Wasik & Murphy On Animal Welfare

Photo by Emmett Wasik

Bill Wasik is the editorial director of The New York Times Magazine. Monica Murphy is a veterinarian and a writer. Their first book, Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus, was a bestseller, and they’re back with a new one: Our Kindred Creatures: How Americans Came to Feel the Way They Do About Animals.

You can listen to the episode in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — on the beginnings of dog welfare, and the “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” for animal activism — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: writing a book as a married couple; the mass extinctions of early America; bison at the brink; how horses increased after the Industrial Revolution and drove the early movement for animal welfare; “the best humanitarian ideas came from England”; bullfighting in Spain; the profound role and colorful character of Henry Bergh; his founding of the ASPCA; the absence of vegetarianism among early activists; PT Barnum’s sympathy and exploitation; transporting Beluga whales by train; the public clashes between Barnum and Bergh; journalism’s role in animal welfare; George Angell’s magazine Our Dumb Animals; the anti-slavery Atlantic Monthly; animal activism growing out of abolitionism; Darwin; Romanticism; George Bird Grinnell and first Audubon Society; fashion and consumerism; wearing hats with whole birds; the emotional lives of dogs; the activism around strays; the brutality of early shelters; rabies and dog catchers; Louis Pasteur and the rabies vaccine; Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty; how she was robbed of royalties; the treatment of horses in Central Park; reform movements driven by elites; class resentment; Animal Farm and Watership Down; the cruelty of today’s food industry; pig crates; Pope Francis; and Matthew Scully’s Dominion.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Walter Kirn on his political evolution, Musa al-Gharbi on wokeness, Sam Harris for our quadrennial chat before Election Day, and Damon Linker on the election results. Wait, there’s more: Peggy Noonan on America, Anderson Cooper on grief, Christine Rosen on humanness in a digital world, Mary Matalin on anything but politics, and John Gray on, well, everything.

Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com. On last week’s episode with David Frum, a listener writes:

I loved this discussion, and at the end I was in tears while walking my dog. I read David’s piece about the loss of his beloved daughter, Miranda, and wondered if you would bring it up. His description of grief was poignant, and I’m glad the two of you had this conversation.

You are the only person who has expressed my feelings about aging and death perfectly. I am 58, and my parents are 88 and 95, both with dementia. I tell my husband and children that I’d be happy to live until about age 80, but really hope for no more. I grieved the loss of my mother, to whom I was extremely close, in 2023 — when our relationship changed irrevocably due to her dementia. When my parents die, I think I will feel relief that their suffering is over. They are safe and well cared for, including by four loving daughters, and some days are okay, but it’s not a life I’d want. 

I experienced grief with the dementia. My mother and I always had a preternaturally direct connection from my earliest memories. At any point in my life, I could call and she would be there. Over two years ago, she suddenly wasn’t. She lived in this twilight zone for two more years, and it’s a twilight I really hope to avoid. But I feel great relief that her suffering is over — and it was harrowing at the end — and that she is with her loved ones again, and bathed in the love of Christ.

Here’s a clip of David discussing the outlook that won the Cold War:

Another listener makes a sharp point:

I was enthralled with your David Frum episode. He has always been an honorable, knowledgeable and sensible commentator, and I appreciated him responding to your tortured, excruciatingly ambivalent Harris endorsement like a big brother. (He is three years older than you.) He talked sense to his overwrought kid brother, with a simple analogy you might understand: the delivery man brings wrapped sandwiches for a group lunch; you announce your hatred of mayonnaise and ask which ones have mayonnaise; he says he doesn’t know; you ask what else is offered for lunch; he replies rat poison. Not a hard decision. Yes, I have qualms about Harris, but not horror. Chill.

I say this as one of your longest tenured and committed readers. Indeed, The Conservative Soul nudged me from center-left to center, where I have resided since. But I also recognize your over-the-top obsessions.

We are all human. I’m grateful for David’s friendship and classiness as well. Another listener tackles the immigration theme in the episode:

In many recent columns and podcast episodes (including the one with David Frum), you have lamented the total inability of the elites to even understand the good-faith cultural concerns of small-town folks whose communities have changed overnight by immigration. That being the case, I’m a little surprised you haven’t made more mention of one of the more telling incidents in recent memory, which is the 2022 Martha’s Vineyard incident. Yes, DeSantis is a total asshole; and yes, he sent migrants there as a cheap political stunt to give his base a hard-on, knowing that he planned on running for President. But that doesn’t mean the incident’s resolution wasn’t instructive.

Having driven around Martha’s Vineyard, there are few places in the country with more of those virtue-signaling “In This House, We Believe” signs, containing the mantra “No Human is Illegal.” And yet the town of 15,000 supposedly couldn’t handle a mere 50 migrants. The average home sale price there is nearly $2 million, and close to two-thirds of the homes are vacant outside of the summer months.  Obviously, residents and homeowners can afford to provide some support services to one bus full of migrants.

The economic concerns of ordinary Americans are almost completely off the table in Martha’s Vineyard. And still, they made sure to exercise their power to expel 50 migrants in a matter of days. Yet working-class towns like Springfield, Ohio are apparently expected to absorb 20,000 migrants in a short time, despite the added significant economic pressures that places on residents. And according to our elites, even a peep of opposition can only be due to bigotry.

Beautifully put. On the recent pod with Michelle Goldberg, a fan writes:

I need to stop reading you, because I pretty much agree with you. That’s why it was refreshing to listen to Michelle Goldberg, who was an excellent opponent for you. You should find more like her: people who can give you a hard time but are not insane.

Another has mixed feelings about the episode:

I was looking forward to seeing listener reactions to the Michelle Goldberg episode and was not disappointed. Like some others, I was taken aback by how taken aback she seemed to be by some of your questions. The charitable interpretation is that her surprise was a reaction to you rather than the substance of the questions — as in, maybe she thought your views were different than they are, and was therefore surprised at the lines you took? 

Less charitably, her surprise resulted from living in a bubble. Although I usually disagree with her columns, I think she writes with much more intelligence and  analytical power than, say, Jamelle Bouie or Paul Krugman, whom I don’t even bother to read; and she occasionally surprises me, which I like. I had hoped that she would display some of her occasional willingness to criticize, however mildly, her own side. But it seemed to me that she felt she couldn’t afford to give an inch, lest she give aid and comfort to the other side.

While I thought she came off badly, may I make what I hope are two constructive and related observations? First, I thought that a number of your questions were loaded, in the sense of having your worldview baked into them. I happen to agree with the vast majority of your worldview, so it wouldn’t be a problem for me. But for a guest with her beliefs, I would have preferred more open-ended questions, structured less around your own beliefs, because one learns a great deal by hearing how someone chooses to answer an open-ended question. 

When you load so many of your own ideas into a question, I think it makes a “thrashing-out” (to borrow your phrase) less productive than it could be. It tends to put people on the defensive, as Goldberg clearly felt, and feeling defensive generally doesn’t bring out the best in people. It also encourages binary disagreement from a guest of her political persuasion, thereby making it harder find common ground. I didn’t think any of your questions were “trollish”, but I understood why she felt defensive.

Second, I thought that you interrupted Goldberg too often and too rapidly. You’ve written before that you want a give-and-take with your guests, not letting them ramble on. I want the same, but there’s a balance to strike, and I think you erred on the over-interventionist side in this case. There was a rapid-fire, almost prosecutorial quality to your interruptions in certain parts of the conversation, which struck me as probably well suited to the Oxford Union, but less well-suited to conversing one-on-one with a guest whom you thanked for coming on or to incentivizing other left-liberal guests to appear. 

Thanks for the constructive criticism. It’s always a balance and I don’t always get it right, but I try. We had listeners with different reactions to this pod, but I have tried hard to keep the pod civil, friendly, and constructive. Liberal democracy and all that.

Next up, readers continue to rage over my endorsement. I’m not surprised. There was something in it to offend both Trump and Harris voters. One writes:

I have been following of your writing since the 2008 Obama election and have supported you since you launched your Substack. This is my first dissent. Your column “Harris for President” contains arguments and conclusions I find illogical.

Personally, I am not a supporter of Trump, and ideally, someone else would lead the Republican candidacy. Nevertheless, he surely is the most moderate Republican president and candidate for many, many years — and for that, compared to the election in 2016, my aversion has lessened.

You critiqued Harris extensively, calling her something to the effect of an empty vessel, a point I agree with. Why, then, support her candidacy for the presidency? Conversely, Trump is definitely not without substance. While he may not use elite rhetoric, he communicates effectively with the public and is unafraid of facing challenging questions. Are you not displaying some of the elitist tendencies in this column that you adeptly challenged in your recent debate with Michelle Goldberg?

Your consistent criticism of Trump has left you unable to reassess your view of him, even in the context of current realities abroad. This ongoing critique, while understandable, may overshadow a potential need for his leadership in our present crises. Could his administration be what we require now?