Vicky Bond has done lots of impressive stuff in her career – she started working as a vet and later ended up running a 100+ person organisation, The Humane League (THL), which many of you might be familiar with as one of the key organisations campaigning to get chickens out of cages. She is now the CEO of Madre Brava, an international climate campaigning group focused on food. 

Given Vicky’s extensive leadership and management experience, managing teams ranging from 5 to over 110, I wanted to pick her brains about leadership and management in the animal advocacy movement. I would highly recommend it for people who are leading teams of any size or want to learn more about how to do it well!

Podcast news:

• We now have a Substack where we’ll soon be sharing summaries and key takeaways from all episodes! We’ll also be doing polls where you can vote on the next guests. Sign up here.
• After our last episode with Sjir from Giving What We Can, we’ve had some people take a pledge to donate between 5-10% of their income to effective charities – this is incredible! But I said I would give up to £1000, and most of this is still up for grabs. So if you’re considering pledging, now is a great time as I’ll be donating £50 to Giving What We Can’s effective animal advocacy fund for each person who takes the trial pledge of 1% or full 10% pledge, up to a total of £1000. So, if you sign up via the links below, there is a special tracker that will let me know how many people take it, and I’ll donate accordingly. 
  • The 🔹Trial Pledge
  • The 🔸10% Pledge

Chapters:
00:00:00 - Cold Intro
00:09:38 - Challenges and lessons in being a first-time CEO 
00:20:40 - Vicky's experience running 100+ person THL
00:26:45 - Challenges in running large organisations 
00:39:02 - Misconceptions around running large teams 
00:42:55 - Advice for running 20+ person orgs 
00:46:41 - The downsides of scale 
00:56:04 - What makes a good leader 
01:02:05 - Overcoming self-limiting beliefs and imposter syndrome
01:05:55 - Madre Brava's strategy on protein split ratios

Resources:

• Entangled life: How fungi make our world 
• Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown podcast
• Rich Roll podcast
• Madrebrava.org and LinkedIn
• The secret thoughts of successful women 

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

Today we're talking about a topic that's really important to me personally: donating and effective giving. Specifically, why donating 10% of your income to the most effective animal charities might be one of the most important things you can do to improve the world.

To dive deep into this topic, I’m so excited to have Sjir Hoeijmakers on the show today. Sjir is the CEO of Giving What We Can (GWWC), the global organisation promoting effective giving and the 10% pledge. Even more impressive than this, he donates around 50% of his income to effective charities, so he really puts his money where his mouth is! 

In our conversation, we talk about the impact your donation can have, why it also makes sense for people who work full-time in the movement and why the act of pledging really matters. We also talk about another important part of Giving What We Can’s work: Their evaluation of regrantors and evaluators, including the Effective Altruism Animal Welfare Fund and Animal Charity Evaluators. 

If anything we talk about today sparks your interest, I really encourage you to consider taking the trial pledge, where you can pledge to give just 1% of your income to effective charities. It's a great way to test it out and see if it works for you. Personally, taking the pledge is one of the things I’m proudest of. Because of this, I’ll be donating £50 to Giving What We Can’s effective animal advocacy fund for each person who takes the trial pledge or full 10% pledge, up to a total of £1000. So, if you sign up via the links below, there is a special tracker that will let me know how many people take it, and I’ll donate accordingly. 

• Take the 🔹Trial Pledge 
• Take the 🔸10% Pledge 

Chapters:

• What is the 10% Pledge? (00:08:00)
• Why pledge vs just donate? (00:10:56)
• Should full-time advocates also give? (00:15:15)
• When shouldn't you pledge? & the Trial peldge (00:24:18)
• Should you give to funds or charities directly? (00:30:10)
• Why is GWWC evaluating Animal Charity Evaluators and the EA Animal Welfare Fund? (00:45:04)
• How did ACE change with GWWC's feedback? (00:55:09)
• GWWC moved $6M to animals in 2024! (01:06:30)

Resources: 

• The How Rich Am I? calculator
• GWWC’s charity recommendations
• GWWC’s evaluations of evaluators
• Career opportunities at GWWC

Sjir's Recommendations:

• Moral Ambition - Book by Rutger Bregman 
• Kurzgesagt - Youtube Channel
• One Helpful Idea Newsletter by Spencer Greenberg

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

David Cole is a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University, a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, a former national legal director of the ACLU and author of the popular book on social change in the US, Engines of Liberty. This book, a must-read for anyone interested in social movements, is the focus of our discussion today.

We spoke about the importance of local organising for political momentum, why incremental progress has seemed to work for other issues, the role of in-person community in social movements, and other lessons from the US marriage equality and gun rights movements.

Chapters:

• The book in a nutshell (00:03:45)
• Why incrementalism was crucial for marriage equality (00:09:36)
• What can we learn from the NRA and gun rights? (00:17:19)
• Why socialising & identity formation are key for movements (00:23:32)
• Symbolic vs high-impact campaigns (00:32:11)
• Messaging strategies in the NRA vs marriage equality (00:36:58)
• Dave & James debrief and key takeaways (00:40:30)

Resources: 

• Engines of Liberty – David Cole 
• The Engagement – Sasha Issenberg

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

Penny, the Executive Director of Animal Activism Collective, has helped bring hundreds of new activists into the grassroots animal movement, as well as supporting dozens of local grassroots groups around the US. Collectively, these groups, and AAC’s network, have been responsible for securing dozens of victories for animals, including getting over 80 companies and restaurants to drop foie gras, fur and much more.

That’s why I was very excited to speak with Penny today about something that feels pretty unique in our movement: A grassroots organisation like Animal Activism Collective working on cage-free campaigns in partnership with less grassroots-y organisations. In addition to this, we spoke about how AAC manages to get dozens of people to travel across the country to join their in-person weeks of action, why Penny thinks movement unity is important, the benefits of getting people in-person and even how Penny started caring about shrimp! 

This is an episode with lots of fun stories and we’re also trying something new by splicing in audio of their protests, so people can get a sense of the energy they bring.

Resources:

• Sign up - UK Voters for Animal Mass Lobby day
• Confidence Code – Katty Kay, Claire Shipman
• This is an uprising – Englers
• Animal Liberation Hour
• AAC website
• AAC Instagram
• AAC YouTube
• AAC email – [email protected]

Chapters:

• What Penny has changed her mind on (00:03:41)
• The RAGE tour: 30 days straight of protest (00:09:20)
• AAC's collaboration with ICAW and CAFT on cage-free & fur campaigns (00:11:02)
• How did the collaboration between ICAW and AAC on cage-free campaigns start? (00:16:25)
• How did AAC's grassroots base react to welfare-focused campaigns? (00:21:20)
• Why Penny is so excited about pressure campaigns (00:24:20)
• How Penny became convinced that welfare campaigns are important (00:30:40)
• How do we create more similar collaborations in the movement? (00:33:48)
• AAC's mentorship and other programs (00:38:26)
• Why an organised grassroots base is essential to social change (00:46:41)
• Penny's recommendations and a win she's grateful for (00:58:29)

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

Lewis Bollard should be a familiar name for those trying to improve the lives of farmed animals. For almost 10 years, he’s been running the farm animal welfare program at Open Philanthropy, the largest funder in the fight against factory farming. It's hard to think of someone who's had a large positive influence on the modern farm animal welfare movement. 

In this conversation, we discuss the many different approaches we can take to help animals. We talk about why some strategies are less promising than they initially seem, common misconceptions he sees amongst advocates, why creating good strategy is hard, where the movement is under-investing and what he’s learned from other social movements. 

See the full transcript on our Buzzsprout.

Chapters:

• What Lewis has changed his mind on (00:02:33)
• The challenges of institutional meat reduction (00:06:05) 
• Lewis' pessimism on animal welfare litigation (00:11:58)
• The case for animal welfare technologies (00:14:42)
• Why blocking new farms may not help (or even make things worse) (00:18:24)
• What Lewis thinks advocates commonly get wrong (00:23:11)
• Incrementalism vs moonshots & the speed of social change (00:26:50)
• What is the movement under-investing in? (00:36:44)
• Challenges in scaling large organisations (00:41:46)
• Prop 12 and the future of US legislation (00:45:43)
• How can we improve our political advocacy? (00:50:01)
• What can we do in the Global South? (00:55:32)
• How will transformative AI affect animal advocacy? (01:07:43)
• What is tough about Lewis' role? (01:15:41)

Resources:

• For more about Open Phil as a funder, check out our episode with Amanda Hungerford
• Lewis’ substack 
• Lewis AMA on the EA Forum
• Lewis' Twitter

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

Cass Sunstein has one of the most impressive track records out there. He’s the author of the social change books Nudge and How Change Happens, a Harvard Law professor and former US government official in the Obama administration. He has been writing about animal rights law since as early as 1999 and has written several seminal papers on the topic. He has a forthcoming book, with the working title Animals Matter, discussing how we can normalise and popularise caring about animals in mainstream society.

In this conversation, we speak about understanding the contradictory views held by the public on animal welfare, how our advocacy can help them overcome these contradicting views, how he was smeared by the media and even called “the most dangerous man in America” for his views on animal rights, and how we can get more people to speak only about pro-animal issues. 

For those interested in hearing more about his previous book, How Change Happens, and his views on social change, you can listen to this great episode of his with 80,000 Hours, which covers that topic in more depth.

Referenced resources:

• Animals Matter – Substack Post by Cass Sunstein
• 80,000 Hours podcast with Cass Sunstein on How Change Happens 
• Justice for animals – Martha nussbaum 
• It’s a cookbook: animal welfare cascades 

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

There are never-ending conversations in the animal advocacy movement about whether diet change is an effective ask for the public. Today, we speak with Thom from FarmKind on why he thinks asking people to donate, rather than change their diet, can be a much more promising approach.

We speak about why behaviour change is difficult, the many benefits of donating, what other social movements have used as their asks, as well as the different experiments FarmKind has run in their quest to figure out how to best raise funds for animal advocacy. 

Mentioned resources

• FarmKind website 
• Farmkind LinkedIn
• Change Meat Resistance: Systematic Literature Review on Consumer Resistance to the Alternative Protein Transition | Annual Reviews 
• Research by Pax Fauna 
• Moral ambition - Rutger Bregman 
• Frans waal - mama’s last hug

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

The EU is one of the most important institutions in the world. They had amazingly ambitious plans to transform the lives of the billions of farmed animals in the EU which sadly, were put on hold last year. Today, we speak to an expert in EU animal welfare policy, Alice Di Concetto from the European Institute for Animal Law & Policy, about what happened, what animal advocates might hope to win in the next few years and how we might improve our lobbying efforts.

Resources: 

• European Institute for Animal Law & Policy website
• Animals in the EU Agricultural Policy, European Institute for Animal Law & Policy (2021).
• Recent Developments in EU Animal Law & Policy: 2019 – 2024 in Review, The European Institute for Animal Law & Policy (2025).
• You can find this research note and this special report, as well as all of our publications online at: https://animallaweurope.org/publications/ 
• Alice Di Concetto, The Double Edged Sword : International Law and Its Effects on EU Farm Animal Welfare Legislation, Global Journal of Animal Law, Special Issue: Internal Law and Animal Health and Protection: Persistent Themes, New Prospects for Change, v. 10, n. 2. Available online: https://journal.fi/gjal/issue/view/11222 
• Coller Foundation, Advocating for Animals: A Guide to Legislative Advocacy (2022), available online: https://calf.law/legislative-advocacy-guides 
• Kraftwerk
• Franz Kafka (especially the unfinished works)
• The Institute’s Newsletter
• Rethink Priorities: EU Farmed Animal Policy – Strategic Assessment 

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

Today, we’re sharing a different kind of episode. Not an episode of How I Learned to Love Shrimp but an appearance that I, James, made on another podcast, Changed My Mind. It's all about what causes people to change their mind and this time, I talk about my experience with changing my view on disruptive protests and social movements. 

This podcast is run by Aidan and Thom from FarmKind, who some listeners may know about, as a great new charity working to raise funds for animal issues. 

You can listen to more of their podcast here on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. How I Learned To Live Shrimp will be back as normal next week. Enjoy!

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!

There is an age-old debate within animal advocacy on the importance of educating the public. Is it simply enough to tell people about the harms of industrial animal agriculture and then they will change their behaviours? Sadly, not it seems. Many people have been disappointed about the amount of behaviour change that’s actually happened over the past few decades due to education, as seen in relatively stagnant numbers of people going vegetarian or vegan. 

That’s why I’m excited that this week’s guest, Katie Cantrell from Greener by Default, is trying a new approach to get people to change their behaviours – by changing their diets with them barely even noticing. Stick around for a great discussion on the importance of nudging, choice architecture and making the plant-based option the default path.

For those who didn’t listen to our special 50th episode (which I think was awesome – go check it out!), this is a reminder that it will just be me hosting the podcast for the foreseeable future, as Amy sadly had to take a step back. 

Resources

• Greener by Default (website, LinkedIn)
• Research on the effectiveness of nudges (and another by the Food Climate League)
• US bans animal testing for certain drugs
• Eve by Cat Bohannon
• The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Naylor

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - it means a lot to us!