Vegan Gains: a Conversation from Kunming to Antwerp, Alaska to Attawapiskat.

I bunnish yen well maybe won't be a
vegan like what would this map is just seeing or people with this getting cash or dime from any meat hearing it that's the stuff we put it on inside of us is what's causing his cancer I know I haven't use on netflix watching your own movie not working with the winning him dr. you with the doc it was something about meat on there something non manage the cancer thing for roofer room ah ba new CN and I pay I mentioned you probably know you like using your drone for anyone to get out and start showing what those the farming operations look like again because I don't know I just don't know when I get back to Canada I think I'm gonna do some of that Anita from that Toronto Pig save we're trying to work out something where we can film some of these farms you know one of the surreal ones you know uh so Vancouver Island not to be confused with Vancouver people or Canadian you know Vancouver Island actually does not have slaughterhouses all the slaughtering is done with shotguns you know what one of the thought yeah that's photogenic if for anyone to get out there with a camera and I was proposing to people when i was there said look you don't have to do it in a hostile way it doesn't have to be a hidden camera it doesn't have to be a drone you could go and talk to the guys who do that job like human beings just try to you know do an interview because a lot of those guys you know something maybe a couple of them are jerks but a lot of them will be happy to have it down under with conversation to you and say yeah but after i dropped out of high school this is the best job I could get whatever their story is but no they're still doing they're still doing all the excuses the old-fashioned way and it's just the cost of the cost of moving the corpses back and forth by ferry is not it's not feasible so it's still happening there but yeah that's the reason I measure that think whenever you look into it where does me to actually come from in your area the answers are sometimes surprising I guess I mean that's the fundamental thing with Toronto Pig save think for many people in Toronto just answer the question of where does it worry as your meat come from but yeah for Vancouver Island Oh surprise dances a lot of houses there it's right really close to downtown and it's actually right behind actually to the slaughterhouses there's a chicken and cow slaughter house it's right next to a big supermarket and nobody knows about it yeah it's really creepy I try to cover like every topic on my channel health xyx environment just so there aren't really any excuses and just so like if anybody actually does have genuine questions about those sort of things they're answered a big issue too is just so much misinformation with veganism nutrition and people just obviously they're not really aware of what actually goes into their food the industry hides it pretty well so um yeah people just need to be more informed on Animal Ethics what happens at slaughterhouses and it's happening more and more slowly and like also alternatives that are available there's still this idea that vegan meat substitutes taste like when most of the good ones out in the market like beyond meat they're actually really good they taste exactly the same and like beyond meat is one of the ones that are actually trying to like sneak their products into the meat aisle basically they they do it on their packaging and they actually try in the grocery store to make sure it's right next to the like beef burgers so well I mention this you a million years ago on facebook but you know taiwan they really led the way on that taiwan really invented the current fake meat technology and sometime if you want to go on vacation taiwan i still feel they have the most sophisticated vegan food in the world um a tale of two teachers so i guess i have more than more than one teacher here here at this school be a one of my teachers i think she did it just to show me that she was serious about veganism long term because she's not vegan yet she agrees in principle she just like opened up her backpack in effect she showed me she was like look you know like i've been looking around and buying this stuff and she had these like packets of fake meat and she gave me she gave me a sample and so on and it was it was some of the fake meat here is frightening lee convincing she gave she just gave me fake beef which i could tolerate but it did they really did taste you're eating meat but here they make fake fish that actually has that revolting fishy sense to it oh my god do to me it's horrifying i mean if you miss the taste of fish fine but it actually makes me want to it's such a realistic simulation the texture slightly gooey texture of fish meat and so on whoo it was a ya know but they they end and they put skin on it the fish has like fish skin and like holy crap so yeah no but really Taiwan led the way of that and obviously this connection we tryna in Taiwan so they're they're catching up here pretty pretty quickly but then the other teacher by contrast so the teacher I've just been talking to for a few days so I was just say this in contrast to your channel in your whole approach I know obviously you're really heavy on the the nutritional aspects which are fascinating the runway like the whole the whole question of igf-1 is fascinating it's just not what I do on my channel I'm you know I think in the next 10 years things like igf-1 we're gonna get step-by-step you know a lot more a lot more into research will reveal you know what we don't already know about those kinds of questions uh but you know the second teacher when she asked me she said like well what about getting enough protein and she asked me like maybe like three times we're speaking in Chinese and it's funny because just on such a deep level I'm so used to that being an excuse or a question it was like the third time she asked that I realized this is actually a sincere question she actually wants to know but today and she was she was sincere and like I say like I didn't realize how the things I told her I had really had a big impact in her and she was asking cuz she was really thinking about trying to be vegan or going going big or going partway like I don't you know I don't push for details to these people but again you're so like I can't even call jaded I'm so used to the the arguments about health just being a sideshow just being you know not not they're not the real issue there the excuse for why the person is going to keep eating meat or what have you that that just kind of stunned me you know I just basically want to do whatever I want whenever I want that's how I want to live my life and YouTube's a pretty good way to do that like I started YouTube just for animal activism now it's become a job but it's a pretty good job it's the only job i can get with the most freedom possible yeah so yeah i just like to live my life that way i totally understand you're in the tiny minority people from that's you know that's what YouTube is the first time ever talk to you like I liked your channel back then you just started you're a couple videos up I was like oh this is great but like tell me like what what kind of work you're doing on the side like what's you what's your big job and you said back then even you were right at the beginning be like oh no I'm just focusing on making YouTube my main career and like I respected that but I thought man that's that's one in a million you know for YouTube to be your only source of income yeah after the first like two or three weeks I kind of knew that I could actually go somewhere with it I just got a good feeling about it I've been doing photography for quite some time too so I'm pretty good with it's sort of the same business in a way so I'm pretty good with that sort of thing so photography videography yeah well i mean what i would say is really positive about YouTube is that you take it with you everywhere you go I mean I guess for better and worse like I'm living in a school in China there are definitely some people who here in this school who hate me or a little bit afraid of me because of my youtube channel like they've seen that they know who that that is and I think you know I mean on some level it's understandable like if they get into an argument with me am I then going to go on youtube and talk about it sort of thing like mean I think in their minds that's that's that's that's the fear but you know in contrast to like when I left Cambodia I lost all the front side in Cambodia when I left France I lost all the front side in France when I left saskatchewan lost all the friends and Saskatchewan and so on so I do i do really like that aspect of it but I'm sure when you got started you you didn't imagine you would ever be living in Belgium but you also have this lecture you can pack up and roll the belgium and your life doesn't change that much yeah yeah and uh Belgium's a lot like Toronto really especially like downtown Antwerp very similar so um people are pretty much the same everywhere I found not huge cultural differences especially Canada to Europe it's a lot more similar than United States to Europe I've been to the States before florida and the culture has got quite a bit different but Canada Europe pretty similar Lisa in Toronto well wonder though does that disappoint you on some level because I thought like part of your interest in places like Japan was in having a stark contrast to what you already knew and grew up with in in Canada well it's not really disappointing um I wouldn't have come here if it wasn't for Jasmine so it's not like I was expecting much coming here if it was Japan or somewhere where I do want to see something really different than yet I would be disappointing yeah I mean like on a really on a really deep level the cultures I've dealt with are different Cambodia is profoundly different even from China and both Cambodia and China are really really different from Canada but to give you like one funny example that you know relates to veganism the two teachers i worked with most here so far because i work with a bunch of different teachers both of them have asked me about veganism and both of them i think have now like converted to veganism in principle but they responded to it they were first really shocked they never thought about it before one of them i'm pretty sure she had never heard the word said it in chinese is all talked about in chinese but like you know she was familiar with the concept but she had never heard the words you didn't know what it was talking about at first and like both of them it took me while the catch on to both how sincere they weren't asking their questions and how deep the emotional impact was for them with my answers these are just verbal answers I'm not showing them slaughterhouse footage it's just a face-to-face conversation and I'm speaking really blunt really simple chinese because that's the only i can use the language and like by contrast in cambodia you really met people whose response to the whole thing of veganism and vegetarianism was refusing to even eat a single meal you know vegan like they wouldn't sit like with you like it was with me they wouldn't sit in a restaurant with your new fun-filled vegan regarding the idea of not eating meat as just being like humiliation because eating meat is such an important aspect of wealth showing that you have money showing the joy of luxury and so on and you know obviously um you can literally ride a boat from this part of china to cambodia like there's a there's a river that connects them you know what if you go to the ocean no the geographic distance is nothing but the cultural differences you know it in every way can be so so deep and of course that's also you know the language differences are extremely deep also so I've dealt with a lot of that and I mean like so honestly obviously I've also studied European languages and lived in Europe probably like within Canada if you hang out with Cree people who have really grown up in a Cree environment with Korea's their language and Korea's their culture probably the difference between Cree people and white Canadians that's probably a bigger difference the difference between white Canadians and white people in Belgium or what have you like you know so you can have huge cultural gaps that are obviously not really geographic mm-hmm one free person she was at a I think it was a direct action everywhere event where yeah it was like some protest and she was there yeah she's one of the few she was talking about being Native American and vegan and because in their culture there's so much you know feathers leather skin stuff like that it's a little weird and difficult yeah no III did talk about it with several Cree or jablay other first nations people at different times and was interesting because most of them kind of simultaneously hated factory farming and had a lot of respect for hunting there's always one of things comes up like I've talked about this in my videos that were talking about different veganism is now compared to the animal rights scene which is then a vegetarian seen like two thousand one but it's like you could say I'm like soft on hunting because for one thing quantitatively like it's just it's not my top priority for the same reasons that the same reason that circuses are not my top priority like you know circle it's a real issue don't get me wrong if you if I met someone who is passionate about circuses I would be interested to hear their perspective but circuses are like such a tiny percentage of the issue and then beyond that I mean wall kale gives you just one one example that was recent by email I got an email from a woman it was a realist email you could ever get and she said yeah you know I never thought about veganism before I found your channel I my channel so again it's kind of jumping into the deep end my channel is not making except a feeling she watched a whole bunch of videos on my channel and she look you know like I'm like I agree with veganism in principle now like long-term I want to do this and I'm trying to work it out in my life she said but she lives in a remote part of rural Alaska where all the people she knows her all her surroundings are indigenous Native American Alaska and hunters and the winter consists of like you know I I don't even know dried goat meat or sighs so I don't want to stare I have no dried deer meat whatever it is you know she's one of the tiny minority of people living on the edge of a natural ecosystem where she has that kind of life so for me like from my perspective I would never respond to an email by that by saying like you who you carnist because your physician like cuz for one thing of you know you know want a rubbin I've already won like you know she already agrees that in principle and I think what she was saying was she's gonna she's gonna eliminate any any purchased meat from her diet she's not gonna buy meat from a grocery store ever again but she's gonna look at how she can live a meaningful life that deals those contradictions and you know a but that's that's always what I've been when I'm about whether you're talking someone is a research scientist who really feels they're finding the cure for cancer even though they're using gone vegan materials or what have you you know and you know the the flip side like what one of my teachers here again like this I didn't realize at first like this stuff was really emotionally about you she had never thought about the fact that leather is made out of an animal skin I can completely relate so for her it was neither good nor evil she thought leather is the same as plastic yeah marketed it so if you're never introduced to the idea so you know like that's the other thing is like okay so what do you really want to make but it was so coming back to like Korean ajiboye people like First Nations people in Canada you know we had this is back maybe more like 2003 or something I remember there was this like environment voters campaign in Canada and that woman still around she's a long time a kind of political hack on the green left in Canada she had this foundation and she got some money donated from wealthy lawyers I got respect for that I'm not saying that the villa fire but whatever that's the reality she had a couple of colleagues who were wealthy lawyers who donated money to her cause and for her the number one defining issue in ecology was trying to force native Canadians to stop hunting yo this is a doctor bottle what it's like well you know we got you know like how many people are wearing leather shoes and so on and like again it's even different if you live there if you leave in Attawapiskat Attawapiskat is one example of a northern you know First Nations community if you live in Attawapiskat and you you're friends with those people face to face then I can totally imagine you talking about hunting and you know like as your own personal friends they're wasting their time and their money if you just look at just the mess someone disassembling a moose carcass and they spend all weekend it's depressing it's hideous and the end of it they're killing themselves apart from the fact that meat is bad for your health as you're selling some time you could do it you could do a video on this you may not be aware but there's a huge body of scientific research on the harm you do lead from lead poisoning that when you eat hunted meet the bullets directly and there's also an indirect ecosystem effect that our First Nations catching on they have massive lead poisoning problems so anyway they're getting lead poisoning from eating this is it's really it's really interesting because yeah there's a knock on ecosystem effect where the bullet fragments etc they stay in the ecosystem so they stay look at the surface layer of the grass etc in the forest of the deer are eating and they stay switch to a copper ammunition right anyway I know there's been a non-lead ammunition movement in on firing regions and so on but this is this is more of a you know over decades in a shallow ecosystem of that because northern Canada this is not that this is not the jungle of Cambodia you know I mean it's it's a really shallow ecosystem anyway so they're killing themselves with lead poisoning apart from all the negative effects of the meat heavy diet etc etc sure if you live there and that's your community that's one thing but to me I remember I talked to her directly I talked to that woman this is before the internet was very powerful but I sent her email and then we had a phone call and it was like you know what sense does this make and how can I commit my time and money while you're making the cornerstone of ecology the 21st century basically shaming you accept the forest was marginal people care of that well you know and anyway and still because i myself i did work on first nations languages I've known like most white people never really meet or talk to many First Nations people in the whole lives like you know I appreciate that like it's just like distant and unreal but um I can't imagine like if I had stayed on that path that it would be something I talked about with people but hello still those questions are priority are really tough so do you want to talk a little bit about about you know vegan youtube BS because I mean to me it's not just drama and these are all people you know we know when have in common to some extent I take it I mean you've never been to Thailand I think you you you probably know the o-line of the story that I unexpectedly found myself going to Chiang Mai because I was on my way here and you know yeah well I mean it is what it is every so often people say to me either privately or publicly they're like sometimes it's an insult terms is just a reflection people like hey you know like you and during writer have a lot in common it's like I know like we're both vegan activists were both actually devoted to a lot of the same principles like I get the irony like I really do recognize that in a perfect world he and I could at least respect each other or like not he had conflict was like I get it you know I mean I'm not the last person to figure out including so like he and I have both lived in Thailand we both done long-distance cycling that's way before i do youtube channel but i have that kind of background to like you know apart from the commitment to veganism animal rights ecology but well it's like no I know this is somebody have a lot in common with and that whatever what they want to say that makes it more sad or more tragic or whatever I mean you know it makes it more of a waste of human talent you know um something's happened to him recently like I know a lot of people thought he was crazy even a few years ago but something's happened recently where his behaviors definitely changed quite a lot um I think he's losing it diet earth thank you pass mental issues parting part of the part of the story is steroids which is you know one of your favorite talk I mean you know it was effectively it was Hannah Khloe who outed him on that Hannah Khloe made a viet where she directly said it and then freely confirmed it at their public Q&A where she really said publicly know you are I know so then yeah then he had no choice different excuses to take steroids throughout like years and years like a two thing like right it was all horseshit and he has a diet that isn't good for testosterone levels and it makes sense that he'd take steroids to come and say for that had to feel better but uh yeah it's doing something to him I think it's a combination of his diet and maybe some of the steroids he's taking well that's the thing about steroids like any other drug that affects your whole body your whole system it's not topical people always think they can predict how it's going to change them but most of the time you can't really predict how it's gonna change you you know like behavioral aspects of steroids like I have a lot of experience with that like I've trained in gyms for so long and a lot of my training partners have been on gear and the last training partner I had he was a pretty heavy steroid user he do like blasts and cruise cycles so cruising you're just taking like 500 milligrams of testosterone per week but then when he's like training for a show or something he dad in like trenbolone insulin growth hormone he'd go nuts like totally different person when he was just on a little bit he he's totally nice guy friendly but then he just became a total dick and yeah it seems a lot the same as durianrider like he's just become a complete dick yeah I mean one of the oddities you know when I was out there so I mean in case you haven't figured it out like the Thai fruit festival is not a festival the only thing they do is meet at the top of the hill once a day like there's just it's not like they have a bunch of its they don't even go swimming or that's it there's one thing that happens a day and there was one day when neither freely nor durianrider went to the top of the hill and nobody got advanced warning nobody got explanation they just didn't show and so you know people who were in that obviously I'm not again there's a mrs. I never showed up at any other events I never could crash anything there were enough people in chiang mai who were friends of mine wanted to be friends my people want to meet up with me that i could just do my own thing i was just there i had no intention on showing up in their events but obviously it's a small world and youtube makes it smaller that day the day when neither one of them showed up durianrider was that was the day when he was sending me messages all day threatening to beat me up and the cell you've seen the messages I don't have to you know uh that was that one day and honestly you know so then whatever like weeks later when people like vegan cheetah were saying that they had broken up during writer and freely at first I completely thought it was I thought come on you make then I looked back at like the timeline of what happened with me of what happened with freely and Durham writer in Chiang Mai while I was there and the timeline of him being on steroids which again it's very likely as he himself has explained to you in detail it's very easy to get steroids in Thailand legally recently where he just picks up steroids from a pharmacy or something like he's been getting him consistently for a while so I mean most likely you know you get this kind of timeline of okay so he goes back to Thailand he gets back on the steroids he apparently breaks up with freely or at least they suddenly like do you know any couple that stays not not in separate hotel rooms in separate hotels completely separate hotels and not even sleeping on the same block you know uh it's a bit surreal and again like you know I know obviously I'm not claiming credit for it but I was there as this kind of canary in the coal miner this catalyst for it and again I also thought it was strange at the beginning I assumed freely was there by his side 110% when he was attacking me and so on but I mean you know she had been you know that apology video I made in someone I really did say look you know here's a bridge if you want to cross it um it's interesting but i would guess that already they were really pretty estranged when that went down and then we all got to see it we all got to see their whole lives fall apart strange too because they still kind of seem to be on good terms free Lee's messaged me through email saying I shouldn't have done that to durianrider and she also still links his channel in our YouTube videos I think to this day so it's weird really weird situation yeah by me know being vegan is lonely for everyone so lonely at the top it's lonely at the bottom you know nobody nobody wants to be alone um but you know if I if I'm in love with somebody I don't stay in a separate hotel that's just ridiculous you if you're staying in separate hotels you've broken up like from my from my perspective but you know obviously I don't say everything you will you know steroids can make you aggressive so who knows like the thing durianrider it seems like he still has issues with depression he says he had an eating disorder when he was younger it still seems like he has an eating disorder he has three point nine percent body fat which is less than half the absolute minimum percent you can have to be a healthy male like and he he claims three-point-nine percent perfectly healthy eats so much processed sugar and I think that's another way that he deals with his depression I don't know like and people are asking him for advice on depression and if you watch Julia Bors interview with him really really disturbing oh man i know that made me feel so old that video because i talk to younger younger people but younger women every day like I you don't want as a university campus in Canada but in my real life whatever like all the time I'm in that position of being like grandfather giving advice or whatever it's okay like I've gone or mph or me but holy during writer and I are about the same age it's like wow this is the advice you give a sixteen-year-old whether it was about sex or depression or anything else yeah but in what you're saying was wear condoms literally anyway uh just funny for me though because I mean you know their whole movement is totally devoted a happiness to being happy today to doing what you want to live in your life your way let's like I cuts a permanent vacation so on and my life has nothing to do with that it's just not to might think of my life at all you know I go there I show up in Chiang Mai like I said I wasn't there to get cry I went to the zoo I was trying to talk to different charities NGOs animal endangered animal type foundations like what I was planning to do with my time there really had nothing to do with during writer and he he interrupted what I was doing and made it about during runner but you know it's just so weird for me because I'm meeting all these people who are just there to be happy they're just there to have a good time and none of them are happy and none of them are having a good time and all of them are walking around with their faces in their hands saying is this who we really are is this what it's come to because shocking and they're all implicated in it they all know before they meet me and they know what during writer is trying to do to me and what have you and they know he's done it before and maybe in their minds they made excuses you know before when it was someone they didn't really know or someone you know whatever the story was and so they know that this is really it this is your vacation you know anyway and my life's wonderful by country I Bettis yen a lot of the guys react when you can't even front of them as they should few steps back a little more than 50