Announcing a new animal advocacy podcast: How I Learned to Love Shrimp

By JamesÖz, AmyOdene @ 2023-04-13T09:32 (+187)

Calling all animal-interested folks! Excited to share that we've launched a new animal-focused podcast series. How I Learned to Love Shrimp is a podcast about promising ways to help animals and build the animal advocacy movement. We showcase interesting and exciting ideas within animal advocacy and will release bi-weekly, hour-long interviews with people who are working on these projects.

We start the series with an introductory episode with Amy and I discussing why we wanted to start this podcast, the topics we want to cover, and some of our own views on various thorny animal advocacy topics. Our first proper episode is with Dave Coman-Hidy, former President of The Humane League. In this, we discuss the age-old debate of welfare vs abolitionism, the pros and cons of measurability, as well as promising strategies Dave is keen to see more of within animal advocacy. 

You can check out the episodes across all major providers (e.g. Spotify, Google Podcasts & Apple Podcasts) and also access them on our website. 

Please let us know what you think, give us guest recommendations and share with anyone who you think could be interested to hear. You can contact us via Twitter, our website or email at hello@howilearnedtoloveshrimp.com. Enjoy!

JP Addison @ 2023-04-13T20:51 (+10)

What a name. I love it. 

About to get on a plane, excited to give it a listen!

Sarah Cheng @ 2023-04-27T04:12 (+6)

I'm enjoying the podcast so far! One suggestion: I'd love if you could put links in the episode description for all the things you bring up during the episode (books, newsletters, articles, etc.), to make them easier to reference.

James Özden @ 2023-05-05T21:07 (+5)

Thank you for the kind words and great feedback! This initially slipped our mind but tanks to your comment, we're now doing so :)

MaxRa @ 2023-04-17T06:49 (+5)

Nice, thanks for the work on this! Fwiw, when I first saw the title I thought this podcast would exclusively cover shrimps, and only reading the post’s summary from Zoe made me realize that doesn’t seem to be the case. Could imagine that it’d be worth changing the name if you want to target a larger audience.

Vincent van der Holst @ 2023-05-31T16:20 (+1)

FWIW I have a marketing/branding background and I think the name of the podcast is amazing and wanted to flag here that I wouldn't change it. The name is meant as a hook to draw you in and start listening and it does that really well. A more inclusive name is less likely to get people in. The way I read the name is as follows: nobody thinks about, let alone love, shrimps, and it really wants to make you learn what you mean and why it matters. Each podcast has another title you can use to cover other subjects, so once you're drawn in by the title you'll quickly learn it's not only about shrimp. You could also take 20 seconds in the intro of the podcast to explain why the title is what it is and mention you're not only about shrimps. 

I might still be wrong. I run a lot of AB tests and I'm very often wrong, so you might want to do the same with a couple names to see what gets people to listen. 

Anyways, love this project and the name, keep doing what you're doing!

MMathur @ 2023-05-05T21:36 (+3)

Great podcast! I enjoyed your episode on Swiss legislative efforts. Given how great your title and logo are, consider selling swag? ;) 

Vincent van der Holst @ 2023-05-31T16:23 (+1)

@James Özden if you consider this also consider using print on demand TPOP in combination with shopify. Hyper easy to set up, no up front costs, great designs, ships directly to customers and organic cotton. You can see an example from us here: https://boas.co/pages/this-is

Gabriel Mukobi @ 2023-04-20T15:59 (+3)

Excited for this!

Nit: your logo seems to show the shrimp a bit curled up, which iirc is a sign that they're dead and not a happy freely living shrimp (though it's good thay they're blue and not red).

Some discussion of this consideration in this thread: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bBoKBFnBsPvoiHuaT/announcing-the-ea-merch-store?commentId=jaqayJuBonJ5K7rjp

James Özden @ 2023-04-21T14:02 (+2)

Thanks for the feedback! We actually ran this by some people who thought it was okay but on second thought, it does look a bit too curled up for our liking. We'll be changing it shortly so thanks for the nudge :)

Vasco Grilo @ 2023-04-15T10:31 (+3)

Thanks for sharing!

I think shrimp is quite underrated. According to this BOTEC, they are the most important group of farmed animals.

James Herbert @ 2023-04-21T09:34 (+2)

Great name, instantly makes me want to share it with others! 

david_reinstein @ 2023-04-15T13:35 (+2)

Enjoying it, and learning a lot. I was worried at first that it would involve lots of small talk and rambling but it really gets into some interesting content and stories pretty quickly.

One question: will you return to answer the title question? I want to hear more about shrimps.

(Also I am being more pc than the hosts here and language policing, but Michael st Jules told me you should call them “shrimps” and not “shrimp” bc of their individuality. But maybe you are referring to how you used to think of them?)

MichaelStJules @ 2023-04-15T14:16 (+2)

FWIW, I don't have strong views on shrimp vs shrimps, and I wouldn't be surprised if this use of language would distract from more important points or even give negative impressions to some people, so could be net negative.

Mary Finelli @ 2023-04-23T21:26 (+1)

Why have you entitled it this? I can't find anything about the title on your site. Love shrimp in what way(s)? 

JamieGittins @ 2023-04-21T14:01 (+1)

This is really cool! I'm excited to listen :) 

Tom Dlal @ 2023-04-14T23:27 (+1)

Excited to give this a listen!

Just FYI, the YouTube link at the bottom of your website doesn't work for me.

Bryan Hanlon @ 2023-04-14T15:06 (+1)

Awesome! The 80,000 Hours podcasts on animal welfare were very important for my understanding of this issue, so I think this is an exciting addition to the movement. I can’t wait to listen soon!

Ula Zarosa @ 2023-04-14T14:23 (+1)

We discussed the episode with David yesterday at our meetup and we really loved it. A lot of people agree with some of his views, and we were trying to draw some conclusions on the next steps for the animal movement. Super useful! Therefore, can't wait for the next episode. Hopefully coming soon? :) Thanks for doing it <3 
Also: love the name, love the branding!!!