James Aspey - Planet Slaughterhouse

Full transcript: James Aspey on London Real

3:28 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is James Aspey, the vegan and animal rights activist from Sydney, Australia. In 2014, you took a 365-day vow of silence and cycled 5,000 kilometers to raise awareness for animals and promote peace over violence. You then broke your vow during an interview on Australia’s most popular morning TV show.

4:45 You survived cancer, overcome drug abuse and eating disorders, and now travel the world, giving free speeches to make our planet a more sustainable place. James, welcome to London Real. Thanks a lot, man. Thanks for that intro. I appreciate it, brother.

4:57 No problem, man. You’re in London. What is the state of eating in this city? Like, when you get here, is this a place that knows your vibe, or is this a place where you’re like, I got some people that are going to be listening to my speeches this weekend? The vibe is definitely growing everywhere. This is definitely a place where you can easily eat vegan, and there’s tons of restaurants around. In fact, yesterday, I just walked five minutes from my restaurant, and I went to, is it Wagamama? Something like that. They got a new vegan menu there, which I was happy to see.

5:28 And so that’s basically, I think, kind of a worldwide thing right now, where veganism is growing, animal rights is growing. They say it’s the fastest growing social justice movement of our time. So, yeah, it’s a good place to be, man, and it’s a good time for this movement as well. You know, this vow of silence, I must say, it got my attention, because there’s a lot of people that protest things, but not a lot of people are willing to put that much skin in the game.

5:54 And so let’s talk about that first, and then we’ll talk about all things vegan. Why go in that big? And did you ever at some point think, I got in too deep? So that’s my question for you. Yeah, well, why? You know, desperate times call for desperate actions.

6:15 And I just realized what a desperate time this is. If you are another species on this planet, especially if you are a pig, cow, chicken or fish, it doesn’t get any more desperate than what they’re going through. And when I became aware of it, I realized how few people actually seem to be aware. So many people view themselves as animal lovers, or at the very least, they would say that they’re against animal cruelty. Yet they pay people every single day generally to mutilate and torture and kill animals for foods and products that not only they don’t need, but that they’re better off without. And when I started learning that we can live and thrive without consuming animal products, naturally I wanted to tell others how much healthier it is, how much better it is for the environment and for the animals.

7:03 And when people didn’t really change, which I expected they would want to, I felt I need to do something bigger. I need to, you know, Einstein said those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act. And I felt very grateful that I could see this injustice happening. And I felt a responsibility to do something. I thought the Devour of Silence would be a great way to raise awareness because it was something I didn’t know of anyone else doing.

7:32 And at the time I saw animals as voiceless, so I thought there was a connection there. And I just thought I’d give it a crack, man. There were definitely times where I thought I was in too deep. In fact, the whole year of planning it, everybody told me I was in too deep. No one thought, really, not many people at all thought that it was a good idea, including vegans.

7:53 But, you know, I just stuck with what I felt was right and I figured it was worth a crack. Why didn’t they think it was a good idea? Well, my family didn’t think it was a good idea because they thought it might send me crazy. They thought that, you know, friends and family thought it would draw maybe negative attention or that I wouldn’t be able to make it. And that would look negatively to the cause.

8:14 Vegans were saying things like, you need a voice, you need to give animals a voice. This is ridiculous. You have to talk about it. You know, I saw that as a little bit short-sighted. And to be honest, they were right up until the end there.

8:27 You know, I wrote a blog every day while I was traveling around Australia in that vow of science. But I didn’t reach that many people. I had about 10,000 people on my Facebook page, something like that. It was when I spoke for the first time when on that interview where that was shared and viewed by millions and millions of people. And that’s where the vow of science really was worth it.

8:49 And you hadn’t talked up until that point. Okay, so… You talked in your sleep. Hang on. That happened one time and I woke up, I’m like, who the hell was that, man?

8:58 What was going on? I’m just like thinking it. I realized I was sleep talking and I’d woke myself up. I’d accidentally spoke about four or five times. Just a word would slip out of my mouth, mainly at the start and purely accidental.

9:13 Although I did say my vow was officially finished at the stroke of midnight when the new year began. And I had planned to speak for the first time on The Sunrise Morning Show 13 days later after I did a 10-day meditation to figure out exactly what I was going to say. But I told Sunrise I would do that. But I wanted to say something, you know, when I was able to. It had been a whole year and I was seeing this girl at the time and she’d never heard me speak.

9:44 So the fireworks had gone off, it was in Sydney, and I just gave her a hug and said her name in her ear, which she never heard me talk. I said it real loud to make sure my voice worked. So I freaked her out, bro, and then I just didn’t say anything after that, you know, that I just waited the next 13 days until I was on that show. How do you date without talking? Man, I learned to do a lot of things without talking that year, but yeah, you just, you make it work.

10:12 And you know, you still communicate, there’s a lot more body language, and it wasn’t easy. But you know, actually, we didn’t last much longer after I started talking. I don’t know, maybe that was the problem. Had anyone ever done something similar? I mean, has this been done before, the vow of silence?

10:28 There was a man called John Francis, and he is an environmentalist. He stopped speaking for 17 years. He also didn’t, I think it was 17 years, something like that. He also didn’t ride in any transportation devices for, I think it was 22 years. So he’s the only guy that I’d ever heard of doing it before.

10:50 I read his book before I started my own vow, it’s called The Ragged Edge of Silence. I found that insightful, and it helped me realize that it was possible. Apart from that, some Buddhist monks, I’d never heard of anyone else doing it. Wow, and what did you learn from that whole experience? The whole experience, man, I learned so much that year.

11:11 You know, because when I, the day that I started my vow of silence was actually the day I went vegan. I’d been trying to be vegan before that, but like you mentioned earlier, I had a bad eating disorder, a bad case of bulimia, and it was very hard for me to eat exactly how I wanted to eat. I couldn’t help myself, I was a big emotional eater. So I’d go a few weeks without eating any animal products, and then I’d binge on a type of ice cream. But when I started my vow, so I didn’t know much about animals before that, you know?

11:46 I’d learned about being vegetarian and the health benefits and the environmental devastation from animal agriculture. I’d learned all that after I had the idea to do the vow of silence. And I tried to study as much as I could that year of planning the vow of silence. When I started my vow, I still didn’t know much about animals, I still hadn’t been around many animals ever. Except for my little dog, I didn’t even really understand my dog, I just did not understand who animals are or the value of their life.

12:13 That year, meeting a lot of people, writing a lot of posts online and reading people’s comments and understanding, and then also volunteering at animal sanctuaries, where there was one example where a rescued bobby calf, which is a baby male cow, the male baby cows are usually sent to slaughter because they don’t produce dairy. So after they’re taken from their mother, they’re killed at their slaughterhouse, and this particular cow was actually rescued. I spent six weeks with this cow, Rupert, and what I learned from that experience was amazing because that’s when I learned that they are actually individuals.

12:55 There is someone in there with a heart, with a brain, with desires and a rich emotional life and wants to be with his mother. And this is where I really kind of learned the value of animals, you know, we’re animals too, and they’re just like us, they just look different on the outside. And I also visited a lot of factory farms that year. I went inside these places myself that I was told were a certain way. I wanted to make sure that as I was being told, you know, it’s a horror show.

13:25 Did you go on tours or how did you get in there? Oh yeah, two tours in the middle of the night, yeah. And you’re silent the whole time. So you’re traveling and kind of promoting this whole thing, but you can’t talk. Yeah.

13:36 Is that making it more powerful when you show up and don’t talk? Well, it made it more challenging. And I mean, some people found it. Wow. You know, you know what was interesting because this topic animal rights veganism, how to eat, what we should be eating.

13:52 We’ve been doing this for years and all this kind of thing. A lot of people get very defensive when you bring this topic up. The beauty of being voiceless was that someone started getting defensive. I didn’t. I wasn’t able to raise my voice.

14:05 And so the conversation stayed at a certain level. But also what was interesting is that because I had taken this vow of silence for a year, people just respected it for the most part. People respected. They might not have agreed with what I was trying to communicate, but they respected that I’d made the effort to take a year out of my life and stop speaking for the animals. So, you know, it was powerful in its own way.

14:31 So you kind of have like it’s almost like a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King approach where if you watch that movie Gandhi or you see what, you know, what they did in the 60s in the south. I mean, as other humans, when we see this guy like starving himself as a protest or you see nonviolent protest, like it does get to you deep inside because you’re like, these are humans and they’re actually not fighting back. Yeah. And so it does. It’s powerful, right?

14:55 I’m a huge believer in the nonviolent approach, although I do think both have played their part. But there’s there’s three main quotes I take from Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Gandhi said, if they curse at you, don’t curse back. If they hit you, don’t hit back. Even if they shoot you, do not shoot back. Keep moving forward.

15:18 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He said, the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. And I want a vegan world. I want everyone to respect each other. I want peace between each other and nonviolence.

15:33 And if we want that, if we want that kind of role, we have to show how that’s done. We have to lead the way and walk that path. We can’t just tell people to do it and not be doing it ourselves. He also said that love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. And in my experience, through trying many different approaches, I’ve come to realize that definitely what works best for me is trying to educate and encourage and inspire people to make better choices, not blaming and shaming people.

16:02 That doesn’t work well for me. OK. Malcolm X said, by any means necessary. And there’s a lot of merit to what he said, too. OK. I think when it comes to innocent beings being tortured and killed, by any means necessary, makes a whole lot of sense.

16:17 OK. Do you ever look at the world and just I mean, maybe you do a lot and just think everyone’s just absolutely crazy because when you look at it, it just doesn’t make any sense that people aren’t acknowledging. These are sentient beings that everyone not only eating. I mean, they’re just eating in every which way, shape or form. Right.

16:35 I mean, if you look at the average American or UK diet, I mean, there are many different animal products throughout the day come from a variety of means dairy and fish and meat and all these things. And like you said, there’s a huge disconnect there. So you have people that love animals and consider themselves peaceful. And yet all these products are being done in a way that you’ve seen in the slaughterhouse. Does it ever drive you crazy that people can’t see what you see as obvious?

17:00 It was not obvious to me for 26 years. In fact, I was completely oblivious. And, you know, it’s it makes perfect sense, actually, why people are like how I was just four years ago, because we’ve been conditioned to believe that we need meat for protein. We need dairy for calcium animals that killed humanely free range actually means something animals are less important than us. Man has dominion over animals. Plants have feelings to dogs and dolphins and whales matter pigs, cows, chickens and fish.

17:34 Don’t, etc, etc, etc. There are so many lies that have been put onto us that we have just believed. And, you know, there’s a lot of reasons for that. But I think that eating because it’s so normal, it’s so every day, it’s not we never made the choice. Let’s start eating animals. We just did because that’s what society was doing. You barely stop to think about those so mundane choices that you make in your day.

18:01 But when, see, for me, what happened is I was a person on train for eight years. When I started to learn that you not only can be healthy, but even be healthier from not consuming animal products. That got me interested. I thought, great, I can help my clients more. I can help my friends and family live a longer life, reduce their chances of many diseases, reduce their chances of getting on many medications.

18:25 That excited me at first. And I didn’t care about animals at this point, man. Not at all, because I didn’t think they were worth caring about. In fact, I didn’t think that they were capable of caring about their own life. So why would I? I just did not see them as as I actually are.

18:42 And so this understanding that that came to me, the next thing that happened was that I watched a documentary called Earthlings, which shows all the ways humans exploit and use and abuse and kill animals for food, clothing, entertainment, medical testing. And I had seen animals be slaughtered in footage before, but I didn’t feel a thing because I thought we had to eat them to survive. When I saw this documentary, it was with a fresh understanding. And so it led me to the question, if we don’t need to kill and eat animals to survive and thrive, what do we do this for?

19:18 And I really searched for an answer. I wanted to find one. And when the best justifications I could find were taste, habit, tradition and convenience. I decided that they aren’t good enough justifications for a single scream that I’d heard. And I’m not the type of person to condone those acts or worse still, to pay somebody to commit them.

19:40 Try to be a peaceful person or a respectful person. If I saw somebody hurting an animal, even if it was an animal I ate, if I saw someone hurting a pig, I’d be over there to stop that innocent being from being hurt. And I think most people have that in their heart. So that’s why I believe most people are already vegan at heart. It’s just that what we need to do is align our actions with our values.

20:05 And that’s the disconnect. So the world doesn’t really make me crazy because I understand why it is the way it is. It’s frustrating because we’re a long way off the mark. But the beauty is I don’t have to convince anybody that animal cruelty is wrong. Ninety-nine percent of people agree with that.

20:22 So my job and any other person who understands this is just to help people learn how to walk in a way that is in alignment with their beliefs and their actions. A hundred years from now, do you think we’ll look back on this as the way we look back on civil rights, slavery, women’s right to vote, gay marriage, as just antiquated thinking? Or do you really believe we’re not going to get there? I believe we’ll get there, man. I do. If I didn’t believe we would make progress, I wouldn’t fight as hard as I do.

20:54 And for those reasons that we’ve seen with the civil rights movement and with equality between men and women, justice has prevailed. We’ve still got a long way to go, but we’ve moved in the right direction. And already there’s so many people on this earth that see what we do to animals as a similar injustice. So for me, it just makes sense that more and more people will get to this point as well because it’s better in every way. It’s better for our health. The food is absolutely amazing.

21:25 There’s a vegan version of all your favorite foods. It’s the right thing to do by the animals. And most people actually do care about animals. So when we’ve got everything going in our favor, you don’t have to sacrifice anything. You just instead of getting cow’s milk, you get soy, rice, almond, coconut, hazelnut milk.

21:41 When it’s that simple to save so many lives, it only it just makes sense to me that that’s the path that will go down. Plus, it’s plus the sustainability reasons we have to. There’s a point in the movie Cowspiracy, and I don’t know how you feel about that film, but there’s a point early on where I think the guys that were directing it are speaking to somebody in the California municipal area. And they’re talking about water saving water through like a shower, a shower spout. And they said, well, wait a second, you could save 100 gallons if you just don’t eat meat.

22:15 And the official got really quiet and he was like, well, you can’t tell people what not to eat. But you can tell me how to take a shitty shower. And you could tell me not to water my lawn. And you do all these other things with that really inconvenience me. But you couldn’t dare say, or you could not eat that burger.

22:34 And it just made me think, you know, as humans or Americans or Western world people, like, why, why, why do we take that so seriously? Like our decision to eat what we want? Because these officials didn’t even want to broach the topic. Like, that’s the feeling I got there. It’s fascinating, isn’t it? I mean, that whole movie, I think is based on the conspiracy of it all, which is that the major environmental protection organizations are being somewhat funded by meat and dairy industry.

23:06 And they’ve brought up, brought out a new documentary recently called What the Health, which has a similar conspiracy that the American Diabetes Foundation, for example, is has funding by meat or dairy or egg industry. And so it’s corrupted. And, you know, in terms of people not wanting to be told what to eat. It’s interesting because the thing that you’re telling them to do, it’s not an inconvenience. Especially we’re so lucky here. You can get vegan meat, you can get vegan chicken, you can get vegan beef. Tastes amazing. They do a lot of, there’s a lot of interesting YouTube videos on this where they sit someone down and they’ve got regular KFC chicken and then they’ve got the vegan KFC chicken.

23:54 Come on, you can’t beat KFC. Mate, Mate, Mate. Now I know you’re off your rocket ship. I say you got it. You made it just check it out, right?

24:02 Look, I have to admit that when my vegan friends took me to the vegan lunch in the last four years or something, I go to the place, there’s a place in Covent Garden, Neil’s Yard, I don’t know what place it’s called, and they give me the vegan burger. I must say that I haven’t always been impressed. And sometimes I wish that they would stop trying to copy my meat food and they should give me something else. But I don’t know, I had that experience about three times in a row. And I’m always wondering why they’re doing that. Now, maybe they’ve gotten more advanced with what they do.

24:28 They’ve come a long way, brother. Yeah. Because I had some experiences where I was like, now maybe it’s because the learning curve wasn’t there. Sure. Maybe it takes time, but there’s some very powerful people investing in plant-based meats. Bill Gates is one of them.

24:43 In fact, the CEO of Tyson, which is one of the biggest meat producers in the USA, is investing in plant-based meat as well. And they are coming a very long way. For example, the experiments I’m talking about, they do it with ice cream. They do it with the vegan chicken. They do it with the burgers. And people don’t even know the difference now, man.

25:02 Where before, I’m sure they would have been like, this is shit. I don’t want to eat this. I totally get that. But these days, and they’re just getting started. They’re just warming up. So what I’m saying is, you don’t have to inconvenience yourself.

25:13 You still want to have a burger? Cool. You still want to have a big barbecue with all the meats? Great. You can.

25:19 We’ve got them all. Vegan version of everything. What about the person that says, come on, James, I’m out in the Alaskan wilderness, and I’m just hanging out. I’m eating some herbs. And I got a net, and I’m going to go just hook me a salmon. He swims down the stream. I’m going to eat the salmon that bears about to eat them anyways.

25:38 What’s ethically wrong with having that piece of fish? It’s probably fairly good for me. He got some omega-3s and 6s. Like, as that example. And I know it’s an extreme example.

25:47 No, it’s a great example. It’s a great question. Why can’t I do that? Or why shouldn’t I do that? I would say because if you could have eaten something else, that should have been your option.

25:56 Shouldn’t we always be opting for the doing the least amount of harm possible? What we’re talking about isn’t just eating a piece of fish. You’re talking about robbing an animal of his or her life for a fleeting taste sensation. Is it really worth it? This animal has a life ahead of it.

26:16 So it’s like the Buddhist karma tip we’re kind of on. I mean, that’s the perspective. I’m not talking about karma. I’m talking more just about the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself.

26:29 Do you think this negative energy piles up on you as well? If you’re kind of eating sentient beans all the time, do you think it comes back? Is that chickens come home to roost as Malcolm X would say? You know, obviously scientifically, I can’t prove that. But I personally, I believe that it does it does create a negative a negative thing.

26:48 I mean, on a real level, you are consuming a product of violence, torture and death. And on a tangible level, the meat has the hormones of the stress hormones, the fear inside the meat and you eat that and people eat it. And, you know, and not just that, but I don’t know how you’d think about this. But let’s say someone walks in this room right now. It’s a fairly chill vibe. It’s cash. Let’s say we’ve just had a big fight. Maybe they’d walk in and feel a little bit more anxious or something like that.

27:21 You know, energy is everywhere, right? Whether you can see it or not. This world currently, we kill 56 billion land animals and over 3 trillion sea animals every single year. That’s a lot of killing in the air, a lot of unnecessary killing in the air. And it’s not just in the air. It’s put inside people’s bodies and it creates their bodies.

27:44 Do I think that has an effect on the society? Actually, yeah, I do. I do think it does. Can I prove that? No, but it just makes sense to me. Okay. And salmon is not going to have too much stress hormone, but you’re saying there will be some there.

27:56 Well, let’s say that you rip a salmon out of their home and they can’t breathe and they’re suffocating to death. I’d say there’s probably going to be some stress there. Okay. Let me give you one other example. I’ve got Cameron Haynes in here in about eight days.

28:09 And he’s the guy that’s been taking Joe Rogan deer hunting and they do bow hunting and they go out and they shoot these deer and these deer that they say they’re overpopulated anyway. So they get the licenses out there and they go and they’re going to be killed by wolves if there’s too many of them. And they say there’s a real, I don’t know, something, a amount of respect when you actually hunt down a deer for seven days or 14 days, or maybe it takes you seven months and you kill it and you take it home and you dress it and your family survives off that meat.

28:36 And I haven’t done it, but I actually want to do it. I mean, again, I’m giving you extreme examples. That’s great. What do you feel about that example where again, you’re killing an overpopulated animal. You’re honoring it and respecting it. Okay. To a certain extent, you’re killing it. Of course.

28:51 Murder, respectful murder. But you know, speak on it because it’s not black and white. I will. What’s that as an example? And also they’re bow hunting. I don’t know if that makes it better than a gun.

29:00 Personally, even if they were giving that animal an injection where they didn’t even feel it and they fell asleep, that’s obviously less cruelty before or less suffering before their death is preferable. But at the end of the day, you’re still killing someone who doesn’t want to die. You know, we call it slaughter. If we’re doing it to a human, it would be murder. There’s no humane murder because the act of murder can never be humane.

29:26 And I would say the same about slaughter. There’s humane euthanasia, but we’re not talking about euthanasia. We’re talking about an act of murder, robbing the life of an individual who doesn’t want to die. When it comes to, let’s say, deer overpopulation, I would say that we shouldn’t be just looking at the easiest solution, go and shoot as many of them as we can. We should be looking at more respectful ways that do actually take the value of their lives into account of what we can actually do about this problem.

29:55 And while we value animals so little that we’re willing to kill them just because we like how they taste, we’re never going to get to a point where when there is an actual problem they’re causing, we’re not going to get, of course, we’re going to kill them for that when there’s actually a problem. We kill them because we like how they taste. So I think it definitely takes a raising of consciousness and of the respect that we show other living beings on this planet before we’ll get to a point where people are saying, okay, let’s not just kill all these overpopulated animals. Let’s figure out a solution that doesn’t cause all this suffering and this murder.

30:30 Let’s find something better. Do I have that solution? I don’t. That’s not my speciality, but I’m sure as this movement goes forward and the respect is increased that we’ll start finding other ways. Okay. I watch the Discovery Channel, right? And I watch Nat Geo.

30:44 And like there’s there’s murder and killings all the time on the planet, right? The lions, the insects kill each other. I mean, we are predators, right? We have the eyes on the front of our head. Like, you know, when something runs, we’re like, you know, your instinct might be to go chase it. What about all that stuff?

31:00 All right. So if we were predators, personally, I don’t think we’re predators. That’s why when we look at slaughterhouse footage, we go like this. Most people. Okay. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But it’s also pretty gruesome anyways. But if we’re predators, if you’re a predator, you want to eat yourself.

31:16 If you’re a lion, you would salivate at the thought of a slaughterhouse. That’s your jam, brother. Because you’re excited because that’s what you eat. We don’t eat. We don’t eat animals like that. We don’t get in there raw.

31:28 We cook them. You know, we have certain parts. I’ll eat that bit. I won’t eat that bit. We cook it up. We season it with plants.

31:35 We put it with other plants. We’re not chasing anybody down. We’re not clawing into anybody. We make these tiny little things we call canines aren’t ripping into any cows. You know, I personally don’t think we’re at all predators.

31:49 We make weapons so we can be predators, but naturally we’re not. And our physiology isn’t that of a omnivore or a carnivore. It’s that more of a herbivore, the length of our intestines, the way we sweat, the way our jaw moves and basically everything points to us being herbivores. I mean, that’s not necessarily a reason because obviously we can live and thrive either way. People live to over 100 eating meat every day.

32:15 But it’s, you know, but what is obvious is that we can also live and thrive without eating any animal products. And when that’s the more kind way, it seems a way to go to me. Okay. So like hunter gatherers back in the day and then farmers, they evolved with kind of animals around and they would eat their products. And maybe that was a necessary part of evolution.

32:33 So now we’re in this higher state. We should now act the part, right? And treat everyone ethically and our animals ethically and just be the better people. As Einstein said, we should widen our circle of compassion to embrace all nature and all living creatures. Lions are still going to kill and eat antelopes and other insects are going to kill and eat each other.

32:56 They don’t have a choice. They have to kill to survive. We are consistently trying to raise our moral standards. And this is that next evolution. And doing that would be ending.

33:10 Let’s say we all did that one thing. We all went vegan. We all started just living on a plant based diet. We would literally end the killing of trillions of beings. Trillions.

33:21 There’s not serious numbers. One of my guests named Edo Portali is a movement guy. I had him on stage the other day and he quoted Einstein as well. It’s very hard to come back from the Einstein quote, right? Well, who are you going to one-up Einstein with?

33:34 You speak a lot and you debate people a lot as well on stage. What’s that like and how did you become such a good speaker? It’s fun. I was a terrible public speaker when I was in high school. I was one of the worst and I was known for how bad I was.

33:52 Which meant you were trying, obviously. No, I wasn’t. I was avoiding it. I was taking those days out of school. I didn’t say anything.

33:57 I was the worst man. I hated it. It was my least favorite thing in the world. I became a person on train for eight years and I didn’t actually realize that I was practicing public speaking. I never saw it maybe train one person or five people.

34:11 And then I went for a job on a cruise ship and I had to do a speech and it was actually all right. It was the first speech I’d done since high school. I thought, why was that good? Then I realized I’d been practicing and not even realizing. When I went on the cruise ship, most of the job was public speaking and I still sucked at it for ages, man.

34:29 I had no idea what I was doing. I couldn’t sell anything. It was all about sales. I couldn’t sell because my speeches were so bad. Eventually, I kind of got the hang of it.

34:36 And then when I started speaking about this, about animal rights, about my journey, about what I’d learned and how I can increase the pace, it was something I really enjoyed talking about. Something that I got invited to talk about very regularly. And now I’ve done, I think I’ve probably done close to 300 speeches all around the world. So I very much enjoy it because people come thinking a certain way and they leave with a totally different idea about what they want to do and how they want to contribute and how they can help and the things they can stop doing that were causing harm.

35:10 So I love it because I see it work. One of my speeches has 12 million views online and it’s influenced a lot of people. I’m really glad I’ve gone down this route of education because I’ve just seen it work so, so well. What’s the most frustrating argument you get on a regular basis that maybe even has some credibility, so not the stupid argument that you get regularly from audiences? You know, all around the world, the arguments are pretty much the same.

35:38 I’d say the one that frustrates me most is just, I just like how they taste. I get that, you know. I love the way meat tastes. I used to eat meat every single day, man. I didn’t stop eating meat because I didn’t like how it tasted anymore.

35:55 And I think I find that frustrating because someone can agree with you with everything you say, you know. They agree that we don’t need to kill any animals. They agree that animals, there’s no difference between, morally, between a dog and a dolphin. And they agree with you the whole way and then you think that they’re with you and they’re going to step onto the side of justice for animals. But then they say, I just like the way they taste.

36:17 And that’s frustrating because when you go vegan, it’s the craziest thing, man. You go vegan and then you learn this whole new world of food. And food, everyone that goes vegan loves food in a whole new way. You try all these things you never tried. Then there’s all the vegan versions of all the stuff you’ve already tried.

36:36 People’s idea of going vegan is they’re going to eat lettuce and tofu every day and then they’re going to be malnourished. And we’re eating pasta and pizza and ice cream and burritos and you name it. And that’s frustrating for me because people just don’t get it yet. They will. They’ll get it as consciousness grows.

36:53 But currently, they think they’ll go vegan. They won’t have any delicious food. And you almost had them because they agreed. And that’s, you know, taste. It’s such a meaningless thing, comparatively, to, you know, whether someone lives or dies.

37:09 Because that’s what veganism is. It’s not a diet choice. It’s not this mundane diet choice. It’s the difference between enslavement and freedom, between torture and peace, between death and life. It’s a very big thing.

37:23 And to throw that away and to do what we do to animals just because we like a taste. And there’s so many tastes we could also enjoy. That’s the thing that frustrates me the most. I hear that. So, you know, all come clean.

37:39 I’ve been doing a lot of different kind of body weight movement stuff lately. The last couple of years, a little bit of breakdancing. Cool. We should battle later. Yeah, maybe we will.

37:49 I got some people here. I’m doing a lot of body weight stuff. And I’ve just found myself drawing more to a vegetable-based diet. And so, like, we do kind of a meatless Mondays. We do other things.

37:58 And I’ve been really phasing out red meats and a lot of other things. And I’ve been really enjoying that. And yeah, there’s lots of crazy, amazing tastes out there. And there’s like, I crave my vegetables sometimes in a way I never thought I would. And also, just a mind shift.

38:11 Like, I used to be in the banking world. And like, there, you always go out and you see who can eat the biggest steak. You know, that’s the celebration meal. And no one ever really thinks, wait a second. I felt horrible later.

38:22 You know, my grandpa was in the beef industry. Like, I was at a feedlot when I was four years old where there was like 10,000 cattle. And there’s something not right about that place, you know. And so, but again, his mentality. So when my sister became vegetarian, he was just like, what the hell are you talking about?

38:37 It’s un-American. So again, a lot of those philosophies. But I’m becoming more open-minded. But at the same time, speak on vegans as a group of people. And the polarization that they have towards other people.

38:53 You know, sometimes they can be very militant and they can set themselves out. Also, within the vegan community, there’s people hating on each other. That guy’s not vegan. This guy is vegan. This guy is being silent for a year and he’s not doing the vegan thing.

39:07 I know vegans. Timothy Shapes, a friend of mine. He’s vegan. And I don’t think he hangs out with other people that aren’t vegan. And if you go back and eat food products again, I think he’s just like, what’s up?

39:17 And of course, I understand why he wouldn’t come to my house for Thanksgiving and I get it. But speak on, honestly, the portrayal of vegans in general. Do they get a bad rap? Do they get a fair rap for being a little bit militant? And like you said, it’s a way of life.

39:32 It’s not really a way of eating and they can be very passionate about it. Absolutely. Okay. It’s a really good point you brought up. Just let me kick back just a tiny bit when you mentioned, you know, you’ve been doing my body weight stuff and things like that.

39:44 One thing that people worry about going vegan is they will lose their gains. They won’t be able to be strong. And I just wanted to quickly mention that a world record holding strong man is vegan. Mr. Universe of a few years ago is vegan.

39:57 Champion arm wrestler, world record holding ultra marathoner, UFC fighters, football players, many others. Yeah. Some jury still out on UFC fighters though, right? There’s a few that are vegan. Sure.

40:10 Just a few. Sure. But yeah, they do exist. I still think that the jury still out a little bit whether you can really be at that performance and do that via consuming vegetables. But I must say there’s a lot of protein and protein based vegetables and nutrients that are out there.

40:25 But I would still say, I don’t know if I’m 100% what I would say is that isn’t it incredible that vegans are still such a small percentage of the population. And yet one of them is a world record holding strong man. So you would I would find it amazing even if they were in the top hundred because there’s so few of them competing, for example. But yet we hear about many of them breaking world records being in the most physically demanding sports on the planet.

40:52 So I would say that’s pretty good. And maybe the jury have to run the numbers. But what I’d also say is that there’s nothing you can find that’s necessary in an animal based diet, animal product based diet as there is in a plant based diet. But the benefit of the plant based diet is that you get everything you need minus the saturated fats, the cholesterol, the hormones, concentrated doses of pesticides and the guilt. No guilt man, it’s guilt free.

41:23 To finish up on that point, I mean I must say I’m drawn to a more vegetable based diet. I mean this is me like speaking the truth. It’s just like I find that I got the two things in front of me at the table and I’m going to the salad first. I’m going to the dal first. I’m going to that first and sometimes I’m like saying honey, I wish you hadn’t cooked steak tonight because I actually don’t feel like eating it anymore.

41:42 And that’s been really amazing for me to see. Also listening to my gut a lot more. So like when I eat a piece of meat, like how does it feel? If it feels bad, stop eating it. Which is hard for a lot of people.

41:53 So look, I’m seeing something here and I’m going towards it. Just to let you know. Awesome man, good to hear. Okay, back to the vegan community. Do vegans get a bad rap?

42:03 They do get a bad rap. Is some of it justified? 100%. When you go vegan it’s like this. You ever had nightmares?

42:11 You ever had a bad nightmare? Yes I’ve had. Okay, I get some bad nightmares usually about snakes. And I wake up and I’m like oh fuck. I’m so glad that was a nightmare because I was terrified.

42:21 And you wake up and you think oh my god I’m so happy now. Right, the relief. When you go vegan it’s like the opposite of that. You wake up. All of a sudden you see.

42:31 You see it everywhere. Victims of violence. You see animal lovers patting their dog while they’re cutting into the flesh of a murdered cow. Right? Who would have in their own way screamed for their life a lot of the time.

42:46 And you look at a butcher differently. You look at a steakhouse differently. You look at your friends and family differently. You can’t help it. You know, you’re not judging them.

42:55 I’m trying not to judge because people are just unaware. But the whole, everything looks different man. And all of a sudden there’s trillions more victims of violence on this planet than you really were paying attention to before. And they’re right there and right here and on that person’s plate and in the fridge. It’s full on.

43:13 For a lot of people it’s, you know, it can be, I don’t know if it’s traumatic, but one person says that it’s like having secondary post-traumatic stress disorder because of what you realize. Because of you see things differently. And a lot of vegans feel a very strong urge to speak up for the animals. Not all of them do it in a great way. Their hearts probably in the right place.

43:40 Some of them, maybe their hearts aren’t in the right place. I’m sure that there are some vegans out there who are vegan because they get to say that they’re better than everybody else in their opinion. I’m better than you. I, you know, you are a murderer and whatever. I’m sure some people love that.

43:54 But they’re probably a minority I would say. For the most part vegans are passionate about standing up for the innocent victims who people don’t seem to care about. And that passion can come through with anger and frustration because vegans cop a lot of shit, man. Vegans cop a lot of shit all the time by friends, by family, loved ones, the media. They make fun of them.

44:21 Fuck, man. Constantly. Do you want to hear my vegan joke? Yeah, go. Are you sure?

44:26 Fuck, I already heard it. What is it? How can you tell if someone’s vegan? They’ll tell you? Just wait five minutes and they’ll tell you.

44:33 How can you tell if someone’s not vegan? They’ll tell you that shitty joke. Okay, thank you. So I think that… They catch a lot of hate, you’re saying?

44:41 A couple of hate. So they’re sensitized already. You know, they’ve kind of become aware of something that can be seen by someone that’s quite traumatic. And they watch the footage. They see what happens to animals.

44:52 They go, holy shit, this is fucked. I can’t deal with this. You know, I need to do something. And they try to do something and maybe they’re not having much impact. Like, I’m lucky.

45:01 I’m having an impact, man. If I was a vegan who wasn’t helping anyone go vegan, I’d be struggling. Because you’d feel bad. I’d feel helpless. Okay.

45:10 Helpless. And another thing is that there’s been some vegans who have had some activists who’ve had great success with a very militant approach. Or they’ve had… Actually, what’s really happened is they’ve had great success with an educational approach, but they’re militant people. And people have modeled that behavior.

45:31 I’m saying, that’s how it’s done. Look at the success they’ve had. We need to be militant. Okay. Anybody I would know?

45:37 The guy I’m referring to is Gary Yourofsky. He’s got a great speech. It’s been seen by millions of people. It’s changed a lot of lives and saved a lot of animals. It’s a very good speech.

45:48 It’s called Best Speech You Will Ever Hear or something like that. The speech is educational. It’s great. But the man, he’s burned out, man. He’s militant.

45:57 Okay. As in kill the meat eaters. Well, not kill the meat eaters, but he might rejoice at a hunting accident, for example. Which is not what Martin Luther King said. No.

46:08 It means and the… It’s not. And look, I’m not saying he’s wrong. People should advocate however they believe, but what I’m trying to show the vegan community is that there is another way we can do this, a Gandhi, Martin Luther King approach that is going to be successful and it has been and it will continue to be. And now that people are seeing this this other way.

46:28 And look, I think another thing, last point on this is that if you wanted to be vegan back in the day, you had to be a kind of out there person. There was no mainstream veganism. There was not many people going vegan. You kind of had to be one of those people willing to just say, who cares what everyone’s doing. I’m doing it anyway.

46:46 Now it’s a lot easier. Everybody knows what a lot of people know what veganism is and you can just do it and it’s not that weird. So I think probably the first people that went vegan were more that way inclined to be a little more militant. And so no wonder they got this reputation. But I think what we’re seeing now is another wave of vegans who are just, you know, you said your sister’s gone vegetarian.

47:08 Pardon? A while back. You know, like it’s just. She’s from Berkeley though. She’s from Berkeley.

47:14 She’s in the heart of it. But it’s your sister. It’s your neighbor. It’s the person at the coffee shop. Like, you know, it’s your teacher.

47:21 It’s everyone’s gone. All walks of life. That’s the beauty of this. You don’t need to be a specific type of person anymore to be vegan. You don’t need to be highly intellectual.

47:30 You don’t need to love tofu. You don’t need to be an animal lover. You just need to agree that causing unnecessary harm to animals is wrong. And so now what we’re seeing is just your everyday person from next door going vegan. And I think this is starting to change the vibe of vegans.

47:48 You know, we’re getting in the media. We’re showing that, hey, we’re not this angry, aggressive, judgmental, annoying, preachy group of people. Some are, of course, you know, that’s in every group. But for the most part, we just see that a better world is possible and more peaceful world is possible. And we’re just trying to encourage everybody to walk the path.

48:08 It’s definitely changing. I mean, look, walk around London Real Studios and try to give away a lamb chop these days. It’s hard, right? You got a lot of your people around here, you know, operating cameras and stuff. Yeah, good.

48:18 We’re infiltrating, man. Booking guests, obviously. So, look, it’s real. And, you know, I’m engaging with it more and more, even though I’m not there. But, yeah, it’s really true.

48:26 I mean, try to give away a piece of meat in here and it’s hard. So, it’s happening. Tell me about a day in your life you were talking about later this year. You’re going to spend five days in front of a slaughterhouse fasting. What does that look like?

48:38 And is this hardcore for you or is this just kind of another week? I mean, earlier, right at the start of this interview, you mentioned something about me putting my skin on the line. So, another thing I did, I did it last year. Around this time, I got tattooed for 24 hours straight. We raised some money for some charities.

48:56 What I’ve found, my approach has been to try to do something that anyone can find interesting. Valve Science getting tattooed for a long time. Because then it’s not just targeting animal people, you know, and get them in this five day fast. Maybe not such a mainstream idea, but it’s on that path of doing something a little bit gimmicky or a bit outrageous so that people will want to follow and see how he’s going, day four, how he’s feeling. And that’s the idea. Is it extreme?

49:32 Yeah, it’s extreme, man. I don’t want to not eat for five days. But like I said, extreme times call for extreme actions. I’d rather just be snowboarding than doing all this. You know, I’d rather be chilling.

49:43 I don’t want to do all this really. It’s not like I just love doing activism. Not at all. There’s so many things I’d rather be doing. But, you know, it’s a job that has to be done.

49:54 And a typical day in my life this year, I mean, I’m probably on a plane somewhere. I’m probably going to do a bunch of speeches at whatever country. I’m probably going to be on the streets educating people, you know, doing interviews with random people on the streets and showing them footage and seeing what they think about it. Maybe I’ll be showing them some virtual reality stuff. Maybe I’ll be in a university.

50:17 Maybe I’ll be out in front of a slaughterhouse getting footage of the animals as they come in. Maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll be able to rescue some animals from somewhere. I’ll be online a lot replying to a lot of comments, a lot of messages, making YouTube vids, trying to have a normal life, which is pretty much impossible right now. But next year, if you ask me, things are going to be different. I’m trying a whole new approach next year.

50:36 This year I’ve done, I’ve been to so many countries, I’ve done so many speeches, and there’s been no balance. So next year I’m going to work on just being more balanced, because again, you know, if you look at my YouTube channel, it’s all vegan stuff, man. And I don’t want it to be that. I want it to be somewhere where anyone can come and enjoy. Instead of being a vegan activist, I’d rather be more just like a normal person who’s vegan, who’s interesting to follow.

51:01 And I think this sort of less is more approach might be a good way forward. So hopefully next year’s more chillin’. I think I’m going to be in Bali a lot next year. Okay. How do you make a living doing this?

51:12 So when I, I’ve never charged for any of my speeches. I’ve always wanted to do them for free. I never want anybody to question my integrity or think that I’m doing this for something. It’s for the animals. It’s to raise awareness.

51:26 What I do is I ask for my flights to be covered, and I’ll either stay with someone, which I’m happy to do, or I’ll get accommodation paid for. I sell T-shirts at the events with a vegan message. So it’s good. I get what I need. Someone doesn’t donate to me. There’s no way to donate to me online, but they can buy a T-shirt. So they get something as well.

51:46 I get what I need, and it’s a message for the animals. So everybody wins. That’s how I’ve done it, man. I’ve lived in my van when I’m at home, which is just like a crappy van. So I haven’t had rent to pay.

51:56 And I’ve just, you know, I’ve just done what I can to, yeah, drop costs and just make it work. And, you know, so far, so good. It’s not glamorous. It’s not glamorous, man. You know, there’s moments where I end up at a really cool place.

52:11 I think, man, I hit the jackpot here, but for the most part, it hasn’t been so glamorous. You know, but it hasn’t, you know, I’ve really put my life on the back burner for the last few years, and that was my choice. But like I said, next year, hopefully it’s a little more glamorous, man. Okay. Talk me through what the experience is going to be like at the slaughterhouse.

52:28 I just want to get a rough idea. You’re there. A hundred and fifty people camping out in front of a slaughterhouse in Melbourne. Five days you’re not eating. You can maybe hear animal screams.

52:38 The trucks are coming up with the animals about to be killed. You’re standing in front of the trucks. Like, what’s it feel like there? What do you expect it to be like? I have different experiences out front of the slaughterhouse.

52:49 Sometimes I’m numb. I don’t feel a thing. I’m there to do my job. I get footage. I put it online. I talk about it.

52:54 You know, sometimes I feel a thing. Sometimes I get there and I hear them screaming. I just think, fuck, like, you know, it really hits me. And I’m one of the, I’m not that sensitive to it. You know, some people are bawling their eyes out. Some people are very emotional.

53:10 You know, you’ve got a bunch of people who really care about animals and they’re seeing these animals. They’re looking them in the eyes. They come up. They might pat a pig’s snout or something, you know, and they’re like beautiful animals and that their eyes, especially pigs, they’re like human eyes. They look so similar. So it’s full on.

53:26 And then, you know, I’ve been at slaughterhouses, for example, we’re in England right now. I think it was in England. I wish I could remember where there’s a slaughterhouse where you can walk around it and you’re, there’s a fence and you’re not even 10 meters away from the gas chamber because they say a gas chamber is the most humane method of killing. And you hear them screaming their lungs out. It’s just constant, constant screaming.

53:53 They have a five second break every now and then, which is kind of just as scary. And then, and then the screams just continue and continue and it’s constant. So, I mean, it’s full on. We’ll be at this slaughterhouse. We’ll be there five days.

54:06 I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of ups and downs. We’ll probably be, you know, we’re going to be real hungry. So, you know, what happens when you get hungry, you get angry. But I hope it’s just a peaceful protest. We always keep it peaceful.

54:18 And I hope that it raises some awareness and, you know, it makes some sort of a difference. Even if you change, like I always think like this, you know, you can’t change the world overnight. But if you change one person, you might add a couple of decades to that person’s life. That alone is significant and amazing. And that person might inspire somebody else who inspires 50 million people. You know, you never know.

54:40 That’s why I just think every action is important. Every, every seed planted is meaningful. And, you know, we just keep moving and keep walking the path and hopefully more and more people join us. Okay. Well, one of those times the riot police came in and kind of where escort trucks in.

54:56 You expect that to happen too? And does that get a little dicey? One time there was a lot of riot police at a slaughterhouse in Melbourne. And it was unusual because usually they’re quite cooperative. Often they can be.

55:11 It was very interesting. We had, I think it was over a hundred, you know, and it was great. What was very interesting about it was that we usually stop the trucks. We have a sign that says, please give us five minutes to say goodbye or something like that. And they generally will stop for a few minutes.

55:28 Let us get some footage and go in. Just it’s just less trouble that way. Otherwise we’re stopping them and they’re screeching and, you know, accidents can happen. And they have happened before. So people get run over. There has been.

55:40 Yeah. Not that I’ve been involved in, but, you know, back a little while back. Yeah. Anyway. And so we, we’ve with the right place.

55:50 It was what was interesting is, you know, these are people of the law. They’re there to uphold justice. And they had lined up next to the trucks. And then there was a line like a barricading line of them. And then they escorted the trucks.

56:05 These police walked these trucks and walked these animals to their murder. And they were basically, you know, they’re about to go and get their throat slit or get put into a gas chamber. And it was just this crazy moment where, you know, the law isn’t always on your side. Slavery was legal, for example, you know, some countries, they stone gay people to death. So you can’t just rely on the law to put out the right morals.

56:38 And this was a perfect example of that. And seeing that happen was just, you know, I was talking to the cops. I actually had some good conversations. They weren’t really answering back because it was riot mode. But, but I just, you know, I just sort of questioned them, you know, you’re a person of justice.

56:52 You obviously believe in upholding the peace. Do you see some sort of hypocrisy in your actions today? Because right now you are defending the abusers. And, you know, one of the cops that I ended up speaking to at the end of the day did go vegan. She went into the slaughterhouse and she said that the activists out there are saying that you’re gassing pigs in here.

57:12 And they said, yeah, come watch. No big deal to them. Come watch. Yeah, we’re murdering pigs, like whatever. And she went and she watched.

57:20 And she the next time we saw her slaughterhouse, she was vegan. Yeah. So is there a particular animal that bothers you more than others? Actually, actually, not really. No. I mean, he must feel more for a pig than say a chicken or something like that.

57:34 I mean, you hear the screams or like, yeah, look in the eyes or. Yeah. No, that’s true. Look, I mean, I’m probably unbiased for certain animals. But but really, no, not really, man. I’m not I’m not like, you know, I’m not an animal lover.

57:51 You know, a lot of people think that must be you have like 14 animals in your mouth. I’m traveling with 45 cats or something. No, man. Like, you know, I respect them. That’s that’s it.

58:00 I just respect them enough not to hurt them and realize that they need people standing up for them. And so when you know, I don’t really have a favor or anything like that, obviously, with the pigs with their eyes and hearing them scream, that’s full on. And that pigs are smarter than dogs. So you know that maybe they’re a bit more aware of what’s happening than other animals. But morally, you know, it’s not intelligence that matters.

58:24 We shouldn’t be basing someone’s life value on how smart they are, how good they are at algebra or anything like that. To quote Einstein again, but I’m going to get this one wrong, but it’s around these sort of lines. Yeah, is that he said something like, if you judge a fish by his ability to climb a tree, he’ll forever believe that he’s stupid. And, you know, we shouldn’t be judging a chicken on whether they can create an orchestra or solve a math problem.

58:52 It’s you know, there’s many humans that would be less intelligent than a chicken out there. They’d be marginalized cases, but they exist. Doesn’t mean that we kill and eat those humans because they’re not as intelligent. And that’s really the core of the issue. We’re talking about speciesism, just another form of discrimination.

59:11 Do people get mad when you compare this to racism? I mean, to slavery and even racism. Do people say, wait, is like, you’re going way too far here? Absolutely. People do. I mean, I personally don’t want to compare it.

59:22 I make the, you know, there are analogies there. I wouldn’t say this is as bad as this or that. There’s no need to say that it’s bad in its own right. Some people would compare it to the Holocaust. And some people would say it’s worse than the Holocaust because this is been going for much longer.

59:38 There’s many more victims and there’s no end in the near side. And we breed them to do this to them. So Holocaust wouldn’t actually be the right word necessarily. But, you know, and these words are triggering for people. And that’s why I don’t bother using them myself.

59:55 Even though it is a form of slavery and it, you know, just by dictionary definition. And it is a Holocaust, a mass murder of innocent beings. It is exactly that. But they’re loaded words. You don’t need to. You can use them.

1:00:08 They’re not wrong. You don’t need to use them. Do people get offended? Yeah. But then there’s also the people who go, this is a Holocaust, you know, and so you decide on how you want to advocate.

1:00:21 I heard an interview with Russell Simmons recently and he was speaking similar language. I’m talking about the animals, that kind of thing. Do you look up to him or the other activists you kind of really value in this movement? So many. But personally, I haven’t spent a lot of time looking at Russell Simmons work, although I think it’s amazing what he’s doing.

1:00:40 What I do know of it because he’s reaching a whole different demographic and he’s got a lot of like street cred kind of thing. So I think that for him to speak out and he wrote a book called The Happy Vegan. You know, I think that’s amazing, man. There’s a lot of activists I respect in this movement. Some you’ll never even hear their name. You know, you never don’t never be known.

1:01:01 You know, I respect them a lot. They go and they do the real hard stuff. And then there’s the ones more in the spotlight who do the speeches or other people who are very consistent on YouTube. And then there’s even the activists who they’re barely an activist. You barely know, but they’ve really spent time building their social media.

1:01:18 And that’s their activism or chefs or the guys creating vegan documentaries or the vegan meat. You know, like there’s just so many ways to spread this message and so many ways that you can contribute. So I think it’s great that we’re covering so many bases. OK, tell me about bulimia, your eating disorder and why it’s all Tim Ferriss’ fault. Whoa, brother. Whoa. Whoa.

1:01:43 And and I also have to say, is veganism some form of this eating disorder? Actually, that’s what saved me, man. But I’ll tell you the story. Answer all those questions. Well, you had to bring Tim into this.

1:01:53 Oh, come on. Tim’s going to love this. All right. Well, it started when I had cancer, not the bulimia. But when I had cancer, I was put on a very high dose of steroids.

1:02:04 And all I wanted to do was eat. I put on twenty five kilos so quick that the skin on my side actually ripped and bled. And, you know, that’s all I was doing was eating. I wasn’t allowed to do anything else, really. So I was eating a lot, man. And you got the cancer really quick. This happened when you were young.

1:02:20 I was 17. 17 leukemia and lymphoma. And boom, it just hit you in half. Had a little lump in my neck that turned into 13 golf ball sized lumps. They took one out from under my arm. Four or five days later, they came in and said, you’ve got a very aggressive cancer.

1:02:34 You’ll be dead in six weeks if you don’t start treatment straight away. That’s real talk. And I was like, I’m so glad I didn’t do my homework, man. I was so happy. Do you think that makes you so driven today because you had a brush with death? I mean, there’s got to be a correlation here.

1:02:52 I understand suffering. I suffered a lot during that time, man. And when I see suffering now, I can I have more empathy for it than I did before. Absolutely. OK. So I think that would be a big part of it. Also, life’s short, man. I’m not here just to muck around.

1:03:07 You know, there’s things that need to be done. I’m very lucky. What I’ve got, I got, you know, even even how I came out of cancer, a few scars on my sides from those stretch marks. That’s it, man. I’m fine. I didn’t lose limbs or nothing.

1:03:21 I’ve got a lot of gratitude and, you know, I just in many ways in my life, I’m very privileged human. So I for a long time just cared about myself. And then I realized, hang on, there’s more to life than just you, mate. You know, you’re at the top of the top of privileged beings on this planet. What about those at the bottom?

1:03:38 And that’s why I’ve been so serious about helping and the empathy thing grown from my own experience of suffering. It’s definitely contributed. So, OK, back to bulimia. I had so that’s where I really started binge eating, man. And you got trained that way because you were so young, like 17, the steroids happened and now you’re used to eating all that food.

1:04:00 Yeah, man, I was. And at the time I started smoking a lot of weed and, you know, because I was on the cancer, I had the chemo and that. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere. So I was like, I’ll just smoke a bit of weed. And I started smoking a lot and doing a lot of drugs while I was on the chemo.

1:04:15 Other drugs, too. Not just weed. All the drugs. Many of the drugs. Because I thought I was going to die. So I’m like, fuck it. I’m going out with a bang, man.

1:04:23 You know, I might die next week. I’m going to enjoy myself. And I knew that a sure way to enjoy a night was drugs. That was my idea at the time. And you can still go out at this point.

1:04:32 Sorry. So this is about a year later. But the first part of chemo was intense. It was six months intense. It smashed me and nearly killed me numerous times. I had a few months break. Then I started a once a week maintenance chemo.

1:04:48 That’s where I started doing my job as like starting to be a personal trainer. And that’s where I started partying again. And because it was just once a week, I feel sick for a few days. It wasn’t that heavy. I could still go out on the weekend.

1:05:00 The doctors just said, you cannot drink. I was like, no worries. It’s not my drug of choice. So I didn’t drink. I never told him obviously about the other drugs. I just didn’t ask. And I partied a lot, man. So the bulimia, right?

1:05:14 So that just you 30 think that’s being saved from death or what was that? I was always interested in drugs. I was finding fascinating. I liked the whole drug culture. I liked that it was kind of rebellious. You know, I actually started selling drugs. I liked doing that as well.

1:05:29 I enjoyed all of that kind of I just enjoyed that sort of lifestyle. It was business, man. It was business. Yeah, that’s how I saw it. And you know, but and I thought I was doing a community service. I’m doing you a favor. You’re gonna have the best night tonight.

1:05:46 I didn’t see I didn’t see drugs. I’ll see them now. Like now I haven’t even had a coffee, no drugs for nearly five years. So I’ve got a big shift in my beliefs about drugs. But you know, it’s a whole nother story. So bulimia. I that’s where the bad eating started where I started binge eating in a big way.

1:06:05 And cheat day gone wrong. Yeah, man. Well, I hadn’t read that book yet. But eventually I read Timothy Ferris’s book, The Four Hour Body. And in that he said, eat no carbs throughout the week. And then you can have a cheat day. We eat as much as you want.

1:06:20 And for me eating telling me to eat as much as I want was a ridiculous amount of food. And I eat. I remember one night doing that cheat day. I ate so much food throughout the entire day that I woke up at about two in the morning. I was so sick, man. And I had to go vomit.

1:06:38 And I vomited and I felt better. I’m like, Oh, I feel a bit better. And, you know, it was a while later. I remember it was Christmas and I overate again. And I was in Japan and I went out and I made myself sick because I was too full. I’m like, I feel better. And then another Christmas I did the same thing.

1:06:56 And then I sort of saw it. I can do this anytime I eat too much, which is all the time because I got such a bad problem with binge eating. And so that’s what I did. That’s kind of how it started. You know, it wasn’t like a body image thing for me. It was emotional eating.

1:07:10 But I didn’t understand what emotional eating was. And then basically this bulimia got to a point where sometimes I mean every single day I can’t I don’t think I was having any days where I wouldn’t binge and purge. But some days I do it. Man, maybe 10 like a lot of times. A lot of times expensive. There’s a lot of food to buy. There was a lot of food. And it was it was you have to be so secretive.

1:07:32 And there’s so much shame. I didn’t tell anybody that I was gone through. So I went through this for a few years. And I’m a personal trainer. Like I feel like such a sham.

1:07:42 You know, someone I’m trying to tell people how to eat healthy. And I’m just like, you are. What are you talking about? What do you know about how to eat healthy? And I knew how to eat healthy, I thought. But that wasn’t the problem for me. It was emotional eating. And this is the biggest problem in my life, man.

1:07:59 I mean, I’ve been through drugs, I’ve been through cancer, been through. I’ve actually been through a drug induced psychosis. I’ve been through some bad shit. But bulimia was the hardest battle, man. Even cancer, everything was so hard. Why? I was so trapped and I was so deep in it.

1:08:15 I was the one time where I remember feeling hopeless, like there’s no way out of this. Not that I’d ever spoken to anyone. Didn’t even cross my mind to. I was just trying to get out of it myself, like I usually do things. And I tried different things. And I did everything in my power that I thought to do.

1:08:33 And I still couldn’t get out. And I’d done it over and over. And I’m like, this is my life now. Give up, man. This is your life. Just own it.

1:08:41 You know, I got to points like that where I hadn’t been like that with drugs and things like that before. I was always found a way out. And there’s no male examples of bulimia out there, right? That’s a problem. I mean, it exists in males, but it’s it. Well, probably back then it wasn’t talked about much at all.

1:08:56 But you know, you hear about girls do it, but then sometimes it’s wrapped up in body image and this and that. But as a guy, you know, there’s probably no one talking your language. I’d never heard of one ever. And I, you know, even now, I don’t know. But I’d never even thought to look up a YouTube video about it.

1:09:14 I read some books on binge eating and things like that, but they weren’t right for me. Thankfully, I went to buy my friend a book for her birthday or something. I can’t remember. The book wasn’t there. So I looked around, see what else was there. I saw this book called End Emotional Eating by Dr. Jennifer Tate’s.

1:09:31 My God, Emotional Eating. What’s that? I read the book. I read the back. And I was like, this is it. I knew. I was like, this is the book. That’s me.

1:09:42 This is my problem. I just spoke to me so loudly. I was so excited, man. And I just spent the weekend devouring this book and doing all the exercises. And it was exactly what I needed. And it was just after I’d done a 10 day meditation course called Vipassana.

1:10:00 And it was like the book and the technique of meditation I’d learned were just hand in hand. It was perfect timing. Divine timing, man. I wouldn’t say that often, but that’s what it was. Right. And then I didn’t come out of it straight away, but I saw that there was a path out and I just started trying my best to just walk.

1:10:21 And there’ll be some back and some forward. And then I was trying to go vegan. And I was hating on myself when I’d be binging on the foods that weren’t vegan, thinking about the animals and just like, I don’t want to be doing this. And then when I decided to do the Valve of Silence and the date, I thought, OK, I can’t keep doing this. I’m going to do this year long Valve of Silence for animals.

1:10:45 I can’t be binging on animal products. Like, you know, it’s just not going to work. It’s just it’s just yeah, it was just wrong on a whole other level. And I thought I’d be caught out. I’ll do a disservice to the whole movement. No. And so on the day that I started my Valve of Silence was also the day I said from this day on, never again will you vomit after your food no matter what, no matter how much you’ve eaten. And I just made a vow to myself on that day.

1:11:14 And then a few days later, I binged hard. I ate a whole tub of vegan ice cream and a dry peanut butter with it. It was delicious. And then as soon as I finished it, I felt horrible, man. And ice cream is the easiest food to vomit.

1:11:31 Because it comes up. I taste good even when it comes back up. And I sat there and I’m like, oh, I could so easily. But I just knew I’m like, well, then you just back in that hole. You just back doing the exact same thing you’ve always done. You know where that leads you. Nowhere good. So that, OK, just just sit with it, man. Just sit with it.

1:11:48 And I sat there feeling like hell. Next morning I woke up, still felt shit, but I didn’t spew. And I thought, you know, anything is better than that cycle. And the next time when I binged a week or whatever later, I got to like 90 percent of the binge. I’m like, just stop them and you’re not going to vomit this up. Remember how you felt last time?

1:12:06 And then maybe the next time was 80 percent and 70 percent. And one other thing that I really think helped me, you know, was that I demonized carbohydrates and fruit. The whole eight years I was a personal trainer. Don’t eat fruit or make you fat. Zero to one pieces of fruit a day max. That’s what I’d say.

1:12:25 When I went vegan, I started eating so much fruit and having smoothies. And I have like I was eating more fruit than I’d ever eaten. And I didn’t crave sugar. I didn’t crave those sweet foods that I had become somewhat addicted to, I suppose. I was having a smoothie that was like dessert for breakfast and it was delicious and I felt good about eating it. And it was just fruit, the most natural food, you know.

1:12:49 And I think that really helped me because I wouldn’t just get to this point where I was just dying for some carbohydrates and then I’d just eat a little bit and eat it all. So I think actually that that helped me a lot as well, man. And I felt really good about the foods I was eating. So yeah, that’s basically how I came out of it. But that book was definitely a catalyst and emotional eating.

1:13:12 Can you think of a couple lessons that it teaches you or a couple principles of the top of your head? Absolutely. I mean, there’s so many, but I say that the biggest things are to be more observant of your physical sensations. So you might eat food and then you want to eat more. There’s this urge to eat more and it can be quite strong.

1:13:33 And your job is just to observe it and realize that it will pass whether you eat more or not. And things like mindful eating, where you eat and you pay attention and you put your knife or fork down and you sit there and you chew and you taste it. And you’re present with what you’re doing, not watching TV while you’re on your phone and doing all these things. So mindful eating was a big thing. But I think probably the biggest thing of that book was, you know, it was it was deeper than just a food thing.

1:13:59 It was about learning how to observe your urges. And, you know, she called it like surfing urges, I think. So you might get this strong sensation to keep eating or to overeat or just to go to the fridge when you’re not even hungry. And you shouldn’t eat for any other reason than if you’re hungry. So if you get one of those urges, your job is to just where is it?

1:14:20 OK, it’s in my chest. It’s this tension. It’s pressure. And you pay attention to it. It’s a seven out of ten.

1:14:26 You know, maybe seven out of ten will be like too hard to go to the fridge. But after you’ve got through a few six out of ten urges, you’re like, no, I’m not going to the fridge. And then it passes. And that’s taught you that you can handle a six out of ten. When a seven foot wave comes, maybe you can surf at this time. You surf a few sevens, you get to eight, you get to nine.

1:14:44 Then it’s to the point where you’re like Kelly Slater and these little urges, you don’t you know, you can shred those waves. You don’t even it’s no thing. And now I’m at a point where I very, very rarely even binge now. You know, I used to binge all the time. Now I might have like eat more than I really you know, I might eat a lot.

1:15:03 And then be like, I kind of wish I didn’t eat that much. I might do that now once every six months or something. So yeah, come a long way. Wow. It’s an interesting point about mindful eating.

1:15:12 That’s been a big thing. I know a lot of Silicon Valley companies are doing that where Google now they’ll have like one day a week where they just do a mindful eating thing. Wow. 45 minutes they spend and think about the food, where it came from, who grew it. Well, that’s another way maybe to go vegan as well.

1:15:27 Think about like, died for my food and killed it and stuff like that. But just being with your food again, not being distracted. Yeah, I think it’s a really big deal. I think about all the time. I worked in banking for so long where you eat as fast as possible at your desk.

1:15:41 What people are yelling at you. And so you get into this really bad habit with food where it’s the complete opposite of mindful eating. So there’s really good tips. Is veganism a replacement for an eating disorder? Is it an eating disorder?

1:15:56 Because you have to kind of be OCD about it, you know, you can go autistic spectrum there and be like, okay, I’m going to do this and do this and do this. Are there elements? I’m sure that some people might use veganism to disguise an eating disorder, perhaps. I would personally, you know, I’ve also met people who think that they developed an eating disorder because they were eating animal products and they had a strong feeling towards animals of compassion.

1:16:25 And so they, after realizing, oh, I’ve been eating this food, which is basically killing animals that I see as my friends, maybe that’s why this doesn’t literally sit right in me and why I don’t want it inside of me. And when they go vegan, they find that they do come. A lot of people that I’ve spoke to have come out of their eating disorders. Some people sure they would use it to disguise. I’m sure there’s that definitely happens. But is it an eating disorder? Veganism? Definitely not.

1:16:53 Veganism is just about justice. It is just about treating others the way that you’d want to be treated. It’s about the golden rule. And it’s just the golden rule in action. It’s about living in alignment with our core values of peace, respect, compassion, kindness.

1:17:11 Let me ask you a question about the current generation of kind of young people, you know, teens, early twenties, maybe people you’re speaking to. Do you think they’re more compassionate than say their peers from 20 years ago or 40 years ago? We hear about Generation X, Generation Y, Generation Me. They’re on social media. Some people say they’re entitled, right? Some people say, no, these young people are just as, you know, just as deserving as, you know, people were 50 years ago.

1:17:41 You’re on the front lines. What’s your read? Well, one thing that’s interesting is this this whole idea that eating meat is manly, which is a big thing. I think that’s starting to become less significant in the next generation. Because manly isn’t that cool anymore.

1:18:00 I mean, maybe partly that and also just, yeah, yeah, maybe that’s it. Actually, man, people, you know, males don’t feel this as strong of a pressure to act a certain way to be manly and gruff and kill animals. And like, you know, they just more I think more people are becoming more comfortable being who they who they actually are not trying to fit into some stereotype or squeezing the sun box. I think that as well, you know, the social media has got a lot of problems, you know, in terms of addiction and some of the shit on there is just a total waste of time. A lot of it.

1:18:38 But you’ve been addicted to all man mobile devices. Absolutely. It’s something I still definitely use way too much more than I need to. And that’s another process. But I’d say almost everybody, almost every this is like an epidemic. It is it’s big. I’m gonna pay for it in 10 years. It’s bad. And but but on the positive side, these people, this next generation who are on their phones a lot, are being becoming aware of more of the issues in the world.

1:19:11 And, you know, what happens animals is all over the web. It’s all over Facebook. And I think that’s a big reason social media is a big reason why young kids are going vegan and people are signed to this issue is brought to light. Finally, you know, it’s not just this dark thing that you don’t hear about anymore behind the closed walls of a factory farm. It’s on your device, man. And and then so is the delicious vegan food and the health stuff as well. Okay, so it’s worth it. And you’re I do think so, man. I mean, yeah, addiction sucks. But you know, like, if you just put yourself in the animal situation, which I try to do a lot, then I think, you know, that’s far more important.

1:19:52 You mentioned the 10 day is it Vipassana or do you call it something different? Well, the teacher, the teacher calls it Vipassana. Okay, I should call it Vipassana. Okay, I’ve had guests on that have done it before. I’m actually just thinking about doing one right now. But I haven’t done it. But I I’d love to do it. And I know I need it. Why are you drawn to it? What is it? And what have you discovered either during or after you’ve done these retreats? And it’s another chance for you to go silent for a while.

1:20:18 Oh, yeah, man. Not that I’m looking for him. But Vipassana is you know, I always say this veganism is for the animals and Vipassana is for us. It’s just such a gift. So basically the technique. Alright, so the whole thing. You let me start with how I was drawn with it drawn to it, then I’ll go into what it is. I met I had a friend who came to my house after she done a Vipassana. I said, what’s with you? You’re glowing like he’s so what’s going on. She explained where she’d been. And I said, I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it again. You know, I was young at the time I said, maybe I’m going to do that one day. I already dabbled into meditation for many years, just a little bit, like guided things. And you know, it was cool. I saw there was some benefit. And then actually the person who I met on the cruise ship, the whole thing that got me started was one sentence. He said that eating animals is bad karma like a wise man. But the Indian guy was the Indian guy. Exactly.

1:21:13 And he also told me that he had become educated in the way he was through meditation. He said he’d learned a lot through meditation, a lot of insight had come. And that’s when I triggered, I can’t do that thing I heard about years ago. So basically for Parshana, it’s all around the world. It’s a technique that this is the story.

1:21:30 I don’t know. But the story goes that the Buddha, just a man, he, like a scientist, studied the body. He wanted to find out the root cause of suffering. Where does it begin? A lot of people already understood that suffering begins when you resist something that you don’t want or when you crave something that you do want.

1:21:51 So that’s where suffering, but that wasn’t the root cause of it. And like a scientist, the Buddha sat there and he meditated and he went through his body to find out exactly the root cause of suffering. Is it the thought? It’s not the thought. Is it our emotions?

1:22:06 It’s not our emotions. And his conclusion was that we create a reaction to suffering when we react to our physical sensations on our body. So that’s a very important part. Whether it’s tingling or itching or vibrating or pressure or pain or coldness, the physical sensation is what’s important. Because after that, everything, then you have the thoughts and all these different things happen.

1:22:31 But as soon as one of your senses has been hit, for example, you see something and it’s favorable or unfavorable. Here’s something favorable or unfavorable. Then you have two options. You either react or you observe. And so what he’s saying is if you just observe it, then you aren’t creating attachment.

1:22:53 Let’s say you have a good sensation. You can get attached, like, oh, this feels good. And the suffering begins when the sensation leaves, which is the nature of every sensation, the nature of everything in the universe is impermanence. So if you’ve got attached to something and then it’s going to leave, you’re going to suffer because you’re going to crave it. And similarly, if a negative sensation comes like an itch, for example, or pain would be a good one, and you resist it, you’re suffering instantly.

1:23:20 And there’s no point because it is going to pass anyway. And feeling this agitation towards this sensation just as another layer of negativity. So basically, the technique is two equal parts. It is observation of your physical sensations while remaining equanimous. And equanimous is just balance of the mind.

1:23:40 You don’t crave good. You don’t resist bad. You just accept the moment as it is. So you go to a Vipassana center. The first four days you do a technique called Anapana, which is observation of your breath.

1:23:52 That just focuses your mind. Day four you start Vipassana and you just sit there. Basically there’s 10 hours a day of meditation broken up a little bit, but all up at the top it’s about 10 hours a day. You sit, you meditate, you don’t talk, you don’t look around, nothing. There’s no TV, there’s no writing, there’s nothing.

1:24:10 You sit and you’re stuck with all your stuff, man. You’ll be in bed, you just want it to stop. You just want it to stop and you close your eyes and the sensations are still happening and all the process is still happening. You cover yourself with a blanket and there’s just no escape. You can’t distract yourself with your phone.

1:24:28 You can’t distract yourself by calling a friend. So people were like, oh, how was that retreat? And I’m like, retreat? You confront everything that’s opposite of a retreat. I’ve had a lot of insight come from this place, but I guess the first time I went, I realized that I never wanted to do drugs ever again.

1:24:48 I also had the idea to do the vow of science. I’ve been seven times, man, seven 10 day courses and I’ve learned. Each time I go, something new pops out at me about the technique or about just like life in general or new insight, or I just go deeper into this more peaceful place because that’s what happens. You know, all these things that we want to feel already inside of us, love, respect, compassion, peace, that’s all there, man. But we have covered it with our reactions and they create the anxiety and the tension and the stress and the fear and all of these things.

1:25:26 And so I would describe a Parshna like this is that the more of this meditation technique you do, let’s just say you’ve got this bright light inside of you covered with filth every time you do this technique and you observe your physical sensations rather than reacting to them, it’s like a layer of filth comes off and you just shine that little bit brighter. And so you leave feeling more of all the good things you want and less of all the things that you never wanted. It actually reminds me, have you seen that movie Limitless?

1:26:01 That dude takes that pill and you see his brain just switches on and it fires up. That’s how I feel after a Viparshana. But it’s a tough 10 days. Man, it’s tough. And there’s no distractions, basically.

1:26:14 You can’t get away from yourself. Just a lot of stuff happening in here, man. Yeah, it’s for one. But, you know, very few people actually don’t make it because they’re teaching you the technique to deal with it. Okay. Breathing and observing the breathing and all that.

1:26:27 Yeah, which just helps you go deeper and not get deep. They describe it as a it’s like a surgical operation of your mind. And you need to stay the whole way because you don’t leave a surgery halfway halfway through. But man, I mean, it’s the technique you learn, you’ve got a full life and you can practice all the time. And for me, you know, one of the biggest things that I bring to the vegan movement is the way the delivery of the facts with peace.

1:26:54 With compassion, with understanding, with patience. I never blame and shame. I’m not perfect, but I try very hard not to blame and shame or judge people. That’s not me, man, trying to lift people up. And I would say that Vipassana is the reason why I can speak to people on their level and have great communication and influence people to make changes rather than being one of those vegans who just pushes people further in the wrong direction.

1:27:21 But that’s just one small benefit of countless benefits I’ve noticed from Vipassana, man. It’s been one of the most valuable things I’ve ever come across in my life. Strong. What if I took a poll of 10 vegans? I went and stopped them right here at Old Street Roundabout.

1:27:35 And I said, what do they think of James? Now, honestly, what would they say about you? How do you represent the movement? What are you doing right? What are you doing wrong?

1:27:43 If you had to be straight out honest with yourself, just like you came back from one of those sessions, what would they say? I’d say that. What would they say? I would say that eight out of 10 of them would really respect and value the work I’ve done. I think they would think that I’ve been a very positive asset in the vegan movement and that I’ve reached a lot of people in a very good way.

1:28:07 And I think eight out of 10 of them would be very grateful for how committed I am and what I’m doing. There’d be a couple of people who might say things like, he’s not militant enough or… some vegans are very intersectional. They bring in all movements. They say he doesn’t speak enough about women’s rights.

1:28:35 He doesn’t speak enough about racism, for example. You know, I speak about what I know and I do try to do what I can in those areas as well. But that might be another thing they say. I think for the most part, I haven’t ruffled. Oh, there’s some people, there’s some people.

1:28:48 Some people would say that by doing speeches in alignment with certain organisations, animal organisations, who I don’t necessarily agree with everything they’ve done either, but they would say you shouldn’t have done that speech for them at their place because now people are going to think you believe this and that. For the most part, I think it’s all pretty positive, man. But I mean, you know, my way isn’t for everybody. And that’s what I tell people. I say, look, this is what works for me.

1:29:19 This is what I’ve seen work best. These are the reasons why. These are the other, you know, these are some great leaders who also trust in this approach. That’s why I do it. But, you know, you can’t…

1:29:31 There’s not one approach to please everybody. So animal rights organisations that they weren’t aligned with. Is that what they mean? For sure. You know, some organisations, you know, they dilute the message a lot.

1:29:43 It’s similar to what we’re talking about with the Caspiracy thing. You know, they dilute… They need to get donations. They make a big deal about welfare improvements when it’s really about the right of this individual to be free and not be enslaved in the first place. There’s lots of different things in the movement, man, that can be complicated.

1:30:02 And I’m an independent activist. I steer clear from all of them, almost always. But if someone invites me to do a speech, I’ll do it at a slaughterhouse, at a butcher. I don’t care who invites me or where it is, because then I have the opportunity to say what I believe. And I don’t think I’m right about everything either, you know.

1:30:20 I’m just doing my best. I’m not the most educated person in the world, but what I know is enough to inspire people to go vegan. And for me, that’s the most important job. OK. Ten years from now, say you’ve been crushing it every year.

1:30:34 All of your goals, you’ve been waving the flag for veganism. You’ve been like the poster boy every year. Everything you do touches, turns to gold. What does your life look like, you know, ten years from now? Like, what is it? You wake up and what do you see around you?

1:30:48 Like, where is where you want to be or where you could be? I never, ever think about that, man. Until now. You know, since cancer, I’ve always had long-term goals which don’t go further than a year. You know, that really changed my perception of time in a big way.

1:31:04 Ten years from now, I’ll be 40. And, you know, I like to think that… God, it’s so hard for me to even go there. But I guess, I guess, by then, I would hope that there’s so many amazing activists around that I don’t have to be so full on in terms of commitment. I’d like to think that I’m, you know, relaxing a lot more and doing just have a lot more fun in my life and still fighting for what’s important.

1:31:34 But I just feel like I’ve… I hope that I’ve paved a certain way for the next people to come. And, you know, look, for me, like, the thing is, I’m not like this activist-y kind of person. Like, protests and covering myself in blood and screaming meat is murder and all that. It doesn’t appeal to me, man.

1:31:51 You know, there’s other ways of being active. And I’d say that in ten years, I’ll probably be a long way in a different direction from what I’m doing now. I’d say I’ll be much more social media, much more of a social media influencer by then and delve into a lot of other areas, not just animal rights, I’d assume. And part of that, to be honest, to be perfectly honest, would be strategy to further the animal rights movement. But as well, you know, I think that there’s benefits for a lot of reasons, including just my own personal health.

1:32:25 And, you know, I… You’re burned out a little bit right now. Yeah, I’ve been working really hard, man, the last four years. So… But it’s not just that I’ve been working hard, it’s that I see that there’s other ways.

1:32:35 Not everyone can be like a YouTube influencer and just be a chiller kind of person. Like, not every activist can do that. But whereas I think I definitely… I could definitely do that. And people… I’m a relatable guy, man.

1:32:47 You know, I’m just a normal guy from Australia, so if he, you know, getting into breakdancing right now myself. And so I think that that’s a really good avenue to reach the mainstream. And in ten years from now, like 40, I can’t even comprehend it. I hope I’m living in the jungle in Bali. I hope, like, I’m just chilling with a lot of cool people.

1:33:06 I hope the vegan movement’s progressed in a long way. I hope that, you know, the consciousness for animals and, you know, just in general, like the amount of respect we all have for each other has continued to increase. And I just hope we’ve made some big strides towards the world that we really all want to be living in, man, a more peaceful world. That’s my hopes. Let me ask you questions about you.

1:33:30 The man, yourself. When you think of the word successful, who comes to mind? Someone from history, I mean, you’ve been quoting a lot of people, someone today, but who comes to mind first when you think of the word success?

1:34:03 What was the worst day of your life, contrasted with the best day of your life? The worst day of my life, the first day that came to mind was one day I was in hospital with cancer and I actually got rushed to hospital because I had a high fever. I’d only been out of hospital for two days before that I’d been in there for six weeks or something like that every day. And I had a very high fever and I rushed in there.

1:34:35 I had bad, bad migraines and soon later what happened was I couldn’t breathe. And it turned out I had pneumonia and I was in the line. I had like a central line sticking into my chest, into a main artery somewhere. And the, what is it? Like the bacteria, I don’t know, the pneumonia was in my central line.

1:34:59 They didn’t know. So they’re pumping all these antibiotics in and it’s just flushing more of it into my body. And I’m so sick that I can barely, I’m on the oxygen, I can barely breathe. They didn’t want to take me to ICU because it was dangerous to move me at all. And for days I was just so, I was terrified of not being able to take my next breath.

1:35:21 And it was like that, it was very close to that where I was just panicked. And if I’d lose my train of, like my concentration by maybe coughing or someone distracting me, I thought, oh my God, I’m not gonna be able to get my breath back now. And that was very, you know, that was a very scary time, man. There’s been some pretty dark times with the drugs as well. But I think that that was probably the worst in contrast to the best.

1:35:49 What were the dark days of the drugs? Is it just like being lonely, being like totally days and days strung out or just thinking I’m alone or I’m about to die? I used to get really paranoid. Okay. Very paranoid drug taker in the end there especially.

1:36:05 Okay. So I had to think that my best friends were gonna cut my fingers off. Like I actually, it was like, maybe they’re gonna, I was like, no, they are going to. And I’ll be pounding out of my chest and I’m just ready to like fight everybody. And just the paranoia was horrible, man.

1:36:20 Not knowing who to trust. But like I said, I had a drug induced psychosis, which was, that went for many months. You know, I was in Canada, when it happened, I had to get brought home into Australia. And, you know, I believed, you know, like, you know, the Truman Show? I was like, I was on the Truman Show, but not only was it, everyone could see me, but every thought I had was broadcast to the world.

1:36:41 Not just the world, to every, all everywhere. And that was, that was a really tough time, man. Because when you don’t think your thoughts are your own, you know, it’s, it’s very, you’re very invaded. And that was, that was a really, that’s the longest story, man, ever, of what happened through all that. And a drug induced psychosis is by doing drugs so many days in a row, that your mind shift changes to where you are in psychosis.

1:37:07 Exactly. And that takes weeks or months to kind of get out of. Took a long, took a long time to get, like, you know, I came out, because I was on anti-psychotics for however many months. And I actually, I felt like they were making me worse. I feel like when I got on them, I started thinking even more crazy shit.

1:37:24 And then one day I said, I’m not taking these anymore. And my family freaked out, you have to take them. Like, I’m not taking them. I’m worse than I was when I started them. I’m getting off these things.

1:37:35 And I stopped taking them. And the next day was the first day that I woke up and I went, oh my God, you crazy person. What have you been doing, man? And I wasn’t fully there, but it was just the first little snippet of like reality. And then it took a lot of work.

1:37:53 Like I did, you know, took a lot of work on myself to get rid of those thoughts that I had about, you know, the nature of reality and me being on this, like this, everyone being able to read my mind. And it took quite a while to get back to normal. And even a long time later, I remember just a thought would come in. I’m like, oh, that was weird. And so it lingered, even though I got rid of most of it, it did linger for a while, but I was lucky because a lot of people never come out of that, you know, or even they have the lingering where I was very lucky, man, that, you know, I didn’t do drugs.

1:38:31 I did go back to drugs after that for a while, but, you know, I definitely stopped for a long time as well just to get it all right. And she’d never gone back to them, but you know, the- That’s because they’re drugs. That’s why you go back. And they’re very, very, they got a very strong pull. And when it’s so normal in your crowd, in your crowd of friends and your, you know, your neighborhood and things like that, and you’ve just, that’s all you’ve known.

1:39:00 When I stopped doing drugs nearly five years ago, I had no idea what to do with my time. It’s like, what do I do? It’s Saturday night. I just sat there. I’m like, I don’t know what to do.

1:39:08 And then thankfully I started filling the space with surfing and breakdancing and animal rights. But for a while, I had no clue, man. What do people do if they’re not doing drugs on a Saturday night? Took a while. Right.

1:39:20 What’s the best day of your life? Besides today? Yeah, today’s probably number one. But number two would be, no, I mean, I think, I think, you know, the best day of my life. I’m not 100%, but I would say that a very, very good day in my life, maybe the best, was when I spoke for the first time on that show.

1:39:42 And I realized that that year of silence, like that sacrifice made a difference. You know, I noticed almost immediately because my phone nearly blew up with the amount of messages I’d receive of people inspired and influenced and making changes. And that day was so significant because that day I felt like I really made a difference. I really contributed. I really achieved my goal.

1:40:03 I’d achieved, you know, my goal, which still is the same today, is to be an instrument of truth and peace and contribute to making this world a kinder, more peaceful place. And that day, I really, as a first day, I really felt like I definitely achieved that goal. So that would probably be up there, man. Okay, if I asked your friends, what is your superpower, what would they say it is? How are you able to do all the things you do, you know, to speak the way you speak, travel the world, get into the position you’re in now?

1:40:39 What would they say is the superpower? Probably something to do with convincing people to do things that I want them to do. I’ve always been, I think I’ve always had the gift of the gab, man. I’ve always been influential. All my friends, they always, everyone as we were growing up, everyone did drugs for the first time with me.

1:41:01 A lot of my friends have gone vegan now. And when I was a personal trainer for eight years, it was just what I had to learn to, if someone wanted to get their money’s worth, they had to be inspired to get fit and get healthy. And so I had to learn how to speak in a certain way to a vast amount of different people, but to get them all to achieve that thing. And so I think they’d probably say my superpower is being able to make friends with almost anybody and being able to, you know, at least just plant some meaningful seeds with people in regards to influencing them to make some certain change in their life.

1:41:46 Yeah, probably something like that. What scares you?

1:41:53 I don’t know, man. I guess I don’t like the idea of wasting my life. You know, I definitely, I don’t know if it scares me. I just really don’t wanna waste my time here. I see it as precious.

1:42:10 Every day I feel like I start seeing my life more and more precious. And, you know, I fear the day that I don’t know how to contribute. I don’t know, something like that, man. I try to, I like to step out of my comfort zone. Do try to face my fears a lot.

1:42:29 And I think that’s why when I said I’m gonna do a vow of science for a year, everyone else was like, this is the craziest idea I’ve ever heard. And for me, I was like, well, remember when I did this? Remember when that happened to me? And so, you know, I do try to face my fears when I realized they’re there. But the idea of not being able to, yeah, just do something, I don’t like that.

1:42:50 What keeps you awake at night? Mm, very rarely do I get kept awake at night, man. I sleep well, but the thing that irks me the most is just unfairness. You know, I just hate unfairness, I hate injustice. Just really, yeah, it really doesn’t make me feel good, man, I just don’t wanna, I don’t wanna contribute to that and I don’t want a world like that.

1:43:14 I just see that there’s this, yeah, it’s just there’s so much potential for it, so much good. So, you know, nothing keeps me awake at night, man. But yeah, I, we’re just so far off the mark. And I guess, yeah, that bothers me. One of my guests in here was Kevin Kelly.

1:43:34 He’s one of the founders of Wired Magazine. And he’s in his 60s or maybe his 70s. And he said, Brian, you’re only as old as the last time you changed your mind. And I’m wondering, what have you changed your mind about, say in the last six months or a year, about the activism you do or anything? I mean, I had a big shift actually this week about the activism I do.

1:43:56 And just my life in general, because, you know, for a long time, my fun and my happiness hasn’t been a priority. And now I realize it actually is a priority. It has to be, even purely just selfish reasons, but also because, you know, the brighter you shine, the more you can be of influence to others in the way that I’m doing things. And I’ve realized that I’ve become quite unrelatable in a big way. Like the vegans, they love me, man, because I’m going hard for veganism.

1:44:27 But really, you know, I don’t think I’m that probably that relatable. I think I am, but I could be a lot more relatable to the general person. If I just shifted a few things. And so for me, I’m really excited to do that. I mentioned it a couple of times already, but I’m really excited to just, you know, take it back a bit for vegan activism stuff and just get back to having fun.

1:44:52 Like more play, that’s probably to summarize it, more play in my life. I’m so excited for more play and just to be break dancing and to be surfing and to just be enjoying nature rather than thinking about what I got to do and my work and, you know, it’s been a big shift though, man, because I have been all in. Every bit of me has been all in and it’s kind of hard to step out because you feel like you’re doing wrong by them, but you got to do it right by yourself as well.

1:45:25 Why now? Why that shift? I hit rock bottom about a week or so ago. You know, I’ve posted on online every single day, at least once for the last four years. And the most I’ve skipped is maybe two days in a row.

1:45:41 And for five days I couldn’t post a thing, man. I was just, I was just, I was just finished. I was sick of hearing it. I didn’t even want to hear the word vegan. Don’t even talk to me about veganism.

1:45:53 And I was like, oh, this is bad. You know, it scared me. And I just realised this is a necessity. Self-care is mandatory. And I tell people that, but I don’t, I don’t practise it.

1:46:08 And I just, because of where I got to, you know, I knew I could come back that time, but I don’t want to get to the point where I can’t come back. And so that’s why, man, it was a really, really tough week for me. Good. Well, I’m glad you observed that, you know, and you’re giving it the credibility that it deserves. I see people outside there sometimes in this space.

1:46:28 I mean, I’m not a vlogger per se, but I see sometimes that people are vlogging every day. And I’ve had people on the show that have logged a thousand days in a row, you know. And Fun for Louie was in here, I think he was on a thousand something day. And that’s insane. Like that, I actually think that will make you insane.

1:46:46 Like if you really are constantly obsessed with the next piece of content, especially if it’s always a long one sub-vertical or something, I mean, it can really drive you insane. Maybe the same way that, you know, the persona is hard, you know, this is almost the opposite where you have to like push everything out there and be the guy all the time. And yeah, I ebb and flow when it comes to my stuff. I mean, I’ll go weeks and weeks without like putting up a vlog or something.

1:47:14 But the day I’ve done them every day. So I think you should trust your gut on that. Totally. And like, it’s hard because you’re not just doing it for you, you know, it’s like every day you don’t, I kind of just can’t help but think, well, who could you have influenced that day from just spending a little time on a post? But yeah, I mean, you’re right.

1:47:32 You got to go with your gut, man. And that’s probably the best advice for anybody in regards to just activism in general is that, you know, I went with my gut with the vow and you should go with your gut with what you post and how you do it. And that’s what I’m trying to do, man. It’s hard as well when a lot of people are looking up to you and, you know, I kind of felt like, you know, obviously there’s a lot of very inspiring vegans out there, but I have felt like I’ve carried a certain weight on my shoulders and had to be a certain way.

1:48:03 And, you know, credibility was so important. This is another thing I’ve learned in the last six months is that credibility is very valuable, especially when you are trying to advocate for lifestyle changes. People look up to doctors because they’re so credible, right? Probably the most credible people, the general person would think. But then there has to be a balance between, this is what I’ve just very recently learned, has to be a balance between credibility and relatability.

1:48:32 And that’s, yeah, that’s where I’m moving towards now. Cool. Why break dancing and do you have a windmill? Not yet, man. I’m just getting into it.

1:48:42 Why break dancing? My opinion is the coolest thing on this planet. I love that you can do it. It’s so cool, man. I love that you can do it anywhere.

1:48:51 You don’t need anything. You don’t need your snowboard. You don’t need your earphones. You don’t need a pen and paper. You choose your body.

1:48:57 So I love that. It’s probably one of my favorite things about it. You can just start breaking anywhere, but it’s everything. It’s power, it’s strength, it’s speed, it’s flexibility, it’s core. You know, it’s everything.

1:49:09 And I just, the way that they move and what they do with their body, it just blows my mind, man. So, and I love, you know, I love music and I love dancing and you can do it by yourself and you can do it in your hotel room if you have to. It’s just the best thing, man. I just can’t wait to be sick at it. That’s awesome, man.

1:49:31 That’s attitude, bro. Like when they battle on that and they’re attitude. I just love that. Yeah, it’s so important. I’ve had a few great B-boys in here.

1:49:37 I’ve had Crazy Legs in here and Storm, who’s the guy from Germany. Yeah, I watch all these tutorials. Yeah, he’s the real deal. Sick. So yeah, I’m about a year and a half in and I love it.

1:49:46 Just get good instructors, that’s all I have to say and they’re hard to find because the good ones don’t want to teach you and so you got to go find them. It’s almost like, you know, the Chinese martial artists guy. You got to go sit on his doorstep and cook his fish heads for him and convince them that they should bother giving you the knowledge. But if you can get some OGs to show you what’s up, it makes a huge difference. That’s cool, man.

1:50:07 So, and you’re traveling a lot, so maybe you could tap into that. Yeah. And there are definitely some vegan B-boys out there. Yeah, there are, they’re hitting me up actually. For sure, but yeah, I love it.

1:50:14 Cool, that’s sick, bro. Yeah, my windmill. I have a windmill, yes. It’s not the windmill I want it to be. So, let’s just say that.

1:50:22 That’s sick, man. It’s a process. Good idea. James, I always ask everybody here a couple questions at the end. I’m gonna ask you now.

1:50:28 If you could pick up the phone right now and make a call to the 20-year-old James and give that young man, maybe he was a drug dealer, I don’t know, a bit of advice. Yep. What would you tell him? I would hate to mess with it actually, man. I’d hate to mess with his, because I’m really happy where I’m at right now and I wouldn’t wanna throw him off with that butterfly effect kind of thing.

1:50:49 But I guess, I mean, a couple of things I would tell him is that your life would be significantly better if you stopped doing drugs. Although in saying that, I also question if that’s true, because maybe drugs did help me get to a certain point and then I had to leave them behind to get to the next level. So, I don’t know. I’m a little bit torn with my beliefs on that. But I would probably, what I really do believe is that you can get there without them and if you get there without them, your foundation is much stronger.

1:51:19 So, I’d probably give him a suggestion about drugs, because they were a big ball and chain for me for a long time. And if that was the only piece of advice I could give him, I mean, yeah, to be honest, that would probably be it, because as soon as I stopped doing that, everything else started clicking into place. Yeah. That was very cloudy. Yeah, that makes sense.

1:51:39 On that same note, best advice you’ve ever received could be from, I don’t know, a parent, personal trainer, another vegan, something. I think the best advice I’ve received is from my friend Tanya. Like I mentioned, some people idolize and copy the approach of certain activists who’ve been more militant, which I did as well, just wanting to be effective. Didn’t suit me, didn’t work, couldn’t get people to change. And then my friend Tanya, she said, why are you doing it like that?

1:52:12 I like how you do it better. And I’m like, what do you mean? You like how I do it even better than they do it? And she goes, yeah, I think your way is better. And at that point, I could never have imagined that I would have reached so many people.

1:52:25 I thought, all right, I’m just gonna try it. I’ll just see if you’re right. And I went, I was just starting into personal training again after the vow of science. And I went in and someone asked me if I wanted a muffin that was sitting there. And I was like, before I would have been all militant about it.

1:52:41 I don’t eat those muffins, you know what’s in there, animal cruelty, blah, blah, blah. And instead I said something like, oh, I appreciate the offer, but actually, I only eat vegan muffins because there’s dairy in there and eggs probably, and they cause a lot of animal cruelty. So I don’t wanna really eat that stuff, man. And we got into a conversation and five minutes later, there’s three people watching my YouTube vids and I took a photo and I sent it to Tanya.

1:53:09 I’m like, that was the best advice. And I’ve done my best to stick with that. And I know that that was a very significant turning point for me because without that advice, I wouldn’t have done it my own way. And there was already someone who had done it that militant way and had success, but there was no me as a unique being who had done it the way I can do it. And now I’ve reached tens of millions of people, man.

1:53:37 So that is probably the biggest best advice I ever got. I always talk about it. And all she was saying is just be true to me. Basically, she just said, be true to yourself. Yeah, great advice for anybody watching your list and just be yourself.

1:53:52 Absolutely. Because people can tell when you’re not congruent and you could have the greatest message, you could be quoting the greatest physicist ever, but if it’s not real, then people know it pretty quick. And when it is real, people connect with it. Don’t they say maybe you know this, most of your communication isn’t actually the words, it’s your body language, and that’s a hard thing to fake. If you’re saying something that your body doesn’t really believe or agree with, it’s written all over you.

1:54:22 And even if it’s subconsciously, we pick up on that kind of stuff. Yeah, people feel it in a big way. Last part of that question, to that 20-year-old that’s watching us, listening to us, anywhere in the world, right, China, Brazil, America, here in the UK, back at home in Oz, whatever, to that person who wants to make a difference, maybe with their own muffin choices today, or maybe they want to educate themselves more, or go on a retreat, or maybe go on a slaughterhouse fast, or maybe just learn more, what advice do you give to them?

1:54:56 Like, what do you tell them? Is the best thing to do to kind of continue the journey, or to see the light, or to try something like this? Yeah, there’s two main things I would say. The first is to get educated, to watch the documentaries, it’d be the easiest way. You’ve got Earthlings, which is free online, and it shows what we do to animals.

1:55:17 So it shows the ethics behind all the products made from animals. We’ve got Caspiracy, which explains the environmental destruction caused by animal agriculture. Forks over knives, which is based on the largest study ever conducted on the relationship between nutrition and disease. And the bottom line of that was that the optimal amount of animal products in the human diet is zero. Those three documentaries, Earthlings, Caspiracy, and Forks Over Knows, I’d say watch them.

1:55:44 So, you know, take a few hours out of your life, it could be all the motivation you need to make one of the greatest changes you’ll ever make in your life. And I say that because I’ve spoke to literally thousands of vegans now, and we all agree, you know, I’ve never met a vegan yet that doesn’t agree that going vegan is one of the best things, if not the best thing they ever did. So I say get educated by watching those documentaries, and then you can branch out from there into where you wanna learn more or whatever.

1:56:10 And another thing, just the other thing actually would be to join Challenge 22. It’s a 22 day vegan challenge. It’s totally free. You get a mentor if you want, you get joined into a group, any question you’ve got, any recipe you want, any think you need, people are there to help you out. Registered dietitians, you name it, you get everything you need.

1:56:33 So it’s challenge22.com. It’s the easiest way to go vegan. When you try for 22 days, you get everything you need. And then you decide if, I mean, ideally you keep going because you realize that you can now and why wouldn’t you? So that would be it.

1:56:50 But if you forget that or whatever, anybody can just start replacing the meat they have in their burrito at Mexican for the black beans. Instead of getting the sour cream, get more guac. If you’re at a Thai restaurant, get the coconut curry. Instead of getting the chicken stir-fry, get the tofu stir-fry. It’s easy, man.

1:57:09 It’s so much easier than people think. It’s so much easier than people think. And it’s so much, it’s infinitely more rewarding than people would expect. Good words of advice. James, thank you so much for coming on.

1:57:23 I appreciate it. I haven’t really talked about this topic specifically, with someone on the front lines in the vegan world. Funny enough, you’re actually, in the last five guests, you’re one of three that talks a lot about this. We have Dr. Michael Greger talking about, vegetarian diet’s gonna keep you from not dying.

1:57:39 And of course we had Mr. Avocado Wolf here as well. And so this is a theme happening here at London Real. But we don’t just walk the walk. I mean, seriously, I am going more plant-based diet and it feels right.

1:57:51 And I mean, I can see my body making these choices and I’m now starting to trust my gut. And I know, and I know a lot of times, I just feel better when I’m eating these plants. And so there’s something there. And I’m gonna really explore more of all these things we’re doing to the animals as well, as well as some meditation. And just to show you it’s not just that, we also have our London Real Academy.

1:58:11 And inside of it, we teach people how to broadcast themselves like this. We teach them how to create businesses based on media like us. We also have a course called our Life Accelerator, which we’re calling Life Mastery Next. And we have a diet section in there. One week we get people to change their diets up.

1:58:25 And I just ask people to do changes. And we have, I have like a quadrant and one of them is like, stop eating gluten for the day, stop eating sugar for the day, go vegetarian for the day, or go fast for the day. And for the people that are already hardcore, we say go vegan for the day. And so a lot of people introduce this meatless Monday concept. And it’s funny because they pay for the program.

1:58:45 And when you ask them to do something, they do it. And they’re like, oh my God, wait a second. I didn’t die when I didn’t eat meat that day. I feel pretty good actually. Oh my God, I actually didn’t eat for half a day and I didn’t die.

1:58:56 So again, a lot of times, you know, we just get in these conditions and we’re only doing it because our mom served it to our plate and because grandma made it for her and it doesn’t make any goddamn sense a lot of times. And so look, what we do here every week is question everything. Why do we do these things? Why are these things legal? Don’t get me started about, you know, psychedelics being illegal, let alone other things.

1:59:19 So yeah, we can’t always trust the law because it’s not always right. Absolutely. So thank you for doing the work you do. Thank you for getting real and talking about your struggle in the past. And again, like Tanya might’ve said to you, it’s important that you’re you because we can relate to you much more when I know that you had major drug problems or you had bulimia or you had cancer and it makes you, you know, we’re much more of a approachable person.

1:59:43 So thanks for all the work you’ve done and thanks for also realizing you gotta take a break because if you can’t be the best you, then there’s no point really. And again, people will feel that energy, that tired energy. You’ll go give that fourth speech in London and they’ll be like, James seems a little off. Yeah, he’s off because he’s been posting every day for four years. So yeah, look, it’ll always be there.

2:00:04 So I’m glad you’re gonna take a little bit of a break. Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me on here, Brian. And thanks for having me on here to talk about this because a lot of people shy away from this. Obviously it’s a hot topic around here lately and I’m glad to hear it, man.

2:00:16 Yeah, I know. I gotta go check with Ruth. Yeah, man, they’re doing this on purpose. He gets in the house, but no, look, I love talking about stuff all the time. Let’s get it out there and let’s see what’s what.

2:00:27 So as we say on London Real, it’s about the journey. I wish you well and yours. Thank you for the time. Thanks, brother.