Edita Birnkrant and Tracy Winston: The Horse Who Collapsed in the Street
Species Unite
“I could be walking in Central Park and come up on one of these horse and buggies. I don't think twice about it because I see it as part of the New York attraction. You know, you have the Statue of Liberty, you have Times Square, and you have these romantic horse and buggy things where people get married in the park and they ride these carriages. And tourists, they take these rides in Central Park. It's romantic, it's something beautiful to see. But I never thought for one second that these horses are abused.” – Tracy Winston, juror from Ryder’s trial New York City has a big,...
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Mari Andrew: How To Be A Living Thing
Species Unite
“It was just this love I developed of life, all life and how much life can be a joy to witness and experience if we're not severing ourselves or severing other lives from our own. And then you start to see all the connectedness and it's like a drug.” - Mari Andrew What if healing wasn’t about fixing yourself—but about remembering what it means to be alive? This conversation is with writer artist, speaker, teacher, and deep feeler Mari Andrew about her new book, How to Be a Living Thing— an exploration on animals, embodiment, and the wild, wondrous mess of being human. ...
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Dr. Shirley Strum: The Echoes of Our Origins
Species Unite
"So I think this whole idea of cumulative culture is a way to make humans exceptional. But it's clear to me that humans are exceptional, and seeing it through baboon glasses, I can understand in a different way why they're exceptional. But many of the things that we think are uniquely human are actually present in other animals." - Dr. Shirley Strum Dr. Shirley Strum is a groundbreaking anthropologist who has spent over five decades living alongside wild baboons in Kenya. Her work has transformed our understanding of these intelligent, socially complex animals — their relationships, their...
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Jeffrey Reed: Cry Wolf: Decoding the Language of the Wild
Species Unite
“I sit in the camp that is going to defend wildlife, and I will live and die in that space. Even though what I see is in the West, wolves have a bad reputation. It's still there…" -Jeffrey Reed What if we could understand wolves? How they communicate, what they might be saying? Jeffrey Reed, is a computational linguist, naturalist, and technologist who’s doing just that—using artificial intelligence to decode the wild. Jeff is the founder of the , a groundbreaking bio acoustic study capturing hundreds of thousands of hours of wolf vocalization across the Greater...
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Trevor Ritland: The Golden Toad
Species Unite
I think you could probably go back and track the stages of grief, probably that is what I went through. But I think if you do it right, you end up at acceptance. And that's where I ended up. And that's not to say that I've fully accepted the idea that the golden toad is extinct. Personally, I do still hold out hope that it could still be out there in those forests." - Trevor Ritland This conversation is with Trevor Ritland, who—along with his twin brother Kyle—authored The Golden Toad. The book chronicles their remarkable journey into Costa Rica’s cloud forest, once home to...
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Reuven Bank and Andrew Kim: When the Ocean Lost Its Stars
Species Unite
"72 juveniles is 28% of the current population of sunflower stars under human care in California. More than a quarter of them are at our facility. If you had asked us that question about a year and a half ago. The answer would be zero at our facility, and the answer across California would be six total." - Andrew Kim In 2013, one of the largest marine disease outbreaks on record, sea star wasting syndrome swept through echinoderm populations, laying waste to sunflower stars across their historic range. Once common in California, sunflower stars are now functionally extinct there. This...
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Delcianna Winders: The Beginning of the End of Animal Testing
Species Unite
“We don't actually know how many animals we're testing on in this country, because most of them are not protected by any laws. There's not even a requirement that you track their numbers.” – Delcianna Winders Today, I have the pleasure of sharing some genuinely promising news. For decades, the FDA and NIH have required or relied on animal testing as the gold standard for drug development and biomedical research. But that's beginning to change. Both agencies have just announced significant steps to reduce animal testing—moves that could mark a turning point in how science is done. The...
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Jeff Kerr: Our First Amendment Right to Receive Communications (from Monkeys)
Species Unite
"It is a scientific fact that these macaques, like all other primates, including humans, are communicating. They communicate in much the same way we do - facial expressions, vocalizations, body postures, those kinds of things." - Jeff Kerr Jeff Kerr is PETA foundations Chief Legal Officer. I asked him to come on the show to talk about one of PETA’s current lawsuits against the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Nathional Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). PETA is arguing that the monkeys being tested on in a government run facility are capable of communication (or “are...
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Isabella La Rocca Gonzalez: Censored Landscapes
Species Unite
"The one that really surprised me was the organic humane Certified Egg Farm. I thought Humane Certified would at least mean that I would see some chickens running around somewhere, but it looked exactly the [00:00:30] same as any other egg facility. They were just big warehouses. You don't see a chicken anywhere in sight. And then I learned, of course, that, um, you know, the this whole free range, pasture raised terminology doesn't really mean anything." - Isabella La Rocca Gonzalez Isabella LaRocca Gonzalez is an artist, author, and activist. Her work is part of a long tradition in art and...
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John Kinder: World War Zoos
Species Unite
John Kinder is the director of American studies and a professor of history at Oklahoma State University. And he is an author. His most recent book is called . John’s book tells a story most of us have never heard: what happened to the world’s zoos—and the animals inside them—during World War II. It’s a sweeping, deeply researched look at how zoos became sites of propaganda, patriotism, and survival, often at the expense of the animals themselves. But World War Zoos isn’t just about the past. It’s also a mirror, showing how many of the ethical blind spots that existed during...
info_outline"When we arrived, we had no records, we had nothing. We had no documentation. And one of one of the first things that you have to actually prove to all of these international government parties and so on, you need to you need to say, where did you get this elephant? And we had no idea. We were actually government officials, and we had this elephant, and we had no real idea of where this elephant came from." -Tom Sciolla
In 2012, during a scorching heatwave in Buenos Aires, a polar bear named Winner died in the city zoo. His tragic death ignited outrage—not just for him, but for all the animals suffering in the zoo’s dire conditions. The protests grew, and the city listened.
Instead of just making small improvements, Buenos Aires did something extraordinary: they took over the zoo.
That’s when Thomas Sciolla, the new wildlife and conservation manager, stepped in. But he and his team didn’t just aim to make life better for the animals still trapped there—they decided to set them free. Over the past decade, they have relocated hundreds of animals to sanctuaries, giving them the lives they deserve and the closest thing to freedom they could ever have after lifetimes in captivity.
The very last animal to be translocated will be moving in the next few weeks. Pupy, a female African elephant who has been at the zoo since 1993 will be moving across South America to Global Sanctuary for Elephants in Brazil.
This is one of the most inspiring stories I’ve heard in a long time—a story of hope for animals, and a blueprint for how real change can happen. Please listen, share and follow Pupy's journey here: https://globalelephants.org/project-pupy/