By Susan Woodward
5
2020 ratings
The podcast currently has 27 episodes available.
Guests Kate McIntyre Clere and Mick McIntyre come on the show to discuss a difficult topic – the commercial killing of wild kangaroos and their joeys.
Kate and Mick are an Aussie filmmaking duo with Second Nature Films. Back in 2018, they released a shocking and damning expose about Australia's secretive kangaroo killings – the largest land slaughter of wildlife that happens anywhere on the planet.
In this interview, they talk about progress being made to end this inhumane industry since the release of their film, Kangaroo: A Love-Hate Story. It needs to happen soon, before the slow-breeding kangaroo is pushed to extinction. The U.S. and Europe are the two main markets for kangaroo meat and skins, although most consumers don't realize their products are made from this beloved global icon.
Calls to Action
That’s a wrap for Season 3. Our Sentient Planet team thanks you so much for listening and supporting the podcast on Patreon. Most importantly, we are grateful for the actions you take on behalf of the humans who fight so hard to end the suffering of non-human animals. The best place to find our suggested Calls to Action is in each podcast's show notes.
We'll be back in a few weeks with a new season about how we can live in harmony with the incredible sentient beings with whom we share the Earth. It's an endless topic!
Credits
Sentient Planet is an independent production created on the traditional land of the Nisqually Tribe in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Please consider supporting our work on Patreon. Thank you!
Intro music: "The Spaces Between" by Scott Buckley.
Interstitial music: "The Divine Cosmos" by Stellardrone.
If you've ever thought about rescuing and providing sanctuary to an animal in need, this episode is for you!
Guests Kate Tsyrklevich and Hope Hilman run Heartwood Haven, a popular microsanctuary for farmed animals in Gig Harbor, Washington, USA. Pigs and roosters are their preferred rescues. Many of the hundreds they've saved come from appalling conditions, including cockfighting busts. Unfortunately, the cruel and illicit multi-billion-dollar cockfighting industry operates underground in neighborhoods throughout the United States.
Roosters and pigs are highly sociable and charismatic non-human animals who can thankfully recover and live healthy lives when removed from abusive and traumatic situations. Microsanctuaries such as Heartwood Haven are springing up across the world to reset public misconceptions about these and other farmed animals, whose lives are just as worthy as our much-revered dogs and cats.
Calls to ActionSentient Planet is an independent production created on the traditional land of the Nisqually Tribe in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Please consider supporting our work on Patreon. Thank you!
Intro music: "The Spaces Between" by Scott Buckley.
Interstitial music: "Ascent" by Stellardrone.
In British Columbia, Canada, an elusive animal has been adapting to co-exist with the world's largest remaining inland temperate rainforest since the last ice age. They're the gentle and beautiful mountain caribou, and our guest this week is perhaps their loudest defender.
David Moskowitz, renowned nature photographer, wildlife biologist and tracker, introduces us to the highly endangered mountain caribou, whose herds have plummeted to just 1,100 individuals due to the ongoing logging of their old-growth home. He helps us understand how a combination of blockades, education, Tribal rights and community forests could bring these caribou them back from the brink.
David is based in the North Cascades of Washington State, in the traditional territory of the Methow people. His photography has appeared in numerous outlets, including The New York Times, NBC, Outside Magazine, Science Magazine, Natural History Magazine, High Country News and more.
He is the author and photographer of three books: Caribou Rainforest, Wildlife of the Pacific Northwest and Wolves in the Land of Salmon. He is also co-author and photographer of Peterson’s Field Guide to North American Bird Nests.
David's next project will document the entire Columbia River Basin of North America. This massive photographic undertaking will support multiple environmental campaigns and become a book and interactive display.
Calls to Action
Credits
Sentient Planet is an independent production created on the traditional land of the Nisqually Tribe in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Please consider supporting our work on Patreon. Thank you!
David's photo: Courtesy of Sarah Rice.
Intro music: "The Spaces Between" by Scott Buckley.
Interstitial music: "The Edge of Forever" by Stellardrone.
From grassroots to policy, we want to follow up on last week's popular podcast by introducing listeners to another amazing ambassador for the oceans – Sue Fisher, of Portland, Oregon.
Sue is interim marine policy director (international) for the Animal Welfare Institute. She's been advocating for greater protections for cetaceans through the International Whaling Commission (IWC) for the past 30 years, and she is one of the main authors of a brand new 50-year vision for the IWC. As the organization turns 75, dozens of international animal welfare groups are urging its 88 member governments to adopt the vision and accompanying recommendations for saving whales and dolphins from extinction.
Sue says there's no better time for the IWC to exert its influence and expertise to clean up the mess we humans have made in the world's oceans with plastics, pollution and over-fishing.
Calls to Action
Sentient Planet is an independent production created on the traditional land of the Nisqually Tribe in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Please consider supporting our work on Patreon. Thank you!
Intro music: "The Spaces Between" by Scott Buckley.
Interstitial music: "Gravitation (Remix)" by Stellardrone.
Environmental artist, activist and teacher. Free-spirited surfer and voice for her beloved whales and dolphins, whom she's dubbed The Cetacean Nation. Oh, and skateboarding sensation on the famous Zephr ("Z-Boys") competition team from the mid-1970s in California. She's the one and only Peggy Oki, and we're thrilled to have her on the show in this exclusive interview.
Peggy talks about her recent encounters with sperm whales in the Caribbean. She updates us on her dogged campaigning on behalf of Tokitae (Lolita), the Southern Resident orca who's been held captive in the Miami Seaquarium for the past 51 years. (We covered Tokitake's plight and the efforts to free her in Season 1, especially in the episode Bringing Her Home: The Lummi Claim to a Captive Orca.) And she shares how the likes of Jacques Cousteau, Sir David Attenborough and Jane Goodall have inspired her life of advocacy for the ocean and the beings who call it home.
Peggy’s original artwork has been displayed in 21 one-woman exhibitions, 40 group exhibitions, and more than 80 private and commercial collections. She is the director of the Origami Whales Project – a curtain of tens of thousands of paper whales created to raise awareness about the death toll from modern commercial whaling. We talk about that, too!
Calls to Action
Here are three quick things you can do after listening:
Sentient Planet is an independent production created on the traditional land of the Nisqually Tribe in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Please consider supporting our work on Patreon. Thank you!
Intro music: "The Spaces Between" by Scott Buckley.
Interstitial music: "Tranquility" by Stellardrone.
In November 2021, the United Kingdom recognized crabs, lobsters, octopus and other decapod crustaceans and cephalopod invertebrates as sentient beings. The animals were added to the UK's new Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill, which will protect them for the first time when the bill becomes law in early 2022.
Expanding our awareness to more species is cause for hope and celebration, says Claire Bass, executive director of Humane Society International – UK. The Humane Society and other animal welfare organizations have worked on the sentience bill with the British government for several years.
In this episode, Claire, who has rescued animals since childhood, explains what the new sentience law means. We also talk about opportunities since Brexit to accelerate efforts to ban live exports and the import of fur and hunting trophies and to deepen campaigns on behalf of the 88 billion industrialized animals who suffer worldwide every year, so humans can consume meat and dairy products.
Calls to action:
Go to hsi.org to support Humane Society International's efforts to:
Sentient Planet is an independent production created on the traditional land of the Nisqually Tribe in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Please consider supporting our work on Patreon. Thank you!
Intro music: "The Spaces Between" by Scott Buckley.
Interstitial music: "Stardome" by Stellardrone.
We're so happy to release the first episode of Sentient Planet – Season 3!
Today’s guest is the vegan writer, photographer and lover of all creatures – Lucas Spiegel. Lucas quit his job as an architect in North America to spend nearly two years traveling the world, working on animal sanctuaries as he explored cultures and what it would take to live a truly ethical life. One result is his recently published travel memoir, The Weight of Empathy. The book is a beautifully illustrated, thoroughly reasoned plea for kindness and mercy in the human treatment of billions of non-human animals.
In this episode, Lucas shares stories about some of the beautiful friendships he made with individual animals in Australia, Asia and Europe and what these encounters taught him.
Calls to Action
Sentient Planet is an independent production created on the traditional land of the Nisqually Tribe in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Please consider supporting our work on Patreon. Thank you!
Intro music: "The Spaces Between" by Scott Buckley.
Interstitial music: "Penumbra (Remix)" by Stellardrone.
What is sentience? If we're to ask the question directly, perhaps a good place to seek an answer is with a great teacher.
This week, it's our honor to welcome and share the Earth wisdom of the joyful Dr. Susan Murphy. Susan is a Roshi, a learned teacher in the tradition of Zen Buddhism. She is the founding and resident teacher of the Zen Open Circle in Sydney, Australia. And, as a writer, radio producer and film director, she’s considered one of the most important global voices in the Ecological Buddhism, or "Ecodharma" movement.
Roshi Susan is the author of the splendid book Minding the Earth, Mending the World: Zen and the Art of Planentary Crisis (Penguin Random House, 2014), a Zen response to the great ecological crisis of our time – climate change.
Please enjoy this open and generous sharing from Susan about sentience, our kinship relationship with non-human animals – and everything else in the cosmos – and the impossibility of separating our human existence and experience from that of the Earth.
Sentient Planet is an independent production, created on the traditional land of the Nisqually Tribe in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Please consider supporting our work on Patreon. Thank you!
Intro music: "The Spaces Between" by Scott Buckley.
Interstitial music: "Last Day on Earth" by Stellardrone.
Jill Robinson first encountered a captive Moon Bear in 1993. The experience, which she recounts in our interview, changed her life. It also sparked the beginning of the end of the horrific bear bile industry.
Moon Bears are Asian Black Bears. They are called Moon Bears in reference to the trademark white fur crescent that appears across their necks. In multiple countries across Asia, tens of thousands of Moon Bears (and some other species) are held captive in tiny cages for decades and subjected to routine, extremely painful procedures to extract bile from their gallbladders. The bile is used in traditional Asian medicines and touted for a host of ailments, including hangovers.
As the founder and Chief Executive Officer of the animal welfare organization, Animals Asia, Jill has been especially successful in her mission to shut down bear farming in Vietnam. In partnership with the Vietnamese government, the industry has been winding down since 2017 and is now illegal. Soon, Animals Asia will break ground on a second rescue sanctuary in Vietnam and free hundreds of bears from a lifetime of unspeakable cruelty and suffering.
This follows another rescue this summer when Animals Asia transported 101 Moon Bears 750 miles across China to a sanctuary in Chengdu. It was the largest bear rescue in history and the subject of the new short film, “Moon Bear Homecoming,” narrated by American actor and activist James Cromwell.
English-born Jill is the recipient of many prestigious international awards that recognize her service on behalf of our more-than-human animal kin. She talks about the origin of bear farming and the developments to end it, as well as her victories for cats and dogs in Asia, from her home in Hong Kong.
Calls to Action:
Sentient Planet is a small, independent production created on the traditional land of the Nisqually Tribe in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Please consider supporting our work on Patreon. Thank you!
Intro music: "The Spaces Between" by Scott Buckley.
Interstitial music: "Blinking Star" by Stellardrone.
What a treat to introduce the Dutch nature photographer and our far-flung team member, Mark Stoop.
Mark lives in Singapore, where he works as a marketing director and indulges his passion for photographing the biodiverse animals who live around him. Birds and reptiles hold a special place in Mark's heart. Indeed, it was his beautiful photo of a curious Green Crested Lizard that drew us to him. The image has been viewed more than a million times, and that personable little lizard with the big attitude has grown into the icon of our Sentient Planet podcast!
In this lighthearted chat with Mark, you'll get a good idea of what it's like to live amongst tropical non-human animals, including monkeys, cobras and wild boar. And if you're a photography buff, you might glean something helpful from Mark's astute tips.
Calls to Action:
Intro music: "The Spaces Between" by Scott Buckley.
Interstitial music: "Nightscape" by Stellardrone.
The podcast currently has 27 episodes available.