interesting podcast about animals and our relationship with them (This American Life with Ira Glass)
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/480/animal-sacrifice
Very interesting podcast about dogs and our relationship with them. Good to listen to while you're doing desk work
-----
Just to give more info on it, the podcast is basically a series of short narrated stories about the different relationships people have with animals in all different situations. The intro is a short biblical reference to our relationship with animals back then. How people used to sacrifice the best animal in their care.
Then there's a very sad but interesting story about dogs in the war, how America created a program, "Dogs for Defence" asking owners to volunteer their pets to serve in the war. This story is probably the saddest, for obvious reasons. There's a mention of how some dog's were trained to be used as suicide bombers, and how these dogs happily did their duty because they trust us, not knowing what they're doing this for. If you don't want to listen to that part, you can skip ahead to 26:00
The next story after that is a journalist turned butcher's insight into feelings and reactions towards raising and killing your own animals for food.
Lastly, the last story is about Ira's dog Piney, who is an extremely high maintenance pittie who gets allergic to almost everything he eats and can't help but be aggressive towards people including the Ira and his wife. Basically Ira, the host, shares his experiences living and caring for a high maintenance dog, and how it affects their lives and how he didn't realize how crazy his lifestyle choices are to the outsider. We're sometimes so invested and love our animal so much, we sacrifice so much without even realizing it.
I like this quote:
"It's a hard thing to spend so much energy trying to protect a helpless creature, or a helpless person, or anything that's helpless. It's a hard thing to turn that off. Once you've been protecting it, your mind is used to protecting it. And the thought that you wouldn't protect it just becomes offensive to who you are. You can't flip off that part of yourself like it's a light switch."
Anyway, just thought I'd share this podcast. It'll draw out almost all your emotions and you'll be able to relate to a lot of the stories.
Very interesting podcast about dogs and our relationship with them. Good to listen to while you're doing desk work
-----
Just to give more info on it, the podcast is basically a series of short narrated stories about the different relationships people have with animals in all different situations. The intro is a short biblical reference to our relationship with animals back then. How people used to sacrifice the best animal in their care.
Then there's a very sad but interesting story about dogs in the war, how America created a program, "Dogs for Defence" asking owners to volunteer their pets to serve in the war. This story is probably the saddest, for obvious reasons. There's a mention of how some dog's were trained to be used as suicide bombers, and how these dogs happily did their duty because they trust us, not knowing what they're doing this for. If you don't want to listen to that part, you can skip ahead to 26:00
The next story after that is a journalist turned butcher's insight into feelings and reactions towards raising and killing your own animals for food.
Lastly, the last story is about Ira's dog Piney, who is an extremely high maintenance pittie who gets allergic to almost everything he eats and can't help but be aggressive towards people including the Ira and his wife. Basically Ira, the host, shares his experiences living and caring for a high maintenance dog, and how it affects their lives and how he didn't realize how crazy his lifestyle choices are to the outsider. We're sometimes so invested and love our animal so much, we sacrifice so much without even realizing it.
I like this quote:
"It's a hard thing to spend so much energy trying to protect a helpless creature, or a helpless person, or anything that's helpless. It's a hard thing to turn that off. Once you've been protecting it, your mind is used to protecting it. And the thought that you wouldn't protect it just becomes offensive to who you are. You can't flip off that part of yourself like it's a light switch."
Anyway, just thought I'd share this podcast. It'll draw out almost all your emotions and you'll be able to relate to a lot of the stories.