Cove Director Louie Psihoyos at The Asia Society

On March 9th, just two days after The Cove won the Oscar for best feature documentary, the plush theater at The Asia Society in New York was packed with eager New Yorkers waiting to see The Cove, followed by a discussion between the film’s director, Louie Psihoyos, and environmental journalist, Andrew Revkin.
The Cove opens with an extrasensory montage; infrared images of oil derricks, factories, and the heavy machinery of industry, a “Twilight Zone” world—contemporary industrial society—perhaps as perceived by special sensitivities; its underlying mechanisms and menacing absurdities; its inhumanity.
Suddenly, like a birth, we land in the technicolor world of the film’s primary crime scene, Taiji, Japan, as Louie Psihoyos, as narrator, introduces us to the film’s principle player, activist Ric O’Barry.
Psihoyos contacted O’Barry after attending a Reefs Conference where O’Barry was scheduled to speak, but was then pulled from the program by the conference’s sponsor, Sea World, an organization O’Barry opposes at every turn.
O’Barry sent Psihoyos a short video he’d made, entitled Welcome to Taiji, documenting the annual killing of over 23,000 dolphins in Taiji dolphin. Although O’Barry has been devoted to dolphin activism for over forty years, in his own words “I’m like a monomaniac about this one cove, the size of a football field, in Taiji.”
Days later, Psihoyos flew to Taiji to meet O’Barry and shoot footage for what would later become The Cove, nature photographer Psihoyos’ first film. “I was called do this,” he told me during the Asia Society reception. “I’m not that much of a spiritual type, but the universe had a hand in this. . . let’s just say I was not planning to get into film before this.”
Psihoyos has an enduring passion for the oceans and ocean creatures. He directs the Oceanic Preservation Society, a non-profit organization. He considers the moratorium on whaling “the greatest psychological achievement of the last century.”
The Cove received major funding from Jim Clark, Psihoyos’ long-time billionaire friend. Once they’d reviewed and discussed the initial footage, a feature-length production was underway. “I started to get creative in a way I never thought possible. . . . . I wanted this film to inspire a legion of activists. . . . We made this film to give the oceans a voice. All the oceans are in peril.”
Both Psihoyos and O’Barry are confident that the film and its associated campaigns will effectively end the slaughter in Taiji. They explain that it will not be stopped on an animal rights issue, nor an environmental issue, but on the human health issue, because human beings are consuming mercury laden dolphin meat, sometimes falsely labeled and sold as tuna or some other fish. Psihoyos said a doctor explained to him that Mercury poisoning erases what it means to be human. You lose your senses; you lose your memory. But, he explains, it seems too controversial a subject to report on in the press.
The Cove crew took great personal risks to bring the film’s messages to the world. Tenderness for dolphins and other creatures is behind this courage and the strategic persistence necessary in any activist struggle. “This movie is a love letter,” Psihoyos tells his audiences.
In winning the Oscar for The Cove, Psihoyos “hit a home run the first time up at bat,” in the words of Ric O'Barry. Revkin asked, “Do I sense a sequel?” Psihoyos is now at work on his next film, a documentary about the Holocene extinction, the massive planetary loss of species and biodiversity that is manmade and continually exacerbated by human behavior.
Psihoyos calls upon his audiences to act, “once you have this information, what are you going to do with it?” In an interview with Amy Kaufman of the L.A. Times on Oscar night, he said, “The Cove is a microcosm of this 5-alarm disaster that’s facing all marine life. Through pollution and plundering and acidication, we’re doing what no wild animal would do: we’re fouling our own nest. It’s a microcosm of this much bigger issue.”
I was reminded of a brief scene in The Cove in which it was said that O’Barry once rescued two dolphins from a small concrete pool filled with their own excrement. Perhaps this is an image for us to keep in mind.
©Jari Chevalier
Listen to the April 1 Living Hero podcast for our Interview with Ric O'Barry.
Watch the Asia Society video here.
The Oceanic Preservation Society site.

Interview with Ric O'Barry

"We never heard of another wild animal coming out of the jungle and saving a life of a human. But there are many stories of dolphins doing that. That's communication. That is communication. That is altruism."
—Ric O'Barry
Ric has devoted the last 40 years of his life to freeing dolphins from captivity and to educating people throughout the world about these highly conscious, intelligent, and emotional creatures. Most recently his campaign to end the annual dolphin hunt and slaughter in Taiji, Japan, became the subject of The Cove, a brilliant film that won the Oscar for best feature documentary this year.
As a young man, O'Barry captured, trained, and lived with the dolphins who played Flipper in the popular TV series. He experienced a powerful epiphany when the lead dolphin died in his arms. Ever since that day in 1970, he has been arrested many times and risked his life in his quest to protect dolphins from hunters and to release captive dolphins back into the wild. He is author of To Save a Dolphin and Behind the Dolphin Smile. I urge you to listen to this amazing man!
We talked about:
Dolphins in the wild and in captivity ● A man in a tank and living with Flipper ● Communicating with dolphins ● Flipper's death and Ric's epiphany ● Going to jail for liberating dolphins ● The Big Lie and the Schizophrenic Cove ● Why the slaughter? ● Toxic dolphin meat and contaminated oceans ● Rehabilitating dolphins (or not) ● Dolphin trauma and madness ● Making The Cove documentary ● The Japanese cover-up and the power of "Gaiatsu" ● Activism: what works? ● How can we listeners help stop the slaughter? ●
Enjoy the show! (The interview is about 46 minutes.)
Listen at your convenience!
Click through to buy Ric O'Barry's books right from this site in the Amazon sidebar widget to the left.
Visit:
SaveJapanDolphins.org;
dolphinproject.org;
Earth Island Institute;
The Cove movie site;
The Oceanic Preservation Society
Read a great article on Ric here.

Interview with Vandana Shiva

Around the world civilian rights to food and water are being eroded by the patenting of life forms and by privatization of water systems. Some farmers have been hit with law suits for patent infringement, while they were planting heritage seeds. The outspoken, multi-talented Vandana Shiva, joins us to talk about these and other issues of capitalist globalization. She is a celebrated ecofeminist, grassroots activist, research physicist, author, and international advocate for alternatives to global corporate hegemony.
". . . there is a higher moral order that requires that we save seeds, because we are caretakers of the biodiversity of this planet.” says Shiva.
We talked about:
The roots of Shiva's global activism ● The violence of "The Green Revolution" ● Suicide seeds, farmers, bombers ● False pretenses of industrial farming ● What's at stake in water privatization?● World Bank legacy in India ● Capitalist patriarchy ● The false liberation of convenience foods ● Civil disobedience and seed satyagraha ● Seed saving ● Lies money can buy ● Democracy as an imperative of survival ● Seeing and acting on interconnections ● The good work of the International Forum on Globalization ● Power and the lessons of history ● A singular solution to a triple crisis ● Caring, sharing, and The Commons
Enjoy the show! (The interview is about 45 minutes.)
Listen at your convenience!
Click through to buy some of Vandana Shiva's books on Amazon right from this site in the sidebar to the left.
Visit:
Navdanya
and
The International Forum on Globalization

Interview with Anne Wilson Schaef

Know anyone who keeps doing things everybody knows aren’t good for them, others, or the environment? Our guest for February, Anne Wilson Schaef, is an expert facilitator in overcoming multiple addictions. Anne takes an unconventional, whole systems approach to awakening and healing people in light of their familial heritage and societal context.
“I think that a part of our work as human beings in this life is to bring as much as we can of our unconscious into consciousness so that we know what we're dealing with and we have the opportunity to heal it . . . ” says Anne Wilson Schaef in this interview.
We talked about:
Leaving psychotherapy behind ● Process addictions and substance addictions ● Surprise! Our society is an addict ● Addiction and schizophrenia ● A progressive and fatal disease ● Can we recover? ● The elements of a successful intervention ● Wisdom and native humility ● The way of science and technology ● The pseudopodic ego ● Escape from Intimacy ● Political dimensions of dysfunction ● The crucial question on the planet ● The trouble with dualism ● The twelve steps and power ● Can billions of people heal?
Enjoy the show! (The interview is about an hour and 7 minutes.)
Listen at your convenience!
Click through to buy some of Anne Wilson Schaef's books on Amazon right from this site in the sidebar to the left.
Visit:
Anne's Boulder Hot Springs Inn & Spa at Boulder, MT
And her website: LivingInProcess.com

Interview with Suzi Gablik

She studied with Robert Motherwell, lived with the Magritte family, and hung out with Jasper Johns. In 1966, Suzi Gablik had a one-woman show of her collage paintings exhibited and catalogued in New York. She later brought a prodigious and caring voice to art criticism, as a respected reviewer of art in London for Art in America, and authored her engaging trilogy of scholarly writings on art and culture Has Modernism Failed?, The Reenchantment of Art, and Progress in Art. She also wrote Magritte, Conversations Before the End of Time, and her memoir Living the Magical Life. Currently, Suzi Gablik hosts a blog featuring her latest cultural and political essays at virgilspeaks.blogspot.com.
We talked about:
Is the human species fit to survive? ● The downside of technology ● The divided United States ● Obama's moral authority ● A burning house, a bus careening off a cliff ● 9/11 as political instigation ● The unbearable places we must go to heal ● Negative capability and extreme sports ● Suzi's magical life of receptivity ● The patriarchy and the black madonna ● The karmic thread of who you are ● How to face the darkness without despair ● Preciousness and unviability ● The artist as role model ● The paradigm of dead objects and the egocentric art world or an alternative: an aesthetic response to the cries of the world ● An alligator named Virgil
Visit: virgilspeaks.com
Enjoy the show! (The interview is about 55 minutes.)
Listen at your convenience!
Click through to buy some of Suzi's books on Amazon right from this site in the sidebar to the left.

Interview with Derrick Jensen

"We need to bring down civilization, because it's killing the planet," says our guest, author and activist Derrick Jensen.
Formerly a college professor and a commercial beekeeper, Jensen's prolific career as an author has given us A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, Endgame, Listening to the Land, Strangely Like War and Walking on Water. He also co-authored Railroads & Clearcuts and Welcome to the Machine: Science, Surveillance, and the Culture of Control. He has written for The New York Times magazine, The Sun, Audubon, and many other publications.
In 2008 Derrick Jensen was named one of Utne Reader's "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World."
We talked about:
Preparation for truth-telling ● Above ground and below ground activism ● The only language destroyers understand ● The essence of Derrick's philosophy and passion ● Normalizing insane behavior ● Reform or revolution? ● What do we need to do? ● Living in the culture of make-believe ● The relationship between eroticism and violence ● Collapse and the shape of things to come ● Hypocrisy in the environmental movement ● Owning prejudices and shifting alliances ● Do we need to harden our hearts or to open them? ● Discernment, compassion, compliance and fierce love
Visit: derrickjensen.org
Enjoy the show! (The interview is about 52 minutes.)
Listen at your convenience!
Click through to buy some of Derrick's books on Amazon right from this site in the sidebar to the left.
This podcast episode contains explicit language.

Interview with John Taylor Gatto

State-run schools don't educate; they inculcate. They dumb people down! John Taylor Gatto gives us a stunning synopsis of his tireless scholarship and long-term experience as an award-winning guerilla educator in New York City public schools.
John Taylor Gatto resigned from school-teaching in the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal, the year he was named New York State Teacher of the Year. Since then, he has traveled three million miles lecturing on why we should abandon and subvert public schools, which deliberately ruin minds and mold lives of obedience to the system. Schools thwart imagination, self-reliance, and individuality and make good, dependent slaves of the industrial-consumer state.
Gatto is author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling; The Underground History of American Education and, most recently, Weapons of Mass Instruction.
We talked about:
The only thing anyone can teach ● The official outlook on human nature ● The chilling Western philosophical movements behind forced schooling ● Compulsory schooling and the University of Berlin ● Sacrificing justice and quality of life for predictable stability ● School, economics, and the social classes ● Overproduction and hyperdemocracy ● Power and the methods of power ● The crime of removing classics from the curricula ● How we will transform ● Superstar entrepreneurs who dropped out of college ● Liberty and the tyranny of measured time
Visit: johntaylorgatto.com
Enjoy the show! (The interview is about 51 minutes.)
Listen at your convenience!
Click through to buy John's book son Amazon right from this site in the sidebar to the left.

Interview with Stella Resnick

Sex and pleasure expert, Stella Resnick, PhD joins us to encourage, inform and delight you! Dr. Resnick is author of The Pleasure Zone: How We Resist Good Feelings and How to Let Go and Be Happy.
She is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Beverly Hills, CA and currently serves on the faculty of the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute. Formerly President of the Western Region of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, Dr. Resnick is a Diplomate of the American Board of Sexology and an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, CE Provider, and Clinical Supervisor, Stella has appeared many times on TV including the Oprah, Leeza, and Montel Williams shows, CNN Live, The O’Reilly Factor, KCBS’ Morning News, and UPN’s Evening News. Her seminar on The Pleasure Zone is featured in the PBS television series Body & Soul in the segment "Ode to Joy".
Stella is frequently quoted in popular magazines; such as, Reader’s Digest, Women’s World, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Playboy, Self, Redbook, McCall’s, Men’s Fitness, Men’s Health, Glamour, Mademoiselle, Family Circle, Parenting, and the Utne Reader. She has written numerous professional papers, and authored cover stories for Self, New Age, and Psychology Today magazines.

We talked about:
Demonizing pleasure in a history of domination ● Fear of peace, fulfillment and pleasure programmed in our nervous systems ● The 8 Core Pleasures and how we resist them ● Pleasure and the stages of human and societal development ● Infant needs and our tenacious early experiences ● Societal health and childhood sexuality ● How we learn to be human ● Two kinds of discipline and your pleasure ● Relearning how to be sexual ● Of what is sexuality an expression? ● Bridging the gap between heart and libido in adult partnerships ● A role for conscious breathing in your life
Visit: drstellaresnick.com
Enjoy the show! (The interview is about 52 minutes.)
Listen at your convenience!
Click through to buy Stella's book on Amazon right from this site in the sidebar to the left.