Carl Safina is an American ecologist and author. He writes about our relationship with the natural world and the other beings that share it.

‘In my writing I explore our relationship with the living world—and how it could be better. My more recent work also probes how free-living animals experience life. What drives my work is a devotion to free-living things and wild places. And what drives that devotion is my deep love and wonder for the living world. ’  (from Carlsafina.org).

During our conversation, Carl expressed his deep concerns with overpopulation, pollution, climate change, habitat destruction,  and the cruelty we inflict on other species. He attributes these issues to a fundamental failure of the education system:

“What do we learn by the time we’re out of high school? We learn to buy things. We’re equipped to just be consumers, not human beings. We don’t really learn ethics, we don’t learn how to take care of each other, how to take care of the world. We don’t learn any kind of perspective that would give us wisdom, let alone some of the humility that you would see in indigenous cultures who revere the world. 

And what do we all do in the way that we live? We use stuff up. We use things that we don’t understand the consequences of. We don’t understand their origins. We don’t really know anything.”

Carl's books include Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace; Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel; The View From Lazy Point, and others.

He is the founding president of the Safina Center which explores how humans are changing the living world and its ecosystems.

Click here to visit Carl's Website

Click here to visit The Safina Center Website

Click here to read Carl's article on protecting half of Earth 

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Jo-Anne McArthur is a multiple award winning photojournalist who has spent over two decades travelling the world to document and bring to light the disturbing truth about our relationship with the other sentient beings that share our planet. Her unflinching photography has been acknowledged with multiple awards including Wildlife Photographer of the Year and The Global Peace Award.

She is the author of  three books: We Animals (2014), Captive (2017), and HIDDEN: Animals in the Anthropocene (2020), and is the subject of Canadian filmmaker Liz Marshall's acclaimed Canadian documentary, The Ghosts in Our Machine.

Jo-Anne is founder of  We Animals Media, an organisation dedicated to bringing visibility to 'hidden' animals through compelling photo and videojournalism.  The comprehensive archive of work depicting the animals we trap, wear, eat, and experiment on is freely available  to anyone wishing to change the status-quo and work towards a more compassionate world where we co-exist peacefully alongside animals.

Jo-Anne and WAM's dedicated team of journalists regularly put themselves in compromising and dangerous situations in the hopes of inspiring others to share their want of a better world for animals. They often have to break the law to obtain the stories they believe will shift our attitudes towards the 80 billion land animals we use and kill every year. 

In this episode of Talking Apes, Jo-Anne opens up about suffering PTSD as a result of the cruelty and bloodshed she has witnessed throughout her career. She tells us about the time her entire team ended up in hospital, and explains how she maintains her incredibly positive and warm demeaner despite the dark worlds she documents. 


READ OUR BLOG HERE to learn more and see some of Jo-Anne's work, including the photos discussed in the podcast. 





Visit Jo-Anne McArthur's Website

Warning: discusses animal cruelty, animal suffering, animal abuse.

Themes: animal rights, animal liberation, animal welfare, vegetarianism, veganism, animal law, animal protection, cruelty free living,  journalism, photography.

GLOBIO is a global awareness nonprofit that creates environmental films and provides visual support to wildlife conservation organizations around the world, and tells their stories globally while educating the public about our shared environmental challenges. GLOBIO’s mission is to inspire a positive relationship with our environment by connecting species, people and planet.

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Great apes — gorillas, chimps, orangutans and bonobos — have been Talking Apes host Gerry Ellis's life long passion. Discover where it started and how it's evolved as guest host Eric Cain explores the world of Talking Apes with photographer, film-maker and podcast host, Gerry Ellis.

Long before creating the Talking Apes podcast, Gerry had built an award-winning career as an international wildlife film-maker, photographer, and writer spans three-decades and features work appearing in National Geographic, BBC Wildlife, the New York Times, Ranger Rick, and more. He is the author and/or photographer of more than a dozen books, including two in the highly acclaimed National Geographic Kids Book series.

Gerry’s filming project in 2001, Wild Orphans, inspired the founding of GLOBIO.

GLOBIO is a global awareness nonprofit that creates environmental films and provides visual support to wildlife conservation organizations around the world, and tells their stories globally while educating the public about our shared environmental challenges. GLOBIO’s mission is to inspire a positive relationship with our environment by connecting species, people and planet.

Support our work by becoming a Patreon subscriber: Click here

Make a one off donation to GLOBIO: Click here 

Talking Apes is a GLOBIO initiative. Learn more:

Official website: talkingapes.org

Instagram: @talkingapes_podcast

Support our work by making a small donation here, or for access to exclusive content and rewards, click here to become a Patreon member.

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At 22 years old, Rachel Hogan never dreamed that a three month volunteering trip to Africa would result in her becoming the director of one of the world's largest and most well known primate sanctuaries.

Over two decades later, Rachel remains on the edge of Cameroon's rainforests overseeing fifty human residents and 300 non-human residents - a growing hoard of gorillas, chimps, and monkeys now living in Ape Action Africa's 17 ginormous forest enclosures.

The sanctuary is a lifeline for endangered baby chimpanzees and gorillas that have been illegally stolen from the wild, victims of the bushmeat trade - their parents killed and the babies sold on as pets.

Ape Action Africa supports the government by making confiscations of these animals possible, and providing lifelong care to the orphaned apes and monkeys that show up at their gates.

Listen to Rachel tell us about the unpredictable and sometimes chaotic day to day life at the sanctuary, the tiny baby gorilla that persuaded her to stay forever, and the recent events that have given her a greater hope for the future of great apes in Africa.

To learn more about Ape Action Africa visit: apeactionafrica.org

Support their work: here

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Primate portraits from some of the most unlikely habitats — tiny, century-old, forgotten places. BEHIND GLASS by Anne Berry is an intimate very personal look at the lives of primates nearly forgotten.

Visit our BLOG to see the photos from our conversation on Talking Apes.

Visit anneberrystudio.com to learn more. 

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On the western edge of the vast Congo basin lies one of the world's most remote rainforests - the Dja. It is one of the last strongholds of a rich biodiversity that includes gorillas, chimps, forest elephants, and a breath-taking range of flora and fauna. 

Dr Nikki Tagg - conservation scientist and Head of Conservation for the Born Free Foundation is one of those rare researchers who has ventured into this spectacular rainforest in the hopes of understanding the causes of biodiversity loss and the mechanisms of co-existence between people and nature to conserve threatened species. 

Her work explores the effect of human activities like hunting and logging on great ape abundance.

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We often hear about how we humans are 98% chimpanzee. In fact, biologically, humans are more closely related to chimpanzees than chimps are to gorillas! 

But when we look past the biological similarities, do we still see ourselves in our closest living relatives, the chimps and bonobos? 

Dr Catherine Hobaiter and her team have spent almost two decades deep in the rainforests of Africa, studying wild chimpanzees and attempting to read between the lines when it comes to their diverse behaviour - especially the nuances of chimp communication. 

When chimps shake hands, point, hold out their palms, or beckon, these gestures look familiar to us - but do they have the same meanings as they do for humans? Are chimps always violent? Do chimpanzee communities always have an alpha male? Why do chimpanzees drum on tree roots!?

Cat shares some of her team's incredible breakthrough scientific discoveries, and some of her favourite personal anecdotes about her time spent with apes like us.

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Decades of losing. Losing forest habitat, losing primate populations, and losing in our efforts to educate politicians, the public, and policy-makers. 

Most critically, we are losing great apes by the thousands each year.

On Giving Day for Apes we talk with PASA's new director, Kelly O'Meara, about how PASA's 23 member primate sanctuaries across Africa are much more than caring arms for the victims of the illegal wildlife trade. 

While the sanctuaries are faced with the responsibility of providing lifelong care to the floods of baby chimps, gorillas, and bonobos that show up at their gates, they are also key stakeholders in the conservation conversation - owed to their unique positioning amidst the local surroundings, communities, and cultures. 

Kelly tells us how PASA acts as a representative for its members and as a voice that raises their importance in protecting not only the individuals in their care but the wild populations beyond their walls too. 

Visit PASA.org to learn more. 

givingdayforapes.org

#givingdayforapes 

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When an entire family of chimpanzees is slaughtered for bushmeat, the baby chimps are captured live and sold into the multi-billion dollar global wildlife trade. Often sold on as pets, they suffer in confinement and misery, deprived of companionship and a natural life in their wild rainforest homes. 

Iris Ho is Head of Campaigns and Policy at PASA (Pan African Sanctuary Alliance) - Africa’s largest coalition of wildlife sanctuaries and one of the world’s leading organizations fighting to protect primates. Her role is to represent PASA at multilateral conferences where wildlife protection policies are made, and to be a voice for PASA’s 23 member wildlife sanctuaries  - all fighting on the frontlines to tackle this intensifying crisis. 

Animal rescues by sanctuaries make up one pillar in the struggle against poaching and the illegal wildlife trade, but the issues need to be tackled holistically to get to the roots. Iris tells us how we might begin to strengthen law enforcement, and change global policies and mindsets to drive lasting transformative changes that could save our wild cousins from extinction. 

Learn more about PASA’s work here: pasa.org

Please consider signing PASA’s petition advocating a ban on pet primates: pasa.org/fight-the-trade-of-primates/

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