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Mark Leiren-Young makes waves with our guests, and shares news about Orcas and oceans. Produced by Rayne Ellycrys Benu.
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Latest Podcast Episode:

An Orca's Past and Our Shared Future with Dr. Gavin Hanke at the Royal BC Museum

Gavin Hanke Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Royal BC Museum (@RoyalBCMuseum) on the life, death and anatomy of Rhapsody - the skeletal star of the museum’s fantastic exhibit Orcas: Our Shared Future #RBCMOrcas - which is open until 2022 before touring the world (and was written by Skaana host, Mark Leiren-Young (@leirenyoung).

Julia Barnes on Bright Green Lies and Cars Vs. Fish

Filmmaker, Julia Barnes, on the dirty secrets of clean energy, how electric cars are running over the oceans and her new documentary Bright Green Lies – debuting online April 22 (Earth Day), 2021 https://www.brightgreenlies.com/

The New Corporation writer, Joel Bakan, on Personhood, Psychopaths and Why the World Won’t be Saved by “Nice Corporations.”

Joel Bakan, co-director of The New Corporation, on his Unfortunately Necessary Sequel, why corporations aren’t our friends and the reason corporations are considered persons, but orcas aren’t.

Carl Safina on Animal Culture, Sperm Whale Society and Cetacean Communication

Carl Safina (@carlsafina) author of Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace talks about the culture of animals, the worlds of whale and sharing the planet -with @Skaanapod host Mark Leiren-Young (@leirenyoung).

New Years wishes for humans and fishes from Erich Hoyt, Joel Bakan, Marc Bekoff, Carl Safina, Julia Barnes, Robbie Bond & Team Skaana

Skaana guests Erich Hoyt, Robbie Bond, Joel Bakan, Carl Safina, Julia Barnes, Marc Bekoff & the Skaana team share our wishes for a very new New Year in 2021.

Orca Love, Orca Mysteries & Orcas Everywhere with Mark Leiren-Young

Skaana (Skaanapod) host Mark Leiren-Young shares stories from the audio version of his award-winning book for orca lovers of all ages – Orcas Everywhere: The Mystery and History of Killer Whales (orcaseverywhere.com).

Words of Wisdom from our Guests:

Alexandra Morton
“We talk about robbing from future generations, but I have an 18 month old grandson,  and it’s really hard to look him in the eyes because we are taking away everything that I love and that he would love. We’re taking away the richness of life. We’re taking away the ability to survive. It really is a form of insanity that we do not act on this.”
Aube Giroux
“We have a right to know what is in our food and what is being sold to us.”
Caitlyn Vernon
“There doesn’t need to be a dichotomy between protecting postage-stamp areas over here, and then over here, we’re just going to do status-quo, business as usual. We can look at conservation holistically. We can ensure that outside of conservation areas, business that happens operates within ecological limits. ”
Camille Labchuck
“We’ve got this obligation to animals as a society to try to help them if we can.”
Dag Ingemar Børresen
"And of course also because they knew fifty years earlier that they had to stop whaling if it was going to be sustainable...if they wanted it to be sustainable.  So they were quite clear about what they were doing, but they didn't stop it."
David Neiwert
“The fight to decide what kind of humans we are going to be, what kind of world are we going to make? Are we gonna be empathetic, decent, kind generous people, or are we going to be cruel and greedy and mean? Or do we want to believe that we can continue to control the world as its lord and master? Or do we maybe need to understand that we are just part of the world and need to find a better way of fitting into it?”
David Suzuki

“But if we live in a world of alternate truth, then we really have entered an Orwellian world of 1984, where you can tell people literally 2 + 2 = 5 and people will believe it.  And we’re at that point now.  You only have to look at the Trump use of facts.” 

Dr Andrew Weaver
“I dream of a time when we don’t have Food Banks.  They shouldn’t be necessary.  If you had a level of basic income, you wouldn’t need to have some of the services that we have to support people who can’t make ends meet. With a level of basic income, it helps people during downtimes and lets them rise above.  So it levels the playing field.  It eliminates student debt.” 
Dr. Jason Colby
Author
"The region that loves them is poisoning them and starving them."
Dr. Lori Marino
Neuroscientist, animal behaviour expert, founder and executive director of The Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy and founder and President of the Whale Sanctuary Project
"People do not want to see orcas in concrete tanks."
Dyna Tuytel
“Ecojustice is a national environmental organization, so we have offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Ottawa, and our mandate is to use the law to protect and restore the environment, mostly through litigation.  And we try to prioritize cases where we can set a precedent, so one case can have a broader impact beyond the specific facts of that case.” 
Elizabeth May
"All whales matter. All cetaceans matter. All life matters."
Eric Hoyt
 "If you get to know them as individuals, you get this attachment and it's beautiful."
Fin Donnelly
"People don’t always realize just how important the ocean is in terms of producing clean air and doing so many things, maintaining a healthy environment and stable climate to create the conditions that humans need."
Kelly Iriye
“Since the creation of the orca task force everyone says a lot of congratulations but nobody has decided to actually do anything.”
Ken Balcomb
“J-50 is just another example in this story of starvation and ecosystem collapse”
Kriss Kevorkian
The lessons I find from grief – and from death – are appreciating what we have in the now.
Leah Abramson
“I started researching orcas and was just sort of fascinated by them and their whole social structure and everything. Everything that I researched, I just kept going down rabbit holes until I knew that I had to make some kind of project.”
Mark Leiren-Young
Mark Leiren-Young, who has a background in pretty much everything — journalism, television, comedy, theatre and film- is without a doubt one of the most talented, multi-disciplinary voices in Canada. – Vanessa Farquharson, National Post.
Michael Moore
"I don’t use the words ‘political activist,’ because I think it’s redundant. If I’m a citizen of a democracy, it means I’m automatically a political activist. I have to be. All of us have to be. If we’re not active, it ceases to be a democracy."
Paul Watson
“We’re killing these incredibly beautiful, socially complex, sentient creatures for the purpose of making a weapon meant for the mass extermination of human beings. And that’s when it struck me we’re insane, as a species we’re insane. And that’s when I said I’ll never do anything for people. I’m going to do this for them. (whales)”
Peter Wohlleben
"We have to bring more emotions into the process and the discussions about environmental things and climate change. Because when we just discuss the numbers, it’s emotionally so far away. It doesn’t touch your heart, just your mind."
Rayne Ellycrys Benu
Rayne Ellycrys Benu is an award-winning filmmaker of the short documentary The Hundred-Year-Old Whale and producer of the Skaana Podcast. A multidisciplinary artist and student of human nature, she has had a lifelong passion for our living earth that began when she was six and wanted to backpack from Ontario to BC to join Greenpeace
Rob Stewart
"I think the way I can best serve the planet and the environment is just educating people. If I bring everybody up in their knowledge of what’s going on, then they’ll elect different people."
Robert Bateman
“A lot of doing art, and I guess anything, is perspiration rather than inspiration.”
Ta’Kaiya Blaney

"Activism doesn't have to just look like one thing. It can be art, it can be creative resistance, it can be social-media-based. Do what you love to protect what you love."

Zoe Hopkins
Award winning director
“The ocean is a planetary issue, not a First Nations issue.”

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The Latest
Rhapsody Orca Breaching
Orcas: Our Shared Future at the Royal BC Museum (Victoria, Canada)
Discussing the “Charming” Psychopathy of Corporations with Filmmaker Joel Bakan
World Whale Day- Online Event
Carl Safina Talks Critter Culture, Communication and Complexity of Animal Emotions on Skaana
2020 Ten Squared Exhibition
Perpetual Motion Productions Inc.
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