Grubstakers - Episode 217: The business of Animals feat. Steve Hindi president of SHARK

Episode Date: February 9, 2021

This month we take a stab at covering the business of animals. To kick off this extravaganza of corruption we speak with animal rights activist and founder of SHARK (Showing Animals Respect and Kindness) about the corruption/thievery within animal charities such as PETA, the threat that factory farming poses against climate change and the effect the media has to dumb down the individual, which leads us to admiring animal abusers such as Joe Exotic. Support Shark by donating to them, watching their videos on YouTube or even just telling a friend about the reality of the dystopian present we live in. P.S This is the book about the meat industry mentioned by Steve Hindi during the interview. Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, And Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry by Gail A. Eisnitz https://sharkonline.org/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC7K5BrapNSnk6XcXbpqXNg https://twitter.com/sharkonline

We find people that basically can't make enough to eat before they go into the fields. I don't believe that. I think that you're looking at other places that are not Central Romana. People actually who focus on and who like getting an orgasm never get one. Pull up your socks and figure out what you're going to do. Any chance we'll ever get to be a complete red state? Oh yeah. For the future is always uncertain. But more uncertain now.

Listen, Blue Ivy is six years old. Beyonce's baby, she tried to outbid me on a painting. Everybody in Atlanta right now at the Louis Vuitton store, if you're black, don't go to Louis Vuitton today. That's why you need to take a meeting with Kanye West, Bernard Arnault. Hello everyone and welcome to Grubstakers, the podcast on billionaires. In the month of February, we are going to be focusing on animals and I am your wonderful vegetarian co-host, Yogi Paliwal. Paleo diet, Sean P. McCarthy. Meteor Steve checking in uh vegetarian andy palmer and uh this week we have a very special interview with uh president of animal activist group shark

steve hendy will be joining us on the program and we we talk at length about many, many issues from animal activist groups that are fraudsters to activism that is fruitless to the animal factory farming that is killing the planet and many, many more zigzags along the way. Well, I just want to say that I couldn't really fit this in during the recording because, yeah, you know, he was very engaging. But just imagine it in your head, this hacky joke that I couldn't make. There's nothing in the rule book that says you can't throw a puppy out a window.

Yeah, no, I very much enjoyed the interview. Yeah. Sorry, I saw Andy smirking during that it's like this is this is strange um yeah it definitely was a little bit all over the place but i mean steve was excited and uh ready to talk about the three decades of animal activist work that he's done and honestly i'm really proud of the interview i think that it turned out really well and uh yeah but he seemed to be really adamantly against the idea of throwing puppies out of windows and i think we should have confronted him with just the hypothetical what if it was really funny

like what if what if what if a cockfight was hilarious yeah there's there's there was the delicate balance of like how many animal abuse jokes do you make with the animal rights activist right yeah it's like so this guy had his ribs broken trying to get these things shut down two weeks ago so uh let me just be a little asshole here oh yeah let's make let's make light of this i gotta say the interview was pretty powerful for me so you'll uh you guys are in for a treat also i don't know brought here to my eye maybe at one point when he was talking about his sort of transformation into this uh from away from pita and like the bullshit huge corporate animal supposed protector organizations and just did it himself

yeah his passion is contagious yeah i think it's a very incredible interview a very incredible guest i think you're going to enjoy it a lot and i think another thing we talk about in the interview that we've harped on a lot is the non-profit industrial complex so he talks about a lot of animal abuse issues but also how all of these organizations um not all of them about a lot of animal abuse issues, but also how all of these organizations, not all of them, but a lot of them that claim to be sticking up for animals just fall into the same, you know, billionaire trap where the homeless advocacy nonprofit that takes money from Mike Bloomberg is not going to criticize Mike Bloomberg. So you get PETA and Greenpeace and all these other groups kind of just trying

to fundraise and not really doing much to make the world actually any better. And with that, enjoy the episodes. Forgive the cough. I got a bit of a cough. They busted a rib a couple of weeks ago at a cockfight. Oh, my God. And I'm still a little bit recovering from it. I'll try and keep it to the minimum.

Maybe you can get me a glass of water and give me a chance. Yeah, no, I got to say, Steve, I didn't realize until I watched the video done by those drone fans about how you would paraglide in the 90s to cover some of the animal abuse way back when yeah i actually uh the main reason we got out of it was because the gas motors were such a pain in the butt uh i've been waiting really for years for them to develop some electric motors right because i think that those are going to be much better and they they keep talking about like, they're right there, they're right there. Because I'm still kind of intent on doing it. Well, I have to say, Steve, you are a certified badass in my eyes and many eyes around the country for everything that you have done. But I got to say, man, like it's been an inspiration to follow you throughout the years and to have you on the show. I got to say, man, it's been an inspiration to follow you throughout

the years and to have you on the show. I'm very excited. For our listeners that don't know you, we're interviewing Steve Hindi, who is the volunteer president of Shark Showing Animals Respect and Kindness. He has been an animal activist for three decades, if I'm not mistaken. Steve, why don't you take a moment to introduce yourself to our listeners? I'm Steve Hendy, president and founder of Showing Animals Respect and Kindness. We work on rodeos, cockfighting, live pigeon shoots, other canned hunts.

We fly drones that can deal with many other issues. So when possible, we work with other groups to get footage that they otherwise couldn't get because they don't have drones. And we use undercover cameras and long range cameras and hidden cameras. And it goes on and on. We try to use technology for the benefit of animals. I'm, I'm a former hunter fisherman and, um, uh, I used technology in killing animals, whether it was, you know, sonar and, you know, different communications devices and we took temperatures of water and all,

all kinds of stuff. You know, we use technology. You go to a sports store these days, and it looks more like you're setting up for warfare, bowling is warfare against animals. Well, I used to do that kind of thing. And now, I mean, frankly, in the animal protection movement, especially an animal protection movement that has so much money coming in today.

It is stunning to me. I mean stunning that they are not, I mean we're still back literally in the sticks and stones era where they take a little piece of cardboard over a stick and that's their way of fighting animal abuse. No, no, it's, you need to be out there with communications and with drones and cameras documenting and exposing things so that people aren't listening to our rhetoric about animal issues. Rather, they're looking at the animal issue themselves and making up their own mind. Because, for instance, just let me throw out just bullfighting, bullfighting. There is no way that I or somebody far more eloquent than me can ever put the horror

and the cruelty of bullfighting into words. You have to see it in order to really understand what's going on. And so that's what we do. I'm not, I don't want to sell you on animal cruelty. I want you to sell yourself. I want your own heart to speak to you. And, and, and, uh, 99 and nine tenths percent of people will do the right thing if they, if they have the opportunity to see what's really going on. Oh yeah. One, your videos from, I think it was a rodeo showing a calf with just a broken leg, really like that probably made it. So I'm never going to go to a rodeo, but I'm very curious. You mentioned that you were a hunter and a fisher. Would you be able to elaborate on like that transformation on how you came to be the president of an animal rights group? I had a boat, had my own boat out on Long Island, New York, right at the tip, Montauk Point.

And the reason it was there is because I was a shark hunter. I started fishing when I was four or five years old. And I lived in Minnesota, born and raised in Minnesota. And I started out with little perch, little panfish, sunfish, crappies, all this kind of thing. And then I moved up to bigger fish in the freshwater lakes. Northern pike. Then moved to Illinois and got into the Chinook salmon and the Great Lakes. But I always wanted something bigger because fishing was really my number one love.

Hunting was more like birds, ducks, pheasants, whatever, to eat, but fishing was what I really loved. And so it started over time there was this thing and i felt like you know how sporting is it i'm uh 150 pounds or whatever back then not 150 pounds anymore i gotta make that clear but 100 you know and i'm and I'm fishing for fish that are five pounds, 10 pounds, 20 pounds. So I so I finally I read a book called Sport Fishing for Sharks written by a charter captain named Frank Mundus. And I said, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to become a shark hunter. And, you know, partially driven by the movie Jaws, like so many people were,

which really set up this mass slaughter of sharks. Right. Wow. And I ended up getting my own boat. There was kind of a whole story involved in that. The first boat, I took my freshwater boat out there and almost got killed, but I got a 230-pound, a half foot Mako shark which is unheard of for somebody alone first time in a 17 foot aluminum boat it's just not the way it's done

and not the way you should be done if you want to live a long time but but I pulled it off and that really so like I suckered myself into that. Got a bigger boat, and that's what I intended to do for as long as I lived. Go out there and sport fish for sharks and, you know, be a big shark hunter and all this kind of thing. Well, that all got screwed up one year in 19, I believe it was 1988 or 89. I forget at this point. But I had read this thing about, this piece about live pigeon shoots. And I could not believe what I was reading about children putting live pigeons into boxes. They call them traps. Putting live pigeons into this line of traps. And then somebody stands there with a gun and says,

pull and one of the pigeons gets ejected out of the box and he shoot him. And I thought that's not possible. I really, I thought that this was bullshit from the animal rights people. And I didn't really have a problem with animal rights people. I thought that what they were doing was basically good. But this I didn't believe. And so I went to Pennsylvania on my way to shark fishing, one of the trips, and I stopped to see this. And basically I wanted to prove that the animal rights people were just lying their asses off.

They weren't lying. It wasn't a lie. In fact, the fellow who wrote, although he had written very well, he was a very good writer. He didn't begin to capture the awfulness of what this was. Young children, preteen children, loading live birds into these traps, the birds being shot to hell, at least two-thirds of them still alive afterwards, fluttering on the ground, trying to get away. And these kids coming back and grabbing these live birds and stomping them or slamming them against the ground or ripping their heads off. Or as the day wore on and the kids became tired just throwing them alive one dump after another into these barrels and uh when i was done at the end

of that day i continued on my way to the to, to my fishing grounds. But I was sick. I mean, I was, I was sick, didn't want to eat. And I actually went ahead with my fishing trip because this is who I was and this is what I did. But I was not the same person anymore. And over the next year, I made a decision that I was going to stomp out these pigeon shoots with every fiber of my being. But it was almost more to protect the reputation of what I was, that I was an ethical hunter, right? And ethical hunters didn't do that. And what I envisioned was that I would partner with all the other ethical hunters out there. And the following year, all of us ethical hunters, by the hundreds, by the thousands, were going to come out there and we were going to physically take those guns away from those slob killers in Higgins, Pennsylvania.

We were going to stop this thing right dead in its tracks. The only problem that I ran into was that there weren't any ethical hunters that wanted to join in. I mean, I would tell the story to people and they go, oh, that's terrible. And I'd say, yeah, we ought to do something about it. I'm going out there next year. You want to come with? And nobody wanted to go with, except my brother. My brother was the only one among the hunting fraternity who was up for going out and doing what had to be done. And so I partnered with the only people who would do something, and that was the animal rights people. And that was the beginning of the end for the old me.

Because then over the next year, I decided that this was going to have to be enough. And it was not easy to walk away from 30 years of hunting, fishing, killing. It wasn't easy. This is what I did. I was good at it. I enjoyed it. I tried to perfect it as much as I could. And now I just had to let it go.

That's the way it goes sometimes in life. And that's how it worked there. I just had to let it go. But what I decided instead, and a lot of people take this the wrong way, and I frankly don't give a damn if they do. I said, what I'm going to do instead is I'm going to hunt the hunters. Listen, I still love to hunt. I love to hunt.

Only now I hunt with cameras. and believe me, that seven-and-a-half-foot mako shark, amount of that shark was on my wall for a number of years. I had a 25-pound Chinook salmon. I had a 24-pound northern pike, and I had some other fish that spent a number of years on my wall. Now what it is is like when we go and bust a rodeo and they do a cartoon about it they'll do a political style cartoon where you know we caught them shocking horses and they denied it but the camera shows what happened and so that you know somebody will write it do up a cartoon slamming the rodeo or slamming the pigeon shooters or you know, whoever. Well, those are the trophies now.

We put them up. And it's – or there was an article in the New York Times about us going after Coca-Cola. No, it wasn't Coke. It was Pepsi at the time. Pepsi-Cola for sponsoring bullfighting. And, you know, we got Pepsi out of the bull rings and we got Coke out of the bull rings and a number of other companies. Those are the new trophies, the things that show victories in those areas. Far better trophies.

And, Steve, you mentioned your battle with the Mako shark that lasted over five hours. I was just reading through your Wikipedia page and it talks about that. I just wanted to ask how it feels to have a Wikipedia page that reads like an Ernest Hemingway novel. Hemingway, if only he had learned and had used his talents to discuss the, the good of animals and all that, maybe he wouldn't have felt compelled to blowing his head off.

Which kind of... Just a thought. Another thing I saw, Steve, is just kind of doing some research on shark and learning about what you do is you've been involved in these campaigns against horse slaughter. And, you know, again, forgive my ignorance. I did not know that there was industrial scale horse slaughter in the United States, or I guess I didn't really know the extent of it is what I should say. So I was just wondering if you could explain to just both me and the listeners, like, what is the situation with horse slaughter in the United States? Why is it done? And, you know, how how prevalent is it?

And who's making money off all this? Well, there currently is no horse slaughter for human consumption. There was that was something that we fought. In fact, one of the last horse slaughter plants was in Illinois, actually quite close to us. So we were after that and became illegal. They tried to make it legal again. We had a video truck called the Tiger that where we brought that truck around to show people what horse slaughter actually looks like. This was kind of before the internet was so pervasive. Although it would still be a great thing to use today, but we, I just don't have the time to run it anymore because we're out in the field. But yeah, horse slaughter, you know, dog food, you know, various, you know,

pet foods and stuff like that can use horse meat. I believe that horse slaughter still does happen in the United States, but not for human consumption. I could be wrong about that. But, yeah, it was happening here. It still happens in a big way in Europe. They slaughter horses down in Mexico and in Canada. But for human consumption, not here anymore, at least not for now. And now that the orange man is saying goodbye tomorrow, hopefully at least not for another year,

four years, will there be an effort like that. Right. You know, Steve, I have to say that I remember watching an interview of yours from, I believe, the 90s, or you were recounting about how groups like PETA at one point were focused on activism similar to shark, but at some point throughout your time over these last three decades, you've learned that they were more about a shock and awe activism aspect and less about exposing animal abuse and dealing with them directly you know from your videos the one thing i've gleaned is that where you have animal abuse you have corrupted local law enforcement sometimes and then you have corrupt politicians that are backing all of it all together so it's not like there are small bastions of animal abuse that are uh innocently

on their own it's rotten to the core when it comes to the community animal abuse that are innocently on their own. It's rotten to the core when it comes to the community of people that are enabling these things. How long did it take you to realize that they were in bed with each other? And then on top of that, groups like PETA were no longer going to be on the front lines like Shark. Well, it's kind of a, that's a multi-question there you want me to answer first let's talk about um sorry about that i'm excited to ask these questions uh let's let's talk about pita first when did you see the change between them being a group that was actually gunning for animal abuse to uh more of a shock and awe campaign group? Oh, it was a while back.

You know, it was PETA that first brought me to the concept of caring about animals, actually. I remember the moment I was sitting in an oil change place, getting the oil changed on my Ford pickup because I was getting ready to go to Canada on a fishing trip. And as I was sitting there in this oil change place, I picked up this magazine, started reading about this group called PETA that was doing work. They were exposing some horrible abuse that was happening to monkeys, to primates being used for vivisection. And, and I was really taken with that. Again, you see, in my mind, I could be a hunter. But I can be opposed to animal abuse. In fact, I mean, I'd been, I'd been hunting, fishing since I was four or five. And, and, uh, but my mother had always taught my brother and I to be kind to animals. We were taking stray dogs and stray cats. We lived in a housing project for poor people where you couldn't have dogs and cats. And yet she was rescuing them all the time. So, uh, but I read this,

I read this story and that's where I had determined in that moment that if I ever encountered these animal rights people at a particular place where I was hunting or fishing, I wasn't going to fight with them. I wasn't going to argue with them. I was just going to quietly pack up and go someplace else to do what I was doing because those people were actually trying to do a good thing and and then you know came the fight that where i came the the moment or the time when i actually made the switch against killing animals and and to help them instead where pita people and and i became you know we were together i did stuff with pita i did stuff for pita my then wife and i we were together. I did stuff with PETA. I did stuff for PETA. My then wife and I, we were good PETA donors. They used to say, you know, Tony La Russa is going to be, his team is coming to Chicago. Would you like to meet him and all that? Because we were good donors. And then

all of a sudden, and we didn't do that stuff. That's not why we were giving them money. We gave money to help the animals. I'm not into meeting celebrities and all that, except Bob Barker. He's great. And the bass player, Gieser Butler for Black Sabbath. I met him about a year and a half ago, and that was really exciting. Sorry, just had to get that out of my system sounds good right and it made it all the better that he cares about him that was terrific but it was when pita all of a sudden out of the blue one day i read that pita they went someplace and took their

clothes off and i went what in god's name does that have to do with anything? Now, I'm sitting here talking to four guys. And I'm just making an assumption. I could be wrong. Whoever is straight here knows that when you've got attractive young ladies that start taking their clothes off, I don't care what it is that you were talking about before. That's kind of what you're paying attention to is the attractive ladies taking their clothes off. So I'm going, you want me to be to be you're trying to focus me on animal abuse, but you're taking your clothes off. I mean, which is it? What is it you want me to focus on? And I and I just didn't understand that. And then and then they started doing even wackier stuff than that.

I remember I was at a conference one time and Ingrid Newkirk was going to have a talk. And well, I'm going to go hear Ingrid talk. And it was this weird setup where she was. It was called pornographic veggies. Did you ever see this? No. It was the strangest thing. So, you know, like have a banana with two the banana no i'm serious this is how it was you think that this sounds crazy i'm actually sitting

there watching this can i say things going what the hell's going on am i having a dream or something you got a banana with a couple of lemons down there, and everybody's laughing at this. I'm like, what are we doing? I'm here to learn about how I'm going to help save animals and all this kind of stuff, and I'm watching some weirdo up here with pornographic veggies. And I'm sorry. I think the people that are involved in animal protection, they start out with the best of intentions. Like myself, when I first got into this, they don't know what to do. I appreciate that. You don't know. How do you stop? How do you stop a pigeon shooter, factory farms or, you know, raising dogs for vivisection. What do you do? No idea. But then you learn, you start figuring it out piece by piece. You know, here are the agencies you got to deal with or, you know, drones. Drones can do something. Long range cameras or undercover cameras. When you start putting together piece by piece and a lot of people, they never get there.

They never get any anywhere near what they can actually do to step in and make their presence felt because you've got these groups now that, oh, listen, just send us money and we'll take care of it. maybe try and get laid and watch and cry over some videos that the rest of the world will never see. You got somebody who claims to be a philosopher or whatever, get up. They do some really weird shit. Well, sit there and light candles. It's a lot of jerk off. It's a lot of animal jerk off nonsense. It's crazy shit. It's crazy shit.

Listen, you want to help animals if you want to help animals for one thing come to shark you don't have to join us you don't have to send us money just come to us and ask us what we've been doing and we'll tell you if you want to develop a drone fleet we'll train you we'll tell you what we're using and you can buy that or you can buy something else you can do whatever want. But the techniques that we use on cockfighting, on rodeos, on bullfights, on factory farms and all this other stuff, they'll work for so many other things. But we don't have the money. We don't have the personnel. The groups that do have the money and do have the personnel are wasting the money. they're wasting the personnel,

they got people who are out there just raising more money. It's an enormous, what the animal rights movement today, 95% of it is just an enormous fundraising scam. I assume you guys get the same emails that I do oh send us a dollar and for right now it'll be quadrupled Greenpeace this last year I thought that I'd seen absolutely the worst of it because I told her I said okay you know what's going to happen at the end of the year putting out all their bullshit this one says your donation will be doubled

okay that's bullshit enough the next, your donation will be doubled. Okay, that's bullshit enough. The next one, your donation will be tripled. Then Greenpeace sent one out, your donation will be seven times multiplied. I said, okay, champions, Greenpeace, they get the champions, they're the champs. But no, PETA had to one-up them. It always would be PETA.

PETA comes up, your donation will be 10 times the amount. You can't make this shit up. Yeah, but they need to shoot that veggie porn in 8K. That's not cheap. You know, people, if you want to help animals animals god knows the animals need your help and there are so many different ways that you can do it but one there are a whole bunch of ways that don't work and that's going to these conferences where like they don't even want me at the conferences anymore because i start talking about everything that's wrong with the animal rights movement because animal protection is a lot like in it's like

running a business and I happen to know because I run a business you know you need to buy your your goods and services for the proper price and you have to sell your product for the right price and somewhere in there you make your profit well this is the same thing we have to use in animal protection you have to use your resources wisely you have to you you have to make the most of your people and your money and and one of the one of the kitties there is voicing her opinion. You have to use stuff wisely. And what people in the movement don't seem to understand is that when I criticize groups like PETA or HSUS

or In Defense of Animals or all the other groups that used to do good things and now do so much less with so much more is that I'm not trying to down them. I'm not trying to trash them. I'm not trying to ruin them. I am trying to make them do what they should be doing because if they don't, millions and millions and millions of animals suffer more, die more. And this whole nasty business of animal use and abuse only deteriorates further and further. And that's where we're at right now. And frankly, I don't think it's recoverable, which is I've really, I've like pretty much written off the movement as something that it's never going to come back. You know, I've used if you've got the time for this, if you've got the patience, if you if you want, you can stop me anytime.

No, please continue, Steve. I will criticize Peter. I'll criticize HSU or any number of other groups like this Will Potter. This guy's nothing but a scam artist. Alex Pacheco, a co-founder of PETA, is an absolute scammer with this bullshit about some mythical cookie that he's developing with absolutely no training, absolutely no foundation for any kind of success in this area. He's a co-founder of PETA. And people think I'm just attacking these people. Look, if you're going to send money to scammers who are just wasting it, who are just dumping it, what's the point? Nothing is ever going to come of that.

I've tried, and for instance, they'll say, well, you can't say PETA doesn't do anything. You can't say HSUS doesn't do anything. Look, is it winter where everybody is right now? Is it cold where you all are? It's damn cold here. So let's say I just bought a new furnace.

I bought a new furnace. I spent good money on the furnace, but that furnace is only getting my home up to 45 degrees. I can't say it's not doing anything right. But is it doing enough? Absolutely not. I want more than 45 degrees. I'm sorry. And that's what the animal rights movement is or animal protection movement is in right now. We've got a mechanism that's only generating 45 degrees and damn it, we need 72.

If we don't get the right temperature, we're going to be cold, unhappy, maybe get sick, who knows what's going to happen. That's what we have. We have a movement that is, you know, just not putting out what it's supposed to put out. Nothing close to it. In the case of HSUS, for instance, we're dealing with cockfighting right now. I mean, I just took a couple of damn good beatings from cockfighters. Cockfighting has been illegal throughout the United States, both in all the states and federally, for more than 12 years. So why are we dealing with cockfighting right now? Because groups like HSUS, who raised millions and millions and millions of dollars off the cockfighting issue, they got laws changed and then declared victory and went home.

There is no victory. You got the laws changed. The cockfighters don't care about the laws. And if the cockfighters are getting protected by the police, well, then there is no success whatsoever. I think cockfighting is more prevalent now than it was 12 years ago. And when people call HSUS, I mean, it doesn't matter what state you're talking about. It could be Ohio. It could be Kentucky, it can be Oklahoma, it can be California. We're hearing from people because they're giving us information. They're saying, I tried calling HSUS. They won't do a thing.

This is crazy. And I'm sick of it. I'm so goddamn sick of it. And you can't, you know, you can't confront these people. I would love to get into debate with anybody, from PETA, with Will Potter. Oh, God, what I would do to Will Potter. With Alex Pacheco. They're all cowards.

They're every bit as cowardly as the animal abusers. You know, the rodeo people have been running from us for decades. The cockfighters, one of them tried to debate me, and it's not that I'm a great debater. I'm not a great debater. I'm just a guy, okay? But I'm a guy who knows what the hell is going on when it comes to cockfighting, rodeos, pigeon shoots, and all.

And these guys all run, but so do the animal protection people. Why, ask yourself this, why doesn't Ingrid Newkirk, who knows Alex Pacheco better than most, why doesn't she say, hey, all you donors out there, Alex Pacheco's a ripoff, man. He's just, he's taking money meant for animal protection, and he's just dumping it. There's nothing coming out of it.

Why doesn't Ingrid Newkirk say that? And I'll tell you why. Because then Alex Pacheco would tell stories about her. If this doesn't concern every single person who cares about animals, well, it damn well should. Are we in this to protect animals or are we in it for the, for the, forgive me, I got kitty hair here. Yeah. Are we in it because we're just cheerleaders? We're just minions. You know, we've seen this.

I don't know. I don't know what's what we're on the political aisle. You guys are. I'm not on anybody's side in the political. I'm on the side of animals and people and the environment. I'm not on. I don't take sides politically, but we've seen what has happened to the Republican Party over the past four years, five years, being minions instead of being Republicans, because Republicans used to stand for something. Democrats stand for something. They'll claim they

still do. But do we? What do we really stand for? And you know what? You don't know your moral strength until it's tested, right? It's like any chain. Chain can look great, but you don't know the strength of the chain until it's put to the stress test. are unwilling to put themselves, to distress themselves through debate, through real discussions about what's going on, the good, the bad and the ugly. Well, then, you know, I'm sorry, you're just full of shit. And and I say this as a highly imperfect person. I'm not trying to pretend like, oh, I'm I'm the guy. I'm not the guy. I'm the guy that used to kill animals by the thousands. I'm the guy that's not vegan. People criticize me for not being vegan. And I don't mind that. I wish I was strong enough to be vegan. I'm actually not.

But then I say to the vegans, so if I'm the guy who's not strong enough to be vegan you know that it's kind it's like a bit of an addiction with me and I'll say it like that it's what it is what's your fucking excuse for not going out in the field and actually doing something better with your time than sitting around a vegan potlice talking about how goddamn holy you are why don't you come on out with us and show us how it's supposed to be done why is a non-vegan let me let me make this clear that i think everybody else in shark is vegan they're they're better they're better people than I. But why do all these vegans who love to criticize me,

and I'm perfectly open for it, why don't they get their asses out of their nice, safe environments and come on out and do the work we do? Because then unholy non-vegan me wouldn't be the one doing it. It'd be those holy vegans, but they don't. So it's very frustrating to me. And I just wish that the people who make so much talk about how much they care about animals would do a little bit more walk. So you're saying that they outlawed cockfighting 12 years ago,

and it's just the problem is there's no enforcement and the cockfighters themselves know this and they just probably make even more money now that it's illicit and so it's like you it's sort of like what i'm hearing is that like nobody's doing the enforcement so you're doing it for them and you really wish that these hundreds of millions in assets non-profits would join you but they don't because of the shitty leadership i think like part of why that is probably happening is like the boards they have a corporate board structure of people who all know each other and they aren't really answerable to the rank and file membership in the way that say you and your organization might be you know i mean i assume you guys make decisions sort of

collaboratively on how to oppose these people we're a small group we're a half dozen people and uh yes we have we will meet as an organization very simple when you're just a half dozen people. And yes, we have we will meet as an organization. Very simple when you're just a half dozen people and we discuss it. And usually it's a democratic choice. Occasionally, if I feel strongly about it, I'll insist because I'm the president. But these are really smart people in SHARC. They're very smart. They're very dedicated. I really want to know what they think and what they have to say because SHARC would be nothing without them.

And, yeah, that's how it gets done. The problem, like, for instance, HSUS, they get a lot of money from people who are maybe more on the conservative side, you know, as far as animal protection. They don't believe, for instance, in standing up to the police because the police are supposed to be the good guys. The police should be the good guys. There's nothing I want more than to work with to support and respect the police. But when we go to a cockfight arena and we film uniformed police officers in the cockfight area, not as law enforcement, but as spectators,

emissarating and enjoying the cockfight, well, those are corrupt cops. And we've just entered into a whole different arena. And the whole problem, for instance, just take cockfighting since we're on that. The entire problem with cockfighting is that law enforcement chooses not to do its job. Doesn't matter which state you're talking about because it's illegal everywhere. And it's law enforcement choosing not to do anything or actively participating, which we've already seen, where, for instance, a father and son team, they are or were at least corrections officers in Harlem County, Kentucky, had their own game farm. They were raising the birds.

They were fighting the birds. They were fighting the birds. They had having their pictures taken with trophies with blood on their clothes because they just came out of the pits. And the big problem is that HSU-S doesn't want to stand up to the police because of their more conservative donors. And so they don't. And if we've got corrupt police, we'll fight them all day and tonight too. And we'll call them out for what they are. And I'll try and get them knocked out of law enforcement. I got no time or patience for that at all. But you've got these groups that are afraid of the donor base or just plain afraid, period, because they don't want to get the treatment I got a couple of weeks ago. You know, we've had we've had guns pulled on us. We've been

hit by cars and stuff like that. And again, for all the brave talk from the vegans and all that, there really aren't very many of them that want to stand up to that. So wait a minute. You're telling me that a cockfight is not an example of showing animals respect and kindness. You're getting the idea, my friend. That must be your comedian part going on. You know, Steve, the duo you mentioned, the father-son, I remember from one of the videos, they were posting about the cogfights on their Facebook page.

Like, you know, they weren't even being, you know, relatively discreet over the crime they're committing. And my question for you is that, like, how often do you see this level of lunacy where the people that are abusing animals don't even comprehend that they're committing a crime, let alone mutilating animals? Oh, they know they're committing a crime. They know that because as soon as we go after them, all of a sudden those pages go private or they get pulled or all that. They know. It's just that they have nothing to fear from the general animal protection community. And they don't. They have nothing to fear from them at all. There is a very, very small handful of groups or individuals who will, you know, step up. But there are so many issues over, you know, literally the entire world. If this money, if this money and the resources were being spent wisely,

there are issues that we haven't even heard of yet that would be, you know, would be hard fought right now, would be won in many cases. But there's almost no effort. I mean, so they can parade this stuff right out before the world. And, you know, until we have an opportunity or some other organization, what few there are like us. And frankly, nobody does. Nobody does it the way we do, which is really sickening to me because we have almost no money. We have a half a dozen people and yet we're doing things that nobody else does. That's crazy. But yeah, they can they can parade it right out in front of the world. And all they're just waiting for somebody to step up and say enough of that bullshit and but nobody will do it so how often when you catch uh uniformed police officers at cockfights how often do they just go oh we were doing a deep cover investigation this is a sting operation yeah you get some of that you had one guy you we had well in clay county kentucky they said they didn't understand that it was against the law.

You can't make this shit up. I don't know what the corrections officers said in Harlan County. They didn't make us privy to that. You know, did you see the video where we called the police in? Our drone had already gotten the cockfight from the outside and the police came in and the drive, there was only one way in and out. They went and started going up the drive and we had set up a hidden camera on the drive. And all of a sudden, just as the cop cars are going in, they stop. And then they backed up so that the cop fighters could escape.

I mean, we didn't see that one coming. We actually put the hidden camera up so that we would get the license plates as they were going by. We never anticipated that the police were going to do that. And that was state police. It's just it's mind bending to to see what is going on out there. And it's just because nobody's challenged them. Look, we all know it's illegal to like steal money out of money out of your neighbor's pockets, you know, and just grab the money out of his pockets and run.

But if you knew there wasn't going to be any enforcement whatsoever, you can imagine how many people would be getting ripped off. It is that crazy. It's just that nuts. It's like the purge out there every day where you can do almost anything you want to animals in so many cases. Like, for instance, in Pennsylvania, for years and years, we were just trying to get the police to enforce the law that clearly said that you can't do what they were doing to the pigeons. They didn't say pigeons in particular, and they would always point to that. We say it doesn't matter. Humane laws are written broadly because, for instance, there you won't

find any law anywhere that says it's illegal to throw a puppy out of a fifth-story window, right? But it is illegal because it's cruel and it hurts the dog and all this kind of thing. And and then along comes HSUS. This is such a sickening story. Along comes HSUS, who wants to pass a new it and declare this great victory was to give pigeon shoots legal cover in Pennsylvania. And they did it. Wow. They did it. They threw the pigeons under the proverbial bus. you, more pigeons die in any mid-sized pigeon shoot, just one pigeon shoot, then that law will be applied for on an annual basis, which is crazy. So, you know, they did it so they could make money. And you see this all the time, one way or another. It's to the point where every time some animal group says, oh, we did this, or or we accomplished this or this victory, I look at it and I go, okay, how are you lying to me? It's not a question of are you lying to me? It's just a question of how are you lying to me in order to make this claim?

And that's disturbing because I'm in animal protection. That's the last thing I should be feeling. It's so ugly out there. And I got to say this, it's not just animal protection. These nonprofits, all of these nonprofits, I don't care if you're doing it for the children, you're doing it for the vets, you're doing it for cancer or whatever. I look at all of them now and I go, how are you screwing us this time? I wish, you know, I don't like, nobody likes government intervention. But I think something has to be

done about these nonprofits. I really do. Because they're just such total ripoffs, scam ripoffs. The thing is that if you're, every now and then you'll see an article, this veteran group was actually a ripoff. And so they go after them. They never go after the animal groups. And I think one of the reasons for that is that they actually want the animal groups. They want the money to get dumped and they'd be misspent and all this because it was spent effectively where you're actually effectively going after like the animal factory farms or the so-called sportsman's groups and all that. If they were being spent effectively, well, that'd be very problematic. They'd be effective.

And so they don't want them to be effective. So they let the scammers come in and just rip everybody off because they don't want any help from the animals. It's a little bit like PETA and the huge animal rights groups are like a counterinsurgency tool almost. So that people like well-meaning people who are just extremely fed up about the situation with animal protection will but they're they're new to that world will go to PETA first and then waste years in there when they could have been doing work like you do which is actually effective exactly right so it's like there's a board there's a corporate board who just sort of corrals a bunch of people who otherwise would be like troublemakers and then shuts them down so that they don't they are inactive for several years at least a lot of

people burn out with those groups they come in yeah they're all pumped up they put their time money energy into those groups and and at some point they realize that they've been scammed or they just get bled dry. And, of course, you know, then you've got the whole thing with PETA killing animals. I mean, literally killing animals, dogs and cats. I mean, they're still doing it. As far as I know, they're still doing it. And it really has become a cult.

PETA has been a cult a long time. But where the people who want to support that, they will do almost anything. They'll make, like being a Trumpy, where you just start making excuses for all the crazy shit that's going on, right? People shouldn't have to make excuses for the issues that they're dealing with, whether it's political, religious, animal, environment, whatever. When you have to start making excuses, that's bad. Just use your logic. Use your brains, people. God or whoever gave you brains, put them to use and stop making excuses. Don't be a cultist. Cultists aren't, they're not the ones who are going to make change for good in the world. Oh, that's okay. Could you go into detail about PETA killing dogs and cats?

Because I think for a lot of listeners and myself included, that's, I've heard like little bits of it, but I don't know the full details of what's happening there. Well, and, you know, it's not like I've spent all my time looking into that, but PETA claims that where they're operating, there are all these homeless dogs and cats. And that may well be true. There are lots of homeless dogs and cats just about every place, and some places are worse than others. And so they collect these animals and they say, well, there's really not homes or whatever. And they kill them. They kill them.

They've there's been some trouble for it. Anybody who wants to Google PETA kills animals, PETA, you know, kills dogs, cats, whatever, you're going to see the articles come up. They've they've there've been times when they've gotten busted for it, but they make up this excuse that, whatever, you're going to see the articles come up. There have been times when they've gotten busted for it, but they make up this excuse that, well, you know, there's not the homes and it's really better for them if we kill them. Look, this is a group that brings in something like a million dollars plus per week. Per week.

What are you doing with all this money I mean one thing you could do is you can actually try and help these animals live instead of killing them if killings the answer I'm sorry I I don't need to send money to do that I'll go out I could go out and start killing it to do it this is direct action I don't even want to make a joke about it because it's such a sick joke pita the group that talked about veganism don't exploit animals ethical treatment of animals let me tell you something about pita it's kind of the same story as will potter they both came up with this fake drone fleet.

They both did it for the same reason, because it was great marketing. You could raise money for it. About the only people who haven't raised money with a drone fleet are us, the group that actually has a drone fleet, because we're the worst damn marketers in the world. We are terrible.

Really, I don't know why the people in Shark haven't fired me which i kind of would like because i don't get paid anyway i can actually go live i never wanted to start a damn group anyway i still don't want to run it now i'm too lazy for that somebody give me a break but these clowns potter and peter they come up with this bullshit about Potter. Oh, I'm I'm going to he raises seventy five thousand dollars for two drones, both of which were basically toys. They cost maybe a few thousand dollars between the two of them. And he's talking about all the things he's going to do.

And then he doesn't do any of it. Makes one excuse after another. Oh, I didn't feel well. well literally i don't feel well or you know just all this bullshit meanwhile i mean drones today especially back then when we started the drones some years before him they were hard to fly we broke up a lot of drones practicing practicing and all this. And then they made the drones better and we got better. And now we've got this fleet that is really something to see. I mean, really something to see, the work that these things have done. But these guys, and then PETA all of a sudden, they realize, oh, there's something here, there's money to be made. So they all of a sudden have a drone fleet what it was was a guy who i don't

even think was in pita had a single fixed wing model aircraft with a little terrible quality wide angle camera on it it wasn't going to do anything but all of a sudden they've got not only they have a drone fleet supposedly but they name it the same thing as ours, Angel. And I was like apoplectic. I was like, what? And this is when I actually thought they had a drone fleet. And I tried to call Ingrid to say, Ingrid, call it anything else. I call it, I don't know, the PETA-ites or the PETA-flyers or the crows or the eagles or whatever you want to call it. Don't call them angels because we called them angels years before. and then i found out they don't even have a drone fleet it was all a scam

you know you know how frustrating that is and then people go oh you're just trying to hurt peter no i'm trying to tell you these guys just scamming your your donations out of you, and they're not doing what – and then they came up with toy drones, which they said, you can buy one of our toy drones, and you can help to save animals too. Oh, God. If you were to buy this little $300 toy drone that they were selling, you have the same opportunity of saving animals with that little toy as you do winning the Tour de France on a tricycle from Kmart. It's the same chance. That's your opportunity.

And let's see. Janet's writing me something. What she's writing is that the animal protection movement, according to Merrick Clifton and his wife Beth, who run the blog site Animals 24-7, animal protection raises about a half billion dollars a year. A half billion dollars a year. My guess is it's probably more because between HSUS, ASPCA, and PETA, they raise pretty close. And yet all of those other groups, especially the big ones, they don't have the abilities that we have. And so it's all such bullshit, people. Look, I want to help animals

as much as I can. That's why I've done it for over 30 years without making a penny. And it's not that I don't like money. I like money just fine. In fact, I'm probably the largest donor to shark. If I'm not the largest, I'm of the largest um and i don't i don't care i want it i want to save animals even if i'm not a vegan but to watch this movement which back when i first got in these groups didn't have all the money right And we used to talk about, you know, someday if the world, if we can get them tuned in to animals, and if we have the money, the things we will do, we will help animals, we will help the environment, and we will help humans all at the same time, because it's all part of the same thing. And then the money did come in. And, you know,

I watched some of the good people die. I watched some of them just burn out and lose their minds and leave. And I watched some of them just turn from good people who cared about animals to shit people who cared about money. I hate that. I hate it so bad. There are people in this movement that if I saw them today, I can't promise that I wouldn't just start throwing fists because I'm sick of it. I'm so disturbed. And I wish to God that people would just put their heads on straight and take a look at HSUS and PETA and the ASPCA and in defense of animals you know I was a good donor to in defense of animals back when Dr. Elliot Katz was running the show and he was a man who cared about animals and then he became old and he had to pass the baton and the baton was picked up by a crazy person who raises lots of money and doesn't do anything for animals. And this happened over and over.

You know, Wayne Pacelli. I never really liked Wayne very much. I'll be honest with you. Because Wayne was always too smooth for me. I'm not a smooth guy. I'm a cretin. I'm just a Neanderthal, which is why it's pitiful that somebody like me is out there doing things that other people don't want to do.

With a group of actually people, they're smarter than I am. They're better than I am. It's just that I'm the guy, I guess, who ends up with the biggest mouth, who ends up doing most of the talking. But we've got to do so much better. There are issues out there that nobody's even touched, nobody even knows about, because we're bogged down with things like cockfighting, which should occurring should be a little behind the barn shit with people who are so deeply inbred that you don't expect anything more from. I just don't know what to do. But I really appreciate that you guys are willing to talk about it because we need so much more of that.

This is just, this is a scam on a, on a, on a unbelievable off the charts level. And it's sickening because animals are dying in the worst possible imaginable ways by the millions and by the billions, the whole factory farm thing, for instance, look what's, look what's bringing pressure on the factory farms. It's not animal protection. It's capitalism and people's personal health, and that we're literally burning the planet up. So corporations are coming in to rescue us. Look, that's great. I'll take the corporation's help to start getting rid of the whole meat thing and bringing in meatless. But where are the animal protectors? That was going to be my next question,

Steve, is that, you know, with big corporations noticing that, hey, if we keep funding meat production and factory farming, we're not going to survive another 30 to 40 years. And my thought to you that I want to ask is, with the direct correlation between factory farming and climate change and corporations going into more meatless options, is it odd to you how blind people are in terms of animal abuse? like they don't recognize that oh hey continuing on this path leads to utter destruction well i don't think uh i don't think that we've effectively told that story. I think the vegan movement, one of my prime beefs, if I say, can I say beefs, with the vegan movement, is that they choose to be inclusive.

We need, or exclusive, and we need to be inclusive. The vegans, I think it's like, uh, they want to be special by way of what they do or do not put in their mouths. Uh, they, they want to feel special with that. And that's exactly the wrong thing. Uh, it's so easy relatively speaking you declare yourself i'm a special person because i'm a vegan and you'll hear him say it you know you got the vegan police out there the most obnoxious sons of bitches in the world i mean you really you just you want to hit them because they're assholes now there's lots of vegans out there that aren't assholes,

and they know what needs to happen, but the vegan police are just obnoxious, and they drive people away from the whole thing. We need, you know, I've had meat eaters in Shark, and I wouldn't hesitate to have them again. Right now, we're vegan but look i want to get the job done if we're going out there and dealing with cockfighting or whatever i want to get the job done would i rather have an incompetent vegan or a competent meat eater to

get i'm going to take the competent guy i don't care what you know and i'll promise you this, back when I was still a meat eater and I gave money to PETA, I promise you if they knew that I was a meat eater, they weren't going to deny my check. Right, right. So if that's the case, and it is, then what do you care if, like, one of the best cooperative efforts that we ever had as SHARP was with a group of bow hunters down in southern Illinois. Now, I hate bow hunting. I hate bow hunting because so many animals are wounded, and there's a lot of suffering that can happen with incompetent bow hunters, and even with the best of them, an arrow is just not as effective as a well-placed rifle shot. So when we got this call out of the blue from bow hunters who said

they wanted to work with us because the DNR was opening up a wildlife refuge to a bow hunt or to hunting, I thought it was some kind of scam. But we talked to these people enough and realized they were serious. And so we ended up working with these guys. It was hunter harassment. It was illegal all the way. But we placed timed alarms in areas where they were going to be bow hunting so that the woods would light up with audio in the morning and the deer would be on the run instead of sitting there like, you know, like sitting ducks.

And these guys were great. They were terrific. They were doing the work that the vegans wouldn't do. So what am I supposed to do? Work with meat eaters and get the job done? Or work with the vegans who, by the way, don't even show up? And, you know, so what am I supposed to do? I'm going to work with people who want to work with the vegans who, by the way, don't even show up. And, you know, so what am I supposed to do? I'm going to work with people who want to work with us.

I don't care. You know, if I have trouble even saying it, but let's say a pigeon shooter wanted to help me to expose something about a rodeo. Or a rodeo person wanted to help me expose something with a pigeon shoot. I'm going to grit my teeth and I'm going to do what I got to do in order to get that job done. And this is, you know, the vegans, the vegan police are more interested in just talking about how holy they are because they don't associate with non-vegans. We need to be inclusive. Right. Because when we are inclusive, people have the, you know, the person who eats steak every night is not going to induce me to

eat steak. But we just might be able to induce them to start using meat-free options or eat a little less steak or at least consider how the animals are raised or something. Okay. That's how I feel about it. You know, in the middle of last year, there was a huge boom of people finding out about Joe Exotic via the Tiger King and Shark had done an expose on Joe a few years before that. And as a longtime fan, I was like, oh no, I know about this person. He is off the walls. What was it like for you guys to see the country all of a sudden be enamored with a man who's running a illegal petting zoo of tigers and is an animal abuser, almost looked at as a pseudo hero in the American media's landscape? Well, this is the problem with our American media today.

Although it's not a new problem. It's really, it's an old problem that has simply gotten worse. I mean, you turn on TV today and it's a stupid machine. You know, they called it the boob tube for a long time, but today it's an outright stupid machine. know they called it the boob tube for a long time but today it's an outright stupid machine you tune in for these shows so many of them one after the other and it's it is designed to make you a fucking idiot and nothing more you know what is it that some new jersey show of this this goofy family they're just a bunch of idiots. The Kardashians. Yeah. The Kardashians. Listen,

ladies, just go out and start making X-rated movies and stop fooling around. You know, just, I mean, that's what everybody wants to see. But they've got these stupid shows. And a lot of them have to do with animal abuse. You know, oh, we're in Alaska or whatever, so that makes it okay for us to abuse animals.

Or Joe Exotic. When they portray people that way, especially the stupid ones, they turn on to this. That's how we've ended up with our president, is stupid shows, which glamorizes, today, glamorizes stupidity, makes it sound like it's a good thing, makes it attractive, makes it profitable. It's one of the reasons why we have so little hope. We've had these reality shows. We've had these producers call us up and say,

you know, we want to do something. You think you could do like a dog, the bounty hunter thing? I said, fuck no. How are you talking about? I said, listen, you could do, you can do a reality show about going out doing investigations and all you remember they they did that for a while what was that animal cops where they had the animal cops show when i saw it i thought it was pretty good you know people

actually in new york i think it was you're going out and doing investigations and all i thought it was a good show but then along naturally they start out with something good and then the people who don't have the talent or don't have the vision or whatever they come in and just want to make a quick buck so they put up a stupid show with stupid people for you know by stupid people for stupid people and and uh and everything just goes to hell uh i i you know i I never was part of Sea Shepherd, but I used to have respect for them until I saw Wild Wars. And I was so, oh, I was so, I just couldn't believe it because they, it was a stupid show. You know, we need to be showing people, and it doesn't matter, even if it was a stupid show there you know we need to be showing people and it doesn't matter even if it was sport hunting even if it was sport hunting you know don't have these cranks on if you're

going to show people how to how to hunt not sport right but how to hunt show them how to do it right i mean i know how to do it right and and if you're going to show them how to do animal protection, show them how to do it right. Not a bunch of goofballs that don't know, you know, a boat from. I don't know what I like it. I thought, oh, my God, I'm so embarrassed. We need competency today just to be Americans, just to be good human beings. We need competency in whatever it is. Even if you're running a slaughterhouse, my God, do it competently. Instead, they keep speeding up the line, speeding up the line,

so that everything's just falling apart. Do you ever read Gail Eisner's book, Slaughterhouse? No, no. It'll rip your soul out. It'll rip your soul out it'll rip your soul out this woman's a hero she uh she she worked in the meat processing plants and wrote a book about the terrible things that happened there all in the name of profit even people who are on the opposite side from us, at least if you're going to kill animals, don't make a game out of it.

Do it competently. Do it with wise, I hate to say wise use. I'll really get attacked for that. But where you don't just waste them. You're not just joining a killing club like the pigeon shooters or like these pay to kill clubs and all this kind of thing. And if you're an animal protector, be a competent protector.

There are people that say they're an animal protection. They don't even know how to use a video camera. Then what the hell are you doing? You know, we'll be happy to teach you animal protection for nothing. We'll show you how to run, how to fly drones, how to use video cameras, how to set up hidden cameras. And then when you have these basic skills, you're limited only by your imagination. You know, this was something when I was first learning hidden cameras and all this, and I'm asking questions of the guy who was running this class. And he said,

listen, if you know how to do this, you're only limited by your imagination. Imagine that. People who know what they're doing, whether it's video production, whatever it is, people who are competent instead of people who are just watching stupid shows, electing stupid, unethical, traitorous politicians.

That's what today is. You guys, you guys are all young. You have a big stake in improving things. I'm going to be gone before long. You guys will be here for a long time. At least I hope so. You got a big stake in making the world a better place for your kids and on and on.

Challenge everything except real facts, but there are so few real facts that you can challenge almost everything and make the world a better place. And get the word out there. People need to learn how to fight again and not over fake shit like who won the election but over being lied to right whether it's by the media who does some lying uh and

learning to discern truth from from fiction that's i think that's the biggest challenge of all today isn't it the the internet was supposed to bring us real knowledge and it can, but, and yet you've got all this bullshit out there. Nobody knows what's real anymore. Certainly. As climate change worsens, you know, and people, uh, temperatures increase, people can't do factory farming anymore because it's too ecologically devastating. And also there's more pressure to end it. There might be more of a change, a shift back to like subsistence hunting and stuff. Like a lot of indigenous tribes

who have been doing subsistence hunting for centuries, if not longer, are sort of like, uh, they're, they're a lot ahead of us in this regard, ahead of, um, ahead of just mainstream U.S. non-Indigenous people, um, in this regard. And you might see some opportunities for to to collaborate with them on animal protection and with like the ethical hunter sort of thing that you're talking about like you said you you made early on you made an attempt to get in touch with ethical hunters it didn't work out but then later you sort of had another chance

to work with some hunters the bow hunter people who you i mean uh i mean despite having like misgivings with them they actually worked out pretty well so i was wondering if like this sort of return to subsistence hunting could actually be like a vector to radicalize people enough to do something about animal protection. Steve, you are imagining something that I think is incorrect. The factory farmers are not going to stop. I was just reading in China where they now got some great plan where they're going to have these like skyscraper factory farms, multi-level going way up into the sky. Factory farm isn't going anywhere anytime soon. It doesn't matter that it's burning up the planet. If they can make a profit today, this week, this month, this year, who cares what happens next year? These people are

not thinking that far ahead. Subsistence hunting, I don't know. It could happen. It could happen it I mean I'm not here to say that we support it we don't there's a lot of deer around for instance and I'd like to see the deer start being sterilized, chemically sterilized, whatever it takes to try and make that happen

I you know one thing that people don't want to discuss for some odd reason is trying to get a handle on the population growth of humans. We can't keep doing this. No species can grow uncontrolled like this forever and not think that bad things are going to happen, especially a species like us that has such a fondness for poisoning the planet with just about everything that we do. And people go, oh, you know, you're saying people shouldn't have kids. I'm saying that we can't continue to increase our numbers by the billions and expect that we're going to be able to sustain that. That's how a virus kills its host and ultimately itself is by consuming the host until it's all virus and then everybody dies. And that's what's going to happen here. We are the virus on earth. And personally, I think we're probably already past the tipping point. So the approach of the end of my life is not as bad as it would be if I thought the planet actually had a future.

I'm not sure it does. Another reason why you guys really got to jump on the stick here. With the factory farming thing, I guess I was thinking of earlier in this conversation when we were thinking like, well, maybe fake meat and people's just general disdain after seeing videos such as yours and other people's of how it's actually done would cause people to change their behaviors at least enough to where it would become less profitable. And in a worsening ecological environment plus the unprofitability, we would stop doing it to an extent. We can hope. We can hope. I mean, certainly meatless meat is growing and yet meat, the meat industry is also growing just because our population is growing.

Now let's hope that at some point that that goes the other way, that would be terrific. That'd be great. Um, but there are always going to be those people out there. They want the real thing or they want nothing. And, uh, but the best we can do, at least the best we can do is at least the best we can do, is to really try to educate people. Some of the older generations, we're going to be less effective than the newer generations. And yes, with each new generation, we have a better chance if we do our job properly.

Let's hope that we do. And let's hope we do it a hell of a lot better than we're doing now you know steve you mentioned early on that like your mother showed you and and i believe your brother the empathy for animals that you didn't see at that pigeon shoot that you first went to where children were mutilating these pigeons do you think that in this country i don't want to discuss worldwide, but when it comes to animal warfare, that Americans, for whatever reason, turn a blind eye? No, I don't think they turn a blind eye. I think that all those children in the beginning, I think that, you know, we're little computers. We're little baby computers in the beginning. I think that, you know, we're little computers. We're little baby computers in

the beginning. Now, some of us are going to be taught bad things and we'll still be compassionate. But a lot of us, you know, you get that ingrained and you're like, for me, for instance, at four or five years old, I learned, and it wasn't that I hated the fish. I liked the fish. I liked, you know, we'd catch them, we'd put them to pale. We'd watch them right up to the moment that of us who know that not only should we, whether we believe in God or we believe in justice or whatever, that the best thing for the animals and the humans and the environment is to have respect and compassion for all beings. That's, we can do that. We can do that. You got your psychos out there. You got little children who are, they've got the bad genes or whatever, and they're going to be a problem.

They were always going to be psychotic. You have that. But that's a tiny minority. if we would just teach compassion and justice and fairness, the golden rule from the very beginning, oh, I think we could almost recreate the Garden of Eden. I really believe that. But we have been on such a bad path for so, so long. I don't know if it's recoverable. Well, to close out this episode, Steve, we once again want to thank you and the Shark Team for facilitating this interview.

The last question I have for you is, in the last three decades, and I saved this for the end because I want our listeners to know this answer could be harrowing, what is the worst example of animal abuse you've witnessed? Oh, my Lord.

I don't know that I can tell that story. That's fair. I don't think. You know what? I completely understand. And the pause in your voice says more than enough. So I appreciate your candor there. Steve, I would love for you to tell our listeners what they can do to help and support Shark.

I know that from your videos and from just interviewing you today, I've learned a plethora of content about the level of corruption in animal abuse and just how terrible some people can be towards animals. What can people do to help Shark? And what can Shark do with more resources and more eyes on your content? Well, you can send a donation. Our website is sharkonline.org. And there we have donation options and all this kind of thing. If Shark had more money, what I would do is, you know, we're a half dozen people right now.

And we can split off and we can have it. Sometimes individuals go out and do things, sometimes a couple people. But what I want to do is I want teams with our capabilities, our drones, our cameras, you know, all the things that we do. I want teams in different parts of the country and then different parts of the world. This has always been what I want to do because, you know, these small cells of people who seek out animal abuse and deal with it. So much of it is just a matter of exposing it. Like right now, the cockfighters, they're absolutely they're they're literally turned murderous because we're shutting them down. And this is before we get real

cooperation from the police. People, they have an inherent goodness in them if they have the opportunity to know what's going on and what to do about it. You want to call us, email us, watch our videos, watch how we deal with whether it's rodeos or factory farms or raising dogs for vivisection, whatever it is, cockfighting, bullfighting. You'll see what we've taken on and how we've dealt with it. And it's not magic. It's not fast. It's not fun. It's not easy.

But it is doable. And it's worth it to do it. It's not easy but it is doable it's just and it's worth it to do it it's not just worth it for the animals it's worth it for you um if i was a billionaire but that's what i focused on was money and me and all that kind of thing uh i would not have nearly the satisfaction in life that i have you know i say every day is is is uh i never expected to live this long i thought somebody was going to kill me before this but every day is a bonus and every day is a good day to die because it's been a good life it's been a good life most of it you know the i i from uh five, four or five, I became an animal killer, but at about 35, I became an animal protector. And I said, I don't believe in God, but I said,

give me 30 more years to save them so that I offset the 30 that I used killing them. I got that. And so really, every day is a good day to die because I got to do what I wanted to do. I'd like to think I've kind of evened up the score. And every day now is a bonus and I'll do as much more as I can. Well, and you know, the billionaire, you can't buy the feeling that a shark investigator has, the way that they can carry themselves because they know that they they sometimes single-handedly, you know, stop horse tripping in Oregon,

like Adam, our investigator Adam has, or, you know, stop certain practices in rodeo, or stop pigeon shooting in Illinois and Alabama and Maryland and the cockfights that we're stopping now. You can be a billionaire, but you can't buy that feeling. You can only earn it. Well, Steve, I wanted to thank you for being with us. And I don't know, Yogi probably mentioned it to you. We're planning to do with this podcast a month worth of episodes about animals and, you know, the people who make money off of animal abuse, you know, billionaires and such. So I did just want to give you one last chance to expose yourself to a food libel lawsuit.

And maybe you'd be interested in telling the listeners who are the big animal abusers in the United States, whether corporations or people in terms of people you see making the most money off of everything we've talked about. Well, you've got a lot of you got a very, very rich people involved in pigeon shooting. That's a rich man's sport. They there's a lot of that. We've exposed some of them. The Philadelphia Gun Club in particular, very, very wealthy people. And we've named a number of them on our website and we'll continue to do so. Safari Club International, of course, is a horrible, horrible organization. fighters. That's a billion dollar industry. It's not just the guys who are fighting the roosters, it's the people who are betting on them. It's the drug industry, the illegal drugs that are pouring

through cockfights now, which was why it's so incredible that the police will not deal with it. They say they say they're dealing with drugs. No, they're not. They're protecting the drug industry by protecting the cockfighters, the rodeo industry, very, very wealthy, tons of money, billion-dollar industry. And frankly, the animal protection groups who are raising untold millions and millions of dollars. That's just, today it's become another form of animal exploitation. And they're no better in fact in a way you know the animal abusers are the animal abusers it's like criminals you expect criminals to be criminals that's why we call them criminals well the animal abusers are animal abusers but it's when the animal savers are actually exploiting animals by burying issues through

laziness and competence and outright fraud. Nothing is more disturbing or hateful to me than so-called animal savers who are actually animal exploiters. And they're, they're, they're worse than anybody else. Great. Is that everything, Steve, Andy, Sean, y'all good all good yeah thank you so much for doing the show

um yeah this is very enlightening and uh and i i really i wish you guys good luck because you are the hope for the future i mean you're sitting here talking about things the four of you are talking about things that I can't get the conferences to talk about. And we need so many more like you, and I wish you all the power and time in the world to get this done. Yeah, but we were trying to end the episode on a happy note, so you probably shouldn't tell people that the four of us are the hope for the future. You know, just months before I went after the Higgins pigeon shoot,

I was killing sharks and calling it sport. You know, even in the Bible, you know, it's sometimes the people who are literally the, remember Saul, you know, Saul was a guy who killed Christians until he became Paul and was, you know, Paul the Apostle, Saint Paul, whatever they call him, you know, it isn't the good guys. It isn't the ones who come in calling themselves good guys. Those are the Pharisees, right? Pharisees, they were the ones who were supposed to be the good guys. But now I'm showing how I was raised a Christian.

I'm not a Christian, but I was raised one. Jesus hated, he didn't like the Pharisees at all. They were full of shit. He wanted, you know, it was the publicans who thought, he thought had the better chance of making good things happen. So I don't know your backgrounds, but it doesn't matter that you don't know that you're maybe the chosen ones. Okay?

You're the chosen ones if you choose to do good things. Well, Steve, we're all factory farming trust fund kids, so we appreciate that. You dirty sons of bitches. That's okay. Just take that money and use it for good. I've been given to PETA and and they tell me it's times by 10 when I give it to them.

So I'm happy to do that. I want to see who the comedians are in this bunch. Okay. Well, Steve, honestly, man, it's been truly an honor and a pleasure. I have followed you guys for a few years. I called, I think it was the Cheyenne Rodeo, or I called Coke over, I believe it was one of your rodeos, and let them know, hey, I'm boycotting your products because of your sponsorship for the rodeo. And I mean, the reality is, Steve, what you are able to do with Shark is that you take activism and you take it away from the hoity-toity, you have to be perfect to be a part of it,

and you bring it to literal grassroots. You said, hey, call Coke and tell them you don't drink Coke because of the rodeo. And I said, yeah, I've got five minutes. And the craziest thing, Steve, was when I called him and I told him, hey, I'm calling you about the rodeo. The guy went, okay, give me a second. And he picked back up and he said, are you calling about this specific rodeo and i was like yes and he goes okay that's good to know and i was like man they have a record because enough people have called and said i don't like coke i don't like this diabetes brown product

and it's because you're sponsoring uh you know cows and horses and i i it's because you're sponsoring killing cows and horses. And it's just truly an honor to interview you, Steve. I really think that any person that sees 30 minutes of shark video footage cannot be complacent in the reality that animal abuse is not only happening, but is happening at a grand scale across the country and the world that needs to be eradicated immediately to have any semblance of peace or harmony or whatever hogwash you want to believe that the future utopia could be. Gentlemen, the honor, and I mean this, is mine. Thank you so much. Thanks, Steve.

Have a good night, Steve. Thanks. Bye-bye. Thank you.