How I Learned to Love Shrimp

Cass Sunstein on why people self-silence about animal welfare

• Amy Odene & James Ozden

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Cass Sunstein has one of the most impressive track records out there. He’s the author of the social change books Nudge and How Change Happens, a Harvard Law professor and former US government official in the Obama administration. He has been writing about animal rights law since as early as 1999 and has written several seminal papers on the topic. He has a forthcoming book, with the working title Animals Matter, discussing how we can normalise and popularise caring about animals in mainstream society.

In this conversation, we speak about understanding the contradictory views held by the public on animal welfare, how our advocacy can help them overcome these contradicting views, how he was smeared by the media and even called “the most dangerous man in America” for his views on animal rights, and how we can get more people to speak only about pro-animal issues. 

For those interested in hearing more about his previous book, How Change Happens, and his views on social change, you can listen to this great episode of his with 80,000 Hours, which covers that topic in more depth.

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Cass:

And this is coming. So the speed with which it comes has a big TBD, but it's inevitable that we're going to see large cascades in favor of human behavior that's less cruel to non-human animals. It's inevitable, and one way to make it accelerate is to meet fire with fire.

James:

Cass Sunstein, our guest for today, has one of the most impressive track records out there. He's the author of several social change books Nudge and how Change Happens. He's a Harvard law professor and a former US government official in the Obama administration. He has been writing about animal rights law since as early as 1999 and has written several seminal papers on the topic. Even more, he has a forthcoming book with the working title Animals Matter, discussing how we can normalize and popularize caring about animals in mainstream society, and in this episode we speak about understanding the contradictory views held by the public about animal welfare, how our advocacy can help them overcome these contradicting views, how he was smeared by the media and even called the most dangerous man in America about his views on animal rights, and how he can get more people to speak openly about pro-animal issues.

James:

And he is a very busy man, so this was quite a short episode. So for those interested in hearing more about his previous book, how Change Happens and his views on social change, we'll link to a great episode by 80,000 Hours which covers that topic in much more depth. Hope you enjoy the conversation. Well, thanks so much for joining us. I'm so excited to have you here. A question we like to ask everyone to begin with is what's something you changed your mind on recently and why well, I've changed my view, actually recently, and in a pretty fundamental way.

Cass:

For a long time I was basically in agreement with bentham, thinking that the question of animal suffering was the fundamental one, and that Bentham said basically 90% of what needed to be said, and a forthcoming book, which is magnificent, from Christine Webb called the Arrogant Ape, that the Benthamite view isn't adequate. And the animal well-being includes many things in addition to not suffering, just as human well-being includes many things in addition to not suffering. So for a horse, what's necessary and what should be provided is a good life for a horse, and if a horse has his no suffering, it is not having a good life, and that reorientation seems to me essential reorientation seems to me essential, interesting.

James:

So that's, I guess, maybe going from more purely hedonistic, utilitarian, like how much welfare do they have? To maybe slightly more expanse in terms of do they feel fulfillment, they have family, do they experience love, like this kind of broader set of attributes. Is that broadly right?

Cass:

yes, exactly so, from a utilitarian and Bentham sense framework just to something more Aristotelian which points to flourishing. And so give a dog or a cat. For the dog or cat not to suffer is really important. But if that's what the dog's life is like or the cat's life is like, there's a form of cruelty there, because a dog or a cat needs many things other than in addition to not suffering, like exercise and play and smells and sounds and adventures, and all those things are central for how we should think about non-human animals.

James:

Nice. That's interesting, and has that changed how you prioritize what we should do to help animals? And maybe also, for some background, most people listening will be focused on farmed animal advocacy. So animals eat food, so I guess I'm kind of curious does this kind of change in how you value their lives or how you think about them yeah, has that affected how we should aim to help them as well?

Cass:

Yeah, completely. So I had thought that the thing you'd want to do with, let's say, cows is make sure they don't suffer, and that might be compatible with their being raised for food, so long as they could be raised for food in a way that doesn't involve suffering. That would be a radical change from where we are. It might not be economically feasible. It would be, in my view, a massive improvement on where we are, but I no longer think that's adequate. If you have a cow that's not suffering or terrified or self-evidently at risk of pain, that's a really large step forward and hooray for that. But a cow needs much more than that, and what a cow needs should be consistent with feasibility. You shouldn't be deprived of that by people, and if people can provide that for a cow, that's the right thing to do.

James:

I haven't actually read that book, so I'll definitely link it below for people. So that's Justice for Animals by Martha Nussbaum, is that right?

Cass:

Yes, it's fantastic, and she's a philosopher and she's amazing. There's a book by Christine Webb coming out called the Arrogant Ape, which is also fantastic, and Webb, the author, is a primatologist, not a philosopher, but that makes it a very good complement to the Nussbaum book. I wouldn't even say to say they're complements of each other kind of isn't adequately admiring. They're both magnificent achievements.

James:

Then I guess I'm going to to go into more maybe philosophy on how we value their lives, to what we actually do about it. So I guess, yeah, of other books, obviously, you wrote how Change Happens, which I think came out in 2019, which has lots of interesting examples on how certain social movements or issues change quite radically in a short period of time. For example, there was Whether Women Should Drive in Saudi Arabia and issues kind of change quite radically in a short period of time. For example, there was whether women should drive in Saudi Arabia and you kind of detail this nice case study of how everyone, all those Saudi Arabian men thought other men didn't think it was okay, but actually the internally they thought it was fine and this kind of led to quite a quick change.

James:

And, yeah, you call this preference falsification. How much do you think that example of preference falsification? Like, do you think that's relevant to how we think about animals in terms of how people think about you know, they say they love animals, they eat meat. Do you think they actually do internally? There's a weird contradiction there. But I'm curious Do you think that this applies to our issue or maybe not?

Cass:

It's a fantastic point and super interesting. So here's a way in. There are a number of people who care about animal welfare but they fear that if they voice their concern, people will think they are weak or in some way. So a number of people quiet themselves with respect to their concern for animal welfare because they don't want to incur social disapproval or be characterized as one of them. And I think many of us have been in situations where if you say I don't eat meat or something, people look at you with some combination of fear and loathing. So some of the fear is that if you say you're a vegetarian, some people will think well, then that person has moral disapproval of me and that's not a very comfortable thing to think of the person you're having lunch or dinner with. So there are a lot of people who care about animal welfare, who self-silence about that. Now they make a little bit in the sense that they think cruelty to animals is regrettable and there should be less, or maybe something they care really a lot about, but they don't do anything or act on it. There's another phenomenon which isn't quite preference falsification. So and you know, with people who are supporters of President Trump we have data on this are given information. Lots of people who were supporters of President Trump or he's president now, and they'll express views about immigration that they wouldn't otherwise express publicly because they have a green light. So I think that's very important and potentially a step forward for animal welfare.

Cass:

So a lot of people who care about animal rights or animal welfare, they're in the closet. It has an overlap with gay rights X number of years ago and, to some extent, some places, gay rights today, where there are people who were gay or who thought that discrimination on the base of sexual orientation was ridiculous. That wouldn't say those things. And then if people step out of the closet and say I really care about animal welfare or I'm a vegetarian, maybe you should be too and you're my friend, but you're going to be my friend no matter what, but maybe you should be too. That can save animal lives and gives other people permission.

Cass:

So people who care about animal welfare or animal rights sometimes face a kind of social tax, and that's really regrettable. The tax could be turned into a subsidy. Or if say you care about animal welfare, people think that's nice, you're a good person. There's something else which is a complication, which is there are people who are, you know they're good people and the idea of treating fellow creatures cruelly or viciously something what they would never support. But they either wall themselves up for off from knowledge about what their own conduct makes possible, or they know it, but they kind of compartmentalize. So it's a little like I had a friend who used to cheat on his taxes a lot and would talk about it. He was a very good person. Otherwise he compartmentalized his general honesty with his tax cheating.

James:

Yeah.

Cass:

That's pretty extreme, but there are people who wall themselves up from what they in some sense know, or they don't want to know and so they don't. It's not quite like preference falsification, but it's in the extended family.

James:

Yeah, the latter, I think, definitely feels like something I've noticed, because even if you were to self-silence yourself, it me it wouldn't make sense. It makes sense maybe you wouldn't speak publicly that you care about animals, but at least maybe personally you'd maybe change your diet. And my sense is that's not necessarily happened, because if you know that's in your private environment you should be able to do whatever you think is true. But actually maybe the second explanation makes a bit more sense, in that they kind of know they're having some ethical transgression according to their own values, but they don't think about it too much and you know if this is the case and how. There was sexual harassment. People now are sexual harassers. It's kind of a little bit analogous, but it's not really precisely analogous because it's less visible. So if someone engages in sexual harassment.

Cass:

It's not clear that they're engaged in sexual harassment. Someone eats meat or contributes to cruelty to animals. It's readily knowable and kind of known. But there's your plate and it has something on it that tastes good and the fact that that was a chicken. That's not really thought about much and that's not a preference falsification. So maybe let's talk about a category that it is, which is information. So we know that there's a lot of stuff people don't want to know. People don't want to know whether they're going to get Alzheimer's. A lot of people don't want to know that. They don't want to know whether they're going to die. Professors who don't want to know their course evaluations might be bad.

Cass:

People don't want to know what their friends and family really think of them might be bad With respect to animals, and I'm doing research on this right now. A lot of people just don't want to know because it will make them suffer. We do have some make them not suffer as much as animals, but suffer emotionally and maybe stop eating what they really like. But we have data suggesting that when people who don't want to know about the mistreatment of animals actually learn about it, they check their behavior. So that's a fantastic opportunity that people who least want to know the information might be most susceptible to change once they get the information. It's the reason they don't want to know is they're good people who know once they hear they can't keep doing what they've been doing and then they do and then they do something different it's interesting.

James:

Yeah, can you say more about that research or like maybe how you would actually, you know, get these people to see the information without kind of like coercing them, because I guess, by definition, they're very resistant to seeing that in day-to-day life?

Cass:

Well, this is a great behavioral science puzzle. So Peter Singer, one of my heroes, was extremely successful not as much as he would like and not as much as I a moral conviction and the thing he did was to put animal suffering on the view screen of an extremely large number of people.

Cass:

So he basically made people clear on what happens to animals raised for food, and that is very powerful, even if it's unaccompanied by a moral argument, because people have at least some utilitarianism in them. When they see suffering, they don't want to contribute to it, and they might well want to contribute to making it stop. So that's about making visible the badness, and I think that's an extremely important endeavor and it's happening every day to change behavior. People, you know they have moral intuitions and they might either love their dog or cat or a horse, or they might easily think themselves into a state where they would love or want to be kind to a living creature who's not human. So there's that living creature who's not human. So there's that.

Cass:

There's another thing which I think is a parallel project, which is not to make people feel bad about what they're now doing, but to make them feel good about what they might do instead. This is worth a lot of thought. Some of the behavioral science stuff, including the domain of animal rights and animal welfare, is about nudging people to act differently by triggering their moral convictions and making them think. I don't want to be part of something horrible, but if people feel guilty or sad, they might freeze up and it might promote the compartmentalization. It's like if people are told they're bad in one or another way, they might react by saying you know, I'm not hearing you or you're the bad one.

Cass:

People don't like being told they're bad, you're moralistic or something. So the parallel project is to make it fun and easy to do things that are more animal friendly and I see a lot of tremendous hope here where meat-free substitutes, plant-based food is increasingly delicious and inexpensive, and to see it as great to do that rather than bad to do the other thing. That would be for many people more effective. So Stanford had a little study a while ago which suggested if people are told that if they eat vegetables they'll be healthier, you got an increase in consumption of vegetables. If you told them credibly that eating vegetables will be fun because the vegetables are delicious, you got a greater increase in vegetable consumption.

James:

So to to promote the the fun and uh delight associated with with animal friendlier action, that might be a better path forward for many nice yeah, I think definitely that lots of research kind of shows, when you're kind of moralizing or kind of judgmental of people, often this is not supportive of them changing their behavior. So I guess this is like a similar version doing that, whereas you're highlighting the positives rather than alterating them. Do you have a sense of like how maybe big the different buckets of people are in terms of like who's susceptible, like who's lowhanging fruit? If you were to speak to people involved in this work and say I think the low-hanging fruit is this audience and maybe information sharing is the best way, do you have any thoughts in that in terms of relative prioritization of audiences?

Cass:

I think we need to know the population whose proportions we're trying to figure out. If you asked me about China, I just wouldn't know.

James:

Yeah, well, we can say the US, us and maybe Europe, to the extent you think that's a good analogy for the US.

Cass:

Probably heterogeneity within communities. So I'm speaking from Massachusetts and I would speculate, without tremendous confidence, that in Massachusetts to appeal to people's moral commitments with respect to animal welfare would be very far from useless, that there's a large population who would be attentive to that. Oklahoma, to emphasize in Oklahoma that meat eating is associated with, you know, suffering on the part of animals might not be as effective as in Massachusetts.

James:

Yeah.

Cass:

So what would you do in Oklahoma? Emphasize the inexpensiveness and fantasticness of meat-free alternatives. You might not even call them meat-free alternatives, so they might deserve a name that is respectful of the values and concerns of the relevant population. I learned from my longtime co-author, danny Kahneman, to find data before expressing an opinion, and we have a sense of which populations would be most susceptible to what. But even that we don't have perfect data and to get the sense of the populations we'd want more data.

Cass:

I would say one thing that with a degree of confidence, which is that behavioral strategies that make access to, let's say, meat-free consumption easy likely to work to some extent with all populations. So there are places where defined meat-free substitutes is like really hard and you know where do you go, and there are places where it's just super easy. It's the first thing you see. I co-authored a book called Dodge which emphasizes that if something is simple for people to get access to, the likelihood that they seek it or use it is often surprisingly high. There's a framework called the EAST framework, which is E for easy, a for attractive, s for social and T for timely, and that's completely adaptable, the EAST framework, to more animal-friendly choices. I have a little friendly amendment of the EAST framework, called the FEAST framework.

James:

F is for fun yeah and if it's fun, easy, attractive, social and timely that across all populations, there's likely to be significant progress I recently spoke with katie cantrell from greener by default, who was definitely inspired by your work and nudge, and I guess the whole program is exactly doing these behavioral interventions making it top of the menu sound exciting, not too labeled, kind of in a very vegetarian or off-the-off way maybe. But yeah, I just wanted to ask you previously when you said about encouraging people to promoting the fun and the deliciousness of vegetables, and I guess you know in our case, maybe unlike Saudi Arabian women, you know there's a large trillion dollar meat industry who's saying the opposite, exactly what we're saying. We'll obviously make much, much more money and power, and how should that affect, or like impact, what we should do, given we have this large kind of counter player?

Cass:

A number of years ago there were light bulb jokes or impact what we should do, given we have this large kind of counter player. A number of years ago, there were light bulb jokes which were not really funny, like how many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb? Or how many engineers does it take to change a light bulb? There was one that I think was funny, which is how many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? And the answer is one. But the light bulb has to want to change. That's pretty good. So with respect to things that involve non-human animals, the light bulb has to want to change, and you're pointing to a lot of economic interest in making the light bulb not want to change. Yeah, maybe to be more engaged with actions that are not good for non-human animals.

Cass:

One thing you can notice is that in many ways, our society creates meat eaters. There's a great paper by a law professor named Lisa Heinzerling in a book I co-edited that just came out. It's her paper, not mine, and the thesis is so much money is going into creating mediators had an extremely instructive argument, and she documents it both with government money, subsidization and, of course, with private funds trying to create meat eaters. Now it would be wrong to say that without the creation of meat eaters, people wouldn't eat meat. Human beings have been eating meat since very, very, very early. Nonetheless, the magnitude of meat consumption and the favoritism of meat over alternatives is a result of resources. So what do we do with this? Well, think of any number of things where there's been large scale change. So we created smokers and then we kind of stopped creating smokers, so a number of people aren't dying who would otherwise die because we're not creating so many smokers. We used to create non seatbelt bucklers by the architecture of automobiles and the law. Now we create seatbelt bucklers and that saves a lot of lives. We could do many things by reducing subsidies, by creating other kinds of subsidies, by, I think, restrictions on advertising would run into various legitimate objections but by advertising of different sorts.

Cass:

And this is coming. So the speed with which it comes has a big TBD. But it's inevitable that we're going to see large cascades in favor of human behavior that's less cruel to non-human animals. It's inevitable, and one way to make it accelerate is to meet fire with fire. A lot of it depends on people's self-conception. So Texas did something smart a number of years ago. They're still doing it their anti-littering program. They needed a name or a rubric for it, and what they came up with was don't mess with Texas. That's really cool, because it suggests that if you're littering, you're messing with Texas and Texas is going to get mad. And that's much better than you know. Be green or litter bug shame on you, which was an old thing. So we need an equivalent of don't mess with Texas with respect to activities that are cruel to animals. We need that, and because that appeals to peaceful self-image at least many people's self-image as you don't want to be weak to protect the vulnerable, that's strong that's strong.

James:

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting because I think I've seen lots of research recently that actually there's, you know, a limited number of demographics, I think, particularly like young men, who actually do eat a majority of meat and thereby causing majority of, maybe, farm animal suffering. So it kind of makes sense and if you're trying to appeal to those particular, I guess, personas, leading into this maybe like protection and like strong framing, is actually quite effective.

Cass:

This is a great project, so thank you for raising that, and what's great is it's doable, it's achievable.

James:

Yeah, yeah. When you say it's doable and achievable, do you mean like, do you think it's like not inconceivable that I guess both kind of companies that are selling plant-based meat and maybe philanthropic organizations muster up enough marketing firepower to actually kind of, I guess, convince or like persuade some of this kind of important group?

Cass:

I think it's yes, and I think it's person to person and it's about social norms. And it might be that you and I, by virtue of you know the work you're doing and I'm increasingly doing might be able to affect some number of people and that can save some number of animals. And if you can save five animals by virtue of two weeks' work from a life of horror, that's a fantastic achievement. Even if it doesn't turn the country around, it does turn those animals' lives around and that's an amazing thing to be able to get to participate in. This is doable. I'm thinking I had a friend actually one of my best friends, this was a long time ago, 25 years ago who was first learning about feminism like for real, and he said to me he was looking at Playboy magazine, as he did, and he thought my God, what am I doing? This is terrible, and not that he wanted to censor Playboy magazine, but he thought this is not right and he completely turned around.

James:

With respect to that and with respect to non-human animals, that's happening every day yeah, definitely, I guess how change happens and, uh, joe would say, I guess predominantly focus on, I think, kind of social norms, more behavioral interventions to help animals. Obviously you yourself kind of worked in the obama administration, like lots of political kind of experience, uh knowledge. But I'm curious, like, to what extent do you think the animal advocacy movement trying to help farm animals should be focusing their efforts on the kind of behavioral approaches versus trying to regulate the industry within government or yeah, and and if the latter, like, what would that look like to be effective?

Cass:

let me tell you two stories, if I may please. There's a rule in the obama that would require cars to have equipment in them so you could see behind better. The question was whether to choose big mirrors, sensors which go beep beep or cameras which would allow rear visibility. We chose the cameras, so all cars in the US have cameras so you can see behind. During discussions of the rule the rule was not uncontroversial within the White House I said at one point you know it's not just children and elderly who would be helped by this and they were expected to be the disproportionate beneficiaries of the fact that people could see behind but also animals, so that dogs and other animals get killed because people can't see behind. I said shouldn't we include a discussion of how this would protect non-human animals? People looked at each other kind of embarrassed thinking why is this person talking about bots? This rule is about people, and so I failed. We did get the rule out and I like the fact that the rule would save non-human animals, but it's not in the justification for the rule. That was a failure. Now or at some future point, someone like me might not look like a weirdo in that respect, might look like obvious.

Cass:

Here's a second story for you. There was a rule proposed by CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which at one point would have required our customs and border people to separate dogs from their owners at airports if they didn't have the right documentation, and the dogs would be put in cages as the Customs and Border People search for a veterinarian. Our Customs and Border People didn't like the proposal very much. They thought we're not veterinarians, we're not dog management people. We're trying to make sure that people don't get in the United States who aren't supposed to be, and to turn us into dog managers is. We don't have the capacity for that, the access to veterinarians. What are they doing here? I worked at the Department of Homeland Security on some things and they wanted my support in the intergovernmental debate and I was convinced by them that they had a good point. But I also thought what about the dogs?

Cass:

You can pause over that, would you? A dog arrives in a foreign country, the dog is separated from his or her owner. The owner is maybe in tears. The dog is put in a cage by people who, you know, aren't dog specialists. The dog is terrified and the dog might be there for a really long time. Now, what about the dogs? And I raised the question what about the dogs? And my customs and border people were not horrified, surprised. That was where I went and they were in agreement. That was a concern. Now, that wasn't their concern and it shouldn't have been. The concern was their jobs. There was a concern.

Cass:

I raised that in the White House process also what about the dogs? Are we going to be putting dogs in cages when they're, you know, separated from people? Why would that be a great idea? And that argument didn't fall on deaf ears. So if you raise things, as many people who care about animal welfare do, it can change things, and maybe more today than 10 years ago. So I would think, in terms of where to use one's energy, it really depends on something like what probability do you have succeeding and how much of an impact would it have?

Cass:

So I failed with the revisibility. What came out by the way of the dogs initiative I think is not ideal, but still. It's not the case that when dogs arrive in the United States, they're put for an indefinite period in some cage. That's not happening, and there are a million and one ideas out there about how to make things at least a little bit better. For years. They can't defend themselves very well, at least not against us, and if we execute on one of those ideas, that's that's something that we should be grateful for.

James:

It seems like your view is that if you have the right opportunity, actually some targeted political advocacy can be quite useful, and at the very least it's kind of over time, the more and more that happens, the less kind of strange or surprising it is, the more likely it is to be integrated into the actual decision-making process.

Cass:

The more likely it is to be integrated into the actual decision-making process, completely, as I remember on the separating dogs when they come into the United States. Some welfare and animal rights organizations engage with the government and one thing that's cool I can report is if an animal welfare or animal rights organization engages with the government, it might be that the government won't engage back. No one's going to write a note saying thank you or we agree with that, we disagree with that. Any engagement is too potentially provocative and inflammatory, but those things are read and tended to and often really impactful.

James:

Even if the person who wrote the thing never gets a response, still it can change things in a major way that's quite a good segue, I think, yeah, if we can maybe talk briefly about, I guess, your recent sub stack post and I guess what we spoke about at the very beginning, which was this idea of how do we normalize animal welfare such that you don't maybe necessarily get socially stigmatized but actually maybe you get a social benefit for being a normal entrepreneur or caring for animals and I guess can you say more about maybe your experience working in the government, maybe what happened with you and I guess, maybe your plans to try and normalize this in the future?

Cass:

It's a little surreal. Thank you for asking. So I was nominated by President Obama to head a White House office that oversees government regulation and, to my surprise, my work on animals became extremely relevant to what the United States Senate was going to do with me. And did I expect that? No, not at all. But I was on national television, courtesy of Glenn Beck in particular, who described me as the most dangerous and the most evil man in America. Dangerous, I thought, was maybe a reference to my tennis ability, a very flattering reference. Evil kind of gave the game away, meaning he thought I was horrible, and you know he's entitled to freedom of speech. But the Senate got very concerned some members that I was an animal rights nightmare that I would ban fishing in the United States.

Cass:

And media that was my agenda and I had a very in the United States. And meat eating that was my agenda and I had a very hard time getting confirmed. I had meetings with senators who were completely courteous but thought are you going to use your government job to forbid people from eating meat? At that point the United States was in a serious economic trough. Maybe a depression was coming, and my main goal was to serve the American people, you know, by getting the economy on its feet again and also doing some things that would promote public health and safety. Those were my priorities. I did and do, of course, care about animal welfare, but I was so beaten up by the process that I was not very active in that area and I'm a little bit ashamed of it.

James:

I wasn't completely inactive in that area it sounds like you were still asking things about animals where you could like in the. In the few dark cases you referenced, it seems like you were still.

Cass:

Yeah, I did some things and we had some things involving animal welfare and cruelty that I'm glad we did, but at the time I was at least aware that I had gotten death threats about that. I was aware that I didn't want to do anything that would embarrass the president on these issues and after I got out of government in 2013, I was much quieter than I would otherwise be on the issue and I'm also not proud of that. So talk about preference falsification. I have a lot of things I'm interested in, but this issue. So I wasn't not writing. I was writing too much, but I was writing this and a reason was I thought is it really worth the rage and hatred and potentially threats that I was subject to?

Cass:

Former Governor Mike Huckabee, this still gives chills down my side and I really want to meet him and talk to him about this. So, ambassador Huckabee, this still gives chills down my side and I really want to meet him and talk to him about this. So, ambassador Huckabee, let's chat. He said to National Television that I think he called me that boy, that part I liked. That boy wouldn't like the receipt he would receive if he went to Arkansas during hunting season. That was a threat and that you know for a public official to talk about a reception and hunting season where guns and shooting are not irrelevant. I don't appreciate that. I would never do that to anyone and he should be ashamed of himself. But that was one of a number of things that did get me to self-silence. But I'm not going to be quiet on this issue anymore.

James:

It's amazing that you've come around and resolved. Obviously, it's not amazing for the threats and being called the most dangerous man in America, although I think that is quite an interesting story for a party. What's one takeaway that you might have for people who, in terms of maybe what you're doing to, I guess, rather than self-silence, what can people do to actually normalize this and talk about this? Anything specific that you're trying to do or you'd encourage others to do, to stop, I guess, change the normalness.

Cass:

To talk to others a lot about it, and to do it not with preachiness or moral disapproval to the extent that you can avoid those things but a sense of exciting and better future that each of us is bringing about, including by what we do today in our consumption choices.

James:

Nice. Thank you so much, casav, for coming on the podcast. It's been amazing and, yeah, looking forward to, I guess, seeing more of your work on this topic as it comes out. So, yeah, thanks for what you do.

Cass:

Thank you, it was great and inspiring. Grateful to you.