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As Sustainable Dish comes to a close, my co-host, James Connolly, and I wanted to reflect on some of our favorite episodes.
They may be your favorites if you’ve been a long-time listener. If you are new to the show, these may be the episodes you’ll want to check out first.
James and I have had the good fortune to meet incredible and interesting people while learning a lot along the way.
Listen in as James and I take a trip down memory lane.
Diana’s favorite episodes:
Episode 117: Dr. Sylvia Karpagam on Malnutrition and the Effects of the Vegetarian Myth in India
Episode 244: Pablo Manzano, PhD on New Research Comparing Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Wildlife and Livestock
Episode 98: The Stolen Goat with Lauren Manning
Episode 173: Nick Offerman, Actor, Woodworker, and Meat Activist
Episode 197: Florence Williams on Using Science to Heal a Broken Heart
Episode 203: Maui Nui Venison on Turning an Invasive Species into Nutrient-Dense Food
Episode 248: Well for Culture Co-founders Chelsey Lugar & Thosh Collins on the Seven Circles of Wellness
Episode 249: Dr. Tommy Wood on Nutrition & Brain Health
James’s favorite episodes:
Episode 238: Isle Kohler Rollefson, author of Hoofprints on the Land
Episode 140: Sean B. Carrol, author of Serengeti Rules
Episode 252: Dan Egan, author of The Devil’s Element
Episode 257: Ulba Bosma on the Rise of the Sugar Industry
Episode 226: Chloe Sorvino, author of Raw Deal: Hidden Corporate Greed and the Fight for the Future of Meat
Rather watch this episode on YouTube? Check it out here: Episode 270: Fireside Chat with James Connolly
Resources:
Connect with James:
Website: The Primate Kitchen
Instagram: @primatekitchen
Twitter: @jamescophoto
Episode Credits:
Thank you to all who’ve made this show possible. Our hosts are Diana Rodgers and James Connolly. Our producer is Emily Soape. And, of course, we are grateful for our sponsors, Global Food Justice Alliance members, and listeners.
If you believe in making sure that people all over the world should have access to nutritious food, please join my mission through my non-profit, the Global Food Justice Alliance. All sustaining members get free downloads and you’ll be helping get healthy protein like meat, fish, and eggs to food-insecure kids. Go to sustainabledish.com/join and check it out!
And if you’re looking for a guide to get your diet back on track so you feel your very best, plus learn more about meat’s role in a healthy, sustainable, and ethical food system, check out Sustainavore.
This is my signature course to help you eat for your health, the planet, and your values. For more information, head to Sustainavore and sign up!
Show support for the podcast by visiting our sponsors:
LMNT is my favorite electrolyte company. It’s a delicious blend of sodium, magnesium, and potassium to keep you hydrated better than water alone. It’s sugar-free and has no dodgy ingredients. Electrolytes are also important in regulating your immune system, helping to keep you healthy during the colder months of cold and flu season.
You can place your order and get a free sample pack of flavors with any purchase at sustainabledish.com/LMNT
Transcript:
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I’m Diana Rodgers, a real food registered dietitian, author, and sustainability advocate. I co-host this podcast with James Connolly who was a producer on my film Sacred Cow. I also founded the Global Food Justice Alliance, an initiative advocating for the inclusion of animal-source foods like meat, dairy, and eggs for a more nutritious, sustainable, and equitable worldwide food system. You can check it out and join me at globalfoodjustice.org. Thanks again for listening. And now, onto our show.
Diana Rodgers, RD (Sustainavore Ad)
If you’re looking for a guide to help you get your diet back on track to help you feel your very best and to learn more about meat’s role in a healthy and sustainable and ethical food system, then I highly recommend you take my Sustainavore course. I’ve condensed all of my knowledge in human nutrition and agriculture and have made it accessible to everyone in eight easy modules. There are quizzes, tips, and motivational emails to keep you on your journey. It also comes with a free cookbook and other great bonuses. So, eat for your health, the planet and your values. Head to sustainavore.com today and check it out.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome back to the Sustainable Dish podcast, everyone. So James and I have a special episode for you. As you’ve been maybe listening to the last few episodes, I’ve been alerting people that we are wrapping up the Sustainable Dish podcast. And so I thought it would be appropriate to have one of our final podcast with James Connolly, my co-host, to kind of reflect on some of the podcasts that we’ve recorded, some of our favorite ones, and just kind of have a little… kind of say goodbye in the podcast episode. So welcome, James.
James Connolly
Cool. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it’s it’s always nice to catch up. And I’m very sad that it’s changing. In some ways, I think that it is in podcasting is really hard, right? I think, especially if you want to do justice to all the stories that we’re putting together and do justice to the people who are kind of working in the same field or tangentially to us and do all of that stuff. I think we’ve had some amazing episodes over the years. And, you know, like, that’s how I met you was through a podcast, I was listening to that… And I just remember, like, just years and years ago, when Sacred Cow was Kale Vs Cow, when we first met, you know, and just kind of talking about that, and seeing the evolution of your career, and, you know, everything that’s been associated with the film, and the progress that we’ve made, and the conversations we’ve had, because it’s been really, really quite special.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, and I haven’t really, like, you know, talked much about, like, why I’m ending the podcast, so I can just kind of let listeners know, you know. I have never made a dime. It has been a financial loss for me ever since I very first started it. And, you know, with all of my travel, it was just getting harder and harder to record six podcasts in a week, and then take off for a little bit and, you know, keep it keep things fresh and keep it going. And I’ve been, you know, so effective with Global Food Justice. And with all of the, you know, I just got back from Uruguay. I was in Canada earlier and Australia before that. And so my energy towards Global Food Justice is what’s most important to me right now. You know, I think I may still, you know, when there’s interesting studies that come out, or whatever, I may still record and post on YouTube when I feel moved to do so. But the weekly guests, weekly podcast, and maintaining that grind of a schedule. Now that I’m an old lady – officially turning 50 next week. You’re close behind me, right?
James Connolly
I know, I know. January,
Diana Rodgers, RD
January. So, you know, I think we get our AARP kind of seeing your senior moments where we’re allowed to, you know, pivot and focus on what’s really important. And so, although the podcast has been amazing, and really informed the film, Sacred Cow is time for it to go to bed. So…
James Connolly
Yeah, and it’s still a recording of a lot of the things that we’ve learned, the arguments in longer form, you know, there’s just… there’s a lot of… there’s so many elements of this that I’m still trying to learn. And one of the joys of it was, it was terrifying for me to be on the podcast. I remember the first couple of interviews I did. I remember actually watching myself like, as you know, like, my body dissociated. And we’d go into this state where I’m like, “Just pay attention to what they’re saying. Don’t think of the next question.” Like all of the stuff associated with that, but you originally came to me because you were like, you have all this curiosity. You don’t have an outlet for that. I’m gonna force you to kind of do this so that you can talk about the things that kind of matter to you. And being in New York City, there’s not a lot of people want to talk about this stuff. Right? And they don’t want to talk about soil health. They don’t want to talk about you know, like, range management, ruminant digestion.
Diana Rodgers, RD
I made you volunteer for the podcast because it would be good for you. That’s what I do. Yeah. So thank you for your service, I really appreciate you taking some of the load off. And also, I mean, for me, a lot of the guests are people that I’ve met at conferences that I’m familiar with their work, I saw them speak or whatever. But your job was a little different in that you didn’t have that exposure to a lot of the guests. And so you were like, reading a 400-page book. And then, you know, trying to track down the author, tried to get them on the podcast cold. And so that’s very different than what I was doing, which was just kind of like winging it, because I had dinner with someone at a conference after watching their presentation. So my job was a lot easier than your job. And I appreciate what you did.
James Connolly
Yeah, I would, I would never, like tell the author of the book that I had read their book and the book they’d written before that and, you know, like, 20 articles in order to sit down or anything like that, because I felt it would be completely overwhelming. But it I felt like it was, you know, like, I think if you want to understand an author’s point of view, they have to encapsulate it within a book, but there are so many sort of myriad entities that go into their worldview. They just want to understand where they were coming from, and you know, some of them ghost you. Right? So, like, you had that prepared? And, you know, some of it is… it’ll be associated with everybody gets busy. You know, scheduling is sometimes a complete nightmare. You know, international scheduling can sometimes be really hard. Yeah, like, I remember when I did an interview on Hoofprints on the Land, she primarily works in Rajasthan, in India. She’s a camel herd veterinarian, and I just happened to be able to get her while she was in Germany. So we’re able to kind of work out some of the timing on that. And that was just a really, really wonderful story kind of coming across from halfway around the globe. And you’ve had that as well, I think it’s talking to people in India and talking to people about like, you know, this is a global issue, like trying to get everything to kind of work, so that you can sit down with somebody for an hour to get their worldview. And the thing that I love most about this is that so many people were devoted to so many different aspects of this, and had different ‘whys’ as to why they got into this and why they were passionate about it. And so it was really fun to explore their whys.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah. I agree. Yeah, in fact, I made a list before we got on the phone, or on Zoom here of kind of my highlight episodes, but you’re reminding me that I forgot one. And that is Sylvia Karpagam, who is a public health doctor from India, who I mean, the anti-meat narrative going on in India is really intense, because there’s like classes involved. I mean, it’s basically, you’ve got one class that is claiming to be vegetarian that even though they’re not, in reality, really vegetarians, because a lot of them, you know, will eat meat when they go out or hide it or whatever. But then you’ve got, you know, a different class of people who can’t afford meat often, but really need it. And Sylvia is really trying to point out that, you know, these kids are going to school because of the meal, like that’s their main driver to go to school, and a lot of these Muslim majority communities in rural India, and you’ve got a school lunch program that is largely run by a very religious group that is sort of a quasi-government group that won’t even not… they don’t have meat, but they don’t even have like, onions and garlic and spices. So the food is like incredibly, not only nutrient-poor, but also bland. And so the kids aren’t going to school because the food stinks. And so you’ve got malnourished and under-educated, rural people there. So that podcast was really fantastic. And I have a lot of respect for Sylvia because what’s going on over there with you know, if you’re even rumored to have meat in your house, you might get stoned to death. Yeah. So Yeah. And,
James Connolly
So yeah. And you know, since the Narendra Modi kind of took over, he is sort of a Hindu nationalist, very big fan of the caste system, very anti-Muslim, but lives that kind of very ascetic lifestyle. He claims to never have had sex. He was married, but he lives this very… like he’s always fasting. He’s always living off a… tries to live this very pure, you know, the worldview sort of aspect of it, but a lot of it is really centered around Hindu nationalism. And so you see within the Muslim minority The… within a country, they’re essentially being persecuted in a myriad of different ways. And one of them is through diet. So if anybody is… there are butcher shops that are being shut down, slaughterhouses, you can see a lot of that stuff sort of happening. We tried to send GoPros to Sylvia, because working on Death in the Garden, we thought her perspective, a lot of the visual imagery might actually, like work really well. We just couldn’t make it through the customs system there. Everything sort of got lost a little bit, and then the excise taxes and everything like that it would have cost us you know, the price of a GoPro in order to get it to Sylvia. It was just an absolute mess. It’s somewhere in India or a bunch of GoPros that were supposed to film all of that stuff, it will never seen the light of day.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Wow. Well, you know, my friends who are from that area of the world, India, Sri Lanka, I mean, they talked about how, I mean, people complain about racism in America, and they just have no idea. You know, once you go to some of these other countries and see how people are persecuted for the color of their skin, or their religion. It’s very intense. So, hats off to Sylvia Karpagam. Number one on the list here, but certainly not in any specific order. I don’t know if you want to go next with your favorite podcast, but I just thought we’d kind of like just reflect on what’s the best.
James Connolly
Yeah, you know, one of the things I mean, I really did love Hoofprints on the Land, just because I think that her methodology for kind of like laying out the story of camel herding in India is actually really fun. And she has such a deep love for the caste that is the camel herding population, but how integrated their farming system is with the manure and manure management that happens in India. And so one of the funnier stories was she was… she would go back to Germany, and then come back to India to visit and maybe like telling them about the grass in Germany. They’re absolutely obsessed, like, everything was about this idea of like, it’s being wasted if it’s not being fed to animals. And so it’s just a completely different worldview. They view the land in a very different way than we do. And it just reminded me a lot of hunter-gatherers, like if you walk through the forest, a hunter-gatherer will be able to sell, you know, sign, and you know, markings and a myriad of 1000 things that we just can’t see. And so you have these camel herders who were really valued for the nutrition that they bring, for the meat that they bring in for their culture as well. It’s a really beautiful culture that’s slowly sort of dying away. And the cost of that is, in essence, in terms of the vegetable and other parts of agriculture means that they’re actually not getting a lot of and the nitrogen and the phosphorus, and all the other elements being laid on the land after harvest. So what they do is they bring those the goats and the sheep in and they bring the camels in after harvest, and they clean up all the roughage that is left behind. And then they poop on the land. And they just, they’re part of an active cycle. And just the way that she kind of really lead you into all of this stuff. So she, with a number of different people had built an entire edifice around pastoralist communities where she was trying to get people from all over the world to kind of like meet up and talk about the problems with pastoralism, the things that could be improved upon, but also the value of pastoralism. One of the stories that she has in there is about Spain and the transhumance movement, that all the sheepherders that the wool on the sheep, in essence, is a perfect carrier for seed as it moves from, like place to place. So they have these, you know, incredible roads that are in essence, just for pastoralist communities that move through that whole landscape, but they bring fertility and fecundity with them wherever they go. So it’s really cool to talk to somebody who’s like, spent their entire lives like devoted to this and just like, yeah, just riff on, you know, things that you just don’t typically think about what that stuff you know,
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, you’re reminding me… I mean, we haven’t really talked but about my trip, but I just got back from Uruguay and there’s this group of regenerative female farmers there that I spent the first like five days with the Pampeanas they call themselves and so it’s the women of the Pampeanas and very similar stories and passion and you know, some of them are only making like $30 a hectare when they could be making 500 if they were to plant soy there, but they’re healing the land and it that can only come from the passion that they have for managing the livestock and loving that way of life and it was really moving. So it’s neat. It’s neat to talk to people from all over the world that are so passionate about this. Yeah. All right, I’m gonna go next. My next favorite one was relatively recently, Pablo Manzano, Spanish researcher who did some work looking at the Serengeti and comparing pastoralists there to wild herds of wildebeest and all kinds of animals and found that the world of beasts were actually emitting the same, if not more methane than the cattle, but the cattle were actually performing the same ecosystem function. So, you know, the conclusion of Pablo and the other researchers on the paper were that cattle can be, you know, effective substitutes for wild animals basically, putting a pin in, like, like denying that rewilding is the solution, which I’ve been, you know, you and I have been saying all along, but some of our most fierce opponents in this argument that we’ve been making are the rewilders. It’s not even the vegans. It’s the rewilders, right. They’re wanting to just kind of, you know, let nature have its place and leave it alone. All right, so wolves get to eat and humans don’t. I don’t know, you know, so. I was super impressed with that one. That’s episode 244.
James Connolly
All right. Yeah. That, so that takes me into so it was one of my first conversations. And so I found a book in a used bookstore on like St. Mark’s place. And it was a book called Serengeti Rules. And I picked it up because I know, like, it just had elephants on the front. And I was carrying it around with me and I walked to the East Village, and I saw premiering that week, I think was Tribeca Film Festival was a documentary Serengeti Rules. And I was like, what, what is this? You know, it’s like a serendipitous moment. Now, in Serengeti Rules, his basic argument is that there are keystone species within every ecosystem, and the removal of those keystone species. Some are predators, some are prey, the removal of that it has a fundamental shift in the ecology of that system. A lot of them are predators. And so what he… the argument that I remember him sort of like, in the way that I interpreted the argument was really centered around this idea that, really, the prey species are the ones that will take over and create a monoculture. If they’re given the chance, they will completely eat away at a system unless they have something that keystone predator species in there. So the example that he uses is starfish. Starfish are a predator species. And so he takes these tidal pools and removes all the starfish. And what ends up happening is the sea urchins kind of take over. And then there’s nothing else. There’s no biodiversity anymore. Because essentially, you have this one species that propagates beyond control.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And which is not just a thought experiment. It’s actually happens, but like, yeah, it’s actually happening.
James Connolly
Yeah, yeah. And so the stories that he tells it, the reason why I called it Serengeti Rules was because of the wildebeest population. After the vaccination against rinderpest happened. You had this year, this massive decrease in wildebeest population because there was a disease that was brought over from India by Italian colonialism when they tried to take over Ethiopia. They essentially didn’t inoculate or segregate their cows when they brought them over. And so they, in essence, have, like, left this out into the wild. It was a massive decrease in population. And the wildebeests, when they inoculated the cows against it, and eventually the wildebeests, you started to see this explosion in population, that explosion of population everybody was freaking out. And the same way, they’re like Savory… remember when Savory was kind of talking about elephant populations? They were like, we have to cull this it’s going from 300,000 to 500,000 to 800,000. One of the scientists was like, Wait a second, let us see what nature does. And what he saw was it… I think it ended up sort of plateauing at 1.2 million wildebeest. And so when end up happening in the Serengeti was you had this millions of these ruminant animals coming through. And then you start an explosion in cheetah population exploded and lion population started moving them, started moving them around. So then you start to saw like acacia tree starting to come back. You start to see all of these different other plant species coming back. And then you saw primates, everything. The whole explosion of the Serengeti happen because these wildebeest populations were essentially doing what they have been doing for a very long time. This is such a cool story. And it is one of the most beautiful documentaries too. It’s like there’s like visually the storytelling and it is actually really, really beautifully done. Um, so that was a big get for me. That was like, you know, you started… like you starting to walk in podcasting. And suddenly I meet this guy, and his resume is off the charts – three pages long. And I was like, I am not worthy to talk to this guy. But he’s super kind. And we just had a really nice conversation was like three days before Christmas. And he took time out of his day to just have a conversation with it. So it was really cool.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, I’m gonna add that to my list because I haven’t I, you know, heard about the book. I did not read it. And I have not seen that documentary. So I’m gonna add that to it. It is amazing how many people we’ve spoken to that I’m like, Who are you, like, to be talking to me? You know, right. Incredible.
James Connolly
Yeah. Yeah. What’s next?
Diana Rodgers, RD
My… let’s see, I’m gonna go with way back to Lauren Manning. And the episode I’ve recorded with her right before she was my co-host for a little bit before you. So I met her because of an Instagram post that she did where some people stole her goat. So this is way back episode 98. And I’m foggy on the details of the whole story. But essentially, people came, they took her goat. They were activists, and she ended up trying to have a dialogue with them. She posted the whole story on Instagram. And I remember…
James Connolly
Do you want more of the details because I remember. I think it was she had an Instagram. She had hashtag something that was an animal rights group hashtag that she put it into one of her posts not knowing what it was. It sent all of these people to her and she got relentlessly attacked on Instagram. Then somebody found out where she lived. And we think I mean, we don’t really know. But one of her goats disappeared one night. It was quote, unquote, rescued. Right. And then she wrote this really beautiful, wonderful short piece. And continue that.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yes, on Instagram a long time ago, but it was a beautiful piece. You’re remembering better than me.
James Connolly
No, and she was like and he just really loves raw carrots. Like that was the thing I remember was like, the she just knew every animal that she was taking care of so well. Like if you’re gonna take care of him, please take care of him the way that I have.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Right. Yeah. So that was that was really really special. Yeah, another one that you know, speaking of people that are like, who are you? I can’t believe you’re talking to me. Nick Offerman. So I had Nick Offerman on my podcast, which kind of blows my mind. And it was really mostly about his book that he came out with not too long ago about going out in the woods and visiting a bunch of national parks, driving an Airstream around in the middle of COVID. But I’m so happy to say that he and I are like friends now. I had no idea who he was. And the name like kind of rang a bell, but I didn’t even know because I hadn’t watched Parks and Rec I’m not like a huge TV watcher. And when I was in England shooting at James Rebanks’s his farm, he, you know, we’re packing up and everything, and we’re… it was a late night. We’re trying to get out to Manchester to actually record with Patrick Holden the very next day. And James said to us, you know, Nick Offerman is coming tomorrow. And I was like, Who? He’s like, you know, Nick Offerman, the guy with the mustache and I was like, I think I know who that is. I don’t know. And so you know, I called up a… I had like one internet bar at James’s farm. I looked him up and went through many, many different channels to try to convince him to be the narrator of Sacred Cow. And unfortunately, COVID made it so I couldn’t meet him in person when he was making the… when he was doing the voiceover for the film, but I just do remember that after almost every sentence he read, he’s like, god dammit, I’m so glad you’re making this film. Like he was just so into it. He’s like, I don’t think a lot of people understand. They think oh, you know, funny that you had Ron Swanson narrate it. But Nick really truly believes in regen ag and cares about this movement very much and he’s probably the only celebrity out there that really does get it And so I had him on episode 173. And you know, have back and forth with him often so. So there you go episode 173. Another one in the books for me as one of my favorites. How about you for next one?
James Connolly
So I want to say that was one of the most excited I was about doing an interview that I just feel like I didn’t… if I was a better interviewer, I might have been able to kind of pull out more of the strings associated with it. There was a book that came out about a year ago was called The Devil’s Element, and it’s Dan Egan’s book about phosphorus. And it’s one of the sort of like, first of all, it is a really, really wonderful romp through history. Like you take this one element, you take that, and you follow it through this sort of thread line, as you move in and through agriculture. Phosphorus is also used in a myriad number of different like, you know, industries. But one of the things that we sort of stood in awe, like reading this was that you could take something so integral to life, Carl Sagan says, in essence, like the limits to life on this planet are due to one element and one element alone, that is phosphorus. He said, we can’t make it. We can’t, like do anything with it, all we can do is recycle it. And it recycles through primarily through animals. So I had gone down to Florida, because I went to a place it’s actually profiled in here, it’s called Bone Valley. And a lot of the fertilizer firms like Mosaic are down there, nutrient and stuff like that. It’s one of the largest phosphorus mines in the Americas. The only other one that’s bigger than that is in West Africa, Morocco, sort of like took it over. It’s one of the largest phosphorus mines in the world. So now think of something that the limits to life on this planet are centered around this. And Dan had done this incredible story about it. But it’s one of the you know, one of the elements of that is that it does promote life, right. So if you put too much on the land, if in agriculture, you’re living through NPK fertilization all the time, this leeches into waterways, and it’s part of the reason why we have just enormous amounts of dead zones in our lakes, and rivers and streams and in the Gulf of Mexico. And so he goes through all of this stuff that that we, we know is integral to life, but also secondary, the elements of it is used in white phosphorus bombs. So it’s sort of like Greek fire, you can’t really put it out. Elemental phosphorus at anything above, like, I think it’s like 87 degrees, spontaneously combusts, and it will not stop until it burns itself out. And so we turn this thing that is so integral to life, also into a weapon of destruction. And we find that with nitrogen, we find out with phosphorus, and we even find that with potassium and saltpeter that we use for ammunition. And so it’s a weird sort of like cognitive, like, sort of element to the understanding of those like three, like things that we use that are elemental to life that are also part of this sort of war machine as well. And then Dan had also done a book on the Great Lakes that was really stunning. That is really long. And he’s obsessed with water. Right? He’s obsessed with what happened to the Great Lakes, a lot of the algae blooms and everything like that. But he tells about this one story about the creating of the North American Mediterranean. So they built a canal called the St. Louis Causeway that they built in the 70s, in order to bring all of those lakes together, so that they could use it for export to Western Europe, and how it just destroyed entire ecosystems. So they wanted to create a Mediterranean, but they didn’t think about the long term cost of it. And so he’s a really amazing writer. I just couldn’t draw, like the passion out of him. And like, I want him to get angry, or like passionate about it. And I just felt like I wasn’t able to do that very well. But I still think that episode is actually really cool.
Diana Rodgers, RD (LMNT ad)
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Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, yeah. You know, there are many guests that I had on that I kind of wish I pushed a little bit harder. But that’s just not my interest in this podcast. You know, I can’t even tell you, I mean, daily, I get emails from PR firms saying you’re a sustainability writer, you should have our vegan chef on because they’ve figured out a way to blah, blah, blah, or, you know, this new food, you know, this new fake protein or whatever, and I could easily say yes, and then have them on and ambush them. And I don’t do it but there have been a few people that I’ve wished that I’ve was a better interviewer or for pushing back but that’s just not… I mean I was an art major, and then I studied nutrition. So the… I have people on the show that I find interesting. And I’m not interested in making people uncomfortable or, you know, whatever. But the one podcast where I did you know, the next one on my list that I have on here is Florence Williams and her book Heartbreak, which is like the science of heartbreak. And I thought that one was definitely not related to sustainability at all. And I guess it’s kind of a little bit of a stretch, it’s sort of health related. But she, you know, went through a divorce similar to me, and but she turned it into a book. So she was a writer before she was a science writer. She wrote about like breast cancer and stuff like that. But then as she was going through all the different phases of her divorce, decided to write a book about what happens when you’re severed from a long-term relationship. And the pain of that is similar, I guess, to the pain of like having a root canal, like there is that an actual physical pain there. And I remember her telling me, it takes three years, and I was like two years in, and I was like, No, don’t tell me that. But that’s definitely somebody that again, I just, I just read her book, personally felt really moved by it, and wanted to have her on the podcast. So nothing to do with regen ag. But I did get a lot of feedback on that one that people really liked it. So I’m hoping I turned a few people onto her book. So I have a few more on here. What do you have next on yours?
James Connolly
Well, I want to talk about Ulbe Bosma’s book, The World of Sugar. I also don’t want to forget, there were so many people that we interviewed for Sacred Cow that were just really truly wonderful. All of those interviews are, they’re really stunning. And people took time out of their very busy lives to sort of meet with us to have these long-form conversations to dive into the details of their worldview. And I think it’s, you know, it’s really, like, I think the film that we ended up putting together the stories that… really passionate moments where if somebody said something that would like, I always go back to like Robb Wolf, where he was like, every time I walk into a bodega in New York City, like, he always says, you have more food choices than the Pharaohs of Egypt or the kings of England. And you walk in, you’re just like, you’re in awe. And you’re also disgusted at the same time, and you have to have this mix of emotions all at the same time. You know, there’s so many sort of like little bits and pieces in there that I carry with me everywhere I go. So that, like, I want to give a shout-out to a lot of the people that we met and took time to kind of like, have those conversations.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, definitely. I mean, it was really heart-wrenching to see how much ended up on the cutting room floor when it got edited into a real film. And there were actual entire interviews that didn’t make it in because the person either, you know, was repeating something someone else said, but then the other person had different sound bites that worked in other places. And so we just went with them instead. But Charles Massy is a really good example. Somebody who gave a beautiful, beautiful interview, and in fact, that’s the one… so Nelson, my director of photography, who you got to know very well. But he that was probably on, I don’t know, the 10th or 12th interview that he was on with me. And after Charles Massey, he’s like, Oh, my God, I totally get it now. And I’m like, Oh, now you get it, like trying to convince these guys, you know, snacking on their granola bars on the side after watching, you know, all these things. And Charles Massy is the one who did it for him. And he didn’t even make it in, and Frederic Leroy, you know, we only have one little tiny snippet from him in the film, but his entire interview and his entire body of work, all the writings that he’s done. He is my favorite writer on the subject of meat because he fully understands the entire argument so well, like, as a holistic argument.
James Connolly
Yeah, I recently just saw Charles Massy in another regenerative agriculture film where he’s actually highlighted. I think he’s the main profile in that, and I think it’s primarily focused on Australia. So he does a really good job in that. Yeah, there… I mean, there’s so many people that I could have listened to more and more and more, you know, we had, I don’t know, 70-80 hours of, of interviews we’d had to go through to distill it down to a 90 minute film. Yeah, and there’s just so much less that gets lost. But Ulbe’s book, The World of Sugar. It really… what he’s trying to do, I think is actually fairly profound. He said that the takeaway for me, if you’re gonna just put it into a soundbite, in and of itself, he said the 20th entry was the century of oil, fossil fuels, gas. He said the 19th century was the century of sugar. And so when you hear about a lot of that stuff, you’re like, wait… wait, you’re gonna make this argument? You know, because there’s just so much in the 19th century. You have the expansion into the West, you have cattle country, you have the sort of birth of the sort of Western ideal of like, what that should look like. You have any number of different things happening with sort of Victorian England, you know, any number of different things, but he is quite literally tracing the long-term ecological deforestation and human damage that was done for this thing that is, has no nutritive value, barely at all. That was a figurehead of wealth that was then democratized and sent to all the sort of colonial parts of the world so that the English person that’s sitting out there having their tea, regardless of what class you were, you had a sugar bowl on there. And the cost to a lot of that expansion to a lot of that the slavery involved in a lot of that is really centered around this one thing. And so as we move through the 20th century, in the way that we’re talking about food, we seem to really want it to kind of start at the beginning of the 1900s. In 1907, say, or haber bosch who wanted to start with the industrialization and the mechanization of our agricultural system. But his argument is like, no, so much of this was centered around the distillation of this thing, which is the tall grass weedy grass, that became sort of a cultural component of all of this stuff, especially with agriculture. So when you’re talking about phosphorus, you’re talking about Bone Valley, you’re talking about Florida. You’re talking about sugars, like slavery, we’re talking about all this stuff. So it’s a really dense sort of academic book, but like peppered with an incredible amount of research. And he’s not coming in from it from this plant-based versus animal-based sort of argument. He’s just say… he’s an academic who studied this very specific thing that I just found really, really interesting.
Diana Rodgers, RD
I mean, it’s reminding me a little bit, and I still need to go back and find maybe you can find it for me and tell me what page it’s on. But there was a brilliant thought experiment that Daniel Quinn did in one of those three books, Ishmael, Call Me Ishmael, The Story of B, where he talks about this group of humanoid things that find this special salt that gives them a smell. And they’re called the stinks. And they don’t even realize that they stink so bad. And then they find this other thing to get rid of the stinks, but then that gives them like, heart disease, or I can’t… my memory is foggy on this whole thing. But like it was a really cool story. Because it’s so similar to the food issues we have today. We’re so used to eating these foods that are so unnatural to us that when we start to have all these problems, instead of just removing the natural food, we add on ozempic. And you know, all these other things that then cause more problems instead of just dealing with the first problem.
James Connolly
Yeah. Chris Kresser talks about that. He said, You know, like, Western medicine really says, well, you will you have a rock in your shoe, we’re just going to give you painkillers, right for the pain that it causes…
Diana Rodgers, RD
Instead of taking the rock out. That’s an easier way than a group of people eating salt. Anyway, if you can find that, let me know because I actually did flip through all three books, like three times looking for that story. And then I was like, Did I make it up? Maybe I made it up? Maybe I dreamt it.
James Connolly
Yeah, there’s the A, B’s and the C’s, which is that A’s live off of the B’s and the B’s live off of the C’s and the C’s live off of the A’s. And so a visitor meets them and says, you know, oh, this means that meat is delicious. Where did you get it from and they point to the B’s and they say we eat them. And so the person is disgusted by that because they don’t want to see that something is eaten. But within the sort of triumvirate of how our soil eats our plants eat, and our animals eat. We seem to have a disgust for some of the elements of that. And I remember like teaching in schools, we, you know, the kids were afraid of their… they were afraid of soil. They were afraid of all the things so it’s not just the one but yeah, it’s very interesting that we modern, civilized society, so afraid of the elements that are composed of all three of this.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, well, this is like the perfect format for our rabbit hole-ish brains. Because we can like lightly dive into one thing and then hop over to something else. So I’m gonna change the subject and go to I have three more podcasts on my list of podcasts so I’m just gonna rattle them off quickly and we can chat about them or not but one is episode 203 Maui Nui, Vennison. This story was absolutely incredible. And you know, I feature a lot of companies on here. I have to this date anyway, no, you know, financial incentive to be promoting them. Their stuff’s incredible. It tastes amazing. They sent me some venison. But the cool thing is they’re harvesting invasive venison that was brought there by like a prince or I can’t remember what the story was. But someone brought all these invasive axis deer to Maui and a few other islands. And there were no natural predators. These deer have completely taken over because Hawaii, basically like a salad bar for these animals. They’re causing massive erosion. They have got to be exterminated. There’s like hundreds of 1000s of these deer, I may be exaggerating. There’s way too many deer and they go out in the middle of the night and they sharp shoot them like basically while they’re sleeping with all these like super burly CrossFit dudes who go in there and then like sling the venison, the deer on their shoulder or put them on to ATVs. And they process them all at night. And so the deer are killed with minimal stress. And they make these venison sticks that you can buy right off their website that are incredible. They’re little charcuterie sticks. But they also have fresh venison and they have a lot of customers that are vegetarian or vegan, except for their meat because they know how ethical they’ve made it. So their whole story. I mean, I was really blown away when I learned about them. So I’m gonna shout them out. The two others – one is Well for Culture. When I had them on, that’s episode 248. I met them also through social media. They are a young Native American couple young family with two cute little kids, and they are fitness influencers. And they have a beautiful book that they wrote where they integrate fitness with eating and spirituality, and they talk a lot about how meat is integral to First Nations. And, you know, it’s easy for Robb and I to make that argument in Sacred Cow, in our book we did. But you know, these guys do it better, because, you know, they’re actually part of that community. And they’re just really articulate really outspoken about the importance of health and meat’s role in that. So just really love their story and their holism approach to wellness. And then finally, the last highlight that I have is episode 249 Tommy Wood, who is a pediatrician in the Seattle area, he’s a professor and an active researcher. And the whole podcast is just about the incredible importance of animal protein to developing humans, you know, especially to babies. And I mean when he goes through, you know, the problems from B12 deficiency the critical need for DHA. I mean, we go through all the nutrients and it is absolutely undeniable that animal source foods are critical to human on, you know, baby omnivores and why we need them so much. And a few of the clips from that podcast went like bananas viral on my social media just because he’s so articulate. He’s so sharp about all that. So it’s amazing how sometimes you can have a different voice say something that you’re thinking, and that’s what makes it happen for people. So I’m glad that I was able to expose people to different voices that resonated best with them.
James Connolly
Yeah, and then and that was talked about when we went and did that UN Summit on sustainable livestock. One of the talks was primary researchers were talking about the importance of animal foods just in terms of nutrient density in developing children and pregnant mothers and all of this stuff is it’s not controversial in any way. Only it’s only controversial in in Western countries. Anybody has been working in developing countries… there was one woman who had been doing this for 20 years and she was like and an egg… any number of different foods that are absolutely integral to newborn and child nutrition is absolutely insane. Stunning.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Shirley Tuwally. I remember Yeah. First 1000 days, I’ve run into her a few times since. Yeah, she’s amazing. Yeah, it’s amazing how outside of the US where people are not confronted with the overabundance of food, you know, as soon as you get into areas where people are not overfed, the question of whether or not to eat meat is not even a question, you know, unless you, of course, as we mentioned, in the beginning of the episode with India, and then you’ve got religious issues going on in there. But, you know, and actually, I should mention, I have a paper that I don’t think I told you about this, but I have a position paper that is being submitted this week to the Journal of Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. I don’t know if it will be accepted. I’m hoping it will. Ty Beal and Frederic Leroy and another researcher are co-authors on the paper with me. And it’s meat’s role in solving both obesity and undernutrition. So, you know, I think it’s very easy to make the case that meat is important for people who are suffering from hunger. But it’s often very easy for people to say but you know, in high income countries, we should be eating less meat, of course. And this paper that we wrote actually argues against that, that all people need meat. And we all need to be, you know, looking closely at meat intake. And not just assuming that because someone is overfed that they necessarily should be cutting back on meat, it’s probably that they’re overeating other things.
James Connolly
I read recently somebody reached out to me on Instagram. I interviewed her for Sustainable Dish’s podcast. And she… I don’t want to say too much about her because I think she’s going through the nursing program. But she had sent me something this morning that I thought was actually really interesting, she said have you ever heard of biosphere two. And so biosphere two was, I think that was originally a… first one… second one was a closed containment system that was meant to be an experiment for the colonization of other planets. And so it had these eight scientists who had to sort of like live and spend all of their time within agriculture, but also doing experiments, be themselves, recycled nutrients do all of that stuff. They had livestock. Plus, they also had other… they were growing all of this food. Some of it was feedstock for the livestock, but other parts of it were recycled. And so over the course of this, I think it was like two or three years, we tried to figure out what is an optimal diet for this that wouldn’t… So if you think of a controlled experiment, this is probably the closest you’ll ever get to a controlled experiment. And so the allowance was typically somewhere around about I think, a quarter of a pound of meat per week. I think meat was only in on Sundays. And most of the people experience pretty acute hunger. And the some people experience it more than others. But most of the people experience acute hunger. They eventually lost about 10 to 15 to 20% of body weight, which is you know, going on that sort of diet, right, where they’re monitoring all of these things, the loss of percentage. But at the end of it, they sort of state that they had sort of gotten used to it, right? This sort of semi-starvation diet, but I was thinking about it in terms of Eat Lancet, because I’m like, that’s kind of what they were recommending. Right? So you created this entire ecosystem, but you put people on this diet that is in… they tried to try to measure protein content, fat content, and all of that stuff. But the elim… the major elimination of large parts of the meat element of it meant that they’re still sort of hungry all the time. And so for me, it was kind of a vision of what like the Eat Lancet diet was sort of feel like for most people, miserably go walking around.
Diana Rodgers, RD
I’m glad I’m 50 now and not 50 in 200 years from now, when that might be you know, people are gonna be listening to this podcast, they had all that access to all that meat and now we’re eating bugs and…
James Connolly
Yeah, definitely very interesting.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah. Well, anything else, James?
James Connolly
No, I mean, you know, Death in the Garden. We’re still working on the film. We’ve been… So far we have been in Turkey, the Arctic Circle, working with Sami reindeer herders, we’ve been working… going across the United States. I think the team is actually headed to Kenya pretty soon to go and talk to some of the Savory hubs. They’re just doing a tremendous amount of work. And of just creating, I think, the visual detail that we need in order to kind of make the film. So we’re continuing to work on that. It may be my last documentary. So I think I’m kind of a little bit over them. Mainly because the barrier for entry for like good documentaries is really centered around pushing people towards plant-based. And so the barrier for entry for even a great film or an interesting film is really hard. But the overall Zeitgeist nowadays, is to push people towards something else. I recently had a conversation with somebody who’s in another film festival, where they’re in upstate New York Film Festival is happening. They’re pushing people towards plant-based diets. They reached out to the founders of the film festival, they said would, you know, at least could you screen Sacred Cow so we can have a conversation about like, the northeast, right, like the the ecosystem, you know, differences between the northeast, you know, all this other stuff. And so we’ve sort of been trying to do a little bit of back and forth on that, just trying to have a conversation. But nobody even wants to have a conversation with this. Yeah. You know, so in some ways, like, you know, continue to work, continue sort of, like fight the good fight, and to do all the stuff that’s associated with that, but, you know, figure it out.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, I mean, I’m glad that there’s, you know, countries like Uruguay who are interested in having me come who really value what I have to say, who are I mean, the meat industry is so huge for them there. I don’t know, 96% grass-fed in Uruguay, and it was just a beautiful system. And they’re like, what’s going on out there? What, how can we push back? You know, so that’s what’s really fun for me is trying to help these small sustainable countries or producers to push back against this narrative that, you know, at least it’s getting more airtime that it’s run by these big, multinational conglomerates that are just interested in profit. I mean, I’m glad to see that the plant-based investment bubble is bursting. There’s less money going in now, people are starting to realize that consumers don’t want it. That it’s greenwashing and you know, just not living up to the claims. And so I probably could have made a lot of money, if I had bet against them in the stock market and little kind of kind of kicking myself that I didn’t do that. But at least I can sit there with my popcorn and watch.
James Connolly
Yeah, I don’t know, if we ended up getting into this very deeply. Chloe Sorvino’s book, Raw Seal. One of the conversations that we had sort of offline, I don’t know how much we ended up getting into it in the podcast. But one of the things you said was the food industry hadn’t had a novel product in a really long time. Yeah, right. It’s sort of mix and match, right? Add a little strawberry, do something, a little bit more cheese to things. This was a novel product that had all of the same elements of like, say, crypto exchanges, or anything like that. It was a novel product that a lot of dumb money went into. And so the series A and series B funding for a lot of this stuff was meant to get as much investment as possible, but then excise and get out of there before the plant-based meat like essentially fell. And so this was a financial scheme that, like was like from her perspective, this is, I mean, she didn’t necessarily say it was a scam, but the enthusiasm was misplaced. And there was a lot of the term that they use and in terms of like, financing, what they call when dumb money comes in, that you want to be, is the term they use… it’s called a great, now, you need a greater fool. As long as you as long as you have a greater fool that you can always make money. And so you need all of those people kind of operating behind. And so I think what we’re seeing right now is the tailings of that. We’re seeing a lot of people still trying to invest. You know, I mean, and we’ve seen the absurdities the market, right? Corn milk, cockroach milk. We’ve seen all of the money kind of going into every single aspect of it. I think what will happen now is like, alright, well, maybe we can breed insects, and maybe they are high protein, or what if we fed them to farm animals instead?
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah. Totally. I support that.
James Connolly
Introducing some degree of like, black five black fly larvae, like locusts, all of that stuff. Like, go for it, you know, but I think we’re sort of starting to come back to Earth in a lot of this.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah. Yeah. Glad to be seeing that. that movement coming back. Yeah. Well, James, thank you so much for accepting your forced volunteer role as a co-host, unpaid co-host of the Sustainable Dish podcast. I really do appreciate all the energy and all your help.
James Connolly
And for two introverts like us, to start a podcast or to do a podcast together. Yeah, definitely psychologically trying. That’s right. Yeah. But no, I mean, seriously, thank you for pushing me to kind of get out and have these conversations because you knew I was itching to like, talk about the things that really matter to me, you know? Yeah. So I appreciate that.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Good. All right. Well, I think there’s a few more podcasts we end October 31 2023. Things will be up as long as I keep paying for the server to host everything and yeah, again, thanks so much for listening, everyone and stay tuned for the last couple ones. Yeah.
James Connolly
Yeah. Absolutely. I really appreciate the audience and everybody involved in it. The editors, the people who had to deal with me.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Oh yes. Emily and Meg before her, you know.
James Connolly
Meg!
Diana Rodgers, RD
Meg did a great job too. So yeah. All right.
James Connolly
Great people.
Diana Rodgers, RD
All right, James, have a nice night.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Hey everyone, Diana here. I wanted to let you know that after many years and over 1 million downloads of the Sustainable Dish podcast, I’ve decided it’s time to direct my attention to other projects, including the Global Food Justice Alliance. It’s been a true honor to interview so many important leaders in the health and agricultural fields. And I’ve loved every minute of it. So, October 31, 2023, will be the last episode. Thank you so much for all of my dedicated listeners out there for your attention, your time. Thank you to Emily, my podcast editor, and to James Connolly, my co-host. Be sure to follow me at Global Food Justice and also at Sustainable Dish. You can get my newsletters, help contribute to the mission that I’m working on to make sure that all people have access to nutrient-dense, animal-sourced foods. Thank you.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Thanks so much for listening today and for following my work. If you believe in making sure that people all over the world should have access to nutritious food, please join my mission through my non-profit, the Global Food Justice Alliance. Visit sustainabledish.com/join and become a sustaining member today. All sustaining members get free downloads and you’ll be helping get healthy protein like meat, fish, and eggs to food-insecure kids. That’s sustainabledish.com/join. And thank you.
