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Conservation Of Education - Micah Siegel · UK Column Radio

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Hello, and welcome to the UK Column. Today, I have a very
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special guest, and that is Micah Siegel. Micah is twelve years old and
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he's from Bethesda in Maryland. Welcome to the program, Micah. I'm really
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excited to be here. Super Now, anybody that's been paying attention will may
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recognize the name Siegel because your father has been an interviewee on this program as
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well, and that's David Siegel. So I'm going to say thank you very
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much for joining us today. Now, Micah, we're going to talk about
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two main topics. You've produced a report on conservation, but first of all,
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we want to talk a little bit about education, because you are pursuing
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a slightly unorthodox shall we say crack in terms of education, in the sense
1:02
that you have decided to leave mainstream education completely. Yeah. I dropped out
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of seventh grade to start my own school. Well, first I want to
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explain why I did that. So I started off in public school, and
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it's all about teaching to the test and grades, evaluating how good you are
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and how smart you are by score, which is really not how it works.
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And I also noticed that the teachers aren't really smart people. They're not
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people. They're not economists, they're not scientists, they're not mathematicians. They're
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mostly people who are good around kids. They're babysitters mostly. Yeah, it's
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a learning free zone. It's not about learning. Learning is just the excuse
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that they use to make it feel important. But it's daycare for kids while
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the parents go do their job and go to work. I think that's really
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true. In the UK, for example, they're nice talking about offering school
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children the opportunity to come to school from seven o'clock in the morning until six
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pm in the afternoon. Yeah. I mean that's quite a day for a
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youngster, and it's just become so normal, nobody questions it at all.
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And you know, it is really taking years of my life away. And
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when COVID hit, it was a miracle. I had about a year of
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freedom. Because most kids will agree with this, because most kids will agree
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that school is the worst and and COVID sort of was the antidote us.
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It made the schools sort of fall apart and go to online and school is
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now on a computer and kids had more power when they're on a computer,
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and all the kids from their camera off is a rule on zoom that you
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can't force someone turn their camera on. That's illegal. So all the kids
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had their camera off. They were playing video games the whole entire class.
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The only person who didn't me too. The only person who didn't was the
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teacher. That was all year. I could be a kid, and I
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had so much more time. I felt like days went so much shorter because
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I wasn't just sitting in a classroom going okay, class, go to page
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thirty five anymore. And then when that was over, it was sixth grade.
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And in middle school there's like ten x amount of tests and stupid scores.
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And also COVID wasn't entirely over, but mostly so they made eight year
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olds and up take COVID shots, which is insane. So I really couldn't
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handle it. And it's at this point it's taken like three years out of
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my life, like seven hours every day. It's terrible. And I thought,
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maybe if you pay money, maybe if there's a transaction, then the
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school will give you real education. That's private school. But I realized something
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else, and I'll explain what I did. So they are about a dozen
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private schools in DC that are about fifty thousand dollars every year for middle schools,
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and I applied to one basically for fun, the Field School, and
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I had to write an essay which was which I decided was about the Hexico
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Personality test. Well, it takes into account six factors and makes a personality
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profile of yourself. I took that profile and made an analysis of that profile
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and wrote about it in the essay about how I thought my personality was compared
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to what the personality test said I was. And I got in. These
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are really hard to get into, so you know, and I learned more
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about the school. Because I was just doing it for fun, I didn't
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really know much about it. I learned more about the school and I realized
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where the fifty thousand dollars a year is going is to get kids into big,
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famous colleges and universities. It's still tests and scores. The only difference
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is after you go to Harvard, but that's overrated and so at the same
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time, at the same time, my brother Shy found this new awesome school,
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the Socratic Experience, and it's online but it works, and the motivation
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for learning there is learning because you're actually interested in learning. Learning isn't a
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ure and the kids are excited to wake up at on Monday morning and go
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to school. There are no tests, there are no grades, and it's
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not about and the teachers are actually really smart. They're really economists, real
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scientists, and real mathematicians. And it's a lot it's called the Socratic experience.
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There's a lot of conversations and discussions, and there's lots of questions,
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what's a typical day like? Because I understood that you're mostly teaching yourself.
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Is that correct? Well, that's later. That's when I started my own
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school. But anyway, now, me and my brother were really enjoying this
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school about half a year until summer break came, and then they gave us
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an assignment to read a book and write about what you learned in that book.
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Most kids were reading Alice in Wonderland and twelve year old stuff, but
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I decided to read Jordan Peterson's Twelve Rules for Life. I was always very
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inspired by people like David Goggins and George Carlin and Jordan Peterson and Simon Sinek,
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people who are changing the world. Were very smart and very hard working.
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That changed me. I wanted to be just like them, but I
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didn't want to just play video games all day for the rest of the summer.
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That assignment was pretty quick. It took like ten days, So so
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I didn't want to just spend three months forgetting everything I learned for that half
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a year at the Socratic Experience, and I wanted to do a project that
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used my interests like school. Never could My interest is animals. Ever since
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I was a little kid, I was fascinated by animals. I asked questions
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like why do zebras have stripes, Why are giraffes next so long? Why
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can't owls ugh? Why can owls from their head three hundred and sixty degrees?
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I was very fascinated by them, and I always got really really mad
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when I saw them being killed by humans. What do you think about them?
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Well, I think about animals. I think animals are wonderful, and
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it also makes me mid when they're killed by humans. But I have to
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admit, Micah, I regret to say I am a complete carnivore, and
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so I do eat them. Do you have pets? Yes, we have
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a cat. No no, no, no no me. My brother and
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my mom are vegetarian and my dad is vegan, so you could say that,
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so you could say the whole animals thing runs in the family. Yeah,
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but I heard I heard a rumor you do like the taste. Yes,
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I do like the taste. And when I was at eleven, I
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switched. So that was about a year ago I switched. Actually, I'm
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turning thirteen in one month, so two years ago I switched. But before
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that I was an evil carnivore. So I'm trying to make up for all
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the bad things I've done. You were taking part in the Socratic experience.
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How did that then move on to setting up your own school? Well,
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so, like I said, my interest is animals, and I wanted to
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do a project that used my interest like school never could. And so me
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and dad were talking and discussing this. We thought maybe we should start maybe
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we should start a podcast to interview people who do know and do understand the
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situation. And so I contacted this guy, rhino expert, Marcus hofmar He
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was in South Africa at the time, and he told me all sorts of
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things about rhino horns, rhinos, the demand for their horns, the fact
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that it's worth more than gold at this point, and traditional Chinese medicine and
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demand as sculptures in Southeast Asia. And he also talked about his main conservation
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technique that he's working on right now, which is de horning them, cutting
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off the horns so that there's no demand by the poachers to kill them.
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So basically, so the rhinos aren't worth anything to the poachers, and it
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doesn't hurt the rhino to cut off their horns. It's made of their horns
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are made of keratin, which is same as your fingernails. So anyway,
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every every animal is it different? Is it different, has a different problem,
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is in a different situation, has different reasons for demand and different prices.
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Yeah, so Marcus, Marcus talked to me about a dude, Peter
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Lindsay, who is who is doing stuff on lions, And then he told
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me about a dude who's doing stuff on wild dogs and so on. So
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I just kept picking up the breadcrumbs and following the trail, and I realized
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I was so much more interested in this school just felt boring, and I
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was learning so much more about what I wanted to learn about from my podcast
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than from school. So me and Dad were thinking one night, if the
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perfect school for me doesn't exist already, if someone hasn't already made it,
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then then we have to make it ourselves. So we made the website designed
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the principles. There are two main principles really for Rogue Scholar Academy, which
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are one that you have a mentor that is helping you out with the project
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and knows all about the field and the topic. I have an example.
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I went to Denver, Colorado to meet my aunt Carlo Bartel Carla Bartel,
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who is one of the best realtor agents realtors in all of Colorado. Every
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single one of these projects has a mentor like that who knows all about it
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and is willing to help and explain along the way. And the second rule
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is that it can't be just something that I learned and I experienced in next
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project. It has to be something that other people can learn from. Two.
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Other people can see, other people can read, other people can watch
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the video of So in Denver, Colorado, I'm making a documentary about it,
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and with the State of the Animals Report, I'm making a report about
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it so other people can learn what I've learned and go through the same experience.
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And I propose that idea to my teachers at the Socratic experience. You
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won't believe this, they said, Micah, this is amazing. You have
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to do this. They care more about the kids at their school than how
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successful the school is. They're willing to have the kids have a better education
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than have kids at their school. So January second the first day of Rogue
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Scholar Academy for me, and it started with the State of the Animals Report.
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My guide for that is Jim Steele, a Nature wild ecologists who helped
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me along the way with all the biology of inbreeding and genetic diversity and coral
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bleaching and all sorts of interesting things. That's fantastic. So you've produced a
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State of the Animals Report. It's just released and it's a fantastic piece of
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work. Actually. So the intention for this report is that anybody that's of
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your age can come along read the report and what experience to what degree did
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they experience what you experienced as you developed the report. Well, it's actually
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not for kids. Kids aren't really high level or in advance enough to read
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it. It's more for scientists and conservationists like Marcus Hofmeier. It's about demystifying
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the situation and taking away and tackling all the misconceptions like since nineteen sixty the
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polar bear population was ten thousand individuals. How much do you think it is
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change since then? Well, unfortunately, I've read the report, so I
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know the answer. But so that's an unfair question. But I so I'm
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going to say, if I was to believe the madstream media, I would
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say that that number must be lower. Yeah, most people would say that
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it's halved or something, that polar bears are melting, that they're dying.
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It's tripled. They have thirty thousand now. And this is true for a
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lot of animals. And there's a lot of fear mongering and misconceptions from marketing
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of conservation organizations because they're willing to exaggerate the situation to make you pay them
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money so they can do this conservation. To give one example, on your
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website, you're talking about the next thirty years and you're talking about people living
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ten years longer. But the population rising to nine point seven billion or so
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that of course, or will it put how much pressure is going to put
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on the natural environment. I have this part in the habitat Loss chapter about
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jesse osbel which jesse osbell May had this talk where he called Nature's Nature is
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rebounding, where he says actually that we have passed peak farmland and farmland is
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now shrinking because technology is advancing so rapidly that we need less farmland to make
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the same, if not more crops. So with technology, as technology advances,
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it'll become more efficient to house nine point seven billion people and all the
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things that they do. But the population will go up, but I think
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it'll level off pretty well. I think it'll stay about the same. Yes,
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I think one of the things that you were talking about in was deforestation,
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and I suppose one of the things that worries me a little bit is
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that if we look at the UK and Europe and the United States, we're
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seeing lots of pressure on farmers to reduce farming and to return a lot of
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farmland back to to rewild a lot of farmland. But of course we still
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we have growing population still in these countries and therefore we need to still maintain
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some degree of food production. But actually in the UK, as an example,
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we have lots of food being imported, and it's being imported from some
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of the countries that you're talking about in your report that are experiencing massive deforestation,
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and I suppose my worry there is that is that situation is not going
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to improve because we are significantly reducing our food production locally, while the technology
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isn't quite there to to support the population at the rit it is growing still
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in our country, for example. It's a legitimate concern, but I think
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it's being managed well. I learned about palm oil and Indonesia, and there's
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a big misconception that it's taking over. But if you look at the graph
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that I have in the ringutin chapter, it's actually the amount expanded the palm
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oil area every year has decreased significantly and it's way past its peak in two
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thousand and nine. So yeah, it has been a problem, but it's
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not affecting orangutans anymore because they're not expanding anymore. The ring tings there have
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already been killed. If they expand more, they'll kill more, But as
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long as they don't, they won't be killing anymore. The real problem for
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rangutans is the pet trade, the demand in China and Thailand and the no
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to own them as pets. It's very cruel, but about one thousand every
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year exported for this reason. Okay, so you're not pessimistic about the situation
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with respect to deforestation and farming and the impact that's having on the natural world.
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Mostly, I think as the quality of life of people increases, so
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does the outdoors because once their lives come first, once they've dealt with all
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their basic needs food and water and home, then they think about helping other
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people in the environment. No, one of the other things in the report
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that I was interested in was elephants, because of course, in recent weeks
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we've seen was it Botswana talking about Germany sending elephants to Germany in a comment
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about the German government talking about uh will hunters going to Botswana? Is that?
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Is that what the story was. So it's called sustainable use, and
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it's it's not exactly a new concept, but it's new to me, and
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I really liked the idea. It's that you sacrifice. Well, conservation is
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all about money, and the more money you have, the more elephants,
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for example, you can make and protect, and elephants happen to be a
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really really good way to make money there. You can get about one hundred
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thousand dollars for one trophy hunt of an elephant, So that's what Botswana is
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doing. They're sacrificing zero point two five percent of their elephants trophy hunting,
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specifically older males who are finished reproducing, and taking those millions of dollars they
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get from those elephants and spending it on protecting the ninety nine percent of the
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elephants left. But it's designed so that the people manage it, not the
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government. In that way, there's an incentive to stop the poachers from getting
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the elephants for the ivory I'm selling. Ivory is still illegal from sites,
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so they haven't been doing that yet. Sustainable trade is another thing and has
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a lot of problems, for example, the certification problem, and also there's
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counterfeit that they can do. A lot of people will be surprised that you've
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that you've said that. I know someone who was providing the oils for the
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Harry Potter films, But in his previous life he was responsible for looking after
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deer herds in the UK and he would, as part of his job,
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cull a certain number of deer every year in order to maintain the population at
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a reasonable level, but also to remove the sick and the injured from the
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pub population, and that He was very clear that this was exactly the right
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way to manage herds, and that seems to be pretty much the approach that
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the people in Botswana are taking. Is that right? It's about the economics.
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Let's look at Kenya for example. Kenya's system doesn't allow any trophy hunting,
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any trade at all. Well, the other one doesn't, but it's
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all about law enforcement and making rules, lots of rules. They don't believe
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in sacrificing a bit of elephants to make money to make more elephants. That
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just seems wrong and they're a bit stubborn. In Kenya they went from having
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about one hundred and fifty thousand elephants since the nineteen fifties to fifteen thousand elephants.
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And in Botswana they went from having about fifteen thousand elephants to one hundred
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and thirty thousand elephants. So they have opposite approaches and opposite results. That
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is a fascinating statistic. Is there anybody in the concert world that is recognizing
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that and commenting on us. Lots many people are just stubborn and just don't
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believe in killing animals. Even if you're killing animals, if you don't kill
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that animal for trophy hunting. Many people just won't get over the fact,
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won't get over the killing part, won't get over the trophy hunting. But
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it's becoming sites in the ICN, and lots of organizations and conservationists are becoming
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more and more aware of it every day. As more and more conservationists like
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Grant Folds, like Ryan Child are talking about it and working with it,
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and as the number of elephants goes up, and as the overpopulation of elephants
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in Botswana becomes more and more of a threat, countries have to allow the
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taking by the trophy hunter of the trophy of the elephant like the head or
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the tusks back home. Many countries don't and that stops the trophy hunting from
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being so valuable. So Botswana is working on PR and marketing and getting this
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out there to change that. Yeah, as you said a second ago,
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they and I have an elephant population that is growing so large that it is
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becoming a bit of a problem for them, and the elephants are damaging crops
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and so on. So on the long term, what are they saying.
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They are really relying on the expansion of this of this new business. Is
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that right? It's really hard to move elephants. You know how the President
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of Botswana threatened to send twenty thousand elephants to Germany. That's not happening.
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That was a lie. It would cost maybe one hundred million dollars to do
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that. It's super expensive to move elephants and they can't. The problem is
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you can't just walk them over to a neighboring country. They don't want to
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do that. They're happy in Botswana. Mozambique is a country that that doesn't
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that has the opposite of ideas of Botswana, and will most likely just kill
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the elephants. The government will take the money instead of the people owning the
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elephants. It's about ownership and the Mozambique government. Well, the problem with
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sustainable sustainable use is that it relies a lot on the government being really good,
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and most countries aren't good enough to have to do sustainable trade, sustainable
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use and support it well, like Botswana has and a lot of them are
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really stubborn, like Kenya, and like Botswana's communists, and they just want
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more power. They want to control their their people and take all the tax
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money and everything. Yeah, I think this, No, that's right.
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The space route, yeah, mozamb Beaca has lots of space for elephants.
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It's synormous, but the government isn't good enough to handle them. I think
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this is a problem all across the world, Micah, that people have good
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ideas and governments mess them up. And governments just tend to get in the
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way of good ideas in general. So unfortunately, it seems to be a
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rule that a good government is needed for anything to happen these days, and
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sadly we don't have very much of that around. But what about big cats?
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Then I'll talk about lions. So lions have this sort of designed life
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cycle that it's called canned hunting. Canned hunting is it's mostly in South Africa.
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There are twelve thousand lions in canned hunting facilities in South Africa and it's
25:48
just factory producing lions for trophy hunting. And the reason they do this with
25:56
cats, they do this with tigers too. The reason they do this with
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cats like lions, but not other species like rhinos and elephants, is because
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cats are pretty good in captivity. You have a pet cat, right,
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so, but elephants are not elephants are also much more destructive, so they
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use cats and instead of just taking them from the wild, they mass produce
26:19
them, factory produce them in cages. But there's a life cycle. There's
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there's four parts to the lion's life in captivity. First, it's a baby,
26:30
and it's and there's cuddling. You can play with the line, you
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can pet it, it won't hurt anyone. There's lots of demand for that.
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The lion has a pretty good life for about six months while it's doing
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this, and then there's lion walks, so that's like one step away,
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so you can't touch the line anymore, but you can walk really close with
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it. This is when it's got teeth fully grown and it's much bigger and
26:57
stronger and more aggressive, so no one wants to cuddle that thing anymore.
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Also, it's really dangerous. So then about after about half a year of
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that, then the quality of life for the line falls off a cliff.
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They go into complete captivity and the whole goal of what they're trying to do
27:22
with the lion is to make more lions and reproduce with that lines. That's
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its job for about a year and it's just in a cage, super tiny
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cage, very small, smallest you can make it, and it's just yeah,
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and that's its life to make more lions for about a year. And
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it's really bad. This is a really bad part. And then it goes
27:45
to trophy hunting. Trophy hunter comes over, pays five to ten thousand dollars
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to shoot it and take some parts back home. There's another problem about that,
27:55
but I don't get into it. A lot of times these lines are
27:57
drugged. They're in a small and easy to shoot, and so it gets
28:03
shot. But there's demand in Asia for its body parts, particularly its bone
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and its skin, because limebone is a lot like tiger bone, and tigerbone
28:15
is very special in Asian culture, Southeast Asian culture, they have tiger bone
28:22
wine and all sorts of weird things that don't help but are supposed to cure
28:26
cancer and brain tumors and heart disease and all sorts of stuff. But so
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it's sold there because this is illegal. These are not conservationists. This is
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canned hunting. They do do the trade, and also the skins are sold
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illegally. Yeah, I'm sorry, where did you say that was that was
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happening? Go South Africa. Yeah, twelve thousand lines in canned hunting facilities
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in South Africa. Wow, that's that's true. Project. I have to
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admit I was not even aware that that was going on in that style.
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Seeing the two approaches with respect to elephants and NOI this third one with respect
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to lions are not. Are there no countries that are focusing mainly on tourism
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and safari? There are that's actually Kenya and Tanzania. So Tanzania as this
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has very luxurious, very expensive, rich billionaire clubs and lodges for people to
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stay and take super expensive, luxurious safaris and take photos of animals there.
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That sort of works, but Kenya does sort of a whole mix of everything,
29:40
so they also do cheap stuff that doesn't really work. Cheap safaris like
29:47
three day little safari, go on rent a car and stuff. That stuff
29:52
doesn't work as well. And that's why Kenya isn't. Kenya doesn't want to
29:57
do the trophy hunting thing because they're stubborn and they don't want to kill animals,
30:02
so they do the safari thing. It doesn't work because it's not luxurious
30:06
and expensive like Tanzania. Yeah, and there's also a lot of pressure from
30:10
NGOs to not be like Botswana. These are like the stubborn people. Yeah,
30:15
so which which ENGOs do you have in mind? Are you able to
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say which which NGOs are are being stubborn? Are we talking about the World
30:23
Wildlife Fund for example, that's one of them? For sure, Worldlife World
30:27
Wildlife Fund does a lot of misconceptions and misinformation. Watch out for that.
30:33
Conservation International is another example of people who just can't get over the moral stuff
30:38
of killing an elephant, even though they're sort of killing it by not taking
30:42
the money and not even investing it into making more elephants. Okay, so
30:47
we've talked about elephants, we talked about big cats, We've talked about polar
30:51
bears. What about coral because lots of stuff about caral in the in the
30:56
mainstream media and bleaching of carl and so on, so that this is devastating
31:03
for the coral reefs. What is the situation with coral? Coral bleaching is
31:07
a lie. First of all, Coral bleaching has to do with the zoozanc
31:12
de lie, which allows photosynthesis by the coral which lives inside the coral,
31:18
and they work together. It's a symbiotic relationship and they switch the corals switch
31:26
out which zanc de lie they have depending on different factors. Right, Sorry,
31:30
hold on, you said zoo zanc delae. Is that correct? Uh
31:34
huh. It's a type of it's a type of algae. It does photosynthesis
31:41
for the corals, and when they're in the process of switching to a different
31:47
zooxanc delie, they lose their color. That's coral bleaching. Now, corals
31:52
that are bleached look a lot like corals that are dead. But corals are
32:00
living animals, and you can do tests and we found that most of them
32:05
are real, live corals that have been bleached. It's not really the right
32:09
word. That's just the word that they use. Because they're in the process
32:13
of switching zoos anc delyi. They can go for months and months without zoos
32:17
anc deli completely white, and then they can get a zoos anc ly and
32:22
completely change color to like green and orange. Yeah, it's been happening for
32:25
three hundred and fifty million years. This is normal. It's not a new
32:30
thing. They're not dying. I spoke with a pretty famous coral reef expert,
32:37
doctor Peter Ridd who says that we are at peak coral capacity, peak
32:44
coral population right now in the Great Barrier Reef, and ocean acidification is the
32:52
next thing. So the ocean in the well, it's just like these words
32:58
like bleaching in the cityication. It sounds so scary, but it's really not.
33:02
Mineral pH is seven. pH is the measurement for acidity and alkalinity of
33:08
the ocean. So above seven is alkaline alkalinity, below seven is acidity.
33:20
Now the ocean is currently at eight point two or something, and it went
33:28
to eight point one over like one hundred years. Apparently they call this ocean
33:35
acidification, but it's still alkaline. It's still on eight. It's still past
33:40
seven. So it's more like it's you can't say it's acidification. That's only
33:46
if it's like getting more acidic. If it's like already in acidity and it's
33:51
getting more acidic, it's getting less alkaline alkaline, right, So they just
33:58
use lots of words to make you scared. Oceans are naturally about eight,
34:04
and there's natural variation. They go from eight to eight to seven point nine
34:09
to eight point one. This is normal and it happens all the time.
34:14
Roles have been going through these sorts of things for three hundred and fifty million
34:17
years. If we're at pig coral of the Barrier reef, what is the
34:25
what's the reason that we're being told that the corals in danger? They are?
34:30
Then there's a lot of this stuff. There's I call it fear mongering
34:36
where look, a lot of these conservation organizations are sort of a scam.
34:43
WWF is one of them. They want they want to give you misinformation,
34:49
get your money, and act. They're saying they're promising saving the corals and
34:55
saving the polar bears. There's no saving polar bears. Polar bears are doing
34:59
fine, there's no saving corals. Corals are doing fine. So it's sort
35:02
of lye. What they do, which is really bad is they kill coral's
35:07
main predator, the crown of thorns starfish. They've killed about a million in
35:10
the past twenty years, so sorry, so who has killed them? These
35:16
conservation organizations like the Great Very Reef Protector I forget what it's called, and
35:23
WWF WFWF does everything wrong. They're doing this because they say that if they
35:30
kill the starfish, they're going to save the coral. Is that right?
35:34
Yeah, because the starfish eat the coral, but that's normal and they're fine
35:37
with that. It's like why does a wolf feed a deer? I mean,
35:40
it works out, so this is quite an incredible situation. So that
35:49
them but doesn't become that's not conservation anymore. That's that's interference. That's just
35:53
killing corals. I mean, that's just killing starfish. And basically people are
36:00
paying to kill starfish because they think it's gonna save corals, even though that's
36:06
not true. It's about money. It's all about money. Conservation is filled
36:10
with corruption and money and bribery. So how do people how do people make
36:16
a judgment about who is a reliable voice in the in the conservation world critical
36:23
thinking and reading my report? Okay, that's that's that's a good answer.
36:30
I have a question for you, Mike. Have you eaten fish and chips
36:32
lately? No? I don't eat fish and chips. I have eaten chips
36:37
recently, but I don't eat fish and chips. Yeah. Well, anyway,
36:43
this is I know people in London and you care are going to see
36:45
this and they eat fish and chips absolutely, so there's there's a pretty high
36:52
chance that they've eaten shark finn No, no shark meat, because shark meat
37:00
is actually one of the cheapest fish meats on the market right now. How
37:06
many sharks do you think are killed every year? I have no idea how
37:08
many sharks killed every year? One hundred million. Yeah, that's a big
37:15
difference between four hundred and fifty rhinos or twenty thousand elephants. This is one
37:19
of the most trafficked endangered species. Well, it's a lot of species.
37:22
Actually, it's basically the most trafficked and killed animal we discussed in the report.
37:29
So this is quite interesting because you know, everybody will have heard of
37:31
shark fin soup, but I certainly haven't heard that people were being sold shark
37:36
mate as opposed to cold or haddock. Yeah, because it's so cheap.
37:42
There's been a law that's passed that if you want to get shark fin soup,
37:46
you can't just take the shark, cut the fins off and throw it
37:50
back in the ocean. You have to take the whole body. So what
37:53
are they going to do with all this shark meat. They're going to sell
37:57
it to fish and chip shops and they're going to use this at a really
38:00
cheap price because they don't want the meat. They Yeah, it's in cat
38:06
food, dog treats, all squalen. Yeah. Wow. Okay, well
38:13
I have to admit this is something I'm learning and this interview Michael, this
38:16
is fantastic. So okay, what are conservation organizations saying about this? Yeah,
38:23
I mean you can't. You can't commercialize these animals like sharks and pangolins.
38:29
You can for elephants and rhinos and lions and tigers, but there's just
38:34
no demand. Yaoming made this advertisement video with wild aid To and the message
38:42
was to stop eating shark fin soup is and he showed the whole process of
38:47
cutting off the fins and everything and how ugly and evil it is. And
38:53
this worked. It reached hundreds of millions of Southeast Asians. It went from
38:59
a social status is to be eating at fancy dinners and parties to anti social
39:05
status. It made you look really bad and evil and mean because Yellming reduced
39:13
the demand. That's one of my beliefs. Most people are reducing the supply,
39:19
but reducing the demand ends it forever. The report is really fantastic.
39:22
We're going to obviously provide a link to the report in the write up underneath
39:28
this video when it was now the question Michaeh is what comes next? Actually,
39:32
right now, I'm in school and I want ten million people to download
39:37
this report. I'm not done. This report is worthy of ten million people
39:42
seeing it. I think I'm really passionate about it, and I need to
39:45
know how to do pr and marketing to make it come true. So can
39:51
you tell me a little bit about how to do that? And well,
39:59
I don't know, can I I think if you do interviews like this,
40:01
Mikey, you're well on your way to getting the interest and getting ten million
40:07
people downloading this report. And there are plenty there's plenty of little excerpts that
40:14
you could take from this interview and get out on social media and so on.
40:19
But you know, in the process of describing your education, you're also
40:23
talking about mentors, and so you know you can use this to approach people
40:32
that have a higher profile than you do as a twelve year old and encourage
40:37
them to take that to there they're following. So you know that those would
40:44
be my suggestions, just off the top of my head. How do I
40:45
get on? Joe Rogan? You said, speaking of interviews, that's a
40:51
very good question. Just start bombarding and with requests. Come on, Joe,
40:57
here's the topic. I'll try that. I mean, you know,
41:01
one of the hardest things about having a podcast is contacting them and actually getting
41:07
them to respond and sign up for a time. Because for every one person
41:12
I actually do an interview with, I had to contact twenty people. So
41:16
maybe I just have to bombard Joe Rogan until he responds. Well, what
41:22
I would say to you is that, well, just to tell everywhere everybody
41:28
how they find your podcast. First of all, it's called Nature's Guardians with
41:31
Micah Siegel. You don't have to add that last part. Nature's Guardians is
41:35
fine. That's on YouTube at the moment, right, Yeah, it is.
41:42
You can find it there. You can go to my website roke scholar
41:45
Academy dot com and there you can see all the projects I'm doing, the
41:49
report, I podcast, everything, So I suggest going there, right and
41:54
the podcast. How many episodes of the podcast if you've recorded so far fifty
42:00
four? Now that is quite a missing, but it needs some traction.
42:07
So I'm going to say to everybody that's watching this, help Micah get some
42:12
traction on his podcast, because you deserve to have many more views on it
42:15
than you have at the moment. And of course it is not easy to
42:20
break into the world of YouTube, there's no question about that. But they're
42:23
fascinating interviews, so everybody should be sharing them. Thank you, thank you
42:30
so much. So my next project is our Zero. It's reducing the demand
42:36
for rhinohorn to zero, and it's about going to Vietnam and working with the
42:39
local kids there to stop their grandparents and parents from eating keratin from rhino horn.
42:46
Which doesn't work, doesn't solve, doesn't true cancer, doesn't your brain
42:51
term tumors, doesn't give you good luck, doesn't do any of that stuff.
42:54
And they're not idiots, they know this. They just need help.
43:00
So you're going to attempt to do this by persuading people on the supply side,
43:05
sorry, on the demand side rather yes, yeah, similar to yelming,
43:09
but working with the local kids there. Okay, there's something else you're
43:15
going to do as well. In early twenty twenty five, I got a
43:19
ten thousand dollars grant from Tyler Cowen from Emergent Ventures. I'm going to make
43:23
a documentary about rhinos in South Africa and then I'm going to actually fix it.
43:30
And work on it with kids in Vietnam about reducing the demand. Right,
43:35
so you've managed to get hold of a ten thousand dollars grant. Really
43:40
well done for doing that. You're heading off to South Africa and Botswana to
43:45
do some documentary making and then you're going to Vietnam. That I've got that
43:49
the right way round. Yes, yes, I half stupidly put my ten
43:53
thousand dollars into bitcoin. It went way up to thirty thousand dollars. Well,
43:59
congratulations, the timing was perfect. Yeah. I hope you don't have
44:04
to pay too much tax on that. I hope so too. I have
44:07
one more question about you people in the UK go for it run request.
44:15
So Ricky Gervais is there too, and he's a famous dude who also cares
44:21
about animals and can help me get publicity in PR and marketing and really get
44:27
ten million people to read my report and watch my videos and change the demand
44:32
and help rhinos. So if any of you guys, if any of you
44:37
guys know him and can connect me to him, please do that. That'd
44:43
be amazing. Okay, Well, I think that's a great place to end
44:45
for today. So Micah, thank you very much. For joining us today.
44:49
It's been interesting. I mean, it's just been an amazing conversation.
44:53
And we will see what the response is, and I think it's going to
44:58
be a really great one. Thank you for joining us. Thank you.
45:02
Okay, that was awesome. Thank you, M.