 I couldn't do it. I held her and she was shaking and she was dying in my hands. She was looking at me, I was looking at her, and I had like a spiritual experience. I felt her pain, I felt her life slipping from her body. Her blood was my blood, her fur was my hair, her eyes were my eyes. And in that moment I said to myself, well if I can't take the life of this animal but I pay other people to do it for me, for my meals, I'm a fucking hypocrite. Okay, so it's with great pleasure for me to introduce to everyone Robby Lockie, a good friend of mine. Now Robby are a vegan campaigner, creative director and the co-founder, most notably the co-founder of Plant Based News. Very big news platform, one of the biggest online. Now, if you, like for me, I didn't know who Robby was for a long time. I'd say a few years into PBN I thought there was only one founder, Klaus. Klaus is probably the most person who's on camera the most. But there was Robby in the background doing a lot of work in the animal rights movement and we only got to know each other personally, probably about a year ago I'd say. Robby, for the people who don't know who you are, can you start off with your story, your philosophy, how you led into veganism, your transformation, your philosophy and outlook on life, how'd you become such a compassionate spiritual human being? Thank you, great to be here, Joey. So it all started about six and a half years ago. I went on a bit of a journey of discovery, mainly for health reasons. I didn't know what veganism was, I'd never heard of a vegan. I knew what a vegetarian was. I mostly found vegetarians really annoying people, I thought they were just fussy people and I never even thought about what people ate in an ethical perspective. But at the time I had a lot of health problems like joint problems, hurting skin problems, rashes. I had issues with low energy and I just was really, really unwell. And I saw loads of doctors and saw loads of different people, different health practitioners and nothing could really tell me what was wrong with me. And at the time I had just started getting into Netflix and it just started. And I watched Forks Over Nights, Food Inc, Fat Secondary Dead by Joe Cross and I really began to fill my mind with all this information about nutrition and the food system and how animals were reared and I was quite shocked by what I was learning. And I decided to take my own health into my own hands and I started being told about these alkaline diets which is essentially just eating more greens and I started juicing every morning and introducing more green vegetables into my diet and then I decided to do a seven day juice fast and that was five different juices every day for seven days. I was doing all myself as well, just quite a task and I had to get up super early in the morning at five and make them all. And I remember being in the supermarket and the checkout lady was like, what the hell are you doing with so many pineapples? Just piles and piles of fruits and vegetables. And got through it and I started to feel really light and full of energy and my health really started to improve after one week. And then at the end of this whole process I went into a pub and I sat down and I ordered a big greasy beef burger and I got halfway through it and I felt really, really sick. And I think that was the moment I started to fall out of love with eating meat and I really began to question why am I eating this stuff? I don't enjoy it anymore after just one week while I'm eating fruits and vegetables. And what happened after that was really, really interesting. I was told about earthlings and I watched the film and I was quite shocked by what I saw. I mean it was rude for me because I grew up on a farm, I've seen animals killed but I never made that connection between animals as individuals and the suffering they experienced and our food choices. I watched the film, turned the TV off and I was just wandering around the house in a bit of a daze, really shocked and confused about why I hadn't thought of this stuff before. And just by pure chance, unfortunate chance, our next door neighbour ran over, the other neighbour's cat right in front of our house, this beautiful white Persian cat and she was lying on the road in front of our house, the lady in the car with her kids, a few paces up. She was screaming and crying, the kids were crying and I went up to her and I said, what's happening? She said, oh the cat, the cat, can you go and help the cat? And the cat was just there on the tarmac in this big pool of ruby red blood flapping around and obviously in pain dying she'd been smashed up by the car. And you know, people always say you should put an animal out of its misery if it's suffering. I couldn't do it. I held her and she was shaking and she was dying in my hands. She was looking at me, I was looking at her and I had like a spiritual experience. I felt her pain, I felt her life slipping from her body. Her blood was my blood, her fur was my hair, her eyes were my eyes. And in that moment I said to myself well if I can't take the life of this animal but I pay other people to do it for me, for my meals I'm a fucking hypocrite. And I thought about all my Buddhist philosophy and practice and everything I've been learning over the last 12, 13 years and I thought there's no way I can continue with my life eating and consuming animals, be Buddhist and be talking about kindness and compassion yet I'm sitting down to what is essentially a plate of violence three times a day and in that moment I became a vegan. Wow, I had my hair standing up on my arms and I'm tearing out my eyes. I did not know that. I did not know your vegan story and you know it kind of freaking me out while you're saying it because it's very, it's eerily similar to mine. You know I did the juice fasting after becoming overweight there was a period of suffering and I did the raw foods, the juice fasting lost a lot of weight, had this amazing energy it was really similar and then I got involved with the ethics it's almost like I had to wake up, get involved with the ethics and find the animals side of it but it was all like a progression of suffering pulling myself out of that suffering and then realize that other animals were suffering too. Do you see this much in the movement? What do you think that is? Do you think it's this spiritual awakening people are having or do you think it's something more grounded? I'd like to say that it's a spiritual thing I'm a Buddhist and I'm a spiritual person but I'm also a rational person and I feel like my world is heavily grounded in science and what is tangible. I think that if that was the case every time people went vegan or stopped eating animals you would be, all the vegans around you would be kind, compassionate, gentle, loving people but they're just not and I'm sorry to break anyone's fantasy about what the vegans are but there's a lot of very aggressive angry, misanthropic and hateful vegans out there being vegan doesn't make you a kind, compassionate person it just means that you're a person who's decided that animals don't deserve to be exploited and abused for their bodies, for their leather, for their eggs for their milk, whatever that's a choice you've made that doesn't stop you from being an angry person so that being said I do think meat could have certain biological components that may cause people to be a bit more aggressive or a bit more angsty maybe what are they? I mean things like adrenaline maybe cortisol or adrenaline these kind of substances I don't know unless we actually test meat I don't know how much of those substances remain in the meat after animals have been butchered and it's been cleaned and processed and stuck in the supermarket it's possible but we need to do tests on the products on the meat, on the flesh to see if they're there Interesting yeah because being a vegan doesn't mean that you are this compassionate person in all areas of your life it just means you oppose something that is inherently cruel, unnecessary and abusive it's like I'm opposed to child abuse that doesn't mean that the sun now shines out of my arse it just means I don't do something that's really cruel and unnecessary you don't need to be this amazing person in all aspects of your life what do you think about the collective suffering that vegans undergo after witnessing what's happening to animals and being met with ridicule do you think that's fueling the hatred? from non-vegans do you think that's fueling the anger that vegans have you know they're facing what's going on to animals and they're met with ridicule from non-vegans and people that are still eating meat do you think that fuels the anger? I think it does you and I talked about it on the phone a few months ago about how it's very easy to react with anger when anger is given to you but ultimately at the end of the day when people react with anger about our lifestyle it's nothing to do with us it's all because they don't really understand where we're coming from we're on the other side we like to use the metaphor of a glass panel and it's frosted and we're now on the other side we're banging on that panel trying to explain to them what's going on no matter what you say no matter what signs you pull no matter what words you use they cannot hear you and you can get angry and you can scream and you can shout but they don't understand you no matter what words you use they're not going to listen unless you do something that's going to lower the blind and lower the defences and you can get in so anger and frustration at people who think that we're crazy is counter-intuitive in my opinion it pushes people further away and even though you want to get angry and you want to shout and scream at people because you want them to listen because you can see you've been in a slaughterhouse you've been on a factory farm you've seen these beautiful as we both often describe child-like beings suffering of course you're angry but we have to, as advocates put that anger aside for a second and think about what's effective rather than what's, you know like an outlet it's hard though it is hard and I don't blame vegan activists for being angry because I get my fair share of vegan activists yelling at me and you know calling me plant-based you're not vegan you know all these things and directing their anger towards me I know that they're suffering their own vicarious trauma from what they've seen and what they've witnessed and the animals they've tried to save and they've seen all this suffering and they're constantly fighting debating and defending themselves and so I understand I try to take myself out of the picture but you know I'm you know I'm no saint when it comes to directing aggression at people I've still got to really be mindful of that I come from a different background and past to you being a Buddhist that sort of you've developed these skills before you were a vegan so talk about your philosophy with your Buddhism and how that's helped you with your vegan advocacy just day-to-day dealing with aggressive people dealing with this battle because it is a battle isn't it I think what it's taught me my Buddhist practices taught me is to accept the things I cannot change there's no point in feeling upset or anger because someone is reacting to you in a way that you don't like because you have no control over them at all, especially online there's no point in reacting in an aggressive way people are aggressive to me online I often respond with politeness and kindness and positivity I never ever lose my temper I never get aggressive obviously now I mean in the past I have done but now in my you could say my Buddhist years I've learned to be a bit more a lot more composed because I've realized that actually when I've reacted with anger or I've lashed out at people I mean it's so obvious you see it straight away as soon as you lash back at people they lash back at you and then it just turns into this muds-linking match and you never want to lose it so it's helped me to be more present to understand that whatever we say whatever we do it's going to come back at us so we put out positivity and compassion and kindness even in the face of aggression it does disarm people when people shout at you screaming you call you a militant vegan you're a crazy you're a cult leader they want you to react they want you to go F you and you this and that but when you go that's great but that's just not the truth well thank you for your opinion that's just not how it is people don't know how to react to that they know how to fire with fire but when you show them a bit of that other side but you know why I respond like that because I know what we're doing is right I have no doubts about what we're doing is positive if I was doubtful about what we're doing if I was doubtful about our movement the way we eat, the way we live I probably would react with anger because I would be doubting myself because I am so sure that this is the future of humanity the way we eat and live people can call me whatever they want they can scream and shout and be abusive but it's never going to make me angry so you co-founded Plant Based News 2017 with Klaus now since then your platforms have grown they're huge they're really big now so you're hyper-exposed to the vegan community all different aspects of the vegan community so what are the type of dynamics you're exposed to and how do you deal with that on a day to day basis consistently you're celebrating three years now of being out there online how do you deal with these struggles what are you exposed to where to begin there's so many ways in which people can be positive and there's so many ways in which people can be negative so many ways people can lift you up and so many ways people can tear you down they want to see you succeed and these people want to see you fail so how do you frame it there's always going to be someone who likes what you're doing and someone who wants to chill on what you're doing yeah and have to come to terms with that and be okay with that and that's all I have to do really and it's a daily struggle because there's always some new challenge some new person coming along and saying something that's hurtful or wrong or just a lie or someone who's criticising us by case some things I brush them off other things I think about them because I do take criticism on board not all these kind of people just have my fingers in my ear just doing whatever I want but not listening constructive criticism you take on board but you learn to distinguish determine what's constructive and what's just an attack there's a culture or cancel culture where advocates or campaigners or people online are attacking other people within their communities and that could be any community the non-binary community, the gay community the vegan community, the Buddhist community, Christian people are using social media to publicly lynch others rather than having a call or sitting down for a meal or having a cup of tea and saying what you're doing I think is damaging what your tactics you've employed here I personally think could be improved by X, Y and Z instead of having hearts of people or meaningful value creating dialogue people jump straight on social media and they go for the jugular and they tear people down and then they have all their friends who agree with them join on board and it becomes like a lynch mob regardless of who's right or wrong I don't think that's healthy for any community very that's definitely been on the other end of that but I do think that part of my vegan activism I've done a bit of calling out too of people who've been abusing animals and that's a part of my activism I guess if I see someone abusing you know a cow in a dairy I'm calling them straight out so at what point do we you know like at what point does reaching out not work and then what do you do like I mean I understand within your own community where you've all got the same goal like in the vegan community we've all got the same goal calling out other vegan activists that tactic's not gonna work that strategy's not good at what point you know does reaching out to someone if that doesn't work then what do you do because it's all about your intention when you call out person A, B or C what do you hope to achieve by that and do you feel that you're calling them out whether it's you and a farmer in a field or you and a person online you really believe that what you're going to say is going to change your opinion change their view or stop them doing what they're going to do if it's none of those things why do it at all but if you're doing it because you're doing it as part of the campaign in the sense of for example if you're calling out farmers particular tactics but treatments of animals you don't really care or you do care you're not really that you know that the farmers are not going to stop what they're doing but by being public about your criticism of how they treat animals others are watching and observing in the way you skillfully explain why it's problematic you are putting on I wouldn't say a show but you're putting on you're explaining you're taking your audience through why what they're doing is wrong but it's not really calling out it's not a personal attack it's more an attack on the industry it's like this is cruel and abusive this industry has to stop if you fat old bastard of a farmer you do all these like what's it called pejorative terms of a person their personality that's what people do they sort of like lynch people they focus on what the person is doing wrong explain why it's a problem they bully people I wouldn't say that you bully people I generally know that farmers are a victim of the system as well not as victimised as animals at some level too but within communities I see it a lot too and I guess you're right it is about your intention is your intention just because plant-based news is a really big platform why do they get all this attention we have to bring them down we have to throw stones at them so I guess it is about what they hope to achieve do they just want to make themselves feel better by bringing someone else down or do they really want to reach out to you this is a problem there's been people who have reached out to us about stuff all the time who have evaluated it or removed it or changed it or altered it we're reasonable people we're not perfect we've been doing this three years we've not been in the business of publishing for like 20 years we're learning as we go that doesn't mean that we're saying don't criticise us people are welcome to criticise us but what are you trying to achieve lynching people for some of the most ridiculous things the issues that people raise are important whether it's racism or human trafficking or speciesism all these issues are important but it's how you deliver the message and we're all flawed as human beings I'm not perfect I'm learning as I go with vegan activism I'm just going for it with all my heart sometimes I'm going to say something maybe I could have said that better but how many articles have you written over six thousand over six thousand plant based news as a resource there's going to be one or two that you might not personally agree with but for the most part the overall good of what you're doing supersedes and it's always with good intention what you're trying to put out there it's a work in progress we're all trying our best we all want to create the same change we're all working towards the same goal we all have different ideas and strategies of how to get there and we're all working together now let's talk about strategy because you guys have a more plant based news aren't you your approach is a lot different you talk more about the health and the environment I know the animals are very close to your heart Robbie but you're not really an animal rights outwardly animal rights sort of a platform so what do you think about different strategies going to farms and rescuing animals showing that what do you think about these more radical forms of activism it's a good question there's not a simple answer depending on who you talk to everyone's got a different opinion firstly the first point about plant based news we're plant based news not vegan news because we want to be a broad reaching platform including vegetarians, flexitarians everyone who's just a little bit interested in cutting animal products because we want to get into their minds and get them to question their food choices because I believe that if you start off with animal rights straight away it does scare a lot of people off for the most part not everyone cares about animals in fact a lot of people don't they don't care about what happens to animals they just want to eat their steak and they don't care if a cow suffers or not they tell themselves these little stories about how animals live happy lives and they're happy to eat them but I think there's different tactics aren't they everyone has a different style and often what people say is we need all of them together to bring change and I think people are doing different things because they believe in what they're doing and not everyone has the skills required to do run a media company or to do video editing or to run a podcast or to be a campaigner on YouTube or a direct action activist it's difficult because I don't want to give any strong opinions about any one particular tactic because I think they all have their positives and they have their negatives my very clear opinion about things like rescuing individual animals from farms is it's kind of a bit bipolar I'm trying to perform my words there's this old story about a guy walking along the beach and there's a starfish probably going to die if they stay on the beach and he's walking along with his friend and he's picking one up and he's throwing it in the ocean and his friend says why are you doing that why are you wasting your time and he says well it makes a difference to this one this one and this one and he's saving those lives they don't have eyes and faces but they are still living entities that may experience some kind of suffering and the animals that are trapped in these horrific factory farms are still suffering as individuals there are tens of them it's a tsunami of suffering and I feel like people that go into farms and rescue individual animals it's a bit like standing in a snow storm trying to capture one snowflake at a time and save one snowflake at a time each snowflake is important each snowflake is beautiful each snowflake is unique but it's not dealing with a problem the tsunami of suffering that's coming at us every single day is coming at us because of the consumer not the farmers not the factory farms they're just a product of a choice in the supermarket every single time a person reaches out for a box of milk or a bag of pork or a bag of mince or a steak that karma, that choice puts those animals on that farm when those choices change when we go into farms that save those animals here and there yes of course it makes a huge difference to that individual, that life that sentient being gets to go and live a life free of suffering but for the trillions of other animals coming down, so you say one pig 25,000 other pigs are coming down the chute behind it because of the choices of consumers in the supermarket so I think that personally when it comes to what's effective I personally feel like all our energy the consumer, change the consumers change society everything else disappears, slaughterhouses disappear dairy farms disappear, factory farms disappear but it's a long and painful process because there are 7.4 billion people on this planet 99% of them are eating animals wow so that's huge how the fuck how the fuck can we change the opinions and hearts and minds of all those people that's what I'm trying to do with plant based news so the problem is the consciousness of the consumer and their choices and that's what's putting these animals in these farms and these activists that are going into the rescue these individual animals are doing it so that this out of the goodness of their heart for this one individual but let's throw this into the mix a lot of these direct action rescues are happening with a barrage of advocacy afterwards animals out there posting it online they're posting the images of the victims online they're rescuing them giving this rescue story saying look at the victims of your food choices meat the victims is a good example of that it's getting news up and people are it's creating all this controversy in the newspapers we're coming up and we're talking about it in our videos and our posts I think that out would outreach that can that's where the power is so it's not necessary for those individuals you're saving it's great for them but the power is in influence of course influencing people to make those changes and as long as we're always conscious of that certainly the save movement people say well I've been on many saves and people have said to me why is it called a save movement we're not saving any animals but the process is that you're going to experience what animals experience in the final moments of their life for most humans for most people who live in the western society they've never seen that before they've never experienced that process and it's quite shocking for a lot of people because they see the individuals they see the eyes of the animals they see the fear and so they feel something and then they go away and tell their friends and family they might capture video that's where the power is that's the influence that needs to go on for me as long as that's going on then that's being effective but if you go into these farms and you take an animal and you naively take them home and try and look after them like a pet and understand that they're taking from a system that believes that that animal is a piece of property and not an individual so I guess if you're going to do any type of activism I would say off the back of it do some advocacy too so you're helping deal with the problem and not just put a bandaid on the problem it's like you're in a bath filling a sand and all you've got to empty it is a teaspoon and it's filling up that's what the world is today like it's relentless and I guess that's with plant based news you're trying everything to reach the mainstream and that we want to have a mainstream conversation around why we don't need to eat animals yes animals are suffering but that's a byproduct of people's choices but if we can convince people to cut animals out of their diet because it's better for our health and it's better for the environment it deals with the animal suffering because we convince people we don't need to consume them so I guess with this softer more broader approach you're trying not to alienate those who have never heard of this and you're trying to reach like let's just me for example I started doing juice fasting first and then this guy was this hippie guy Dan McDonald who was talking about you know calmer man and all this stuff and that's how I sort of started to wake up I didn't see an animal right I became an animal rights activist from this he wasn't even a vegan this juice fasting guy so it's weird how the progression can happen and that's why I don't shun these different approaches that are trying the best to reach people with different approaches everyone's trying the best that's the thing I always carry out what I'm saying when I offer my opinions on tactics everyone's doing their best and trying the best to stem what I say the tsunami of suffering everyone's just using the skills or the resources or the courage they have because it takes a lot of guts to do direct action it's not for the faint hearted and when you think about other social justice movements always having some type of direct action to force social change or to force the conversation into the mainstream again for me there's a lot of nuance here so people often talk about direct action take this justice for black rights say in the US people would go and sit in restaurants and protest inside restaurants and do sit-ins and do all kinds of things and really get up in people's faces it's really really tricky because sometimes it's hard to compare speciesism with racism they are related they interconnected aren't they the victims are different they often have to say it's very important to remember the victims are different the mechanisms in which people talk about individuals some are more important than others dogs, cats are loved where as chickens and cows and pigs have no rights and they're just food like with racism in the US or worldwide this color or race of people are important and privileged and these people don't in fact they're both human beings and they both deserve to have the same rights how do we convince people to listen to use violence, to attack people to try and educate people it's really difficult because we don't want people to suffer we don't want them to die we don't want to have to use violence my personal opinion is that we have to start we have to focus on our children we have to focus on the younger generations and try and educate and teach young people about compassion about kindness and teach people to be happy kind people attack each other and compassionate people don't want to attack each other I think that innate compassion when it's fostered within human beings I think it automatically all the other kind of isms do melt away I think wow I tend to agree that it does sort of the roots of it start at your childhood if your child is around a lot of abuse, a lot of discrimination and they see dad treating mum unfairly and your parents are racist or they still hatred into you look at that animal there it's just a filthy pig all these things that you learn you just absorb as a child and also find this phenomenon with doing outreach that the younger generation are just easier to reach then the cup that's completely full won't take in you it is hard to convince older people to listen because they feel like they've lived their lives you come along as a younger person they're like who the hell are you to tell me what to do that's why it's harder for kids to get their families to go vegan because they come to this lifestyle and they realise it's a compassionate kind healthier lifestyle and they go and tell their parents and their parents are they don't want to listen because they think who are you little boy to tell me what to do yeah I totally agree with that I love talking to the teenage like women the younger women they're more connected to empathy guys I don't know what's going on with the guys they've been trained differently or something that is really you know they've got these barriers up there's so much stigma with men trying to outwardly express emotion and me being from you know gangs and hardened people from prisons and things like that men are really they've got this barrier with you Robby like I've noticed you're very connected to your emotion you're very outwardly if anyone ever meets Robby you'll see he's really warm, really yielding I was really closed off but what is this phenomena do you think it's like cultural, it's fathers what is it? It's a defence mechanism you've obviously everything that you've experienced as a person you've had to protect yourself emotionally, physically spiritually I was very lucky to grow up in a world where I have been able to grow up in a world where I've been able to develop myself self actualisation I've not needed to worry about over the last 22 years I've not really had to worry too much about survival, about food I've been fortunate to live in a part of the world where I can focus on myself and develop myself as a person but when you're just trying to survive and dodge bullets or knives or whatever time for self actualisation time to meditate and try and figure out who you are and I think that's what it is I think a lot of people are so busy just trying to live their lives just trying to survive and men are particularly socialised to not have time for emotion it's just about being the great women about being the one who is the patriarch this is the society we live in when men are pushed to be leaders and obviously our world is changing the scales of privilege and opportunity are levelling out this is why the world isn't such a flux because everything is now changing the world that was is no longer the world that is now and that's why everything is upside down for a good reason it is good I've always hated the fact that it's hard to talk about emotions without the men and I think it leads to suicide because you're bottling all this stuff up it's the leading killer of men in the UK 5,800 men take their lives every single year in this country it's the leading killer of men under 55 and that's because they just haven't learned to express emotions I didn't even know what certain emotions were like what am I feeling here I had never been taught what these emotions are that's not what boys do and that's the society we live in where men and women are forced into these polar opposites when we're not human beings men are obviously more prone to certain characteristics top-level characteristics but I think men and women are equally capable of experiencing extreme and deep emotions sorrow and sadness and joy so we're looking at the vegan movement 75% around women wow it's no surprise really to me men have always been the hardest to receive this message we've got a lot of compassionate men out there I'm not trying to downplay the men in the movement but it just seems like this message is received better by emotionally connected women and what do you think about this as a strategy for outreach to focus on those who are easier to reach like the women instead of like banging your head against the war against you know everyone needs to be reached but why not reach those who are easier first yeah low-hanging fruit not to call women low-hanging fruit but women are more open women are socialised to connect and they have closer friendship groups from a very young age women are more I think in our society more encouraged to connect and to express themselves but with things like the game changers coming out of the recent film content and documentaries or art or whatever you want to call it is geared in a way that men get and taps into their ego for example like in the game changers there's a bit where they talk about erections and saying how if you switch to a plant-based diet you can potentially increase the strength of your erections by 100% you know a lot of men they care about stuff like that they want to be sexually powerful and strong they have this sexual identity reduced and so when you tap into the ego of men I feel like it's a very powerful way to get men to listen it's a ticket in I know that we should be doing all of this for the right reasons which is to protect animals from being abused but I guess everything is a ticket in and once you find what that ticket is for someone once they sort of yield to this message of the meat and dairy and they're more open to it that's when they can really solidify and find earthlings or find the ethical you know this horror show that's going on that you know so everyone needs their ticket in and that's why a plant-based news is so fantastic because it reaches your arms out in all these different ways yeah it's crazy this last month we reached 29 million people on social media that's in one month amazing that's crazy and everything is growing so rapidly like Instagram just hit 500,000 followers and it's going up about 3,000 a day amazing and the website gets about 5 million page impressions a month so you're doing something right there we must be doing something right people want to read our content so to all the vegans who think that we're not vegan enough we do have a strategy and we are we're not forgetting about the animals people who think that we don't write enough about animal stuff we're trying to be strategic we're trying to build a big audience first get everyone on board we already do we craftily stealthily put in the animal message so that it's there so that people are not type blindsided by it so they're learning about health and nutrition and then the animal message comes in and they're like they take it in the barrier is down that totally makes sense more of a strategy see me I can't talk about anything else really I have been in introducing different aspects of advocacy training being an athlete those types of things but people can share my stuff but I think the strategy is really working like wonders for developing a following pulling people's barriers down interweaving the animal rights stuff you share animal rights activists stuff too it's fantastic so where to from here do you have looking forward with how far you've come now where do you see yourself in five years do you just follow your heart or do you have a plan the plan is to build a platform that reaches more people and do that through continually creating more content in the three areas which is health, nutrition sorry health, animal ethics and environment and then underneath that is all the other areas whether it's fashion or technology or science or food technology just to kind of be there telling all those stories but then also I want to develop the whole education side of things as well really want to make courses we really have so we've got pvn academy where you can learn on how to have a successful vegan pregnancy raise a child vegan we've also got reversing type 2 diabetes on a plant based diet we've got these short courses where we teach people about these topics so I want to develop that as well I think knowledge is power as they say really want to empower people with the knowledge because I think people go and stay vegan when they really feel confident about what they're doing people leave the vegan community or switch away from the vegan diet when they're doubtful, when they get ill and they feel like it's their diet that's the cause and they don't realise there's a whole stress in their life probably causing it but when people feel confident about what they're doing then also be aware of what is involved in animal agriculture and just the sheer horror of it but also the damage as well like is that steak really worth it yes it tastes great and you'll enjoy it for like an hour or so but the damage it's doing to our world is it really really worth it helping people really get that and making sure it goes in it's just not worth it as long as we're out there educating people about that, I feel like we're doing our job yeah amazing and what about on a personal level do you feel like are you just always going to operate with plant based news or are you going to do anything in your own personal ventures because I see there's a lot of you've got so many levels to you as a human being and so much to give are you thinking about doing anything just off the back of your own personal platform I'd like to, I'd like to do more public speaking yeah I'd like to get involved with writing books and things like physical things people can use and develop it's difficult because I'm someone who likes to get involved in lots of different things so it's hard for me to like focus my energy into one space because I enjoy so many different parts of what we do I think it would be probably getting involved with more documentary type content I really have a burning desire to make documentaries, feature length documentaries on particular topics gender for example the gender revolution where people are starting to realise that gender is not a binary even though there are a lot of people more conservative people who refuse to listen and say no, you know, gender is about men and women and that's it there's no one between, you know, I categorically disagree with that because my entire life I've always felt a little bit different, not completely male not female, some in the middle and I never had a way to talk about it a way to describe it, you know, and this whole gender revolution has expanded and it's developing and it's evolving and it's such an interesting conversation, it's fascinating but there's so many people on the other side of the conversation who want to shut it down and don't want to talk about it so I want to explore stuff like that To talk about your sexuality Robbie, I mean we haven't talked about that, I mean if you're comfortable with that and have you experienced any bullying because of how early did you find out about your sexuality tell everyone about that Yeah, so I grew up in Zimbabwe in Africa and being gay in Zimbabwe is considered a crime you actually got a prison, oh my god 15 year sentence if you're caught in a gay relationship in that part of the world, so it was considered a crime so that rhetoric or that dogma was around me as a child and I lived in fear because I didn't know any other gay people I didn't even know what being gay was, right your sexuality, just with heterosexuality you discover it you know, in your young years before you're 9 or 10 I guess 8, 9, 10 you start to notice the other gender or the same gender, so right at the same time so I think gay children and heterosexual children develop their sexuality around the same time it's pretty much identical but it was weird because there was no one to support me no one to talk to me about it no one to explain to me what I was going through why I was different no one to nourish me and nurture me there was only fear and shame so it was a terrifying experience as a child growing up feeling like I was an alien although I was some kind of like abomination, because I grew up in a religious part of the world which is very heavily Christian which taught that being gay was an abomination that you go to hell and that God hated you and that being gay was a sin but I didn't even know what gay was but I knew that I was one of these people potentially and lived in terror from the age of like from 8 to like left home terrified that my family would find out about it and when I was about 15 I said to my mum I remember the day like it was yesterday I said to my mum what would you do if I told you I was gay when driving to school and she said I'd probably kill myself how awful is that the first time you'd ever nearly confided in someone about it? so you can imagine as a teenager when you tell the most important person in your life that you might be gay and then she responds with that and she is like my mum was my world and I was like that's it I'm never telling anyone this I'll keep this hidden forever and then I I moved out and moved to the big city and dated girls like a lot of gay men do in the beginning and I just hit it and then I happened to have an experience where I had an experience that I had to go for at the time and she found out and she went straight to my parents and told my parents wait for them to find out I was out of my parents amazingly they both responded very well, my mum cried, my dad cried they both said they blamed themselves but they didn't throw me out a lot of young gay people are thrown out how old were you at this time? about 16 so it was only a couple of years later my parents responded well they were very accepting and they were asking me now being with my partner for 11 years amazing so how long did it take for you to become comfortable with your sexuality outwardly? I'm still not completely comfortable because of years living in a society where I was told what I was was an abomination or wrong because I live in fear I mean we can't live comfortably in a society where you're not seen as normal because heterosexuality is seen as normal even though nature, homosexuality is quite common so I live in that I live with that all the time so I would say never really that's awful I've never heard that from the experience of another gay person or of a gay person what it's like to not be able to express yourself to your partner in public do you think society has come a long way or is it still really in the stone ages when it comes to it? it's still in the stone ages why can't I walk down the high street and watch Apple? we have an acceptance in most parts of society in modern British society hate crimes in this country are at an all time high towards LGBT people absolutely awful I've never seen anything like that myself but if I saw something like that I'd definitely be speaking out about it it's hard for me to understand I've always been very accepting of people but I understand where I come from the gay culture it's just not accepted I thought it was more the world that I'm from but it seems like society hasn't caught up yet it's a long way to go gay rights and fighting for the rights of LGBT people hasn't really been going on that long 40 years ago it was illegal in this country to be in a gay relationship Alan Turing who was one of the heroes of the Second World War who cracked the enigma code and ended the war against the Germans he was a national hero but he was gay and he was in a relationship with a man and it was exposed and instead of the government washing it away he had two choices he could either go to prison or he could be chemically castrated the government chemically castrated a national hero because he was gay because being gay and sodomy in the UK, two men having sex was a crime only 40 years ago my mind is blind I don't know anything about gay history yeah it's shocking absolutely shocking have you ever been bullied for your sexuality? yeah over the years there's been people who reacted negatively but on a whole if I take a step back I've always been completely fine the being community is that all the men that I know in the being community because women are fine usually they're not having issues with women but all the men, straight men in the community are completely open and loving and my sexuality isn't even an issue I don't even know about it I've always noticed you're just the more compassionate human being just more connected to your emotions has that got anything to do with your sexuality or more to do with your spiritual Buddhism and no I think it's to do with more spirituality there's a lot of very angry gay men who are very hurt and damaged by the society I understand that I completely understand that it's kind of it's similar to not on the same level but it's similar to what vegan activists would experience constant ridicule but I wouldn't say it's on the same level but that's why a lot of vegan activists are constantly defending and fighting and let's talk about this non-binary thing because I'm completely new to it if you're talking to someone who doesn't know anything about this whatsoever and would you consider yourself non-binary you don't identify as male or female well it's different labels are interesting things aren't they I don't want to label myself because as soon as you label yourself you put yourself in a box and you say you're with these people or this group of people I'd be cautious to say I'm non-binary because I don't want to pigeonhole myself but I certainly as I've grown and I've explored the idea of what gender means I feel like I am somewhere in the middle I don't feel like being a woman but I don't feel like I'm a man either because I think a lot of people don't understand what you're born with like your sex your sex organs whether you've got ovaries or testes or penis or vagina or whatever sex that's your body but then gender is your identity that's something beyond your physical body it's who you see yourself to be how you see yourself for example if you walk down the street in the dress how would you feel I'd feel definitely out of place because I identify as a man so I dress like a man and I put wears trousers exactly well because of the way other people would view that and I would feel uncomfortable so what is your identity how others perceive you and how you perceive yourself yeah well that blew my mind a bit then so when you take on a dress or a wig or a make up or whatever you're altering your outward identity and you present yourself now I present as a man beard, deeper voice trousers or whatever but if I came in tomorrow and I was in a dress and I shaved off my beard and I looked more feminine I'd be presenting as a female again as feminine but I'm still I'm born a man and my sex is male but my gender would be moving more towards female because I would be looking female dressing female maybe you know in a more feminine way because the gender is what society has defined it as you feel uncomfortable wearing a dress done because society has defined wearing a dress as a thing women do only unless you've gotten anywhere killed I am part Scottish so you never know well that's really blown my mind because you don't present yourself as an eccentric gay man you know like a lot of gay men they're really eccentric and you can really tell but you just seem like a normal guy and even your partner seems like two normal guys but again that's all identity so what you're talking about is sort of being camp or being a feminine and kind of like theatrical and a lot of gay men love to put on that show because it's fun it's fun to be able to express yourself and wave your hands around and sing and dance and be a theatrical person in a healthy society be proud as well that would be encouraged and nurtured because a lot of those people are very creative they're talented and artistic but in a society where it says no men don't behave like that you're a little sissy you're a little pufter as you might say in South Africa or what do you say in Australia there's all sorts of slurs not South Africa in Australia there's a lot there every western country seems to have all these people call me it for being a vegan activist they use gay slurs on me caring about animals people associate being gay with something so negative people use the word gay as an insult to try and tear people down because being gay do you want to know where homophobia comes from though it's really interesting where? it comes from sexism because for a man to be like a woman is degrading because for a man to be anything feminine or female is degrading because you know, men aren't like women, why? because men are basically more superior or something like that if we had no sexism in our society homophobia wouldn't exist because men are so terrified of being anything feminine because they don't want to be seen as weak or passive or under the power of another man for a man to be under another man is considered degrading because of the way men view women because of how our society sees women that is messed up and women are some, the women in the movement some of the strongest people have ever met they're so protective that's why sexism is so ridiculous because it's men's innate fear of being female being anything close to being female or feminine we all have a feminine and masculine aspect to us it's all in different that is so true, because if someone were to call you a pig or a cow or you're a chicken you take that as an insult, but I love pigs if someone called me a pig I don't get insulted anymore because I've sort of trained that speciesism out of my mind but people use pig as an insult and I guess this is kind of like the same sort of discrimination like being considered feminine run like a girl, you run like a girl you cry like a girl Olympians of women in our society we treat and talk about women in a really demeaning way it's built into our language I really do agree with you I've just learned a whole lot I'm really glad we had this conversation and I think that you're really spot on when we've got a long way to go when it comes to just education and being conscious about these different forms of discrimination that are just built into us and the way society is structured you can't just walk around with a dress on people are going to laugh at you people are probably going to throw something at you I'd feel embarrassed and it's like why it's just a bit of fabric and I really am grateful for you to have the confidence to share this about yourself it makes me admire you so much more that you have the strength to overcome such adversity in this world it's oppression isn't it you were born in Zimbabwe you were born in Africa it's oppression and it's so new it's only just started to legally been dealt with but still in people's consciousness it's still with so far behind and you still manage to do all the fantastic work you do for animals and has being a victim in one aspect of your life helped you recognise the oppression in the animals as well yeah definitely so I think understanding what it's like to be a I wouldn't say I've directly been oppressed obviously I do have other areas of my identity which do give me added privilege in society Caucasian I present as male and there's a lot of discussion around that as well and that does give you added levels of privilege but I feel like as a man as a man who's acknowledged that and recognised that I need to use it in a positive way not to abuse my privilege but to invest it wisely and who are least privileged in this society than those who were caged and cut up into pieces and fed to human beings I mean the animals are really on the lowest level like you would expect all LGBT people to get in and you would expect them to all be vegan but they don't a lot of gay people I've spoken to don't want to hear about veganism or don't want to talk about animals they think it's ridiculous you would assume that people who have understood oppression would understand other forms of oppression you would assume people who are vegan wouldn't be racist or sexist or transphobic but they are and they are people like that when I was at the march the parade, the pride parade I have found them the most easiest to talk to about this topic very understanding but you don't feel that's true of the whole community? No I think it's you know every human being is different it really depends on their upbringing and their knowledge of oppression and their introspection and their what's it called self-actualization depends on how much inner work people have done I think Thank you so much Robbie for enlightening me and wow I really do feel like I know so much more about you and thank you so much for your work I know it's a battle like you're going up against it here your platforms are really big you've got an amazing team behind you plant-based news are really if you don't know plant-based news you're more likely to know plant-based news than me but keep going and thank you so much for coming on the podcast do you have any last words for the listeners? My final words are be kind to yourself just keep being a good person with the best of your abilities Thank you so much Robbie My pleasure Peace out That was a killer podcast I love that That's great Wow talking about some new stuff You've got to go Alright 6.30 excellent Thank you so much for that mate Robbie talked about that