Speaker 1: Oh hey, everybody, and that's the Hunty Collective. Another week,
Speaker 1: another show, episode seventy one this time, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: start you off with a little behind the scenes, a
Speaker 1: little life and time to fill the engineer. There's been
Speaker 1: a big movement around the country to keep Phil on
Speaker 1: the podcast, so I figured, if we're gonna people are
Speaker 1: gonna be hashtagging my boy Phil, we better find out
Speaker 1: more about what he thinks about things including peas, Game
Speaker 1: of Thrones, and other really interesting items. And then we're
Speaker 1: going to once again transport ourselves to Berkeley, California, where
Speaker 1: we're gonna hear from a vegan professor philosophy, Robert C. Jones,
Speaker 1: and learn about what he thinks about hunting, about ethical
Speaker 1: veganism as he calls it, and some of his greater philosophies.
Speaker 1: It is a long, deep, and awesome conversation, so stick
Speaker 1: around for that. But before we get to that, it
Speaker 1: is summertime, and if you there's part of this podcast
Speaker 1: coming up where we talk about a certain sparkly beverage
Speaker 1: that I've come to be a real big fan of.
Speaker 1: And the perfect cooler to put in put that sparkly
Speaker 1: beverage in is the brand new day Trip lunch bag
Speaker 1: by Eddie. Now, you guys all know that I have
Speaker 1: a long history with the Eddie. I love their products,
Speaker 1: I love their people, I love their company. You might
Speaker 1: ask eighty dollars for a lunch bag. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I'm telling you, man if but you
Speaker 1: get over the sticker on this. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: one of the more the least expensive YETI products out there.
Speaker 1: It's a great way to have YETI with you all
Speaker 1: the time. And for as a father who is running
Speaker 1: to all kinds of swim camps and bike camps, and
Speaker 1: running my kid to the river to go fishing, taking
Speaker 1: him on road trips to spot elk and and doing
Speaker 1: it just everything with my little guy, this is the
Speaker 1: perfect thing to have with me because he likes he
Speaker 1: likes water, he likes juice, he likes milk, and so
Speaker 1: do I all the things, and so it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a great product for that reason, and it's a product
Speaker 1: I would recommend. So go to eddie dot com and
Speaker 1: check it out. So, without further ado, Episode seventy one,
Speaker 1: let's go. I guess I grew up on an older road.
Speaker 1: A ped'll do the medal. I always did what I've
Speaker 1: told until I found out that my brand new glows
Speaker 1: the game sec in hand from the rich kids next door.
Speaker 1: And I grew up baths. I guess I grew up.
Speaker 1: I mean, they have a thousand things inside of my
Speaker 1: head I wish I ain't seen, and now I just
Speaker 1: want to do a real bad dream or being a
Speaker 1: like I'm coming apart of it seems. But thank you,
Speaker 1: Jack Daniels, Oh No. Seven, Tennessee. Who Hey, everybody, and
Speaker 1: welcome to another episode of The Hunting Collective. I am,
Speaker 1: of course, Ben O'Brien, and I am joined by Phill
Speaker 1: the Engineer. Hey do Ben, it's good now, Phil. We
Speaker 1: got a lot to talk about. I'm excited to hear this,
Speaker 1: a lot to talk about. You have been a recurring
Speaker 1: guest for how many weeks? Now we're like four weeks.
Speaker 1: I think this is number four, and there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of a movement afoot hashtag keep Phil. I saw
Speaker 1: that pop up a couple of places. A lot of
Speaker 1: people were um giving you props for the way you
Speaker 1: handled the public versus private land conversation as well as
Speaker 1: the way that you handled the animal rights conversation. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I can tell you my secret. My secret is to
Speaker 1: let the people who have way more knowledge and experience
Speaker 1: about these topics to talk for thirty minutes and then
Speaker 1: I come in. Yeah, no, no, I say one vaguely
Speaker 1: intelligent things like generalized, generalize, I I and then people applauded.
Speaker 1: I say, yes, that's my whole career point. I'm just
Speaker 1: kind of like, yes, a great point, fell oh expert,
Speaker 1: That's that's how I roll. Um. But anyway, you're you know,
Speaker 1: like the movement to keep Phil is strong, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna I never I don't think I ever suggest that
Speaker 1: we wouldn't keep Phil, or maybe I did, but I
Speaker 1: think the first episode was a little rocky. I think
Speaker 1: there was an insinuation that maybe I would be around. Well,
Speaker 1: now I'm turning the heat up on you, Phil. Great. Now,
Speaker 1: there's no one else to except for me to do
Speaker 1: any talking. We don't need Ryan Callahan or Steve Ranella,
Speaker 1: who are these whatever? Whatever? No, No, don't need Yannis,
Speaker 1: but tulis in here, yucking it up. Just me and Phil,
Speaker 1: just me and Phil. Now, this is gonna be a
Speaker 1: long episode because the interview with Robert C. Jones Vegan
Speaker 1: philosopher vegan. Uh, he's not a vegan professor. He's a
Speaker 1: professor of philosophy but also a vegan, and he teaches
Speaker 1: classes about veganism and ethical veganism, has written some papers
Speaker 1: on the subject. He's going to be our guest. I
Speaker 1: will say before we get any anything else, that I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed this conversation man likes as much as I've
Speaker 1: enjoyed any other conversation I've had with anyone really on
Speaker 1: this podcast, Maybe because I was coming off of a
Speaker 1: very confusing time that I spent with manimal rights activists
Speaker 1: from episode seventy. So if you haven't listened to that,
Speaker 1: please go back. Listen to episode seventy. Hit pause right now,
Speaker 1: Phil and I will take a break and let's you
Speaker 1: do that, all right. Welcome back. That's a long break, Yeah,
Speaker 1: welcome back. Uh. You've now listened to episode seventy with
Speaker 1: Matt Johnson from Direct Action Everywhere, and know that I
Speaker 1: kind of left that one confused, a little bit, a
Speaker 1: little taken aback by some of the points made. Some
Speaker 1: of the assertions around human slavery and animal rights, some
Speaker 1: of the assertions around disabled humans and animal rights left
Speaker 1: me a little bit taken aback UM and wondering if
Speaker 1: I was doing the right thing and highlighting those ideas
Speaker 1: I left. I will say that I left that podcast
Speaker 1: thinking exactly that it was that is just the right
Speaker 1: thing to do to let someone like that have my
Speaker 1: platform to espouse those ideas. But luckily, the next day
Speaker 1: I met with Robert C. Jones, who you're about to
Speaker 1: hear soon, and he helped me get through some of
Speaker 1: the issues I had and I came to a better place.
Speaker 1: And I think this to our conversation with Robert Jones
Speaker 1: was about as productive as they come between a hunter
Speaker 1: and a vegan, and hopefully you'll think the same thing.
Speaker 1: So we'll get to that in a little bit, but
Speaker 1: before we do, I got a couple of emails that
Speaker 1: came in regarding that last podcast. UM. One of them
Speaker 1: just says it's from Demetrius man as SR. He said
Speaker 1: in regards to the point made that we give disabled
Speaker 1: people rights that they don't understand, and why wouldn't we
Speaker 1: do the same for animals, I think we could offer
Speaker 1: a counterpoint that the disabled humans will typically have a
Speaker 1: caregiver or family member that does understand those rights. There
Speaker 1: is not another animal that will understand what those rights
Speaker 1: are and dictate them or champion for that animal. Just
Speaker 1: my two cents. Thanks for all you do. Demetrius from Ohio. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fine. What do you think about that, Phil? I
Speaker 1: think that solves that problem. Uh, solve it. I mean
Speaker 1: it's like, it's a good point that I don't think
Speaker 1: was was raised last week. But yeah, it's just more
Speaker 1: to chew on. Yeah, I think it's a yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's there's there's again. I think part of the
Speaker 1: reason why I was made uncomfortable that because there is
Speaker 1: really no logical way to dance through that that idea.
Speaker 1: I haven't. I've thought about it a lot since that conversation.
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about it at all coming into it.
Speaker 1: And so now one of the good, um, one of
Speaker 1: the good things about the conversation, Matt Johns was I
Speaker 1: was able to think through that assertion and I still have.
Speaker 1: I I see no validity in it. I just don't.
Speaker 1: So we'll move on from it. Another guy, Dennis White
Speaker 1: wrote in and he was and he said, Hey, Ben,
Speaker 1: I was really looking forward to this episode, and when
Speaker 1: you announced that you were going to talk with someone
Speaker 1: from that world, I just finished it, and I was
Speaker 1: honestly a little let down. I think his answers were
Speaker 1: just cookie cutter responses that he has followed away in
Speaker 1: his brain just to use them against any argument, any
Speaker 1: time with anyone. If he compared animal race to slavery
Speaker 1: one more time, I was going to jump out of
Speaker 1: my skin. I don't remember a response that he gave
Speaker 1: that didn't involve slavery. In the end, the mental gymnastics
Speaker 1: that man has to play just to make a point
Speaker 1: with little or no credence must be extremely exhausting. I
Speaker 1: don't know he goes. I can feel that frustration, and
Speaker 1: I think a lot of folks that wrote in voiced
Speaker 1: that around that podcast. But but at least now we
Speaker 1: know kind of where someone like Matt Johnson is coming from,
Speaker 1: and we can work through the things we agree with
Speaker 1: and the things we don't. So we'll leave that behind
Speaker 1: and we'll look forward to Robert C. Jones. But before
Speaker 1: we do, we're gonna find We're gonna find a little
Speaker 1: bit about Phil, the mysterious man behind the keyboard, or
Speaker 1: it's not that's not really keyboard, is it? Phil? What is?
Speaker 1: What would you call that? That is a mixing a
Speaker 1: mixing board, a mixing board. Yes, And if there's gonna
Speaker 1: be a movement around someone, then we gotta we gotta
Speaker 1: know who they are. So Phil, we're gonna go through
Speaker 1: your entire list story to your entire life story. All right,
Speaker 1: I've been preparing my whole life. Where were you born?
Speaker 1: I was born in a in a city outside of Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 1: that's actually in Washington State called Vancouver. Whoa hot bed
Speaker 1: for hot bed for undercover animal rights access it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but vegan butcher shops and the like. When you mentioned
Speaker 1: in Portland, that's like the woke capital of the world.
Speaker 1: And so maybe are you Maybe we just discovered the
Speaker 1: real reason you're here. Uh okay, this is where I
Speaker 1: grabbed the microphones in the mixing board, scream something, scream
Speaker 1: something about it slavery, slavery, and you run away. All right,
Speaker 1: Well that's playing out your childhood went over there in
Speaker 1: Oregon or Washington, Washington. Yeah. The reason I related to
Speaker 1: Portland is because whenever I say Vancouver, people automatically assume Vancouver,
Speaker 1: British Columbia, which is the bigger, the bigger city. But Vancouver, Washington,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a nice little suburban area. It was
Speaker 1: like relatively um quaint childhood. No, yeah, man, I yeah.
Speaker 1: I went to school there, came to school, uh college,
Speaker 1: and in Bozeman, went to the film school out here.
Speaker 1: Um and uh yeah. I worked in television after that
Speaker 1: for almost six years. And now I'm now I'm here
Speaker 1: and I've been lucky enough to be using my film
Speaker 1: degree in Montana, which is that just kind of rare?
Speaker 1: Most most of my friends fled to New York or
Speaker 1: l A or the like. Okay, film out of the
Speaker 1: important stuff. Okay, ready you like pas? Yeah? What what
Speaker 1: kind we're talking? Snap, we're talking just kind of like
Speaker 1: an ushy These are good? All right? That's a strike
Speaker 1: against you running thing. Are you aware, Phil? If you're
Speaker 1: gonna be a part of the show, you should be
Speaker 1: aware that I have a I don't say I hate peas.
Speaker 1: Where did this come from? Who are you? Yes? Showed
Speaker 1: me show me on the pod where the hurt you? Um? Listen,
Speaker 1: there's a thing called Shepherd's pie. You ever had that?
Speaker 1: I enjoy Shepherd's Have you ever had Shepherd's pie with
Speaker 1: a P in it? It's like a little it's just
Speaker 1: like a ruinous little green ball that comes out. You
Speaker 1: find it to be delightful. It's very delightful. I do not.
Speaker 1: I find the Shepherd's pies like my favorite thing. And
Speaker 1: I never understood why. There was like some bites I
Speaker 1: enjoyed a lot, and then other bites I thought, well,
Speaker 1: this is am I eating garbage? Am I eating poison?
Speaker 1: And then other bites would be like, this is the
Speaker 1: best thing I ever had. And I realized the bites
Speaker 1: without the peas where the bites that I enjoyed, and
Speaker 1: the bites with the piece for the pies I did
Speaker 1: not enjoy. Now there's been some people right in uh
Speaker 1: a feller named Simon Lester. That's his Instagram handle. At
Speaker 1: least is it chating me because he's like in the
Speaker 1: p industry, we're friends with pea farmers that I'm like
Speaker 1: ruining their lagoon love or like there they profit from it,
Speaker 1: and also says there's good deer hunting on pea farms
Speaker 1: around the country. So okay, maybe I've been proven wrong.
Speaker 1: But doesn't make me like peas anymore? Is it? Is
Speaker 1: it a texture, a taste, a combination, all all of it?
Speaker 1: You hate all of it, all of it. The only
Speaker 1: thing that I don't hate is the color green, but
Speaker 1: when applied to peas, I hate the color green. That's
Speaker 1: a shame. I feel like the specific shade of green
Speaker 1: that you know is a part of the pea is
Speaker 1: it's it's bright looks, it looks nutritious and delicious, and
Speaker 1: I would say that it's both. Oh my god. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: moving on. So you know we're in a peak Canary
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, there is an entire festival in Bozeman
Speaker 1: that is named after the p unbelievable. So I think
Speaker 1: you're in the wrong city. It's misguided. I mean, for
Speaker 1: sure we could agree on that, right Phil, Nope, Nope,
Speaker 1: can agree on that. Okay, Um, bald eagle or wild turkey?
Speaker 1: Which one would you choose? Bald eagle? Well? Are we
Speaker 1: talking about eating not eating? No? Just in general, Like
Speaker 1: if I put two things beside you, you would choose
Speaker 1: the bald eagle. Okay, that's fine. Are you pro or
Speaker 1: anti apple pie? Very pro? Boy? Wow, I think I'm
Speaker 1: over four. What's going on? You don't? But you don't
Speaker 1: think that like apple pie is overrated? I mean, I
Speaker 1: just are you just eating like off the shelf grocery
Speaker 1: store apple pies. If you know, I've had a lot
Speaker 1: of homemade apple pies and I just don't feel. Man,
Speaker 1: you get that all the mode, and you don't you know,
Speaker 1: you get the perfect and that is delicious. But I
Speaker 1: don't mind all the mode. But I do mind apple pie,
Speaker 1: like apple pie is being built up as like this
Speaker 1: American tradition. No I don't. I don't. I don't buy
Speaker 1: into that. I don't be Americans apple pie now, but
Speaker 1: it's a I think it's a very good dessert. Let
Speaker 1: me put a few other pies out there for you. Okay,
Speaker 1: Rhubarb pie not as good as apple? Oh my? Oh alright? Uh,
Speaker 1: cherry pie not as good as apple. Oh ah. I'm
Speaker 1: just thrown off now because this is not going well.
Speaker 1: I will tell you I like the like like a
Speaker 1: key lime. Yes, better than apple. Good? Good. There we
Speaker 1: finally feel something. There we go. You're a taste maker, Phil. Uh.
Speaker 1: Let's see what else I got. I'm just coming up
Speaker 1: stuff off the flying that you like cheesecake. I do.
Speaker 1: Are your listeners enjoying this conversation? Okay, Phil, here's another
Speaker 1: guy that wrote in I'll find it on Instagram. But
Speaker 1: you send me a message and it was one of
Speaker 1: the more interesting messages he was. And then the question
Speaker 1: just basically was do you consider your listeners when you're
Speaker 1: making a podcast? I was. I think this conversation answers
Speaker 1: that question. I mean, yeah, I consider that they're there.
Speaker 1: But do I always just do? Sometimes I go off
Speaker 1: onto terrible, weird rabbit holes. But I think that's respectable.
Speaker 1: And I think you know the your your your true
Speaker 1: fan base will appreciate that you know you're not catering
Speaker 1: to them. They come to you because what you do
Speaker 1: get what I want to talk about. Here we go, Um, okay,
Speaker 1: what do you drive? Phil? I drive a two five
Speaker 1: Honda Pilot? Al right, shout out the Honda. Yeah sponsor
Speaker 1: us uh wait, hold on, speaking of sponsors, the trans
Speaker 1: that she lined up. That's why speaking of sponsors, we're
Speaker 1: gonna close this this part of the show out before
Speaker 1: we get to Robert C. Jones and this this this
Speaker 1: Roberts Jones. The reason why I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: peas and apple pie and what we're about to talk
Speaker 1: about because the Robbers Jones interview gets deep as you
Speaker 1: would imagine me and a philosopher for professional philosopher own
Speaker 1: veganism might get it got real conceptional and real deep.
Speaker 1: So we gotta I want to give you guys a
Speaker 1: little bit of candy before your vegetables. Here peace peace. Um.
Speaker 1: There's this product out there in the lexicon of sparkly
Speaker 1: drinks called white Claw. And now it was maybe about
Speaker 1: three weeks ago. I had no idea what white claw was.
Speaker 1: I knew that there was a billboard outside of Bowsman
Speaker 1: that had white Claw, and there was like a I
Speaker 1: think it was like a real nice looking young lady
Speaker 1: looking happy. She was looking really, I'm in fit tan happy.
Speaker 1: It sounds like an advertisement. Yeah, And I thought up,
Speaker 1: m hmm, maybe if I drank that I could be fit,
Speaker 1: tann and happy. And so I was at a buddy's house.
Speaker 1: His name's Omar, and he started whipping out these white claws.
Speaker 1: And there's a myriad of flavors. I don't know how
Speaker 1: many flavors are a white claw endless. They're adding new
Speaker 1: ones every day or so I hear. And I think
Speaker 1: if I might have been sitting around a fire when
Speaker 1: I first put my lips on this, I mean, just
Speaker 1: astonishingly tasty beverage that is known as white Claw. Well
Speaker 1: do you do you want to explain to the listeners
Speaker 1: what white Claw is if they haven't, I haven't had
Speaker 1: the pleasure. Again, I don't really if they look it up,
Speaker 1: I've got time to explain everything to you. But now,
Speaker 1: white Claw is a drink, is a beverage. Um, let
Speaker 1: me just look up. Let me just go to its website.
Speaker 1: Because I don't know a lot about I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 1: I only know that it's delicious and refreshing on a
Speaker 1: hot summer's day. It is what the industry calls a
Speaker 1: spiked seltzer, I think is the term. This is being
Speaker 1: thrown around hard Seltzer. Hard Seltzer made pure. That's five
Speaker 1: percent alcohol bi volume, which is more than four and
Speaker 1: less than six hundred calories I think per thing, and
Speaker 1: only two grams of carbs, which is what I want
Speaker 1: out of my booze. Um. So that's that's it. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's and it's uh, it tastes like a little taste
Speaker 1: like alcohol water. It's yeah, it's like a Lacroix with
Speaker 1: a little a little a little friendly handshake. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's it's like how would you yeah, so like,
Speaker 1: how would you describe it? Well, it's you know, it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like that Lacroix Seltzer water type. You know, it's
Speaker 1: completely it's there's no sugar, well besides the alcohol, there's
Speaker 1: no added sugar or anything like that. Um, it's not flavored,
Speaker 1: naturally flavored essenced Uh, you know, just trying to watch
Speaker 1: the calories. I think it's a good option the hot
Speaker 1: summer's day. Uh, I am. I haven't told you this yet.
Speaker 1: I am actually a very big white cloth fan as well.
Speaker 1: I am a proponent. I think this is a good product.
Speaker 1: This is it's a great product. It's a great product
Speaker 1: because there are so many now, so many different brands
Speaker 1: are and you know, companies are making their own version.
Speaker 1: You know, actually like big craft breweries are making their
Speaker 1: own hard selters now because beer isn't selling as well,
Speaker 1: and so like a local big Sky brewery Ada, Missoula,
Speaker 1: just started making making their own version. It's it's it's hot,
Speaker 1: it's popular. Yeah. I was told a couple of times
Speaker 1: I was posting a lot on the internet about white
Speaker 1: clothes trying to get sponsored. They didn't, I mean they
Speaker 1: didn't yet. They haven't yet. Maybe they'll hear this. They
Speaker 1: haven't yet responded to my many d ms on Instagram.
Speaker 1: Okay are you are you verified on Instagram? Do you
Speaker 1: have that little blue checkmark? I think that might help
Speaker 1: you out? Do you think so? Yeah? I think so.
Speaker 1: I think you could get verified? You think so? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Have you have? You We don't have to you don't
Speaker 1: have to talk about it, but I think you should
Speaker 1: try to get verified. And I think white Cloud would
Speaker 1: be much more. I had to check who they like,
Speaker 1: who is this check marked fellow? I think they would
Speaker 1: be crestfallen. They's like, oh no, he's not worth the
Speaker 1: crap a you're worth the check or they would they
Speaker 1: probably don't even look. You know, there's so much competition.
Speaker 1: I think they'd take the advertising. I think they'd take
Speaker 1: this thing. So yeah, all right, well listen guys, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna bleach my hair start wearing some pastel colors. M
Speaker 1: I feel like that would go appropriately with my white claw.
Speaker 1: C Yeah, some like Sperry like get that yacht look going.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, the white Claw is kind of like
Speaker 1: the yacht of well, it has a whole water theme.
Speaker 1: I think a white claw that's like a name of
Speaker 1: a kind of wave. Right, It's get that white Cap
Speaker 1: white Claws. Look at their label. Hey, you've you've enlightened me.
Speaker 1: I've you know, all no laws when you're drinking claws
Speaker 1: man there, see look at that. Why aren't they paying
Speaker 1: you already? Anyway, we've we've digressed way far away. Anyway,
Speaker 1: if you're listening to this and you are happy to
Speaker 1: be employed at a little company called white Claw, hit
Speaker 1: me up t C at the media dot Com. We'd
Speaker 1: love to discuss a sponsorship package that includes me get
Speaker 1: my hands on a bunch of free white Claw. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think since I was a guest on this
Speaker 1: episode where you, um, there would be I mean, were
Speaker 1: you introduced this idea, there would clearly be some overflow.
Speaker 1: That's all your position. Now we could get a little
Speaker 1: white Claw fridge to go underneath your board over there
Speaker 1: in the podcast studio. Uh yes, or even just on
Speaker 1: tap maybe. Oh why do they do that? We should say,
Speaker 1: like we're under extreme conditions here at Meat Eater. The
Speaker 1: podcast studio is about five degrees right now. I could
Speaker 1: go on for another twenty minutes about the the adventures
Speaker 1: that that I've been going through to um make this
Speaker 1: podcast studio you know, sound proof, sound friendly and A
Speaker 1: lot of that has to do with the h VAC
Speaker 1: air conditioning system, which right now is pumping out way
Speaker 1: too much cold air. Oh, I got an idea where crowdsource. Okay,
Speaker 1: here we go. We got we got an h VAC.
Speaker 1: If we have any h VAC professionals and or um
Speaker 1: insulation professionals and or park A companies out there listening,
Speaker 1: we could use help in all those categories. Because it
Speaker 1: is like, I'm of course wearing flip flops? Are you
Speaker 1: bring I'm not? No, No, you're wearing sweet? What kind
Speaker 1: of shoes are you wearing? That could also be part
Speaker 1: of the you know, they're just like like a trail
Speaker 1: running shoe. Um, I don't who makes them. You don't
Speaker 1: even know. I don't even know. Let let's see this
Speaker 1: is this is the problem here. They look well worn, Phil,
Speaker 1: I've used them a lot UM's definitely exercising New Balance
Speaker 1: a lot um. You can any we We'll just say
Speaker 1: they're New Balance shoutouts they are. They are not sponsor us.
Speaker 1: If we get sponsored by New Balance and white Cloth, dude,
Speaker 1: we would be the new Jobs. Buddy. I feel like
Speaker 1: he's he's kind of the perpetual New Balance sponsor even
Speaker 1: in the afterlife. All right, here we go. Um, anything
Speaker 1: else I missed? No? Um? Uh you know, just for
Speaker 1: future reference. You know, uh, I know you talk about
Speaker 1: Game of Thrones on this show, even though yeah, the
Speaker 1: show is over. I heard a story about you trying
Speaker 1: to explain it to Steve and then him being almost offended.
Speaker 1: He just didn't even doesn't like serial dramas, didn't understand
Speaker 1: the dragons. No, but if you ever want to go
Speaker 1: into a throne's deep dive on this show, I've been
Speaker 1: asked several times. I've been asked several times since that
Speaker 1: episode because people don't always listen every week, so they'll
Speaker 1: like catching up. They'll be like five weeks behind. Did
Speaker 1: you comment on the ending of Game of Thrones? I
Speaker 1: say no, because it was terrible. I mean maybe the worst,
Speaker 1: Like the last two seasons were just not they were
Speaker 1: terrible television. I mean just the writing just went off
Speaker 1: the rails that the acting went all the rails, proc
Speaker 1: the actors were reading the reading the scripts, like what
Speaker 1: am I happy to? What do I have to say now?
Speaker 1: Like the last episode was just I thought I read
Speaker 1: a spoiler of that last episode and I thought it
Speaker 1: was a joke. I thought, well, that's not, that's not
Speaker 1: They're not gonna do that brand as the King are
Speaker 1: you talking about? Didn't you hear Terry and he has
Speaker 1: a good story. That's like some ridiculous Hollywood writer that
Speaker 1: had to save the crappy storyline. Uh well, see, here's
Speaker 1: the thing. He doesn't even have a good story. He
Speaker 1: was one whole season the show. He wasn't even in
Speaker 1: uh huh what he was underground, wheeling towards the learning
Speaker 1: about he's becoming. I don't know if you heard he's
Speaker 1: the three eyed raven. Now wells like you will never
Speaker 1: walk again, but you will fly. I'm thinking this two
Speaker 1: is gonna be work into a Dragon. No, didn't work
Speaker 1: into a dragon or into a raven and just watched
Speaker 1: the Battle of which watched here's a share. The last
Speaker 1: season had many problems. I am not. I did not
Speaker 1: spies it. I think it had good moments. Of course
Speaker 1: it did that were overall. Of course it did plagued. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a condensed last two seasons. I think if they
Speaker 1: would have honestly stretched it out, Phil, that's like saying, well,
Speaker 1: my car drives most of the time, but it broke
Speaker 1: down six times last week. It's there's so many big, huge,
Speaker 1: fat problems. I'm not gonna argue, but this this could
Speaker 1: go on a while, Yeah, it could. We may, we
Speaker 1: may come back to this. We gotta get to we
Speaker 1: gotta go to Berkeley, we gotta get to Robert C. Jones. Again.
Speaker 1: This is a big time commitment, folks. You're gonna be
Speaker 1: with us for another two hours. So um, I'm not
Speaker 1: apologizing for that, but just get get prepared. Maybe take
Speaker 1: a break after this segment is over. Crack a white claw,
Speaker 1: crack a white claw. Get cozy by the fire. If
Speaker 1: there's a beach around, go to the beach, sit and
Speaker 1: get one of those chase lounges. Get in there. Um,
Speaker 1: I get ready because this is going to get If
Speaker 1: you thought last week, if he's at last week was
Speaker 1: a deep and interesting conversation about kind of the ideological
Speaker 1: differences between animal rights slash vegan folks and US hunters,
Speaker 1: this one is much much deeper. And again I'll say
Speaker 1: before we get to it that Robert Jones, I hope
Speaker 1: we can do more with him. I would take this
Speaker 1: conversation we had on the road, um and let anyone
Speaker 1: hear it live record, it doesn't matter. I think it's
Speaker 1: an important one. I think he is a pretty open
Speaker 1: minded guy. And and he did he compliment. He called
Speaker 1: me brilliant one time in the podcast. That's probably why
Speaker 1: I like him so much. And so, UM, I really
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy it. I really enjoyed it. I hope
Speaker 1: to have Robert back, but until then, enjoy this two
Speaker 1: hours Vegan the Hunter in Berkeley, California. I guess I
Speaker 1: grew up on an alder road. Robert, how's it going, Hey,
Speaker 1: Vn's good to see it, good to be here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's good to meet you too. I have been reading
Speaker 1: a lot about you and watching some of your videos
Speaker 1: and and going deep into the category of veganism. And
Speaker 1: we were just talking before we hit record. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: fresh off the heels of an interview with Matt Johnson
Speaker 1: from Direct Action Everywhere. Learning about species is m and
Speaker 1: learning about um animal personhood, things of that nature. So
Speaker 1: my my mind is let's forgive me, my mind is
Speaker 1: spinning right now. UM. But I do, as we were
Speaker 1: saying before, I do very much want to learn about
Speaker 1: these things that I haven't open curiosity. There's absolutely nothing
Speaker 1: about me being a hunter in a mediator that makes
Speaker 1: me want to know less about this or fight against it.
Speaker 1: I'm I have a legitimate, open curiosity about what you
Speaker 1: do and what Matt does. So before we get going,
Speaker 1: give us a quick rundown of of your background, um
Speaker 1: in both philosophy and then also veganism as it were. Well,
Speaker 1: I can tell you, and the short version of the
Speaker 1: story is that I know I grew up in a basic,
Speaker 1: basic American household, meet three times a day. And um,
Speaker 1: my mother, she would always tease me because after I
Speaker 1: became vegan, she would say to me, I remember when
Speaker 1: you were a teenager and I didn't serve meat at
Speaker 1: a at a meal, and you would say, I would
Speaker 1: say to her, mom, this isn't a real meal. You're
Speaker 1: supposed to have meat at a meal. So I so, now,
Speaker 1: of course she would now she looks at me, but um, yeah,
Speaker 1: So I grew up in that, you know, basic American lifestyle,
Speaker 1: grow growing up on the East Coast in Philly, and
Speaker 1: then I moved to um To l A. And I
Speaker 1: had a friend who worked at a natural food store.
Speaker 1: And the first thing that happened was he showed me
Speaker 1: a little brochure of a veal crate. You and I
Speaker 1: eat a lot of veal because that was somewhat part
Speaker 1: of my food, the old cut lance reveal Scalapini called.
Speaker 1: My mother was Italian, so um. So I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I had no idea. They put these little things in
Speaker 1: little creates, and so that sort of planted a seed
Speaker 1: in my head. And I was like, oh man, I
Speaker 1: kind of feel bad, like I don't know if I
Speaker 1: could eat view anymore. So that was the first exposure.
Speaker 1: And then I read a book called Diet for a
Speaker 1: New America written by John Robbins. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you know John Robins. John Robbins, he was the heir
Speaker 1: to the Baskin Robbins ice cream throne. His father and
Speaker 1: his uncle started basking Robbins, and at some point in
Speaker 1: his development he decided to be a vegan and animal
Speaker 1: rights person, and he he actually renounced. He turned down
Speaker 1: the family business and moved to Hawaiian and grew plants.
Speaker 1: But anyway, he wrote a book called Diet for New America,
Speaker 1: and and really I had one of those like Road
Speaker 1: to Damascus moments, like the scales fell from my eyes.
Speaker 1: I read this book in like two days. It just
Speaker 1: laid out like, here's the animal rights argument, here's the
Speaker 1: environmental argument, here's the all of the argument. And I
Speaker 1: just I was it. I was just like, this makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense. I don't want to cause unnecessary suffering. I
Speaker 1: want to decrease it. And I just on the spot
Speaker 1: kind of became a vegan. Yeah, how old were you then?
Speaker 1: It's in my twenties, the early twenties. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think we're talking about again before we recorded that there
Speaker 1: is there is this idea that that that I want
Speaker 1: to fight against that all, you know, like you kind
Speaker 1: of fringe, you assign that fringe motive to all the
Speaker 1: thing you don't agree with. And I think it's good
Speaker 1: to hear your story and other stories about how you
Speaker 1: came to this, to one you know what it's like
Speaker 1: to eat, mean, you understand what it tastes like. You didn't.
Speaker 1: You didn't grow up in a liberal incubator in l A.
Speaker 1: And Jane and Jane Fonda is not your your mother,
Speaker 1: so like she did sit in our tank a few
Speaker 1: times outside the house. Well, well you know, let's see
Speaker 1: thats reaffirms at all vegans, No Jane Fonda, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean for us, I wanted to set that up.
Speaker 1: You know who you are and how you came to
Speaker 1: what you believe, because I feel very strongly that my
Speaker 1: path came to my passion a certain way, and you
Speaker 1: you came in your own You got to your passion
Speaker 1: in your own way. Um, and your and your studies
Speaker 1: in your own way. So I mean it's it's it's
Speaker 1: critical to that, to that understanding your story is critical.
Speaker 1: I think for hunters to understand, well, I have hunted
Speaker 1: too as a teenager. As a teenager, I hunted just
Speaker 1: locally in Pennsylvan. You know Pennsylvania obviously, hold on a second,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, you take a drink of water. Believe
Speaker 1: it in me, Like the vegan guy can't. He's unhealthy
Speaker 1: throat his drive because he doesn't have twelve So you know,
Speaker 1: as you know, Pennsylvania's a hunting state, and I grew up, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, people would go up to like Scranton and
Speaker 1: they would go hunting, and deer hunting is a big,
Speaker 1: big deal. And um so I did I've actually killed
Speaker 1: animals with a gun? Yeah, so mm hmm. I mean
Speaker 1: I do feel bad about it now when I think
Speaker 1: about it, as a little innocent I just they were
Speaker 1: just lit. They were like sitting ducks. They had no
Speaker 1: idea that I was ready to kill them. And so
Speaker 1: but I was doing it as a teenager where I
Speaker 1: was like it was fun, like I got I got
Speaker 1: a certain kind of gratification from it. So I do
Speaker 1: have that in my background as far as what happened
Speaker 1: with me, Like how did I end up, say, being
Speaker 1: a professor who's writing, you know, professional philosophy on animal
Speaker 1: rights after I did that whole you know, kind of
Speaker 1: vegan thing. I read that book. Then I started to
Speaker 1: Then I discovered that there was actually there were there
Speaker 1: were philosophical arguments that would undergird these beliefs. So rather
Speaker 1: than saying something like, you know, animals are like you
Speaker 1: and they have rights and stuff, when I started to
Speaker 1: dig deep into it, and I started to read sort
Speaker 1: of the classics, which would be Peter Singer Animal Liberation
Speaker 1: and Tom Reagan The Case for Animal Rights. Then I
Speaker 1: started it into like the nitty gritty because I've always
Speaker 1: kind of been analytical. And so then I went to
Speaker 1: graduate school and I, um, I just want to get
Speaker 1: a master's. But my professors, they they encouraged me to
Speaker 1: do the PhD thing, and you know, I'm a blue
Speaker 1: collar guy. I applied to a bunch of schools and
Speaker 1: I got a phone call one day from Stanford saying
Speaker 1: You're in, you know, the PhD program. And I was like,
Speaker 1: I was like, wait, I know there's a lot of
Speaker 1: Robert Jones, isn't Maybe there's another Robert Jones. There was
Speaker 1: no way I did it. So that was like they
Speaker 1: made me an offer I couldn't refuse. So when I
Speaker 1: went there, I you know, animal rights in the even
Speaker 1: in the in the world of philosophy, it's itself fringe.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of philosophers who do this work.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's more now, but this was in nine
Speaker 1: nine years is and this is all It's like I
Speaker 1: got accepted to you know, it's like twenty nineteen years ago.
Speaker 1: So so what I'm getting at is that um is
Speaker 1: that at the time, I thought, I'm just gonna write
Speaker 1: my dissertation. My dissertation is called the Moral Significance of
Speaker 1: Animal Cognition. So I really got into like the moral
Speaker 1: the relationship between cognitive properties of non humans and how
Speaker 1: we value them. That was something I got really obsessed with.
Speaker 1: But what I decided was I thought, there's no one
Speaker 1: whoever went to Stanford in the philosophy department who did
Speaker 1: animal rights. So I'm going to be that person. And
Speaker 1: I'm going to use the cash of you know, West
Speaker 1: Coast Ivy to kind of legitimate in a certain way
Speaker 1: aspects of animal rights. So so that's how that's so
Speaker 1: I've been doing that now for you know, I've got
Speaker 1: this job in two thousand and eight, so it's been
Speaker 1: eleven years since i've been you know, quote professional philosopher.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's I mean, I I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot there. I think I think the issue of the
Speaker 1: moral sort of the moral status of non human animals,
Speaker 1: it's a really complicated issue. It's super complicated, and I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm drawn to those complicated issues. I think
Speaker 1: that's where the meat of our humanity and like the
Speaker 1: things that we're really tugging at us, even as yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to make you squirm tofu kill stuff too.
Speaker 1: We'll get there and get there. Um. I just think
Speaker 1: these issues are you know, I'll keep saying the meaty
Speaker 1: and and that's where like, that's where we can really
Speaker 1: get to the things that tug at us philosophically. I
Speaker 1: feel at least there's a lot of things that tugg
Speaker 1: at meat philosophically about hunting, and I'm just n abashed
Speaker 1: at trying to explore them. Just happen to do it
Speaker 1: in the public forum. But I mean there's really if
Speaker 1: I were to sit down and be like, what, you know,
Speaker 1: what worries me about hunting personally intrinsically? What what is
Speaker 1: it that that just just makes me ache? And it's
Speaker 1: just like, boy man, this thing is it's my it's
Speaker 1: the industry I'm in, it's the lifestyle I've chosen. It's
Speaker 1: the thing I'm most passionate about. Is the thing I
Speaker 1: think the most about, and it involves killing things and
Speaker 1: ripping their guts out. And so is that you know, historically,
Speaker 1: if I look at the span of history in thirty years,
Speaker 1: if we can look back at me and be like,
Speaker 1: what was this guy doing? Um? So that talks to
Speaker 1: me and I'm not you know, I'm open about it.
Speaker 1: I'm not ashamed of that. It's like probably should because
Speaker 1: if I'm going to do something as serious as go
Speaker 1: out into the you know, go out into the woods
Speaker 1: and find an animal to pick the animal, I'd like
Speaker 1: to kill go and kill it and then dismember and
Speaker 1: bring it home and feed to my family. That's a
Speaker 1: pretty complex and serious thing to go and do. It's
Speaker 1: not it's not a bike ride, you know. It's a
Speaker 1: pretty three dimensional kind of like way to to way
Speaker 1: to like recreate or to to to find joy in
Speaker 1: the world. So it's something that I that talks at me,
Speaker 1: and I think that's probably like we probably have this
Speaker 1: same kind of quandaries within within our consumption, within the
Speaker 1: what we're really involved. Then it's just like you look
Speaker 1: at the world and like, I got some problems with this.
Speaker 1: How can I solve those problems? Um? And I think
Speaker 1: that's where most vegans, I don't know about you, most
Speaker 1: vegans and me kind of a line like we're just
Speaker 1: there's we see the issues with consumption and the human
Speaker 1: engine that we are, and we're trying to solve those things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you think so? I read I want to talk
Speaker 1: about that. We'll probably talk about this forever, But I
Speaker 1: read veganism as an aspiration, and I was like clapping
Speaker 1: during most of it because I think I think what
Speaker 1: I'd like to do is first set up what most
Speaker 1: hunters are most folks might think about vegans and and
Speaker 1: and veganism, veganism as an aspiration. You knock a lot
Speaker 1: of those right over, like, at least in my opinion,
Speaker 1: you do. Um, So give us your like the two
Speaker 1: forms of veganism that you can see there to be
Speaker 1: there are two different ways that people can conceive of veganism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so in that paper, and I want to say I
Speaker 1: I co authored that with Lori Gruin. Yes, she's she's
Speaker 1: a uh, one of the giants in the in the
Speaker 1: world of animal way and I owe her a lot
Speaker 1: for that. Um. But actually I've I've since developed that
Speaker 1: idea a little bit more. Nay, it's been a while,
Speaker 1: I should say that. I'm sure there's there's lots of Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've developed some stuff. But basically the way I was,
Speaker 1: the way that I conceived of veganism, the way that
Speaker 1: Lori and I conceived of it, and then I've been
Speaker 1: thinking more about it is so let me ben, let
Speaker 1: me just say first of all that it's so I
Speaker 1: feel like I've kind of gone around the circle on this.
Speaker 1: I've gone around the wheel. And what I mean by
Speaker 1: that is when people say, like, do I identify as
Speaker 1: a vegan because of the way that the term and
Speaker 1: the concept vegan has sort of traveled through the culture.
Speaker 1: It's almost like I distanced myself these days because veganism,
Speaker 1: in many ways, and I talked about it in the
Speaker 1: paper you're talking about, veganism is in some ways well,
Speaker 1: first of all, veganism, at least today in in popular culture,
Speaker 1: it's about It's about food choices, right, It's about the
Speaker 1: choices you you make when you when you go to
Speaker 1: purchase food or make food. And in many ways it's
Speaker 1: divorced from the issue of justice. And I see quote
Speaker 1: animal rights or animal ethics issues as it as a
Speaker 1: social justice issue about non human animals. And so I'm
Speaker 1: reluctant to use veganism interchangeably with animal justice or animal
Speaker 1: ethics because you know, Beyonce's a vegan, and all these
Speaker 1: people are vegan and they eat plant based foods, and
Speaker 1: so what I argue in that paper is, you know,
Speaker 1: you can think of yourself what I call like identity
Speaker 1: vegan or lifestyle vegans. So there are there are vegans.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know that this is not scientific
Speaker 1: by any means, but there is a stigma attached to
Speaker 1: vegans where people think that vegans are kind of zealous,
Speaker 1: self righteous kinds of people, and they think I'm holier
Speaker 1: than now, and I sort of I have clean hands
Speaker 1: because I don't consume any animal products. I don't wear leather,
Speaker 1: I don't eat honey, I don't use wool, I don't
Speaker 1: write and and and I know all this stuff because
Speaker 1: I lived it. Right, So it says in the papers
Speaker 1: that these vegans have an air of moral certitude and
Speaker 1: moral superiit artye, So so there's a certain, whether it
Speaker 1: be factual or not, at least there's a certain caricature
Speaker 1: of vegans that they have a kind of moral superiority.
Speaker 1: And I was at at the butcher's son shout out
Speaker 1: to the how did you like it there? It was good?
Speaker 1: What did you well? I'm curious, I'm so curious. What
Speaker 1: did you What is your order? I had? Uh, hopefully
Speaker 1: you can give me some more like some more dope
Speaker 1: on what's really going on there. I had the chicken grinder,
Speaker 1: which is a is a nice sandwich with some kind
Speaker 1: of chicken for sims. Suddenly they're like, whatever that was?
Speaker 1: I didn't really, I didn't have time. I was like,
Speaker 1: I gotta eat lunch and we gotta go over recorded podcast.
Speaker 1: I don't have really time to take this menu and
Speaker 1: kind of like, but I took a picture of the menu,
Speaker 1: said go back and look at the ingredients and kind
Speaker 1: of break down what was what. But it was good.
Speaker 1: I would eat there every day. Ain't problem with that.
Speaker 1: I just why did they We're gonna go, We'll go
Speaker 1: down this rabbit hole because we should. Why do they
Speaker 1: Why do they say chicken though, like I didn't anything.
Speaker 1: I understand. Why would you Why would you say that
Speaker 1: it's chicken when it's not. I don't understand. And they
Speaker 1: also said, like much like you're saying, we don't like
Speaker 1: the term vegan. When I was talking to the cashier's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't really we say vegan. It's in there, but
Speaker 1: we don't really like to say it anymore. It's plant based,
Speaker 1: That's what he was saying, and much the same the
Speaker 1: much the same way you're saying it, and I think
Speaker 1: plant based, and I'll I want to go back. I
Speaker 1: want to go back to that issue about this where
Speaker 1: they say chicken and and the butcher's son, I mean,
Speaker 1: I I don't know if people who are listening to
Speaker 1: the podcast but your son is a fully vegan Delhi
Speaker 1: in Berkeley, and I don't know if it was when
Speaker 1: you were there. Every time I've been there, it's it's
Speaker 1: a pretty pack. You can get a table. And in fact,
Speaker 1: the guy that the folks I was with from direct
Speaker 1: action everywhere, they were like, this is the this is
Speaker 1: the slowest we've seen it. It's good, and it's it's
Speaker 1: all I care about good food. It's good. It's great food.
Speaker 1: To me. I just was like a bit like, why
Speaker 1: we just tell me what's in it? I want to
Speaker 1: know what I'm eating. It's not chicken, I know that,
Speaker 1: So I just like to know if it's a wheat
Speaker 1: based you know, like shred or whatever it is. I
Speaker 1: just like to know that. I don't don't You're not
Speaker 1: tricking me, but what you are doing is confusing me.
Speaker 1: I think I think we're going This is a good
Speaker 1: point I had you brought up there, the plant based thing,
Speaker 1: because this touches on exactly what I was talking about,
Speaker 1: and that you know, within the vegan movement there is
Speaker 1: like the plant based. Now, when you say plant based,
Speaker 1: usually not always, but usually what that implies is that
Speaker 1: I'm a vegan for these reasons. Um, it's not so
Speaker 1: much focus, say on animal justice issues as much. And
Speaker 1: it can be they overlap, there's a lot of overlap,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's more about perhaps maybe health reasons,
Speaker 1: or it could be something like environmental reasons, environmental degradation,
Speaker 1: and and it's associated with or I should say factory
Speaker 1: industrial produce, agriculture and environmental degradation. So plant based for me,
Speaker 1: if if you looked at my diet, if you just said, Robert,
Speaker 1: write down everything you eat for a week, it would
Speaker 1: look like a plant based person. But I personally, I
Speaker 1: feel like my cause is a political cause. It's a
Speaker 1: social justice cause. It's not about diet, right, so so
Speaker 1: so going back to our original questions, So and I
Speaker 1: really what I don't ben, what I definitely don't want
Speaker 1: to do is come on this podcast and pile on
Speaker 1: vegans and because they're already demonized enough. But what I
Speaker 1: want to say is the version of veganism that I
Speaker 1: advocate for, and I'm writing on it now. I'm actually
Speaker 1: I've been struggling with writing this book for a year,
Speaker 1: which is which is thinking about the social justice aspects
Speaker 1: of of this issue. But um, veganism as as a
Speaker 1: liberation movement, not so much as a food movement. Right,
Speaker 1: So veganism as a political stance rejecting things like uh,
Speaker 1: corporate consumer capitalism, and environmental degradation, all these things are
Speaker 1: all tied together human health issues. So the picture is
Speaker 1: very big if you're a vegan. And I mentioned this
Speaker 1: all the time when I give these talks, like let's
Speaker 1: say you're a vegan, and by vegan, what you mean
Speaker 1: is that you do not consume and I mean that
Speaker 1: literally and figuratively with regard to say, purchasing, you don't
Speaker 1: consume animal products. So you might think I'm I've removed
Speaker 1: myself from the cycle of suffering, right, because I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm not causing any offering. However, let's say you, for example,
Speaker 1: you go to Walmart and you buy a cotton T
Speaker 1: shirt because it's cheap, and that cotton. To produce the
Speaker 1: cotton is really environmentally it takes a lot of resources
Speaker 1: to produce cotton. And then there might be a young
Speaker 1: a young girl who's inn Indonesia making you know, crap
Speaker 1: wages um to produce that that clothing under this kind
Speaker 1: of you know, um, global corporate capitalist economy, and so
Speaker 1: if you think that withholding your you're voting with your dollars.
Speaker 1: If you're voting, you're saying I'm gonna I'm gonna avoid suffering.
Speaker 1: Because most vegans who are ethical vegans, and I don't
Speaker 1: mean I mean non like health plant based versions, I
Speaker 1: mean of veganism. But most people who say if I
Speaker 1: say to you, why are you a vegan, and you
Speaker 1: say because I don't want to cause unnecessary suffering. So
Speaker 1: there's an implication that by refraining from eating animal products,
Speaker 1: I'm decreasing the suffering in the world. But all of
Speaker 1: our purchases. This is what I say, And I think
Speaker 1: that's the paper where I say, I say, we all
Speaker 1: have blood on our hands. Yeah, there's have some great
Speaker 1: quotes in here and some things like that. That's where
Speaker 1: I'm reading them. Like, look, I think I think conceptually
Speaker 1: veganism is great, Like i'm I'm I think it's a
Speaker 1: if it's it's like, it's a choice, is the thing
Speaker 1: I want to do. Conceptually, it's great because it's you
Speaker 1: are metering or limiting in some way your impact on
Speaker 1: the world, and you're doing it for altruistic reasons. But
Speaker 1: the big argument that I've always that most people, most
Speaker 1: even ford facing folks that I know, you're like, listen,
Speaker 1: you can't your your hands aren't your hands aren't clean,
Speaker 1: they just aren't, you know, and you look at like say, oh, keenwa, right,
Speaker 1: was mostly produced in the Andes. I mean there's when
Speaker 1: the when there's more higher demand for keena, the price
Speaker 1: goes up for the that are using it and eating
Speaker 1: it where they are, you know. Mexican avocados is another
Speaker 1: great example of like, you know, the more demand from
Speaker 1: Exicano avocados raise the prices and screws with a lot
Speaker 1: of things, right, and deforestation comes from people like I'm
Speaker 1: I gotta prove more avocados. Let's just get rid of
Speaker 1: this far at and so there is there's just this
Speaker 1: this acknowledgement of that is a good Like when I
Speaker 1: was reading through that, I'm like, this acknowledgement helps to
Speaker 1: mitigate almost everything, almost everything we disagree on, at least
Speaker 1: the core basic issues. I think most hunters are, most
Speaker 1: meat eaters have with the It's like the moral superiority
Speaker 1: thing is just that's where I get off the bus,
Speaker 1: you know, That's where most that's I think that's where
Speaker 1: most folks get off the bus. So if you could
Speaker 1: start the conversation by saying, yeah, we get it. We
Speaker 1: had a lot, a lot of things to figure out here,
Speaker 1: but this is just my way of trying to better
Speaker 1: the world by consuming in a better way. I think
Speaker 1: that's that's understandable because that's what I'm doing. Yeah again,
Speaker 1: I see, I think that, And I don't know. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know the hunting culture ben as well as
Speaker 1: you do, obviously, but I'm I would say if I
Speaker 1: had to guess, both in the animal rights world and
Speaker 1: in the hunting world, the kind of thing that you
Speaker 1: and I are talking about is not the predominant view,
Speaker 1: at least from my experience. It's not like i'd say
Speaker 1: this in the population in general. Most people, most consumers
Speaker 1: don't think about the interconnectedness of all these kinds of
Speaker 1: industries and human endeavors as the impacts that they have,
Speaker 1: right So, so I think it's important for no matter
Speaker 1: where you're where you come down on this issue of
Speaker 1: hunting or um animal rights, we're all involved in this
Speaker 1: cycle of destruction. You can't get out of the cycle
Speaker 1: of destruction. You can't have seven and a half billion people,
Speaker 1: nine billion people by twenty eleven billion people by the
Speaker 1: end of the century. You can't have that many people
Speaker 1: and have the place be sustainable. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: you may have heard the statistic if everyone on the
Speaker 1: planet lived an affluent Western lifestyle, we would need five
Speaker 1: planet Earth's as like resources. Right, So so we're all
Speaker 1: we're all in this together. So the fact that I
Speaker 1: might refrain from purchasing or be activist, be an activist
Speaker 1: in trying to prevent animal suffering, that doesn't remove me
Speaker 1: from from animal suffering. It doesn't remove me from suffering
Speaker 1: or human suffering or degradation of the planet. However, I
Speaker 1: do want to say if here's what I think is important.
Speaker 1: And this is my friend John Sapan Matsu, who is
Speaker 1: a great animal philosopher in Boston, animal rights guy. He
Speaker 1: has a whole paper that I highly recommend it. It's
Speaker 1: called The Animal of bad Faith, and he talks about
Speaker 1: how many of our moral decisions talk reflect a certain
Speaker 1: kind of what John John Paul the philosopher called bad faith,
Speaker 1: and that is we want to tell ourselves a story
Speaker 1: in a in a way that um, it's like think
Speaker 1: think about like this. It's we're just we're we're deceiving ourselves.
Speaker 1: So so when you think about normal bad faith, you
Speaker 1: think bad faith. If I make a bad faith contract
Speaker 1: with you, I know, in advance of premeditatively say yeah,
Speaker 1: if you, you know, build this thing, I'll pay you.
Speaker 1: But I know I'm not going to pay you. That's
Speaker 1: not the kind of bad faith. This kind of bad
Speaker 1: faith is a bad faith when I'm acting contrary to
Speaker 1: what my morals are, but I deceive myself. I tell
Speaker 1: myself a story. So in the case of the vegan,
Speaker 1: I might say, oh, no, I've removed myself from the
Speaker 1: cycle of suffering. And so it's okay that I buy
Speaker 1: this iPhone that has slave minerals in it, where I
Speaker 1: buy this BMW that has just plastic, there's no anim
Speaker 1: there's no leather. Or you might be a meat eater
Speaker 1: that says like, oh animals are you know, they're here
Speaker 1: to be eaten, and and I think all of those
Speaker 1: are examples of no, let's let's just let's at least
Speaker 1: put our cards on the table and say you can't
Speaker 1: escape the suffering. That animal doesn't want to die, it
Speaker 1: wants to live. So let's not make pretend that that
Speaker 1: you know, that's what it wants to do and so
Speaker 1: once we if we can shed at least the bad
Speaker 1: faith and have a quote good faith discussion. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's where. That's where, that's where it starts. That's a
Speaker 1: huge and great point. I love, like I love the
Speaker 1: cards on the table because I there again like if
Speaker 1: I would have and I and I've made this mistake
Speaker 1: in my past, like the air of moral periority, I
Speaker 1: kill an animal there. I just go out there and
Speaker 1: I find this animal. It eats naturally, lives naturally, and
Speaker 1: I remove it from that landscape. And isn't that in
Speaker 1: itself the best way to go and get your food.
Speaker 1: If I were to take that towards and blow that
Speaker 1: up to the environment. I'm wearing you know, textiles, I have,
Speaker 1: you know, rubber in my boots. I'm driving a combusting
Speaker 1: engine vehicle out to go and get this thing. There's
Speaker 1: so many like lay those cards out on the table,
Speaker 1: like yes, you know, and I feel that way. I
Speaker 1: think about veganism too. I mean, if you were to
Speaker 1: lay the cards out on table as you just have
Speaker 1: and say, like I understand that that it is impossible
Speaker 1: to to fully mitigate all these impacts on the world
Speaker 1: around us. Let's lay that out on the table and
Speaker 1: be like, Okay, we can probably all agree on that.
Speaker 1: And I feel like that's kind of where hunters a
Speaker 1: lot of times that vegans can start, like we kind
Speaker 1: of start from the same place and just like see
Speaker 1: the world around me. I want to know it better.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm gonna try this way. This is like
Speaker 1: a adaptation of eating meat in in a way for
Speaker 1: a lot of like new and adult onset hunters what
Speaker 1: we call them, people that are picking hunting up in
Speaker 1: the thirties. It's a way, it's a way to like
Speaker 1: find themselves. It's a way to solve the same problems
Speaker 1: that I think that you're trying to solve. So there's
Speaker 1: just a lot of similarities in it. But I love
Speaker 1: the idea of laying the cards out on the table,
Speaker 1: the airs of superiority that we have in the hunting
Speaker 1: space and conservation and eating the meat and the organic
Speaker 1: nature to meat, whatever I think I could. I could
Speaker 1: poke holes and those all day, and I often do
Speaker 1: so in the same way that like your you can
Speaker 1: be self critical of your community. I could do the
Speaker 1: same thing hunting and lay those self critical cars on
Speaker 1: the table won't be like it ain't perfect, boy, it
Speaker 1: ain't close, and then we can get to the root of,
Speaker 1: like philosophically, why we're doing what we're doing. And no,
Speaker 1: it's not, it's just it's just dawned on me that
Speaker 1: something else that's interesting is, you know, like I said,
Speaker 1: I really want to as much as I have for
Speaker 1: the past few years, sort of made these critiques of
Speaker 1: a certain kind of veganism. I also and I and
Speaker 1: I so in doing that, I want to say, I
Speaker 1: also feel protective and I don't want to pile on
Speaker 1: because as I mentioned, the vegans are kind of like
Speaker 1: vilified and seeing as wackos, but also in in you know,
Speaker 1: in certain certain parts of the culture, hunters are seen
Speaker 1: as I feel, you bro like trophy hunting and that
Speaker 1: like really liberal, moral superior vegan kind of in this
Speaker 1: same pretty much the same bucket, depending on which which
Speaker 1: one you So there's there's there's probably if you again
Speaker 1: this isn't scientific, I would imagine there are a lot
Speaker 1: of Americans if you said, you know, what do you
Speaker 1: think about vegans, Oh, they're the extreme wackos. Oh, and
Speaker 1: what do you same person, what do you think about hunters? Oh?
Speaker 1: They just like the shoot ship and kill things, right
Speaker 1: with the elephant tail Donald Trump Junior at Elephant Tale, Like, well,
Speaker 1: sure he did, but that's just one guy. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean and you see Pamela Anderson throwing blood on people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's just one person, right, So I think it
Speaker 1: it's it's something that I can I've certainly I think
Speaker 1: in your work you have too. It's just like you
Speaker 1: kind of could turn inward and you know that some
Speaker 1: of the like some of the conversations with in the communities,
Speaker 1: these communities that are this tight, our insular, and there
Speaker 1: is you need to kind of turn out for a minute,
Speaker 1: look around and go why don't people dig this as
Speaker 1: much as I do? Like, why do they think the
Speaker 1: way they Why does the common person, you know, just
Speaker 1: a independent individual, if you were to posit those things
Speaker 1: to them, Why do they think the way they do?
Speaker 1: Why is it they think hunters are a bunch of
Speaker 1: redneck shooting fools and vegans are a bunch of you know,
Speaker 1: they're walking around protests and with buckets of blood. It's
Speaker 1: like why, why? And what can we do to help
Speaker 1: help those things? Um? And I'm glad we've we've already
Speaker 1: we're already in the same we've arrapped at the same
Speaker 1: place this quickly. But anyway, I think that's my I
Speaker 1: think that's my main question if you, if you were
Speaker 1: too in your own mind, kind of like lay out
Speaker 1: the similarities between a hunter like Steve Ornella have you
Speaker 1: met and we're a part of his Stars in the
Speaker 1: Sky documentary, and even well you know about me and
Speaker 1: and what we do at our companies. There would you
Speaker 1: if a Vegan said, what do you know about these guys?
Speaker 1: How would you lay it out in a way that
Speaker 1: you know that maybe they would understand there is a
Speaker 1: different version of Well, I would say that, um, from
Speaker 1: my you know from my And once again it's a
Speaker 1: limited perspective. I'm not like community. I'm not hunting for
Speaker 1: a compliment I get. But what what I would say
Speaker 1: is that what I discovered, UM, because I've known as
Speaker 1: I mentioned, I grew up in Pennsylvania and I've known hunters.
Speaker 1: I've been to people's homes where there's like you go
Speaker 1: in the room and there's like the bear, there's all
Speaker 1: the heads on the walls and all the trophy hunting,
Speaker 1: and um, one of the things I discovered about Ronella
Speaker 1: when I went out there to Montana was and looked
Speaker 1: into that that world. And then when I heard about
Speaker 1: the podcast and listen to you, then, um, what what
Speaker 1: I was surprised about was the sort of thoughtfulness, Like
Speaker 1: it wasn't merely the stereotype of like basically you're just
Speaker 1: an arm of the n r A and you are
Speaker 1: basically here to promote guns and killing, and that was
Speaker 1: that's that's an easy rout. But what I discovered in
Speaker 1: hearing your podcast and even you and I had talked
Speaker 1: before the podcast before I even agreed to go meet
Speaker 1: Steve and being the film was I was I was wary.
Speaker 1: I thought like, oh, this is gonna be an ambush.
Speaker 1: They're going to get an animal rights philosopher edit the
Speaker 1: film to make him look a galunatic. But so I
Speaker 1: didn't find that. So so when I talked to Steve
Speaker 1: and and we had conversation before we did the film,
Speaker 1: I felt like, this is a pretty thoughtful guy. We
Speaker 1: we we disagree about certain important what I would consider
Speaker 1: like ethical implications of what we do, but but this
Speaker 1: is the kind of person where I I felt like
Speaker 1: when Steve and I were having a conversation he was
Speaker 1: fully tuned into like he I felt like he was
Speaker 1: like I want to learn about what like the way
Speaker 1: you think he wasn't like I didn't get the impression
Speaker 1: that I just want to throw this vegan dude on
Speaker 1: on the in front of the camera and make him
Speaker 1: look like an idiot. So and likewise, you know, we
Speaker 1: just met. But in listening to your podcast a few times,
Speaker 1: I thought the thing I the thing I think about
Speaker 1: is with regard to your being a hunter is here's
Speaker 1: what I mean, my my general my first impression was like, oh,
Speaker 1: there are hunters out there who are actually thoughtful and
Speaker 1: think about this stuff rather than um kind of stereotype
Speaker 1: where no matter what in my experience I have and
Speaker 1: as you have probably with with animal rights, people's like
Speaker 1: there's a there's a sort of you circle the wagons
Speaker 1: and any kind of question like well there's wildlife management
Speaker 1: really like there's your license? Is that the best way
Speaker 1: to help animals? And and there's like the party line
Speaker 1: what I heard with you on yours and Steve is
Speaker 1: like not that you might you might disagree, but you
Speaker 1: And here's what I tell my students in my critical
Speaker 1: thinking class. I'll say, and I teach an animal rights class.
Speaker 1: I say the same thing I say when you come
Speaker 1: into this class in in September and then you leave
Speaker 1: in December, I'm not I'm not I'm not interested in
Speaker 1: your like your views from September you actually change. What
Speaker 1: I'm more interested is if you come in September with
Speaker 1: certain views about animals. And I teach a Cheeko State,
Speaker 1: which is in northern California. It's a big a community,
Speaker 1: big hunting community. And I have a lot of students
Speaker 1: because my class the animal. I teach a class called
Speaker 1: Confronting the Animal, which is in the g pathway they
Speaker 1: call food study. So I have all these agg animal
Speaker 1: science hunters taken my floah exactly what the hell? But
Speaker 1: here's what I tell them, And this goes to what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. Is that what I if I had
Speaker 1: to choose, if you left in December and you still
Speaker 1: felt the same way about hunting as when you came in,
Speaker 1: or you still felt the same way about meat eating,
Speaker 1: but you you actually had reasons, and you had you
Speaker 1: could you could think about now I understand why I
Speaker 1: believe this, or now I understand why this is more
Speaker 1: valuable to me that to me is is more important
Speaker 1: than saying, Oh, in fifteen weeks, I'm gonna make you
Speaker 1: into a vegan. And so when working, you know, listening
Speaker 1: to you and talking to Steve, it's like it's like
Speaker 1: having that kind of thoughtful conversation where you interrogate, like
Speaker 1: why do I do this? And is are my beliefs
Speaker 1: lining up with the world. As a vegan, I might
Speaker 1: think when I PLoP down my money and I go
Speaker 1: to the butcher's son and get a quote chicken sandwich,
Speaker 1: am I really helping the planet as opposed to just
Speaker 1: going on autopilot and going, oh, yeah, it's vegan, so
Speaker 1: it's good. Oh it's hunting so it's bad. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like this intellectual weightlifting you're doing. You know, I would
Speaker 1: say that I, why are you Why are you going
Speaker 1: over there? Why are you going over to the belly
Speaker 1: of the beast, Because I was like, I'm I spent
Speaker 1: all this time talking into a little microphone and trying
Speaker 1: to figure out if I'm right or wrong or trying
Speaker 1: to to judge how to approach a lot of different situations,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, if I can't take these beliefs over
Speaker 1: and test them on people that I respect and say like,
Speaker 1: let's let's throw back and forth and let's see what
Speaker 1: I can learn. If I can't do that, then I'm
Speaker 1: then I'm wrong. Like then if i'm if, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna come and say, well, concert wise, hunting great, Well
Speaker 1: you know what, Robert conservation, you know what else? The meat?
Speaker 1: You know what else? The adventure. Oh, it's also fun.
Speaker 1: It's really fun to do. Like you said, when you
Speaker 1: went hunting as a kid, you had a good time.
Speaker 1: So those are those are the party lines, and those
Speaker 1: party lines I believe I believe in. But I also
Speaker 1: believe there's depth behind them, and there's holes in them
Speaker 1: that I'd like to fill in um And how better
Speaker 1: to fill them in than to to run right at
Speaker 1: them and just see see if they stand up? Because
Speaker 1: I don't want to be sitting around thirty years. I
Speaker 1: met a lot of hunters I met, well, not a lot,
Speaker 1: but I've met a number of hunters I very much
Speaker 1: respect that are getting up in age sixty seven years
Speaker 1: old and quit hunting and just start taking pictures of animals,
Speaker 1: you know. And so I would ask myself, why is
Speaker 1: that is that going to be me? Am I going
Speaker 1: to get to a point in my life where I've
Speaker 1: killed enough And why would that be if that is me?
Speaker 1: Why would I get to a point where I'm sixty
Speaker 1: five and I'm just done with it? Is? What's that
Speaker 1: say about the practice? Um? And so those questions, I
Speaker 1: think you are key to either one side being on
Speaker 1: the right or you know, at least intellectually sound with
Speaker 1: what we do. For sure, Yeah, I think part of
Speaker 1: it is being it's being critical of always being critical
Speaker 1: of whatever your beliefs. When when when you're fully entrenched
Speaker 1: and you think I've now reached the point where I
Speaker 1: don't need to question anymore than then you're in danger
Speaker 1: at that point, that's a great point. Then there's I
Speaker 1: think that's you see that, and I think you see
Speaker 1: it on the internet. Man, people, the rage machine is
Speaker 1: the internet is it's it's a bastion. I mean, anytime
Speaker 1: you have anonymity and then you can you can that's
Speaker 1: dangerous people they get you, um. And what's worse is
Speaker 1: we listen to them. That's what I wanted to go
Speaker 1: back to the other thing you're talking about chicken, because
Speaker 1: I know it's the chicken thing, because why and I
Speaker 1: want an answer to this that makes sense to me,
Speaker 1: and I will pursue it. It's like, I go in
Speaker 1: there and I got a lot of message from people
Speaker 1: and on Instagram as well, It's like, why why is
Speaker 1: it called chicken or steak? Why is it a steak
Speaker 1: and cheese if it's not steak? Isn't that on its face?
Speaker 1: It seems disingenuous. It seems confusing for no reason. And
Speaker 1: I did learn and going in there that you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people that I live on what we
Speaker 1: think is a vegan diet, like you said earlier, don't
Speaker 1: like the label. So my assumption is like there's something
Speaker 1: in there that I need to understand, But I didn't
Speaker 1: just read the menum like it seems strange. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and there is, I mean, just you know again, going
Speaker 1: you and I are part of what we're doing is
Speaker 1: like breaking the notion that there's a monolith on any
Speaker 1: of these issues, right, there's not there. There maybe you know,
Speaker 1: a consensus among hunters, but it's not a mono. Length
Speaker 1: And there's and same thing in the animal rights world.
Speaker 1: There's yeah, there are there are plenty of people who think,
Speaker 1: you know what, we shouldn't even name it chicken, like
Speaker 1: it's a vegan place. It's a sandwich. It's modeled after,
Speaker 1: you know, a chicken and things sandwich. You know, kind
Speaker 1: of you said it was a grinder, but um, but
Speaker 1: it's not chicken, so en I would have eated just
Speaker 1: the same if it was like a wheat grinder. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: it's good. Wasn't peppers? That's good? You know. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't need I didn't need to be coerced and eating
Speaker 1: the sandwich. I would eat it. I was there because
Speaker 1: I knew what it was and I'm like, I'm down
Speaker 1: to try whatever and also taste really good. So what
Speaker 1: I don't give a ship what's in it? So is
Speaker 1: that what's the well? I think there's a number I
Speaker 1: know this is actually been This is a really I
Speaker 1: think it's a lot more complicated and I totally dig
Speaker 1: your I totally to get Let me just say I
Speaker 1: can acknowledge that there can be an aspect of this
Speaker 1: where do you think, wait, is this intentionally deceptive? So
Speaker 1: you have some person, let's imagine they wander in off
Speaker 1: the street and they don't know it's just because it
Speaker 1: looks it's a nice it's a nice restaurant. It's really nice.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of nice looking people in their nice
Speaker 1: looking people. They're not like I thought they might be
Speaker 1: a bunch of pale people can barely get out of
Speaker 1: their chairs. Well you know vegans, you know, they're just yeah.
Speaker 1: They I went in there with a bunch of beats,
Speaker 1: well pills, and nobody would take it. I go in
Speaker 1: there and I just it's like a very nice restaurant.
Speaker 1: It's like, go to this thing you would not and
Speaker 1: even to eat it. You're like, yeah, okay, this is
Speaker 1: like a kind of like a stake um back when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. Yeah, and so that's all there
Speaker 1: for what reason? You know? What's the facade? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: I think I think so let me just say I
Speaker 1: acknowledge that I can. I can totally get where someone
Speaker 1: might look at that and say, what the hell are you?
Speaker 1: Are you trying to like deceive people and make it right?
Speaker 1: But let me let me let me before you get on. Now.
Speaker 1: I think there's this is why I was thinking of
Speaker 1: what I was eating this chicken grinder, and it was
Speaker 1: like eating this and like this port wheat basted chicken.
Speaker 1: It was pozzitive to maybe laugh. But there's also a thing.
Speaker 1: There's a thing we do in hunting that we've discussed
Speaker 1: on the one Steve's podcast and this one as well.
Speaker 1: So it's like we we say harvested animal as as
Speaker 1: as a way as normenclature kind of too put up
Speaker 1: a facade for some people like I harvested that elt,
Speaker 1: but yeah you didn't, you killed it. You should say
Speaker 1: that you killed it. That's that's my belief. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people use the term harvest to soften
Speaker 1: and activity. So my that's my wondering. I'm like, we
Speaker 1: do that in our world to kind of soften the
Speaker 1: blow of what's exactly going on here. I'm like, is
Speaker 1: this what they're doing? Are they trying to soften that
Speaker 1: it's a vegan place? So that's that's that's where I
Speaker 1: started in my own mind. So that's great, and I think,
Speaker 1: and Ben, I'm glad you brought that up because earlier
Speaker 1: we talked about the issue of like not living in
Speaker 1: bad faith, and I do think that I and I
Speaker 1: talk about this in other places where you know, using
Speaker 1: the word harvest it's a euphemism. Just let's just come
Speaker 1: out and say, like I agree, let's just say it's killing.
Speaker 1: Harvesting is a euphemism. For what's happening. It's killing. And
Speaker 1: I tell people, you know what I do, what I've
Speaker 1: done hundreds of times in my life, and what you
Speaker 1: do when you kill an animal. One of the first
Speaker 1: things that you do to dress it you cut its
Speaker 1: asshole out. I've cut out hundreds of assholes. Am I
Speaker 1: supposed to like just gloss over that. I'm ripping hearts
Speaker 1: out and I'm pulling, you know, intestines out, and I'm
Speaker 1: cutting tongues out to eat like that? Well, don't you
Speaker 1: maybe can you can come come up with a new
Speaker 1: you're your hold or you're removing that, You're you're disorganized.
Speaker 1: I like that, but disorganization. But yeah, but do I
Speaker 1: need to come up with I'm not comtab with words
Speaker 1: for those, and I'm just not talking about it like
Speaker 1: I'm harvesting the animals. You No, I'm shooting in. I'm
Speaker 1: walking over to it, I'm ripping its guts out, I'm
Speaker 1: cutting its asshole out, and I'm splitting its pelvis. I
Speaker 1: understand that, and I think the gritty nature of that
Speaker 1: helps me understand the animal, helps me understand what I'm
Speaker 1: doing in my partner process. So I feel that's important
Speaker 1: to see it and talk about it and not and
Speaker 1: not rip it away by saying oh harvest or or
Speaker 1: not talking about the gritty, bloody nature of being a hunter.
Speaker 1: I mean, is this it's unavoidable, So why I try
Speaker 1: to avoid it? No bad I I mean, that's that's
Speaker 1: you're not living in bad faith. And that's that's that's
Speaker 1: not common. But but going back to look, I think,
Speaker 1: let me just say, I think this is actually it's
Speaker 1: a little more complicated. The surface the surface critique. I understand.
Speaker 1: It's like you guys are just deceiving. It's not chicken
Speaker 1: call it, uh, you know, satan based or wheat bit right,
Speaker 1: But let me let me, let me try this. See
Speaker 1: see if what you think of this. I'm gonna pull
Speaker 1: up the picture I took of the men um. So yeah.
Speaker 1: So now here's a couple of things. So I don't
Speaker 1: know if you're familiar with there's a whole. There is
Speaker 1: an entire strand there are within the world of animal rights, philosophy,
Speaker 1: ethical theory, there's different strands. Now, there's a woman who
Speaker 1: wrote a book, um, she's a friend of mine, in
Speaker 1: very influential book called The Sexual Politics of Meat. Her
Speaker 1: name is Carol j Adams. She's she's she's big time. Now.
Speaker 1: She has an interesting theory about the relationship between I
Speaker 1: won't I won't even get into the sexualization and and
Speaker 1: sort of the the sexualization and feminization of food products
Speaker 1: and animal products. That that's not that's not the reason
Speaker 1: I'm bringing up her book. The reason I'm bringing up
Speaker 1: her book is because she she uses this really in
Speaker 1: important concept that she calls the absent reference. And this
Speaker 1: is where I think the answer to the chicken thing
Speaker 1: is going to be found in. So let's think about
Speaker 1: chicken is an interesting example. But let's go back to
Speaker 1: you mentioned steak. So steak is a dead cow, right,
Speaker 1: so you have so let's think about the production of
Speaker 1: this object. So you go to a restaurant, you order,
Speaker 1: you order this object. It has a name on the menu, steak.
Speaker 1: They bring it to your plate. It's cooked, it's dress,
Speaker 1: it's all nice, right, and and it smells great. Now
Speaker 1: that and this is Carol's work on the absent reference.
Speaker 1: That object there used to be a subject, used to
Speaker 1: be a living being who had a subjective life, who
Speaker 1: had experiences, who had joys, who had who you know
Speaker 1: as a cow and licked its baby in the sun
Speaker 1: right has had all these things. Right, So now we
Speaker 1: get this object that is an object of literal, literal consumption.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's purpose is to be consumed by humans.
Speaker 1: And so the the referent meaning the thing to which
Speaker 1: that steak refer the living thing that steak refers to
Speaker 1: the cow back earlier in the line, that cow is
Speaker 1: gone from the whole experience. Not only is the cow
Speaker 1: missing from the experience, it's not even called a cow,
Speaker 1: it's called something else. Right, So it's it's an invisifying
Speaker 1: or it's a wiping away of the subjectivity and the
Speaker 1: sentience of that original being. So so now you have
Speaker 1: this notion, say of like you go there in your
Speaker 1: order like a steak, and it's not really steak. Um.
Speaker 1: So when I talked to Carol, Carol and I haven't
Speaker 1: had a discussion about about uh. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're out here in California. You're out here in
Speaker 1: the Bay Area. There's a woman named Miyoko, and Miyoko
Speaker 1: produces all vegan dairy products, and I gotta tell you
Speaker 1: they're really good. The vegan butter, Miyoko's vegan This is
Speaker 1: not a commercial I'm just telling you it's really good
Speaker 1: as as someone who's eating butter, you know, for many
Speaker 1: years and who stopped. So Carol and I were having
Speaker 1: this conversation and I said, she she said, oh, this
Speaker 1: Mioko's cheese is really she said Mioko's cheese and I said,
Speaker 1: sort of pejoratively. I was like, you mean, you know,
Speaker 1: like the fake cheese, and she said to me, no,
Speaker 1: it's cheese. The notion that cheese has to come from,
Speaker 1: you know, either a goat or like, like, we are
Speaker 1: actually upsetting the paradigm. So when we say this is cheese,
Speaker 1: what we're saying to you is we're trying to change
Speaker 1: the concept of what cheese is. So when you look
Speaker 1: at this object that it's made from, like coconut milt,
Speaker 1: however you know it's made in plant based, to call
Speaker 1: it fake cheese is too is to capitulate to the
Speaker 1: to the sort of species ist, anthropocentric paradigm that says
Speaker 1: cheese has to come from an animal goat, right, right,
Speaker 1: And so there's there's a kind of political act in saying, no, motherfucker,
Speaker 1: this is cheese. I'm calling it cheese. If you think
Speaker 1: cheese requires dairy that's welcome to the new world. Cheese
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be dairy. Of course, in response to
Speaker 1: things like Mioko, the dairy industry are trying all across
Speaker 1: the country right there, passing these labeling laws. You can't
Speaker 1: say this thing is cheese. You can't use the word
Speaker 1: even like soy milk. Right, you can't use the word milk.
Speaker 1: You have to say it's soy derivative. Right. So so
Speaker 1: now what I what I'm trying to what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to say here argue, is that calling that chicken thing chicken.
Speaker 1: You could see it as deceptive, but I think there's
Speaker 1: a deeper way to think of it. There's a way
Speaker 1: in which that's a political act to say this is
Speaker 1: this is chicken. You know, accepted baby, this is chicken.
Speaker 1: And you might want to go, no, it's deceptive. Chicken
Speaker 1: is this animal? And you go, no, this is also chicken.
Speaker 1: Because you see, when I go to a restaurant, I
Speaker 1: order a real chicken. That is an object that has
Speaker 1: been separated from the chicken. So so the fact that
Speaker 1: it carries the same word the chicken from the living
Speaker 1: being to the chicken on my plate. What I have
Speaker 1: on my plate is radically far away from the chicken.
Speaker 1: It's from the animal. And so I think part of
Speaker 1: what's going on, at least what I want to say
Speaker 1: is this is this is a this is a fuck
Speaker 1: you to the paradigm to say, welcome to the new
Speaker 1: vegan world. It's chicken, like it or not. It's not deceptive.
Speaker 1: It's meant to push you to rethink what chicken, what
Speaker 1: pork is So I think I think I think that's
Speaker 1: where it's comed very existential. Yeah, it is existential. It
Speaker 1: is it is forcing you to to confront what, what
Speaker 1: the hell? Why do I believe what I believe? And
Speaker 1: why do I think that chicken has to be that thing?
Speaker 1: And is that thing on my plate when I ordered
Speaker 1: when I go to a quote, you know, regular non
Speaker 1: vegan restaurant and I order a hamburger, No hamburger. Hamburger
Speaker 1: is most hamburger other than those that are you know,
Speaker 1: let's just say a vast man. The majority of ham
Speaker 1: burger come from cows who underwent stress and were slaughtered
Speaker 1: and in in suboptimal conditions. Despite with Temple grand And
Speaker 1: wants to say, and then they're ground up and they're
Speaker 1: put on a plate. That's what hamburger is, right, and
Speaker 1: so I get this object that I call hamburger. And
Speaker 1: what what your son wants to say is we have
Speaker 1: hamburgers too. They just don't. They don't. They're not. I
Speaker 1: don't I understand what you're saying. I would just say
Speaker 1: I would just tell them, like, yep, you got a
Speaker 1: very like that approach is very existential and probably hard
Speaker 1: for most people to pick up, or almost a possible
Speaker 1: just for the regular person to go in and pick
Speaker 1: all that existential, you know, meandering up what they would
Speaker 1: pick it up. You'f like chicken substitute or wheat based,
Speaker 1: you know, supposed to be chicken, saying like this is
Speaker 1: a replacement for what you normally Isn't this good? You know,
Speaker 1: it's like almost if you just said to me, if
Speaker 1: you if you came to me and he said, if
Speaker 1: you only have to eat this, if you would replace
Speaker 1: this with chicken, because I don't really eat a whole
Speaker 1: ton of chicken, because you know, my wife and I
Speaker 1: have a big argument at home because she would buy
Speaker 1: a chicken. I'm like, well, I don't want to don't
Speaker 1: buy a chicken at the store. That's not what we do.
Speaker 1: We eat wild game. That's all we eat at home,
Speaker 1: That's what we do. She's like, well, do you haven't
Speaker 1: killed enough you know, chickens, turkeys? Man, ye, do your job,
Speaker 1: You're fool. So I would say, okay, well, then next
Speaker 1: year I need to kill ten turkeys and on this
Speaker 1: many pheasants and this many quail to kind of offset
Speaker 1: that thing. But I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't. I would.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can compare that, But that's
Speaker 1: just that's just me trying to say, I understand white
Speaker 1: meat is something that I'm going to consume, and I'm
Speaker 1: trying to change that up adversely to the restaurant. You're like, wow,
Speaker 1: if you just said this is a ken, this is
Speaker 1: a possibility to replace the chicken that you eat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but hold on, hold on then so it's like there's
Speaker 1: a replacement theory there. I get it. But what I so,
Speaker 1: let me just clarify. I don't think I agree with you.
Speaker 1: You you said something interesting. You're like, look, the average
Speaker 1: person is not going to do these kind of like
Speaker 1: philosophical existential gymnastics. But what I want to say is
Speaker 1: that you don't have to, So so let me you
Speaker 1: don't have to go through this whole thought process. It's
Speaker 1: just a it can be seen as a political act.
Speaker 1: So let me let me give you an example. You
Speaker 1: mentioned that you have a small child, so let's fast
Speaker 1: forward thirty years. You have a son or a daughter son,
Speaker 1: So now your son is your age, she's is in
Speaker 1: the mid thirties, and and now he goes, hey want
Speaker 1: some chicken, and it's this stuff you ate at the
Speaker 1: at the butcher's son. And everyone says and then people go,
Speaker 1: like chicken, they used to eat those stickam in cages.
Speaker 1: So now look what Look at what has happened over time,
Speaker 1: and this has happened. This happens in a lot of
Speaker 1: justice movements, is that a term gets reappropriated and there's
Speaker 1: no reason, there's no politically, there's no reason to go
Speaker 1: this is a chicken and substitute because in the future,
Speaker 1: if that's what chicken is, that's what chicken becomes. And
Speaker 1: now look what you've done. If you're a vegan, right,
Speaker 1: you've you've maintained this the concept and the food thing,
Speaker 1: the concept of food to eating, and you've and you've
Speaker 1: decoupled it from that animal that's been suffering. So what
Speaker 1: I want to say is I don't think you need
Speaker 1: to do all that. All you gotta do is see
Speaker 1: it as they're trying to change there. They're subtly trying
Speaker 1: to change things. So in the future it's acceptable to say, hey,
Speaker 1: do you want some cheese and they bring out some
Speaker 1: whatever vegan cheese rather than going do you want some
Speaker 1: cheese substitute? At that point, you're saying this isn't real cheese,
Speaker 1: and they want to go No, dude, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna go down that road. Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: imagine like that. That seems like I say, I disagree
Speaker 1: with that. It seems weird to me, just for the
Speaker 1: same reason that harvest and kills seem weird, Like why
Speaker 1: don't we just say this is a substitute. We're trying
Speaker 1: to substitute this for chicken. We don't believe. We believe
Speaker 1: that the most chicken that you eat, or any chicken
Speaker 1: you're gonna eat, was killed and suffer, and no matter
Speaker 1: what you do, it can't free range, let it run
Speaker 1: around the yard, whatever you want to do. It had
Speaker 1: to suffer to get to your play. Kind of a
Speaker 1: it's kind of a thing that's based on vision like
Speaker 1: I didn't see it get here. It had to suffer
Speaker 1: to get here, right, And so I would like just
Speaker 1: say and I would sell the butcher son like if
Speaker 1: I think it would be just as effective just to
Speaker 1: say straight out. You don't have to say substitute, but
Speaker 1: you could just say wheat based sandwich. Or it's almost
Speaker 1: like to give up that you know your believe. I
Speaker 1: believe that no one should eat chicken ever. But I
Speaker 1: gotta be real subtle about it to get out of there.
Speaker 1: I gotta like, I gotta be real subtle to kind
Speaker 1: of like overtime change the meaning of the thing, rather
Speaker 1: than just being flat out honest with people, be like,
Speaker 1: don't eat the chicken, and let's let's have that. Let's
Speaker 1: let's you know, as you said, let's be fair and
Speaker 1: and and have good faith in our in the way
Speaker 1: we approach it, rather than subtly trying to move it
Speaker 1: to a point where there's a third year old person
Speaker 1: that doesn't understand what chicken used to be or what
Speaker 1: it is. It's kind of change in bad faith over time.
Speaker 1: Just tell me what it is. I don't care in fact,
Speaker 1: if it's good it's actually to me, It's like I
Speaker 1: could go home and tell my wife, you know what,
Speaker 1: instead of getting chicken, why don't we get this thing here?
Speaker 1: What is this grinder thing? Why don't we get the
Speaker 1: grinder and we'll vaccine that ship up and whenever and
Speaker 1: whenever I've been a terrible hunter and we run out
Speaker 1: of turkey, then we'll eat this for some the substitute
Speaker 1: that tastes like chicken. Our kid will love it. He'll
Speaker 1: never know. You won't have to go to the store
Speaker 1: and participate in factory. For me, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: feel bad as a shitty hunter, and we've got this
Speaker 1: thing here that can help us. And so I see
Speaker 1: when I'm eating that, I'm like, dude, you guys are
Speaker 1: missing the freaking point here, Like this is somebody like
Speaker 1: me who believes my consumption is very important. I would
Speaker 1: take part in the chicken grinder. Everything you know and
Speaker 1: some you know, some products, some vegan products. They for example,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't say the brand, but they have
Speaker 1: chicken patties. It's like c H I K. And right.
Speaker 1: So it's like it's like stopping chicken the thing because
Speaker 1: I would argue, like I said, I would argue as
Speaker 1: a mediator that I wouldn't much rather eat the vegan
Speaker 1: version of chicken as it stands now than eat actual chicken.
Speaker 1: It would be either wild turkey or a plant based replacement.
Speaker 1: That's cool. I love to eat plants. I eat them
Speaker 1: all the time, you know, So let's let's let's give
Speaker 1: me the chance to get at that. And it even
Speaker 1: removes my own kind of My wife would be like, well,
Speaker 1: that says chicken on it, Like it's not chicken. Then
Speaker 1: I have to explain the existential crisis. I'd much rather
Speaker 1: be like, this is some wheat ship or what a
Speaker 1: jackfruit or whatever it is. It tastes really good. You're
Speaker 1: not gonna worry about it. This is what a jackfruit is.
Speaker 1: Just eat it. And she's like, yeah, that's great. No,
Speaker 1: I get it. Yeah, And look, I'm with you. I
Speaker 1: see what you're saying. Again. I just think it's a
Speaker 1: way of seeing it as a political statement, as a
Speaker 1: subversive act. I think that, and I just don't. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's necessary. I would argue that like veganism
Speaker 1: in itself is like, it's not a bad thing, and
Speaker 1: especially in the way that you present it, says like,
Speaker 1: let's let's just embrace it in a way that because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people like me that don't feel like, hmm,
Speaker 1: if you're trying to if you're telling me this is
Speaker 1: a chicken, what aren't what? Also aren't you telling me
Speaker 1: you know what other submersive things you're trying to get
Speaker 1: me to believe? You know, it seems seems just ingenuous.
Speaker 1: But I did enjoy to go back to the butcher.
Speaker 1: Sound great job on the chicken sandwich. I took, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I eat half of them. Took the other half of
Speaker 1: the hotel chickens are that sandwiches are so big you
Speaker 1: can giant I got. I was there not longer. I
Speaker 1: got the It was like a rubin, which I think
Speaker 1: is like I guess I had the menu people because
Speaker 1: people were like, what are you talking to? This is insane.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, it's not insane. It's good. It's actually good.
Speaker 1: If they would just say, like good food made of
Speaker 1: ship you don't normally eat. They are like hot garlic, lemon, chicken, pesto,
Speaker 1: pulled barbecue, pulled pork. That was like, uba, now you
Speaker 1: say that, you bab um. Hot roast beef. I didn't
Speaker 1: say what that is, and it doesn't even say what
Speaker 1: it is. It just says slice soured with grilled onions,
Speaker 1: little gem blood. It It says like all the ingredients,
Speaker 1: but not what the beef actually is. And that was
Speaker 1: confusing to me. I'm like, I just what is it? Right?
Speaker 1: Tell me? I'd love to because I'll be making it
Speaker 1: at home, you know, if I run out of if
Speaker 1: I miss an elk this year, I'll be I'll be eating.
Speaker 1: But if you if you went to a restaurant ben
Speaker 1: and and like a lot of people don't know. I
Speaker 1: once again, I'm just I'm kind of talking out my ask.
Speaker 1: But what I'm trying to say is there are people.
Speaker 1: There are people who don't know. Does everyone know that
Speaker 1: like beef is a cow and pork? I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: sure most people do. But what I'm getting at is
Speaker 1: if you go to a regular restaurant and says like
Speaker 1: all beef hot dog, does it say dead cow and
Speaker 1: you just go it's beef? Right? Yeah? I mean, but
Speaker 1: then you would say, like people are calling it beef
Speaker 1: to make a political statement. No, they're just that's what
Speaker 1: they call it. But I'm saying I agree with you.
Speaker 1: You're saying, Look, I'd like to know what the hell
Speaker 1: this thing is made of. And I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people that I present that to on Instagram or
Speaker 1: that too, like what is jack fruit? Is good? Can
Speaker 1: I cook with it? Could I if if I run
Speaker 1: out of venison, crack that thing open and have a
Speaker 1: nice venison facimile for dinner. I don't know. It's not
Speaker 1: on the menu. So that was It's just one of
Speaker 1: those other things that for me, it would make it
Speaker 1: more approachable for me, would make it less like you're
Speaker 1: trying to tell me make the statement, because if you're
Speaker 1: not totally wrong, And even in this conversation, I'm having
Speaker 1: a bit of like, oh I would eat that ship.
Speaker 1: I should figure out what that is because I only
Speaker 1: killed four turkeys this year and I was aiming to
Speaker 1: kill ten. So eventually, you know, even for me, my
Speaker 1: wife and I get like the preciousness of the meat.
Speaker 1: She we got a thing called an Insta pot. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: the inst which I like. I like the Insta pot.
Speaker 1: I like that. I live in an age where Insta
Speaker 1: pots a thing. She put some turkey in the Insta pot.
Speaker 1: She has a little child run around, happened to forget
Speaker 1: it was in there, came out not so good, and
Speaker 1: she you and I always get mad at that. I
Speaker 1: can't help, but I have some anger towards that, And
Speaker 1: she's like, why are you so mad? Because I can't
Speaker 1: just go out and get that now, like that that
Speaker 1: was the thing that I can't replace, and so it
Speaker 1: becomes much more of a replucious, a precious thing. And
Speaker 1: if some real smart vegan at the butcher's son was like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: I have found a replacement and it tastes great, and
Speaker 1: your kids will eat it and your wife will eat it,
Speaker 1: and you don't have to participate in any kind of bullshit,
Speaker 1: per do. I'm like, okay, sweet, let's go put some
Speaker 1: peppers on it. Let's hit it. So that's something it was.
Speaker 1: I'm glad I went there, and I'm glad to have
Speaker 1: those conversations. Um, let's get it. Let's get to you know,
Speaker 1: more of your academic stuff and and some of the
Speaker 1: things that you said and um in the paper. And
Speaker 1: I think that, like I said, I'm reading a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff. I'm like, man, there's a whole lot
Speaker 1: in here that I can get with. You went through
Speaker 1: in there and I said, it's been years since you've
Speaker 1: written this, but it kind of what you're stated support
Speaker 1: for vegan ethical veganism, and and kind of the reasons
Speaker 1: that you got there. And as I looked at it,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a man, it's weighty, it's heavy, you said, um,
Speaker 1: and you stated work that you support ethical visas as
Speaker 1: empowering response to the cost in terms of violence, suffering, exploitation, domination, objectification,
Speaker 1: commodification of animals for food, the destruction of the environment,
Speaker 1: the placement of animals in the process, as well as
Speaker 1: the cost of our own health and the health of
Speaker 1: the planet. Then these things call for media affect them
Speaker 1: decisive action at the personal, collective, and policy levels. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's who wrote I wrote that cheese was a good day.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's like to read that. I read that
Speaker 1: like yeah, I mean, I yeah, I'm I'm with you.
Speaker 1: There's not a whole lot that I can pull back
Speaker 1: from in that, Like I want all the things that
Speaker 1: that you want to talk. As I said, it's been
Speaker 1: a while since that was those words were strung together,
Speaker 1: but imagine that's still typifying. Yeah, no, I haven't. I haven't.
Speaker 1: So just talk about that the whole of what moves
Speaker 1: you to this, because we know now that you've eat meat,
Speaker 1: you've hunted and done things, killed things, And I just
Speaker 1: this that that paragraph was was was powerful to me
Speaker 1: to read. Well, I think, first of all, as far
Speaker 1: as I think, the motivation for ethical veganism, for most
Speaker 1: of us who are ethical vegans, is that we have
Speaker 1: a desire two two um decrease unnecessary suffering in the world. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I walk, you know, whatever lifespan I have,
Speaker 1: I have this kind of footprint I leave and hopefully
Speaker 1: I can be as I can be, as as low
Speaker 1: impact as as I as possible. Of course, none of
Speaker 1: this is perfect, right, Like I drove here, it's not,
Speaker 1: and it's not somethingly back clean like I drove here
Speaker 1: today to meet you. How many insects I must have
Speaker 1: killed hundreds of them on the freeway. So I'm killing
Speaker 1: just driving here. I have an automobile, it's using fossil
Speaker 1: fuel and so so. So this is what I say
Speaker 1: in the paper, what Laurie and I say, is that
Speaker 1: we're all involved in this, in this endeavor of destruction.
Speaker 1: Now does that mean that I just throw up my hands,
Speaker 1: go fuck it, it doesn't matter. Just eat whatever you want,
Speaker 1: Just drive freaking fly everywhere, right, No, it doesn't mean that, right,
Speaker 1: So they're the connection. So if if I'm motivated by
Speaker 1: this kind of imperative to say, I want to be
Speaker 1: as gentle as I can, I want to cause as
Speaker 1: little suffering as possible, if it's possible, whatever I can
Speaker 1: do whenever I make decisions, especially as a consumer in
Speaker 1: you know, affluent in an affluent you know, the most
Speaker 1: affluent country in on the planet in history. Um, what
Speaker 1: kind of choice can I make that will reflect, um,
Speaker 1: the ethic of of of you know, non mouth feasance
Speaker 1: of of decreasing suffering. When I look at the way
Speaker 1: that food is produced, particularly with regard to animal based food,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned in there, what I see is on
Speaker 1: so many levels there's so much suffering and there's so
Speaker 1: much destruction. The animals themselves are as I mentioned there,
Speaker 1: there's violence involved. And I'll use chickens as as an
Speaker 1: example since we were talking about chicken. I mean, chicken
Speaker 1: are the most abused animals on the planet. The number
Speaker 1: of chickens, it's hard to wrap your mind around. Just
Speaker 1: in the United States, there's about nine billion chickens, right,
Speaker 1: so more than the entire population of the Earth planetary wise,
Speaker 1: it's like forty billion chickens. These are annual you know figures.
Speaker 1: So the way the chickens are treated is abominable. There's
Speaker 1: no no one who has a heart whatever wish that
Speaker 1: upon a sentient being. Right, So when I say that
Speaker 1: there's violence involved, there's domination involved. There is commodification, right,
Speaker 1: commodification meaning that And this goes to what we talked
Speaker 1: about a little bit earlier. It's like the being, the
Speaker 1: sentient being, the you know, chickens are and and and
Speaker 1: this is what I I I'd like to think. You know,
Speaker 1: we think like, oh, chickens are not that smart, but
Speaker 1: but ben just think about all the all the organisms
Speaker 1: that live on the planet Earth. Right, There's like micro organisms,
Speaker 1: there's little things that live on like our eyelids, and
Speaker 1: then there's like human beings right in the grand scheme,
Speaker 1: there's like carrots and grass. Chickens are pretty fucking smart, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, like compared to all that ship right, like
Speaker 1: treating Okay, well, they can be ruthless. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know who would be the most ruthless species.
Speaker 1: We could probably have a debate about that where um
Speaker 1: but uh or a discussion but but but anyway. So
Speaker 1: my point is that, um, the chickens are commodified, and
Speaker 1: that they're turned into command they're turned into things to
Speaker 1: be there's there. Their sole value is the value they
Speaker 1: have in in markets to to create profits and stuff
Speaker 1: like this. So that process of taking a living sentient
Speaker 1: being and and dominating it, and and and perpetrating a
Speaker 1: kind of violence against it and co modifying it, that
Speaker 1: just doesn't align with my values of wanting to walk
Speaker 1: on the earth and decreased suffering. So with that aspect,
Speaker 1: I feel like I just don't want to take that
Speaker 1: chicken into my body. It's it's not something that I
Speaker 1: could even bring myself to do. Does it taste good?
Speaker 1: Have I eaten millions of pounds of chick? Yeah? Is
Speaker 1: it the Yeah? But that's not the point right now
Speaker 1: with regard to that yet passage that you read that system,
Speaker 1: that the system that produces that chicken, let's say that
Speaker 1: brings it to the table at the restaurant or brings
Speaker 1: it to the supermarket. That system, in my estimation, speaking
Speaker 1: of pretty is ruthless. It's it's it's ruthless. The the
Speaker 1: there's it's at the expense of not only the health
Speaker 1: of the planet, but our personal health. Right. So you
Speaker 1: have this industry that's producing in the United States nine
Speaker 1: billion chickens a year, polluting our water, um, polluting our air.
Speaker 1: It's one of the one of the highest fossil fuel
Speaker 1: producing products is animal products, right, And and and draining
Speaker 1: the actifers aquifers um increasing antibiotic resistant uh you know,
Speaker 1: um organisms. So so then I look and I'm like, wait,
Speaker 1: this isn't only a about me feeling like I don't
Speaker 1: want to cause suffering to that chicken because I want
Speaker 1: to be as nonviolent as possible. But here I am
Speaker 1: contributing to the destruction of the planet. I'm like, wow,
Speaker 1: So my consumer choices as as as a as a consumer,
Speaker 1: even if I'm a vegan, right, this will anyone who's
Speaker 1: a consumer has to have this kind of at least
Speaker 1: I believe, has to have this kind of mindset. And
Speaker 1: then there's issues of health and and and I know
Speaker 1: I we haven't talked about this, but I know you,
Speaker 1: I know you're going to agree with this. It's like,
Speaker 1: just just take human beings, Homo sapiens, who we've been
Speaker 1: here a quarter of a million years, which is a
Speaker 1: blink blink in the eye of the eye in in
Speaker 1: in geologic time, and then like how long have we
Speaker 1: been eating ship? Like we rip open a plastic thing
Speaker 1: and eat this shin and throw it and then go
Speaker 1: to this store and get this Like that's gotta be
Speaker 1: a hundred years or so. Well, it's the way it
Speaker 1: breaks down, is it. I think it's like a hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: I always get just number. I'm pretty sure it's I
Speaker 1: always think it's crazy to think of, but hundred thousand
Speaker 1: generations of people lived as hunter gatherers. Then you get
Speaker 1: into the industrial revolution, basically there's about two or three
Speaker 1: generations there, and then processed foods, there's about two or
Speaker 1: three generations in there. There's a lot of play, I'm
Speaker 1: sure in that in that run. But that's that's what's
Speaker 1: that's what we're dealing with. We're dealing with the matriculation
Speaker 1: of time. Like all the time we were one thing
Speaker 1: and now we've found ourselves and only six versions of people,
Speaker 1: so far away from the thing we always were, that
Speaker 1: there's so many luxuries that we just never had and
Speaker 1: so remove from our own humanity in so many ways,
Speaker 1: not just the way we eat, but all the things
Speaker 1: that it's you know, it's strange to think of these crises,
Speaker 1: crises and you know, and you know, self identity like
Speaker 1: what are we and why are we here? And you know,
Speaker 1: and so for me, that's led to a lot of things.
Speaker 1: But I'll tell you what I mean, Honey, hunting led
Speaker 1: me to garden. I never gardened before I was before
Speaker 1: I hunted, and I I was looking like that, that's
Speaker 1: cool to know where that came from. Boy, I better?
Speaker 1: Why am I? Why would I be so involved in
Speaker 1: knowing where this piece of steak came from and then
Speaker 1: not know where that carrot came from or not know
Speaker 1: you know, and hopefully you know why was my wife
Speaker 1: and I are done having children, will have chickens and
Speaker 1: other things that helped to mitigate those things. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of led me down the path of isn't it
Speaker 1: hypocritical for me to, you know, do this, like to say,
Speaker 1: hold up my hand and be like, look at my meat.
Speaker 1: I know where that came from, and then ate grass
Speaker 1: when that ridge over there? And but but this carrot funk,
Speaker 1: I don't know? You know? Or this you know? This
Speaker 1: macaray and cheese I don't know. And so as you're
Speaker 1: saying I mean, there's just something about knowing that we're
Speaker 1: the engines of consumption. We wake up in the morning,
Speaker 1: we just consume. We consume the air, consume everything. Um.
Speaker 1: And there's layers to our consumption. If you can peel
Speaker 1: back a few of the shitty layers or your consumption
Speaker 1: and get down to the raw form of what you're eating,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't you? It is my question, because it seems
Speaker 1: fucking lazy, not supposed to cut anymore? People don't were
Speaker 1: you cousin, I wouldn't even pay because I've heard your part.
Speaker 1: I know, I told I was told recently that that.
Speaker 1: But I I think I got kids. I probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: say for it, but um, it'll take me a while
Speaker 1: to get out of it. But anyway, fuck it. Um
Speaker 1: we're like, that's that's the type of being that we are,
Speaker 1: Like we've are. We've reached a point now and intellectually
Speaker 1: where we can kind of start peeling back the layers
Speaker 1: of our consumption where when we were hunter gatherers we
Speaker 1: didn't have the luxury to peel back those layers. And
Speaker 1: so there's And I told our animal rights folks the
Speaker 1: other day, I said, I think history is progressive, and
Speaker 1: I think I don't think that I know, and I
Speaker 1: just I've read it that I've experienced it and seeing that,
Speaker 1: you know, the progressive idea, let's move past slavery, let's
Speaker 1: move past you know, Jim Crow, Let's move like we've
Speaker 1: we eventually get there. So there's it is a part
Speaker 1: of me that wonders whether and Steve openly wondered it
Speaker 1: in Stars in the Sky documentary you were part of.
Speaker 1: Is is there a time we moved past this hunting
Speaker 1: thing or or is it so barbaric? I would argue
Speaker 1: this like it's not, in my opinion, like there's barbaric
Speaker 1: parts of it, but it's intent is not barbaria um
Speaker 1: and it has a lot of it does a lot
Speaker 1: of good for for wild life. So I think that's
Speaker 1: that's probably where we should get to next. Like when
Speaker 1: you think of hunting, you know, well, we could probably
Speaker 1: get together and whack factory farms over the head all that.
Speaker 1: In fact fruit In fact, I said yesterday that I
Speaker 1: just I've always founded hilarious if he would go to
Speaker 1: like a Chick fil A and inside the bag is
Speaker 1: a dead chicken. Part this there's some thing you pulled
Speaker 1: off a chicken on the bag? Is it cartoon chicken? Like?
Speaker 1: What like if we yeah, like a chicken, it's like, Hi,
Speaker 1: what's up? And they have like these cartoon cows that
Speaker 1: are saying eat more chicken? Like, are we so divorced
Speaker 1: from the idea of what that thing is that we
Speaker 1: would one likes make it into a cartoon? I get
Speaker 1: I get that. Why would we put it on the
Speaker 1: outside of the bag where the dead chicken is. We
Speaker 1: must not understand or or or or we might un
Speaker 1: we Again, this can go back to the bad faith
Speaker 1: is it's it's uncomfortable. And so by employing things like
Speaker 1: cartoons are having the cows on the billboards saying eat
Speaker 1: more chicken, we can laugh at it. But I think
Speaker 1: the laughing um if the lies this this other level
Speaker 1: of discomfort because in most people know, you don't have
Speaker 1: a chicken who was you know, running around in a
Speaker 1: yard like in the old you know, right, So I
Speaker 1: think I think it diffused. There's something about the making
Speaker 1: it into humor, you know, trying and attempt what I
Speaker 1: would call a sick and twisted attempt at humor is
Speaker 1: is to diffuse the you know the kind of cognitive
Speaker 1: dissonance or that. But anyway, yeah, so yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's you know, we agree on that and yeah, just
Speaker 1: to put the closure on this is before we move
Speaker 1: to the next thing, is um. Yes, So when I
Speaker 1: think about veganism and I see the interconnectedness between the
Speaker 1: individual animals suffering and dominated, and it's it's violence and
Speaker 1: and the commodification and then the degradation of the environment
Speaker 1: with industrial food production and animal agriculture, and then the
Speaker 1: health aspects and then walking into a store and ripping
Speaker 1: open a thing and throw on the It's like we
Speaker 1: are so we have we as human beings are so
Speaker 1: far away from anything that is would be considered um,
Speaker 1: I would say, like nonviolent or peaceful. There's there's aspects
Speaker 1: of all of this consumption that aren't just sucking ship up.
Speaker 1: And so what I what I want to argue in
Speaker 1: that paper is as a vegan, every opportunity I can
Speaker 1: within reason, right, I want to try to decrease my
Speaker 1: my suffering impact, you can't and realistically, and this is
Speaker 1: one of the things that some philosophers argue is a problem, right,
Speaker 1: is like they call it it's too demanding. So if
Speaker 1: you really want to live like this, How could you
Speaker 1: even like move out of this little room because I'm
Speaker 1: gonna walk out there, I'm gonna maybe step on in it.
Speaker 1: Like anything I do at some point is going to
Speaker 1: interact with some kind of suffering and cause some kind
Speaker 1: of suffering. But I don't think. And this is the
Speaker 1: thing is veganism is not to me as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: as you know reading the paper, It's not about perfection.
Speaker 1: There is a notion like people will say like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're not really vegan because you take antibiotics. But no
Speaker 1: one says, no one, no one at least who's thoughtful
Speaker 1: about veganism, says that veganism is is perfectly withdrawing yourself
Speaker 1: from the cycle of death and suffering. No one's saying that.
Speaker 1: Veganism to me is saying again, is how can I
Speaker 1: how can I decrease unnecessary suffering? Right? So so, so
Speaker 1: I accept that there's going to be suffering and death
Speaker 1: caused by my choices. I just happen to think that
Speaker 1: by by not contributing directly two animal suffering, as you say,
Speaker 1: we can we can beat up um factory farming for days.
Speaker 1: But but by not contributing to that, I have a
Speaker 1: lighter footprint now when it comes to what you're mentioning
Speaker 1: with regard to hunting, and this has always struck me
Speaker 1: this way, and it's not I don't think it's different
Speaker 1: with the way that you think of veganism in the
Speaker 1: way maybe the way I think of hunting, maybe the
Speaker 1: way I think a hunting is different than other folks.
Speaker 1: But what with what you just said and what you
Speaker 1: just kind of described is veganism from you? For me?
Speaker 1: You could take the word veganism, remove it from all
Speaker 1: the things you just said, put the hunting in there
Speaker 1: and be the same damn thing. And and it just
Speaker 1: the way that I think of hunting I think of
Speaker 1: And it's almost as if veganism would be if we
Speaker 1: started back to back agreeing in the way that I
Speaker 1: think we agree. I don't know if you if you
Speaker 1: will see if we agree, And like what you said,
Speaker 1: my my feeling about hunting now in like the modern sense,
Speaker 1: because I can't go back and be a subsistence hunter.
Speaker 1: One of my goals in life is trying to understand that, really,
Speaker 1: really and truly, but I can't. So I think of
Speaker 1: if we started back to back and we understood the
Speaker 1: reasons why we would go and do a thing, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I feel by killing one elk, I am
Speaker 1: not only participating in there being more elk, but participating
Speaker 1: in less cows dying. Right Like if I went and
Speaker 1: just want to the I just went to the store
Speaker 1: and bought a steak, I get, you know, a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty pounds of meat ish off of al If
Speaker 1: I kill a moose, it's more than that, you know,
Speaker 1: So I can I can make that into sausage. I
Speaker 1: can make So that's all the sausage. I don't have
Speaker 1: to go to the storm vibe. And I'm also understanding
Speaker 1: that I take part in this this great system that
Speaker 1: we've set up. It's it's one of the fallacies. And
Speaker 1: the hunting logic is it's not it's not voluntary. If
Speaker 1: you want to hunt, you gotta pay. And it's so
Speaker 1: it's not altruistic. You're just taking part in the process.
Speaker 1: But the process leads to something good. So I think
Speaker 1: of it is if we were standing back to back
Speaker 1: and both understanding, like we want to do good, we
Speaker 1: want to decrease suffering, we want to decrease these like
Speaker 1: exploitative ways of our world. And this disconnection from what
Speaker 1: we really are on this planet, and maybe disconnecting ourselves
Speaker 1: from ourselves a little bit around impact that I'm walking
Speaker 1: backwards and you're walking forwards. It's like I'm walking back
Speaker 1: towards our humanity for millions of years, and back towards
Speaker 1: community with nature and being a part of this, being
Speaker 1: a real and tangible part of the natural world, in
Speaker 1: the circle of life, in the predator and prey relationship,
Speaker 1: and just taking part in that as a way to
Speaker 1: kind of walk back and to also escape the same
Speaker 1: thing you're trying to escape. I'm just walking back towards
Speaker 1: what I what we used to be. You're just walking
Speaker 1: forward to something we never were. And as we get
Speaker 1: further away from each other, that's where we can't never
Speaker 1: we forget to turn and look back and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: remember where we started, Remember where we started in that
Speaker 1: same spot where we're both like, we don't like exploitation,
Speaker 1: we don't like commodification, we don't like each ship that
Speaker 1: came out of some weird plastic thing and throwing the
Speaker 1: thing away and not understanding what's going in our mouth.
Speaker 1: And I don't like I don't like knowing that I'm
Speaker 1: being tricked by the chicken people, Like I don't want
Speaker 1: the chicken people to trick me. Fuck then, um, And
Speaker 1: so that's that's I described that to this dude, Um,
Speaker 1: Simon Roosevelt, who is I think the great grandson of
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt, just doing a random phone call that out
Speaker 1: he was on and I said this kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and he's like, I wrote that down. I was like, ship,
Speaker 1: this means It's like, that's a smart guy. And so
Speaker 1: I've held onto that because of that affirmation that that
Speaker 1: that there's this idea that that's what we're doing, you know.
Speaker 1: And so that's why I respect the ship out of vegans.
Speaker 1: Even if that v and be like, you know, quit
Speaker 1: quit doing what you're doing it like, yeah, I still
Speaker 1: respect the idea and I won't remove you know, my
Speaker 1: respect for that idea won't be removed no matter what
Speaker 1: if you you know, if family Anderson throws blow to
Speaker 1: me or not, I don't. I still think there's right
Speaker 1: in both of them and you're just kind of doing
Speaker 1: different things. Well, Ben, I do think that that metaphor,
Speaker 1: I have to say, that's pretty brilliant. Like when as
Speaker 1: you were describing starting together and then walking in these
Speaker 1: different directions that really I'm in fact, I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna write that down. Uh, but yeah, I think, well,
Speaker 1: just a quick note Pam Anderson, she just gets naked
Speaker 1: for animals. Yeah, I can't stop using her. That's she
Speaker 1: just takes her clothes off. It for animals. But um,
Speaker 1: let me just say something. I would take my clothes
Speaker 1: off for animals. I felt that it would help. I
Speaker 1: think it probably wouldn't help anybody. Well, Ben, Um, I
Speaker 1: know you can't see this. Ben's actually taking his clothes off.
Speaker 1: We're in a hotel room. It's for the animals though,
Speaker 1: That's what I tell people what I'm walking around. Do
Speaker 1: you see this? It's for the animal I gotta I
Speaker 1: gotta help the animals out. But yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: something that's been profound of meat in the way of
Speaker 1: thinking about it. Um, I want to I want to
Speaker 1: touch on something you said about history being progressive, and
Speaker 1: I think if I can, if I can just expand
Speaker 1: on that or clarify. So when you say if I
Speaker 1: under if I'm understanding you when you say history is progressive,
Speaker 1: I think what you might mean, right, is that throughout history,
Speaker 1: the circle of those beings, those entities that we consider
Speaker 1: have moral value, who we value. That circle has been expanding.
Speaker 1: So at one time it might be like white people
Speaker 1: in Europe who are landowners for something, and then it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know women in or oh kids or you know,
Speaker 1: or people of color or of slave. Oh right. So
Speaker 1: so that circle of what what we call it in ethics,
Speaker 1: of the circle of of moral considerability, the things that
Speaker 1: we can that have to come on our radar. If
Speaker 1: you talked away, if you talk to a uh say,
Speaker 1: a plantation owner in Virginia and you know, eighteen twenty,
Speaker 1: and you say, oh, do you think that those people
Speaker 1: working out in your field are just as morally important
Speaker 1: as you and your family? They go, no, they're they're
Speaker 1: not in that circle. Right. Of course, now we look
Speaker 1: back and we say, wow, that was just either you know,
Speaker 1: either they were in bad faith or they actually didn't
Speaker 1: they didn't think that those were human beings. Right. But
Speaker 1: so what I want to say is when you're in
Speaker 1: with this metaphor you're talking about, and I think the
Speaker 1: animal rights movement in general is to say that circle
Speaker 1: it needs to be expanded even more because because and
Speaker 1: this touches on something you and I talked about before
Speaker 1: the podcast. Is the thing that gets you into the circle.
Speaker 1: It's not that you're a member of the species Homo sapien.
Speaker 1: It's that you're a thing that can suffer. And once
Speaker 1: you open that door, once you go, the things that
Speaker 1: are in that circle are the things that can suffer that. Now, I've,
Speaker 1: as you say, history is progressive on this view. I've
Speaker 1: expanded the moral the circle of moral consideration vastly. Now
Speaker 1: I have to go, does that bear suffer? Does that
Speaker 1: elk suffer? Now? It's in the club. Now. It's not
Speaker 1: to say that once you're in the club everyone is equal,
Speaker 1: because a lot of people will criticize, you know, like
Speaker 1: Peter and and and Ingrid new Kirk, who's the president
Speaker 1: of Peter will say, like a boy is a pig
Speaker 1: as a mouse? Oh, animal rights activists think that you
Speaker 1: know a mouse is the same, but don't put in jail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but and and that's but that that's not I think
Speaker 1: the view is to say this is and actually I
Speaker 1: bet you. I think I think you're going to agree
Speaker 1: with this. And here's what I'm just guessing. So so
Speaker 1: sentient beings like non human animals, maybe you won't. But
Speaker 1: they're in the club of things that I have to consider.
Speaker 1: In other words, if I if I'm walking down the
Speaker 1: path and I kick a rock, You're not going to
Speaker 1: think anything of it. If I kick a little vole
Speaker 1: or like a little mouse, you might go, dude, what,
Speaker 1: what's what? And I can't just go, oh, it's just
Speaker 1: a mouse. You would go, you know, you have a
Speaker 1: if your son pulls the dog's tail, You're you're not
Speaker 1: gonna go that's okay, You're gonna go, hey, don't hurt. Right,
Speaker 1: So we agree that I think we agree that that
Speaker 1: circle actually is is pretty big. Now the question is this,
Speaker 1: Once we agree who's in the circle, then the question
Speaker 1: is who's more important in the circle, Like what's the hierarchy? Dude?
Speaker 1: I totally and as I listened to you, and I was,
Speaker 1: like I said, I was. I was talking to the guy,
Speaker 1: the animal rights guy, Matt Johnson yesterday, and I was
Speaker 1: confused by that point, Like I just couldn't get it
Speaker 1: accepting having the circle, accepting animals into where we are.
Speaker 1: It's confusing to me because I end up like I'm
Speaker 1: killing animals. I'm not gonna stop doing that if they're
Speaker 1: in the same circle as me, What the funk? And
Speaker 1: then there's all these issues of they're in the same
Speaker 1: circle as me. There's a lot we can get I mean,
Speaker 1: I can go for for days and days and poking
Speaker 1: holes and that idea, but we can get there if
Speaker 1: we need to. But what I would agree with in
Speaker 1: that idea is that, yeah, absolutely any animal was suffering
Speaker 1: belongs like being in the circle. But hunting is to
Speaker 1: me a good way to kind of live in this
Speaker 1: circle because I'm I'm taking one or taking few to
Speaker 1: help the many. And I think if I could talk
Speaker 1: with the l can be like we're on this circle,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna kill something of like I might just tell
Speaker 1: myself I'm not if I do certain things. But there's
Speaker 1: no way I can't see I can't say getting around that.
Speaker 1: Maybe any consumption engine I can't see getting aroun on
Speaker 1: me being the understanding life eats life and I can't
Speaker 1: understand I can't see myself getting around that. So what
Speaker 1: am I going to do? All right? And I think
Speaker 1: we probably can agree to get to that point. Then
Speaker 1: what are we gonna do? You have a different answer
Speaker 1: than I have. It's like, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: Not the animals. What I'm gonna do, I'm gonna kill
Speaker 1: wild animals and eat those to mitigate other animals that
Speaker 1: I have no vision over, no like vision of what
Speaker 1: they are. And I wrote this down to bring this
Speaker 1: up to you. I was like to me, it's this,
Speaker 1: it's this like vision issue. It's an issue of seeing
Speaker 1: within the circle. I can see my impact. I'm better
Speaker 1: at being in the damn circle. If I can't see
Speaker 1: my impact, if I'm choosing to take some walk walk
Speaker 1: away from my impact purposefully and then not look back
Speaker 1: at it, then I probably I'm probably not as good
Speaker 1: in the circle as other people. You know. So my
Speaker 1: vision the vision of cutting asshole out of an analym,
Speaker 1: the vision of pulling its cuts out. And so maybe
Speaker 1: for animal rights folks that helps them understand that I'm
Speaker 1: fighting for the same circle you're fighting for. It's just
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be so foolish as to think
Speaker 1: that I'm gonna live ever in a world well there's
Speaker 1: no impact, no human impact. Yeah, that said, you have
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that. Everyone has to acknowledge it. Um, And
Speaker 1: I just want to go back to something you said
Speaker 1: about it's true that life, life needs life. You know,
Speaker 1: life kills life to survive. And but most vegans, myself
Speaker 1: being in this areas, is that it's it's not the
Speaker 1: issue of of destroying life as much because plants are alive,
Speaker 1: but your plants aren't sentient. So let me let me
Speaker 1: let me ask you a question, just just just sort
Speaker 1: of theoretical thought experiment, is like you're in the circle,
Speaker 1: and all things being equal, you have to survive, and
Speaker 1: you could eat a plant or you can kill an elk.
Speaker 1: And and just in my thought experiment, do you have
Speaker 1: like a full nutrition. It's not like you need to
Speaker 1: sup it's like you can, you can survive, you can
Speaker 1: you can flourish. And so you're in the circule when
Speaker 1: you're like, I can do this thing or I can
Speaker 1: do that thing, separating out all the consequences. We were
Speaker 1: talking about factory farming. So I think that's that's a
Speaker 1: question I would have for you, is would you still choose,
Speaker 1: say that, to kill the elk over eating the plant
Speaker 1: or killing the plant for sustenance, and and if so,
Speaker 1: why and if not why not? Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 1: And I think most I think you never asked yourself
Speaker 1: that because it's it's there's never gonna be that time
Speaker 1: where I know that, But it's a thought experiment. In
Speaker 1: a thought experiment, I would say, yeah, man, i'd probably
Speaker 1: eat the plants. Yeah so so, And I think hopefully
Speaker 1: most people would think, like I said, like the substitute
Speaker 1: chicken seem that bad to me um and its principle
Speaker 1: and the way that it's presented seeing that bad to me.
Speaker 1: It's like this tastes like something cool, and it could
Speaker 1: be plants instead of a thing that has babies, and
Speaker 1: yeah great, yeah sure. But I think where people I
Speaker 1: disagree with vegans and and and people that are vegan
Speaker 1: get get off the train is the thought experiment thing.
Speaker 1: Like in in thought and theory, it's like what I
Speaker 1: like about you is you're not so connected to the
Speaker 1: thoughts and theories, like there's there's reality sitting right there
Speaker 1: alongside of them. It's important to have those thoughts and
Speaker 1: theories and then work through them, but it's also important
Speaker 1: to understand the reality of the world in which we live.
Speaker 1: I could change the world in which we live. I
Speaker 1: do a lot of ship. I'd probably be able to fly,
Speaker 1: I would have definitely have wings. I would also I
Speaker 1: don't know what else I would have, but would definitely
Speaker 1: have wings. But you know, if I could change those
Speaker 1: things and have those like what what would it be?
Speaker 1: I just can't And so I have to just examine,
Speaker 1: you know, what I can do, you know, And if
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I have to kill the elk,
Speaker 1: I don't, And then that would be disingenuous for me
Speaker 1: to say, like what if I don't kill the elk,
Speaker 1: then I can't be me? Boy, that'd be a tough
Speaker 1: line to walk. But I do think I've come to
Speaker 1: this and I feel comfortable in it because I've thought,
Speaker 1: and like I said, I challenged myself for a long time,
Speaker 1: is this right? Am I just doing this thing because
Speaker 1: other people I know do it? Um? And it's that's
Speaker 1: pregned out. I was going to bring up a comparison
Speaker 1: that would be confusing, but I think like that at
Speaker 1: the moment where you decided to walk away from it,
Speaker 1: I decided to dive back into it pretty hard, you know,
Speaker 1: I I just don't. The other thing I want to
Speaker 1: do is just explain, or at least try to talking
Speaker 1: about the thought experiment as being like theoretical, which it is.
Speaker 1: But I think the reason I brought the thought experiment up,
Speaker 1: and why the thought experiment is important because what it demonstrates.
Speaker 1: What I can infer from your answer to that thought
Speaker 1: experiment is that given the choice you actually given, given
Speaker 1: this like moral and ethical or moral choice, you think
Speaker 1: and correct me. And I don't want to put words
Speaker 1: in your mouth, but from what you said in that
Speaker 1: thought experiment, it seems like, do you think if you
Speaker 1: had to choose all things being equal, eating or killing
Speaker 1: the plant is less causes less suffering or is less heart? Right? Oh? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: And yeah absolutely, And I think most hunters, I think
Speaker 1: that's something that most hunters struggle with and would probably
Speaker 1: cringe to hear me say like what, yeah, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: And also the thing about history being progressive, most hunters like,
Speaker 1: what's he's saying? Isn't he isn't isn't that kind of
Speaker 1: the argument this other guys making. But I think what
Speaker 1: I think it buttresses how I feel about this thing.
Speaker 1: Like I've if I felt killing elk was like somehow
Speaker 1: necessary or better than eating a plant, then I would
Speaker 1: have to admit to somehow like lusting for or holding
Speaker 1: up on a pedestal the killing of of an elk
Speaker 1: I don't and I don't do that. I don't want
Speaker 1: to do that. It's not hunting. It for me is
Speaker 1: many parts, you know, but it's not all parts, the killing, right,
Speaker 1: And so I think it would be disingenuous for me
Speaker 1: to say to say I would I would rather take
Speaker 1: an arrow and jam it through the heart of an
Speaker 1: elk then walk over here and picking your corn off
Speaker 1: of things, Like the two acts aren't equal, right. I
Speaker 1: think that's important, man, that's really important, because you and I,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're on the same page. And and if
Speaker 1: if someone said to me you had to kill an
Speaker 1: elk or you had to you know, there was like
Speaker 1: these children like, to me, it's a no brainer, like
Speaker 1: I have to kill the elk to sit right. So
Speaker 1: so I think we agree that that what if if
Speaker 1: I don't have to cause suffering, if it's mere really
Speaker 1: because of my appetite or whatever, just because I like bacon,
Speaker 1: or because I like to drive you know, diesel trucks
Speaker 1: just around. You know, we both agree that if it's
Speaker 1: not necessary like that, it seems like that that choice
Speaker 1: that's not that wouldn't be the right choice. So what
Speaker 1: I think is is really interesting here is that now
Speaker 1: you and I are looking at the world. We have
Speaker 1: similar at least and this and this venue we have
Speaker 1: kind of overlapping values. And now we're like, so what now? Now,
Speaker 1: now I have to look at the real world, and
Speaker 1: you're like, so, what is the way to decrease suffering?
Speaker 1: And as you said, my my view is, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: I just want to remove myself from the killing of animals,
Speaker 1: and you think your view is no. By by actually
Speaker 1: adopting this, I'm actually decreasing suffering. And so I think
Speaker 1: that's where our disagreement is. And that seems like that's
Speaker 1: less of a philosophical that's more of like an empirical
Speaker 1: like is it the case that it seems like more
Speaker 1: tactile than anything? What's your tactic here? What are you
Speaker 1: going for? And I think mine and mine, like I said,
Speaker 1: if you were, you know, I think that's important for
Speaker 1: me to realize them, for you, and for folks listening,
Speaker 1: especially hunters, to realize. Boy, it would be weird to say.
Speaker 1: And listen, I'm sure people will right in after this
Speaker 1: and tell me why. Maybe it's not weird to say,
Speaker 1: but to me, it's weird to say that you would
Speaker 1: pick killing the elk. If if we're if if all
Speaker 1: things being equaled, you're standing in you're standing in a
Speaker 1: a baseless environment, and there's an elk over there, you're
Speaker 1: super hungry. There's an elk over there, and there's a
Speaker 1: stalk of corn. I just it would be super disingenuous
Speaker 1: for any hunter, just say they would go and take
Speaker 1: the life of that elk over picking the corn. I
Speaker 1: just think it would be disingenuous. But but yeah, then
Speaker 1: we get to the point where now we leap back
Speaker 1: into the real world. We're like, okay, now we're we're here.
Speaker 1: We can't we can't live in that world. We don't
Speaker 1: live in that world. And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: folks that look at vegans think that that's the world
Speaker 1: in which they live. They think they can live in
Speaker 1: a world, or you know, some version of the vegan
Speaker 1: person thinks they can live in a world where there
Speaker 1: is that choice. My I would say that there isn't.
Speaker 1: I have not run into a time where I could
Speaker 1: can make that choice. So now my choices are this
Speaker 1: complicated menu of have some of this, but over here
Speaker 1: this is gonna happen, right, have some of this, and
Speaker 1: over here this is gonna happen to have some corn,
Speaker 1: and over here, you know, corn prices are gonna go up,
Speaker 1: and wherever that corn came from, and some some migrant
Speaker 1: worker is gonna become poor because they can't afford corn now,
Speaker 1: and then they're gonna deal drug whatever or and now
Speaker 1: I'm never gonna see that. And that's why I say that.
Speaker 1: To me, it's like this vision experience. In embracing that experience,
Speaker 1: I've learned so much about myself, about what I can
Speaker 1: do as a person, about what an animal really can be,
Speaker 1: and how it can really value your life, what it
Speaker 1: can give you that you may not know if you
Speaker 1: never went through that. It's a freaking hell of a
Speaker 1: hurdle to ask anyone just to like, you know what,
Speaker 1: you can find all these wonderful things, but you gotta
Speaker 1: kill that thing. You gotta go over and walk over there,
Speaker 1: kill it. But here's what you're gonna get when you
Speaker 1: do that. Boy, I understand that's tough, and I would
Speaker 1: never ask. I don't ask people to do it unless
Speaker 1: they want to. I wouldn't be like, son, you're three
Speaker 1: years old, you better really love to kill stuff, or
Speaker 1: your life won't be as enriched as mine is no like.
Speaker 1: But if you want to take that monumental step to
Speaker 1: go and pluck the life of an animal, of something
Speaker 1: you didn't plant there, and you're taking it out of
Speaker 1: the natural world, you didn't put it there. If you
Speaker 1: want to do that, I can show you how to
Speaker 1: do it in a way that will enrich your life
Speaker 1: and and will be this version of consumption that helps
Speaker 1: you be a better part of the circle. And maybe
Speaker 1: it will be a small tribe of us in the
Speaker 1: future that does it. But if it's a tribe of
Speaker 1: people that understand it, it's impacts in a way that
Speaker 1: it can function for good. I think it can stick around.
Speaker 1: But again, you know, I mean there's I don't know
Speaker 1: if veganism is growing. I don't know the numbers. I'm
Speaker 1: assuming it is in the world wide scale. It's about
Speaker 1: worldwide's about but it's probably growing, right, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's supposedly growing. But you know, you don't know. But
Speaker 1: we know that hunting is like not. I think hunting
Speaker 1: is actually diminished the numbers of hunters, so we we
Speaker 1: know by every measure, there's not a standard of measure,
Speaker 1: which I wish there was. What there isn't. But we
Speaker 1: know by almost all the measures that we can can
Speaker 1: can have here in our country at least that it's
Speaker 1: it's diminishing and why. I mean, there's lots of reasons.
Speaker 1: But for me, if we could, if we could just
Speaker 1: hang onto that thing that is so enriching to my life,
Speaker 1: then we could make it work for the future. Do
Speaker 1: you Here's I'm curious about two because you're I mean, Ben,
Speaker 1: You're so thoughtful, and it's it's I'm just very impressed
Speaker 1: with you're the depth of your thought process about this.
Speaker 1: So as a non hunter, someone on the outside, I'm
Speaker 1: wondering about the issue of and again I'm sort of isolating.
Speaker 1: I know that I mean the way and you can
Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong, but they're they're the way
Speaker 1: I think about hunting, the way that this is not
Speaker 1: original to me. Gary Varner, who's an animal rights philosopher.
Speaker 1: I've tried to get Gary on the podcast and he
Speaker 1: he said he's retired. Okay, he's he's a smart dude.
Speaker 1: I mean, not because he didn't want to do the
Speaker 1: because he's retiring. Um, but you know, he talks about
Speaker 1: you know, what he calls therapeutic hunting, subsistence hunting, and
Speaker 1: sport hunting. There's three categories, right, and they overlap. Therapeutic
Speaker 1: hunting is, like we were thinning, we have to do
Speaker 1: this kind of conservation, we're hunting for that purpose. Subsistence hunting,
Speaker 1: of course would be like Inuit are doing, and then
Speaker 1: there's sport hunting, so and they of course overlap. But
Speaker 1: what I'm what I'm the the way that I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about this in this kind of nice neat categories is
Speaker 1: it seems like the easiest target, no pun intended for
Speaker 1: the vegan, is the sport hunter, right. So so and
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that there are people who just go out,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna shoot and and and and kill the
Speaker 1: animal for this pure pleasure. But I would say right
Speaker 1: in that case, because what the way you're talking about
Speaker 1: hunting here, Ben, It's I don't know if your view
Speaker 1: is the majority view among hunters. It may or may
Speaker 1: not be. I mean, it's it seems to me from
Speaker 1: the outside like you're a particularly thoughtful hunter. But the
Speaker 1: fact that I live in a culture where it's perfectly legal,
Speaker 1: whether or not it's moral, that's a separate question, because
Speaker 1: legal and moral two separate issues. But I live in
Speaker 1: a culture where it's perfectly legal for me for no
Speaker 1: other reason than my own pleasure to go get it
Speaker 1: your ten point buck shoot it. I don't have to
Speaker 1: do any I can go bring it back to my place,
Speaker 1: chop its head off, throw it out, and put it
Speaker 1: on my wall. That just seems like talk about where
Speaker 1: we've gone fucking sideways somewhere, like the fact that that
Speaker 1: is okay, as opposed to saying, you know, the kind
Speaker 1: of fair chase rules and the hunter's ethics and stuff.
Speaker 1: That just seems like, well, that's we've gone way off
Speaker 1: track here if that's okay. So I wonder if you
Speaker 1: would agree with me and that that's a reflection just
Speaker 1: like the thing in the plastic bag, and you throw
Speaker 1: the fact that we have somebody with a higher powered
Speaker 1: rifle killing, puts his head up, doesn't give a shit
Speaker 1: about it. That would you agree with me that that's
Speaker 1: something that we should we should advocate against or I mean,
Speaker 1: am I putting you on the spot on the No? No, no,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm I'm putting myself on the spot by
Speaker 1: haven't you on? Um? But I do that, and so
Speaker 1: we can have this conversation. So I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot and I discussed this, and there's a guy who
Speaker 1: was just on We'll just have been on the podcast
Speaker 1: prior to this, who is the Hunter? And it was
Speaker 1: who is saying, like my granddaddy's way of being a sport,
Speaker 1: hunter's gotta gotta go, like we gotta change this. And
Speaker 1: and I see that, and I see and I see it,
Speaker 1: and I look at it and I'm like, I kind
Speaker 1: of agree with you. But but there's something that pulls
Speaker 1: at me a little bit that the culture, in the
Speaker 1: idea of hunting is born in all types of motivations.
Speaker 1: So like a it's I'll start by saying, like, at
Speaker 1: its core, I can't really disagree with that because that's
Speaker 1: not what I do. Right. So, like your version of
Speaker 1: vegans and that you have if somebody's practicing there out
Speaker 1: there saying like if you don't need vegans, you're going
Speaker 1: to hell, or if you don't need vegetables, you're going
Speaker 1: to hell, Like you don't agree with that if you
Speaker 1: don't want to strike it from the ledger because it
Speaker 1: probably has some it's doing some good. And then in hunting,
Speaker 1: I know for a fact that we've set up a
Speaker 1: system where that guy who just chops the head off
Speaker 1: he has to pay money, and that money goes back
Speaker 1: to making sure there's more animals. He is doing good,
Speaker 1: whether he wants to or not, like he is killing
Speaker 1: an animal that that Wildlife biologists on the state level
Speaker 1: have said, there are this many animals, there's this much land,
Speaker 1: there's this many resources. We must balance them. Let's use
Speaker 1: this hunter, this trophy hunter, as a tool to help
Speaker 1: us do that. That in that triphy hunter will pay
Speaker 1: us money, you know he has. He assigns a different
Speaker 1: value to that animal. Maybe it's not the meat or
Speaker 1: the experience that I have. He signs a different value
Speaker 1: to it. He'll pay for that. We'll put that money
Speaker 1: back into making sure that we have the things we
Speaker 1: need to make sure these animals, you know, we perpetuate
Speaker 1: these populations in the future. And so I would just
Speaker 1: admit to being conflicted over that. I don't. It's not
Speaker 1: something that I that I do. I wouldn't if if
Speaker 1: I said this yesterday with Matt Johnson's if you took
Speaker 1: away the meat thing, it would I probably would quit
Speaker 1: doing it. I don't know. I have never been that situation.
Speaker 1: But if you said, hey, you can only hunt things
Speaker 1: you can't eat, Like, well, what's what's what are we doing?
Speaker 1: Why are we doing this? That you better have real
Speaker 1: I better have to sit back down and re or
Speaker 1: reorganize my thoughts around why I'm doing it. So there's
Speaker 1: that point. So I just it's just it's something I'm
Speaker 1: gonna flict in. I see why it's good. I see
Speaker 1: the actual like levers and buttons that we've in the
Speaker 1: systems we've created to make that guy good. Let's call
Speaker 1: that guy an asshole. I've seen that. I've seen that
Speaker 1: it costs ago in a sheep hunt, and I've watched
Speaker 1: sheep hunters shooting shoot a sheep and just knowing they're
Speaker 1: not gonna take the meat, but giving the meat to
Speaker 1: the local native tribe or something, or a local poor
Speaker 1: family and lauding themselves for that. You know, it's like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: at least we've built in the hunting community, we have
Speaker 1: built this thing where you better at least you better,
Speaker 1: at the very least somehow make yourself seem good. It's
Speaker 1: because we don't tolerate that ship. If you're just whacking
Speaker 1: stuff and and rolling around, we don't really tolerate that.
Speaker 1: You better give money to conservation, you better give the
Speaker 1: meat to someone who needs it, you better do something
Speaker 1: to stay in the club. I'm comfortable there, but philosophically,
Speaker 1: I don't agree with that person. And I'm sure you
Speaker 1: could probably say the same with lots of lots of
Speaker 1: vegan folks. Um. So it's so it's definitely complicated that way.
Speaker 1: And I mean there's times where I've spoken out against
Speaker 1: certain groups and I've supported certain groups. And I'd love
Speaker 1: to see a time where we don't have to say
Speaker 1: the word trophy hunting, or we don't have to like
Speaker 1: have that conversation. But we're here, you know, and I wish,
Speaker 1: I wish we could have the full conversation, And like
Speaker 1: the mainstream, I wish we could really just have the
Speaker 1: full conversation, not just pluck the thing that you know
Speaker 1: that is controversial and push it, push it forward. Maybe
Speaker 1: if somebody can take that away from this conversation, like boy,
Speaker 1: it's not We're just not that far away. We never
Speaker 1: have been. I don't really think. Um, we can pick
Speaker 1: reasons why we are. We can say trophy hunting far away,
Speaker 1: you know, crazy naked liberal lady far away, but that's
Speaker 1: not really at the core world we're trying to get to,
Speaker 1: you know. That's the that's the friendship that we all
Speaker 1: point to, is that people that aren't smart enough to
Speaker 1: come up with their own ideas just point to that stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think people that that follow our company and
Speaker 1: listen to this have thought this through and I've talked
Speaker 1: to a lot of them, and a lot of them
Speaker 1: are where I'm at there generationally moving away from what
Speaker 1: it used to be and trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: is ethics. You know. I've given some talks on hunting
Speaker 1: ethics and sporting ethics and a lot of people come
Speaker 1: and a lot of people have questions. And so I
Speaker 1: think there's a generation, not just our generation, but like
Speaker 1: a movement within the hunting world to better understand this
Speaker 1: stuff and be able to better articulate it, where maybe
Speaker 1: before it would be like there was a there was
Speaker 1: a principle when I was coming up that was I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was my dad's, but it was
Speaker 1: definitely his generations. I was like, don't talk about it
Speaker 1: because if you go hunting and you just keep it
Speaker 1: between us, like nobody will come and attack. And if
Speaker 1: it's if it's just us amongst us, we get what
Speaker 1: it is um and then social media game and then
Speaker 1: here we are, you know, vegan philosopher and a hunting
Speaker 1: bearded hunting guy talking. Yeah, but I really appreciated him.
Speaker 1: I feel like we've covered all the ground. Is there
Speaker 1: anything left on the on the plate? Uh? I mean
Speaker 1: we could talk for hours. No, I think I think
Speaker 1: for what we covered, yeah, I mean if if, if
Speaker 1: nothing else comes up this discussion. What I hope is
Speaker 1: that people who are listening who don't agree with animal
Speaker 1: rights or veganism or this kind of way that I
Speaker 1: look at the world, is that they at least I
Speaker 1: think that there's substantial body of of thought. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's not simply like animals are sacred and you're
Speaker 1: killing them and you're bad. It's it's if nothing else,
Speaker 1: they see that this is actually a nuanced, you know, view,
Speaker 1: that that is not merely like you said, throwing the
Speaker 1: blood on the I mean, it's not loony tunes what
Speaker 1: you're saying, what you're saying to me. At least maybe people,
Speaker 1: maybe this will be the end of my podcast Hall
Speaker 1: Hunters will be like this, dude, what the is he
Speaker 1: talking about but he didn't speak for us, but I
Speaker 1: don't only speaking for myself. And like when when where
Speaker 1: I'm in the room with you and we're talking like this,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of it that makes sense. And like
Speaker 1: I said, it wasn't I didn't. That didn't just happen
Speaker 1: to me. I thought that for for quite a while. Um,
Speaker 1: And so who knows how many people will will listen
Speaker 1: to this and have those realizations, but I think a
Speaker 1: lot will because I think it. We're just a lot
Speaker 1: closer than we thought, or most of us think. And
Speaker 1: taking a little bit of time to walk through it,
Speaker 1: that's all you gotta do. Take a little bit of
Speaker 1: time with vegan. If you're out there listening to this,
Speaker 1: then you've got a vegan aunt that just always yells
Speaker 1: at you about your steak, your venison. Sit down with
Speaker 1: her and have this kind of conversation. Be like and
Speaker 1: and if either of the two of you in the
Speaker 1: conversation hasn't thought out their ideologies enough, boy, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be like, oh shut I better go back to I'm
Speaker 1: pretty go back, I go bettert to go get get
Speaker 1: back in the idea, Jim, start lifting. Anyone who wants
Speaker 1: to contact me, tell him to my website. Yeah, what's
Speaker 1: your website? Where can people find? I just googled you
Speaker 1: and like started watching videos and reading your paper. Is
Speaker 1: there a better? RC Jones dot m E r C.
Speaker 1: Jones dot emmy. You know, I feel kind of embarrassed
Speaker 1: because r C. Jones dot com, it's arc Jones is common.
Speaker 1: The only thing they had left was me, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: sounds it sounds so like, you know, like narcissistic, like anyway,
Speaker 1: with a name like rcy Jones, all the other things
Speaker 1: were taken. So if it was like arc Jones dot awesome, Okay,
Speaker 1: I thought I'm awesome. All right, you're being a little presumptive.
Speaker 1: You're pretty cool anyway. R C. Jones dot me if
Speaker 1: you want to, and you can shoot me an email.
Speaker 1: What I mean, I I love to dialogue about this
Speaker 1: stuff because I think dialogue is I you know, we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier about living a life we're trying to
Speaker 1: you knows, as I say in the paper, aspiring to
Speaker 1: live a life of non violence and less suffering. I
Speaker 1: think modeling dialogue is rather than vitual and and this
Speaker 1: polemic and yelling and you're done and you know, I
Speaker 1: think part of that responsibility to non violence is to model. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's a great point. Yeah, And I remember early
Speaker 1: in my career. I mean, I look back a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff I've written in my career. I worked for
Speaker 1: the n r A, like when I first came out
Speaker 1: of college, and it was a great place, nice people.
Speaker 1: You know, they believe that they believe. And I still
Speaker 1: I believe very hard, whole hardly in the Second Amendment
Speaker 1: and all those things. Um, But there's just ways that
Speaker 1: I that I spoke and wrote at that time that
Speaker 1: I just don't know that I knew the gravity of
Speaker 1: of what I was saying. You know, anti hunters was
Speaker 1: a big thing, and this is it's like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: it's not. That might make me feel good like there's
Speaker 1: an enemy out there, but it ain't really going to
Speaker 1: get to the point of what I'm trying to do
Speaker 1: is make sure there isn't anti hunters. If I want
Speaker 1: to make sure there isn't anti hunters, I better not
Speaker 1: like close the bridge off, like I bet you. If
Speaker 1: if I want to make sure there's more hunters, I'd
Speaker 1: better not be so rigid in my ideologies that you
Speaker 1: have to think the way I think to get in
Speaker 1: the club. If I do that, then unless people are
Speaker 1: gonna come into the old, the old hunting club. So
Speaker 1: I think that's true for any you know, mechanism or
Speaker 1: hunting or anything like. You know, if we can open up,
Speaker 1: open the shades and be like, this is what's really
Speaker 1: going on in here. Some of it's really great, some
Speaker 1: of it not so great, all of it is complicated. Um,
Speaker 1: we embrace those things and we can we can do something,
Speaker 1: do something good. So well, I appreciate you coming. Thanks Penn.
Speaker 1: It was really nice of great discussion. It's really nice
Speaker 1: to meet you. Yeah, we'll have to do we'll have
Speaker 1: to do more and see what we can well too.
Speaker 1: And I think they're, like you said, we can do
Speaker 1: do a lot with this conversation. Take it further, or
Speaker 1: take this exact conversation and get more people involved. I
Speaker 1: think of you. It's an important thing. I like it
Speaker 1: all right. Thanks man, I guess I grew up on
Speaker 1: and all day row. That's it. That is all episode
Speaker 1: seventy one of the books. Thank you to Phil, Thank
Speaker 1: you to Robert Jones, Thanks to all of you for listening.
Speaker 1: I will say that the last two episodes are something
Speaker 1: that I thought about since the time that I I
Speaker 1: thought about doing this podcast, um for a bunch of reasons,
Speaker 1: but one to challenge my own ideas about animal rights
Speaker 1: and about veganism, to challenge my ideas about Berkeley, California
Speaker 1: and the people that live there, and to bring myself
Speaker 1: closer to the things I don't understand. So that's what
Speaker 1: I wanted to do. Hopefully I definitely achieved that for myself.
Speaker 1: I think having both these conversations with Matt Johnson and
Speaker 1: Robert Jones back to back helped me have a deeper
Speaker 1: perspective and and find real good meeting and in the
Speaker 1: time I spent with both those gentlemen and and moreover
Speaker 1: the time I spent in Berkeley, California exploring these ideas.
Speaker 1: So hopefully there's value in it for you. There certainly
Speaker 1: was valuing it for me, and I guess it's an aside.
Speaker 1: One thing I was thinking is that I would love
Speaker 1: to to go on the road with Robert C. Jones
Speaker 1: and take that conversation and and let people sit in
Speaker 1: the audience and listen to us talk and ask questions
Speaker 1: and make assertions and just open it up to to
Speaker 1: a larger dialogue. I just I just felt I'm sitting
Speaker 1: in a hotel room with with the guy. I felt
Speaker 1: that it was so much value in that room that
Speaker 1: he brought in his perspective that it would be great
Speaker 1: for other folks to see that. So right in, tell
Speaker 1: me either to send us out and let us do it,
Speaker 1: because that would be cool. Um. Also, you know, I'd
Speaker 1: have to ask Robert make sure he's got some time
Speaker 1: to go and do it. But that's that's neither here
Speaker 1: nor there. What else? What else? What else? Oh? Um?
Speaker 1: The Mediator dot com, you gotta go go to the
Speaker 1: metor dot com. I don't talk enough on this show
Speaker 1: about some of the content on the Mediator dot com.
Speaker 1: It's I work on it every day. I got a
Speaker 1: great team of people here, Sam Longdren Spencer, new Art,
Speaker 1: Morgen Mason, Joe Fernando. These guys are working on the
Speaker 1: website every day. We're posting a dozen or more articles
Speaker 1: a week there for you. That includes recipes, that includes
Speaker 1: a thing where we launch called fact Checker, where you
Speaker 1: right in and ask us um to debunk a myth
Speaker 1: that's out there. We have asked wire to hunt from
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon we have a gear dump series we just
Speaker 1: launched where guys like Brian Callahan are dumping out his
Speaker 1: traditional archity traveling kid and guys like Brodie Henderson are
Speaker 1: showing you what he carries in his bucket when he
Speaker 1: goes fishing with his kids down by the lake. So
Speaker 1: all that stuff, it is too much content for you
Speaker 1: probably to take in on ada a league weekly basis,
Speaker 1: And we're gonna keep pumping it out for you over
Speaker 1: there at the meat eat or dot com. So so
Speaker 1: head over there, and while you're there, to go to
Speaker 1: the store and buy some th HC swag. That would
Speaker 1: be great. And I'll end with please please please right
Speaker 1: in th HC at the meetator dot com. Th HC
Speaker 1: at the meetor dot com. Tell us what she thought
Speaker 1: of this show. Tell us whether we need to keep
Speaker 1: feel or not. Tell us whether we need to talk
Speaker 1: about Game of Thrones. Tell us whether you like peas.
Speaker 1: Tell us whether you are enlightened by our conversation about
Speaker 1: veganism and animal rights. So next time we're going to
Speaker 1: talk to a very enlightening gentleman. His name is I
Speaker 1: fucking forgot his name? Hell Well, William von Hippell, Damn
Speaker 1: it Bill. We'll just keep this all in Phil. The
Speaker 1: thing I forgot William von Hibble. Sorry, Dr Ron Hipple.
Speaker 1: Your name is so it rhymes with nipple, so why
Speaker 1: would I even forget that. Anyway, We'll see you next week. Bye,
Speaker 1: Thank you, Jack Daniels. Oh I'm seven, Tennessee. Who whiskey
Speaker 1: got me dragging heaven and h and just got to
Speaker 1: look good to me. They're gonna have to department to
Speaker 1: the farade, Oh the far red, far dragging heaven,