ate bit the
Speaker 1: head off a chipmunk. Actually, you'd probably be right if
Speaker 1: especially if you did all three at once. At the
Speaker 1: very least, I wouldn't leave them alone with your child.
Speaker 1: Uh So, a lot of progress is being made, and
Speaker 1: by nineteen o seven all the states in the United
Speaker 1: States had some kind of anti cruelty law going on,
Speaker 1: and it started to become just sort of the mindset. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was kind of the tradition, Like the states oversaw
Speaker 1: a protection of animals until the mid sixties when the
Speaker 1: federal government got involved and created the Animal Welfare Act
Speaker 1: and the Animal Welfare Act. Um. Again, this kind of
Speaker 1: follows that thing where some people agitate for changes to
Speaker 1: the law, changes to our way of thinking, and get
Speaker 1: the public aroused, and then the public say Congress or
Speaker 1: government do something. The same thing happened here. UM Sports
Speaker 1: Illustrated in Life Magazine both came out with articles about
Speaker 1: how people's family pets are being stolen and used as
Speaker 1: what are called random sourced animals that are sold to labs.
Speaker 1: And that really would get the public going right, because
Speaker 1: the idea that Huggy Bear could be stolen from your yard,
Speaker 1: sold to Johns Hopkins University's Head Trauma Center, and then
Speaker 1: have his head beaten open with a bat. See what happens.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry I used Huggy Bear. Now that I'm I'm
Speaker 1: making this this far forty years later, that still cuts
Speaker 1: the uh so, Snoopy Snoopy is stolen from your yard
Speaker 1: and experimented on the idea that this could happen just
Speaker 1: scared an outraged America, and UM it created very quickly
Speaker 1: the Animal Welfare Act. Yeah, and that originally just protected
Speaker 1: lab use, but then over the following decades, you know,
Speaker 1: it really expanded. UM and today it protects all warm
Speaker 1: blooded animals in lab experience except three birds sadly uh,
Speaker 1: the rattus genus rats, and the muss genus mice and
Speaker 1: uh not Coincidentally, they those three makeup of research animals
Speaker 1: in the US, along with the other cold blooded animals
Speaker 1: that are used like fish and reptiles. So of the
Speaker 1: animals used in lab experiments are not covered by the
Speaker 1: Animal of Welfare Act. But it's not to say that
Speaker 1: other animals can't be used in animal experiments. It just
Speaker 1: means that if you do experiment on a guinea pig
Speaker 1: or a macaque monkey or something like that, you have
Speaker 1: to follow these guidelines. But even then the guidelines are
Speaker 1: pretty slouchy. Actually, they're huge loopholes, and basically they amount
Speaker 1: to um you. Especially originally in like nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: you just have to reduce unnecessary suffering. Who's to say
Speaker 1: what's necessary or unnecessary? Certainly the law didn't, and they
Speaker 1: left it up to the researchers to decide what was
Speaker 1: necessary or unnecessary. What's crazy is Chuck is it has
Speaker 1: been expanded and amended, It's also been narrowed. There was
Speaker 1: an amendment made I think in the seventies that extended
Speaker 1: the protections, which again are loose and almost toothless, to
Speaker 1: all animals warm and cold blooded. And then in two
Speaker 1: thousand two they dialed it back to what it is
Speaker 1: now and what it was originally, whichard's warm blooded animals
Speaker 1: except rats and mice, and the cold blooded animals and
Speaker 1: the birds and the birds and the bees in the
Speaker 1: sycamore trees. All right, well, let's take a break here
Speaker 1: and we're gonna come back and talk about the kind
Speaker 1: of the two categories for animal protection, animal welfarest and
Speaker 1: animal rightest's what I call them, all right, right after this, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back, Chuck, and you teased um the different types
Speaker 1: of approaches to protecting animals, right there is like a
Speaker 1: whole contingent of people. And I think most people on
Speaker 1: the street, if you stopped them said do animals deserve
Speaker 1: protection from harm or suffering? I would guess most people
Speaker 1: would say yes. And I'm sure there's surveys out there.
Speaker 1: I didn't find one, Um, but if you drill a
Speaker 1: little deeper into it, to adopt a little corporate buzz speak, um,
Speaker 1: low hanging fruit, yeah, you would find that there's really
Speaker 1: kind of two threads to this, like, and they're they're
Speaker 1: based on just how far you feel that protection should go. Right,
Speaker 1: So the first is animal welfare. So and that's the
Speaker 1: current accepted paradigm of how we approach treating animals protecting animals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they generally think, uh, and these are you know, generalizations,
Speaker 1: but it's if you're going to fit people into two groups,
Speaker 1: you got to do that. They generally think that, you know,
Speaker 1: what we're doing now works pretty well, but we need
Speaker 1: to enforce it more. We agree with John Locke and
Speaker 1: Emmanuel Kant that you should protect animals from cruelty, but
Speaker 1: not because like they have moral standing necessarily, but because
Speaker 1: that is a sign of a bad person that makes
Speaker 1: us look bad, which you know that's valid. Um. But
Speaker 1: they balance that out with we treat animals humanely, but
Speaker 1: we can still use them for food and labor. Right,
Speaker 1: So animals deserve protection from humans harming them, um, But
Speaker 1: they're also our property, like we can we can do
Speaker 1: what we want with them, so long is there isn't
Speaker 1: any unjustified suffering, right and uh, not suffer needlessly, which
Speaker 1: you pointed out earlier, but more so here that that's
Speaker 1: a needlessly what does that mean it's very open to interpretation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if you look at what happens to animals in
Speaker 1: animal experiments, there's um I mean it runs the gamut,
Speaker 1: like and everything from withholding food and water to um
Speaker 1: uh burning skin with blow torches or to making a
Speaker 1: monkey obese on purpose and making sure they don't exercise.
Speaker 1: So you can study what lap band surgery does, right,
Speaker 1: I mean there's damaging their brains, maiming on blinding them, um,
Speaker 1: just doing invasive surgical procedures for for practice like just um.
Speaker 1: The idea of what is justified is extremely subjective, but
Speaker 1: as a society we've all generally agreed that hey, as
Speaker 1: long as science is being advanced, as long as human
Speaker 1: uh humanity is is being in some way advanced or
Speaker 1: developed or protected, then it's justified. Um or And then
Speaker 1: with food, right, like, is it those animals don't die
Speaker 1: of old age? Is it? Is it a needless death
Speaker 1: to eat a cow uh and kill the cow before
Speaker 1: it's time? Yeah? And so most people, I think who
Speaker 1: believe in the hierarchy of humans at the top of
Speaker 1: all organisms here on earth would say, well, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a useful a useful um use of an animal feeding
Speaker 1: a human, right, right, So that's the idea of animal welfare.
Speaker 1: Protect them from harm, but yeah, we can eat them
Speaker 1: and and and a good example is making sure a
Speaker 1: cow has a good life while it's alive, it's not
Speaker 1: suffering while alive, it's not scared when it dies, and
Speaker 1: then you can eat it totally fine. That's the animal
Speaker 1: welfares view, and that's the generally accepted view in in
Speaker 1: the West. Animal rights or rightists. Uh. They think generally
Speaker 1: that the system we have is flawed and that um,
Speaker 1: animals have these rights they or they should have rights
Speaker 1: kind of along the same lines that humans do. Um.
Speaker 1: They should have legal protection just like we do under
Speaker 1: the law. And we are a long way from where
Speaker 1: we need to be when it comes to protecting animals
Speaker 1: from humans. Right. Um. The idea of the animal rightists
Speaker 1: is that animals have an inherent moral value. Um. And
Speaker 1: the idea behind that is if if they have an
Speaker 1: inherent more moral value like humans do, then they deserve
Speaker 1: legal protections that humans enjoy, which is a radically different
Speaker 1: approach to protecting uh animals. Um. And the idea is that, um, well,
Speaker 1: it all kind of came from this guy named Peter Singer,
Speaker 1: and he wrote a book in nineteen called Animal Liberation,
Speaker 1: and he basically started off the modern animal rights movement,
Speaker 1: especially the radical version of it. He said in it
Speaker 1: that um that you, if you use Bentham's philocific calculus,
Speaker 1: but include animals right to happiness, not just their suffering.
Speaker 1: He added a little cherry on top, right, you just
Speaker 1: blow the concept of using animals for human means out
Speaker 1: of the water, like it's just not justifiable. Is an
Speaker 1: animal a moral agent? And a moral agent is a
Speaker 1: being that is capable of making decisions based on right
Speaker 1: or wrong. And moral behavior comes in all sorts of forms.
Speaker 1: We think of it as like, um, helping a little
Speaker 1: lady across the street, or not stealing even though you
Speaker 1: totally could and get away with it. Um, But it's
Speaker 1: it's even more. It's even broader than that. And some
Speaker 1: people say animals do demonstrate moral behavior like loyalty or
Speaker 1: showing concern for someone that's or a person that's injured,
Speaker 1: or something like that, and so therefore an animal can
Speaker 1: be a moral agent. Other people say, no, an animal
Speaker 1: can't rationalize, it can't think about the future, it can't
Speaker 1: want to keep living. Therefore, it couldn't possibly be a
Speaker 1: moral agent. And Peter Singer really made a lot of
Speaker 1: waves when he said, he said, well, then if you're
Speaker 1: going to experiment on animals because they're not moral agents,
Speaker 1: you might as well go ahead and experiment on people
Speaker 1: in vegetative states and infants because they're not moral agents
Speaker 1: under that definition either. Yeah, he says, you know what, else,
Speaker 1: can't rationalize your baby? Yeah, so go ahead and do
Speaker 1: some horrible experiments on your baby. Yeah. And I'm sure,
Speaker 1: I mean, the other side of the argument was probably like,
Speaker 1: oh god, and he dropped that Mike, and everything is
Speaker 1: the rubbing in our faces. Uh. Another guy came along
Speaker 1: named Tom Reagan, and uh. He wrote a book called
Speaker 1: The Case for Animal Rights. He argued favorably, the animals
Speaker 1: do have moral rights, and he had a little thing
Speaker 1: that he liked to call subjects of a life. He said,
Speaker 1: humans and animals are both subjects of a life, which
Speaker 1: means we have you know, animals have that inner experience
Speaker 1: that is called haveing a life like we do. Right,
Speaker 1: So some of the ones that have higher moral, higher
Speaker 1: faculties up. Yeah, yeah, it's not all animals in his
Speaker 1: his uh, in his um view, it was like ones
Speaker 1: that are capable of reasoning, because some people say humans
Speaker 1: are the only rational beings on the planet and therefore
Speaker 1: everything else is is open season. Um, these guys like
Speaker 1: Tom Reagan said, no, there are certain animals out there
Speaker 1: that can reason and therefore can be moral agents. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean when you see behavior of some of these
Speaker 1: animals like that elephants, well then people would be like,
Speaker 1: that's anthropomorphizing, anthropomorphizing burn him. Yeah, you know, you try
Speaker 1: and burning can't can't be can't be, can't be proven.
Speaker 1: So therefore Descartes ghost exists. And then Tom Reagan also
Speaker 1: made waves chucked by saying, um, if if an animal
Speaker 1: is a subject of a life, meaning it can think
Speaker 1: about its own life and want to live, therefore, um,
Speaker 1: I sound like Miss South Carolina. Therefore, um, that animal
Speaker 1: deserves at least one basic freedom, which is the freedom
Speaker 1: from being property, which in and of itself would radically
Speaker 1: alter our relationship humans relationship with animals. So these guys
Speaker 1: are like kind of putting these ideas out there, and
Speaker 1: as we'll see, they got some response, but it was
Speaker 1: typically um among hardcore animal rights people rather than the
Speaker 1: general public. Up to this point, and then the final
Speaker 1: dude in the trifecta, the triad of Evil, of Evil,
Speaker 1: of good. I know, I'm just teasing Gary franc Uh.
Speaker 1: He was a guy that came along and said, you
Speaker 1: know what, we need to abolish our domination over animals period. Outright,
Speaker 1: it is slavery and we should treat it as such,
Speaker 1: get rid of it. And he said, we didn't get
Speaker 1: rid of slavery by making slavery more humane. We got
Speaker 1: rid of slavery by getting rid of slavery. That's what
Speaker 1: you do. And he's saying, it's the same thing here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty radical ideas at the time. Yeah, it's um and
Speaker 1: radical is a pretty good word because these these ideas
Speaker 1: really caught the attention of some people who did become
Speaker 1: I guess radicalized by them. Like the the animal rights
Speaker 1: movement has had long had a militant arm to it,
Speaker 1: for sure. Yes, it started actually before even Peter Singer's
Speaker 1: book Animal Liberation, from as far back as nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: there was a group in the UK called the Hunt
Speaker 1: Saboteurs Association. This is the most polite saboteurs organization name
Speaker 1: you can come up with, probably, so they um, they
Speaker 1: sort of laid the groundwork for for the Animal Liberation Front,
Speaker 1: who was got a lot of press, and then another
Speaker 1: group called the Band of Mercy Um. The Band of
Speaker 1: Mercy was named for the Victorian era British SPC A
Speaker 1: with their children's wing. Yeah, that's what in the cute Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally cute, the Band of Mercy Um And they were
Speaker 1: the actual the first people to liberate animals when they
Speaker 1: broke into a laboratory that used uh or a farm
Speaker 1: that that sold guinea pigs, two labs, and freed six
Speaker 1: guinea pigs. Yeah, they made off with six, but I
Speaker 1: mean there were six guinea pigs lives that uh that
Speaker 1: otherwise would have been um subject to experimentation. So it
Speaker 1: was a big success and they ended up eating the
Speaker 1: guinea pigs to celebrate, No, they didn't. Uh. And the
Speaker 1: actually the lady who ran the farm though, she was
Speaker 1: really shaken up and she actually shut down her guinea
Speaker 1: pig selling business because of that because she was I
Speaker 1: mean some some people had broken into her house at
Speaker 1: night and she thought twice Yeah, she was like this
Speaker 1: is I don't want this to happen again. And I
Speaker 1: mean this is depending on your viewpoint, this is deeply
Speaker 1: uncool of these people, like they used in imidation. They
Speaker 1: would make death threats, they would make bomb threats. Um.
Speaker 1: They would threaten people's family. Yeah, they would set fires.
Speaker 1: People who were running legitimate labs were threatened. Um, people
Speaker 1: who were legitimately supplying the labs were threatened. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: would set fires. Um. And then there were other ones
Speaker 1: where you're just like, yeah, I'm kinda and can kind
Speaker 1: of get behind that. The point to a lot of
Speaker 1: these wasn't not wasn't just to get people to um
Speaker 1: cease their activities or to actually liberate animals. They um
Speaker 1: were done also to generate publicity. This is a huge
Speaker 1: aspect of it. These guys were pr masters. They realized
Speaker 1: that the bigger and the bolder, UM, the more likely
Speaker 1: it was to get headlines. So guys like the or
Speaker 1: groups like the Animal Liberation Front or UM the Band
Speaker 1: of Mercy would agitate, go out and do these these acts,
Speaker 1: and then Peter like more moderate groups that weren't actually
Speaker 1: doing us would publicize it and write up press releases
Speaker 1: and send it out to the press and um maybe
Speaker 1: set up interviews and stuff like that and try to
Speaker 1: get the get the word out as much as possible
Speaker 1: about these One thing Peter did was they would, uh,
Speaker 1: they would basically turn people. Well sometimes they would send
Speaker 1: people in undercover to get jobs at these labs so
Speaker 1: they could make videotapes. And sometimes they would just get
Speaker 1: in touch with someone there who worked there, turn them
Speaker 1: as but basically as a double agent, and say you
Speaker 1: will be our person on the inside and you can
Speaker 1: do these videos for us. And they got kill the Queen.
Speaker 1: They got sixty hours worth of audio and video from
Speaker 1: a lab, cut it down to a about a half
Speaker 1: an hour documentary called Unnecessary Fuss and released it. And
Speaker 1: it was a big deal. Like basically experimentation and and
Speaker 1: in humane treatment on tape for the masses beyond. Like
Speaker 1: it was about as ugly as you could get. Was
Speaker 1: that the u PEN Head Trauma Center, UM research lab.
Speaker 1: That's probably all you need to say. Pretty much. Baboons
Speaker 1: were involved and they were researching head trauma. Yeah. So um.
Speaker 1: When this came out, it really got the public going.
Speaker 1: And just like in the sixties with those two articles
Speaker 1: about people's pets being stolen and used in lab experiments,
Speaker 1: this led to an amendment to the Animal Welfare Act.
Speaker 1: UM directly led to it, and the amendment said that, uh,
Speaker 1: there needed to be committees that oversaw each lab that
Speaker 1: was carrying out animal experiments. There needed to be the
Speaker 1: use of pain relievers and anesthesia uh in in experiments,
Speaker 1: and there needed to be postoperative care in lab experiments.
Speaker 1: Right yeah, and that you couldn't take a single animal
Speaker 1: and just keep operating on that animal. Okay, Again, all
Speaker 1: of these things had a very important caveat. Caveat is
Speaker 1: unless it's necessary. So there was a huge loopholder. If
Speaker 1: you're testing like pain threshold on a maccaque monkey, while
Speaker 1: you can't give it pain relievers, you can't give it anesthesia,
Speaker 1: you need to inflict pain, and well it's part of
Speaker 1: the experiment, so it's medically necessary. Or we have to
Speaker 1: see how one maccaque monkey responds to multiple surgeries because
Speaker 1: we're trying to induce ps PTSD in that monkey, so
Speaker 1: we can study PTSD drugs. Well, that's medically necessary, and
Speaker 1: that this this whole loophole, that huge loophole with the
Speaker 1: idea that advancing science and human understanding and human welfare
Speaker 1: as long as it's necessary, then you can justify anything
Speaker 1: you do to an animal that's still around and it's
Speaker 1: been around for a very long time. So this is
Speaker 1: all culminated in more recent years with a guy, an
Speaker 1: attorney named Stephen Wise, who uh depending on who you are,
Speaker 1: you might this guy is crazy, or you might say
Speaker 1: he's amazing, a hero and a hero. So he's an
Speaker 1: animal rights attorney essentially. He wrote a book in two
Speaker 1: thousand called Rattling the Cage Colon toward Legal Rights for Animals,
Speaker 1: and he basically put forth a very radical idea, which
Speaker 1: is that some animals, like the elephant, or the great ape,
Speaker 1: or the gray parrot African gray parrot, they actually deserve personhood.
Speaker 1: They deserve legal protection under the law, just as a
Speaker 1: human being does. And let me uh well, he founded
Speaker 1: a in two thousand and seven, a group called the
Speaker 1: Non Human Rights Project Big in Little H Big are
Speaker 1: Big P and it's a legal defense group that basically said,
Speaker 1: let's find a sympathetic judge somewhere where we can bring
Speaker 1: up a case and maybe get something some precedent set,
Speaker 1: get something on the books. Yeah, all they have to
Speaker 1: do is get one case heard, get it denied, and
Speaker 1: that's to motion the appeals process where you can work
Speaker 1: through the higher courts. Right, um and hopefully get to
Speaker 1: get some sort of legal ruling. Right. So this guy
Speaker 1: is sharp and part of the problem that he's facing
Speaker 1: right now is, as far as law in the United
Speaker 1: States goes, animals are property. The strictly property, their special
Speaker 1: property right Like, for example, if you're beating up your
Speaker 1: microwave and the neighbors aren't going to call the cops,
Speaker 1: and the cops aren't gonna come. But if you're beating
Speaker 1: up your dog, the neighbors are probably going to call
Speaker 1: the cops, and the cops are probably going to come. Right.
Speaker 1: The thing is is that animals still property, and and
Speaker 1: as far as the law goes, property cannot possibly have
Speaker 1: standing in a court. And if it doesn't have standing,
Speaker 1: then that means that the animal can't sue on its
Speaker 1: own behalf. You being the neighbor, you can't sue on
Speaker 1: the dog's behalf because you're just the neighbor who you
Speaker 1: have no standing in this dog's wealth, are either. So
Speaker 1: these these animals, any animal is in legal limbo as
Speaker 1: far as American courts are concerned. Him. Why is trying
Speaker 1: to figure out a way around that? Yeah, he attempted
Speaker 1: some lawsuits and his organization did UM in New York
Speaker 1: on behalf of four chimpanzees. UM, and he said, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm gonna see on these chimps behalf, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try and gain their freedom. He lost all the cases,
Speaker 1: got a lot of press, but he did have one
Speaker 1: heard and in one of the cases he even got
Speaker 1: a judge or not got a judge, but the judge
Speaker 1: actually issued a writ of habeas corpus, first time ever
Speaker 1: for an animal, even though the judge reversed that order
Speaker 1: that same day. It Yeah, what did I just do? Uh?
Speaker 1: It was a very big deal in the media. Got
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember hearing about this guy on the
Speaker 1: news and when you when you wrote this article, is like, oh,
Speaker 1: I totally know that guy. Yeah. Yeah, there's a really
Speaker 1: great Boston Globe profile on him and what he's doing
Speaker 1: UM from a year a couple of years ago that's
Speaker 1: worth checking out. Yeah, there's a documentary to UM release
Speaker 1: this year called Unlocking the Cage by the legendary d A.
Speaker 1: Pinne Baker and his wife and partner Chris. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure you'd pronounce her name Heddas. Perhaps he's he's the
Speaker 1: one that did Dylan's don't look back in or. He's
Speaker 1: very legendary the War Room. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: ever saw that, the political one. Um, what else because
Speaker 1: I know the name he's he's a documentary legend, documentary
Speaker 1: documentary and legend documentary, legend whatever. But he's uh made
Speaker 1: this movie about Stephen Wise and his group called Unlocking
Speaker 1: the Cage. I haven't seen it yet, but it's on
Speaker 1: the list. Um. Yeah, he's a pretty interesting guy. Uh,
Speaker 1: what's what. Something that struck me that I found in
Speaker 1: my research was he and Peter don't really see eye
Speaker 1: the eye. They're not working in conjunction. In a few
Speaker 1: years back, Peter Um brought a case against Sea World
Speaker 1: on behalf of the Orcas and said that it was
Speaker 1: a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment against slavery, and Stephen
Speaker 1: Wives is like, what are you doing? He saw that
Speaker 1: they had very very clearly opened the door for the
Speaker 1: judge to be like, the Constitution doesn't apply to animals
Speaker 1: because animals aren't people. And once that precedent is set
Speaker 1: like that, because it's not actually written in law, and
Speaker 1: no one there hasn't been that precedent, and that really
Speaker 1: opened the door for it. And he Luckily the judge
Speaker 1: is just like no, but didn't rule any further. So
Speaker 1: what why is trying to do is to get somebody
Speaker 1: to set a different precedent, which is, uh, yeah, well
Speaker 1: that that actually makes kind of sense. So let's let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and run this trial through. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: something that could be possible one day. Like you know,
Speaker 1: there have been courts that have ruled where, uh, this
Speaker 1: animal was an heir to in a state, and the
Speaker 1: court made the animal temporary ward of the court and
Speaker 1: endowed this animal with the inheritance give it a nice lunch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had to kind of work through that. So he's
Speaker 1: he's kind of he's got a little bit of a
Speaker 1: leg to stand on and kind of pointing some of
Speaker 1: these things out right. And plus, corporations are artificial people
Speaker 1: under the law. Yeah, we did a whole show in
Speaker 1: that right, right. Um, So, I mean it's not like
Speaker 1: this is just totally wacky as far as the law goes.
Speaker 1: I think the problem is this the big challenge he's
Speaker 1: facing is, Okay, let's say you're successful and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, animals have the same rights under the law
Speaker 1: that humans do. What's that gonna do to the world. Um,
Speaker 1: And that's a huge that's a huge question that's raised.
Speaker 1: I mean, like you can just you can come up
Speaker 1: with a lot of stuff that would happen automatically. Obviously,
Speaker 1: medical testing has gone. No more zoos, no more circuses
Speaker 1: for lea circuses with animals, right, it's just flee circuses
Speaker 1: maybe um the creepiest circus of all. Um. Obviously, there
Speaker 1: would be no hunting. Veganism would probably just be that's
Speaker 1: just what we eat. Now. Nugent would just drown himself, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he really would. Yeah, Ted Nugent would not like a
Speaker 1: world where animals had the same rights that I think
Speaker 1: about it. Um, And like pets would would there be
Speaker 1: pets any longer? There's actually been changes I think somewhere
Speaker 1: in Colorado and definitely in somewhere in Rhode Island, if
Speaker 1: not Rhode Island, the state. Um, they they amended the
Speaker 1: law to include guardian instead of owner or in addition
Speaker 1: to owner. That's a different thing. It totally is like
Speaker 1: when you're the legal guardian of your younger brother, you're
Speaker 1: not their owner. No, I mean you might treat them
Speaker 1: that way. But uh. And then the lastly, so we
Speaker 1: talked about animals being moral agents. Right, so if you're
Speaker 1: a moral agent, you also have moral responsibilities in addition
Speaker 1: to moral protections. Another can of worms. Yeah right, So
Speaker 1: like if an animal kills another animal, as are you
Speaker 1: going to try it and execute it? Yeah? I mean, well,
Speaker 1: I mean that kind of happens today. You can animals
Speaker 1: are often put down when they attack other animals. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so yeah, there would be more of the same. What's
Speaker 1: weird is apparently back in the Renaissance, in the medieval era,
Speaker 1: um they used to have trials for animals that did
Speaker 1: something record. It wasn't I mean like we do it today.
Speaker 1: Like remember Travis the chimp who um who ripped the
Speaker 1: woman's face off. He was summarily executed by police and
Speaker 1: I think had he even been captured they would have
Speaker 1: put him down. There wouldn't have been a trial. But
Speaker 1: they used to actually have the trial. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: because they wanted to give the animal a fair trial.
Speaker 1: It was for he feeling the the community, you know,
Speaker 1: to make the humans feel better. If they could draw
Speaker 1: this out and make this like an actual issue that
Speaker 1: was resolved in the execution of the of the animal. Interesting,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's pretty way boy, good one, dude. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nice job. Yeah, thanks you too, buddy. If you want
Speaker 1: to know more about animal rights, you can type that
Speaker 1: into the search bar your favorite search engine. And since
Speaker 1: I said search engine, that means it's time for listener mail. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is the famous part two from earlier this week
Speaker 1: with IVON and I promised a list of band names
Speaker 1: and a list of puns from Josh, because Josh says
Speaker 1: that he hates puns despite his somewhat regular use of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I again, I take issue with this. If you accidentally
Speaker 1: make a pun, you're not a punny person. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's just go on this list. Poison IVY episode Josh,
Speaker 1: let's stop beating around the bush. Accident blood types Josh,
Speaker 1: I'm sure I take a B blood. I'm positive of it.
Speaker 1: Hula hoops discussing a pushing a hula hoop with a stick.
Speaker 1: Hang in there and stick with it. Accident police dogs
Speaker 1: discussing the current popularity of arson dogs. They're so hot
Speaker 1: right now. I think that was on purpose. It's possible.
Speaker 1: Remember that one chili Chili peppers, Josh, it's right for it.
Speaker 1: Total accident. I don't even think you can include that one.
Speaker 1: Can you sweat colors? There's this boiling point, I guess
Speaker 1: talking about how hot it's been in Atlanta. M hm,
Speaker 1: that's a reach. Yeah, I agree. Strike that one from
Speaker 1: the record, UM spam, talking about the trouble the maker
Speaker 1: of spam had one trying to sell spam. He was
Speaker 1: hamstrung by the name Hormel spice meat. Again. Accident, handwriting analysis,
Speaker 1: the writings on the wall. I don't even remember that one.
Speaker 1: I'm not pun though, I'm not copping to any of
Speaker 1: these purpose. I've got a few more UM casinos. It
Speaker 1: paid off an aces Nolpe accident. White collar crime. This
Speaker 1: is something that has woven into history of white collar crime.
Speaker 1: Total act, disgusting. A wool transporter keeping wolf for his
Speaker 1: own use. Again accident. I'm just gonna do one more,
Speaker 1: pick the best of him, chuck uh. This like a letterman,
Speaker 1: Tom tasteing how it works. After saying it makes you
Speaker 1: wonder how things we can taste taste, he said, chew
Speaker 1: on that one. Accident. And now the band names. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna read through these very quickly and looking at this list,
Speaker 1: these are great. So if you're out there looking for
Speaker 1: a band, name, Listen up, listen up, toe thumb uh interest,
Speaker 1: cytoplasmic sperm injection. Maybe like a prog band. Maggot Therapy
Speaker 1: that's a metal band. The Static Crush that's total chew gaze,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, or ima uh disruptive Technology. I don't even know.
Speaker 1: My Atonic Goats. That's a good one. Yea. The Tennessee
Speaker 1: Stiff Legs. I love it. That's a blue grass band.
Speaker 1: A fist full of neurons. Metal uh, force Multiplier, total metal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. Nazis on meth it's metal. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: punk that can be good too. Masters of Plastic, nerd Core,
Speaker 1: colloidal quantum dots, definite nerd core, super critical fluid. That's
Speaker 1: probably nerd Wore two actually, I guess so. Or a
Speaker 1: boy band, the Brownie Wise Massacre. That's a indie that's good.
Speaker 1: Brownie Wise overdrive boy they were two um Snake detection
Speaker 1: theory up on that one. He's really cracking me up.
Speaker 1: Extraordinary rendition. That's like a guy just like you. Two
Speaker 1: guys in Maine that singing a coffee shop. They do
Speaker 1: all the classics. Ye standards were extraordinary rendition, controlled burn
Speaker 1: not bad. That's a new metal Poor fred Noonan. That's
Speaker 1: a band that's destined to break up poop Fusion, same
Speaker 1: cooperative eye hypothesis. I don't know if that's a good name.
Speaker 1: After all, I might retract that one. Uh, Flesh on
Speaker 1: the Chunks, that's a good one. Or that could be
Speaker 1: the first uh album from poop Fusion. Uh, like a
Speaker 1: Zappa esque band, the Horny skin Folds. M. I can
Speaker 1: see that being like, uh, party party rock kind of thing, right, Um?
Speaker 1: Is that freedom rock? Yeah? Man, turn it up professional
Speaker 1: mermaid culture. That's not bad. That's very indie though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like they go to Columbia University or something. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then finally too or super Critical CEO two not bad. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's too super critical. So and then finally Frozen poop
Speaker 1: Knife in there. Who did you tell to change their
Speaker 1: name to Frozen poop Knife? Oh? I don't know. Oh
Speaker 1: uh diarrhea Planet. Yeah, and they tweeted back and said
Speaker 1: thanks for the idea, and never did they No way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great. Oh yeah, those guys are good. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's it. Everybody von for keeping track of that. Man,
Speaker 1: that's a great lesson. Yeah, and thank you to the
Speaker 1: dudes at primer Stories for posting the essay I wrote.
Speaker 1: Go check it out at primer stories dot com, slash
Speaker 1: s y s K and if you want to hang
Speaker 1: out with us, you can hang out with us on
Speaker 1: Twitter at s y s K podcast. You can join
Speaker 1: us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 1: You can send us an email the Stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us
Speaker 1: at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is it how stuff Works dot com. Mhm