"I think that's often the solution when feeling sort of bogged down in the issues of our day is when you zoom out and you look at sort of the whole arc of change, you can sort of get inspired that, yeah, we've come a long way." - Monica Murphy Bill Wasik is the editorial director of The New York Times Magazine and Monica Murphy is a veterinarian an…

“Wouldn't it be amazing if you went into Nike Town and the same pair of shoes or the same style [but]each pair was different because it had been grown and was not the result of a plastic, you know, a plastic polymer or an animal that had been so heavily finished that they all look the same. That, or me, would be mind blowing, where you and I could …

“He called me into his office and he said, ‘you see that picture above my desk?’ I said, ‘yes.’ It kind of looked like an animal that reminded me of a squirrel. He said, ‘that is a lemur that we think is extinct in the wild. If you can, please go to Madagascar and find out if it's extinct or not.’” – Patricia Wright Dr. Patricia Wright is an anthro…

“When those fires happened, it was about 8 o’clock in the morning. It goes completely black, so the sky is completely black. There's no light. The sound is like being under a train. It's unbelievably loud. And of course, the heat. You are right in the heat of the fire and the smell and the taste. So, every one of his senses was taken from one world…

“There's this hidden curriculum, right? With dissection you're supposed to be learning the anatomy, the physiology of a particular animal. But really, what students are learning is that these animals are meaningless. They're basically just a tool for you to cut into and then discard after you're done with your so-called learning.” – Nicole Green In…

“We live so disconnected from the natural world, and many people live much more disconnected than I am because I've made the natural world my life, my work. But if it's still surprising me and we live so disconnectedly, why is that? Because these owls have been here, all these other creatures have been here since before we got here. They're a norma…

“One after another, citizens came up. And they just hammered that council with additional concerns. You know, one of the guys, his place is 500ft from there. He's like, ‘what do you think this is going to do to me, to my family? How dare you expose me and my family and this community! None of you all live around there. How could you have not brough…

Dr. Faraz Harsini has been advocating for animal rights for over a decade. He is the CEO and founder of Allied Scholars for Animal Protection (ASAP), a non-profit organization that supports students who are interested in advocating for animal protection and pursuing careers that can make a difference. He is also a Bioprocessing Senior Scientist at …

“…but what's happening lately is that mink on fur farms have been starting to be infected with H5n1 bird flu. So, the World Health Organization is worried that this disease is now changing to better infect mammals. Of course, we are mammals. And of course, if it's on fur farms, there's human mammals on the fur farms who can be infected by the bird …

"The stonefish is the most toxic, venomous fish on the planet. The stonefish is one of the only fish stings that has been known to kill people. Now, I knew this going in, right? I did my homework. So that was one where I went on a limb, perhaps? Maybe too far." - Mark Vins Mark Vins is an Emmy Award winning wildlife and adventure filmmaker, and the…

“You're seeing young men going to prison or getting buried in the ground because they're out there poaching rhinos. And, it just drove a bigger wedge between conservation efforts and the communities. There’s only so many times you can look into the eyes of a woman who’s lost a brother or a husband or a father or an uncle and expect that we’re going…

"In Montana they allow using dogs to chase down wolves, which essentially becomes like state sanctioned dog fighting. You have this horrible scenario where the packs of dogs are surrounding the wolf pack, and it just comes to a bloody end. These are blood sports. This is something that we should be way beyond as a society." - Collette Adkins Collet…

“In the US alone, there are 100 million people with prediabetes or diabetes, 33 million people with some kind of chronic or various stages of kidney disease, 122 million people with cardiovascular disease, 10 million with GI issues, and 50 million people have food allergies. And, as you know, the food insecurity and malnourishment in the country is…

“I was at a restaurant and the veil dropped in an instant. The curse broke and I could see for the first time. ‘Oh, wow, I'm eating body parts.’ And I turned around and I saw my bag and it was an expensive Fendi bag. And I looked at it and I'm like, ‘this is not leather. This is the skin of an individual. This is a scam.’” – Rebecca Cappelli Rebecc…

“I call the act a poison pill, because really, what it is, is if it ever gets inserted into the farm bill or if it gets passed on its own, it prevents all of the animal centered organizations, all the environmental organizations, all the family farm and rural community organizations that push back against factory farming. It wipes out all of the pr…

“I really felt like I turned into a bird. The way I was playing was changed. Like I played the way nobody would play a clarinet unless they had spent weeks listening to nightingales.” – David Rothenberg David Rothenberg is, amongst many other things, an interspecies musician. That means he makes music with whales and birds and insects and even with…

“Fashion is a really easy way to get in because it doesn't really involve any sacrifice, does it? I think for a lot of people, the thought of going vegan food-wise just seems like a really big deal. Whereas buying a vegan handbag, you get to buy a beautiful handbag and it's vegan.” Annick Ireland Even though it’s 2023 and it feels like much of the …

“Ultimately, this is a dumping ground. The industry is not going to be spending money on horses that are going to be killed for human consumption, so ultimately, in their last six months, they suffer. They suffer terribly.” – Gemunu de Silva In the United States we do not eat horse meat and we do not slaughter our horses, but we seem to be fine wit…

“When we do polls on this, we've got all political parties high support for ending cosmetics animal testing, from Republicans, Independents, Democrats - age gaps between the boomers and the zoomers, everybody is in agreement. You know, it's one of those issues that you cannot get more unity on a single issue.” – Monica Engebretson Monica Engebretso…

“I understand that when you have been [going to] a restaurant for many years, for some customers, it's normal to think that somehow you own it a little bit, like, ‘Oh, this is my table, this is my restaurant.’ And, then when the restaurant changes completely, you feel really betrayed… I invited them. I invited a lot of people, a lot of my regular c…

“The truth is that in between all of those wonderful events was huge debt, maxing out 20 different credit cards and absolutely annihilating my credit, moving from that little half acre backyard into where we are now in Santa Clarita, refinancing the house five times, having people show up in the middle of the night to repo our cars, the bank trying…

“I think the thing revolves around the control of nature. You know, I mean, you get way back to that. Some people are really uncomfortable around nature existing as it should, and they feel that we need to fix things." - Dr. Chistopher Servheen Grizzly bears are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act. But Republican lawmakers in Montana…

“…people say, okay, recycle, and then somebody sees you throwing out a little candy wrapper. Nobody's going to point at you say, ‘Huh, I saw you threw away a recyclable piece” Right? But if I say I'm vegan and then I eat a slice of halal and halal is made with eggs, somebody will say, ‘Oh, it has eggs, you're not really vegan.’ And so that's just k…

”We’re already starting to see this happening, like there's a leather tannery in Vietnam called Isa TanTeck, where leather runs through the blood. That's what they specialize at. They came out with their own mycelium material. A leather tannery has come out with their own mycelium material. Are they in it? Are they in it for the passion of saving a…

“And it's true that as much as online makes things much more accessible in so many ways, sometimes it's the feeling and seeing that actually really gets people over the line, because they're like, ‘Oh, wow, that feels really… that looks really good. Oh, look at it on me. Oh, you can style it like this as well. And oh, you can go over the shoulder l…

“We're the first species that has enough mixture of intelligence and capabilities to actually screw it all up. That is our distinction. You know, there's a lot of species on the planet who are now looking to us to say, ‘Well, okay, you're the first to be there. Do you screw it up for everybody or do you figure out how to transcend this?’” David Mey…

“Chickens have full color spectrum vision. That means they see the entire spectrum of colors from the infrared to the ultraviolet. The reason that roosters crow when for humans it is still dark outside is because they see the sunrise before we do, because they see infrared light. So, they're up and about in what for them is daylight, when for us it…

“Somebody told me, when I was a young designer at Mercedes, they said, ‘well, it takes like... 20 cows to upholster this sedan.’ …Clearly people believe that cows, that the leather, is a byproduct of the food industry, but that's not necessarily true. When you part out the cow, the leather is actually the most valuable component of the cow. - Vicki…

Catalina Lopez is the director of the Aquatic Animal Alliance at the Aquatic Life Institute. They're a nonprofit focused on improving the lives of aquatic animals, specifically in the food system. I wanted to talk to Catalina about octopuses. This year, we're set to see the world's first octopus factory farm open in the Canary Islands. Just when it…

“Despite all the information that we see promoting dairy [in school], you cannot promote plant-based milk unless you also promote dairy even more. It just goes to show that there's something more to it.” – Marielle Williamson Mariel Williamson recently graduated from high in Los Angeles. This past spring, while still a student, she was told by her …

Rose Patterson is part of Animal Rising, the animal activist movement that's disrupting animal exploitation all over the UK. Animal Rising used to be called Animal Rebellion, that is until April. And since April, which is only a few months ago, they’ve exploded - they are everywhere. They have disrupted horse races and greyhound races, they've brok…

“Right from the beginning I think I was infected with this disease. It's a very, very contagious disease of not knowing how to say no to an animal in distress. So, alongside of the bears, we were rescuing everything else: crocodiles, snakes, birds, deer, foxes, jackals, you know, I mean, you name it.” - Kartick Satyanarayan Kartik Satyanarayan is t…

“I think we are at the point where so many of these methods have shown in studies to be more predictive for humans that it really is an issue of human health. We need to do better for patients. We know we can and that these methods exist, so we need to use them.” -Elizabeth Baker This past season, we’ve focused quite a bit on animal research and ex…

“We don't know one case where a lion which was hand fed or bottle fed was released successfully in the wild. Of course, if they see humans and they understand that humans is the connection to food, it will be always a danger to put those lions back in the wild. And many of those companies use that as an excuse why this conservation project is impor…

“I think to some extent it shows that we don't want to have knowledge that will make us uncomfortable or make us feel that we're doing something wrong. And I get that from people quite often, you know, that don't really know me very well, but they ask me what I'm doing and I mention something about I've written about animals and the way animals rai…

“It’s like comparing hells - it's a different type of hell, right? It's just like one hideous place where you're neglected and you have all manner of suffering to another place where it's a different set of conditions of suffering and misery.” – Dr. Alka Chandna This conversation took place a couple of weeks ago as a live event. It's with me and Dr…

“We'd never worked in this industry. We'd not got any prior experience in fashion ourselves. But we thought, how hard could it be? Famous last words. How hard could it be to design a handbag? Turns out very hard, very hard.” – Natalie Deana Natalie Deanna is the co-founder of Frida Rome, a conscious luxury brand that makes stunning vegan handbags, …

“It's very disappointing when I see these menus that are from starter to main courses, all animal proteins… How can you not have like 30% of the menu be plant based? For what reason? Do you need to have animal proteins in every single dish? There's no need for it… People don't need that. The planet doesn’t need that.” - Verde Camilla Parmigiani Ver…

“So, if you listen to the experts, we're to be raising dramatically more animals for food in the future. The only way around that, I think, is through technologies that will render the exploitation of these animals obsolete. I mean, technologies have changed so much about how we live here on Earth today. Instead of whipping horses, we now use bikes…

“What I did not expect to see from farmed monkeys being bought and transported into the US, were monkeys who were coming in with things like Ebola like viruses, malaria, tuberculosis, simian retrovirus, herpes viruses, salmonella, Yersinia, Campylobacter, unnamed deadly diarrheal diseases. They were coming in with Tier 1 Select agents. I mean, we'r…

“I also heard the sounds of killer whales. They were calling to each other loud and clear. these melodious whistles and calls which went right into my ear pieces. I realized that even if I couldn't see them, they were there somewhere beneath me in the ocean. They were communicating with each other. They were staying in contact. It was like a big fa…

“Our cultures are built around stories, right? We connect through stories, we learn through stories and stories are often stronger when they have characters, characters we can connect with. And I think that that been a struggle for many, many animals, all kinds of animals, that they don’t have a face or a character that people can connect with.” – …

“Our bodies have co-evolved over millennia with the help of all these other beautiful animal species, with the millions of species of bacteria, fungi, and viruses that live on our bodies and inside our bodies.” – Parneet Pal This episode is a little bit different than what we usually do at Species Unite. We are still talking about an animal, but th…

“And then instead of heroes, we started being referred to as terrorists. But that made no difference to us. I mean, we kind of carried on regardless, and we started trying to do as much damage as we could to inflict economic loss on these companies.” – Ronnie Lee Ronnie Lee founded the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in 1974. The Animal Liberation Fr…

There's a fundamental mismatch between how we make plant-based meat and the facilities that are making it. When you're using the wrong tool, when you're trying to use a spoon to cut a piece of vegetable, it just doesn't work. It's the same kind of thing for making plant-based meat.” – Christie Lagally Christie Lagally is the founder and CEO at Rebe…

“But what the tour guide told us, was that eventually, as they grew, they now have their own octopus catchers. They called them the octopus whisperers, and they said that these people know exactly where the octopuses are going to be and when, so they know how to go get them and bring them back to the facility.” – Laura Lee Cascada In October of las…

“It's almost like the Animal Welfare Act is like a safety, a security blanket, because it's like, ‘Oh, we have the Animal Welfare Act to protect the animals, they're okay.’ And they don't realize that it's actually not very strong and that it's not being very aggressively enforced.” – Rachel Fobar In February, Eric Kleinman from the Animal Welfare …

“There was a law on the books [in New York], even back in 1917, that required that every publicly funded elementary school needs to provide instruction in the humane treatment and protection of animals.” - Meena Alagappan Meena Alagappan runs an organization called, Humane Education Advocates Reaching Teachers, otherwise known as HEART. Heart is a …

"I have often asked myself, ‘why is it that wolves don't kill people?’ Every year there are records of lions, tigers, bears and other large carnivores killing people. For wolves it very rarely ever happens. They are certainly quite capable of hauling down much larger prey than ourselves such as moose and bison. I think it has a lot to do with the d…

“I give a presentation to law students on animal law every now and then, and I tell them I can teach you everything you need to know about federal animal protection law in 10 seconds. I say there isn't really much. There are very few laws, especially at the federal level, protecting farmed animals.” - Chris Wlach Chris is an attorney and he is an a…