July 26, 2023

340: UNCHAINEDTV Founder Jane Velez-Mitchell: Animal Advocacy & Media Impact

Are you interested in learning more about animal rights and the vegan lifestyle? In the latest episode of the Healthy Lifestyle Solutions Podcast, I engage in an insightful conversation with Jane Velez-Mitchell, the visionary...

Are you interested in learning more about animal rights and the vegan lifestyle? In the latest episode of the Healthy Lifestyle Solutions Podcast, I engage in an insightful conversation with Jane Velez-Mitchell, the visionary behind UNCHAINEDTV. This worldwide streaming platform advocates the vegan lifestyle and champions animal rights. Jane opens up about her path to embracing veganism and becoming an activist for animal rights, stressing the significance of aligning one's convictions with their behavior.

Jane Velez-Mitchell is the creator and content editor of UnchainedTV, a worldwide streaming television network and social media platform. UnchainedTV offers free access to original videos centered around the plant-based lifestyle. Additionally, the network streams a wide range of content, including documentaries, cooking shows, lifestyle programs, talk shows, and music videos, from diverse sources.


In this episode, you will learn the following:

  • The significance of addressing animal rights concerns with individuals and emphasizing reaching out to unfamiliar individuals rather than attempting to persuade friends and family members.
  • Utilizing mass media to expand the outreach to a broader spectrum of viewers.
  • The meat industry's efforts to undermine alternative meat products and their reliance on processed meat.

 

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Transcript

00:00:00 Jane: I started to see some of the horrors, you know, in animal experimentation and in food production. And I was like, this is wrong. But it was only after I got sober that I really realized, you know, I've got to truly align my beliefs with my actions. And then Howard Lyman, the fourth generation cattle rancher who went vegan and went on Oprah and revealed the secrets. And he was doing a book tour. And I interviewed him and he said, "Do you eat dairy?" And I kind of hung my head. And I said yes. And he said liquid meat. This is the Healthy.

00:00:33 Maya: This is the Healthy Lifestyle Solutions podcast. And I'm your host, Maya Acosta. If you're willing to go with me, together we can discover how simple lifestyle choices can help improve our quality of life and increase our longevity in a good way. Let's get started. 

00:00:51 Maya: All right, friends, welcome back to another episode of the Healthy Lifestyle Solutions Podcast. So again, I bring you another individual that I met at the Vegan Women's Summit. This is Jane Velez Mitchell. You probably have heard of her from UNCHAINEDTV. I told her that I actually knew of her when she worked for CNN and I would see her talking about true crime when I would see her on Nancy Grace years ago. Well, she went on to really develop a different type of career, being an advocate for animals. And during the pandemic, she went from offering on Facebook live lunch break lives, which you might have seen her do. She was doing that very often to creating a show on Amazon that was called New Day, New Chef, where she would bring on chefs and they would cook in a kitchen that was really entertaining. And today she has her own streaming network called UNCHAINEDTV with tons and tons of contributors that are making this platform happen. So in our conversation, we talk about how really she's encouraging people to join her membership so that they can keep this network going. She encourages people to become contributors. So if you feel like you have a cooking show or some sort of show that can be on her streaming platform, you can do that as well. So I had a very kind of short and intense conversation with Jane. I hope that you enjoy it. As always, the full bio and the links to each of my guests can be found in the website. That's a healthylifestylesolutions.org. And let's welcome Jane 

 00:02:27 Jane: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it, Maya.

00:02:30 Maya: Well I appreciate you being here. I mentioned that I was at the Vegan Women's Summit and you were there as well.

00:02:37 Jane: Yes. UNCHAINEDTV, our global streaming network to promote the vegan lifestyle and animal rights. We were there. We went live. We did a story that was a roundup for those who wanted to be there and maybe couldn't be. It was in Brooklyn, New York, and at Gracie Mansion in Manhattan. And so we did a video roundup that you can watch for free on UNCHAINEDTV. And, you know, it's really so simple. You literally go to your phone's app store and you put in UNCHAINEDTV and all of these videos come up hundreds and hundreds. We have well over a thousand. And so, you know, instead of wasting all your time talking to that neighbor or that relative, "What do you eat? Grass?" You just say, "Hey, I'm going to text you and you can take any of these videos here like forks over knives or vegetated or Earthlings or dominion, and you can just text it to them," or, "Well, I can't make steak with mushrooms." Yes, you can. Wicked Kitchen. Boom. Text it. So it saves everybody time. And it has great information. Award winning documentaries, award winning cooking series. We have reality shows. We have talk shows. And we need to get this information out past the vegan echo chamber. That's one of the reasons I started on TV is that how many times have you gone to an event where everybody's already vegan and we're lecturing you right? You know, well, we are already vegan. We don't need to know this. We know it. You know, let's get to the people who are systematically deprived of this information by advertising based news media, which, look, who keeps the lights on? Fast food, pharmaceuticals. The two industries that would be in big trouble or would have to change dramatically if we adopted as a culture of a plant based lifestyle.

00:04:26 Maya: Yep. So do you think that people see that that is obvious to them when they're sitting in front of TV and they're watching whatever content there's a commercial. Big pharma is pushing something on them. Certain processed foods, animal based, processed foods are being advertised towards them. Do you think they made that connection, that...

00:04:45 Jane: No. 

00:04:46 Maya: Most of what I'm consuming in general, it's been driven and sponsored by the big food, the big pharma industries.

00:04:52 Jane: No, they don't make the connection. I mean, the first key to waking up from brainwashing is saying am I being brainwashed? You know, I mean, it's sort of like the Matrix. They're in the Matrix and there's actually a book by that title, similar title. So that's what we try to do today. We just finished moments ago an interview with the head of Animal Outlook and an undercover investigator who showed the horrific conditions. It was traumatizing just to download the footage and re-upload it for me. Imagine the poor man who went in there undercover with cameras to record it for two months, more than two months. And, you know, of course, the same company is saying, oh, happy, healthy chickens. And we have animal welfare policies and it's a moral and ethical issue. And then look, look at the the chickens they own. Okay. Look what condition they're in. It's unbelievable. 

00:05:55 Jane: Now, they don't do those stories very often on mainstream media. Okay. The organizations that do these undercover videos beg their… that's one of the things that we're able to do is that when they can't get coverage anywhere else, that one did make headlines but it made headlines in the newspaper. I mean, you don't see people showing the video. Okay. As far as I'm concerned, that should be on the front page of The New York Times with the video. And that's what we offer. We offer an ability for these companies, these non-profit organizations, to get their stories out there. I just did a podcast and it's going to be a written news article, too. And so we're fulfilling that. I'm actually running an entire streaming network and nonprofit news organization with written stories and live videos on our streaming network as well as on our social media. And, you know, normally there'd be hundreds of people doing this. In fact, we have a post office box and it's connected to a building. So you know how it says doesn't say P.O. Box anymore. It says sweet something or other. And people routinely think that's our building. I mean, no, this is UNCHAINEDTV World Headquarters right here, my living room.

00:07:09 Maya: Right. I've heard you say that you really don't have, like a large staff because people might assume because of who you are and because of the huge platform that you have. UNCHAINEDTV has so much content, they probably assume it takes several people to make all of this happen. There is something that--

00:07:27 Jane:  Dozen or several hundred now. It's me and I have a lot of volunteers and anybody who wants to volunteer, please contact me. You can just Instagram me, DM me on Instagram, UNCHAINED_ TV, UNCHAINED_ TV. We need just the other day a woman comes up to me in the street, I love what you're doing. I want to help. I put her to work right away, uploading videos, describing videos because I'm up till two in the morning doing it. So we have people who do the cooking shows on a volunteer basis like plant-based in the burbs, like OMG L.A, Travel series here in the L.A. area and everybody's volunteering their time to try to save the world before we hit a climate apocalypse. So if you want to volunteer and then I have to give a plug, I don't take a salary, I donate to my own non-profit. We keep everything totally as minuscule in terms of expenditure as possible. 

00:08:31 Jane: Let me say this we do need help. I am aiming for at least 100, hopefully 300, and that would self-fund our nonprofit news network 5 or $10 don't monthly donors. So we have an anonymous donor who says if you sign up to give $5 a month to UNCHAINEDTV, I will give $50. If you sign up to give $10 a month, I will give $100. Because if we get like 300 people giving $10 a month, we could fund a good percentage of our streaming network costs because just running the network is a couple of thousand a month. So I'm urging everybody, if you like what we're doing and we are working around the clock. I mean, just racing, racing, racing, every single one of these videos, I have to get them. I have to get a release form, I have to upload, I have to describe them, and then we shoot out of our own original content. Tons of it. So, you know, join our team. You become an UNCHAINEDTV team member. You can just go to unchained tv.com/donate and sign up $5 a month, $10 a month. And you can really feel like you're taking action because we are reaching the masses. Okay. And we're growing every month and people are watching these videos. Not vegans, not just vegans, people who are veg, curious people who want a healthy recipe, people who have heart disease, people who, you know, they're suffering from obesity, whatever the issue is that they want to get rid of, or they just love animals and they don't want to hurt them. So become an UNCHAINEDTV monthly contributor. You can just go to unchainedtv.com and click 'Donate.' There's a button right there or you can go to unchained.com/donate. Thank you for listening.

00:10:24 Maya: Yeah, yeah. Wonderful. I will put that in the show notes. And also so let me ask you that's the donation that you have a goal of having at least 300 people to subscribe to this monthly membership. The content, the use of the app. Is there a fee for that?

00:10:39 Jane: No, we are totally free. Why?

00:10:42 Maya: Okay, so that's why you need donations. Yes. To keep it going.

00:10:46 Jane: Yeah. Let me explain how this came about. When we started, I was in mainstream media most recently at CNN Headline News. I worked in mainstream media for many decades. And then when that wrapped up after a very nice, long career, 38 years. Thank you very much. I started this nonprofit and originally, when Facebook Live came along, we were able to get, Oh my God, we got 17 million views in the early days of Facebook Live one year because they were just sending it out to tens of thousands of people.

00:11:18 Jane: We did. We did something called Lunch Break live every single day for five years, never missing a day, New Years, you know, Christmas, Hanukkah, whatever it was, we were live. And with a lunch segment. Now, all of a sudden, as you most people know, Facebook changed their algorithms and they started showing it to fewer people. Then we did a 20 episode award winning cooking show that's on still on Amazon Prime called New Day, New Chef. It won two Taste Awards. So that was a great until they started. One day I woke up and they started charging $0.99 an episode. So it went from hundreds of thousands of views down to like 1000 views. So that's when one of my producers, I work with an Emmy winning producer, and he said, He's Irish. He said, Well, we can start your own streaming network if you want, and then you can stream everything for free. And I said let's do it. That's how we started UNCHAINEDTV because people have their HBO and their Showtime, blah, blah, blah Netflix, they don't want to pay a cent for anything beyond that. So free is the number one search term for streaming device users. So we made everything free because we don't want to create any barriers to anybody seeing this content. 

00:12:31 Jane: I think 37% of people say they went vegan because of a documentary, and one of the top ones is Earthlings. It is on there. I don't want to have any barrier to stop anybody from stumbling onto Earthlings watching it and going vegan. So that's why we do everything for free. But by the same token, it's not free to run this network. So we need help and we need to become more self-sustaining. So yes, we do have some donors, but they also want to see that we are going out of our way to become self-sustaining as well. In other words, you can't just rely. So that's why these $5 a month and $10 a month donations are so crucial to our survival.

00:13:17 Maya: Absolutely. Yes. I know I don't run a platform as big as yours, but believe me, there are costs that are involved on a monthly basis to host everything and to support your work. So I was familiar with your lunch break lives. I've watched those also. New Day, New Chef. I watched those as well. I wasn't aware that they actually started charging for them. But you have a lot of energy when you're in the kitchen, so you're very entertaining when it comes to watching you. So I'm excited to know that all of that and the documentaries are all found on in one place, which is your app, UNCHAINEDTV. Before we connected, I told you that I knew about you. I just kind of want to tell my listeners because some listeners may recognize you back in the day. And when I watched True Crime, I used to watch Nancy Grace and I started learning about you and you would report on these stories with a lot of passion. Now I see you with a similar passion in a sense that you really do care for what you're now advocating for. How did you make that transition? I know that you have a story of going sober, going while really coming out of the closet known as being gay and then now going vegan. And you just continue to evolve as a human being. It's amazing. You took all these skills that you had once when you worked for CNN and now you're using them to care for the planet, to protect animals, to help be a voice for these animals.

00:14:47 Jane: Well, thank you. And I'd like all that in writing, please and notarize. Well, first of all, yes, I did get sober 28 years ago, and I wouldn't be doing any of this if I hadn't gotten sober. And, you know,  it was no accident that about several months after I got sober, I had a moment of clarity, and I was like, Wait, I love animals. So why? I was already sort of veg... I was vegetarian. It was a journey. I grew up in a mostly pescatarian household. We kind of thought we were vegetarians, but we ate cheese and fish and dairy, and we weren't. But we were at least not bringing, you know, chicken legs and turkey legs into the house or or ground beef or any of that. So then as I grew up and I went to NYU, I became a journalist who was working around the country at various news stations. And I started to see some of the horrors, you know, in animal experimentation and in food production. And I was like, This is wrong. But it was only after I got sober that I really realized, you know, I've got to truly align my beliefs with my actions. And then Howard Lyman, the fourth generation cattle rancher who went vegan and went on Oprah and revealed the secrets. And he was doing a book tour. And I interviewed him and he said, Do you eat dairy? And I kind of hung my head. And I said yes. And he said liquid meat like that. And that's the moment I went vegan. And, you know, if he hadn't confronted me, I might not have taken the action.

00:16:18 Jane: But he… I thanked him for confronting me and so and I also came out. Yes. So no accident after I got sober because as long as you can have waiter Chardonnay, you know, you don't have to really face yourself. So when I started working at a show called Celebrity Justice, I started being able to do animal stories because there are so many celebrities who have a passion for animals. And it was one way to get the issue out. But also I could fulfill my job function of interviewing celebrities, which is very hard with a tabloid show. And then when I got the show on CNN Headline News, I asked them, I said would you mind if I did a little animal segment once a week? They said, well, we don't see a problem with that. They probably thought I was going to do pet adoption, but I started doing hardcore animal rights every Friday for about four minutes. And, you know, I have to give them kudos. They never stopped me. They never cut me off. And for four years I did pay gestation crates and tail docking and introduced some of the companies that are now huge, like it was just Mayo at the time. I interviewed Josh Tetrick, the founder. 

00:17:30 Jane: So when that show wrapped up after a six year run, which is a nice run on TV,  I decided the time had come for me to just do this full time. But frankly, I'm sorry to disappoint. I was never a crime buff. That was a job. This is the crime. I'm interested in the crime of killing a 80 billion animals every year and letting children die of starvation while we serve a huge percentage of our food to farmed animals. You know, I've never really I did cry because it was sort of the genre I fell into but it's not a passion of mine except in the sense that I would like to avoid becoming a victim of crime. That's my... Yes. That I'm very interested in.

00:18:12 Maya: Yeah, that's funny. And there's just so much true crime today. Podcasts and shows and all of that. A lot of online, you know, what do they call them? True crime buffs or whatever. So now you said, I know we don't have a lot of time, but I just want to know, like, I hear what you're saying you don't want to be preaching to the choir. And that's why you want to use UNCHAINEDTV as a way to get to people that are hearing this content for the first time and then boom, all the resources are there. How are you outreaching to those individuals that have never heard the message?

00:18:44 Jane: Well, again, that's one reason why we need a donor base because of a tree falls and no one hears it. So we started this. It was in beta testing in 2021. It launched just about a year ago, officially in May of 2022. And we surpassed a million views with our incredible,  the world's first reality show starring pigs, Pig Little Lies, Pig Little Lies, you got to watch it on UNCHAINEDTV. You'll laugh, you'll cry. It's a reality show starring pigs. And, so, you know, we have to promote UNCHAINEDTV. And the marketing is expensive. It's the most expensive part because we're getting virtually all with a very small exception of our content donated to us. So what after paying, you know, the app function and certain key things like insurance, you know, accounting, all those things to stay above board and do everything properly. The next thing is marketing. And so we do Facebook ads and we are doing Google ads and we also want to get in there and market to, let's say, people who already have Amazon Firestick, people who already have a Roku device, people who already have an Apple TV device. That's where we could really hit those people. But that is the most expensive advertising of all. So again. You know, it takes a village.

00:20:17 Maya: Absolutely. Yeah. I can't even imagine the cost to get that happening to to create something like that. Oh, right. So what is the best way? So there is one other question and I didn't see that. So I was looking at your website and I didn't see what you once had. You call them contributors today. Did you at one point have sort of like on location correspondents that would be reporting for you in certain areas? I had considered doing that at one point. You encourage whatever event activity is happening that can support animals, even if it's environmental or plant based. You wanted people to contribute. And I almost signed up and then I said, Jane, I said, I have too much too much work as it is. But if you do still offer that, how can people still contribute? And from whatever is happening in their area to get it to UNCHAINEDTV?

00:21:07 Jane: Well, you're very smart. You've analyzed everything very properly. Okay. When we were just on Facebook primarily, although we also have a YouTube channel, you know, we've got 150,000 followers on Twitter. We also do live on Twitter. We have about 840,000 followers on Facebook. So we were doing primarily that live on Facebook. But the problem is that the return was diminishing as Facebook changed their algorithms to distribute less organically. And it just it's becoming pay for play almost, you know, And so and I'm not attacking Facebook. If it weren't for Facebook, we wouldn't have anything going right initially where we got those millions of views with lunch break live all those years. But all these technology companies are constantly pivoting. So we have to pivot in turn. And it was actually the Vegan Bros who were here once and they go, "Don't ever call it a mistake. It's a pivot." And I said, okay, thank you for that. 

00:22:09 Jane: So we've had at one point like 70 volunteer contributors around the world going live because every time they went live, they were getting thousands of views. But as the views diminish, we still have some contributors. So I just had lunch with our European contributor who was here visiting and I gave him the latest gimbal, you know, stabilizer and microphones. And I said, go back because we could take a really good video and re-edit it. And we've done that. We've re-edited some of our top videos and put them on the app. In fact, I went live for two hours at the Animal Liberation Conference, I don't know, several years ago, way before the pandemic. And it was so compelling when I found it on my computer going through some things, I was like, "Wow, that was really impactful." I just downloaded it and put it on UNCHAINEDTV because it's once in a lifetime. Tens of thousands of people marching for animal rights with flares, speeches. I mean, it was an extravaganza. And guess what? We're going back to the Animal Liberation Conference this Saturday, and we're going to be UNCHAINEDTV is going to do live team coverage on our streaming network, on Facebook, on YouTube, on Twitter, and cross posting to other Facebook pages of the Animal Liberation March on Saturday. So tune in and watch it. We'll have it set up so you can watch it right at unchainedtv.com or download our app and sit there and watch it on your TV screen or watch it on your phone.

00:23:41 Jane: But it's going to be really exciting and breakthrough. You know how generally when you see reporters at a scene, they have a big news truck and they have a masked TV reporters? Well, we figured out a way to do the technology like this. So we're going to be able to go live with four cameras, actually five cameras covering all angles of the march and the speeches. But we don't have to have a mask. So we're really doing some breakthrough technology. We just did it the other day at the Santa Clarita VegFest for the very first time. And so, you know, I'm very lucky to have. Donors and contributors. A couple of contributors. Jeff Hoffman, who's an engineer, and Mike Devotion, who's an incredible retired business executive who knows so many things. They've helped me with this project. In fact, I'm racing out when I finished this interview to have a meeting with our team in preparation for going because there's a lot of technical equipment, there's wires everywhere and you miss one wire and you're out of business. That is so true

00:24:46 Maya: That's incredible. I mean, I don't have that much experience with reporting and media, but believe me, I figured out at the Vegan Women Summit, back to back, back to back and working in the media room, it was really stressful. And the camera gave out and the battery went dead. And the lineup that we had for interviews fell behind. And so, yeah, it's almost like all of us who are not really trained in that could use some training to be more effective in this world so that we can be a do a better--- learn by doing.

00:25:16 Jane: You learn by doing. I went to journalism school at NYU. I learned more the first week on the job in Fort Myers, Florida than I did in four years, mostly partying, if I have to be honest. But, you know, attending college.

00:25:29 Maya: Well, Jane, I enjoyed you so much. Thank you for spending time with us. Just if you have a final message, most of my listeners are women. And as you know, women are the ones or the one that primarily runs the household is the one that decides what they will bring into the household, whether it's, you know, personal care products or household products or food. You know, that's where we can start to make more vegan choices. So if you have a message for us.

00:25:57 Jane: Well, I would say that, you know, we spend a lot of time talking to each other, other vegans and I would say take a lot of that energy and put it into mass media. If you think you could do a great cooking show for UNCHAINEDTV, reach out to me. Just yesterday, somebody reached out to me from Taiwan and she's going to send me her videos and she wants to do a whole cooking show. And she's got the whole thing laid out with a staff. I mean, she was like hyper organized. I was like, I want to see your videos because you seem like hyper organized. You seem like you could really pull this off, but who knows? So if you think you've got a cooking show, if you want to do a talk show like you've learned a lot, look at your setup. It's very professional. You get a nice professional setup and never admit that you're nervous on camera. Okay.

00:26:52 Maya: The good thing is I can I can edit it out. But think I had to say just because I felt a little rushed. But no, it's you know, I was--

 

00:27:00 Jane: It's my fault. I asked you to do it a half an hour earlier because of the the the logistical complexities of what we're trying to pull off at ALC. So please watch. But thank you, Maya, for not just saying, oh, you know, I'm vegan and I want to save animals, but you're taking action. And that's what I tell everybody. You know, the animals cannot speak for themselves. We need to take action. And the action isn't just talking to each other, okay? The action is definitely not in fighting. I am completely opposed to any infighting. I even say it on my website. If you have a problem with anybody in this movement or any organization, call the police or call a lawyer. Leave us out of it. Of course there are exceptions. If I feel like a human or an animal's, life is in danger. There's exceptions to every rule, but that's how I feel about it. I have no tolerance for infighting. So take that energy and instead of saying, Oh, you're doing it wrong, well, show us how you do it better and and get active. Like we need volunteers. 

00:28:07 Jane: If you have if you can afford a cup of coffee a month, you can afford to be part of the UNCHAINEDTV team. Okay. And we desperately need you. So being a $5 a month contributor is not going to break your bank or a $10 a month contributor. If you can do that, do it. Go to unchainedtv.com/donate and donate. And you know, don't give up hope. Don't say, oh, it's too big of a problem. Yeah. Somebody said to me, and I remember this, you know, it was only a couple of thousand people who stormed the Bastille and sparked a French Revolution. It doesn't have to take millions of people. If we get to three, I think it's 3.5% of the population, boom, it will happen. But every single person needs to go vegan and every single vegan needs to become an activist.

00:28:54 Maya: Yep, that's right. So thank you so much for your time, Jane. And we're going to be looking out for you since you're preparing for the Animal Liberation. It's an animal liberation conference. Okay. Thank you so much, Jane, for your time. Oh, and then did we share everything? It's all your links are on your website, unchainedtv.com

00:29:15 Jane: Yeah, well, the best link is to get to watch. If you go watch.unchainedtv.com, you get right to the online version of the streaming network. watch.unchainedtv.com. But if you want to share it out, you really should download it. That's the best way because when you download it, you literally there's a button and you send the video so quickly. I mean, it's I'm impressed with it.

 00:29:45 Maya: Okay. 

00:29:46 Jane: Because obviously, I didn't create the technology.

00:29:48 Maya: But you have the vision and you've been working towards it. So that's all your content in a sense. You've created this platform to support people and the contributors are the ones that are also helping to build it so.

00:29:59 Jane: Well, keep in mind that your Healthy Lifestyle Solutions might be a show on UNCHAINEDTV.

00:30:05 Maya: Okay, yeah, maybe we can talk.

00:30:07 Jane: About your best interviews and you might have to edit them down a little bit and add some music, but with some cover illustrations like, okay, today I did Animal Outlook. I had to spend like three hours not only reading about it, then taking clips of the videos. I had to edit the videos and reupload them because with the platform we use Streamyard. You can't put more than you know about a minute, a minute and a half video, but it's great. Streamyard is a great platform. So then I had to break it down into a little clips and upload it. I had to do the company statement from the company because you need to give their side and give them an opportunity to respond. And then of course, Animal Outlook responded to their response and there was a lot of research that went into it. But the picture tells the story. The video tells the story. So if you can incorporate video on top of what you're doing or photos, then you take it to the next level because you've already got the background is very nice. I'm going to give you an eight plus on that background and the microphone and all that. I'm serious. No, it took me a while to get this together. I was like oh...

00:31:19 Maya: I'll share some things with you. I'll share an ideal. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. The I'll share, you know, later on a little bit about what I'm doing with my husband. I created a segment for him on my podcast called Doctor in the House. And he's a vascular surgeon who treats people who pretty much for the most part have developed chronic disease as a result of what they eat. As you know, a lot of it is lifestyle and food. And so we tackle these health topics. You probably have plenty of access to a lot of doctors, but we talk about stroke prevention and heart disease prevention, and it's always the food we're part of. Walk with the Doc. That's what we do in our city. We organize events as well to support people. So...

00:32:00 Jane: What city?

00:32:01 Maya: I live in Dallas. 

00:32:04 Jane: Yeah. Okay, great. 

00:32:04 Maya: Yeah. Meat country. Right? This is where we're--

00:32:07 Jane: I'm having chickpeas, rice and hummus. Oh, the little carrots.

00:32:11 Maya: That's wonderful. There you go. But yeah, mean my passion to help people create changes because people are suffering. But at the same time, I know that if I can move people away from eating animals, animals don't have to suffer. And so the context--

00:32:25 Jane: It's really horrible what's happening to these animals. I mean, just seeing that video, it's enraging. It's... Come on, guys, this is a consumer issue. And all that chicken you're eating. Oh, my gosh. Chickens are the most killed. Like, in other words, if people just stop eating chicken, we would reduce the number of animals killed from 80 billion down to like, well, I don't want to give incorrect statistics, but more than 90%. Okay. So there's a product. So you saw it at the Vegan Women's Summit. Tindall's Chicken. It tastes so much like chicken. I don't even know what chicken tastes like. But everybody around me is like you sure this isn't chicken? It smells like you're going. It looks like chicken. So you know. Why? Why kill an innocent animal when you've got a product that tastes exactly like it? And that's why they're going. The meat industry is going after those meat alternative products and they're attacking them. 

00:32:22 Jane: And we learned at the Vegan Women's Summit, there's an entire war room in Denver, Colorado, where the meat industry sends out processed, processed processes. Oh, you think deli slices aren't processed? Not only are they processed, but they're cancer causing, according to the World Health Organization. So don't buy the BS. Okay. And, you know, I've had to do this, too. I used to spend a lot of time trying to convince people I care about like certain relatives, certain friends, certain neighbors, they are the least likely to convert. You're much more likely to convert a stranger who is not going to take the information personally. So I've given up. I've given up on those people who I've talked to for years, like, go with God. I'm sorry, I'm not wasting my time on you. I'm going to take my energy and put it into talking to strangers, using mass media, hopefully a lot of strangers to get to them because don't waste your breath on those people. And I'm talking to myself too, because there's always that, Oh, I want to send this to her. I want to send that to her. Crickets. Never get a response. Let it go. You know, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different response.

00:34:29 Maya: Yeah. And it's that message is so freeing also, Jane, because that means you can just let it go. You can just allow things to be. And, you know, I learned that very early on. And unfortunately, I alienated people as a result of my trying to convert people, especially family and friends. And I think that's one of the first things that we all need to be taught is don't be aggressive. Just allow people to be.

00:34:52 Jane: I'm sorry, disagree with you.

00:34:54 Maya: Okay.

00:34:55 Jane: Okay. I was confronted into going vegan, liquid meat. Okay. So you can't always say don't be confrontational. What I am saying is that it doesn't matter. Confrontational. Nice, up, down, whatever. Your relatives are the least likely to listen to you because they're taking it personally.

00:35:17 Maya: That's true.

00:35:18 Jane: The friends are taking personally work on the strangers. It doesn't mean what you did is wrong. I think sometimes you have to be confrontational. Right.

00:35:26 Jane: Well, did they did women get the right to vote without being confrontational? Did we end, you know, all sorts of other horrors inflicted on human beings without being confrontational? No. Now, I'm not saying always confront, but I don't think we should walk around with both hands tied behind our back. Confrontational doesn't mean violent. Absolutely nonviolent. And we are a nonviolent the ultimate nonviolent movement. Okay. That's why we don't want to hurt anybody, including animals. But sometimes you do have to confront if somebody runs around saying they're spiritual and environmentalists and say, well, you know, meat is up there at the very highest carbon price tag of any food. You're giving them a fat. How can you be an environmentalist if you're eating animals? 

00:36:11 Maya: Yeah. Or a feminist. Oh, that's even worse?

00:36:16 Jane: Forceful impregnation which starts with RND ends with E. We know what that is. It's right.

00:36:21 Maya: Yeah. Absolutely. And then. Well, and then that could be a whole course in itself. I don't know if you have any classes on training people how to outreach to to people, but I do know that there is I guess if there is a psychological level of readiness that some people are just ready, maybe they've heard the message or they're just ready to make a change, or maybe they're sick now and they're ready. So that's just like assessing how do you know what to say at what time with certain people? 

00:36:49 Jane: But you're still talking to people personally. What I'm saying is take that energy and put it into talking to even our worst viewed video is viewed more much more than any in person like even conference.

00:37:04 Maya: That's true. Yeah.

00:37:07 Jane: So that's why I say get on board. We need your help. Please join the team. I think you have a show in your future. Maya. I'm going to run off to do my next task, but I really appreciate you.

00:37:18 Maya: Thank you. 

00:37:20 Jane: You're great. 

00:37:20 Maya: I love your passion and your energy. There's so much that we can learn from you. Have a great time. I know I say great, but I know that you know what you're doing is real work. So thank you again, Jane. Have a great day.

00:37:30 Jane: Thank you, my dear. Love you. 

00:37:33 Maya: Bye. 

00:37:33 Maya: You've been listening to the Healthy Lifestyle Solutions podcast with your host, Maya Acosta. If you've enjoyed this content, please share with one friend who can benefit. You can also leave us a five star review at ratethispodcast.com/hls. This helps us to spread our message. As always, thank you for being a listener.

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