About Me, Filmmaking, & the Future of Veganism.

it is okay my man this is two o'clock in
the afternoon where I'm at on October 10th 2018 so uh should I just call you Jordan should I call you uh cave like mr. cave light my first name is pronounced aisel but as you could imagine living for so many years in places like Cambodia and what have you you get real open-minded about how people should pronounce your name so I've had different nicknames where I lived all over the world and yeah so in Chinese I'm dying and in lotion I was I so on and so on and so forth so yeah I do I do well you know um my major the major I finished with was political science but you know basically was political philosophy that I was doing and in a lot of ways already coming out of high school what I was really doing and the opportunity for me university was studying philosophy but the question was sort of him what department was I gonna do that and there were a lot of struggles initially what I wanted to do was a major in economics which I thought of as the philosophy of poverty but I got there it's a bunch of a bunch of alcoholics trying to get rich you know what was what was going on in the department of economics was not now what I was looking for her yeah no it's just you know the nature of the courses and the nature of the people studying and that was a big big letdown to me so I ended up in in political science but yeah in terms of what I was actually reading on my own time and what I was learning cuz most of what I learned at university was very much despite what was being taught in class and not because of it it was very much a philosophy and you know I I exhausted my interest in European philosophy and then moved on to Asian philosophy where at the end of my be a Buddhist philosophy and you know as a dude working on Buddhist philosophy from about ten years learned Pali he lived in Asia Poly's the ancient scriptural language of the religion did a lot of work on that and now partly just because I date younger women you know my girlfriend is is 25 and just in terms of the last the last couple months in the last year she was really asking me where she should start with or possibly even finish with philosophy so we've actually done quite a robust kind of reading course so we both went back to the ancient Greeks so for her that was her first time reading big names like Aristotle and Socrates through Citadis and what-have-you and for me it was my second or third time reading those books but some of them like right now I'm still reading Aristotle's politics it's very long through yeah but but but but reading it I haven't read it since I was 19 or something but the last time I read a business oh it's it's almost like reading it for the first time because I'm such a long time but yeah so looking at getting those books getting through the gatekeepers to do really good work even at Discovery Channel was something really good the payoff isn't great because the amount of viewers that you're that are seeing it unless it's a massive documentary which is really difficult to have yeah so you know turning towards the internet and shorter videos viral videos whatever if you can you know the amount of videos short videos that I've done that been seen by a couple million people versus right by a committer I did I saw by ten thousand people so it's like trying to figure out now in 2018 looking forward what's the best way to reach people to engage them right well look my my perspective this is a little strange filmmaking both is and isn't part of my life you know I've made over 1,000 videos on YouTube but I do not think of that as filmmaking most of the time but you know just about to two or three days ago there's a there's a website I'm a part of which is mostly people who are put it this way it's people who are already bored of veganism they're not new vegans that people have been in the scene for long time and they were asking for suggestions for debate topics you know within this this group and this is my auto suggestion said you know what I like to see you debate is how are we gonna make a Netflix TV series and I say you know I'm thinking of a Netflix TV series that's not about veganism but you know something that competes with Walt Disney and the kids shows that are on there already you know a lot of which are really bad I know what's a good spongebob competes with SpongeBob SquarePants or something and where it's not about veganism but where it's really getting across the important moral messages of our time kids shows always have I mean Sesame Street is always a woman right okay are you thinking of the the right yeah sure right if you think if you think you're really not more ethical than anyone else you haven't hung out with the right people yet there are some people so how do you really package that in a way that's entertaining interesting personal story of striae or whatever you know hero story whatever that might be like what is that and what you know you were to make up dumb right now what would it be because I you know I'm oh good thing you're starting at the deep end of the swimming pool that's a good way to start my channel so you're not you're not disillusioned later with who is way to see hunger who is yeah that's good most people discover my criticism of these figures after years and sometimes thousands of dollars invested in them right but look you know I have a five-year-old daughter so for me you know one project I started to get rolling was writing a children's storybook and you I assume you haven't seen it but I could send you the length okay right right so reading it only takes three minutes or something I mean it's it's a it's a picture book there's not a lot of text there I mean so that again it's not I mean it is it is vegan propaganda but it's not a pamphlet and I mean I know so many vegan parents and again from different backgrounds there's really a terrible paucity I have seen the books that are already out there and they're pretty lousy in a bunch of different ways and it's it's very easy to write things that are preachy or like a pamphlet and you know this is not we're talking about so in terms of filmmaking and cultural production one side of his egg would have already mentioned something to compete with SpongeBob SquarePants somebody to compete with Sesame Street something to compete with Curious George in terms of storybooks but even if I were making something for adults I would probably be looking at something to compete with Game of Thrones or something to compete with Star Wars you know I don't think I'd be looking at all to reproduce what documentary films have already done oh really really broadly speaking you know I think the impact that vegan documentary films could could have hit their pinnacle when Oprah Winfrey first covered veganism so to my memory I believe that was 2012 you could google it and maybe I'm slightly off but I just put a belt then about 2012 and of course at that time YouTube was really growing very rapidly for many many people that was the first time they'd ever seen slaughterhouse footage is the first time they'd asked themselves tough questions about where does meat come from where does milk come you know these kinds of questions and you know this sort of the shock of oh my god they actually you know insert their fist up the cow's anus while impregnating them on these dairy farms all that was new and shocking and it got on Oprah Winfrey's TV show at a time when Oprah Winfrey was the most powerful figure in American mainstream media um but that is now over and we're now into a much longer period of time much longer stage of the game when veganism is not any more exciting or interesting than campaigns to get people to quit smoking so emits a powerful comparison one that's not that easy to say with so you were mentioning before the you know people you consider to be and politically astute people but they continue eating meat you may well know people who continue smoking cigarettes like whites who are ethical in other parts of their lives right right right right that's right right oh but I think but I think that's the end of the debate I think that's the problem in the ultimate answer to veganism like the answer to you should quit smoking is I don't care and that's all it's ultimately what's you're up against right and you know the same right that's right right yes right that's right and they well and they don't care so you right but you know I'm not I'm not I'm not even being devil's advocate here I'm just stating that in terms of the position we're in because your question was about filmmaking and what can filmmaking do now well the answer was very different in the year 1992 I'm in the year 1992 it's like okay we have this story we have these fundamental facts about where where meat comes from where milk comes from maybe where fur from comes from some Stan we have this explosive documentary footage and the story to tell and nobody knows it yet that's comparable to the stage I would say right around the end of World War two almost nobody knew that cigarette smoking was really bad for you so if some people know some scientists some health research there were some people who knew that cigarette smoking especially within the United States of America it was a mainstream view that smoking cigarettes was healthy for you that like track athletes would run better if they smoke cigarettes these were widespread beliefs in like the 1930s completely ridiculous course but then after World War two there's again for a documentary filmmaker II to look we have this story to tell cigarettes they're actually poison they're actually bad in various ways and I think there are questions of ethical responsibility and so on to in terms of smoke cigars Bo regardless that was new and shocking let's say 1945 up to 1960 or 1959 or thereabouts you know but then by the 1980s it's old everybody already knows cigarettes are bad for you put it this way everybody already knows that in a perfect world there would be no cigarettes one way or another whether or not you personally have to go through the withdrawal symptoms of quitting in this vague perfect Wilson era so the same way we're now coming into a much longer period of struggle where more and more people will be aware of yeah you know what in a perfect world milk cow milk wouldn't be produced by having this cow stand in a shed and be you know anally probed and goes this horrible existence um but it's not shocking it's not new what happened with Oprah Winfrey promoting veganism for a month it's never gonna happen again lightning doesn't strike twice it's old news it's become part of the constant background noise of Western civilization culture so the the nature of the struggle and challenge ahead of us you know including as filmmakers myself being a zero budget filmmaker on YouTube you don't woman to some extent what I am doing is making films but I'm not going for that that shock reaction and in a sense I'm also really not that interested in telling people something they don't they don't already know so I'd say that this is just within that I mean I think it's quite correct to call it entertainment I actually I made uh just nerves about your email I made a really simple note on one piece of paper here that one things I want to say to you is that I see it as kind of a four-part challenge and one one of the four parts is is entertainment so there's activism and activism narrowly defined because the other three parts here activism there's an academic side to the debate there's an entertainment side and then there's the food industry side of what's going on avignon so a food industry being you know companies actually producing vegan meat or soy milk in this campus right this this this this side of challenge but the the entertainment side I use the word entertainment because III again I don't really see that as you know there's this shocking news do you know where cow milk comes from that that was the case I think as recently as the 1990s people really didn't know and people didn't know what a slaughterhouse looked like and so on and now they do and again the the creative challenge looked at george RR martin in his book series the Song of Ice and Fire Game of Thrones there's a list of political themes he wants to meditate on a lot of them going back to his own youth during the Vietnam War I mean you know he's still messed up about what happened with the Vietnam War and you know consequences of this and so on would you fight sure that's not that's not a criticism but my point is sorry so the author of Game of Thrones and Song of Ice and Fire George RR Martin's so he said he's a best-selling on there but yeah I just say but you know what he produced wasn't a documentary about democracy or you know the Vietnam or something he created a form of entertainment and fiction that you know that brought these themes you know to a to a mass audience now again it is different with children but I think probably for filmmakers whether you're talking about an adult audience or a children's audience the next step for veganism I think is going to be you know a step in that direction where we really do look at entertainment as entertainment and very obviously something like science fiction can embody and address these ethical these ethical problems mmm you know what more easily than fiction set in medieval times good or what have you but yeah I think I think I think that's gonna be the road ahead and not trying to recapture the excitement you know of say 2012 I know it's recent history but for me I think you know lightning doesn't strike twice we don't get that we're not gonna get that impetus again Wayne's young right using let's say I got to know him got access to him and followed him and the ups and downs a good person bad person who he is good Giants game getting tackled personal story that it doesn't matter the veganism is the just the device but it's really about a personal struggle to accomplish something and it's dealing with you know legal issues and you know where capitalism and socialism meet or whatever the different factors regulation for asti regulation what are all the things that are you know big discussion points in our culture but through a personal journey and whether it's him is there another person that I don't know about or is there another is our sting operation that's 10 years in the making of the most intense like undercover videos that will be seen you know will hopefully come out in the next couple of years that will you know obviously right but something that's still newsworthy that's you know that you might have your pulse most people right so that's I think that's the fundamental I think that's the fundamental thing I'm challenging you want I think Wayne's young is very much hung up on that but I mean after a certain point the fact that cigarettes give you cancer is not newsworthy the fact that a particular movie star even has died of lung cancer is barely newsworthy and it was shocking when those those things were first being realized by the American public but it's not shocking more it's never gonna be shocking anymore in the same way I mean um where do fur coats come from you know how could we possibly have footage that's more horrifying and more graphic than what's already out there I mean like it really is I mean by the way I'm not being sarcastic every so every every so often I have to edit that kind of footage and it's amazing to me that it still can upset me or disgust me you know editing footage of that because you know I do my own small parts of filmmakers baby chickens go into an incinerator right now right so I just say I'm not I'm not you know I'm not um scoffing at the impact that has on people including the effect it has on me when I when I work with it um but you know I think in a sense we got a bit of a free ride because of that shock factor that supported our you know our our cause and then once you're once you're past that shock fester the factor there's there's a much greater you know um creative creative challenge there now you know someone like Wayne's young so I mean what what if instead we took so that's someone from the activist side you could have someone from the academic side you could have a university professor who does you know animal rights and veganism there are a few examples you could have someone from the food industry side you could have one of these you know one businessman who's you know promoting vegan food and vegan cuisine I know a couple of examples you could follow any of those people but I think exactly what you have to let go of is the thought that there's something there that's gonna make headlines as you're saying or that there's gonna be an investigation there's gonna be a film clip of what really happens on the farm so what once that's gone what's what's the story [Music] sure and you know um you know as I say I mean whether we think of it in terms of science fiction or children's storybooks or any of this stuff you know I think there were a lot of people who want to get across these kinds of messages that's something that I may pursue but in the meantime I'm also looking whether it's a set of short videos that's like a series whether it's potentially animated like we talked about yeah yeah well obviously it's it's up to you but I mean what what are the facts you want to get across and who is the audience for them you you know I mean it's it's very saddening to me that all the time I deal with these these provinces of knowledge whether they're political or what-have-you look okay I'll give you the simplest example you know when I was in Toronto Toronto Canada I was interested in a lot of different political and ecological issues and ethical issues but many of them didn't touch people's lives directly so you know whether you're interested in slavery or the history of Cambodia or something like veganism that can all seem a bit distant but then I started doing political campaigning on on water pollution and this very directly included the water people were drinking out of their own taps you like it's a water polluter Anto is on a lake it's not a river so this is pollution going into the lake and then coming directly into your tab then you're you're drinking it bathing in it correctly and you know I was aware with something like air pollution that can be a bit abstract well there's this cloud in the sky and it kind of goes away and this you know this was so visceral it's like oh really and no you don't know you know what you get to witness is the extent to which people don't care they really sincerely genuinely don't care you know so whether it's something like that or you know I mean I'm in Cambodia I'm at a place where mass murder and torture took place and I'm talking to someone face-to-face about the CIA's role in this and what its role is and people don't care so you know I just say look I mean I I sympathize but it's easy to go through life looking for that reaction or trying to generate that that kind of reaction through drama whether it's whether it's whether it's with you authorship through research and in a textual basis or through filmmaking but I think especially with veganism it's it's it's it's misguided I think um you know art and artifice I think has to kind of take you in a different direction that way yes shock value is easy it's easy to shock people but I mean look at still today I mean this is still a part of my life so many people still support communism tomorrow I'm going up to the University campus there's a professor there the professor I'll be seeing she still supports communism she was encouraging her students to memorize the lyrics to the Internationale which is a communist anthem basically and you know I've written essays myself with really shocking vignettes of you know mass murder and torture and starvation and you know kind of the worst elements of communism and people are able to shake that off and ignore that and say well they they don't care so me given this this capacity in human nature it's it's not surprising to me what people's attitude is towards meat and cigarettes and and even alcohol whiskey and all these other things yeah yeah I'm sorry I'm trying to be sympathetic but I mean yeah that's that's kind of the warning of who you talking to [Music] right but wasn't there um I'm sorry but but I've seen several Killick coming back to this basic premise that we can never go back to the year 2012 I think you will doubtless remember cowspiracy that came out but I think just a few months ago Natalie Portman came out with another film of the center and again we're way past the point of diminishing returns and now I can't say no but care about natalie portman so it didn't have zero impact on plant life right right right but my point is lightning doesn't strike twice I don't think I don't think that's happening again right and it's called the game changers yes for been in the trailer has been out for a year now but I do think that that at least right this this national football players not look at this guy massive well III well III agree with you and I disagree with you to some extent because here's the thing what I've always said about the health argument and veganism is that the crucial thing we just have to get across is that being vegan is possible because a lot of people genuinely think it's impossible I see that in Asia if it was like they actually think you need meat to live or you need dairy to live so once you've got across that it's possible yes generally speaking of course being vegan is actually healthier than eating meat but to me that's that's really a secondary question the first question is can you be vegan can you sustain health in life on a vegan diet the answer is yes now you know are you actually going to be healthier than someone who's on a very disciplined pescetarian diet you know if you eat all junk food as a vegan and they have it's theoretically possible you know there's a there's a caveat stupider so but I'll leave that aside of the 7 question here's the problem um those athletes are talking about do they smoke cigarettes or no no nobody cares that athletes don't smoke cigarettes it's not galvanizing or driving the the anti-smoking movement the fact that these these athletes are again can we put together a documentary about how all the best Olympic athletes refuse to drink alcohol I'm not saying all of them but probably a very large percentage of people who are high level athletes refuse to drink alcohol what is the impact of that on the culture of drinking alcohol almost zero so again I'm saying this challenge you I'm not saying that has zero significance sure there are all kinds of celebrities like beautiful women and male weightlifting athletes who look good and eat a vegan diet but guess what on the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine every month there's someone else who eats meat and drinks alcohol and smoke cigarettes and may smoke marijuana or do other drugs who also is beautiful either as a model or actor or weightlifter or athlete or what have you and I don't think that has this galvanizing highly impactful effect for a sobriety movement nor for an anti-smoking movement nor can we really expect that for the vegan movement so just put in the cabbie here when I offer these criticisms I'm never claiming that there's zero efficacy that's not you know even even like the most ineffective forms of Act is look if I just stand on the sidewalk and hand out pamphlets saying stop stop anemic right and you know when you hand out pamphlets it's always also people who already have something going on in their head there's someone who was already nine-tenths of the way there and you happen to give them that you know which were you can only take credit for having a small impact no you're gonna you're gonna have some impact but again III really I really think it's misleading I really think it's misleading to hope right I wouldn't expect a big impact I wouldn't expect that to to change headlines or change the culture the basic fact that many successful athletes eat a vegan diet so what many successful athletes are completely sober in Husted refuse drug alcohol infuse of smoke advocacy right in the activism what do you think right interesting that's happening in whether it's visual or not that's happening in the vegan world we even leave it if it's inside baseball like you know like yeah two evenings what is the most interesting thing that's happening that you're seeing that you're like oh this is this I wanna know more about you know it all rests on donor support this is the the brutal reality that most people in interview will not tell you so you say what's interesting or what's exciting or what am i hopeful about for the future I can only be hopeful about things that are gonna have 65 year olds donating money to support them which is again another reason for me not to be wildly optimistic about athletes or you know sexy people in in bathing suits which you know has its has its role in the movement it's fine I'm not I don't hate on it so much um when I look at an organization like PCRM Physicians Committee for Responsible medicine the question I have to ask is can we have two three many PCRM can we have ten or twenty and can these sorts of institutions or initiatives can they develop the kind of the kind of self evident legitimacy that gets them donor support which is predominantly going to be from wealthy people over 65 years old so then this again this may seem very bleak but that that really is my hope in terms of what can happen right now um you know is there a lot already going on that I'm hopeful about you know no no I'm not and the framework of what we've already said already says it why like am i hopeful that Paul Bashir you know standing around with people wearing masks on the street am i hopeful that can now go up to the next level and have some kind of bigger and better impact no not at all not at all and I'm not hopeful about direct action everywhere and someone I think a lot of those things have already kind of hit their peak or hit their limit and these are you know these these are for related reasons but you know there is the the real prospect of doing what PCRM has done in terms of lawsuits challenging things that are illegal or unhealthy that are going on okay sorry let's say illegal and you just flushed a little bit is it legal to have schools teaching schoolchildren that eating two eggs a day is healthy from chicken eggs you know it may or may not be legal but it's probably something you can challenge at city hall or in court through various forms of public redress whether or not it's legal in a particular jurisdiction may may stand to be debated but in many jurisdictions it's not it's not legal for coca-cola to come in and tell schoolchildren hey kids it's okay to drink it or it's good to drink a can of coke every day so or of course not the cigarettes is unthinkable so they're they're a matter of principle there and again the the organization that can do that you know another one I like to point out is the problem of chromium hexane with leather this is a toxic pollutant issue but you know whether you can get the wedge in on demanding labeling we say hey look can we have labels saying what this really is and what the consequences are whether those the because you can label things for ecological consequences as well as health consequences and and what have you whether it's at that end or whether it's again challenging the school boards and challenging these kinds of things about about what they're doing the potential for that to create a plurality of respectable organizations like PCRM that's about the only thing I can really be be positive about right now so I'm looking at my own little note from my one note here about the four sides of the equation the activist side you said other than the activist side the academic side the entertainment side and then the food industry side you know um there's nothing happening on the academic side nothing so if you want hope I mean it's it's got to go up from here it's got to get better than where it is right now have you I mean you know again I know you have been in the game that long but I don't think you hear about people like oh wow did you hear about this great research that was done as part of someone's PhD thesis on veganism or somehow really diggin ISM you know given that there's an enormous amount of department resources going into feminists research you know academic feminism academic Human Rights discourse a lot of academic political discourses that don't necessarily lead anywhere to change the world there's obviously the potential for veganism to to start making a difference in the world via academic institutions and that hasn't happened at all yet so I am extremely cynical about academic institutions but I think and say even if you're just starting from zero and getting up to the the same level that that should be happening now in the next ten years yeah yes yeah yeah [Music] yeah yeah Canada you know we founded Greenpeace it's a Canadian or originally and the founders of Greenpeace every single one of them ate meat smoked cigarettes and drank alcohol and a lot of them used to work on fishing boats they'd worked in the fishing industry they're from east coast of Canada it's well I met a couple of those guys there's one I really remember meeting and speaking to but I think some of those because I was involved in ecology admittedly before I was vegan but I was already strictly vegetarian back then I was vegetarian and I refused to buy leather I was I was kind of vegan in principle but now I really barely heard the word vegan back then but anyway I was sure the vision it blew my mind back then I mean how can you you know how can you front for this cause without without being volunteerism so you're right but in what you'd be describing there is the potential of veganism to co-opt things that are already going on in ecology um you know and then the question you ask is is there anything really hopeful and positive enough going on in ecology that veganism co-opting it is going to be a very positive big deal is going to make this gonna make a big difference Yeah right I mean you know what why do people care so much about Star Wars or why did they care in the past um you know it's a story about ordinary people doing extraordinary things big you know myth mythological sized themes and conflicts you know something like the the extraordinary success of Game of Thrones both the books and the the TV show again there are very fundamental themes of honor and duty and self-sacrifice and you know it does get into what is feudalism and what is democracy eventually this is like more than three thousand pages into the text I mean there there are there are real you know questions people find very compelling being played with a lot of this stuff and especially if you're looking at Batman and spider-man a lot of it is kind of simultaneously adult entertainment and children's entertainment which is also it's a curious feature of Western civilization now that we know we tend to make this kind of children's entertainment but it's actually so dark and violent in its themes that it's only appropriate for an adult audience this is a you know I'd say the most of the Batman movies and that kind of thing it's like that but you know I just point out there there's a hunger for entertainment with real substance and dealing with with those those kinds of themes and any or all of those themes I mean it's it's very easy for me to imagine that someone who's just cognizant of veganism and ecology you could throw in a few others but veganism and animal rights ecology could start producing fiction you know to that out of that background it happened once in a really weird way with the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer a bunch of people include mostly authors at that time this is really before cinema but authors and playwrights made a lot of works that featured the question of cruelty to animals and animal rights based directly on Schopenhauer's influence and Schopenhauer's theory of of art and and compassion Schopenhauer put forth the general idea that sympathy or compassion is the basis of all ethics and then in this this was shown in whether or not you felt compassion for an animal even when you were killing it for me yourself and so on so that's anyway that's a couple hundred years ago there have been other kind of ideas like that that played out in in the arts but yeah I think it's fair to say in that in that theater veganism hasn't yet had its turn it bad it's not yet it's not yet boring and I think that's kind of the the challenge you have to you have to play when you you represent a cause or a problem that everyone already knows about it look what if I ask you this question this would be really really hard what if you wanted to make a film now in 2018 trying to get the message across that the war in Afghanistan has to end it's very hard cuz everybody already knows and nobody cares everybody already knows about Afghanistan now you know go back to the year 2004 or something okay you know this is the you know the shock value is there and do you realize what we're doing in Afghanistan there's gonna be this sense of sturm and drawing built into it but now today the same ethical issues are really really hard to broach in fiction or in documentary so no I mean it's that kind of transition that kind of much maturity or maturation of the cause that we have to prepare ourselves for yeah yeah to ten years when they get over the it's weird well my hope for that is limited because of my experience with Buddhism and Asia what you say is true I mean that there's this fundamental issue of making veganism easy that's what those industries are accomplishing but you know I've lived in Taiwan and Taiwan is still to this day the most advanced nation in the world that way because of the basis of Buddhism and Taoism but what I found in Taiwan was that the easier you make veganism the more the common run of man regards it with a kind of contempt you know doing doing what's easy isn't what's respected or you know what's regarded as a steer or impressive or an accomplishment if climbing a mountain is easy and anybody can do it then than so what it's just letting happen to do that weekend and I saw I saw and felt a lot of that in in Taiwan and where I'd meet people who were in vegan restaurants but they were meat eaters there just happened to be going to vegan restaurant they're regarded as one style of food out of many that they sometimes ate the same way you might sometimes go to a Vietnamese restaurant or a Thai restaurant it's just another form of food in the market and you really got the sense Moo a couple times people said to me oh look you know after chatting with you for awhile they found me quite intelligent area - oh but you can't possibly be vegan because their assumption really was that vegans were these superstitious people who believed in ghosts and we're doing things to avoid getting bad karma and so on they're this really low opinion of vegans even as the food becomes easier easier to get and easier to enjoy as the lifestyle so I just say you know facilitating something at the same time makes it facile makes it easy puts it in a position of contempt whereas you know just just a couple of years ago when I told people yeah you know I was vegan whether I said I was vegan in Saskatchewan or vegan in even when I was in conveying but I was vegan in in in China and you nan um and people really say oh wow like that that must have been hard like how did you do it you know how did you manage this you know didn't have problem this is that well and there and there is this kind of grudging respect for it just because it's something hard to do so it's it's a double-edged sword um but I mean there's definitely the possibility that veganism becoming an industry having this support I hope that's gonna create you know ultimately this all relies on donations I'm filmmaking there's some income there's sign Oh some films break even some turn a profit many don't many are done image vases but you know um you know the prospects for vegan activism like PCRM PCRM is not going to turn a profit ever pedda people with Ethical Treatment is not going to turn about ever so all of this rests on that on that donor driven basis so sure there's the hope that the proliferation of vegan bacon and vegan milk substitutes and vegan cheese that it'll it'll create a material basis for um for like I say the proliferation of two three many PCR M's many legal challenges many of those Democratic agencies private people private entities or they yeah organizations companies like Ford Foundation type you know you know the Ford Foundation Ford Foundation has come up many times in my life I've lived at a strange life you know says that's a good question and you're right they are highly eccentric multi millionaires so I've pointed this out repeatedly in in my videos but so Gary Yourofsky who was a big deal five years ago and now isn't gary yourofsky was the most vocal best-known voice and vegan activism about five years ago why oh you are oh f sk why gary yourofsky and you can search within my channel I have a playlist of videos in which I'm criticizing him he was an obscure part-time substitute teacher in Detroit Detroit Michigan United States and to all reports he was living in poverty which I can believe even if you're rich in Detroit you live in poverty it's pretty rough it's pretty powerful though as as a supply teacher in Detroit I have no reason to think he was he was affluent in any way brought way to pretty tough life and he was putting all of his time and effort into vegan activism on his on his you know on this basis out of his garage so to speak and one you know multi-millionaire the former guitarist for the rock band Queen so you're old enough you can probably remember when Queens a really big deal so the the good but the guy is apparently I've looked it up he is incredibly wealthy this this musician he's you know some musicians are broke but he's not one of them yeah so it he you know he perfect he personally met this guy and selected him and started putting money behind him and then what do you know he's going on world tour and he's becoming this high-profile figure and he's doing interviews with the mainstream news and so on so something like that that might seem you know in the slang parlance of our time might seem organic it might seem grassroots it's not it's very much the product of one donors intervention so I have been told that about other other vegan groups and individuals who've emerged from obscurity that the crucial first step for for Wayne's young for direct action everywhere was and again I've been told this by many sources and there is some verifiable evidence for it with the donations they received from from Ingrid Newkirk Ingrid Newkirk who is the founder of peda I do not know if the money came from her personal bank account or if it was funding directly from petaa like from agency to agency I suspect the latter that it was actually peda giving them the startup money to do what they're doing so yeah I mean ultimately in these countries we're talking about activism is about money it doesn't exist without donations or it's invisible without a net you know it just you know it can be it can be one man standing on the sidewalk with pamphlets but you don't get above that in terms of organization or impact now it is different in a Muslim society it is different in a Buddhist society the structure and function of charity is very different if you're in some other society but definitely in the United States and Canada the only prospect we have for building institution a building community in veganism is going to be donation driven the big exceptions being for-profit food industry and someone like you if you get out there and say hey I want to make a movie that has the best aspects of Star Wars and the best aspects of Game of Thrones and the best aspects of dune and you know here it is you know here's my project you know and the moral of the story maybe it's several points or in several levels actually does relate to veganism it does relate to the fact that animal will suffer the same way humans do or something there's something you're getting across you know in this script or in this story but this really has the ability to make money you know whatever it's starring Natalie Portman I don't care it is you know that's also different because then you're taking it out of that out of that donor driven loop yeah so no it's I'm not optimistic and you know talent is really really thin on the ground there there are not a lot of talent I know cuz now I've been doing this I mean you know I've been blessed I haven't been tied down with a full-time job I've really been shaking hands and talking to people and reaching out to people so intensively in the in the last five years yes yeah I mean it works but it's it's not in a sense that I was hoping it would be because I was really hoping that patreon could be a crossroads where I yeah where I meet and get organized with other activists that was really what I was hoping was to create a little you know network of people actually do things with um but you know anyway something but frankly some of that is my fault my message is not appealing to that many people people find me intellectually intimidating I don't want to work with me yeah right right right you're trying to win yeah yep right it's I yeah and it is disappointing and I was talking to someone who was an organizer for um cube of truth so cubed truth is also known as anonymous for the voiceless she was a he was like a regional director and so not the very very top level but still and I was saying to him look you can't run an organization like a high school clique like this can't just be about who's friends with who or who's sleeping with who or who's cooler is not like you know there's God like I don't care what the principles are what you got and I remember he said to me this is almost a verbatim quote he said like no it never ends everything is like a high school but look you know I do have experience in other walks of life you know and not all vegans do not all vegans I know what it's like to sit down at a at a boardroom meeting and present research and findings to representatives of corporations and large charities and government agencies and chair a meeting and do this kind of stuff you know I and you know most left-wingers especially look down on corporations as Eagle heard me look down on corporation says evil but you actually learn a lot in terms of good good corporate practices and how to you know as you say even Monsanto there they cooperate they play well with others because they're playing to win you know a lot of those attitudes definitely are definitely are missing but look you know the flip side is that the internet gives us a false sense of place and I was talking to another activist I can name him I don't think it's doesn't harm his first name is ally his name's Ali Tabrizi and he is now like yourself documentary filmmaker so like right now he's finishing his first big professional documentary film so he's he's a he's off the internet but when that launches he'll do a press releases and stuff for it but Ali to reason I was telling him within his first year of being an activist on YouTube he was organizing events with more than 200 people like 200 people I think 300 400 people he had all this positive support at all levels from individuals and institutions and groups and you know he had he would throw an event have people show up to it um and I do not I mean after five years you know the message I'm delivering and I know I know what I've done that's that's made me unpopular I'm honest about things like you know castrating dogs and declawing cats and killing cockroaches I would never do so to come back to Gary Yourofsky I would never do what Gary Yourofsky does and lie to you claiming that I never kill cockroaches I actually I actually do think it's immoral to kill a cockroach I think you're still killing an animal but I do it and I'm I'm willing to be honest about that and if you if you live in Cambodia you know if you live in the tropics killing cockroaches is probably like okay yeah the New York winter is never cold enough to wipe out the America the hardy American cockroach is amazing yes yeah it's cold so you know I just say you know but my honesty about all that stuff you know alienated me but so but the the point I was just making is it's easy to lose track of the sense of place and feel like I'm on the internet there forum everywhere and you're not the difference between me and Ally Tabrizi was that he was in downtown London England and London England has 200 years of animal rights activism you know proto veganism and then veganism that is really where veganism began they have the oldest deepest tradition and it's also you know a huge city in terms of population and I have not been in London England so apart from all those other factors ultimately where you are who you meet face to face you know those those still are the real fruits and it probably is for filmmaking - that's probably why you need to live in New York and why you can't do filmmaking in schenectady or something you know so politics is even more so right politics is even more simple well it's also cool for me to hear than you it sounds like you've really got interested in this in the past one year so it'll be fine under standard stay but my point is I mean you know I would be really interested to hear where you're at one year from now you know so give me six months no but I would like to hear back from what you're doing you know in the old days whenever I did these interviews I'm not gonna ask you now because I think you're just putting your plans together I used to always ask other activists what what are you planning for the next five years what do you think's gonna have with you and the in the next five years and again I was talking to people of all ages I can't just say these were young people some of them were 21 but some of them were 35 and almost all of them were shocked by the question like what what do you mean five years and I got an email I got an email from one of them a couple months ago and he said Wow you know what you asked me that and now it's four years later and now I look back and I really think well what if I had a five-year plan because you know that these these kinds of questions are not they're not gonna disappear for us right well and [Music] well but that point these other people in the game I don't think I don't think Leonardo DiCaprio has a five-year plan I don't think natalie portman has a five o'clock there there are a lot of people who are not even thinking in those terms and you know I think the people with a five-year plan are people like PCRM those are the people who are really looking to make a difference in the next five years and one of the first steps they take isn't narrowing their focus and limiting their ambitions to the difference they can make in the next five years they can't take on everything [Music] even though they only a million other tricks but you know so we're talking about 10 20 30 years if you're gonna be honest we got to look at land use Reggie water you know yep so the smartest people the people with money something clicks like why did it click for me and not for someone else I did like me any less than you or whoever I'm talking to right it may be it may be that would you come to the end of this research you're doing your final conclusion is that you are special and you you you and you maybe you start to feel comfortable with that specialness because you know when I moved to Cambodia you know is there to do humanitarian work I was there to do research it was there to make the world a better place that was already does it's a strictly vegetarian I was like 98 percent vegan but it wasn't on obscenity so you know I'm living this this kind of stranger self this one like guess who I'm meeting every day I'm meeting the white people who are there as sex tourists like a meeting people Cambodia has no extradition treaties or they didn't them with any Western but they're you're meeting people there were literally murderers there was one guy I never met him but he was literally an axe murderer he had killed someone with an axe it was living there you know you're being kind of in contrast to you know yourself and you know the couple people I knew in the humanitarian field who may be there with these very pious motives you're meeting the worst of the worst oh and the Christian missionaries of course the people who are there to convert Buddhists to Christianity you're meeting these astoundingly immoral people so you know I think III do a very pragmatic down-to-earth you know sense of ethics but I think part of that may be in the course the research you're doing now you're gonna have to admit to yourself that you are in some way a special person and of the other people obviously the other people who are at the same airport with you in Cambodia or who even at the same event with you when you're when you're involved in veganism or at the same conference you maybe gonna start to get a feeling for what [Applause] various structures and I would say in the inner city is in Harlem Compton there's vegan soul food restaurants there's you know anyone it doesn't matter how cute into it doesn't matter who you are in in Detroit it was about 5050 when we were in vegan restaurants a lot of the vegan restaurants about 50% of the guests would be black and also about 50% of those staff a lot of them so and you know some of them were black owned and celebrated as such but know there's a big african-american interest in veganism in Detroit and Chicago and in other places but look all of it is dwarfed by China and Taiwan I mean you don't even have to get into India I mean India it's a bit of a question mark which way India is gonna go on on veganism but the you know Buddhism is the sleeping giant buddhism and taoism and confucianism behind veganism and the the potential of even something like Judaism because you know Israel and tel-aviv specifically Israel has become massively vegan and there's really no basis for veganism and in Judaism you know there's a very vague intellectual tradition or concern you can try to characterize that as being the basis for why why so many Jewish people became became vegan but it's not it's not as if they're quoting the Bible or something it's if anything it's probably because they're disillusioned with the Bible that they get interested in veganism but no so I mean you know these these there were big sources of non Western and non-white impetus behind veganism however PCRM take a look right now what ethnicity or SP serum what even peda people death treatment mammals so you know there's no doubt that the established and moneyed elites are the ones who are actually sitting up and running the the few organizations we've got there's not not a lot to talk about and that comes back to donor driven activism which is what I've been saying that well what if I'm trying if I start my own organization like that who do you think I'm doing fundraising for 21 year old edgy vegans no it's people over 65 it's people who are retired and you have a certain amount of their income they're giving to charity every year and you're trying to make the pitch to them so that's where the disconnect is and you know obviously I think you just have to have a realistic attitude towards that I mean ultimately if you want to specialize the vegan charity look let's say I said I'd love to do this website of a specialized vegan charity just dealing with elephants but it's a vegan charity helping elephants I have a fair bit of experience the elephants through my years in Southeast Asia nobody is really gonna care nobody's gonna support you or not support you because of your gender ethnicity you know etc if they if what they care about is is elephants so in that way also specialization is a way out of the the identity politics and ethno socio-economic you know bind of our time to say hey look this is what we're really great at well we're great at is water pollution or elephants or you know specifically challenging school board's about propaganda that says milk and eggs are okay this is what we're great at so the color of our skin shouldn't be what we're judged by I think that's what all of us can hope to do you know regardless of what color of skin it is you or you were born into yeah okay we're past one hour no well think thank you and as they say look don't act like it's hard to find me I've certainly got an eventful year coming up I think I'm moving back to Taiwan we're really preparing for that but I'd be really interested you're at the kind of fact-finding stage but you know please do keep the show over we really just hear what the next steps are that you take keep you up to date and I'm sure I'll have some other questions along the way and you know I appreciate you giving me the time great thanks thanks for calling bye bye