Hello everyone, this is Ryan and you are listening to The Vegan Report.
What you just heard was the angry reaction of a college student who discovered a booth
in his campus promoting Elwood's organic dog meat farm.
The dog farmers were even distributing free samples of dog meat, and that just brought
him to the edge.
Now what if I told you that the dog meat samples were actually plant-based mock meat and the
farmers?
Vegans!
Vegans pretending to be dog farmers.
Why?
What's the point of doing this?
Well, that is the question we are answering today with none other than the genius brain
behind this initiative, Molly Elwood.
Molly is an animal rights advocate and writer, copywriter, and editor for brands by profession.
Visit the description below for the link to the full meltdown video of that college kid
and also the link to the very funny and insightful social media account of Elwood's organic
dog meat.
So, thank you Molly for being on the show.
Thank you for having accepted my invitation.
No problem.
I'm really happy to be here.
Thanks for having me.
So, I want to start with this.
You are a writer and I guess you understand the narratives we tell in our culture and
to ourselves.
And can you maybe, you know, and feel free to answer this question however you want,
but give us an idea of the power of narratives in the animal world, you know, how, for instance,
we justify our eating habits or the way we see animals and all the stories we tell ourselves
around that.
Yeah.
So, I think that I'd kind of interpret that being that the stories we are given when we
grow up, as we're growing up, about how we treat animals and what animals can feel and
what they process and, you know, what our relationship to them, what our relationships
are like.
We often, I think we know the answers as kids because we ask the questions that are really
kind of, you know, obvious.
You know, I remember as a little kid getting a kitten and being like, well, shouldn't,
why is the kitten being taken from the mother and being told, well, the mother doesn't care,
you know, that she has so many babies, she doesn't care.
So that's a story now that we tell ourselves and that just becomes another thread within
the quilt that is the story of what we tell ourselves about animals.
And when we tell these stories again and again, we don't question them because somebody in
authority at some point told us what they were.
And so we didn't have to go through, you know, what does that actually mean?
So I think that a lot of animal rights activism is about, it's not even deprogramming, it's
raising these stories and asking people themselves to go back and ask why.
And now that you're an adult yourself, you can think about, you know, what do these stories
actually mean?
So interesting because I always think, you know, what are we fighting exactly?
Are we fighting big ag?
Are we fighting stupidity?
And you're making me think, you know, maybe we're fighting just immaturity, just childhood.
We're just asking people to grow up.
Yeah.
Well, one of the things that I put on the Elwood website that I felt was pretty impactful
just to me, I wrote it and then I thought about it and went, yeah, I actually, I agree
with this idea that is, you know, a lot of the things we told ourselves, we had to because
that's how we were able to get along.
For example, you know, in order to slaughter animals, we would have to think that they
don't feel pain as much because that's the only way we could as humans feeling, thinking
empathetic humans that we could get over it.
We'd have to think that we have to take animals away from their parents, but now we don't
have to anymore.
And like now it's like those stories, those children's stories helped us get along when
we had to do the hard things.
But now it's like we've graduated and it's time to, you know, put away those, you know,
and it's funny because it's not putting away the childish things.
These are putting away the adult, you know, the rational adult hardening that we had to
do.
So.
And how do you explain the speciesism dimension of it?
Like there are stories of, you know, Bambi and I did an episode on fish and we talked
a lot about Nemo and how this movie, which is about animal abuse and getting a fish out
of a tank provoked, you know, when people watch that movie, they felt the need to go
in a pet shop and just own purchase a clown fish.
How do you explain that?
Oh, well, you know, I think, you know, obviously we have feelings for animals that we can relate
to or that we have feelings, cute, cuddly feelings for.
But all again, when you go back to stories, all it takes is a good story to make you realize
that they're thinking and feeling and we have empathy for them.
I remember seeing Finding Nemo and it was funny.
I had just, I wasn't vegan.
I had just buried my dog and it was a big dog.
Like it was a Pyrenees that I had to dig.
This is a real story.
This isn't me being funny farmer.
It was the only dog I've ever, I have ever owned and I had to dig a really big grave.
And then I went to go see Finding Nemo and it destroyed me.
I just remember in the front row of the audience just sobbing my eyes out, just destroyed.
And I probably went out after that and ate animals because you're not thinking about
it.
I have empathy for dogs and fish and I probably went and ate chicken.
But I think it's the speciesism is again, it's a program that we're just running because
we don't question.
But then how do we tell the right stories?
Because if I had to think about the perfect story to tell about fish in order to trigger
empathy in people, it would have been Finding Nemo.
Right.
Yeah.
Go on.
Yeah, exactly.
And then people went exploiting more animals because of that movie.
Oh, so when you were saying then they go and they go buy them.
I mean, I don't think people's relationship with animals, we still say even I as a vegan,
I use the word ownership even though I don't mean it.
I'm a vegan.
I don't think we should own anyone or any animals.
But at the same time, it's a shortcut.
It's a way to speak the language of everyone to say, I owned this dog.
I owned this fish.
I wanted to have a relationship.
And I think that the pet ownership, quote unquote ownership is our desire to have relationships
with animals.
And what's really funny is like, for example, I'm in an urban area right now and I'm feeding
some crows and I want them to be my friend.
And I had this realization that they like how kind of narcissistic that is for me to
be like, I want them to like me.
And they're going, I have to live.
I have to survive.
I have to feed my family.
And thank God this individual is putting nuts out for me.
But I'm not going to like, there's no relationship here.
Animals don't need us.
I mean, maybe cats and dogs have those bonds to us.
But it's a selfish want that humans and we like, just like we want food and we want companionship,
we want pets and we want to be heroes.
I just thought the image that appeared in my mind was that of a psychopath who just
kidnaps someone.
And I've seen that in a movie somewhere.
Be my friend.
You'll be my friend.
Exactly.
So are we the psychopaths?
I think we are.
And I think that, I think, I mean, obviously there are animals that we domesticated animals
that need us, but they need us for survival.
And I really think that dogs would probably prefer to hang out with a bunch of dogs than
people, but you know, they can't live right now without us.
So we, we, we get the benefit, right?
But yeah, it is a bit psycho.
We're like, come be my friend forever.
I'll give you a warm bed.
You'll love it.
Okay.
I want to go back to the words we use around animals.
Is it truly that important to say, you know, for instance, companion animal or just animal
instead of pet or purchase instead of adopt, you know, what's, do you have a strong opinion
about that?
I have a feeling that, and I don't, you know, I'm, I'm ready to be attacked for it.
I think vegans end up othering ourselves a lot by using language that is, while more
morally appropriate, it really distances us from everyday people who aren't vegan, you
know, by me, by me saying companion animal or, you know, it's one thing to say it and
define why I'm saying that and tell someone about it.
But if I'm just talking with a coworker, I'm not going to, but at the same time, as I've
started thinking more about the word pet and how I was thinking about the way humans might
use it about each other and an endearment, but it's still, it's pet is like your thing.
Your thing that I own that you bring me joy and you do not, there's no interaction from
you upwards.
It's just me and my thoughts about you and how, you know, so on, on one hand, I do think
that we can, we can be careful with our language and we can talk about it.
We can talk about its meaning.
But I also think that in everyday interactions, sometimes we can be shooting ourselves in
the foot.
So yeah, I think lots of vegans out there are not truly conscious of the image people
have of us.
And one of my favorite meme is that of, you know, it's like a, you know, it shows what's
the vision that carnivores have of a vegetarian, of another fellow carnivore, and then of a
vegan and the vegan every time, you know, whatever person is looking at, you know, it's
something otherworldly.
It's a, it's an alien.
It's an extremist, you know, terrorist.
It's like, it's my favorite meme.
And I try to remember that when I go into a conversation with someone who's not vegan,
who's right.
So you have that, you also are conscious of that, you know, your initiative, you know,
you have to be conscious of that doing what you're doing.
So can you describe first the image that people have of vegans just as a reminder?
Oh my God.
Well, I can just say, I mean, I'm in a very liberal city and if you're vegan, you are
so counterculture.
We are, we are, maybe you're a punk vegan and you're pierced and you're wearing black
and you're, you know, you're, you're wearing a shirt that says meat is murder and you're
going to be yelling and you're going to be dousing people, you know, yourself with blood
in front of the Chipotle.
And it's just, we are, I, it's the struggle to wake people up and I'm going to be in your
face and I'm going to show it to you right now at any instant.
I'm going to say I'm a vegan by the way.
I know it was funny when, when I first went vegan, I bought all the ironic shirts and
all the stickers and I had a pierced nose and I was like, I should get a tattoo.
I don't have a tattoo, but now's the time I'm going to get a big vegan tattoo.
And at the same time as, as I started to become more vegan, just in, in like that, I mean,
I don't mean to say like more vegan, but as I started talking to more people about it,
I realized that I could reach more people by toning my appearance down and looking more
like everyone else.
So then you can kind of surprise them and go, yeah, you could be vegan.
Vegan doesn't mean, you know, it's chewing everything that is, you know, normal or you
don't have to go yell in front of a Chipotle.
I mean, we would like you to, but you can also just be at work and bring vegan cookies
and you can, you can go sign petitions and you can try and talk to other people.
And I think that that's just, you know, it's a journey.
A lot of us take.
I get the punk rock, you know, image of vegans, but there's also the image of, you know, the
obnoxious vegan is ignorant who doesn't, you know, get it.
Yeah.
There's, yeah.
So there's the idea of the ideal idealistic vegan, you know, that, or the hypocritical
vegan.
I mean, it's the thing that we really love to hate the hypocritical vegan, the vegan
who's eating avocados or almonds or the vegan who's never stepped foot on a farm or the
vegan who, you know, who, who lives in a city and has access to everything, but has never,
has never been in a rural area.
And it's really easy to be, it's really easy to shut down to try.
If you were a meat eater, it's very easy to shut people down with these images because
some of them are true.
A lot of us have never been on a farm.
A lot of us do live in, you know, urban centers and it, it's an easy, that's an easy win
for them.
Why do we have this image of vegans?
I, I, you know, I will put the blame on social media and I'm thinking right now of the vegan
teacher like personalities, big personalities like that who are out there and there's a
lot of attention around them.
But what is your explanation?
Well, I mean, for the most, I mean, a lot of it is true.
A lot of the, a lot of the perceptions of vegans are true.
And I think, you know, we all have the, also the idea of when we go vegan, we all go on
the journey of having to talk to people about it and we all become obnoxious because we're
idealistic and think that if I tell you these things, you're going to change your mind too.
And then you have the emotion of the information we're learning becomes so horrifying.
So we have to, I have to tell you about it.
And then at some point we, we become so wrapped up in, in the importance of the, of the issues
that we become, we become the thing that they hate, you know?
And I think we all have, it's, it's a journey we're all on and we have to, I don't know
what I'm saying.
It's, it's hard.
It's very hard.
Sorry to push those questions on you.
No, no, no, no.
It's true.
I think the word I was looking for, what is the word that means when you end up being
people hating?
I wanted to say it so easily, but I can't think about it.
Like antagonistic.
It's a, oh, I can hear you.
Misanthropic.
Yeah, misanthropic.
That's it.
It's just, we end up, we end up wanting to, we end up othering ourselves and not really
caring because at this point, like the animals are more important.
So, you know, F you, we're going to do what we need to do to save the animals.
And the worst part is sometimes that can't save the animals.
So sometimes we do have to pull off our punches and we have to spoon feed non-vegans the
information and even though it's going to be slow and it's going to be the longer path,
it may be more likely to lead to veganism.
And that's what the hardest part is.
It's like, I don't know.
It feels, I haven't watched Karate Kid, but it feels like Karate Kid.
We're just like, just hold back.
Just.
Yeah.
We need a lot of wisdom, I guess.
Being vegan is one thing and as you pointed out, it comes with its own mental charge,
you know, mental weight and challenges.
But then going into activism, I find that it is an answer to many of those issues we
feel from becoming vegan, like a solution, a way to do something to address those feelings
of powerlessness.
But you know, is it, please share your story of activism and how you decided to take that
extra step.
Yeah.
Well, first it started, you know, just trying to find a way to do something, you know, again,
you have all this information and at first you think, well, I'm just going to tell people
about it and it's going to change people's minds and that doesn't work.
And then you're like, well, maybe I'll argue with people online and that's going to work
and that doesn't work.
And you're like, what if I just bake a lot for people and that doesn't work either.
And I tried a lot of things.
I volunteered at farm sanctuaries and I tried, I went out and did like Cube of Truth and
I just felt like it wasn't from, it wasn't for me.
I mean, like since then, I really, I've done Cube of Truth since then.
And it was just, at that time I was, I was not ready to talk to anybody.
So I just stood in the cube and, you know, was really mad, standing behind the mask,
just looking at people.
But I'm a writer and I was thinking, well, what if I started blogging about this?
That would be helpful.
And what if I, but it was really hard to reach people.
But I just, I do think that is it.
It's like, we, we, we read up and we get all this information and we gather it and then
without an outlet for it, it's just, it's so depressing and it's so sad and so anxiety
producing and that is how you end up telling your friends about it so much to the point
where they're just like, you know, I love you, but you've joined a cult and can you
just, can we just not talk about this?
And you realize that you can't keep going to the same person with your information.
You actually have to reach a wider audience and you need to plant seeds widely.
So I do think that everyone should try and find the activism that speaks to them and
try, I mean, you try a million things.
There's so many ways to help.
And there's, you know, it's not, it's not just protesting in front of a place or just,
you know, arguing with people online.
There's so many ways you can use your skills.
There's so many nonprofits that need, if you have, you know, office skills, they need your
help.
So what I like about dog meat farm is the creativity of it.
It's the way you went looking for something original that was not tested, but which is
at the same time, you know, genius in the way it exposes the hypocrisy of people, of
the public.
How do we, how can we be more creative in our activism?
Well, one of the things that I find is pretty, pretty fun about dog meat is none of this
was the intention.
These are all outcomes of it that are lucky outcomes.
I made it cause I enjoyed it.
I made something for myself and I didn't expect anyone to see it.
And I was just, I was just enjoying the process of making something for myself.
And I think that when we consider ourselves, what amuses us, what interests us, finding
that you're going to find other people through that.
So it, you know, it doesn't have to be a, you know, a satirical campaign.
It could be, you know, whatever the thing is that you're really into, you're going
to find other people through it.
So I think, and I think that that is also given the project longevity is because to
me it's still amusing.
I still find joy in it.
And I think we need more people who are passionate and who are able to stick with their, the
thing.
So you have to be, you have to, you have to kind of let go of also what other people think,
you know?
And we can, I actually had a woman today, a friend of mine I was having coffee with
and she's not vegan.
And she goes, so have they figured out what is the best way to make someone go vegan?
And I laughed at him like, no, we haven't figured that out.
We would like to, but what's really nice is we need a million ways because there is, you
know, millions of different types of people.
And so, yeah.
But it surprises me in a way that there aren't more creative ways of doing activism out there.
I hear, I always hear about the cube of truth, which isn't an amazing idea.
And I'm glad that it's widespread now.
But how do you explain the lack of, you know, trying something new and just going outside
the norm of what activism means?
I think I go back to an email I got early on.
I got a, I spent money to buy a mobile billboard in Las Vegas.
They just advertised my dog meat and it just rolled around in Las Vegas for a month.
And it just brought me a lot of joy.
And somebody emailed me and said, you can do that?
You know, don't you have to ask permission?
And I've said this in other interviews where I'm like, permission from who?
Like it turns out you can do things.
You can just make things.
And I think that there's a lot of feeling that there's some process we need to go through
before we make something.
And I remember when I first, I went to my first vegan conference and I was so excited.
Like I went to all the talks and I filled a notebook with all my ideas.
I was like, what if we did this and this and this?
And then we had, it was a meeting in California and then the Portland Activism Group got together
for a meetup and I'd never met any of these people before, even though I'd come from Portland.
And so I was like, oh my gosh, I'm so excited to meet you.
Here are all my ideas.
And they were like, we have all of our other stuff already in place.
We have, you know, these protests and working on this bill and like the very organized things.
And my first thought was like, oh, well, I'll put mine at the end of the agenda, you know,
and eventually in a few years, we're going to get to some of my ideas.
And then I went, oh, right, this isn't an organization.
I don't need to ask permission of other vegans to do things.
I can just make things.
And I think, I wonder if that is one of the reasons we're stymied is we think that we
need approval or we need money or we need, you know, we need to think about the priorities
of things.
I mean, like if you think about it, I mean, and I often think about it as I think about
the money and effort and time that could instead be used in say, undercover investigations.
I find that to me, that is the most valuable thing we could be doing.
It's funny because it's not dog meat.
I think the most important thing we should be doing is getting video and showing people
what this is, but that's not going to reach everybody.
So just as much as we need to be, you know, taking our B12, we also need ice cream and
we should be eating some ice cream too, you know?
So yeah.
Well, do you think that people are getting desensitized to all the footage of slaughterhouses?
And I want to generalize that to other activism work.
You know, do you think that there is a ceiling and that someday this won't be as effective
as it was?
Well, I think that the one thing that is important about it is I can remember on my own vegan
journey was my thought that these videos must be old.
They must be from another country.
They must be showing something that, you know, happened just once.
And so that's the unfortunate part about it is there's always people who haven't seen
it yet and there's always people who think that.
And at the minute they go, hey, maybe I should look at this stuff.
And if they see it all stopped in 2024, they're going to be like, well, that doesn't happen
anymore.
So it serves the purpose of when that person is about to go vegan and they have to go look
at something, they'll find something from Mercy for Animals that just happened last month
and they can be horrified.
And so I don't think that that's going to pass, but I do think that especially as a
vegan, God, the stuff that I've seen again and again, and you're like, you just watched
that the cow in the UK get hit by a truck or hit by a police car.
And I was shocked when I saw it.
And then I just scrolled on by because I'm like, what?
I have only so much empathy.
I'm not saying I'm not empathetic of it, but I'm just saying where there's only I'm going
to keep seeing it.
We're always just going to keep seeing it.
So I think it's my own bias because I did not, you know, decide to become vegan because
of that footage, because I was exposed to that footage.
So I guess it's hard for me, you know, and I don't look for that footage.
You know, I look away just like you.
Yeah.
Well, you did look, but then because I don't find it constructive to just be sad all the
time and fill my heart with all those negative feelings when I'm already doing something.
I don't know what you make of that attitude, but yeah, no, not at all.
I mean, I totally feel that, especially as you know, and you're doing your activism is
we know it, we know what's happening.
I don't need to see it.
I went on one vigil and it destroyed me and I don't, I don't, I don't think it would be
helpful for the movement if I went to another one, you know, if I put me out of commission
for another, you know, two weeks.
But at the same time is I get what you're saying though, that there are many people
who that's not the reason they went vegan.
And that is where you get into the creativity of being like, what do we need to do?
We need to do so many different ways of reaching people.
Like I really like speciesism WTF.
I don't know if you know about them.
They're doing the milking women as an, as a big art like experience.
And I just think that like, that may not make someone go vegan.
It might.
It also makes someone go, what am I looking at?
And what is this?
And what are they rep?
Who's making this and why?
And I think that we need more stuff like that.
It doesn't have to be the thing.
It can be a representation of the thing to get people interested, to bring them in it.
And I love, I love that campaign for the creativity of it.
And I think that we should, you know, more artists and, you know, people should be exploring
what can we do in ways that are just outside of the box.
And I want to quickly go back to that message of you don't need to go through a process
or ask the permission of someone or even go through an organization to do your own activism.
This speaks to me as someone who decided to just launch a podcast out of nowhere.
What would you say to the people who are listening and who are considering activism, but there
is this hesitation?
How do you bring them, you know, on the other side?
I think again, for me, it was finding what is my skill and how can I use it?
Mine's advertising.
So it's, I'm so used to just sitting down and coming up with 10 different things and
then having to just choose one of them and going with it.
And I think a podcast is a fabulous idea being like, what is it that's interesting to me
and who do I want to talk to because other people would be curious?
So I think it is, it is sitting down with yourself and having this moment of being like,
what am I interested in?
But maybe, for me, I can say the journey that I'm on right now is thinking I don't do a
lot of street activism with Outwoods.
A lot of it is just in person.
Sorry, a lot of it's online.
And I've done one-on-one tabling events, but I haven't done it with a big group of people
more than a handful of times.
And I certainly don't know how to film them.
I don't know how to mic myself and put the audio and get the camera and have debates.
And I don't know how to change that debate into something that's editable with the onscreen
text.
It's just out of my wheelhouse.
And I was thinking, well, if I want to learn how to do this, maybe I should film it.
Maybe this is a podcast.
Maybe this is a podcast that's going to help teach other activists how to do this.
Regardless of whether I actually even want to do it, I actually think that I don't.
As I listed all those things, I'm like, God, that sounds like a lot of work.
And I think I should just keep doing what I'm doing.
But how interesting would that be as content, to be interviewing activists and finding out
what they're doing and how they do it?
And then you've got a resource for activists.
So that's just a journey.
That's one example of something we can do that's exciting.
You could be like, I'm really interested in turtle rescue.
And it may not be vegan, vegan, but you might want to know something about it and learn
how to do it and create a short video about it.
Or you want to educate people and you can make a brochure.
And I just think that there's so much value in what interests you will interest other
people.
Okay.
I want to get to the second thing that I admire the most about this initiative.
And it is the humor attached to it.
I love the videos I see online, on social media of people getting angry about vegans
promoting dog meat.
And what is the place for humor in vegan activism?
That's a question I was asking myself in preparation for this interview.
Apart from this initiative and maybe some others, some movie productions, like short
movies or things like that, there's a lot of seriousness.
There's a lot of cries and sadness and not much humor, not much, I guess I'll use this
word positivity and the things that energize you and make you feel like, we're one of the
winning.
So how come this is so funny?
What's so funny about this situation?
And should we instill more humor in activism?
Well, I think it's a really hard question to answer.
And so I was doing standup comedy about the same time I went vegan.
And as I got more vegan, the less I could do comedy because I was just so depressed.
Like the information is just so hard to deal with.
It's just, it's too much.
And so I stopped and it was funny how many people are like, oh, Molly, you should do
comedy about veganism.
And like, there's this rule in comedy about you don't punch down.
Like you never make fun of anybody lower than you.
And you're like, well, I don't want to make fun of vegans because everybody already hates
us.
So you can't be like self-deprecating.
And then you can't make fun of the audience because the audience eats meat.
And so there are comedians who have figured out how to do it, I never did.
But why this is so funny is because it's dogs.
It's taking the, for the lack of better word, sacred cow, the thing we love and doing the
worst thing possible, which is funny because we do it to everyone.
We do it every day to all the other animals.
And so it just becomes, it becomes funny because one, you know, we're not doing it and you
can hold up like a wiener dog in front of the camera and their big sad eyes.
And you're like, what if I, you know, it's just, it's ridiculous.
And I think the idea of making it, showing how ridiculous our actions are becomes very
funny.
And it was, I don't know, I can't, I wish I could explain it and I wish I could figure
out like, what is the secret about what, what else we can do like this.
But I do know that it's, there's so much power in taking and taking the other side and just
showing it back to them.
So Lifting Vegan Logic has been doing some amazing videos where he has started taking,
you know, meat eaters videos and then saying the same things, but often he'll put dog meat
in as well, which is great.
He's, you know, somebody is just like, here's what I, as a meat eater, here's what I ate
in a, eaten a day.
I start with like, you know, five pounds of pug bacon.
And then like, it's just, it just sounds disgusting and awful.
And I think there's just there.
Yeah, there's a lot of power and mocking the other side because we're always mocked.
And we're always talking about what they were always talking about the animals and we're
talking, but we're never talking about them, the people who are choosing to do so and how
silly it is and how hypocritical it is.
And I also think Vegan Sidekick has done amazing work in this.
Like he was so inspiring to me as a, as an early vegan.
And I, I'm loving seeing more people bring humor into, into activism.
And I wish we could, you know, I want to find more ways to do it.
And it's ripe.
It's ripe.
It's ready.
Also don't know if you know, I was part of the ad campaign in Los Angeles, the hate vegans.
Have you seen this?
No.
If you look up 888 hate vegans on Instagram and the website is hatevegans.com.
It is a lawyer who specializes in helping carnivores, meat eaters who've been wronged
by a vegan.
A vegan has, you know, shown them where eggs came from and they were emotionally damaged
and you know, or they accidentally ate a veggie hot dog and it just, ugh, so disgusting.
You could be entitled to compensation.
Call 1-8-8 hate, hate vegans.
So we've made a, there's a whole ad campaign that's going around this and the website's
funny and the Instagram's funny.
And we're just trying to like show that vegans have a sense of humor, which you know, it's
obvious why we don't, but we can.
And it's, it's healthier to relate to the situation with humor.
I was reading one of the early texts, the vegan society.
It was one of the early founders, uh, don't ask me why I'm doing this in my free time,
but he was saying, you know, something in, in the lines of it is so absurd to see a grown
man drinking milk.
Um, and he was making, you know, the, the parallel with, you know, he's not a kid anymore.
Why, why is he drinking milk?
And that was back in the 1940s.
And I found that so funny.
I mean, the timing of it.
Yeah.
Um, and yet some of my favorite activists out there take their, this crisis that we're
in and this very serious situation with lots of humor, um, because I guess it's a survival
instinct.
It is in a way.
And, and that is a, an instinct present in many, you know, frontline activists, like
the people in doing rescue are, um, the gallows humor is preservation.
You know, it's the, how do we get through this?
There's if we throw ourselves directly into the despair, we can't carry on.
Um, and we all need, we all need that because I mean, we need that in life.
You don't just need that in activism.
Life's hell unless you're able to be like, but at least it's warm.
You know, I don't know whatever that is.
It's just, we, we need that and we need to be able to find what is, what is the light
on the edge of the dark and that, you know, it'll, it'll bring more people into it.
And especially if you're trying to, if you're trying to make new vegans, no one's going
to come be vegan.
If we're all just like, come to our sad party.
It's a funeral all the time.
So what's your favorite reactions, uh, from a dog meat farmer?
Oh my God.
I just had an incident yesterday that just brought me great joy.
Um, I am working on an Elwood's project and I was scouting out dog parks to shoot a video
at, and I have these really big magnets on my, on my truck.
And so I drive the pickup truck and I put two of them on, on the tailgate because you
have to look at them then and they're really big and they just, they're just, I'm farming
dogs come to my website.
And I was taking a phone call in the car and I watched these two women with sunglasses
and they had just, they had just taken their little dogs out of their car and they stood
where they could see me in through the mirror and they were just hands on their hips, just
mouths open, just glaring at me.
And my favorite thing was not responding.
Like they kept moving to try and get my attention.
And then I was just like, I don't think I need to engage with you right now.
And I'm just going to let you go on this journey with your dog by yourself.
Um, so just sometimes it is just the everyday interactions that I can provoke just by putting
it out there.
And what's really nice about that activism is I don't have to be part of it.
You know, I think as an early activist, I was so tired.
Like I was just like arguing nonstop on Twitter and you're not making a difference.
And this would be like, it's, it's the equivalent of like leafletting.
And I'm just like, I'm just dumping it on the city.
And then I was leave and I'm just like, good luck with all of that information guys.
Um, so that, that is one.
And then I do like getting messages, even though that's not, I'm going vegan.
There's people saying, look, when I first saw this, I was hysterical and I was very
upset and I went on this journey and you know what?
I'm still going to eat meat, but good on you.
And this is very funny.
And I know that that is not the purpose, you know, the per obviously we want people to
go vegan, but that itself is like, here's a seed that's been planted.
They're like, one, you got me good, good for you too.
I looked at all your stuff, got it.
I, okay, I'll follow you.
You're funny.
And it's just such a begrudging, like, okay, I got it.
And now they're ripe for the next vegan to come along and punch them with the next piece
of information.
You know, it's just, I'm, maybe I'm not making vegans, but I'm, you know, ripening them,
I guess, you know, I don't know for the lack of better term, but, and we, I think that
that's also the thing is we have to be okay with that.
We have to be okay with this is not good.
This is not the death blow that makes you vegan.
I don't know what all my violent metaphors today show what my space I'm in.
Something I like to fantasize about when I look at those reactions is what if this was
our world and you know, this reaction was for every type of farming, you know, that
farming, you know, the norm was you get, you're shocked and you're just, you're hyperventilate
when you see someone, you know, farming for pigs or cows or something like that.
It's just as shocking as dogs.
It's like, um, it's like a, you know, a glance into this wonderful fantasy world.
It's amazing.
Yeah.
I remember having this conversation with somebody who was really upset.
Um, he, he, he had, uh, he knocked over all my stuff at vegan Dell when he got mad and
he cleared all my tables of stuff.
And one of the things was somebody in another vegan said to him, he's like, it's like, keep
your cool, man.
Vegans don't even do this in the butcher shop when it is real.
Like we just, you gotta keep it together.
Welcome to veganism.
Hold it together.
We're not, we, as much as we want to tear everything down.
And uh, I then said later, I was like, I would love to do that.
Wouldn't you love to go to a farmer's market and flip a table with that?
Just bring you in.
You're just like, and we can't, and we're giving people the fantasy that we want, you
know?
Oh my gosh.
That's so true.
I never thought about it, but yeah, we put them in our shoes and they feel the same way
we do, but about other animals and never put.
And they get to react and we do not get to.
And so it's very cathartic, like to see someone like we may be laughing at them, but I think
if we take it from an, if you watch that kid, the video, the viral video of the kid going
dogs, you're like, imagine being able to be like pigs, you're doing this to pigs.
You're disgusting.
Like, oh my God, it's just, oh, it's all what we want.
I just, I want to go do that.
I want to go somewhere and just one big temper tantrum at the farmer's market, which is
do me for the year.
And I can't.
Well, I don't know if that's very efficient.
It's not efficient.
It's not effective, but it makes me feel good.
I do agree with you.
I 100% agree with you.
I've said that so many times in this podcast, you know, I wish I could go in a butcher shop
and just, you know, smear, you know, paint, you know, red paint everywhere.
I just don't know if I don't, I don't think personally, I don't want to go on a limb and
say this.
Nevermind.
We'll cut this.
I was, yeah, forget it.
Well, you know, no, I'm curious.
I don't want to discourage activists from finding ways to express themselves, but I
do think that I personally don't find a die in, in a supermarket to be the most effective
way.
We might be putting off more people than we're educating or convincing.
And so again, if unless it's connected specifically to a, you know, a grocery store that's carrying
a farm that is abusing animals in a way that we have, you know, captured on video and we
want them, it's, it's attached to a, you know, a boycott or something.
But I think that we need to be very specific about those.
And we need to, you know, you have to think about the optics of these things.
And unfortunately, while we want to be loud and passionate, unfortunately, sometimes that's
not, that's not the way I guess.
But again, I don't want to put down anybody who is doing that work.
And I think that we should all do what we can.
So I mean, the, the data and the studies done by institutions like phonetics, um, back that
claim, you know, that understanding and not, yeah, I completely agree with you.
That was something, um, that was something Robert Sheik writes in his book, the impactful
vegan, you know, how there is a hierarchy of activism.
It's not all forms of activism that are equal, but yeah, it's good to talk about context
too.
Yeah, it's really, it's really hard because you think that, um, you know, going, I think
going to a restaurant to protest them serving foie gras is a very specific action.
And while you may not be able to change people's minds by going out there with a bullhorn and
of knowing all the restaurant owners and, and, and, and goers, and then you put that
on social media, that may not be as effective as say standing in front of it with a video
showing what happens to them and then letting people see it, you know?
And I think that if we are more nuanced with our, again, we, we want to use a sledgehammer
and sometimes we should be using like a screwdriver.
I don't know.
I agree.
I completely agree.
And I mean, we need to foster critical thinking in everywhere, including, you know, vegan
activism.
It's not the exception to the rule.
Um, we were talking about the funny part of, you know, um, the initiative and something
else I was wondering about, um, um, you know, around this initiative and around, you know,
the role of dogs in our society is, you know, sure.
We confront people in their hypocrisy of, you know, do our dogs, um, the same as cows
and so on.
But don't you think that there is some form of hierarchy between species, um, like a bug
and the dog versus, you know, a pig.
It's not the same degree of sentience, you know?
Yeah, I, I, I sound like Peter Singer, but he's making that point and he's the one who
came up with speciesism.
So yeah.
Well, no, I think obviously speciesism, speciesism exists amongst vegans and we, you know, we'd
love to hold ourselves to the high moral ground that like everything is the same.
You know, a dust mite is an ant is a pig is a boy is a bear.
I don't know how that quote goes, but I mean, I think what it comes down to is.
I think I'm allowed to have my own personal hierarchy of animals, as long as it doesn't
impact them.
And there are things that, you know, we also do not live in a vegan world.
So there are some things that, you know, sometimes we do things that are hypocritical and we
can't, we can't be perfect.
We are humans, but it's all about intention.
So like for me, I just know the way that I, if I see two animals on the side of the road
that have been hit by a car, you know, you're going to have a different feeling if it's,
if it's a dog versus if it's, if it's a squirrel and it's just, you can't help it.
And I think that it's unhelpful to pretend like, Oh, I'm just, I'm just as devastated.
And you're just like, well, who do you have a relationship with?
I bet if you had grown up with pet squirrels that you would feel much more pain when you
see a dead squirrel.
So I don't know.
I just, it's, it's helpful when it comes to making choices that we can say that we
don't have to hurt any of them.
Like I can easily put a spider outside.
It's much harder, say, if my whole kitchen is infested with termites to say, Oh, I'm
just going to live with them.
Or I have lice and I just got to just figure out a way to live with them.
You know, whatever the thing is, we have to be realistic about things.
Yeah.
And it, I think goes back to the image people have of vegans, you know, and hearing those
ideas, I guess anyone would think they're completely disconnected.
Right, right.
How do you even drive down the road?
How do you walk down the street?
How do you even do anything?
And well, I had a vegan on this podcast at the very beginning.
I wanted to, you know, interview veteran vegans and he had been vegan forever.
And he said, you know, I feel so sad and so heartbroken every time I use my car because
bugs hit the windshield.
And I was thinking, I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
Oh God.
I think again, it is, it's a, if you were driving down the road and you're going through
a bunch of gnats, you're going to feel differently than if you're going through a bunch of butterflies.
Like it's just, we can't help to have these connections, these feelings.
And it was funny because I was, I was actually talking to the kid.
I was talking to the kid about the kid who busted up the, actually this story is not
relevant.
I thought it was, it had to do with driving down the road and killing a bunch of animals.
But this is how I was trying to make them go vegan.
So it's not, it's not much fun.
Nevermind.
It's okay.
You know, 10% of podcasting is rambling.
It is rambling.
But no, I do think that there's, you know, to get back to that, that specific thread
is thinking about there's a woman and I can't remember.
I think, I think her name is, oh, I can't remember.
I wish I could reference her.
I saw a thread on Instagram that was a woman had made a post.
She's like, let's talk about imperfect veganism.
I'll go first.
And she's like, sometimes if I buy something and I find it has honey in it, I eat it anyway.
It's your turn.
And everybody was sharing their things and it was such a cathartic thing because what's,
what's really interesting is about it is you could say, when I get sugar ants in my kitchen,
I put out poison because I don't know what else to do.
And another vegan could say, hey, have you tried this?
And that person go, maybe actually, no, I haven't.
Let me try that.
And then we all get to go on another vegan journey together to find out, does this thing
work?
Or if you're saying I, ooh, so that didn't work.
I'm glad we're not on camera continuity.
You anger the vegan gods.
Oh my God.
They're like, we must be perfect.
Shoot.
Oh God.
So yeah, don't, don't poison the ants.
You can use cinnamon along the border.
Sweep them up, take them outside.
But yeah, no, just finding out ways that were not perfect is it's helpful for the outside
too because I mean, I was thinking about it be really fun.
And I'm going to share it here on your podcast.
Great vegan campaign idea, which is asking imperfect vegan questions, the things we don't
have answers to, to let the non-vegans know we don't know the answers and we would love
your help on it.
Like when they say, well, I was at the Rowdy Girl movie premiere in New York City and a
woman, I think a non-vegan asked this question with genuine concern.
She goes, well, let's say I know a chicken farmer who wants to give up chicken farming.
Like what does she do with all those chickens?
Like how is she going to like, what kind of, she goes, what kind of finances or support
or government, you know, government things are in place to help her so she doesn't, you
know, so she doesn't lose money.
And everyone kind of laughed or like there's nothing, there's nothing you can do.
If you're a chicken farmer with 20,000 chickens and you don't want to farm them and you don't
want to kill them, there's nothing you can do.
Nobody's going to adopt 20,000 chickens.
You can't feed 20,000 chickens.
You can't like, wouldn't that be a really good billboard?
We're like, what do we do?
And then we actually open it to a debate.
And now there's a podcast about scholars being like, what is the solution?
Is it government intervention?
Is it, you know, whatever the thing is, what do we do?
And we don't know.
And I don't know.
And help.
Please help us.
Well, actually I do have the same, you know, an insorable questions.
And I was thinking of getting someone like a big vegan brain, like Peter Singer and
asking those questions too.
But the fact that we don't even, you know, openly because, and that's an issue I discovered
by doing this podcast.
I'm talking to other vegans and I'm talking about activism.
And I find that it is not the case for most vegan platforms out there.
We're always talking to the non-vegans, to the greater public.
And so we're always on, you know, defense, exactly.
We're always, you know, trying to convince and trying to advance the cause and all of
that.
And we're always talking to each other that there's no space where we're here and feeling,
you know, enough comfortable and, you know, open-minded to have those conversations.
It's really scary because I don't know if you know, but vegans are really judgmental.
So you know, you gotta be careful.
You know, you don't, you could say the wrong thing.
And suddenly, you know, it's going to get out there that the dog meat farmer, whatever
sometimes is saying, you know, that it's okay to not make someone go vegan immediately.
Maybe it's okay for someone to just be vegan at home and they're like, ah, you know.
So we do have to be careful.
But at the same time is when you don't open yourself up to these conversations, you can't
advance the movement.
We can't change things if we're so afraid, you know, of being canceled or whatever.
But I think that things are changing.
When I went to the, I spoke at the National Animal Rights Day event in New York City.
And originally I was planning a speech as myself, like Molly, the not the dog meat farmer
that was going to be, you know, like, oh, the animals and I feel sad and here's how
I do humor to whatever.
And then I went, wait a minute, they didn't hire the dog meat farmer to give another vegan
speech.
They hired the dog meat farmer to give a dog meat farmer speech.
And so I asked the organizer, I said, is it okay if I just come in hot?
Like hope you anemic vegans are getting all your B12.
You just look like you're barely standing up.
But she's like, yes, we want that.
Well, well, well, how great to see all your anemic faces looking back at me.
I hope they're distributing some B12 in the back for you.
So I have a little chat to give here.
So again, I'm Molly Elwood and first I want to say to the person who liberated the Labradors
from our barn last night, we have you on video.
So that's property theft.
Elwood's organic dog meat is a family farm and we treat our meat dogs like family.
They have access to pastures.
They have warm beds.
They are safe until they're one bad day.
Everything is done humanely and ethically and perhaps most importantly, it's local.
We give our lives to these dogs and to the profits we get from them.
And yet, like other animal farmers, we are often attacked by militant angry vegans like
yourselves.
And we know they're vegan because their arguments are baseless and hysterical.
These vegans, they talk about the unseen suffering of small picnic breeds in cages, pugs being
gassed, male retrievers shot because they can't give milk.
They complain about corgis feeling fear, Frenchies feeling pain and cockapoos slaughtered by
the hundreds.
In fact, I received this very email just yesterday.
I'm shocked.
This is beyond the boundaries of humanitarian kindness.
It's disgusting and deplorable.
I have a poodle and I would never let any harm come to him.
This is an actual email I received.
How would you like it if someone had a people farm and decided to eat you?
I feel like I'm going to throw up now.
Thanks for ruining my morning.
It's disgusting and morally wrong.
Just wrong, wrong, wrong.
She's saying my family organic ethical farm is wrong.
P.S.
I'm a vegetarian.
These plant heads have never stepped foot on a dog meat farm.
So how would they know?
Allow me to herd all your myths down the chute of awkwardness to the killing floor of truth.
Our dogs are raised for this.
They're not pets.
This is their purpose.
It's our family's tradition.
It's the circle of life.
Humans have been eating dogs for centuries.
They taste delicious.
Other animals eat dogs.
Dogs would overrun us if we didn't eat them or else I'm told they may go extinct.
Dogs don't suffer the same way we do.
Plants feel pain too.
We're smarter than dogs and everything in moderation.
Also you are all eating avocados.
And besides you know who didn't eat dogs?
Hitler.
Hitler never ate a dog.
So which side of history do you want to be on?
Right.
So this points to the fact that you can love dogs and eat them.
It's fine.
What I can tell you about unseen suffering, it's the unseen dog meat farmer, middle of
the night, gently cradling a Rottweiler who won't make it before kindly thumping it on
the floor to end its life according to USDA standards.
We need more of whatever and it was just this kind of breath of fresh air to be like, let's
find some new ways to talk about old subjects.
And you know, I'm 40 so I'm not like the next generation, but I'm excited for the next generation
of vegans who are maybe not so stigmatized and so afraid to have different conversations.
Well, I do again, my personal bias.
I feel like an outsider.
I have yes, vegan friends, but I was never, you know, I never had any idea of the judgment
that, so I never, and I still don't feel, you know, uncomfortable or fearful to ask
those questions.
In fact, I feel like the urgency to ask them, you know,
Oh, right.
It is.
It's very urgent.
The time is now to say, if you know, if you don't agree with a kind of activism, we can't
be, we can't be emperors new clothes about it.
It's kind of like, it's kind of like when a new vegan restaurant opens up and the food's
really bad.
And we all have to go, it's great.
And I'm like, you can't because then the noggin vegans are going to come in there and go,
this is what you think is good.
We're like, we are obligated to give it the one star review, or better yet, let's message
them privately and say, that was really awful.
What happened?
But similar to be like, you know, I know a lot of people who hate Tempeh, which should
just be okay.
That Tempeh is not for everybody.
And don't tell everyone if they're starting out, you just try Tempeh.
You know, I recently went to a vegan restaurant and this restaurant was the one everyone recommended
me for when I first became vegan, like, oh, this is the starter vegan restaurant.
You know, you'll like it.
Yeah, it's good comfort food.
And it was a horrible experience.
The food was disgusting, truly disgusting.
And I was just, you know, giving my feedback, sharing my feedback to other friends, not
openly, you know, they're like, quiet, don't tell anybody.
Not even that.
They were like, no, it was good.
I mean, it's sure.
Yeah, there is.
I mean, seriously, when was the last time you went back to that restaurant?
That's the real question you need to ask.
Right.
And yeah, I agree.
I mean, when was, you know, dishonesty and just being, I just hate that attitude.
It's so, I don't know, I find it disgusting in a way.
Right.
And it's not advanced.
It's not going to advance the movement.
It's pretty myopic to just be like, kind of like early on, I would say currently we're
in a very good vegan cheese space.
But I think that, you know, 10 years ago, or not 10 years ago, five years ago, the vegan
cheese space was really gross.
And we should have all just agreed like, everything's good about veganism except for the cheese.
And you'll get over it.
You'll find other stuff to eat.
Just give it, it'll catch up.
You know, just give it some time.
But I did say that a lot to friends who were going vegan.
And they were like, well, what do you do about cheese?
I was like, I learned about what happens to the dairy cows.
It's not that I was able to find a replacement.
I just stopped because I felt so bad.
But now there's a lot of great cheeses out there.
But I mean, similarly, I think that a lot of people were lying and being like, Daya
is great.
And we're like, stop it.
It sticks to your teeth.
I hate it.
It's disgusting.
I hate Daya.
Okay.
Some of it's gotten better.
I think they're new.
They're new.
I'm not lying.
I'm not just saying this.
I think I've had some good Daya lately.
I still sometimes prefer pizza without cheese.
I'm afraid to try it.
I have a trauma as I see it.
Yeah.
I think if you layer it with enough stuff, like if the cheese isn't the point of the
nachos, but it's like in the middle of a seven layer dip and it's not going to stick to your
teeth that way you can really eat.
But that's not like that's how good of a selling point of cheese is that if you bury it with
a whole bunch of other stuff, it's fabulous.
If you can't taste it or sense it.
Well, let me tell you, I invited a vegan entrepreneur who came up with this good vegan cheese and
she was telling me, I have to be forceful with vegans so they give me their real truthful
opinion and I am always telling them you need to say the truth because if you don't give
me the right feedback, I'm not going to make good cheese.
Yes.
How is she going to make better cheese if we're all lying to her?
I know.
Well, similar.
I mean, that's the same for also for any type of let's say any type of activism too.
If we're all saying this is amazing, this is great, keep doing it.
My dog meat posts don't get better when everyone is like thumbs upping them even if they're
not that good.
I actually have a there's a meat eater that follows the Elwood podcast, Elwood Facebook
page and every so often he shows up and he rates my posts and yesterday's Father's Day
post he gave a two out of 10.
I was like, okay, good to know from the meat eaters.
They don't like it.
The vegans liked it, but the meat eater.
Okay.
I don't know if he's doing it.
I'm obviously he's trolling me and I don't really know how he feels, but it helps.
Exactly and I feel the same way about this podcast.
I want to get people's feedback.
I mean, real feedback about the quality of the episodes.
Yes.
Yeah.
And sometimes I just wonder, you know, are you saying the truth or is this just a way
to encourage me?
Well, that's why it's so nice.
You have to have in any kind of creative pursuit having the person you trust to tell you the
truth despite it hurting.
You know, you've got to be able to you similarly, you've got to be able to give that give that
feedback to people and I think that that's how you like test your friendship, I guess,
you know, find out how strong it is.
Sometimes you give that feedback and that's the last time you hear from them.
Other times they come out with you, they're like, well, I changed it.
What do you think about this?
And it's great.
Well, in my personal, you know, in my life, feedback helped me tremendously in my career,
in my personal life, you know, it helped me grow into the person I am and I like I love
the person I am right now.
I'm a better person because of feedback, sometimes harsh feedback.
Oh, yeah.
That's good.
Why not?
Why be afraid?
It's a gift.
It's so hard to be that vulnerable and you have to be.
I mean, I think that takes a lot of self work for yourself to be like, I am confident enough
with my intentions that I am ready for that punch in the stomach that I'm about to get
and then I'm going to like take it away and I'm going to sit with it and come back to
the person and say, thank you.
May I have another, you know, like it's just we have to we have to be okay.
Okay with it.
And the person giving to it, like you have to have that comfortable relationship, too,
to be able to say, you may you may tell me this.
I might even lash out when you tell it to me, but I'm going to come back and say thank
you.
Like I'm going to be like, shut up and walk away and just be like, oh, he's right.
And then come back and be like, okay, thank you.
And having that having those comfortable relationships are very it's so helpful.
Exactly.
And that's something I like about social media, actually, the fact that it's anonymous and
people feel free to show a bit of their real self online.
I mean, sometimes it gets really mean and there's a problem here.
But still, I love that those of truthfulness and I do critique social media a lot, but
you'll never see me critique them for the hate comment, the bad comment or yeah, this
is not my thing.
Well, yeah, I think that like I've gotten comments, I mean, that are really helpful
from, I don't know, probably meat eaters, I think vegans are still like, yay, veganism.
But being like, this post is just way too long.
Like, did you expect me to read this?
Or, you know, what is she even talking about?
Good to know we won't do that one again.
Like, and I think also one thing that's really helpful is if you make enough content, you
can't be precious about it.
Because you know, we need more higher, higher quantity, maybe less quality.
And that way, you're going to learn over time that you can how to fix things.
And some of my favorite posts out there, and I'm not talking about, you know, specifically,
dog meat farm, but some of my favorite posts out there are just cheap videos and bad montage
of something.
I just love it.
Yeah, well, it's funny too, that I found that some of the sometimes the content that
I spend the least amount of time on is the one that goes really well.
Like I didn't plan it and I just did it and it's impulsive and it's funny.
And yeah, I actually I follow a lot of meme accounts on Instagram and the one God, I was
just laughing just recently, I think it was like, it's kind of like history of memes or
something and it was the it's from a long time ago and it was the like the soccer player
who falls and then he spins off into space.
And that that techno song is playing that that that that that that that that and it's
just him like rolling through different scenes and it is just the most enjoyable like imagine
that with a purpose like if that had some message to it, like maybe that's the next
thing for vegans is to like find the memes that were really viral and like what would
be funny?
Like I don't know.
Well, vegan means I absolutely love them.
And I love that it's content for vegans.
And you know, we were talking about humor, I can't believe you know, we missed the vegan
means thing, but yeah, it's amazing.
I love vegan means.
Yes.
One I think that there's so my friend that I work with on a lot of a lot of Elwood stuff,
Jacob Yap, he's a Jake Yap is a comedian and vegan.
And I was talking to him about this and he had this really good metaphor from not metaphor.
It was something that happened in his real life.
So he's a he's a comedian and he does radio shows and stuff.
And he said when he first got into radio, he had one of those like 4am slots, you know,
or he had to get up really, you know, he to get up at 3am to get to the radio station
to start broadcasting at four.
And he's like, he's just like, we're just making jokes and nonsense.
Like what are we doing?
What is the point of this?
And he's, you know, I don't like we're not saving the world.
And he says his, his producer, whatever you call it was said to him, he's like, you know,
we not we may not be saving the world, but the ambulance drivers who are on their way
to work, they want to laugh.
They need something to get through it.
The doctors, the people who are saving lives, they need something to keep them going.
And that's what our role is.
Our role is to keep them going.
And you think that's where the point of humor is in the vegan movement is the slaughterhouse,
you know, undercover slaughterhouse worker needs something.
He needs some some champion to say like, look, it's not all bleak and dark, and we're here
for you.
And I may not be there, you know, doing these same things.
But I see you and I get you and let's let's make a vegan meme.
I know.
And it's just the tiniest little thing.
But we all need that.
And it's, it's not just it's not just the undercover slaughterhouse worker who needs
boosting.
It's the person who just went vegan.
And now they're all depressed.
And they're like, I've been vegan for two years, and everyone hates me or you know,
I love the vegan meme that was it was it was it's like a cheerleader and a goth sitting
on a park bench and they're eating ice cream and it says when all you have in common is
veganism.
It's just like, I love that.
It's very true.
I mean, I just always I'm in wonderment of how this problem I know a lot of vegan activists
like to compare veganism to other social justice movements.
But I do find that veganism is its own thing.
It is quite exceptional in the complexity of the problem.
The the just the how great the problem is.
And also what it requires from you and how it unites you with just strangers.
Well, and I don't think I think that it's one of the one of the rare movements to that
is not as much as we at the top of this, we were trying to say, oh, you're a you're a
rebellious, you know, far left punk who, you know, pierced whatever and like, no, there
are conservative vegans, there are Trump voting vegans, there are vegans from all around the
world.
Like it is you may only the only thing you have in common is you both use nutritional
yeast.
And in fact, I've gone on a lot of vegan meetups that I hate it.
I'm just like, oh, my God, no, not to judge them.
I'm just like, I'm not like these people.
We I can we can share recipes and we can talk about the animals.
But beyond that, we don't have anything in common.
And I think that that makes our movement so sometimes so hard because you're trying to
mobilize people who have all these other outside concerns and wants and things.
And we're professionals, there's professionals and there's students and there's moms and
there's grandparents.
And it's just when all you have in common is, you know, this one thing, it's hard, it's
hard to unite and motivate us all.
And I think it's a it's a lie for us to try and say that we're all the same.
So that's also another reason for different types of activism and different types of podcasts.
Like I I want the movement to be I want the public facing part of the movement to be as
inclusive as it's embodied as its embodiment, I guess, lack a better word.
But it's like I would love to see some I'm not I'm not conservative, but I want to see
some conservative vegan podcasts, reach more vegans, find more vegans in your movement.
I don't care who you vote for at that point.
I mean, I do care who you vote for.
But I do want you to know more vegans, make them please.
Exactly.
I mean, I platform, you know, platform.
It's very technical term.
But yes, I invited on this show a couple of conservatives who described themselves as
vegan and conservative.
I also invited Dr. Vlasak, who's one of the officer of the animal liberation front, who's
like at the far left of even the left, you know, it's an anarchist movement.
Yeah.
And he's advocating for, you know, he's not advocating, but he's, you know, talking openly
about how there is an argument for doing illegal stuff in terms of, you know, vegan animal
rights activism.
Right.
And I just think it's wonderful that we have this much ability to just, you know, be appealing
to every demographic out there.
So why do we stick to a certain narrative or to a certain doctrine and to I mean, we
have arguments to appeal to the right and we have arguments to appeal to the far left.
Like, why are we not exploiting that potential?
I think it's just, it's a scary, like we said before, it's a scary thing of being afraid
of upsetting a vocal majority of saying that you, we want you to march under the same banner
as these other people whom you disagree with on so many other fronts.
And it's just like, we want our teams to be as monolithic as possible.
So I'm pure.
I don't want it, you know, but at the same time as we have to recognize that it's much
more complicated, human being human is much more complicated and nuanced than anything.
And we can't be simplifying things just because it helps us feel better.
It doesn't help the animals at all.
Yes, exactly.
It's not about you.
It's about the animals.
It's not about your comfort or your, yeah.
And so do you think that veganism is a religion?
Because at first, you know, before starting this podcast and really diving deep into the
activism scene and the world of veganism, I used to think that, you know, veganism is
a religion was just something that anti-vegans would say on social media or in your face
to make you mad or that was something thoughtless.
And then I would talk with vegans and they would say, yeah, for me, veganism is a religion.
And in the way it is, like you said, you know, pure and it has this dogma around it and we
need to all fall into the same line.
And it feels like a religion and, you know, I guess there's also the fact that what we
require from people or what we ask from people is a big transformation in their lives, something
akin to a conversion.
So I see the familiarity.
So yeah, I'm asking you, do you think it's a religion?
I mean, I think you could take it as a religion.
I think all the things you said are very true.
It's, you know, and it can feel very spiritual too.
It can feel very transformational to be like suddenly we're all, you know, my choices have
an impact on the whole world.
And it is a very powerful emotional feeling that we can get from being vegan.
And I find myself moved all the time by it.
I'm often just, I'm often feeling very spiritual about it, but I don't think it has to be.
I think we can come at it from a purely logical perspective and say, we don't actually have
to.
Let's be very logical about this and let's examine all the inputs and the outputs and
do the diagrams and stuff.
And we can also come to the same conclusion.
And I think that you can't do that as much with religion.
Religion is unprovable for the most part, I would guess.
I'm not religious.
I didn't have any religious upbringing, but I think that that's kind of one thing that's
different is you can't prove it.
Whereas this is like to take the religion aspect of it is a beautiful thing.
And if you have the time to make space for that in your heart, I think that's beautiful.
And I don't think it takes away anything from anyone.
And I think that you can approach it, you know, when talking to people, you can approach
it from different perspectives.
So I try not to get into the emotional feels of it too much, because I'm worried that that's
going to put off people and they're going to be like, oh, vegans are so emotional and
stuff and they're like, they're so woo woo and wishy washy.
So I think it can, you know, depends on your audience who you're talking to.
But yeah, for me, sometimes it feels very, very religious.
Amazing.
So Molly, I think we're ready to land this interview, this conversation.
Did you have anything more to add before we end the recording?
I just want, I think I'd like to say that I want more people to feel empowered to do
things for the animals.
And as we do them to be conscious of our audience at the same time, which is hard because it's
what contradicts what I also said of doing the things that interest you.
So I think it just, we have to, we have to be careful and keep in mind, keep in mind
our goal, I guess.
I didn't say that very poetically, but I just think, yeah, let me say that one more
time.
I really want people to feel empowered to do activism and to find their own path.
And as they do so, you know, find both what interests them and you know, what the optics
look like from the outside so we can try and do the most impact for the animals.
So it's going to look different for everyone.
Amazing parting words.
Thank you, Molly.
You're amazing.
Thank you for your work, for your great activism, for making us laugh so much and bringing us
joy.
And thank you for having accepted to be a guest on The Vegan Report.
No problem.
I was really great to talk to you and I hope we get to talk again.
Thank you everyone for listening.
I kindly invite you to share this podcast with the vegans you know.
Let's encourage more people to take action.
Again, thank you so much for caring and I will see you next Tuesday for a new episode.