Zombie Book Club
Welcome to Zombie Book Club! We're a Podcast that's also a book club! We talk about Zombie / Apocalyptic horror novels, TV and movies.
Zombie Book Club
Would Vegans Survive the Zombie Apocalypse? with Special Guest Jo Salazar | Zombie Book Club ep79
Would vegans survive and even thrive in a zombie apocalypse? In this lively episode of the Zombie Book Club, we dive into this thought-provoking question with special guest Jo Salazar, author of the gripping novel The Dead Weight. Together, we explore the practicalities of vegan survival in a post-apocalyptic world, from foraging wild plants and mushrooms to the challenges of ethical hunting and urban scavenging. Jo shares fascinating insights about survival fitness, the advantages of plant-based diets, and how cultural traditions influence dietary choices, all while weaving in humor and camaraderie.
Our conversation also ventures into Jo’s experience as an author, touching on the complexities of addressing animal cruelty in storytelling and the personal feedback that shaped their journey. We highlight creative survival tips, such as making acorn flour pastries and crafting herbal remedies, while celebrating the rich history of plant-based diets in diverse cultures. This episode is packed with wit, wisdom, and a fresh perspective on apocalypse survival strategies that will intrigue vegans, zombie enthusiasts, and everyone in between.
Jo Salazar:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_jo_salazar_
- The Dead Weight: https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Weight-Jo-Salazar/dp/B0DCTNFH92
- Jo Salazar's Website: https://www.josalazarwriting.com/
Resources Discussed:
- The Game Changers
- Veganuary - Go Vegan
- The Black Forager - Foraging Tips
- Thich Nhat Hanh’s Buddhist Teachings on Veganism
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Welcome to Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book is a vegetable and the vegetable is also bacon, and the bacon is just okay. I'm Dan, and when I'm not eating my vegetables, I'm writing a book about the zombie apocalypse, where my characters' survival will depend on their skills finding food in unexpected locations.
Speaker 2:And I'm Leah and I thought that oyster mushroom bacon was actually really great, dan.
Speaker 1:We made oyster mushroom bacon. It tasted exactly like bacon. I was actually talking about when people make bacon from carrots, oh yeah, I mean, has that?
Speaker 2:have you had that I?
Speaker 1:haven't? Or do you just think it's going to be gross? I'm just talking shit.
Speaker 2:You're being one of those people.
Speaker 1:I'm one of those people that thinks that everything that's vegan is gross Even though you are vegan.
Speaker 2:What's happening here? I guess we'll dig into this later I was okay, dan, what kind of episode are we doing today?
Speaker 1:Oh, I don't know. Today is a Casual Dead episode and we ask the very important question will vegans survive the zombie apocalypse?
Speaker 2:This is a good question for us especially, but we are not answering this question alone. Today Joining us is our very special guest, our ZomBestie Joe Salazar. Joe is the brilliant author of the zombie novel the Dead Weight, also fondly known in our book club as the I Hate Fun Joe from our 2024 Zombeeween game show. You got to listen to it to understand, and beyond that, Joe is an all-around amazing human, a dear friend that we're really thrilled to have with us to unpack this very important topic for vegans at least to know if we can survive in the zombie apocalypse. Welcome to the show, Joe. Oh, thanks, guys, Thanks for having me back. Any excuse to have you on, Any excuse. This was one that was long awaited, oh yeah, Well, I guess your brother, my brother-in-law, Simon, even drew a portrait of you, a thumbnail for you for this episode. Oh, I forgot about that Two months ago.
Speaker 3:That's how long it's taken to get out of this. I think I remember seeing this, and it has my tattoos on it too. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I love it. It's split in half, so one half you're Joe and on the other half you're zombie Joe. One half you're joe and on the other half you're zombie joe, and simon said that the reason that you're missing your arm on the zombie side is because simon did not want to draw your tattoos again, don't blame him.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of them, they're beautiful.
Speaker 1:We release episodes every sunday, every single one, so subscribble yes, please, thank you, since it's a casual dead Joe.
Speaker 2:we're going to do life updates before we dive into the topic du jour and I think, if you're up for it, if you want to give go first, since the listeners haven't heard from you in a while what's been going on in your life.
Speaker 3:Sure Gosh. I think the last time I was on episode 57, I think I had just released pre-orders for my book, but it has been out in the world for more than three months now, which is great, and everyone's been really, really kind with their reviews and it's just been really fun to get to know readers. It's been so much fun to get to know other authors through this podcast and we've had fun along the way too. So I've had a lot of help from Dan with artwork, so just really grateful for the community that you guys have built. And yeah, it's a good time to be an author right now, particularly a zombie author.
Speaker 2:I agree and I would say that you're too humble, because Dan and I were actually just talking this morning about how much of a community builder you are by nature and the way that you started connecting with us and we built a genuine friendship and then had you on the show, and it's just really nice to see you doing that with other authors and building those connections and you bring people in in that way. I think it's a very special skill that you have, actually, jo, so you are a big part of building the community that we're a part of. Thank you, joe. Has there been any like particularly surprising moments about having your book out in the world, anything that people have said or that you've found out about the world of being a published author now?
Speaker 3:Oh gosh, there have been moments when I've been really surprised like happily surprised by people's reactions. I didn't know how the world was going to receive the dead weight, but it's been really great. I actually heard yesterday some good news it's going to be placed on the shelves in Griggsville Illinois' public library on Monday. Oh, nice, public library on Monday. Um, and yeah, and Griggsville is one of the little towns along the Illinois river, and so they caught wind of it and are spreading it through the community, which is cool, um, yeah, so I I've I've had some interesting feedback too, though. Um, funny enough, this is. This is the vegan episode, right? Someone left a review about animal cruelty in my book and I was like wait what.
Speaker 3:What did they say? Oh gosh, I won't remember the review exactly, but they said that they had removed a star because they didn't enjoy reading about animal cruelty. And I could. I wasn't exactly sure what they were referring to. I think it might be the fishing scene, um, where the girls go fishing. It might also be the the moment where the girls light the chicken house on fire. No spoilers, but spoilers, um, but they did leave the door open so the chickens could escape. Like I thought I was really nice and vegan about it, but I guess I was not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you know, not depicting those things doesn't make it not vegan. Like you're pointing out a thing that happens in the world and like describing it in a way that is honest about what it is. It's not. You're not like, yeah, and then they gutted fish and it was great. Everybody loved it, especially the fish.
Speaker 2:Fish love being gutted yeah, I'm not going to spoil who says what or anything, but I really felt like with leaving the door open and awareness of the chickens as actual beings that might want to get out, and also the way that one of the characters thinks about fishing and maybe it was like, as a vegan who knows that you're a vegan, I could see that. But, um, I think some people just don't want. I mean, I get it if you don't want to read animal cruelty, but it's also like real and it's also survival related sometimes, which is exactly what we're talking about today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, this really reminds me of something that I remember stephen king saying a long time ago. He was talking about how, in one of his books, he had a character that, like I, I would say, has like a reverse save the cat moment and he kicks a dog and, uh, and he does that to show how horrible of a human being he is. It's right in the beginning of the book. And somebody came up to stephen king and said, said, uh, I, I just couldn't read the rest of the book. And somebody came up to Stephen King and said, said, uh, I, I just couldn't read the rest of the book. It's horrible what you did to that dog. And he and he was, like you do realize the dog wasn't real right.
Speaker 2:I feel like we're going to get into a debate right here and I'm going to pause myself, because I hate when dogs are hurt in a book or a movie. Like what was it? We were watching recently where I was like, um, if they kill an animal, Like what was it? We were watching recently where I was like if they kill an animal, the dog, I'm going to be pissed. Was it Zombievers? I feel like you were there, Joe, and we were like, no, Did they kill a dog?
Speaker 3:They did. They did kill a dog in Zombievers. There was a dog in Zombievers and we did have that moment, yeah.
Speaker 2:But I feel like books are meant to address real world things, albeit with some sensitivity, and it's just like, I guess, maybe a content warning.
Speaker 3:I would you know, but that's about it, yeah, yeah I mean, my, my hope was that in the way I described it, it wasn't like overly gratuitous and that it shined a light on hey, this is like actually uncomfortable, like these girls aren't ordering chicken nuggets at mcdonald's like you gotta, you gotta go get it, and isn't that kind of uncomfortable now. So I I was hoping to make that point. I I think most people got it, but some people may not, and that's, that's okay.
Speaker 2:That's, everyone has a right to their opinion and that's perfectly fine that's true, but it must have been funny to read that like as a vegan, I.
Speaker 3:I wanted to reach out to them and be like wait, I'm vegan.
Speaker 1:But you know, the fish is okay, it was just made up, yeah.
Speaker 2:Didn't you see there how I was making a point that it is a life that was being taken Anyways.
Speaker 1:No, don't talk about it.
Speaker 2:Dan, what have you been up to? Oh, what have I been up to Since we last had a casual bed.
Speaker 1:I have great news, leah. What's that? I've officially written the beginning of my book, which might sound confusing to people, considering this is the beginning of the third season of this podcast, and I've been talking every episode about how I'm writing this book. But I never really wrote the beginning, I just kind of wrote the middle, um, with no direction whatsoever. And I was writing this week and I just had this idea that I've been thinking about for a long time and when it came out, I just realized this is how it starts, and that's like the hardest thing to know is like when it starts and when it ends, I think, and it's, and it's big because it very much influences the direction of everything, and like already, I just I just see like it's like a. It's like if you went back in time and you're looking at a Polaroid of yourself in 1985 and all the people start changing. It's like that where you're like, oh my God, I changed everything, whoa.
Speaker 2:Did you have a moment like that, Jim?
Speaker 3:First of all, I'm just so excited to hear this like that. Nothing makes me happy, because I've been waiting for this book since I first heard you talk about it. I cannot wait. But I I absolutely know what you mean there. There's a moment where you make a decision and everything clicks into place, but then you're like, oh man, okay, now I have to change this, this and this to make it work. But it's also like you don't mind the change because you just know that it's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I've already committed to rewriting. Anyways. It's like I don't know if I talked about that in a previous episode, but I have so many. I have what I call a to-do list and my to-do list is everything I've dictated about my book, and Leah saw firsthand today how long that is 91 pages.
Speaker 2:Then that's just for one character and that's just what you dictated with your voice over the summer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's my to-do. Everything that's in red which is after page 15, at this point to page 91, is stuff I've got to turn into real words and make sense of. So my after a few days of like trying to edit it into normal sounding verbiage, I was like I'm just going to rewrite it. I'm just going to take everything that's here and rewrite it in a different way, and I think that's the best way to do it.
Speaker 2:I got to read it, Joe.
Speaker 2:You got to read it, yeah, which that's also how I know that Dan knew it was good and it was right, because I definitely have not read those 91 pages in all read. I think I've read like one other storyline that now I'm not even sure will be in the story no, I think I've read like one other storyline that now I'm not even sure will be in the story no, last year. So, and it's, it's really good. And I know that I'm Dan's spouse.
Speaker 2:So I realized that my opinion may be perceived as biased but I, even though I'm not a writer now I did write a lot and I was my minor in creative writing and my whole world for five years of my life was like writing and getting critiques and then also reading other people's work and getting critiques. So I can't when I read anything, I just can't help but like put my brain in that space and it's fucking good, it's really good. Like I need to know what's going to happen next. I love the characters immediately. It has a really clear point of view. I'm just I'm trying not to say what it's about I'm really excited about it. So, um, I know, joe, you'll be one of the first that gets a chance to look at it.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, absolutely yeah I was gonna say I volunteer as beta reader immediately.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. Yeah, I might even need like a gamma reader.
Speaker 3:And that too, whatever you need, you're so kind.
Speaker 1:Leah, what are your life updates?
Speaker 2:Well, I had three weeks of vacation and it was really nice. And then I went back to work, oh, and within four days my soul felt like it had been ground into dust. Yeah, and the world? Because all of a sudden I had to, like, pay attention to the world again in a way that I got a break from, and I just feel like if I'm not careful, I will just make everyone depressed around me if I just talk about how I'm feeling every day. So I'm trying to figure out how to, like you know, find that balance, and part of it is this podcast. Yeah, and thinking about an apocalypse and how we're going to survive it as vegans Makes me feel better. Yeah, I don't know if it makes either of you feel better about the world, but it makes me feel better about the world, yeah.
Speaker 1:You know what makes me feel better, what I've recently tried ignoring it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can't do that because of my job. I mean, I can ignore some parts of it, yeah, and I think we should just say what it is the impending implosion of the United States and the world. And the world yeah, in many places it's already been an apocalypse Little things like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thinking about the crushing realities of the oppressive regime of capitalism closing in around us, tightening its grip on our necks yeah, I mean, I try not to think about that.
Speaker 2:You sure had a really descriptive way of not thinking about it.
Speaker 3:Wow Jo, how are you doing in this dystopia? I mean I, what can you do? I mean I, what can you do? It's? It's one of those things where it's hard to ignore it, because you want to be responsible and like be aware, but then at the same time, you open your eyes and you're like, yeah, but you know, I'm, I'm hanging in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I changed my lock screen to Luigi.
Speaker 2:There it is. Well, one of the things that we're mourning right now is tiktok, and supposedly in eight days it won't exist, which actually, so this episode will be out the day before it's supposed to be gone, or something like something to that effect, so this could be outdated.
Speaker 2:but um, dan, actually, as you know, joe, you were like killing it on tiktok. Everybody should go see joe's tiktok before tiktok's gone, um for sure, thank you killing it on TikTok. Everybody should go see Joe's TikTok before TikTok's gone, for sure. Thank you, killing it, like making amazing rules.
Speaker 1:Back up all those TikToks.
Speaker 2:Yeah and so. So finally, dan was like we're going to have a TikTok and I was like Joe just warned us not to come until after we knew what was going to happen. So yeah, we'll see, we've got eight days. I yeah, we'll see, we've got eight days.
Speaker 1:I also made a lemonade which will also go away with TikTok.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was recommended by Sylvester, so we'll see what happens there, but it'll be interesting and that's why we need to prepare for the apocalypse.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll make our own social media. That's how we prepare for the apocalypse.
Speaker 2:I mean, I guess the podcast is not social media.
Speaker 1:We make our little homestead. We grow a garden, we have a social media that only works at our house.
Speaker 2:That's how we prepare. We need to have internet somehow in the apocalypse. I think that that's very important for as long as we can.
Speaker 1:You know, I'm probably the person to get on that.
Speaker 2:to be honest, yeah, do you know, Joe, that Dan's job in the army was like making sure that there was things like internet?
Speaker 1:I did not know that was your job in the army phones, internet generators um top secret satellite communications, fiber optics, cable tv toasters he invented some weird radio thing that I don't understand yeah that's probably a whole other episode, but um, he's gonna be useful to us in the apocalypse is basically what I'm.
Speaker 3:That's probably a whole other episode, but, um, he's gonna be useful to us in the apocalypse is basically what I'm. That's exactly what I was thinking. This is really valuable, um, I'm. I'm gonna come to you guys, if that's all right please do.
Speaker 1:My skills are outdated, but you give me some old garbage and I'll turn it into something. Um, anyways, we should, we should, move on, we should. Let's move on from the morning of the world and, uh, let's talk about us. Isn't that what we always do at?
Speaker 2:least when, joe, you're gonna break up the monotony of dan and I being narcissistic.
Speaker 1:So we appreciate you so we're talking about whether or not vegans would survive in the apocalypse, and people may not know, if they've never heard us talk before, that Leah and I are vegans.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so is Joe. It's one of the things we bonded over. Yeah, me too. Yeah, when did you become vegan, joe?
Speaker 3:I actually counted for this episode specifically because I feel like I lost track and for the longest time I've just been telling people a number of years in the teens and guessing that it was right. But I counted and it's actually been 18 years. Damn, it's been a minute.
Speaker 2:You've been through a lot as a vegan Cause. 18 years ago was not what we have today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm from the times when vegan cheese was like plastic. Yeah, I've been.
Speaker 2:I've seen so many improvements I've been thinking for 10 years and honestly, when I first started it felt pretty plastic.
Speaker 1:So I think for me it's been five years and I've uh, I've enjoyed all of the modern amenities of vegan food that has come out since then, which is yes, you amazing, but that's part of the allure right, I have pizza, I have chicken tendies, I've got my hot dogs, I've got my cheeses. Get big cheesecake. Yeah, I can get the cheesecakes.
Speaker 2:Joe sent us nice amazing rice krispies and cookies. Yeah, and you know what? Those chocolate bars that you sent us. Oh my god, they're amazing, yeah I'm not suffering, yeah the sad thing is in the apocalypse, just like everybody's everybody, the conveniences are going to go away.
Speaker 1:That's true we won't be able to get cheesecake anymore no, no, beyond beef for us.
Speaker 2:But I I do want to just have a little bit of a caveat. If anybody's still here that's not vegan and hasn't given up on us to be like, oh, oh God, it's those people. Thank you for sticking around. Yes, thank you. I want to be clear. Like the book club has a surprising number of vegans and vegetarians. It surprised me. I'm not totally sure how that happened. I don't know, but it did.
Speaker 1:Maybe we talked about it enough and everybody left behind just agrees with us.
Speaker 2:We also have a lot of omnivores.
Speaker 1:True, yeah, just agrees with us. We also have a lot of omnivores, true, uh?
Speaker 2:and hunters, pescatarians, flexitarians, people who, uh, are sort of in process between vegan and vegetarianism, so there's like everybody is welcome here. This is not going to be a conversation where we're trying to make you feel like you're a bad person, which I think is a lot of the stereotypes about vegans but we are here to just explain why this choice was the most logical conclusion for us and that we have actually thought about how the fuck we're going to survive. Yeah, because when people ask you all the time what's your favorite question, joe, that you get from non-vegans, how do you get your protein? Yeah, how do you get your protein?
Speaker 1:Where does it come from? What do you eat? Should we answer that?
Speaker 2:Can you eat flour. Yeah, I found vegan bread for you and I'm like most of it's vegan, some of it's not. That's true Bread is made of flour. Yeah, how would you survive? This was a great one. How would you survive if you were stranded on an island with a pig?
Speaker 1:Would you eat it I mean the pig and I would probably hang out. Yeah, I would snuggle with that pig a lot.
Speaker 3:What would you do, Jo? I would make friends with the pig immediately. There's, yeah, not food to me.
Speaker 1:I just couldn't do it. Also, if, if anyone on that Island is going to know where to find food, it's going to be the pig. The pig is going to find it. That's so true. Yeah, it's going to start running around and digging and before you know it, there'll be some root that the the pig is eating, and chances are you can eat it too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cause they're really close. I forget what the percentage is of dna, but they're very close relatives. Sadly, they're tested on a lot, um, unnecessarily for human products, but um, that's because they are so closely related to us. And then the other one, um, joe, that you pointed out, that we get asked a lot is what if it was the end of the world? What do people ask us then? What if? What if?
Speaker 1:would you eat?
Speaker 2:meat if it was the end of the world, would you All the time? Yeah, and therefore, if you would in the situation and I love that it's like this intended thing of asking the question, because I think it's like they think it will negate veganism if we say, in dire circumstances, yes, I would eat meat, because that is my answer right off the bat I will tell you they're like we trapped you.
Speaker 3:I mean that's yeah, that's obviously my answer too. Like I, if, if, given the choice between dying and eating meat. Like I would probably eat meat, but that is almost never going to be the situation that you're in. Like it's it's meant to be a gotcha, but it's not as we will discuss. Like that's not even close to the reality of what would actually happen in the apocalypse, no. And if it did happen in the apocalypse, we? That's not even close to the reality of what would actually happen in the apocalypse no.
Speaker 2:And if it did happen in the apocalypse, we would still be vegan, based on the definition of veganism. So we'll get to that too. Yeah, because it's not like you. It's about what's practical and possible, and that can be different for people in different contexts.
Speaker 1:I think it's important at this point to you know, we weren't born as vegans. We've eaten meat before, we've lived the life that everybody else has lived, and we're also country kids. We're a bunch of country kids. We grew up in the, in the sticks. We grew up with the dirt under our fingernails every day.
Speaker 2:So I still have dirt under my fingernails Most days.
Speaker 1:Leah, do you want to give us your country roots?
Speaker 2:Sure, I grew up you can Google it I grew up outside of Woodville, ontario, canada, on a farm. It was a little hobby farm, only 40 acres, but I was surrounded by farmland and woods and I spent most of my time actually with animals. There were some cows that we raised, we had horses, we our neighbor. We never had chickens, but our neighbor had chickens and I looked after them for them. Friends of mine were dairy farmers. That was actually the primary industry really. There was dairy and so, like I saw those things, there was a pig farm that I would drive by all the time. That, as there was dairy and so, like I saw those things, there was a pig farm that I would drive by all the time.
Speaker 2:As a kid I always wondered like where are the pigs? Why can't I see them? And there'd be like this really bad smell. And not until I learned things, before I became vegan, did I realize that they just never got to go outside or see the light of day. And so what else did I do? Yeah, I put cows on a truck to be slaughtered. Like I raised them. I gave them names like Sir Loin, hamburger, hamburger, yeah, you were there for that I loved hamburger.
Speaker 1:Hamburger was my favorite.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, and I, you know, I fished, I knew how to shoot a gun, I never personally hunted and I absolutely thought it was necessary to eat meat. And I actually said, quote unquote, in university when my very first vegan I could never do that, I could never be vegan. I love cheese too much. And it took me 10 years, I think, or a little more, after meeting that person to make the decision to be vegan. So that's my backstory. What about you, jo?
Speaker 3:Yeah, a lot like you. I grew up on a farm out in the middle of nowhere and in my case it was West Central Illinois, right along the Illinois River, and my dad was a farmer and he's since retired. But when I was growing up we had wheat fields, corn fields as far as the eye could see, and my dad also ran a hog farming operation where we had hogs in houses never saw the light of day and I know exactly where that smell comes from. It is the manure pits that line the back of these houses and they are just filled with like six feet of waste. And that is what my house smelled like and I'm pretty sure that's what I showed up to school smelling like. Nobody told me so like. Looking back on it, it was right, so nice, but we all geez. But we also had other animals. We had a small chicken coop so we would get eggs and sell those at the farmer's market. Lots of cats, dogs, few cows. We had a lamb that lived in our house for a while yeah, it was like the runt and my dad brought it home and just left it in the house and we would bottle feed it and I don't actually know what happened to that lamb, but I imagine it wasn't good because once it grew up it disappeared one day. I'm sorry, yeah, it went to a different farm upstate Different farm upstate in quotes, but yeah.
Speaker 3:So I also grew up on a farm and saw all the things that they show in the videos promoting veganism. I've seen those in real life. So when the videos promoting veganism like, I've seen those in real life, but it didn't really sink in. And so I got to college and I met my first vegan in college. This is so funny, Leah. We're just like living parallel lives. That's so weird. But I met my first vegan and I also said I could never do that. And about five years later I was trying to do that and I remember emailing her and saying thank you, I'd never met a vegan before. I never knew it was possible and I haven't stopped thinking about it since.
Speaker 2:We talked and eventually I got there. Yeah, that's land.
Speaker 1:My grandfather owned like 150 acres. He didn't have a farm, he was a chiropractor but his dream was to move to upstate New York from Syracuse. He was a big city doctor and he moved to upstate New York, started his own practice up there, bought a whole bunch of land and then kind of just rode around on his tractor on it, didn't really do much else, just for enjoyment I guess. And my parents made a deal with my grandfather to build a house back there and live in it. I don't know if they paid anything they might have. My grandfather was kind of stingy like that, but I digress. It was built from logs that we cut down with chainsaws and then stacked on top of each other like Lincoln logs, and it was kind of small but it was like a little two-story hand-built log cabin. It didn't have electricity, it didn't have a bathroom, it had an outhouse that was, you know, 50 or so feet away from the house. It had a hand pump in the downstairs sink area and, yeah, it was really rustic.
Speaker 1:We raised a couple of pigs. Johnny and Susie. Really rustic we. We raised a couple of pigs, um, johnny and suzy. Oh, I tried to ride johnny because I thought he was too fat to move, because I never saw him move. He was really fat, um, and I jumped on his back and, while while his legs were doing burnouts, escaping me, he kicked me in the nuts like 47 times and that was the first time that had ever happened to me. Uh, we also had chickens. I remember one of my clearest memories at the cabin was a day that we were, uh, killing the chickens, chopping their heads off on a wood block, and I remember one. It wasn't a clean hit, so the head was still attached by the skin and it was running around spraying blood everywhere with its head still attached, making choking noises as it ran.
Speaker 2:Wow, that was descriptive. We're going to now. We need a content warning.
Speaker 1:We moved out eventually because I think it was putting a strain on my parents' marriage, since they got a divorce after that. But I still lived in very rural areas. I spent most of my time in the woods. When I would grow up, I'd work on dairy farms and bale hay and feed cows and get kicked by much larger animals. Feed cows and get kicked by much larger animals. Yeah and uh, and then eventually joined the army because it was my only way out of that place. There wasn't really anything else around there.
Speaker 1:um for the you know, for the future of a person who wasn't necessarily going to go to college and succeed at things in that way. So, uh, I also. I also like to hunt as a young adult, though in my later adulthood it kind of got away from me because I didn't have any land anymore. After my grandfather died, my family divided up all of his assets, sold his land, sold his house and that's gone now.
Speaker 2:The person who bought it bulldozed the cabin, because he didn't want people living inside of it.
Speaker 2:That's too bad. Somebody could have used it for shelter, like me. Yeah, I think the point here is like there's a lot of stereotypes I see on people who are angry at vegans commenting on the internet, being like you especially farmers like you, don't know how this actually works. We love our animals, yada, yada, yada. And I just want I thought it was important to start here to say like we actually know where food comes from. We were a part of that process. It was our everyday reality and yet somehow we all landed here and I'm not saying everybody lands here, clearly not but the three of us did.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, on that topic, I remember as a hunter, I would have some people tell me I was barbaric because I was killing animals. And even then, like you, I thought that this was a necessary part of our diet. I thought that if you didn't eat meat you would just waste away. Where would you get your protein? Yeah, I looked at the food pyramid and I'm like, yeah, meat is right on the food pyramid along with poultry and fish. We need these things to survive people and people would think that I was barbaric for hunting, and I would point out, no-transcript, but that's also assuming that it was a necessary thing for my survival. And then one day I remember reuniting with somebody who I hadn't talked to in a very long time, about eight years, Leah, who had gone vegan in that amount of time, and immediately I said, oh, I could never go vegan. Where would I get my protein from? I would miss cheese too much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then I sent you a meme based on facts. Not all memes are factual.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So Leah sent me a meme and it was a 100 gram pile of red lentils next to 100 grams of beef, like a steak, and it pointed out the fact that the red lentils actually had more protein than the steak and that's all it took. I was just like, oh, I don't need the meat, I can eat this. Yeah, so I did continue eating meat a little while after that because I was going to truck driving school and being on the road and living a vegan lifestyle is not impossible, but incredibly challenging.
Speaker 2:I think it would be incredibly challenging if you've never done it before, Like if you were to go on the road now. I think you'd be prepared.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, there's still a lot of obstacles, but I could kind of do it maybe with a lot of expenditure of my time and energy.
Speaker 2:So, in other words, it's harder to be vegan under capitalism as a truck driver than what we're about to argue. It would be in an apocalypse. Yeah Okay, under capitalism as a truck driver than what we're about to argue.
Speaker 3:It would be in an apocalypse. Yeah, okay. Uh, joe, when was your like that moment where everything shifted? You're like, yes, I have to do this. Uh, the moment for me.
Speaker 3:So I I was in graduate school and I had just taken up running as a way to like de-stress and cope with the the new of learning to be a social worker and having my first social work job, and I was having a lot of fun with running and I was like, oh, how do I get better at this? And then I read an article about vegetarian runners and how beneficial it is and I was like, okay, maybe I can do that. And then, as I was looking up recipes, I stumbled across a podcast and it was the Vegan Freak Podcast, which has since gone away. But listening to this podcast radicalized me. In a single episode I was like, oh yeah, I also believe that animals are not ours to use. I also believe that this is not cool. I can do this.
Speaker 3:And that was it for me. That was the moment, and so I guess what I'm saying is podcasts are like the best thing and case in point, like you guys and the community that you've built, and I know I say this all the time but podcasts can, yeah, but but podcasts really do connect with people. Podcasts change the world and I know that sounds dramatic and woo, whatever, but I think that the message that people choose to put out there really does make a big difference, really does connect with people, really does help people who have nobody or have few people, who how do I say this? A podcast is an opportunity to make a connection where you might not have connections otherwise. I was living in a really small town. I didn't know anybody like me. I didn't know anyone who thought like me. I didn't know anyone who was even considering veganism. But finding that community via podcast, it was life-changing for me and I think that's really special.
Speaker 2:That's incredible. Thank you, vegan freaks. Wherever you are out there, I guess I'm also a vegan freak. Yeah, bring the vegan freak. Yeah, bring the podcast back.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I wish I miss it.
Speaker 1:Joe misses it, bring it back.
Speaker 2:For me it was a long slow burn. Basically I started doing like meatless Mondays because I heard it was healthy, with my ex. And then we had a couple of vegan friends and I remember distinctly one of them coming to our house and making us this incredible meal that was completely vegan. And at one point I was like, hey, what if we had chicken to that? And she didn't yell at me, as vegans are stereotyped to be. She just kind of looked at me and was like I don't think we need to. And she was right, it was incredible.
Speaker 2:And then we went out together to a local pizza place and that pizza place had vegan cheese and she ordered a vegan calzone and I was like you know what? I'm just going to try it. And at that point I know I said earlier vegan cheese sucked 10 years ago I would say that the shredded mozzarella cheese was okay. The Daiya, however you call it, cheddar cheese block was like a just hellacious uh leap ad. But anyways, I tried it and I was like, okay, this doesn't taste exactly like pizza I'm used to, but it's good, I enjoyed it. And that was the moment. I mean I'm going to be completely honest the moment was, oh, I can still have pizza. That's what went through my head. I can have pizza, pizza, I can do this.
Speaker 2:So then we started watching documentaries and all these memories came rushing back from my childhood and my early adulthood, where these things that I saw every day and just thought of as normal, because I didn't see animals as um like I loved them and I I cared for them, but I also saw them as things that I could enact my will upon, like if I need you to get in this trailer, you're getting this trailer. No matter what I have to do to get you in there, I need to eat you. So, whatever, I saw all of the um dairy calves every day in their little individual shelters, tied not with their mothers, and it never occurred to me until I, until I actually, like, thought about it and I was like, holy shit, this normalized my whole life, this really intense abuse of animals. So then I went vegetarian and told everybody that I would have my homestead and, when I had my own homestead, that I would eat meat then, when I could raise it and kill it myself, and I only bought local eggs and that was the only thing that I was eating.
Speaker 2:And then a friend of mine who actually had hogs on their farm asked me if I'd like to come and slaughter it with them and be a part of that process, and that indicated that I wanted to. And at that point I was maybe like six or seven months into being vegan, except for eggs, and I was just like he said that and my whole body was like no, I don't need to, and I don't need to and I don't want to, I can't be a part of it. And so that was the end for me, but it took a long time and a lot of seeds planted before I got there. What is veganism?
Speaker 3:We talked a lot about it. Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude as far as possible and practical all forms of exploitation of and cruelty to animals for food, clothing and any other animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms, it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partially from animals.
Speaker 2:Thank you for reading that out loud. If Dan did it, we'd be. We'd still be here. Yeah, thank you for reading that out loud. If Dan did it, we'd be.
Speaker 1:We'd still be here.
Speaker 2:What's really important to me from this definition is that, as far as is possible and practicable, there are people who are quote unquote militant vegans who will say, like you should just die if you have to eat an animal. I'm not saying they're not out there, but I am saying that I'm not one of them, and it sounds to me like all of us aren't either. We understand that there are circumstances that make this very difficult. Like, dan, if you had to go on the road and you had to eat some animal products to survive, that doesn't make you not vegan. It makes you, in a context where that is very challenging, slash, impossible to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, also like if, if, uh, if somebody was, um, that was inuit, and their diet consisted of caribou because they lived above the frost line, uh, you know they, you can't tell them not to eat caribou, because that's, that's what they eat yeah, it's what's available to them.
Speaker 2:If you're, if you're that far north I was actually just reading about this um, their diet is very high in animal fats and proteins and very low in any fiber, um, and because of that, actually having a lot of fiber or carbs is is bad for their health.
Speaker 2:I am not pro keto I feel like I need to say that as a whole but there are some people, um who, ancestrally, that makes sense for them and so, yeah, I think, depending on your context, there are choices you have to make and it's within their indigenous rights to continue to hunt, because that's what makes the most sense for their ecology. But that is actually a unique case and not a regular case. The other thing I really want to point out is that I think people forget is that animals are people. People are animals and, like being vegan doesn't mean you're not also caring about people and their well-being, and that's why I think that as far as possible and practicable part is the most important part of the definition, yeah, and I think one of the things that people don't often think about is the fact that efforts to support animal rights are also efforts to support human rights.
Speaker 3:There are a lot of jobs that people do that are incredibly difficult, incredibly dangerous to their health, to their limbs, that are involved in animal agriculture, and when we do away with animal agriculture, we create safety for people who do those jobs. Or when we do things differently, recognizing that you know we need to keep animals safer, we create safer environments for the humans that are involved in that practice, and I think that that's one of the things that people don't often consider that animal rights are often human rights. Does that make sense? I'm not sure if I said that well. No, I think you said that great Animal rights are often human rights, yeah, yeah, does that make sense? I'm not sure, if I said that well.
Speaker 2:No, I think you said that great Animal rights are human rights, because we're animals and so if you are vegan, it's also your responsibility to give a shit about the species you're a part of.
Speaker 2:In my opinion, if you want to have compassion for all beings which is sort of my short-line version of veganism that means people. And, like you said, joe, like I read an article about how a lot of slaughterhouses, their main source of employment is formerly incarcerated individuals or new immigrants because they can't get any other job, and the psychological damage of just being a fact based essentially a factory worker killing living beings who are often fighting for their lives over and over and over again. I don't think I can overstate how fuck that is. And then the other side of it is like you'll see me. Um, I'm personally really invested in the worker rights of farm workers, who are also, uh, engaged in like monocropping of vegetables, because they are off also really badly mistreated, and so just not eating animals if you read that definition again that you read, Joe, it's not about only just not eating animals, it's about thinking about holistically how can I live a more kind and compassionate life to the best of my ability within the context I have, and that absolutely includes humans.
Speaker 1:It's also a practice of compassion and I feel like the more we practice compassion, the more chance there is of somebody looking at another human being and realizing that they are a person.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think I promised at the beginning that we're not trying to convert anybody to be vegan, but if you're listening to this and you're thinking about it, then DM us. Yeah, I would certainly be open to those conversations, but also, if you're still like that's not for me, I could never be vegan. I think this next segment is for you, which is just about like it is possible, even if other people are not making that choice, the choice that the three of us and many vegans would make in the apocalypse is to maintain a vegan lifestyle as far as possible and practicable. So we want to just spend a little bit of time talking about like how that's actually possible in an apocalyptic environment yeah, and if you're just hearing about veganism right now, give it 10 years.
Speaker 3:Apparently that's about how long it takes. So dms in 10 years, yeah put it on the back burner.
Speaker 1:You know, let's talk about hunting. I've, I've done've done some hunting. Um, I I've probably shot more squirrels than anyone should ever shoot in their life. Squirrels are not a good source of food and I stopped shooting them because I realized at one point I'm not actually eating a whole lot of food from shooting squirrels and I have to shoot a lot of them to have a meal, um, and it kind of just kind of felt gross having to like annihilate an entire squirrel family just to have a couple of squirrel wings, basically, um, and also they were really not fun to skin, um. So hunting is a high energy, low payoff way of survival, like, even if you're only going after big game. You're talking about tracking sometimes down after you shoot it then drag it miles and miles and miles back to wherever you're camping to process it into food. It's going to take so much more energy than it's worth, unless you have means to do it without utilizing energy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I don't think it's just hunting. Like when you lived on a hog farm, joe, what went into actually keeping those, like raising them, keeping them alive, to then actually slaughter them and eat them?
Speaker 3:It takes a lot to keep them alive Like that was my mother's whole job. The pounds and pounds of food vegan food that you feed to animals to keep them alive and grow them. It's a lot. And it's not only the food that is required. There are also antibiotics and the building of structures to house and keep them safe from other animals. It is a very labor intensive process to raise an animal like a pig, like a cow and even a chicken.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a lot about in the apocalypse. We often see depictions of people with cows or with some kind of livestock and I'm always like, where are they getting their food from? It's just not thought about. You have to grow like on a typical canadian farm. Where I grew up, before um, the corporatizing, corporatizing, corporatization, thank you agriculture was like 250 acres and most of that acreage was dedicated to corn to feed the animals, basically almost all of it, and then you'd have a little bit of space for pasture.
Speaker 2:Uh, and so, like what, that's really hard to do. First of all, it'd be really hard to grow food in the apocalypse period, but then to try to grow food, like if you're just getting started again and it's new for you trying to grow food to then feed an animal that you're going to eventually eat, just doesn't make sense in calories and energy expended, all the physical labor like the, the physical labor that you yourself would have to go through, like your mom did and like the workers do, to support those animals being alive, to then just kill them. You could just go direct to the source and eat the food that they would be eating.
Speaker 1:I actually have a statistic for this that I learned a long time ago, back when I was doing a lot of research for buying my own land to have my own farm on One pound of beef typically in terms of just a generalized grain they just used grain as a stand-in for whatever food you're feeding these animals. But one pound of beef for every pound of beef you want to grow, it's going to cost you eight pounds of grain. For a pig, it's going to be four pounds of grain to one pound of pork. For a chicken, it's two pounds of grain for one pound of chicken. And for a fish, because they are not affected by gravity nearly as much, they grow a lot easier. It's more of a one-to-one ratio and I remember reading that and being like, wow, that's a lot of food for a lot less food in return.
Speaker 2:I wish I had your brain. Like, do you have facts in your brain like that that you read? Like I read that, but I would have to re-Google it to find the literature that would say it. And dan's just over here, like, like you have to stick there, amazing it lives rent-free do you have any, do you have any facts like that, about things like this, that live rent-free in your head, joe?
Speaker 3:So I have facts. So numbers absolutely not, but I'll never forget the video that I saw of a rat learning how to drive a car. Do you remember that? And so rats have feelings and they can drive cars. And I also don't want to eat a rat. Those are the kinds of facts that live in my mind. I couldn't remember a stat to save my life.
Speaker 1:Important follow-up question. Did you know that in Australia maybe it's New Zealand?
Speaker 2:Yeah, don't mess that up. Fact check me.
Speaker 1:New Zealand or Australia. Let us know They've actually licensed the first dogs for driving motor vehicles amazing.
Speaker 3:Um no, I did not know that, but isn't that amazing it is amazing, they're good drivers who knew? I've seen dogs on skateboards that could skate better than me. Literally, this just happened, skateboard just happened this week.
Speaker 2:I was like, oh, ziggy would be so cute on a skateboard. And then I was like his feet or his legs are too little. And then I saw on Instagram a video of a corgi on a skateboard and I was like look at me limiting Ziggy's potential.
Speaker 3:But anyway, go ahead. Anything that has the ability to learn how to skate and or drive a car should not be eaten, and yes, I agree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the I forget what was the exact thing.
Speaker 1:So rats and dogs are off the menu.
Speaker 2:Does it have a mother? Does it have a mother? Is like a basic rule of thumb too. It's probably not not going to eat it, because that means that they are sentient, they know what's happening around them, they have a central nervous system, they can feel pain and they have emotions. I think we really take that for granted, like when I learned that the exact same hormonal uh thing that happens to humans who give birth, uh, when they see their kid or they have, like that they have this, uh, what's the? What's the hormone that's, um, like emotional attachment. I forget what it's called um oxytocin yeah, one of
Speaker 2:those oxytocin. That exact same thing and the exact same amount happens with cows when they give birth to their babies, but we're taking their, their calves, away within like 48 hours of birth so that we can take their milk. And I saw, I've seen videos and I've seen it in real life of like cows trying to get back to their babies and not being able to like. Once I made that connection I was like, oh my God, I can't do this anymore. So how am I going to survive in the apocalypse? That's my first question for myself, dan, do you think we would be successful in hunting?
Speaker 1:Hunting is something I've always found to be a very much chance type of situation, even the most skilled hunter, unless they're using illegal methods like baiting, spotlighting, where you drive along on the side of the road and you use a spotlight to see if there's deer in the field and then they freeze when they see the light, putting salt licks out and then waiting for deer to show up to lick some salt, to show up to lick some salt. Unless you're doing those things, it's chance and you have to. Even if you rely on all of your expert hunting skills, the chances are you're going to see one, maybe two deer an entire hunting season. That's rough. They are. Deer are incredibly intelligent. That's something I've always known by hunting them is they? They are much smarter than the rest of the human population.
Speaker 2:Give them credit for joe, have you ever watched the show alone, alone? No, I haven't. It's problematic, but I still love it it's basically tell me more.
Speaker 2:Uh, it's a. You have to survive a hundred days in the wilderness alone. And they're survivalists do this. They usually have them in like really harsh environments and they're allowed to have a certain number of items to bring with them. But what we?
Speaker 2:I've watched many seasons now with Dan and basically most people have a very, very, very, very hard time, if not impossible, hunting anything. Trapping works a little bit better, which, by the way, is super cruel. My granddad did. I grew up surrounded by pelts and stuffed animals. I don't mean the cute stuffed animals, I mean the ones that are taxidermied. He was a trapper, but anyways, yeah, like it's very difficult and a lot of them ultimately survive on what they can forage and some of them just go to sleep literally to try and wait out the 100 days when they realize they don't have the energy anymore to survive like that. So it's not easy and historically it's not easy, our ancestors, unless you're in an environment where that really is your only main food source. Typically it's like 25% or less of any diet gathering and hunting diet, which is why I think it's important to put gathering in front of hunting, because that's actually what it takes and it's a lot of effort to find anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to kill um, something that I felt pretty strongly about and, uh, I'd like to find some historical data that backs us up. I don't have any saved in my brain right now, unfortunate is that my, my belief is that, um, our, our ancestors, ate primarily what they gathered while walking around and then scouting, yeah, and hunting wasn't a big part of what they did, um, other than, like, opportunity, hunting and hunting, and animals will spend their energy eating, because that's what we do as creatures that need to eat. We, we, we travel from place, place, we look for food and we eat it. So the animal is doing all of the hard work for you. So, if it's the middle of the winter and there is nothing around to eat and you see an animal, then that's when they would decide we have to eat that animal if we're going to survive.
Speaker 2:What do you think about fishing, Jo, in the apocalypse? When would you do it? Would you do it?
Speaker 3:Oh, would I do it Only if I had to. I used to fish as a little girl all the time. I know how to do it. I know how to make a fishing pole out of just about anything. A fish hook out of just about anything a paper clip I know how to do it about anything. A fish hook out of just about anything a paperclip. I know how to do it. Would I want to, after knowing that fish feel pain? No, I wouldn't want to, but it seems like one of the easier ways to get sustenance. If you are in between starvation and finding a blueberry patch or something like that, I I can. I can see that being one of the first things that I would go to, rather than trying to spear a squirrel or, you know, chase a deer agreed.
Speaker 2:That's actually like in that show alone. That is uh can be a good source.
Speaker 1:Sometimes not at all, though, like sometimes they'll fish and they'll fish and they'll fish and they'll get nothing and they're just starving to death and mad yeah, I, I think this is like if, if you're, if you're doing this for survival, you really have to know how to set up things like trot lines, um, fish baskets, uh, nets for catching fish, and this has to be something that you put along your path while you're gathering, because chances are you're not going to catch anything, but every day you do the rounds, you're looking for berries, you're looking for acorns and you're checking your trot lines for fish, while you're also keeping an eye out for animals, and that's really the only way any of this makes sense.
Speaker 1:This makes sense. There's something that I wanted to talk about, because it's something I think about a lot. Imagine it's the zombie apocalypse. All the people from all of the the populated areas are being forced out into the woods, and the only thing that they know how to do to survive is they've heard that there's some hillbillies out there who shoot animals and eat them um, and that was an unfortunate possibility, because I know there are some people out there that don't know where their food comes from at all and just imagine thousands of people in the woods just shooting anything.
Speaker 1:They see each other sometimes, but how fast do you think the forest would be depleted of animals? If everybody in like not even the biggest city, maybe just a small-ish city, a medium size city just went into the woods and started going after anything that looked like food, it wouldn't be long before every animal was gone. There's so many of us that would be hungry that it wouldn't.
Speaker 3:It wouldn't last long they'd be gone so fast. Yeah, and to your point, animals are pretty smart. Once they realize they're being hunted, they're gonna get out of there quickly, like they'll know. So we wouldn't even have to hunt them to extinction, we just chase them away. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, but if I mean, and frankly, the zombie hordes would probably chase them first, right, they'd be like oh right, they don't trust you.
Speaker 2:That's a bunch of weird groaning ones. Yeah, that too. Yeah, I mean, and frankly, the zombie hordes would probably chase them first, right? They'd be like oh, they don't trust humans. That's a bunch of weird groaning ones walking weird, or running, depending on which version we're talking about.
Speaker 1:And that brings me to the second point, which is the risk versus the reward. So imagine you have a safe place where you can grow a garden, but you're also leaving that place to go hunting. Grow a garden, but you're also leaving that place to go hunting. You're entering a dangerous area full of possibly zombies, inexperienced hunters who might think you look like a deer, people who might just want to take what you have, and you're going out there just to walk around and maybe never see anything that would be food. The reward doesn't match the risk of going out there and doing that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is why I'm team foraging. I think foraging is very cool. My favorite Instagram account is actually the Black Forager. Maybe it should just be Black Forager, I don't know. Do you follow them? No, but I'm about to now. Oh, please do. They're wonderful. They also happen to be vegan, but I didn't know that when I first started following them. I just was like I want to learn about foraging and they would they go out, they forge things, they show you how they make it into food, uh, and it's truly. They are truly a wonderful person.
Speaker 2:But you said something, joe, uh, before we started this podcast, about like foraging in urban environments, which is something I have not thought about. We, dan and I, have the privilege of living in the woods, so there is food literally all around us, but I had not thought about. Dan and I have the privilege of living in the woods, so there is food literally all around us, but I had not considered the possibilities in an urban location. So how would you survive in the apocalypse and find food if you were staying in Chicago?
Speaker 3:Okay. So this is such a fun question for me because I think about it all the time. I'm a runner, I run through the city, sometimes for a couple of hours at a time, and I have made it a point to memorize all of the resources in my neighborhood. It's so fun. So if you, if you run down and I won't say the street that I live on, but if you run down my street, I know where there is a grapevine, I know where there are two peach trees, there are apple trees on my running route, mulberry trees are everywhere and of course there are going to be oak trees in the parks, acorns are everywhere.
Speaker 3:So all of these things are scattered throughout the city and of course they are seasonal, right, but there are also other things that kind of, you know, pop up in vacant lots. So red clover and what is it like? Pineapple weed, and of course, dandelion greens. Where would we find dandelions? Everywhere? And so you could, you could make it. You could make it in the city of Chicago if you were, if everyone else had not already depleted those resources. So like assuming there was a mass extinction first.
Speaker 2:But what but, joe, where will you find your protein?
Speaker 3:It's in everything, yeah what.
Speaker 2:No way.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's in everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like to say that, for, uh, foraging is like hunting, only smart. Uh, there's so many wild plants like it. If you, if you know where to look, if you have just a basic level of understanding plants around, you realize that you're surrounded by food. Yeah, one of the things that I love about the place that we live right now, I was pointed out this flower to avoid this yellow flower that looks a little bit like Queen Anne's lace, which is like this kind of like flat bouquet of tiny, tiny little flowers.
Speaker 2:They're white flowers in Queen Anne's lace. They're very pretty.
Speaker 1:And this is like a yellow version of that, and I was told never to touch one of those because it's worse than poison ivy. So I'm like I got to look this up because I want to know what that is Turns out. It has a phototoxin, so it reacts with UV light and what it is is parsnip. These things are invasive. They grow everywhere, Every roadside, every field. All you see is yellow as far as your eyes can see, and everyone's just like don't touch it. That is some garbage plant we all collectively hate. And if you dig them up, they have a parsnip at the bottom which is like a white carrot. If you haven't had a parsnip before.
Speaker 1:Quite tasty, highly recommend roasting. Roast them Full of vitamins, all kinds of minerals, and they are in the millions on the side of the road. All you have to do is wear long sleeves, wear gloves and harvest it when the sun is not shining, and you are fine, really, yeah, and it was at that point that I really got interested in the plants that are around us, because it's like there's just food everywhere that people aren't even looking at.
Speaker 2:They're avoiding it, I feel like we need to make an apocalypse cookbook called Poisonous Parsnips 100 Different Ways, or something.
Speaker 1:If we're going to eat a lot of that we need to find fun ways to cook it 101 ways to eat poison.
Speaker 2:The other thing that we have lots of, and imagine that you know fungi are everywhere. If you've watched the last of us, you know that, um, they are you. Even if you can't see it, it's out there. So I'm sure you could forage for mushrooms too in your area, joe. But like mushrooms is a big one, there's so many. If you know some basics, you're not gonna die. I, a lot of people have a mushroom phobia because they've been taught to um, but it doesn't take a lot to learn some of the basics. I'm not saying you should eat a mushroom if you don't know what it is, yeah, but what I am saying is learn what they are.
Speaker 1:You need a good guide and don't buy it from Amazon, because some of those are AI generated and if you will die.
Speaker 2:AI generated mushrooms. Ai generated books. There's AI generated. Like herbalism books AI generated mushroom. Ai-generated books there's AI-generated herbalism books.
Speaker 1:AI-generated mushroom survival books Really disturbing. People have poisoned themselves by buying a book off of Amazon and then eating mushrooms that were clearly poisonous.
Speaker 3:That's horrifying.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:This is why traditional knowledge and knowledge through your community is so important. Don't just go to Amazon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, mushrooms, I would say unless you know what you're looking for, don't, but there are some that you could learn to identify that would be pretty safe, like lion's mane, for example. It's hard to find something poisonous that looks like lion's mane. I can't think of a single one, to be honest.
Speaker 2:Chicken of the woods. Have you had chicken of the woods or hen of the woods, Joe?
Speaker 3:Have I had it? Yes, there is a restaurant here that does a fried chicken sandwich that is to die for. It's called Handlebar, and when you guys come here one of these days I'm going to have to take you there. It's the best fried chicken quote unquote sandwich that I have ever had in my life.
Speaker 1:I believe so. Recently I've been growing a pink oyster mushroom and I fucked it up, but it did grow mushrooms, because it is the most badass mushroom that ever lived and it will grow in spite of whatever you try to do to it. Pink oysters, specifically Oysters but yeah, pink oysters are pretty robust, but anyways, it grew and I'd heard that you can fry them up like bacon. So I added a little bit of soy sauce, a little bit of liquid smoke, fried it up, and then my brother came in the house and I'm like eat this. And he's like that's bacon.
Speaker 2:No way. Oh yeah, it's really good. It blew my mind.
Speaker 2:And I hate the smell of bacon. Like I used to love bacon when I ate it, and then I don't know if this happened to you. Joe Dan's had a bit of a different experience, but, like, for me now the smell of meat is like really gross, and bacon is the number one that like, if it's if I'm in a house and somebody's cooking bacon, it just makes me want to retch, like I, like I can't stand the smell, and when I ate this bacon, this mushroom bacon, I was like, holy fuck, I think I like bacon again. I don't know how that happened, because you knew in your mind yeah, but I think, like, your palate changes. That's the other thing I would say. Like, now I don't honestly don't know what meat tastes like. So everything that I eat that is meat, adjacent or vegan meat, is amazing to me and that that's it.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about the efficiency and safety of foraging versus hunting. Hunting is loud and what is the number one thing that zombies are drawn by? Oh, is it noise? I get so mad every time somebody unnecessarily makes a loud noise in any kind of zombie thing. I'm like what the fuck are you doing? I genuinely get angry about it, whereas foraging is quiet. Also, plants don't run away.
Speaker 1:They don't. Plants don't run.
Speaker 2:These plants don't run. Plants want you to eat them, especially berries. Berries are literally designed for us to eat them, so that we can poop out their seeds and spread their babies. It is a truly reciprocal relationship between plants and people, or plants and anybody who eats plants.
Speaker 1:I sometimes imagine like an apple tree. That's like, as you're chewing on an apple, it's just like yeah, eat that apple.
Speaker 2:Is there anything that you forage? I'm just moving on. Is there anything, joe, that you have foraged or that you'd be excited to try? In the apocalypse Like this is my opportunity to run my route and make something from these trees or from what I can see around me.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh. I will say that there are a lot of this. This is a real temptation for me, just like in the real world. I will run past these community gardens that you know people have used to the fence and like it's their garden. It's just like out in the community and they're growing something and it takes everything in me not to jump over those fences and take their tomatoes. You should do it. Just run away with it like I got your fucking tomatoes. No, I'm trying to be a good neighbor these belong to Joe Salazar.
Speaker 2:Joe the veggie writer.
Speaker 3:Joe the veggie writer. No, I would never do that, but in an apocalyptic scenario I would. I would 100% steal from someone's garden in the apocalypse, but I think that I can make an amazing vegetable soup with just what grows in my neighborhood.
Speaker 1:This okay this is a perfect segue, because my thesis is maybe our thesis, all of our theses is maybe, I hope um, vegans not only would just survive, I think they would thrive, because if there's one thing that you learn to do as a vegan is take all of the stuff that society has told you is just stuff that goes on the side, that you have to eat while you consume meat, and you turn that into food like a soup.
Speaker 2:You pour all this stuff into a soup and most people don't realize that vegans can make incredible soup out of things that you would not really think makes an entire soup the number one thing I would want to forage from pantry shelves in the apocalypse, uh, would be any dried beans, although we should be growing ourselves, caveat, um, but in the early days, dried beans and liquid smoke, because that shit makes everything taste incredible.
Speaker 1:Get a big old container of salt, yeah.
Speaker 2:No, we just go to the ocean. We can go to the ocean or we can trade with somebody who lives by the ocean, who makes salt.
Speaker 2:I mean, we don't live by the ocean, but if the option arrived, yeah Well, I have a question actually, because I think the other thing people are thinking about in terms of like could vegans thrive? Is that we're just going to inherently be protein deficient, vitamin deficient. Everybody's gonna be like where you get your b12? I hate to tell you folks, it's actually just dirt. It has to be healthy dirt because animals are supplemented for their b12 as well, because monocropping means unhealthy earth that the food's growing from. But I'm curious, like you said, that your gateway moment or the start of it was like oh, this would be good for me, for my health, for running. Have you had any other like health benefits or things you've learned about, just the individual benefits of eating a vegan diet?
Speaker 3:I would say, every time I go to the doctor and they ask me about my diet and I say that I'm vegan, they say good, and then they check my cholesterol levels and they're like good, so that has been beneficial, that helps. But I don't remember 18 years ago and how I felt and also I was in my early 20s and I think in your early 20s, like you, always feel pretty good. But I would say that now, as a 40 year old, I'm I feel good and I, you know, and and of course that's not going to be true for everybody and it may or may not be my vegan diet and everyone is different and, um, I've been really fortunate with my health, but you know it, could it contribute? Sure, I uh.
Speaker 1:I have a whole bunch of statistics about this. Sure, I have a whole bunch of statistics about this, but Of course you do.
Speaker 1:But I also have the same experience as what you're describing. I go to the doctor often because I go to the VA and it's free, so I get my blood tested so much. I do have a liver issue which has gone on for a very long time. Veganism didn't do that. That was eating an almost entirely meat diet for most of my life. But my cholesterol is ideal. Everything across the board is ideal. My blood pressure is 113 over 72. When I go in there they're like you have the blood pressure of an 18 year old, and then I remind them my blood pressure wasn't this good when I was 18.
Speaker 1:When I first started working for the excavation company that I work for now, I was considered a truck driver, slash laborer. They didn't tell me that I was going to be a laborer, but I found out and I had to jump into holes and dig with shovels and bang things with hammers and all kinds of stuff and I was doing that right alongside of 20 to 25 year olds and doing just fine, while also being twice their body mass and twice their age. You know, something that my boss would say to me is you know, you're not that fast, but you never stop, and it's true, 14 hours a day. I would just keep going while everybody else was standing in the shade smoking.
Speaker 2:I have an important one for people with penises. Supposedly it makes your dick harder. Yeah, over time, because you have less plaque buildup or like shit in your veins so that your erection is, uh, more impressive. Yeah, not like I don't know. I know some people don't care about sex in the apocalypse, but I think that's a nice potential side perk. But I appreciate what you said, joe, which is like can it help in some ways? Yes, will it help you avoid calamity? No, you can have physical health issues regardless, but I think it can help.
Speaker 2:I will say one of the weird things that happened to me that I never expected or thought about when I made the transition was that my eyesight actually improved. So I've had glasses since I was 10. And if anybody else has glasses, you know how it goes. It just gets worse over time, and I was probably vegan for about two years when this happened. But before I even talked to the optometrist, I already noticed I was like colors, feel like I'm like. Am I imagining? The colors are brighter. I feel like I'm imagining things.
Speaker 2:And then I went to the optometrist and he was like you have the best levels of like, like the healthiest level of glaucoma, whatever that number is, that's possible. And he was like how did that change? Because before I was like in the middle, so still good. But now I'm like bottom of the barrel, good, like there's no chance of me getting glaucoma at this point in my life. And again I will get old. I will probably still potentially have glaucoma. But he was like what changed? He's like what are you eating? And I said well, I went vegan. And he's like oh, it's the antioxidants. He's like you eat so much vegetables. And then he was like I have also good news for you your prescription is actually lower now. It went down a full point. Yeah, I was like that's great, but I know I'm still going to get old and I'm still going to need bifocals one day. But it was a fun side benefit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, want to hear some of my statistics. Oh, I didn't know, yes, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, these are really fun statistics. I love, I love these. Um. So there's been a lot of studies into plant-based diets. Um, some of my favorite ones come from documentaries that um, people love to try to discredit. Um, but one of them is oh fuck, I forgot the name of it. There's a documentary called game changers. I highly recommend it.
Speaker 1:Um, where they did a lot of studies on people who were athletic athletes At the time.
Speaker 1:I don't know if this is still true, but at the time, the strongest man in the world was vegan, and lots of people have tried to discredit him and be like well, you weren't always vegan, you ate meat before, to which he would say yes, I've made mistakes in the past.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I found fascinating was that a group of college athletes. They tested their endurance in a number of ways, including how many erections they got in the middle of the night, and what they found is that while they were on a meat-based diet, they performed pretty well. When they switched on a meat-based diet, they performed pretty well. When they switched, and this is only like a couple days worth of a plant-based diet, but eating no meat and only plant-based burritos, they increased their athletic endurance by four times. They did four times as well in strength and endurance-based tests. There's also been studies where they measured the amount of pain that somebody can tolerate, and an easy way to test this is by putting your hands into ice water, and depending on how long you can hold your hand under ice water is how much pain you're capable of tolerating, and the average person on a meat-based diet was capable of holding their hand underwater four and a half minutes at most, which is a really long time to hold your hand under ice water.
Speaker 2:They better pay me for this. I'm not doing that unless I'm paid for this study.
Speaker 1:And the average person who lived a plant-based diet. And, mind you, these are just average people. They're not athletes, they're not special forces, they're not army rangers. You know, these are just average people off the street who are, like I, like broccoli. They, on average, lasted 26 minutes.
Speaker 3:Damn Wow. This explains why I'm so good at getting tattooed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't find it really painful either. You know what I love it. There it is, there it is. Our pain tolerance is higher and again, like, what does that do to surviving the apocalypse? Everything, having better endurance will make us go further. We know we can get food and also our ancestors, like I mentioned a little bit earlier, coming all the way down to chimpanzees, our closest living. I think bonobos are slightly closer related to us, but they're the same chimps and bonobos, in terms of their diet, is 2% meat, so occasionally they will eat something, but it's 2% and I feel like that sounds like possibly what it might be like for us in the apocalypse is 2% of the time.
Speaker 2:We're going to have to make a choice that we make because we know that it's required for us to live and that fits within the philosophy of veganism, the ethics of veganism, because the ethics of veganism are also much older than this term vegan. So many cultural traditions, religions, have a very similar ethic Buddhism, hinduism, tao, philosophy is often embraced as no harm or reducing your harm, compassion for all beings. Not all of them are vegan, but the one that I follow, thich Nhat Hanh's Buddhist tradition, is a vegan tradition. Ancient Pythagoreans were mostly vegan. I did not know that until recently.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but they ate honey. That was the one thing that they did, and I know this might be shocking to non-vegans. Honey is not vegan, if you didn't know, because it has a mother and a nervous system. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Bees yeah.
Speaker 2:Bees.
Speaker 1:Honey comes from bees, if you don't know, yeah.
Speaker 2:And there's a whole movement called Afro-Veganism, because many parts of Africa, many cultures within Africa, are also primarily plant-based or traditionally are primarily plant-based.
Speaker 1:This brings us to something that I think is really cool. Um, like I said, uh, previously, I think vegans would thrive, not just survive. Um, and there's so many things that I think vegans would, would do with the things available in nature that most people I don't think would think about. Um, the first time I ever heard of acorn flower was the walking dead and I never thought about it. I've thrown so many acorns at other kids as a kid, never realizing there's a nut inside. There's a reason that squirrels like them. If you crack open the acorn, there's food inside. You can eat those, so you can also take that and turn it into flour and you can make anything that you can make with wheat flour.
Speaker 2:And it's a decent source of protein, as is everything else on our list, but I feel required to say it because it's a nut.
Speaker 1:Yeah, also I think maybe it's gluten, gluten-free it's definitely gluten-free.
Speaker 2:Gluten is only. I feel required to say this for everybody who maybe doesn't know a lot about um gluten. My mom is a celiac so she really can't have gluten, and gluten is only in wheat. So if there's no wheat in something, it is inherently gluten-free. But sometimes they do put seasonings that they like bulk up with flour and then it'll fuck something up, so you gotta be careful with seasonings.
Speaker 1:But, like, everything that you can forage is gluten-free yeah, okay, um, so you know, you can make bread, you make cookies, you can make bread, you make cookies. You can make pie crust. You could make I don't know what else Biscuits.
Speaker 2:Oh, we could make a pie with the berries we harvest Right, or an apple pie or a peach pie from your trees.
Speaker 1:I didn't get to the berries. We don't. The next thing on my list is wild berry jam, blackberries, elderberries, raspberries. You have special Illinois berries where you're from that we don't have here. Mulberries, right we do.
Speaker 3:We do have mulberries. Do you guys have mulberries? I don't know, I don't think so googling, oh, they're everywhere, everywhere here they stay in the sidewalks. Data loves to eat them. Are they good for dogs? I mean, they're not harmful, they're just.
Speaker 2:There are mulberries in Vermont, dan.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, I've never seen one in my life.
Speaker 2:Maybe you haven't. This is why it's important to get a foraging book for your local area. Maybe we have one, just not realize what they are.
Speaker 1:I want to find one now. We talked a little bit about mushrooms. Imagine a grilled lion's mane mushroom. A lot of people don't know what lion's mane is, uh, but real quickly it's. Uh, this big white puff ball that grows on the side of a tree looks kind of furry and, um, the inside has the same texture and flavor as like lobster or shrimp. It's very similar texture to chicken, so you can use it in the same way that you use chicken, lobster, fish, anything.
Speaker 2:People who typically hate mushrooms love lion's mane mushrooms. It's like the only one that they'll eat.
Speaker 1:I love grilling it, breading it. Best non-chicken sandwich I've ever had was a lion's mane mushroom that I breaded in cornflakes and turned into a sandwich.
Speaker 2:Well, now we need to go to this place in Chicago to see if it's better. Yeah, they're chicken of the woods. Chicken of the woods, that's the next thing on my list.
Speaker 1:Chicken of the woods tenders. Basically the same idea Bread it, fry it in some oil and you got some chicken tenders from mushrooms. Pine nuts I learned about pine nuts, like last month. I always wondered where pine nuts come from.
Speaker 2:This is how he shows how disconnected our culture is right To be like we're super disconnected Again.
Speaker 1:I've thrown so many pine cones at other children, never realizing there's nuts inside of it you can eat. We joked about eating pine cones. They're like eat this. It's like you can't eat a pine cone. That's stupid. But if you take a fresh pine cone and I believe you have to boil it till it opens up, inside there's nuts. Typically you only harvest big pine cones because it's very labor intensive, but all pine cones have nuts inside of them. Squirrels know this and now you know this too. You can make birch beer. It's kind of like root beer, but it's made from birch trees and other herbal extracts that you would also find in the woods. You could also collect that tree sap and make a syrup from pretty much any tree almost all trees you can make syrup from. So you can have oak syrup. You gotta birch syrup. You could have maple syrup you could have. I don't know if I would try pine syrup, but it's gotta be a thing I mean they are sticky a lot of coniferous trees are very sticky, so you never, never know.
Speaker 1:The sap is useful. You can boil down the sap into a glue-like substance. It has antibiotic properties so you can put it on wounds. It's great for starting a fire. It is it's amazing for starting a fire Super flammable. And that goes into the next thing Pine needle sprite. We talked about this in an early episode and said that we were going to do it and we haven't yet. But if you take pine needles pretty much from any tree but be careful that what you're pulling it from isn't something that's poisonous but typically all pine trees are non-poisonous you can take those pine needles and on each of the pine needles is yeast and if you put it in water with a little bit of sugar, maybe even some oak syrup that you just collected, some birch syrup it will carbonate the beverage. It'll be sweet and bubbly. It'll taste very Sprite, adjacent kind of fresh and piney and sweet.
Speaker 2:We learned that one from Black Forager yeah, Black Forager. I wish I knew their actual name.
Speaker 1:I only know their brand name and that's probably for a reason you don't want people showing up at your house. Yeah and last, I kind of just wanted to talk openly about plant medicine. This is stuff that our ancestors all knew and you know. A lot of the medicine that we have these days are just repackaged versions of this, to be perfectly honest, like aspirin came from the bark of willow trees. But there's also some things that we kind of just threw to the wayside, like turkey tail mushrooms. They grow everywhere. They're the most common mushroom that you'll ever see. They just grow on dead wood and it looks like a cluster of turkey feathers growing out of the side of a piece of wood. And there's only one thing that you can confuse it with, which is false turkey tail, which is not as good as turkey tail, but it won't kill you. It'll just be really bitter and gross and probably make you maybe vomit. I don't know, but if you make a tea out of that, it is great for inflammation and heightens your immune system in a very significant way.
Speaker 1:People have used that in conjunction with regular treatments to battle very serious deadly illnesses that they are fighting with modern day medicine and as well as herbal remedies like turkey tail tea.
Speaker 2:That is impressive list, and there's so much more. Again, follow some foraging accounts, you can learn a ton, and I think the challenge for me and you Dan I don't know where you're at with this, joe is just to like start practicing this, because we did say we were going to make the pine needle sprite on like episode two. I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 1:To be fair, we're not near a lot of pine trees.
Speaker 2:Are you? I'm pretty sure. To be fair, we're not near a lot of pine trees.
Speaker 1:Are you kidding me? There's pine trees just over there I didn't see them.
Speaker 2:I used their pine bows for christmas last year um other survival tip become aware of your surroundings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there it is to be fair, I'm really bad at identifying trees yeah, I think that's the biggest thing is like hunting takes skill.
Speaker 2:Uh, this also takes skill and it's a skill that we need to develop. Personally, I have a little bit of ability, but to make any of these things I don't think. I mean, I think I can make the pine needle sprite pretty easily, yeah, and the and cook mushrooms easily, make jam.
Speaker 3:Um, actually, you know what your whole list I think I could do, yeah that's why I made it that way do you have any survival tips, joe, as a vegan, um, same one I shared last time I was on here find a good hiding place, but but no like for for um, for finding sustenance, things like that. I think the having a good it's you said, having a good sense of your awareness and like what's around you and knowing what things are I think is really important. In my apocalypse cabinet I always keep, you know, a couple of books on how to identify different medicinal plants, different edible plants, but I have to say that I would definitely need to read those books to be able to know what I was looking at. So maybe I need to do some work on that.
Speaker 1:I have a way to identify things if you're not sure. That isn't 100%, but I feel like it works. Look at what the squirrels eat. So sometimes I'm not sure about a mushroom. I pick up a mushroom and I'm like I don't know if this is the one that you can eat or the one that kills you instantly. But then sometimes I'll see just a random mushroom on the ground with a few bites taken out of it, and I look up and I realize it's just below a squirrel nest and I realized the squirrels are eating this. So maybe it's not a jack-o'-lantern mushroom at all and it actually is a chanterelle.
Speaker 3:As long as there are no squirrel bodies lying around.
Speaker 1:Right you look for the bodies. The squirrels know, though, like they're so much smarter than us when it comes to finding food in the forest. Like the squirrels know what to eat, they're not going to make a mistake. Like the squirrels know what to eat, they're not going to make a mistake. They're not out there eating the poisonous mushrooms. They're out there eating the good mushrooms, and you'll find them all over the place with little bites taken out of them. The only reason they're on the ground is because the wind blew too hard.
Speaker 2:You're giving me flashbacks to when you saved the baby squirrel because the wind blew too hard. There was a windy. This is definitely a worthy segue. There was a windy. This is a definitely a worthy segue. There was a windy day in augusta and um dan and I were outside with the dogs in our backyard and ziggy there's like a sound that we'd hear once in a while that sounded like kind of crying or like this very high-pitched sound. Couldn't figure out what it was. And then Ziggy all of a sudden came up to me and in his mouth was a naked baby squirrel.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, like eyes not even open yet. Yeah, and we read about what to do.
Speaker 2:We did all the things to try and get it to be back with its mom. We waited, we waited. Mom wasn't coming. It was still pretty cold out that day for Georgia, yeah, it was still, it was cold, yeah. So Dan took care of Stevie the squirrel until we were able to go the next day to the wildlife sanctuary. And we want to believe I mean Stevie's descendants at this point are hopefully living wild and free.
Speaker 1:They told us that Stevie had a very good recovery, so I choose to believe that. Yeah, I tend to think about, especially when we're talking about scavenging, and the way that foragers would find food everywhere is the contrast to that where people would be literally fist-fighting each other over canned beans and cans of spam in abandoned grocery stores. That stuff is so finite. But if you know where to look and if you just know just a little bit, you know maybe, maybe you don't want to eat acorns for every meal every single day, but it's better than starving.
Speaker 1:and if you just know that you can eat those.
Speaker 3:You can find acorns everywhere yeah, and I think to have the confidence to like run in the other direction of the chaos and just know you're going to be okay and not have to. You know, fight for that can of beans, like that's a survival tactic in and of itself.
Speaker 2:It definitely is, cause you you don't want to be fighting over the can of beans when you know that, like in your backyard, is food you can eat. And the other thing I would say is like a survival tip is is seed saving. I think that's really important learning to garden Even if you're just not everybody has the privilege of time or space to do gardening. But even if you can just have a tomato in a pot under a grow light, that's something. And just having seeds available, having them stored properly, that's really great insurance for any kind of difficult situation that you might be in with food access.
Speaker 2:And when I first went vegan before I fully understood just how plentiful protein is, I googled this you need 18 lentil plants for two people to get all of the protein you need in a year. So, and yes, you can grow lentil plants in our region. Um, that's the other thing is know your zone like, know what your um gardening zone is, your climate zone, because that will affect what you can and cannot grow too. So there's lots of things to learn that can help us survive and, honestly, what keeps us from doing it a lot of the time is just capitalism. We got to work to go buy groceries and pay our mortgage. Go ahead, joe.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I also just read that all of those grow zones are changing because of climate change. Yeah, isn't that fun, isn't that crazy.
Speaker 2:So if you knew your grow zone, maybe you don't anymore well, the good news is is it's probably only getting warmer, which means you can grow more things and longer like if. Well, here's the thing. Here's also why foraging is so important if your climate's stable. Um, there was a couple years ago there was such a bad drought that there was a huge shortage of hay and grains to feed all of the animals that are in Vermont, that are, you know, dairy animals, whatever, any kind of cattle livestock, and that was a really big problem is you can't rely on climate to be stable enough to farm anymore. Which fun fact. The only reason we ever settled into cities and started farming was because the climate stabilized around 12,000 years ago. So we're going to need to do some of our ancestral learning, I think, to survive. There we are. I'm very, I'm very inspiring. Right, you know the world is ending. That's what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the world is ending. Yeah, that's the world we know. Yeah, the world as we know it. Yeah, much like that one song that I always incorrectly attributed to counting crows and it was not made by the crown of counting crows.
Speaker 1:This leads us to something that I think is really fun to think about is how this leads us to something that I think is really fun to think about is how being a vegan and being knowledgeable about foraging could help a community that you join or a community that you come across that wants to trade with you. There's so many ways that you could then share what you have and help them survive as well, and also to help educate them. You could teach them about foraging and how to survive off of non-animal food sources. Teach them how to survive the way that you've been thriving all along, which would be really valuable in a place where they think the only way to get food is to either grow it in a garden or raise it as an animal. To realize suddenly that you're surrounded by food and you just have to go out and find it could be life-changing to many people, and it's not something that everybody realizes. It's almost like forbidden forbidden knowledge. It's.
Speaker 2:It's magic, uh, and sometimes it's treated like magic, sometimes it's treated like black magic yeah, like my brother, um, with my youngest nephew, who's eight right now, is gonna come visit us probably not this summer, the next summer and I was like jesse, can I teach him to forage and can we eat the forage mushrooms? My brother was like you can help him identify the mushrooms, but he's not allowed to eat them because he's convinced his son will die. Uh yeah, it is magic. It is scary to people when we and this is also just shows you how far we've been divorced from the actual way that humans are meant to be living. Which brings me to my other hot tip.
Speaker 2:If you're able-bodied and you love shopping, which most of us do forage, because it's the exact same reason why shopping works and why people get addicted to shopping or overpurchase things and overconsume if they have the ability, the same dopamine of searching online or going to a store to find that thing that you want is the same dopamine you get when you find find a berry or you find a mushroom. It's literally using that part of our brain that was designed for foraging, so there's honestly like how much joy do you feel when you find a mushroom? Or like, even in your world, you're going for a walk or you're running joe and you're like oh my god, I could eat that look at that.
Speaker 3:No, this, this actually makes a lot of sense. I remember going mushroom hunting with my dad when I was a kid. Like we'd get in the canoe during season and we would go and find it was like the morel mushrooms yeah you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've never had one, but I'm familiar yeah, and we would.
Speaker 3:We would go and look and I remember how excited he would get and I remember how excited I would get and those I remember how excited I would get and those are some of like the strongest memories that I have with my dad and it makes sense that you know we would we would form those memories as a result of dopamine and all of that good stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, save money, go forage. Yeah, go for it. You're going to have a good time.
Speaker 1:I think that also, like as as a forager and as a as a as a vegan that has these skills to make food out of things that people don't normally see as food, your, your ability to barter and share with communities or people within your community would be through the roof. It'd be super valuable. Like you walk into somebody's somebody's uh, zombie, survival, gated community situation and they're all. They all look ragged and starving and their teeth are falling out. They all have scurvy and you show up and you're like I have pine nut hummus it's true, it's like when um carol brings her acorn chocolate chip cookies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, everybody's loving that you're like how did you make this? No, she was such a brilliant character yeah, and all this like makes me I I think it'd be really cool to like make a like an apocalyptic cookbook one day, just like really research this stuff and like make recipes that are like find acorns, find, find this, find a sprig of thyme somewhere, make this thing.
Speaker 2:It'd be pretty cool I think I feel like those might already exist, just in the form of foraging cookbooks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's true. I think this would be more like a zombie theme.
Speaker 2:Bring together your can of beans with your sprig of thyme that you grew and the mushrooms you found, kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. And then how to haggle with other survivors that also want to have your apocalyptic shepherd's pie that he just made from random stuff you found.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm so curious listeners if you're still here. You found yeah, I'm so curious listeners if you're still here. How did you? If you're here, thank you for listening, especially if you're not vegan and you've listened to three vegans talk about how much we love being vegan for over an hour probably at this point, and if you are still here.
Speaker 2:I think the last thing I would say to you is yeah, pick up a foraging book. It's there's. That's honestly what, dan, I need to be learning too. There's also a challenge going on right now that happens every year called Veganuary, and there's a website you can go to that has meal plans and recipes for you and, like I said, if you're just curious about dabbling a little bit in this, I love to talk about really great recipes and ways to veganize things that you love, so send me a message. On Zoliva Club Podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Instagram. Even if you're not making a lifestyle change, just try something out, try something new.
Speaker 2:Do you have any last words of vegan advice for survival, Jo?
Speaker 3:Go vegan now. It's good practice for the apocalypse and also I share that sentiment Like, if anybody wants to reach out to me for vegan advice good substitutes for cheese I will have that conversation with you. I would love to have that conversation with you If you live in Chicago in particular. Let's talk about all the great places over here. It really is I say this all the time. It is like one of the vegan capitals of the world, I'm convinced. So come on over, I'll take you for a tour. Anybody who wants to come, we're coming.
Speaker 1:I never considered Chicago to be like a great vacation destination, but you're convincing me.
Speaker 2:You don't want to see the beans? And eat some beans. Yeah, I want to see the bean. It's not like we can go eat.
Speaker 3:It is and eat some beans. Yeah, I want to see. The bean is not what we can go eat, it is we and we can go eat beans at the bean yeah, is the bean as hyped up as it is on the internet?
Speaker 2:is it that great?
Speaker 3:no, it's not. It's beautiful, it's cool to see once. But you walk up to it. You look at, you take a picture and you're like, okay, now what it's, you have to do it, but once you do it.
Speaker 2:You know it's done. You go to the vegan restaurant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and eat real beans.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, thank you for joining us, Joe. This was really fun to talk to you. We don't get to talk to other vegans every day, particularly other vegans who are interested in surviving in the apocalypse and like actually taking that question seriously.
Speaker 3:This was so fun. Thank you for having me, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I thought it was really fun too. Um, where can, where can people find you? And uh and your book.
Speaker 3:People can find me on Instagram. Uh, maybe you can find me on Tik TOK if it still exists when this episode comes out, but I you can also find me on my website, joesalazarwritingcom, and, yeah, I hope people reach out. I would. I would be excited to talk about veganism and zombies and whatever else people have on their minds.
Speaker 2:Joe is a gem. Take her offer seriously. You will be so lucky. Yeah, um, you're one of the greatest things that we things see. I'm objectifying you and making you not a human, where you're. One of the greatest um gifts of 2024 and now we're in 2025 was meeting you.
Speaker 1:So, um I feel the same way, yeah yeah, thank, yeah, thank you, but thanks, thanks, super Thanks for joining us. This has been a long time coming and we have to find another excuse to do something else again very soon, hopefully. I'll take several months to do it this time.
Speaker 2:I mean that's being an adult. If we live in the same city, it probably still take us multiple months.
Speaker 1:It would, but thanks everybody, it'd probably still take us multiple months it would. But thanks everybody for joining us on the Zombie Book Club.
Speaker 2:We didn't even talk about a book, except for Joe's book the Dead Weight, which you can find Everywhere, including an audio book, which is an excellent audio book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or on Joe Salazar's website, which all of those things will be in the description, unless I forgot. So you better check to make sure I did my job. Everybody let me know. Did I do it right? I don't know, we'll see. You can support us by leaving a rating or a review or sending us a voicemail on the many things, but you can send us a voicemail up to three minutes long at 614-699-00006. It's only three zeros. I put too many in. I do that sometimes. But if also, you know, maybe you are also an author of a zombie book of some kind, it has to have zombies in it. That's the rules. But you could leave us a book, an elevator pitch of your book, on the thing that we love.
Speaker 2:We haven't had one in a while.
Speaker 1:It has been a while. We're overdue for an elevator pitch. Our elevator is going unused at this point. It is an Otis elevator. I don't get in anything that doesn't say Otis on it, Sorry everybody else. I don't know what that means it's a brand of elevator.
Speaker 3:Did you know what that meant, joe? I had no idea, but I'm going to look for it now.
Speaker 1:I don't risk my life on any other garbage elevators. Anyways, you can also join our Discord, the Brain Munchers Collective Discord. It's Ali Eats Brains' Discord.
Speaker 2:It's a good time over there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, All the links are in the description.
