There are days when I grumble about “having” to do this podcast. When there's a lot of editing to be done. When I have to turn my hastily typed (and hugely typo'ed) notes into coherent show notes. When my audio sounds terrible and I have no idea why.

And then there are days like this, when one of my action heroes agrees to be interviewed. And I'm nervous, and fan-boyish, and just about trembling with excitement and privilege.

Carl Safina is the author of, most recently, Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel. I consumed it on Audible a couple of years ago, and was utterly mesmerized and transformed by the listening. I think it was one of the sneaky factors that pushed me, somewhat against my better judgment, into the Animal Welfare camp of the plant-based movement.

The book describes the author's encounters with three fascinating and endangered animal populations – the elephants of East Africa, the wolves of Yellowstone, and the Orcas of the Pacific Northwest – and the humans who have devoted their lives to studying, documenting, and understanding these magnificent creatures.

The central idea of Beyond Words is that animals have thoughts and feelings, and are in every way the moral equals of human beings. This won't surprise any dog owner, but flies in the face of 200 years of reductionist, materialist science that relegated animals to “it” status: interchangeable units without cognition or consciousness. And that viewpoint is what allows us to commit atrocities such as elephant poaching for tusks, killing wolves for sport, and turning the ocean into a bad neighborhood unable to sustain life.

And ripped straight from Carl's website, here's a little more about this brave and beautiful soul:

Carl Safina’s writing about the living world has won a MacArthur “genius” prize, Pew and Guggenheim Fellowships; book awards from Lannan, Orion, and the National Academies; and the John Burroughs, James Beard, and George Rabb medals.

His seabird studies earned a PhD in ecology from Rutgers; he then spent a decade working to ban high-seas drift nets and to overhaul U.S. and international fishing policy.

Safina is the first Endowed Professor for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University, where he co-chairs the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and runs the not-for-profit Safina Center. He hosted the PBS series Saving the Ocean.

His writing appears in The New York Times, TIME, Audubon, and on the Web at National Geographic News and Views, Literati Magazine, Huffington Post, CNN.com, and elsewhere. He is author of the classic book, Song for the Blue Ocean. Carl’s seventh book is Beyond Words; What Animals Think and Feel.

He lives on Long Island, New York with his wife Patricia and their dogs and feathered friends.

In our conversation, we covered:

* why it's important to know that animals have individual personalities

* animals have as much claim to existence as humans

* we have incredible egos with incredible insecurities (“we're capable of being insulted by the natural world”)

* animals believe only what there's evidence for (“they don't kill each other over ideologies”)

* science is the greatest thing the human mind has ever created

* the problem with science is that it's done by people

* the withering criticism heaped upon Jane Goodall by old male colleagues who had never spent a day in the field

* the heretical question: asking why animals do what they do

* “isn't it obvious and inescapable that she protected her baby?”

* 7-year-old Carl and the homing pigeon epiphany

* the scientific overreaction to mythology and folk tales about animals

* the elephants of Amboseli and Samburu – “what they're like when they're being themselves”

Thoughts on the episode? Let us know.

David Donohue is a primary care physician in Wilmington, Delaware, and one of only 280 board-certified lifestyle medicine specialists in the United States. As David points out in our conversation, that's fewer than one for every million Americans.I wanted to talk with David about the successful and innovative Cure Diabetes program that he's run over the past year, but we quickly started egging each other on (is there a vegan egg-replacer metaphor for that phrase?) to describe our pet peeves about the current medical system.

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David Donohue is a primary care physician in Wilmington, Delaware, and one of only 280 board-certified lifestyle medicine specialists in the United States. As David points out in our conversation, that's fewer than one for every million Americans.

I wanted to talk with David about the successful and innovative Cure Diabetes program that he's run over the past year, but we quickly started egging each other on (is there a vegan egg-replacer metaphor for that phrase?) to describe our pet peeves about the current medical system.

David is not only a doctor, but a computer coder/developer, and this means that he sees the world in terms of systems that can be optimized. And the medical system, in his view (and mine as well), is one giant system optimized to produce pretty much the opposite of health and value for consumers. As he points out (and people have been saying for three decades now), it's bloated, ineffective, and unsustainable – and must be reformed or replaced.

David's got strong opinions about medical education – and regular K-12 and college education – that had me nodding Yes so hard that my headphones nearly fell off a few times.

If you are a doctor, or know a doctor, or go see a doctor, or studiously avoid doctors, this is a must-listen podcast. David is funny, smart, compassionate, and driven to make the world a better place.

We covered:

* “studying the classics while Rome is burning”

* when have I ever needed to calculate the area under a curve?

* we make 200 food decisions each day

* medical education has it backwards: you can't learn about kidney disease until you learn about nephrons

* lip service to Motivational Interviewing, but not part of what doctors “are supposed to do”

* the internal medicine boards questions – all about drug protocols, nothing about lifestyle change

* the Cure Diabetes program

* the power of group dynamics

* lifestyle medicine isn't radical – recommended by United States Preventive Task Force for coronary patients as first line treatment

* the danger of a non-supportive partner

* adding the Power of Purpose to the intervention

* adding Moral Support to the intervention

* the importance of easy recipes and cooking demos: “this is easier/tastier than I thought”

* we often adopt self-defeating narratives when we get medicalized

* the department of internal medicine holiday party food spread: two tables of sausages and a table with chocolate dipped bacon

* electronic medical records are largely for billing and regulatory compliance, not patient care

* the biomarkers that do and don't work for showing disease reversal

* creating a crowdsourced wiki of effective behavior change strategies and techniques

* and much more…

Enjoy, add your voice to the conversation via the comment box below, and please share – that's how we spread our message and spread our roots.

Links

David's medical practice

Want to work with David? Email him here: *protected email*

Overdiagnosed, by Gilbert Welch, Lisa Schwartz, and Steven Woloshin, MDs

The Citizen Patient, by Norman Hadler, MD

NutritionFacts.org

Gregory Walton's Wise Interventions

the Dominion documentary trailer

the Direct Trial on reversing diabetes through dietary caloric restriction

Thoughts on the episode? Let us know.

Emily Fletcher is one of the new faces of an ancient practice. Former Broadway star and founder of Ziva Meditation, she talks funny, dirty, relatable, and wise about one of the simplest, cheapest, and most profound of wellness practices: going within ourselves.Emily draws upon her experiences in a stress-inducing profession, her immersion in the spiritual technologies of ancient India, and cutting-edge research into the neuroscience of consciousness to give meditation a modern angle: it's a brain gym for high performers.

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Support the show

Emily Fletcher is one of the new faces of an ancient practice. Former Broadway star and founder of Ziva Meditation, she talks funny, dirty, relatable, and wise about one of the simplest, cheapest, and most profound of wellness practices: going within ourselves.

Emily draws upon her experiences in a stress-inducing profession, her immersion in the spiritual technologies of ancient India, and cutting-edge research into the neuroscience of consciousness to give meditation a modern angle: it's a brain gym for high performers.

If you'd like to experience Ziva for yourself, I managed to negotiate a nice discount for Plant Yourself listeners (and I don't get a penny if you sign up – I just really believe in what Emily's doing, and the benefits you'll get from it).

In our conversation (which you can also watch in the video below), we covered:

* being “the most competitive meditation teacher”

* from child to adult in one year

* growing up training to be “professionally beautiful”

* suffering from chronic inflammation and insomnia as a Broadway understudy

* discovering the benefits of meditation

* shifting from object-referral to self-referral for happiness

* struggling to play Val in A Chorus Line

* reframing meditation for high performers

* the importance of deep rest and surrender

* all indigenous traditions contain techniques of de-excitation

* why India has preserved the purest meditation lineage

* a verifiable fourth state of consciousness

* the balance of mysticism and science

* the challenge of charging money for teaching meditation

* seeing the brain and the mind as hardware and software

* dealing with our “300 million year old meat suit”

* contextualizing and navigating the fight or flight response

* the connection between meditation and sex

* and much more…

Enjoy, add your voice to the conversation via the comment box below, and please share – that's how we spread our message and spread our roots.

Links

Ziva Meditation

Link to save 20%: Enter code PLANT at checkout to register for the new online training

Video

Support the Podcast

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Gratitudes

Thanks to Plant Yourself podcast patrons

– Kim Harrison

– Lynn McLellan

– Anthony Dissen

– Brittany Porter

– Dominic Marro

– Barbara Whitney

– Tammy Black

– Amy Good

– Amanda Hatherly

– Mary Jane Wheeler

– Ellen Kennelly

– Melissa Cobb

– Rachel Behrens

– Christine Nielsen

– Tina Scharf

– Tina Ahern

– Jen Vilkinofsky

– David Byczek

– Michele X

– Elspeth Feldman

– Viktoriya Dolomanova

– Leah Stolar

– Allan Kristensen

– Colleen Peck

– Michele Landry

– Jozina

– Julianne Rowland

– Stu Dolnick

– Sara Durkacs

– Kelly Cameron

– Wayne Pedersen

– Leanne Peterson

– Janet Selby

– Claire Adams

– Tom Fronczak

– Jeannette Benham

– Gila Lacerte

– David Donohue

Thoughts on the episode? Let us know.

Tali Sharot is an Associate Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, and director of the Affective Brain Lab. Affective, as in emotions and motivation. Brain, as in processing and decisions. Drawing on recent groundbreaking work in behavioral economics and neuroscience, Sharot shows us how to navigate the intricacies and predictable biases of minds; our own and those of others.Dr. Sharot is the author of the new book The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others. When I saw the title, I knew I had to discover what she knows about influence: how we can do it well, and how we often screw it up.

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Support the show

Tali Sharot is an Associate Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, and director of the Affective Brain Lab. Affective, as in emotions and motivation. Brain, as in processing and decisions. Drawing on recent groundbreaking work in behavioral economics and neuroscience, Sharot shows us how to navigate the intricacies and predictable biases of minds; our own and those of others.

Dr. Sharot is the author of the new book The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others. When I saw the title, I knew I had to discover what she knows about influence: how we can do it well, and how we often screw it up.

I wasn't disappointed. There are thousands of books on persuasion and influence out there; few if any are as scientifically rigorous and practical.

I was delighted when Dr. Sharot agreed to talk about her insights and recommendations on the podcast. And the Atlantic Ocean, often stroppy when it comes to facilitating Skype calls, cooperated beautifully so that we could achieve darn good audio quality.

Dr. Sharot and I discussed:

* why very smart people suffer more from confirmation bias than the rest of us

* how to deal with confirmation bias without reinforcing it

* the UCLA vaccination intervention

* “there's always something we agree on”

* brain studies of pairs of people agreeing and disagreeing

* the evolutionary origins of confirmation bias, and why we don't believe people who claim to have seen pink elephants

* how to talk to someone who believes in the health benefits of a paleo diet

* “if we enjoy eating meat, we don't want to believe that it's not good for us”

* the strategic deployment of carrots and sticks

* the amazing “Go/No Go” brain circuit, and the mixed message of inhibition as a means to a reward

* a new and empowering reinterpretation of the famous Mischel “Marshmallow Study”

* the butterfly effect in groupthink

* what would our phobias look like if they were rational and statistically based?

* why we fear flying more than driving

* we should be very scared of medicating ourselves

* the importance of giving our counterpart a feeling of control and agency when we're trying to influence them

* “under threat, we automatically absorb cues about danger”

* “change their state before you change their mind”

* the first step is always awareness

* and much more…

Links

The Influential Mind

The Optimism Bias

The Affective Brain Lab website

The Affective Brain Lab on Twitter

The Skin Rash / Gun Control study: Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government

Marc Guitart-Masip button-pushing experiment: “Action Controls Dopaminergic Enhancement of Reward Representations”

Sean Taylor's study of manipulated initial ratings: “Social Influence Bias: A Randomized Experiment“

Thoughts on the episode? Let us know.

Kassi and Derick Harrington grew up in Thibodaux, Louisiana, where they grew obese and ill and miserable on the Standard Cajun Diet.Derick's life revolved around food: hunting and fishing and then frying whatever he caught. Kassi was overweight her whole life, as was her entire family.Derick suffered from hypertension, high cholesterol, an auto-immune disease, and was on the fast track to type 2 diabetes. He had no energy, no passion for life outside of the gustatory, and in his own words, was "just existing."

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Support the show

Kassi and Derick Harrington grew up in Thibodaux, Louisiana, where they grew obese and ill and miserable on the Standard Cajun Diet.

Derick's life revolved around food: hunting and fishing and then frying whatever he caught. Kassi was overweight her whole life, as was her entire family.

Derick suffered from hypertension, high cholesterol, an auto-immune disease, and was on the fast track to type 2 diabetes. He had no energy, no passion for life outside of the gustatory, and in his own words, was “just existing.”

Kassi remembers trying to lose weight her entire life. From trying to lift weights when she was eight years old, to making New Years Resolutions, to subsisting on microwaved Lean Cuisine, to every yo-yo diet, to dangerous weight loss pills like Xenadrine and Metabolife. She wanted to lose weight so badly, she was willing to sacrifice her health.

Derick had more or less given up on health and happiness. Kassi was chasing every promise, every fad, every restrictive and self-punishing regime that popped into her consciousness, with only temporary results.

Then, on a vacation in Disney World, Kassi tried a new strategy: seeking health rather than weight loss. And that's when everything started changing.

Her pragmatic, self-loving approach became self-correcting, as she tried things and saw how they made her feel and adjusted accordingly. And then, her brother Dustin made an off-hand comment that rocked her world: “You know, giving up animal products has been the easiest way for me to lose weight.”

Dustin had dropped about a hundred pounds at that point, inspired by his older brother, Josh LaJaunie. Kassi adopted the plant-based diet through baby steps, and soon found her own success, for the first time in her life.

Derick didn't like the changes at first. Not eating meat was blasphemy to any self-respecting male Coonass, and he would have none of it.

But slowly, he came around. To healthier eating. To running. To the inexorable pull of wellness and joy that was emanating out of the LaJaunie household and transforming its members.

Now Kassi and Derick are full-on plant-based runners, and the parents of a beautiful, chunky, healthy, plant-based two and a half year old boy. And what they've given up is nothing compared to what they've gained.

In our conversation, we talked about their transformation, the bumps in the road, and how their lives have changed since pursuing health as a priority. We covered:

* “I was always losing weight for a thing – to fit into my jeans, to go on vacation, to meet a guy”

* having all the “things” and still not being happy

* “I had to learn to love myself enough to fix myself”

* the LaJaunie family growing closer together after getting healthy – “it's hard to love other people when you can't love yourself”

* the struggle and shame of one partner changing while the other resisted

* Derick's big shift: running the Crescent City Classic 10k race in 2014

* the “baby steps” approach to lifestyle change

* Derick's nickname at work: “Lettuce”

* Kassi's workplace nickname: “On the side” (based on her restaurant ordering strategy)

* deeper changes – becoming more compassionate

* your mind isn't as clear when you're consuming all these animal products

* “Meathead” – someone who still has an ugly attitude

* educating themselves and feeling confident to question what they've been taught their whole lives

* Derick's extreme approach to running and racing (marathons, 50ks, and speed work)

* excuse busting: having a toddler, both working fulltime, commuting, and still getting up at 4am to exercise and prep food for the day

* feeding a toddler on a plant-based diet

From the moment his parents' marriage fell apart, Bryan Falchuk turned into the fat kid. In a world out of control, food was the one thing he could control, and the one thing that could soothe his deep hurts and anxieties.

Every day Bryan woke up and was determined to lose weight, and twenty minutes later he'd be elbow-deep in the foods he'd sworn to give up, or at least moderate. He experienced himself as someone untrustworthy, someone who lacked agency, someone to whom life happened.

Despite all this, Bryan managed to muddle through: got married, got a good job, had a kid. He had turned into enough of an exerciser to slim down from “obese” to “standard American” – 40 pounds overweight, but wearing it pretty well. He might have continued this way indefinitely and lived the typical American decline into chronic disease managed by legal drugs, and just-below-the-surface emotional anguish managed by food, media, and other legal drugs.

Then his wife became gravely ill, and Bryan realized that he might lose her. And that his two-year-old son would experience a childhood trauma possibly even deeper than his own. So on June 30, 2011, when he entered his bedroom and found his son watching his mother suffer, he realized that he had to change himself.

To take charge of his actions. To give up being miserable, always unpleasant and stressed and on a short fuse, getting fatter by the day. To become the father his little boy deserved, and the husband his wife absolutely needed if she were to have any chance at healing.

On July 1, he woke up with a new identity. Armed with only this, Bryan began the long, hard work of remaking himself.

It was an honor to speak with Bryan about his journey, and the lessons learned along the way. We covered:

* his first failure as “marriage saver”

* “little kids need to feel safe and secure and taken care of”

* turning overnight from a skinny, smiling kid into a round little ball of anxiety and depression

* losing weight in high school – while not addressing the emotional root causes

* eating until his stomach ached badly, and still not stopping

* using others as a puppet for his own self-judgment

* humiliation and heat syncope at a summer camp relay race for the “fat kids”

* we're looking for “fast food enlightenment”

* Bryan's wife losing 2 pounds a day, and her physician about to take 6 weeks off

* “this is not what I ever expected”

* “are you living your life, or are you an employee of it?”

* we get rewarded in life for focusing on what's wrong – hard habit to break

* letting go of willpower and harnessing identity

* “I'm calling the shots, and these are my choices”

* acknowledging past scars and choosing to heal

* the first real workout in years – busting intervals on the elliptical

* “I'll do the same tomorrow, if not better”

* reaching goal weight and staying there

* using Tim Ferriss's “slow carb” diet to discover what really was healthy

* discovering Rich Roll, and turning vegan overnight

* dropping our emotional attachment to food

* it's about life now, not weight loss

* in coaching, the presenting issue is a gateway drug to the whole human experience

* and much more…

Enjoy, add your voice to the conversation via the comment box below, and please share – that's how we spread our message and spread our roots.