Our Hen House Our Hen House Podcasts

We all wish for the superpower to understand what animals are communicating. This week, we are joined by biologist Mickey Pardo to discuss his work studying animal communication and social cognition in animals ranging from elephants to woodpeckers.



Mickey Pardo is a biologist specializing in animal communication, animal cognition, and wildlife conservation. He earned his PhD from the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University, where he studied vocal communication and social cognition in Asian elephants and Acorn Woodpeckers. He then completed a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at Colorado State University, where he studied vocal communication in African elephants and made the discovery that elephants have names for one another. He is currently a postdoctoral associate at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, where he is using audio recorders and AI to non-invasively monitor threatened bird populations in Southern California. Mickey regularly volunteers with Anonymous for the Voiceless and is an organizer with Pro-Animal Future, which is seeking to ban fur and slaughterhouses in Denver, CO, through ballot initiatives. He is also assisting the Nonhuman Rights Project as an elephant behavior consultant and has recently signed up as a mentor for Animal Activism Mentorship. Mickey has published multiple pro-animal op-eds and has a relatively new YouTube channel where he discusses studies on animal cognition and makes a scientific case for animal rights.



Thanks for tuning in! If you enjoy the Our Hen House podcast, please leave us a positive review! To view the show notes with resources, visit the website at https://www.ourhenhouse.org/ep751/

Wouldn’t it be great if we could keep land from falling into the hands of animal agriculture and just give it to wild animals instead? That is exactly what the U.K.’s Vegan Land Movement is doing, and Gina Bates is here to tell us how they are doing it and why you should do it too.



Following art college and a career in design, Gina Bates left London for the far north of Scotland. In 2018 she bought the assignation for an 80-acre Highland croft along with 100+ acres of common grazing which will soon be reforested under a Native Forest Scheme. Named Highland Veganics, it’s being designed as the first vegan plant protein croft in crofting history. Gina is also one of the founders of Vegan Land Movement, a Community Interest Company that aims to buy areas of animal agricultural land to restore to nature. The aim is to also eventually transform some parcels of land to produce food veganically alongside creating wildlife and animal sanctuaries, raising awareness of complex ecosystems and working with nature rather than against it under the vegan principles of least harm.



Thanks for tuning in! If you enjoy the Our Hen House podcast, please leave us a positive review! To view the show notes with resources, visit the website at https://www.ourhenhouse.org/ep750/

Darwin was onto something. So how did scientists then go so completely wrong in understanding who animals really are, and where are we now? This week, we are joined by field biologist, professor, and author Marc Bekoff for a glimpse into The Emotional Lives of Animals. We also hear more about his friendship with Jane Goodall and how that led to the recent Jane Goodall at 90 essay collection.



A professor emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Marc Bekoff has published 31 books and won many awards for his research on animal behavior, animal emotions, compassionate conservation, and animal protection, worked closely with Jane Goodall, and is a former Guggenheim Fellow. His latest books are Dogs Demystified: An A to Z Guide to All Things Canine, the second edition of The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy―and Why They Matter, and Jane Goodall at 90: Celebrating an Astonishing Lifetime of Science, Advocacy, Humanitarianism, Hope, and Peace. He also publishes regularly for Psychology Today.



Thanks for tuning in! If you enjoy the Our Hen House podcast, please leave us a positive review! To view the show notes with resources, visit the website at https://www.ourhenhouse.org/ep749/

How do we put farmed animals on the agenda for policymakers? This week, Gabriel Wildgen joins us to discuss the Animal Policy Alliance, a project of The Humane League that is working to connect state and local animal organizations across the US to each other and help them get what they need to compete with animal agriculture.



Gabriel Wildgen is the Director of Public Policy for The Humane League and is heading up the new Animal Policy Alliance, a national network of local and state level policy organizations uniting to end large-scale animal cruelty through policy change. Gabriel formerly represented the Good Food Institute on Capitol Hill, where he helped secure the first-ever Congressional appropriation for alternative protein research. Gabriel holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Bachelor of Journalism from Carleton University.



Thanks for tuning in! If you enjoy the Our Hen House podcast, please leave us a positive review! To view the show notes with resources, visit the website at https://www.ourhenhouse.org/ep748/

How did humans’ relationship with the other animals go so completely awry? The incomparable Jim Mason – author, lawyer, thinker, and animal rights OG – joins us to discuss his seminal work, An Unnatural Order: The Roots of Our Destruction of Nature, for a discussion about where humanity went wrong, why it matters now more than ever, and how we can start to put it right.



Jim Mason is an author and attorney focusing on human/animal concerns. He is the author of An Unnatural Order: The Roots of Our Destruction of Nature and co-author with Peter Singer of Animal Factories and The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter. He is a contributor to A Cultural History of Animals and The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies and his writings have appeared in Audubon, The New York Times, New Scientist, and numerous other publications.



Thanks for tuning in! If you enjoy the Our Hen House podcast, please leave us a positive review! To view the show notes with resources, visit the website at https://www.ourhenhouse.org/ep747/

Rescued animals at some sanctuaries are now facing a new hurdle before they can be truly safe: climate change. We are joined this week by Kathy Stevens of Catskill Animal Sanctuary to discuss this new challenge.



Kathy Stevens is the co-founder and executive director of Catskill Animal Sanctuary. Since then, Catskill has saved more than 5,000 non-human individuals through direct rescue — and exponentially more through programming that encourages humans to adopt veganism. Kathy is also the author of Where the Blind Horse Sings and a contributor to books, podcasts and articles on animal sentience, animal rights, and veganism.



Thanks for tuning in! If you enjoy the Our Hen House podcast, please leave us a positive review! To view the show notes with resources, visit the website at https://www.ourhenhouse.org/ep746/