Take A Vacation!

Please note that this transcript is automatically generated and contains many inaccuracies

Disclaimer

Brad: The Zooier Than Thou podcast contains adult concepts and language, and is intended for mature audiences, so if the first decade of this century is no more to you than a hazy memory of having funny feelings while watching Bolt, or your big brother playing Halo 3 and not letting you play, and you weren’t really able to understand at the time why having the obnoxious orange asshole become president was such an incredible and terrifying disaster

Toggle: Stick to the script, please, Brad.

Brad: Oh, right, sorry, I get a little sidetracked sometimes, you know, like my mom always used to tell me, if I didn’t stop —

Toggle: Brad!

Brad: Anyway, if any of that stuff applies to you, then you should come back to this podcast when you’re a bit older and have a better sense of who you are, and a firmer grasp on the world and what you’re looking for in life.

And in the meantime, don’t entertain the old fear of missing out, because I promise you, later is going to come sooner than you think, and you really need to cherish your youth while you got it. Because life is what you make it, my friend……

Theme

Kynophile: Hey, what can I say? You’ve got me howlin’ at the moon! Whoa, don’t you know that love is wild when you’re a zoo? We’re Zooier Than Thou! Oh yeah!

Intro/Emails

Mike: Greetings, friends, and welcome to a nice, relaxing episode of Zooier Than Thou.

I’m Mike the Dog,

Sigma: And I’m Sigma, your friendly neighborhood miniature dragon us.

Mike: and I didn’t even write a script this episode because I was away on vacation.

Sigma: Then why am I reading a script right now?

Mike: Oh, wait, I read this wrong. I meant to say that I wrote this script because I wasn’t away on vacation. This episode isn’t relaxing for me. I was talking about our listeners, who are hopefully listening to this while at a beach with a cool drink in hand.

Sigma: So Toggle has taken a break.

Mike: Oh, he’s needed it. One thing he’s learned was that he couldn’t just try to reduce his workload a little bit. He had to be entirely hands off from time to time. Like the season five hiatus didn’t really work well for him. This new flip flopping structure we’ve been doing is actually helping.

Sigma: I’m glad that it’s been helpful. I know from my own little sabbatical that time away is not time wasted. I spent my time working on myself as a writer.

Mike: Yeah. And I would spend my own time away. Usually it’s little bubbles of quiet time between days.

Sigma: And now it’s time for emails!

Mike: E mails.

Sigma: This first one is from Farmboy, who is young, confused, and tired. Hey, first I just wanted to say that what you guys are doing with this podcast is incredibly helpful to people like me. You’re doing a lot more good than you realize.

As you’ve probably gathered from my name, I grew up on a farm for most of my childhood. I’m exclusively zoo, despite many desperate attempts to form an attraction to humans. I’m exclusively attracted to horses, donkeys, cows, pigs. Sheep and goats, those are the only species that I really feel safe around. I spent too much time daydreaming about falling in love with a mare or a cow like in some cheesy romance novel.

Unfortunately, this has led to me becoming quite the misanthrope since every species I’m attracted to is considered livestock. Being painfully aware of how humans treat the animals that I love takes me to a very dark place. It makes me hate myself for being human sometimes. The meat panopticon episode you made a few months back was almost impossible to get through for me.

I cried for the majority of it, but it was a good message that people need to hear. I’ve been a vegan for years, but I still feel helpless. I wish there was a way I could do more for animals, but also learn to see the good in people too.

Thank you so much for that, farm boy.

The way that I cope with being a pescatarian that lives in a world where the majority of people eat whatever happens to be available is that I look to my cats, really, and I know this sounds hokey, it sometimes sounds a little hokey to me, but it really helps me a lot. My cats are meat eaters. And there is not currently any such thing as a totally cruelty free cat food.

Unfortunately, I’ve tried to find one that would not make my cat sick. I could not find one. And once I did find one, but then everyone wore me against it because it could cause serious issues for the cat. I’m still looking. Hopefully lab meat will offer better options.

In any case . I don’t judge my cats for being obligate carnivores. I do not judge them for being predators. I do not judge my cats for the fact that if they were to see a little bird flying nearby, they would pounce on it, or for the fact that if they saw mice in a little hole nearby, they would stalk them and eventually eat one, because they’re predators.

And our fellow human beings, for better or for worse, are also apets predators. In a world where they really hold all the cards and they have the majority of the power. It really takes a lot of work to get other human beings to think of the world as we do,

Mike: I suppose there’s work on the cats too. Like you can’t expect the cats themselves just to stop being predators. You put in some work around the cats, either keeping them indoors or something, right?

Sigma: I do actually keep my cats indoors, but then again, I am supportive of alley cats, because the truth is that if we were to take away alley cats, then other carnivores the same size would fill in the spaces in the ecosystem that are left over from the cats. One way that we can protect wildlife in our area on a more permanent basis is to be more strict about how we protect our waste, because anytime we leave waste out, we attract it.

animals that get into that waste, and they are really in danger anytime they’re concentrated in a small area.

Mike: Vegan diets. Yeah, I don’t know. Ha. I think the issue is a little more, it’s a little beside the vegan diet point for obligate carnivores. I see what you’re saying though, yeah, it’s that we have to expect that people will be doing what they do, and we need to work around that ourselves. I know myself I became vegetarian partly because I do like pigs. If I see a pig, I think there’s hot, the sexy animals which is, I don’t know, I guess not very much the public opinion on pigs, but oh man, boars, right? You get certain ones that really get me going. And I really can’t, Reconcile that with what the idea of slaughtering them and eating them. So I know my, for myself personally, I had made that choice to not eat them

It would be hypocritical of me to be doing that and to like, try to be friends with them at the same time.

Sigma: way that I ended up becoming pescetarian was that one time I had an opportunity to work as a stable hand for a little while, and I did not know anything about horses. I did not have textbook knowledge of how to handle horses. And if you don’t have textbook knowledge of how to handle animals , you have to rely purely on empathy.

That is what you lean on if you have to learn something experientially as an adult, how to do, rather than getting trained by your parents on the right way to handle them. And I developed very close relationships with those animals. And, Later, during that job, I actually had an encounter with a cow, and the cause of the fact that I could not just leave that cow alone While waiting for animal control, I had to keep that cow entertained and in the same place while animal control came to help.

Fortunately, a lady that lived nearby said that she was keeping a watch on the cow and that I could go on. In any case, my interaction with that cow really changed my perspective on those animals. Her ears were so expressive that I can never again look at a hamburger and not see that adorable face staring back at me.

It just is too disturbing. It’s too strange. And part of the reason why I gave up poultry actually, this is ironic, I was going to continue eating poultry, but I found out when I was eating only poultry and otherwise vegetarian products, I actually might have a mild allergy to poultry, believe it or

Mike: Oh, interesting. Interesting.

Sigma: In any case,

ended up going completely pescatarian.

Mike: I’ve thought about pescetarianism, about just eating some fish. I think at this point it’s if I need to, I will. I went fishing with a friend once, like a year ago, and we caught a fish. And so I, I ate it with him because sure. But generally speaking, I can not, and so I will not.

It’s what I, my usual philosophy. So if I don’t need to, then I might as well not. And I had managed to find a good Tom Yum paste without shrimp paste in it. You can still find some good vegan products here and there.

Sigma: Whereas I, for one, cannot really see an animal that has a central nervous system that is basically just ganglia as in the same category as even one of the more advanced fish species out there. So I’m not quite at a point where I’m ready to give up seafood, maybe some fish, but other seafood that are not like fish that actually have brains.

Mike: Uh huh, huh.

Sigma: that I cannot give up shrimp. I cannot give up crab. I cannot give up lobster. I cannot give up oysters. I definitely cannot give up oysters. I grew up on

Mike: There’s that vegan argument for scallops. Where it’s oh, they just got I think it’s the scallops specifically that have the very basic nervous systems. Just ganglia. Fish do actually have proper nervous systems. It’s just that they don’t, have the conscious experience of pain or whatever.

They still feel

Sigma: Weird still about fish, because they do have more of a central nervous system than, say, a lobster but when we get to animals like, say, shrimp, lobster, crab and oysters, I say that if it were a human being, And had the same

central nervous we would call them a vegetable?

Then, I think that I can make a fair argument that they are vegetables.

Mike: They’re tasteless As that sounds. If I’m allowed to eat vegetables, I can eat human vegetables, too.

Ha

Sigma: I’ll be totally okay with that. If you want to eat human vegetables, go for it. I think it’s perfectly ethical.

Mike: Soylent

Sigma: everyone thinks I’m insane.

Now everyone thinks I

Mike: I’m not a cannibal, I’m a dragon!

Sigma: Oh, of course. Actually, the dragons from the Realm of the Elderlings series were cannibalistic, but that’s because they harvest, they actually take on the memories of of anything that they eat. They do that as a way of preserving the memories of their dead, so they’re cannibalistic.

Inherently.

Mike: right, okay to get back to the farm life a little bit I noticed there’s this really weird line in the sand almost where I think a lot of the zoos who Not just encounter, but maybe just encountering too, but when they’re familiar enough with specific mammals to have a, have an understanding of them, that empathy really they grow close and those animals become like family, right?

We draw that line of we’ll eat these animals, but not these animals because we’re familiar with dogs. We don’t want to eat them, that kind of thing. But so I think a lot of zoos, if we actually meet a lot of these farm animals, don’t want to eat them, to slaughter them like we do.

Mike: like at odds with normal farmers though, because normal farming, they are really almost militant about, or cavalier, what would be the word? Where they. I don’t know, I guess they, they just keep themselves at a distance somehow. They make sure to keep themselves at a distance where they can say even if they’ve named them oops now they’re in the freezer.

Sigma: Yeah in fact, what I’ve heard from many people that grow up on farms that grew up on family farms, in particular when they were growing up, their parents actually did not allow them to name any animal that they were ever likely to eat, because they had a philosophy that once you name something, you’re responsible for it, you’re responsible for its happiness, you’re responsible for its welfare.

Names are powerful. Names are one of the most powerful things.

Mike: oh, who’s in this one? Oh, it’s Betsy we’re eating tonight.

Sigma: Oh, dear, oh, ow, whoa, oh, whoa!

Mike: know, right? Some of them, they keep this barrier up in just the right way or something.

Sigma: Oh dear, yeah, for me, because I came late in life to understanding farm animals and finding out, oh, human like consciousness, oh jeez, now I have these ghosts popping out of anything that I see that has meat in it, and it’s gonna screw me up. Maybe if I’d grown up on a farm. Okay, here is how I’m going to not have anybody that grew up on a farm and eats meat come out and kill me for not understanding them.

I understand, you grew up in a culture where you were taught an ethic for how to keep animals from a distance if you’re supposed to be able to eat them and not feel sick, but I was not. I grew up in a privileged, yuppie background, and then when I suddenly encounter a cow and it has just as much personality as my pet cat or my pet dog, that kind of freaks me out.

I have a little bit of a different background that leads to me reacting very differently to things that, for a person that’s acculturated, being able to have that separation, the experience might be very different.

Mike: yeah. I think that’s one of the barriers that we’re knocking at. Cause that right there, I think it’s half of humanity’s kind of indifference towards animals that puts us at odds with them.

Thank you, farm boy. It’s always good hearing you Perspectives about farm life and how zoos handle that. I hope things are better in the future as we deal with the livestock and their rights, This one here is from Hugdoggie. Always a pleasure.

He’s got a question for the community. Hugdoggie says. Hi Zoot and everyone listening I have a very simple question today, is censure really the best word to use in the Zeta principles? Language is of course, one of those things that can vary from place to place in both meaning and tone in my own country.

It is a very antiquated and outdated term that many younger people have absolutely no knowledge of, but I don’t know if this is true in other places. That’s trying to find a word that is suitable in all English speaking countries may be a challenge and heaven knows what it is transformed into when converted to other languages for zoos in non English speaking countries.

Personally though, I’d like to see censorship be changed to condemn, to make it more accessible to people in today’s use of language. What are people’s thoughts on this? I feel having clear language in something as important as the Zeta principles is critical, both for those within the community and to those from outside trying to understand what zoos are all about.

A poll exists in both Zooville and Zoo Community if any listener has feedback on this question. Gotta zoom, much to do here before Santa Paws comes for all good pups. May everyone have a safe and peaceful holidays. Yeah thanks for

writing in.

So censure is it’s an expression of strong disapproval. So I guess condemnation would be good the way we use it today. Condemn, had more of a religious overtone before it was about, down to sin or whatever. Condemn would be okay today. I’m mostly using calling out.

I mentioned to call out abuse because that’s the language we tend to use today. I don’t know.

Sigma: I want to make a note on the English word condemn because Words, in any language, have undertones of meaning that are really hard to translate. And entire books have been written on this, fiction and non fiction. The word condemn actually refers to a very strong sense of hostility and to say that you condemn something implies a level of aggression that is really inappropriate for any social occasion except if you’re condemning somebody who committed true cold blooded murder

Mike: Condemned to death. Yeah.

Sigma: Yeah if somebody committed cold blooded murder against a completely innocent vulnerable human being, and seems to think it’s funny and thinks that you’re stupid for not realizing how funny it is, you condemn that sort of person, because they’re really screwed up. To say to somebody You’re screwed up.

What you just did and what you seem to think of it is not okay. I condemn that. That that’s what we mean when we say condemn. It’s a very strong word that we use for very special circumstances. The word censure, you can censure somebody for not using a comma in the right place.

So it’s really hard to translate the word censure into some

Mike: Oh, I translate it literally as calling out. If you’re expressing disapproval of something. One of the things that we’ve struggled with is to actually physically speak out against things that we see that we know are wrong. Especially from friends.

Cause we see things and we’re like,

Maybe I will distance myself from this person. And we do a lot of that kind of social tiptoeing a little bit, and we need to be stronger about telling people what we think, we have our values. And we share those values if we share the Zeta principles, right? And we’re called to censure things like sexual exploitation of animals and sexual abuse, right?

We all are called in the same way. We’ve seen the Zeta principles and agree with them and all that.

Sigma: I think that you put your finger on it when you said speak against. I think that the best way to translate censure into other languages is to say speak against. You can speak

against using a comma in the wrong place. You can speak against somebody you using the wrong kind of lead on their dog because it’s actually hurting the dog’s throat, you speak against it because they might not realize they shouldn’t do that.

You speak against somebody that lets their cat roam around in an urban area, where if everybody did that would screw up the ecosystem. They might be from the country where barn cats are normal. They might not understand that you shouldn’t do that in the city. You can speak against things without being hostile.

Mike: So I translated it dynamically to call out, but speaking against would be the more, correct term

because calling out reminds me of what they do on Twitter,

Sigma: Toxic call outs, right?,

Mike: And that’s not really a problem with the definition is just how people do it. And that’s why we pussyfoot around a little bit is because we know we don’t want to be those people. at least you could open a conversation with them because really you should be able to convince them.

Sigma: Yeah, and it’s a difficult line to walk to be able to say a point of view on, something that is against what another person is doing, And not sound like, I reject you, I hate you, and I want to make you feel afraid, It’s really hard to speak against what somebody is doing, and not lead them to the impression that you’re trying to isolate them, or shut them down completely.

But that, perhaps, you want to open up a new way of thinking for them. Like, how can you Speak to somebody in a way that opens up a new way of thinking to them so that they can engage that new way of thinking and not feel like the world suddenly hates them forever.

Mike: Yeah. And that’s something that we’d struggle with because we talk with people who. Are scared of just being hated for no reason as well. And we need to make sure that our ideas come across without seeming like we’re just attacking their character or something.

Sigma: very difficult line to walk.

I’m in a writer’s critique group and something that we’ve learned in a writer’s critique group is that when we criticize something, we do it in a way that we’re helping somebody to be better, not telling them that they’re bad. What we do in my writers group, because I’ve been working on myself as a writer we say, I see what you’re trying to do here’s how you can make that work.

Mike: . These are very heady

questions. We’ve been discussing them for years. And I think really some of us will eventually change a few words here and there. I’ve been meaning to update just like two words on zoo community.

And that will propagate through because we’ve had these discussions now. So yeah, thanks for writing in.

Feel free to

keep on writing in later too.

Sigma: Slime Mutt who’s frustrated, unnoticed, you’re cool if you get the reference. Hey there Zoo Crew, I had a rather frustrating experience today, and it brought me back to another experience six years ago, and I wanted to know if this is a common feeling for my fellow animal enjoyers.

Today I went to my local mall. This mall has a pretty big parking lot, and it’s not uncommon for people to illegally pop open their trunk, sit on their tailgate, and try to sell puppies out of the back of their cars. Obviously these puppies tend to vary in terms of health and other aspects, and you have to be careful with taking in these parking lot pups, but of course, Sometimes, it’s a bit hard to not pull over and take a look when there’s a box of fuzzy black lab mitts right next to someone’s shitbox After a few seconds of holding and inspecting a rather adorable curly haired male, I asked the one selling them if they had a name. The seller told me that particular pup didn’t have an official name, but since he had the biggest sheath out of All of his brothers, they called him Big Dick Rick, and made a joke about how he would make a good breeder.

I obviously wasn’t wearing any type of zoo pride merc. And even if I was, that was a nine week old puppy he was talking about! To the untrained eye, I look like a regular, slightly emo cis male, and certainly not a non binary zoosexual. I felt incredibly disgusted by this joke.

Politely handed him the puppy back and left. Side note, but even if he didn’t make that particularly gross joke, I probably wouldn’t have taken in the curly pup anyways. He was rather lethargic acting, and the seller mentioned that he hadn’t been dewormed or vaccinated. As cute as he was, I can’t exactly drop a few thousand dollars to treat what was most likely parvo.

That particular joke brought me back to when I was younger. For some context, I have a tank full Of land snails, I keep as pets. They’re incredibly fascinating to me, and I could literally fill a book about why I love them platonically so much. As a goofy 15 year old, I wasn’t shy to tell people about how much I loved and respected those slow little bugs.

I told so many folks, people I had never spoken to knew me as the Snail Kid. I was also starting to understand and accept the fact that I was zoosexual, but of course I didn’t feel any romantic or sexual attraction to my snails. I didn’t tell anyone about my zooish feelings, however, and I’d like to think nobody knew.

One night, I was talking to a mutual friend on Facebook Messenger about a school project we were working on at the time, She knew how much I adored my gastropods, and seemed genuinely intrigued, and I happily answered every question she had. But after 15 minutes of pure mollusk loving joy, she dropped a complete bombshell onto the conversation, and asked me if I had ever let the snails crawl on my genitals, and she thought it would feel really good to let them crawl on my clit.

Again, I was completely horrified by this comment. I told her absolutely not, and even let her know that she was wrong. That area is highly acidic and could harm my beloved pets. Not to mention, as much as I cleaned their tanks, I was positive that would lead to some sort of infection. She didn’t really seem interested in anything after that, and eventually we continued working on the project via very dry emails from her school.

Monitored accounts, meaning no more horny bullshit. This experience admittedly made me mad for several reasons, since it felt like she didn’t actually care what I had to say about my buggy companions, and just wanted to air out some incredibly perverted thoughts. What I wanted to ask, though, is It’s normal to get this mad when non zoos bring up interspecies sets like that.

Admittedly, I might have overreacted on the Puppy Dick Show, but I can’t help but get mad when people bring up sets and such a young dog in the same conversation. I would’ve been less pissed off if the bots, the puppies were in had big neon riding on it.

That said, our Labrador is a whore. Come on, take our bastard. Children. I don’t like calling adult dogs, babies, but that’s a puppy. That’s a baby. A few weeks ago he was still on the TT and they’re talking about his dick just. That’s gross. I will, however, not apologize for getting mad about the snail sex joke.

Even though I’m a zoo, I find those jokes flat out disgusting. I love and respect animals. I respect them enough to let them have sets with me. And certainly respect them enough to No when not to have sets with them. I see zoo memes online, and they don’t bother me at all. I’ve even sent non zoo friends that stupid blowjob wolf meme, and they think it’s funny, too.

I can sing every line of No Cock Like Horse Cock like a pro. Let’s just ignore that song is about dildos and not about an actual starian. And I

feel completely cool and collected. Am I just in denial about some zoo self loathing I have going on?

It feels like both times someone brought up sets with a non human IRL, it just made me mad. I don’t think I would get this mad if some random guy came up to me, shook my hand, and told me he was a zoo, and introduced me to his non human companion, but the second someone implies that I’m having sex with a non human is when I get agitated.

Thank you so much for that email. that was a very interesting, thing. Perspective, and to some degree, I understand how you feel there, because the fact that I have had experiences with non humans myself. I know how it’s supposed to go.

I know when it is wholesome and I

know that my animal has a stake in sexuality and I have obligations in that relationship. Therefore, when somebody talks disrespectfully about the same subject, it feels like it’s being treated in a disrespectful way. The weird thing is that because I’ve done it and am open to doing it, I think about what circumstances, what is it that makes me comfortable with it.

And I have developed this idea of what makes it okay, how is it okay, why am I okay with this even though 90 percent of the rest of the world is not. And I developed this idea of what is appropriate. And these kinds of tasteless jokes, because of that, because I’ve thought about it, because I’ve thought it through, and I’m not just coming to it on a lark,

Mike: Yeah. There’s a bunch of jokes that are tasteless because they haven’t thought about it. And you can say that, is tasteless because of this and this. And maybe they’ll be a bit put off because, you just pooh poohed their joke, but they might say oh, okay.

I do understand. And they just never thought about it before.

Sigma: Yeah, as a transgender woman, I was assigned male at birth, and and because I’m only really attracted to guys, we have a fairly cavalier way of talking about sex. You just cannot undo the fact that you grew up as male if you happen to be a transgender girl, and I have internalized a way of talking about sexuality that to Even a straight man is a little bit shocking because I am completely comfortable with talking about my sexuality in an easygoing and friendly kind of way and it is very difficult to understand how A straight cis woman feels or a straight cis man feels about the same subject matter since I don’t have the same background.

And the background that you grew up with tends to affect how you feel about a certain subject.

Mike: It all depends on your experiences. And I think someone like you has had more experiences, right? You have your toes dipped into different worlds and you understand a little bit about this and that, because I know I’ve encountered certain things where I’m just like, Oh, great. I’ve understood trials that come up with certain people’s lives. And I know what is insensitive to say. There’s a bunch of random stuff. There’s a whole segment of bestiality videos. That’s a calf sucking where a farmer is using a calf, sucking on teat instinct on his dick.

And I’ll admit, I looked at some of those videos when I was like 19. And it was the sort of thing where there was a little bit of something niggling at the back of my mind saying maybe then I guess, maybe years later, I’m like, that’s not a good video to watch. I can see why it’s, using the animal for our own purposes. You get this feeling. And if you’re a moral person, an ethical person, who’s self reflecting and keeping those values in mind you grow to understand. What you thought about them and why don’t approve of it now. And a lot of people just haven’t gotten through that. They’re just laughing at an animal’s dick size, leaving it at that.

It’s probably not even a sexual thing for them.

Sigma: It’s just because of the fact that we are zoos, we have had time to think about it,

so, it’s more alarming when somebody’s doing it wrong

Mike: that, that’s why they forgive the sex joke thing for the puppy. But yeah, the snail thing obviously is. More.

Sigma: Hey, look, if you just want to cull the snails and eat them as some weird form of caviar, then then then just eat the snail, but doing something sexually perverse because you thought it would be a cool and a lark, even though I don’t think that snails are sentient, pardon me if you disagree, But, even though I don’t think that snails are sentient, that’s a really screwy thing to do

Mike: They are sapient, is what we would say.

Sigma: It just comes across as a screwy thing to do with something that has ganglia and obviously is moving

Mike: Yeah. It’s the usual

thing, human use of animals like they’re used for their own purposes whether it’s gustatory or sexual doesn’t really matter to most humans. That’s what we point out. In fact, that’s probably why Some people will get a bit frustrated at us for constantly pointing out like veganism and vegetarianism. That’s why we point it out is ‘cause there’s very similar concepts behind those two things.

Sigma: I believe that having a sense of of ethics just comes naturally to the majority of people, and and if you’re naturally not a sociopath, then It is very difficult to have sexual relations with an animal without also acknowledging some degree of agency in that animal. We cannot swallow doing what we do without acknowledging our animals as, to some degree, human like.

And once we have reached that point in our thinking where we acknowledge the same animal we are attracted to as having a sort of human like consciousness, disrespectfully anymore. The longer we spend thinking about this, the harder it is to swallow other people’s disrespect. Even if they’re being disrespectful about how they approach the topic of zoosexuality.

If some random bloke is talking about puppies penis in that way, it comes across as alarming to someone that sees that puppy not just as a thing, but as a child. Because I am a zoo, I assign the adult animal some degree of agency And because of that, I see their offspring as children. And when somebody says something like that, my reaction is, How can you talk that way about a child?

Are you insane?

Mike: Yeah.

And we’ll see this constantly. Right.

Sigma: It is just weird.

Mike: yeah, we’re going to see people like, just, what, not considering the animal, right? And this goes all the way through, pet owners and everything and really we just need to speak up. That’s our job, I think. As zoos, a lot of us, especially people who are listening to this whether we’re Zeta Zoos or the Zooier Than Thou Zoos, whatever we are this bridge between humanity and animality and, what, just natural.

Ideas about what it means to be a mammal. And we can just poke at that a little bit when people are saying things that obviously don’t even consider the animal, we don’t have to call them out on penis jokes necessarily, but remind them about the animal’s agency or remind them that the animal for instance, is a child right?

Like little bits here and there, just get people thinking. In terms of Hey, this animal deserves a bit of respect because it’s little pieces each person will hear a little bit of that in their lives here and there, and it’ll get them thinking.

Sigma: There is a so much one pack there.

Mike: I actually gotta, add one more thing, that I do see this stuff very odd very commonly, when we have zoo spaces, open zoo spaces tend to attract a lot of those people who just come in looking for sex, and they’ve obviously never really considered what the animal needs, or like what it means to, I don’t know, think about, I think about them as a sexual being.

And a lot of them are very much just Oh, this is hot. A lot of the times it’s about the act. The act is hot. I mentioned taboo seekers, usually when I’m talking about them people who are specifically looking for that feeling of being wrong or something, or a bit of a corruption. And a lot of the times they’re just after that feeling.

It has nothing to do with the animal itself almost, right? The animal’s just a good gateway towards that, and it turns out to be very opportunistic. Seidenberg’s research, which we talked about months ago, is that she been, she bundled a good portion of people on Zooville as opportunists.

Sigma: For me the weirdest thing about accepting myself as a zoo is that by accepting that I could be a zoo and still be a good person, I have oddly raised my standards because I like to think of myself as a zoo. Being worthy of respect, even though I am a zoo.

Mike: Yeah.

Sigma: By accepting myself as a zoo, I’ve become more ethical as a zoo for that very same reason. Because I

do accept it, I have higher standards. And I believe that’s a good thing.

Mike: I’ve seen people who don’t accept themselves that they can’t have standards and that’s it’s terrible to

Sigma: That is the weird irony, and this is why it’s so destructive to oppress zoos, because if you don’t give them a chance to learn a little bit of self respect, then there is this sense of chaos in their lives, because if there’s no hope of anything they do being okay, then they have nothing to aspire to.

They don’t have a good concept of who they are, or handy to aspire to. Which leaves them very much in No Man’s Land, which is a dark place,

Mike: So yeah. Thank you, Slymut, for writing it. We hope you don’t encounter too many of those in the future, but if you do, yeah, just please say something. Just speak up a little bit. Just a

word might set them on the right path.

Sigma: Thank

Mike: Okay, this next one is from KangarooFucker, who helpfully left his Twitter handle, at Elon Musk.

He’s asking about a Discord server and song lyrics. KangarooFucker says, hi there. I’ve been a big fan of yours for almost a year now, and I find your podcast very interesting, and you used to be an anti zoo. I would have The urges for animals, but I shut myself off at the time thinking I was gross and weird for these thoughts.

But listening to your podcast gave me a look at a different perspective. It helped me realize I wasn’t a freak for thinking these things, but it was just my sexuality. I was just writing this to ask, do you ever think you’ll create a Discord server or something? I would love to be able to communicate with people on the podcast and other people who enjoy listening without having to risk outing myself to a bunch of anti zoos.

I was also wondering if you would ever be releasing the lyrics to your music. I have them on loop constantly and I really enjoy them, but I think it would be nice to know the lyrics to them maybe. Maybe it can be like a separate bar on the website. Thanks a bunch. From Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and whatever else. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Kangaroo fucker. God,

Sigma: your website when you stop deadnaming your daughter.

Mike: I’ll go with the last one, F first because I looked it up. Toggle mentioned this before and I looked at the website. They have a so Farry account, kiss BK bar you can find that Kiss me k bar, K-A-B-A-R, dot, so furry.com. You can do some Google searching. It should be easy enough to find. I don’t know if we’ve got a link to that somewhere.

We can put it in the show notes. I don’t know. And they, they have a few instrumentals and karaoke versions with the lyrics in the descriptions. I believe you have to be logged in order to see other. Videos. So the more raunchy ones might be behind the login wall, but yeah, we totally got them. I’ve actually sang some of the karaoke ones myself. I’ll put them on. It’s difficult without a voice track to sing along with. You have to know where all the cues are, but I like that better.

Sigma: Music, I love music. I go to karaoke every week.

Mike: Oh yeah. Do you ever sing the zoo songs? Do you know half of what you are and so on?

Sigma: I have not tried to learn the songs yet, but perhaps if we ever have a sort of a a Zooluminati meetup we could do a karaoke party, because I go to karaoke like every week, and because of that, I know how it’s supposed to be done, and to do karaoke right, you have got to have a good DJ, and by good DJ, one that’s like really enthusiastic and an attention whore.

if somebody tells you, I, I feel like I am making people perceive me as a narcissist because I act like such an attention whore. And I realize that I don’t really want to be that way. What do I do? Here’s what you do. Post karaoke. Get it out of your system and be meek and humble every other day of the week.

Every single week. Host a karaoke party, invite people to it, and be as much of an attention whore as you wish to, because that is when it actually pays off to be that way. That’s where it’s appropriate, because that’s what makes it fun.

Mike: So Sigma, you should take a look at these, this link too, and get the songs and learn them, learn the lyrics.

Mike: So

Being anti zoo, yeah, I don’t know. I think it’s actually a pretty obvious path. Because we don’t just I don’t know, born accepting ourselves, right? There’s a lot of shame out there for sexuality just in general. So a lot of us end up questioning ourselves.

I personally, I’m a bit embarrassed to talk about this. Cause I’ve always been like, so accepting of myself. I’m a very natural sort of person. I was just like, yeah, this is me. And I was always just. Very careful to think about what things are and, I never really saw any problem with it. In fact, in 2020, when I was really honestly looking at myself trying to figure out if I was, justifying anything.

Even then I knew that, my partnerships with animals were always good. And it was just the fact that I was paying for their slaughter to eat them just because I liked it. That, that had to stop. So that’s my only hang up in that case,

Sigma: speaking on once being anti something and coming to accept it later, I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, and I was a queer person that came from a really conservative Christian family background, and because of that, I was filled with all of this self loathing until I was around. 13 or 14 years old, and that is when I realize, one day, that I should not base my opinion of myself on what other people think of me, if I do that, then I could be led into things that I don’t want to do.

I came to understand that if I base my morality on what all the rest of society thinks, then what if I were to find myself suddenly in a place in this world where almost everybody was racist? What if I found myself in a place in this world where slavery was legal, and it was considered to be appropriate to say that some people of certain races could be treated in this way.

Should I accept that just because everybody else does? And the truth is that if I cannot Learn for myself, based on my experience, based on my own introspection, what I think is right and wrong, then I’m screwed. I’m lost. And if I let myself be pushed around by others and how I think, I can end up doing some really evil stuff.

And the more I learned about history, the more I realized that every time an entire society has done something evil, it was because there was one person too many that had an opinion because everybody else thought they should have an opinion. And that’s what goes wrong in those moments in history.

Mike: and honestly, I commend you for being cautious we do have to think for ourselves eventually, but starting from that cautious point. It means that we’re not flying into things that could be abusive just suddenly without thinking about it. You started from a cautious point thinking that maybe this was bad because of other people, but at least you thought it through and came to your own conclusions and you can bring that forward a little bit and just talk to some other people, make sure that they’re thinking things through. And make sure that they aren’t making mistakes in their haste. Just, yeah, it’s it’s a difficult balance, right?

Sigma: Every position on morality needs to add up from the pieces, cause all of our ethics are based on how we put the pieces of the information we have in the world together and if there’s something wrong with the logic of how we’re putting that together, that could lead us down a very dark path.

And often it has led entire countries, down a very dark, miserable path.

Mike: anyone who’s listening to this is anti zoo, Or in the furry community, or was anti zoo before just remember not, you don’t have to join into that stuff even if it comes up, like today, tomorrow, you can stay quiet about the hate that you see, or speak up about the hate without giving anything else away

Sigma: Either that or you could find the feral community.

Mike: Whatever, yeah, that too,

and show kindness to the people who out there questioning themselves as well, because yeah, you know what they went through, and there’s so much pain coursing through our community through that that it would be great if you could help give back, right? besides that, you were talking about Discord. And I don’t know we got Telegram Sigma mentioned, of course Feral, safe for work that, that’s a good one.

Sigma: I want to say that if you want a good safe for workplace to hang out online, I actually own a telegram group called Feral SFW. We’re not about zoo. We are Not about any form of sexuality. We’re just people that love animals. We don’t allow hate or cruelty of any kind. We don’t allow hate against zoos.

We don’t allow hate against transgender people. We don’t allow hate toward any animals whatsoever. Just treat people right. Treat people right. The living things in this world that are sentient and you’ll fit into feral as of W.

Mike: And that’s if you’re on Telegram, but you might not be on Telegram. If you’re only on Discord, yeah, I don’t know, I guess there’s a couple places

I would be careful with Discord,

Sigma: don’t know anything about Discord at all, except for one chat that is about an author that I like. But,

other Than that, I’m not familiar with discord

Mike: Zooier Than Thou discord would be interesting

we had something just for like people to ask questions of the cast and crew or whatever, things like that. That would be interesting to set up, I don’t know or the very least I don’t know, we got this email form, right? Maybe we can make that a little bit more friendly where people can ask questions and not have it just a formal email to be answered on the show.

But yeah. We’re certainly around the community too. So if you’re on Zoo community, if you are on if you’re on Telegram, we’re around if you have, yeah. For instance, feral Safe for work there are certain places you’ll find us. I guess you’ll have to, you’ll have to find us to get those locations.

Of course at the end of the show, we usually tell you what our Twitter handles are, so you can always find us there. He can ask us some questions, But yeah, in general, connect over time, you’ll find people in connect and so on.

Sigma: Yeah, and maybe we’ll run into you sometime.

Mike: Thanks, Elon. . A segue prepared from the last email.

Karaoke, right? I’d like to schedule some karaoke nights. That would be pretty fun. If we could, set something up every once in a while,

Sigma: Yeah, yeah, I love karaoke.

Mike: because

sometimes you need a break, right? Sometimes you need a break from everything.

Sigma: Maybe we could have a zoo holiday, a zoo vacation, where the only thing that we do at zoos is just get together, Hang out, shoot the shit, drink beer . And just spend the month just

being

in the company of our fellow zoos. Even if

it’s only hanging out on Zoom.

Mike: Vacations are important, but I don’t think a lot of us take them, and oh there’s all sorts of opportunities for little things, little breaks we take the kinds of things we do to recharge. And that’s actually what our topic is about, so that’s what we’ll be coming back to after this break.

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Topic - Take A Vacation!

Mike: Welcome back to the topic, which is about vacations.

I guess I could have probably scripted the whole thing, but that would be silly. Instead, we should go on vacation. And just have a chat. Isn’t that what you do on vacations? You like talk with each other?

Get some socializing in?

Sigma: Hang out with people. Pet your cats. Snuggle your cats. S stubby your dogs. Do whatever you please with your dogs. As long as they seem to enjoy it.

Mike: Yeah. That was Eggman. I’m Egg the Dog. We have Akito with us today.

Akito: hello, I’m Akito.

Mike: Who has been around quite a few years, actually. How long, when did you start

Akito: it’s not been that long two years and a few months. It’s, not too much.

Mike: I think you were first dipping your toes in like somewhere in 2021, right?

Akito: No May 2022,

Mike: Oh, okay.

Akito: I remember it was a little bit after I turned 18. It would have been silly to join this community at 17.

Mike: Oh yeah.

Sigma: A

little awkward.

Mike: Yeah. You were one of the ones who are doing stuff, right? You’ve got your podcast and it’s common, I think, for a lot of, the doers of the community to quickly get burnt out. And I’ve noticed that you’ve just been there, been working and been steady along.

And I thought maybe you can give some insight into sort of your process, your,

whatever you would call that.

Akito: Yeah, for sure. I used to do a lot more. When I first joined the community I was also, moderating a bunch of groups on Telegram and on Discord, but I eventually noticed that it was just too much, right?

Mike: Yeah.

Akito: all get to that burnout point. I wasn’t burned out, but I could just feel that I didn’t enjoy it anymore.

Mike: Yeah.

Cause

There’s the feelings that creep up first, right? The warning signs,

Akito: Yeah, exactly at this point I’m really mainly doing the podcast and taking care of my own spaces a little bit so yeah, and even our podcast we’re having a hard time, recording every weekend. And sometimes Brass is not on, sometimes I’m not on, so we just get a guest instead. And it’s been working out for us, we’re already at over a hundred episodes, been going for two years,

Mike: Oh we still release every week

A hundred episodes yeah, 50, 52 a year, 50 ish.

Akito: And episode 100 will be at Eurofurence. we wanted to have this kind of a cool episode.

Mike: yeah. We’ll leave the music again.

Akito: Oh, we’ll

definitely have the

music again. The annual zoo concert, that is a thing we’re doing.

Mike: Oh yeah.

So the reason I made this topic, or I wrote the skeleton of this topic. The I wrote the outline of this topic, probably. Two or two and a half years ago just as I was looking around seeing people stressing for time because I don’t think people generally have vacation literacy.

Basically the ideas behind why, like why you’d have vacations or like What you’re really aiming for, all that stuff, right? Everyone knows the concept of a vacation, of course. Everyone knows that you can get time off of work and so on. But I don’t think many people know the warning signs of burnout, what they’re trying to get out of a vacation the best ways to, get the most out of it.

So I figure this is a good topic for anyone really, who’s an activist trying to do stuff. Keeping active is the main point there, right? So how are you, how can you be active while also resting?

Akito: Yeah, I agree.

Mike: A lot of people are over eager at the beginning. I find.

Akito: Yeah, for sure.

Sigma: I personally believe that. A big part of it is that what drives the initial flurry of activism is the sense of fear, the state of emergency that overwhelms many of us when we first realize that there’s a problem. And while we are coming to that realization, we develop this sense of urgency to do something, somebody do something, and this can for a while motivate us to get a whole lot done.

Due to this sense of something being in a state of crisis, but eventually, we actually do achieve some of our most important aims and then we get to a point where we feel we can relax, things have settled down, we find a little niche where we feel safe, and then we want to go into that niche and stay there and relax a little while, because We have exhausted ourselves, because we actually have done a lot.

It’s a good thing we did do a lot. But eventually after we’ve had that kind of rest period we find that people are asking about us. Where did where did Sigma go? Where did Mike go? and what are they doing right now? And we realized that there were actually people that appreciated some of what we did, and they are wondering how we’re doing and what we’ve been up to.

In that period of hiatus we can be more disciplined about that, rather than just disappearing without people knowing what we’re doing or why they haven’t heard from us in a while we could say I’m going to be taking a vacation between March and the end of July, I need some time off.

Because this disappearance that happens to some of us it just makes people worried, and that can create a second sense of crisis in the community, because some of our most important people, they haven’t heard from them in several months, and what happened to those people? Did they get whacked?

Did they get killed? Did someone do something horrible to them? And being able to concertedly and deliberately take the time off that we need after that crisis period, I think is very valuable.

Mike: You mentioned extreme emotions bringing us in. I think it’s not always just fear and stuff, but also everything else, hope and love and everything like that. I think we, we join and we are motivated by some very intense feelings of many different kinds. Yeah. And it’s almost a manic period, isn’t it?

And

that kind of gives away to something more, depressive, doesn’t it?

Akito: yeah,

Sigma: of like the honeymoon period in a marriage, right?

Mike: Yeah. I usually compare it to that.

Akito: I think my main reason for doing a lot in the beginning was, I wanted to get to know everyone, I was new, no one has heard of me, and I guess I also wanted to be respected, and I wanted people to know me, and I think once I, established myself in the community, I was ready to just, Coast, settle down, as

you said,

Mike: I remember that process in the beginning.

it’s hard, it’s also scary because there are all these people that are already well known, and it feels, I don’t know, like dumb to text them and say hi, this is me, please be nice to me, or whatever

Mike: I had tweeted it to talk, not tweeted DM’d, I

DM’d Toggle,

when he was struggling with something and I had said something nice, but then I also was like, Oh, if you need help with I poked at the transcriptions or something for the site and he thought I was like asking him when they would be done or something.

And he was like, Oh, we’re going to get them done at some point. Don’t worry.

Akito: yeah, it’s scary. Like, you can say the wrong thing and immediately they don’t like you forever. First impressions are

Mike: He hates me now. Yeah.

Akito: I totally get you there.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, there was a whole process of sniffing butts, to put it into dog terms.

Sigma: Yeah,

Mike: would go through for hours, just looking at all the different profiles and like slowly reading what people were saying, following some people, joining in conversations here and there, yeah, that was, it takes time.

It takes like months. Of like slow, like just understanding individual people.

Akito: I think it was also just, I was really excited that there is a community like this, like, I’ve known I was a zoophile.

Mike: Yeah. I think that drives the honeymoon period a lot.

Akito: I’ve known I was a zoophile for super long, and then I think I was listening to Zooier Than Thou, as it goes for many newer people in the community, and I don’t know, just, it was especially scary talking, or exciting, talking to the people that made the podcast, cause, like, I guess you see them as idols, or

Mike: See them as representatives of something

Akito: you want to be like them, also just, yeah, making friends in the community before you know that there is also a kind of dark ish side in the, to the community is just very exciting.

Mike: There’s some of that learning the dark arts, and I remember when I got my burner number to sign on to Telegram, I think the that beginning part there where you’re learning the communities, half of what drives that honeymoon period,

if you reach a point where you feel like you know everyone, and you’ve got this good sense of exactly where you stand with everyone and how the community, is structured, then Things fall off a little bit,

Okay, so in that beginning process, you’re spending some time. Learning about who’s who, and you put more and more into it, don’t you? Cause the feed, your Twitter feed gets longer and longer, things like that, like you get more and more people to respond to.

You end up joining different spaces, now you’re keeping up with all these groups so by definition almost, there’s this sort of blossoming outward, where eventually we get full. We get to a point where we’re busy maximally, as much as we can be. And it’s a natural process to get there, I think.

People will say, can you do this? And you can, because you do have time, but then eventually you don’t have any more time. And we reach something that I call steady state, where what you are doing kind of fits into all the time you have. And so you really, when you need something, you need it then because there’s no time to prepare. And there’s some examples I’ll go into, but yeah, it’s about specifically being locked into a sort of step by step process. So yeah, one example of this is or one example of the problems that can arise with some of this is that I’ve heard marathon runners. We’ll actually need like nipple protection because it turns out if you run and run nonstop, your shirt will actually sandpaper away at your nipples and they’ll start bleeding, which is something that no one ever experiences in life because.

Even if you do a lot of running or a lot of walking, there are rest periods and stuff, right? And you generally, your body heals or calluses over or whatever. So it’s only in these extreme circumstances where there is no rest period that you run into this sort of problem where something as simple as a garment can cause unintended secondary effects.

So if you don’t have a rest period it’s possible. To keep going in lockstep like that, like a marathon, but you have to know what is required, what kind of protections you need in place. Marathon runners, of course, will, have someone handing out water bottles or something while they’re running.

They’ll be running, they’ll grab some water and drink it and keep on they’re still running while they drink it. So they need handoffs and stuff. Don’t they have teams who will give them snacks and things?

Akito: Yeah, they

Mike: And then so there’ll be like running, like eating trail mix while they run or whatever.

Akito: Oh, I wanna eat trail mix now.

Mike: Yeah.

Akito: Yeah, I just woke up, now I’m hungry.

Mike: Oh, these should be running too.

Akito: No.

Mike: Anyway, I find it to be like a really fascinating process of just I don’t know, you, you as you’re working really understand what you need as you need it. And you get a sense of that. I ended up taking little tiny mini breaks as I was working where I’d get to this point of there was always something in front of me to do.

And it would be a matter of, okay, I’m going to do this. I’m going to do this. I need to, I was familiar enough with myself to know when I needed to take a moment to pause or to go get some coffee or something, and I would do that and I’d come back and I’d work on more tasks and it’s very much like this, everything listed out and you just go through it all. Which is right on the edge, right? There’s this slope that you can fall off into burnout, but I wanted to kind Poke at that a bit because it’s an interesting concept and I don’t think many people think about it, that sort of like high productivity area just before risk of burnout. I don’t know if any of you have encountered that kind of thing.

Akito: Kinda as I said earlier I was, doing also a lot moderation wise, I think I was moderating What, five, six different groups? You can’t read six different chats at once,

Mike: Maybe you can’t.

Akito: I definitely can’t. Even if one of them is a Discord server with I don’t know, twenty channels, what am I

gonna do? Read it all?

No.

I also want to have a private life, I want to be able to sit down and play video games as much as I want.

Mike: Oh God. See, I guess I gave away my private life is what I did.

Akito: I didn’t. That’s why I’m not doing that much today. I’m focusing on What I do in real life, and then, if someone needs something of me I’m there, you can have me,

Mike: That’s a good way of doing it. Yeah.

Akito: Yeah.

I’m just doing Zoo and Me, I’m tweeting now and then, Yeah.

Mike: I contacted you and we were able to schedule this.

Akito: exactly, I’m playing video games, mostly I can take a break, I can do a break on that, I think,

Mike: I can’t play games unless someone schedules some with me.

Akito: exactly that was my way of winding down everything. There was also around the time, the whole end of 2023, the whole DSi thing happened,

Mike: Oh, yeah.

Akito: and I was just really, fed up at that point. Since I was feeling poopy, I just, I think it was like a week I actually didn’t go online in the zoo community at all. that was like the only time I freely Just not been present at all.

Mike: I think, yeah, there’s those moments where we need, like this is actually a really good next topic for this. We sometimes have things that are hard, right? Things. Either events or something comes up that we have to deal with things that are hard for us and that burns through our reserves much quicker and it leaves us needing a rest.

Sigma: I feel you guys on the point of not being able to keep up with multiple chats, because I have reached the point right now where I’m Where very nearly the only chat that I pay attention to, on Telegram or anywhere else, is my Feralist FW group.

And I have been very happy with that, but that’s enough to keep up with. Trying to administer that group, trying to maintain social cohesion in that group. Has taken up the lion’s share of my social energy outside of other things that I’m doing in my life. I’ve also in conjunction with that begun to expand my horizons creatively.

I’ve begun to develop myself as a writer, and I’ve taken up a couple of other hobbies. Because those are things that have always been things that I’ve wanted to do. And now I’m at a point where I think I need to be more disciplined with my time. so I can do things that really need to be done.

Mike: Yeah. And you’re able to do that because you’ve been really good at giving, really good at building a good moderation team for your spaces.

Sigma: Oh, for heaven’s sake, yes. I’ve got one really wonderful moderator. Gus is incredible.

Mike: Yeah. I’ve, I find myself relying on having someone there to just do the day to day. Even on ZooCommunity, I need to give a call out to HugDoggie, who sent an email to us earlier. He’s been looking at the site for a long time, looking after the site. And before that, Brass Bulldog and I don’t know if I could even do it without them.

It was really good to have them on board.

Akito: yeah, I love Hug Doggie, one of our earliest guests on Zoo and Me Yeah, yeah, he’s a good guy.

Sigma: It’s good to have people that you can rely on. It is the most wonderful thing.

Mike: It’s part of our responsibility as, I don’t know what you would say owners of groups in the community, people who are facilitating the community like this. It’s our responsibility to look at people, what they’re doing, and whether they can help to bring them into that experience.

Akito: I don’t think I really relate to that because I don’t have a group like that. I just have the podcast. It’s not that urgent, If we’re missing out a week, it’s cool.

Mike: yeah, do you have a chat on your, like you have a channel, right? Yeah.

Akito: Yeah, it’s just mainly for feral youth. So it’s whatever.

Mike: The channel, the chat is just a discussion thing to reply to

the

Akito: exactly. exactly. There is a community in there, they’re just chatting about Feral Yev. If they can’t chat about that they’ll be fine, I’m sure.

Mike: Yeah. And,

your moderators are holding things down fine. You don’t have like weird drama jumping in every once in a while.

Akito: No, it’s fine. It’s totally cool.

But, and I can always rely on Brass that if I’m just not feeling like recording, he’ll find a guest, and he’ll get it done

Mike: Yes.

Akito: or the other way around we’ll work it out. It’s just,

Mike: Partnerships.

Akito: Yeah it’s not all on me to do it. If I say I can’t edit this week I’m dead or something.

I don’t know. He’ll do it.

Mike: Yeah. Partnerships are so important because oh, I had another note in here that what we’re doing, if we have to leave and the things rely on us, basically it stops and all the network effects die out. That’s the fire. That kind of fuels everything. Yeah, you need other people to step in and keep that thing running.

Especially something like a podcast, right? That you’re doing every week. Yeah, having someone else to step in is really important. I actually I mentioned earlier the Toggle had to take entire months off. Basically, he found out that the, what do you call that the hiatus he tried didn’t really work because he was still in charge of getting all the podcasts together.

And so throughout the month, he was still stressing about that, even though he was technically on hiatus. He should probably have just taken off six months and had no podcast at all for six months. That’s a proper hiatus, but yeah, this, what he’s doing now is flip flopping. We are still releasing episodes every month.

But it’s a sort of a different team that’s handling most of it every second month so that gives him some good vacation time

Akito: I also think that taking a vacation where you in the beginning say when it’s gonna be done just doesn’t really work. Cuz how do you know that how do you know if you’re in ready in six months? What if you’re still not

really all there? What if, I don’t know, I prefer just saying I’ll be gone

until

I’ll be back,

Mike: yeah, I do understand the feeling like there are times where I’m, spending time listlessly drifting and then I say, oh, now I am ready, like I’m, I’ve been off for most of this year, and I’m slowly coming back where, like I’ve been keeping up with chats and things, all the important stuff, making sure everything’s still running, but I had dropped most of the really involved stuff, involving myself with the community, and I’m slowly picking it all back up, catching up on all the groups that I’ve been involved with.

Behind in, and it’s a matter of, it’s almost like that first bit where you’re doing more and more, slowly expanding outward back into what I was doing before. Because I think the main marker of burnout is that you just cannot do what you were doing. So to even do half of it, you’re still working at 100 percent capacity. So you really do have to just drop the whole thing until you recover and can get back to where you were.

Sigma: Perhaps at some point we ought to discuss whether or not we can have a sort of art and science to using vacation time to trigger a sort of second honeymoon. Because I think that When we talk about needing a vacation from something to continue to love it, that is what we are talking about, that desire to feel a little bit more like we did during that honeymoon period,

Mike: Yeah.

Sigma: and by stepping away,

we can come back to it feeling fresh.

Mike: Yeah because I think a lot of that honeymoon is our connections with other people, right? And connecting to more and more the whole community, it’s so invigorating. And, just I don’t know, a week ago, I’m thinking about things like who do I want on this podcast? And everyone’s tapped out.

And if you had said no that would have put me, in a worse place, really. Trying to struggle to find someone else. No, so I’m glad that there are people around me who are still here. People around me that, are doing the same things I’m doing, that I can talk to, like this, having this conversation right now.

Sigma: I’m very glad to be here.

Mike: Yeah, so just maybe all of us taking vacations together and then coming back at the same time as well. Things like that, right? Some of us can kinda give each other a hand up and say, Okay we’re both kinda ready to get back into things. And that, that helps build that community drive again.

That fire that lights a passion. The

Akito: I don’t know, I think my main vacation really is just your friends. It’s not exactly

relaxing,

Mike: You know what?

Akito: it’s

Mike: It’s not relaxing, but what it’s different

Akito: Yeah, you get to meet all of these people in real life. In real life, some for the first time, and it’s just nice to see them completely differently, it’s exciting. Also, I

Mike: Yeah.

Akito: The food’s good.

Mike: Oh, geez. If it was all about meeting for food, I’ll bet the whole community would be like 10 times better.

Sigma: Recently, I tried going to my first furry convention, and I just did not really feel it. It just is not necessarily my thing. I am more of a small, in person, meet up kind of person, apparently. Because then there is a greater degree of intimacy.

Mike: Also Sigma,

Mike: You came into all this from. feeling unwelcome in the furry community because of all the drama and the call outs against zoos and all that, right?

Sigma: A huge part of the reason that I got involved to begin with was really due to the fact that the zoo community began to exist. To tell you the truth, there had always been some really bad pornography sites that were not very friendly places and did not have Anything at all like a community.

They were money making sites, and I found that to be, to a high degree, tacky and not very welcoming. And then, all of a sudden, there was this group of people that just wanted to come together to have somebody to talk to about this part of themselves that they really could not talk about with anybody else.

And with the sudden wave of Antipathy towards zoos in the furry community. Many of these people, instead of just ceasing to exist like I think many furries might have imagined we did, we ended up just finding each other. And all of a sudden, we had this huge jumble of different people with different ideas and different backgrounds that just did not know each other and there was that period of us all as You were talking about earlier, of us meeting each other and sniffing each other’s butts, to put it in dog

language.

Mike: yes,

Sigma: and that triggered in me that initial wave of excitement that this was an entire world of people that I didn’t know, and getting to know them was a huge deal for me. Again, talking about that sort of honeymoon period, yes.

Sigma: So that was how I ended up coming across the zoo community. There was also the fact that, to tell you the truth, there has always been harassment against zoos in the furry community, even going back to the 2000s and the 2010s. We have had pockets of territory. that happen to be furry spaces of a kind that were also not well known to the mainstream

to a certain degree we might not have been completely aware of much antipathy there was toward us in the mainstream community because we would find these spaces where most people

We’re accustomed to knowing people like ourselves, if they were not people like ourselves to begin with.

Mike: A day too.

Sigma: It did take me a while, though, to realize how much antipathy there was until I started meeting other zoos and realize how far back it really goes. It was not really a sudden wave. For a while, it climates. But it was an old problem. It was an old problem that really went back to at least the 1990s, if not potentially earlier.

And the fact that we were able to stay ignorant of it, or at least many of us were able to stay ignorant of it, is a testament to how many different kinds of online spaces there really were. So that we could end up in those sorts of niches where we could remain blissfully ignorant of how bad things are elsewhere.

Mike: Cause yeah, you had written a bit about how you didn’t feel welcome in furry spaces and came to find the zoo spaces here. I was just wondering how that kind of matched up with you trying to go to a furry con again. I guess if you’ve always thought that it was worth. Trying for.

Sigma: to tell you the truth, I don’t think that at least the convention that I went to was really geared toward people that think very much as I do.

did not fit with me.

I actually get along much better with the science fiction and fantasy community. To tell you the truth, I have always really fit in a whole lot better with the science fiction and fantasy community.

To tell you the truth, there is a subsection of the science fiction and fantasy community See you there. are dedicated animal lovers. There’s a whole sub genre in the

science fiction and fantasy genre that is focused on people that have strong, even magical empathy bonds, or even telepathic

bonds with animals, and that forms this huge sub genre in the science fiction and fantasy genre.

Mike: Yeah. I’ve caught some of the writings about that in your group. You ought to host an episode at some point talking about either zooey or animalistic media or books and things but yeah, to get back to vacations.

Sigma: , well, it is inevitable that some zoos would identify with that particular

literature.

Mike: Yeah, totally.

Sigma: Because, if you’re going to write about animals, you have to expect people that love animals to read it and to enjoy it and to appreciate it and to feel changed by it.

Akito: I don’t know, I think why I enjoy furrycon probably more than you is because I see myself first as a furry, and then second as a zoophile. I guess it’s just, what I’ve always done, be a furry, since I was like a child. I do enjoy some of the more furry elements of a furry convention.

I’m actually the same in that I’m first a science fiction and fantasy fan, but only secondly a zoo. The fact that I’m a zoo, that’s just a weird thing about me.

Sigma: That suddenly became controversial for reasons I can never understand.

Akito: But I think being a zoo has actually improved my experience at these cons. I don’t know what I would do all day if I was, if I didn’t know all of these people. I would just, I don’t know, stand around. Buy things.

Mike: You could become friends with anyone. It’s just harder if you think they might hate you suddenly. Yeah. Exactly,

Akito: knowing all of the Europeans is just nice that I have this, I don’t know, like 20 people big friend group who I can meet, we all meet up at once together and play songs. That’s way cooler than like meeting one

person and going to McDonald’s,

Mike: I find I don’t know zoos is a big part of it’s part of who I am, right? Imagine going out and having no hair or a scalp or something, right? You need all your parts, even if it’s not like the most important and everyone focus on this. You have all of you to go out with.

And yeah, that’s part of the animality of me. Can come out at a furry con. And I think the reason such a thing might be a vacation for me is that I feel a lot of that same energy of meeting people and being able to build connections. I don’t know if you get that at furry cons, the connections that you build there.

Akito: Yeah, I think it’s for me mostly You Meeting people I already know and fursuiting. I guess you make connections fursuiting, in a way, but I don’t really go up to strangers and talk to them. But to me, in, where else can you start an uwu chain, You can’t do that in a random city somewhere, you, you

can only do those at furry cons.

Mike: Yes.

Akito: special.

Mike: My yif me pin. I can’t wear that to work.

Akito: Exactly. I did. I did do that. I like had pins with like furry dicks on my backpack

Sigma: Now speaking on doing creative stuff and and being involved with the community, to tell you the truth, a big part of why I have been distracted. Is that I have been trying to develop myself creatively. And I’ve been trying to develop myself as a writer.

And that has been a very productive time period for me. Perhaps we could start talking about the need to take creative vacations where we just take time to focus on developing a part of our creativity, our ability to make things and create things, and mostly focus on that for, say, half of the year

Mike: yeah.

Sigma: something that we can bring home.

Mike: Because there were, there’s the concept of a sabbatical, right?

Sigma: Yeah yeah that, that is really in the academic community from what I have heard. , I’m not in the academic community myself, but in the academic community, there is such a thing as a working sabbatical, where you take leave just to develop a part of yourself that you can bring back to your profession.

And it’s not something you’re doing. As much for a vacation to spend doing nothing, but instead, you spend that time away from your main work to get something, to develop something that you need in order to do well at your work.

Akito: While I like that concept, I think I’m a bit too lazy for that. When

I want to take a vacation, I want to be Sip on a piña colada and sit on the beach. That’s my kind of vacation.

Mike: I think there’s different kinds, right? So like You could take a vacation, and then maybe you also say, maybe towards the end of the vacation, you’re like, I feel pretty rested, but I want to draw, or something like that, right? There’s different kinds of things people want to do when they feel inspired.

I like to just drop everything and do some coding projects sometimes, programming. And there’s something about that, spending all day, just literally all day, programming on something. There’s nothing else like that for me.

Akito: Yeah. I think Zoo and Me also started as a, burst of energy in the middle of nowhere while I was on summer break from school. And I just wanted to do a project, so I hit up BRASS and we said, yeah, let’s do this. And I think a lot of projects start that way, honestly.

Mike: yeah. I think that is actually completely true. Even me joining the community, it was 2020, and I had just stayed at home and worked from home for most of the year, and I was, like, as vacationed out as I ever was, basically, and then towards the tail end of that, I was healthy minded and said, I wonder what’s going on in the zoo community, because I hadn’t popped in for eight years, and it’s because

of that vacation that I was suddenly inspired to do that, right?

Akito: And I’m glad you returned. I have no idea what it was like. 12 years ago.

Mike: I don’t know. I wasn’t really in anything. It was like I knew some furries. That was about it. The idea of an external zoo culture was brand new to me. Oh, Zooier Than Thou was like groundbreaking, right?

Akito: Certainly was to me.

Sigma: something that I follow online is something called Google Trends which just shows how many people are, what percentage of searches are searching for a specific topic. And weirdly, at the start of the period, like shortly after the year 2000, there was this sort of high, this high percentage of searches were about zoos or zoophilia.

And then it gradually declined to very nearly non existent then there was this flurry of controversy, a lot of oppressive laws were passed at the time when everyone was becoming a Nazi, apparently, which was a really weird time in our history. Blame

social media! Anyhow and all of a sudden, there was this huge or I should say, more like a gradual increase in how many searches were for zoophile or zoophilia, and then there was this period of huge spikes when a handful of journalists were were doing sensationalistic reports on zoos and ones that were dysfunctional and weird because it just happened to be a way they could sell tabloid papers.

But then short, shortly after that, I think that they lost interest in that and Now we’re at the highest steady level of interest in zoophilia that there has ever been without those big spikes that are triggered by sensationalistic

Mike: yeah.

I think we are closest than we’ve ever been to like actual, what we call that good faith interest.

Sigma: I believe so. That is

a

good

term for it,

Mike: than their lives now.

Sigma: yeah? Especially now that more people are working from home, with more people working from home, there is a greater need for somebody to have A sort of social interaction, and people, when they get these work from home jobs, they they get their COVID dogs.

It started out as COVID dogs, but now in the wake of that, now the COVID dog phenomenon was actually dysfunctional and very bad for animals, but but one interesting phenomenon is that in the wake of COVID, more people are doing hybrid working setups where people only go to the office a couple of times a week and they still have the same problem that they had during COVID, but they get it.

Lonely, they need company, they need contact, they need physical contact, or at least to be in the social space of another living being. What do you do? Hire somebody and pay them a wage

just to keep you company and have tea with you?

Now we haven’t figured out how to turn me into a cat girl yet we’ll just, we’ll spend a while working on that, I would be happy to volunteer to be the first experiment on that.

But until we can figure out how to turn Sigma into a kimono dragon girl I would really rather be a dragon girl than a cat girl.

then there is a use in having an animal in your company. More people than ever, I believe. To have an animal in their lives to keep them from going insane.

Mike: and if you’re working from home, you can take a bit of a break and take them on walks and things too because that was the big issue is a lot of people are just out all day and they just don’t get to see the animals until they come back home and I don’t know, it’s always bothered me having the animals just cooped up all day like, oh, trying to put you away.

You can sit until we get back.

Sigma: Back before the turn of the millennium many animals did not spend very much time inside, but they ran loose through

That was not the best thing, but that was how things were done back in the barbarity Oh, it’s almost as bad. It’s almost as bad. I’ve got a neighbor who just leaves the dogs out, and the dogs are barking and barking, because they’re so excited by everyone who walks by please pay attention to us, because they’re just sitting in our yard all day.

Mike: And so I’ll make a point to just stop and, go over there and give them some attention every once in a while. It’s the same either way, but if they work from home, if people work from home a little bit, then they get more time with their animals,

Sigma: Oh

yeah,

Mike: I think is way healthier for both.

Sigma: absolutely, and it’s also, as you say, a lot better than keeping them cooped up in a small backyard all day too, so definitely it works out well for everybody.

Which is leading to more people having animals than we’ve ever yeah. recorded history.

Mike: I think a good work from home strategy can almost improve the way vacations work, how we can rest and so on. Cause like I said, some people suffered through 2020. It was really good for me. I’m a homebody. I’m what do you call that? Introvert. So it was really good for me just to sit at home.

I was able to go between meetings to bake some bread or whatever.

Uh, it was

almost like a big vacation for me.

Akito: I was, what, 16? It was such a nice time. We had online school, from bed, with my laptop. I miss it. I know a lot of people died, and that really sucks.

Mike: the actual virus and stuff, but yeah,

Akito: but lockdown was interesting. Everyone was home. So many new hobbies. It was cool.

Sigma: I’m a weird sort of person when it comes to the extrovert versus introvert because I have a great need to socialize, but for me to do it and not feel lost and confused, I need structure. I actually do best in situations where we’re taking turns, people wait their turn, and they get their

turn, and for some reason, that makes me feel feel comfortable going into a social situation rather than dreading it

if you tell me to go to a cocktail party and socialize and make friends, I’m like, what, and have everyone talk over each other and feel like I’m rude if I try to break into a conversation just to have people even know that I’m there?

I, I am so shy about social situations, and that is the issue. I’m really a very social person deep down, but I’m also an incredibly shy human being, except in situations where I know it’s my turn to talk which case I tend to blossom.

Mike: I could enjoy the connection, the communication and all that, but I do really like just spending time in silence alone after that. I can talk with some people and then say, okay, I’m done for the month.

Sigma: Hey,

uh, I’m a person, I spend the majority of my waking hours reading, or listening To audiobooks. In fact I spent the entire day re listening to one of my favorite audiobook series until I got on here, and as soon as I’m back off of here, I’m going to go back to it.

Mike: I’m a vacationvert, I like to just sleep in.

Sigma: Oh, sleeping? See, for me, I don’t sleep very much. I sleep six hours, and if I try to sleep any longer, I just give myself body aches. I get bed sores if I sleep more than six hours. I

Mike: oh yeah,

Sigma: why don’t you do this and then you’ll sleep longer? But I don’t want to

sleep longer because I’ll have bed sores.

Mike: yeah,

Sigma: cause I actually need, After six hours, I need to get up and restore my circulation. And, believe it or not, I’ve got the perfect amount of energy to go about my day. It’s exactly the time I need

Mike: there’s always naps if you need it,

Sigma: so sleeping in is not something I’ve ever been able to do, but I have heard that some people prefer to sleep very little at one time, some people will sleep only like three hours in the night and then they’ll take a three hour nap another time of the day which that’s called a bi phasic sleep cycle, isn’t it?

Mike: Oh probably, most people, like we’re geared towards naps.

Mike: there’s something physically about it, if for instance my sleep schedule is pushed way too late and I try to go to bed too early, like just in the evening, I will sleep for two hours, like dead sleep for two hours, and then suddenly wake up and I cannot go back to bed.

Because it’s like nap time or something, right?

Sigma: yeah

Akito: Sorry about it. Talking about like social interactions and rest, I really like to think about it as I like the concept of a social battery. Cause, Eurofurence last year was also extremely taxing on me.

Afterwards, I like had three weeks straight no contact with anyone. I just had to chill

Mike: ha

Akito: and recharge, and I’m dreading it all over.

Mike: Ha. uh, I think it’s a cute concept,

Akito: Super social, but only for a few days.

Sigma: I would say this, to somebody that’s afraid to take a vacation from something that they see as necessary, it is inevitable that you’re going to end up taking a break, but if you do not schedule a vacation time, what’s gonna happen is suddenly you’re going to burnout and you’re gonna disappear for seven months.

And nobody’s gonna have any idea what happened to you, and you’re gonna find out, some several months later, everybody thinks you’re dead. you just approached the computer one day, and you’re like, I can’t do it right now, I’ll get on tomorrow. And then that turned into I’ll get back to it next week, I’ll get back to it next month, when is it gonna

be?

Mike: when you are doing things and you come back to it, and you have that dread when you’re trying to open a program, and you have that dread, and you say, I don’t want to do this right now, that right there is a very strong warning sign, That something needs to change

Sigma: absolutely.

Mike: probably the biggest possible warning sign where

Sigma: um.

Mike: the very least some kind of break

Sigma: Scheduled vacation time can actually help you avoid those situations where you get that sense of dread that Mike was talking about where you’re actually afraid to go back to it because you’re afraid of getting sucked in again.

So having the reassurance of knowing that you are going to take scheduled vacations from it makes it less scary to go back to it.

Mike: So yeah, we hope you all have a good vacation when you manage to get one and thank you Akito for joining us

Akito: no problem. Anytime.

Mike: Oh yeah! tell us what your are and all that.

Akito: I have a bunch of them on Twitter or X

Mike: it Twitter.

Akito: Twitter’s way better. I miss the bird on Twitter. You can follow me under at a Keto the zoo. And our podcast account is at Zoo and me. And if you just wanna listen to our podcast without having to go through Stinky Twitter, just go to Zoo and me.

It’s a great thing. Great. URL. I don’t know, Brass, you can find him, I’m

sure. He wasn’t on here, so I don’t know if I want to plug him. I’ll do it. Ed Brass, the bulldog. He’s cool.

Sigma: Alright Sigma if you if you want to find me, The only group that I really check is my own group, which is FeralSFW. We are a safe for work group. It is FeralSFW, one word,

Mike: On Telegram.

Sigma: We are a public group. And As for the feral designation, it’s not necessarily a zoo space.

The sense in which we are a zoo safe space is that we refuse to take part in the mainstream furry community’s spite and malice towards zoos. That’s not allowed in our group, and zoos are protected. in the same way and for the same reasons as transgender people of color, or people from other countries, and people with disabilities.

We do not allow harassment against any group whatsoever, including zoos, which makes us unique in the sense that we do include zoos as one of those distinctions that We do not allow harassment based on that point. But we are about the ferals, which means that we just like animals.

Mike: I’m there too. It’s actually one of my favorite groups.

Sigma: Thank you very much, Mike.

—

Toggle: Greetings, friends! I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode. I wanted to remind you that next month is our annual Howloween episode, which also features our annual Samhain ritual. So if you have any loved ones you want to remember next month, please write in at [email protected] and make sure the word ‘eulogy’ is in your subject line, and we’d be honored to help you remember your lost loved ones.

Outro

Mike: Thanks friends for listening to Zoo Ears than Thou.

Sigma: Our next episode is on October 17th. Get ready for a spooky month.

Mike: It’s bound to be full of fun skits, so don’t miss it.

Sigma: You can subscribe to the podcast via our zoo RSS feed. Just point your favorite podcast [email protected]. You can also check out our extensive bonus content at. Bonus zoo.wtf. If you want to show your support financially, head on over to donate.zoo.wtf.

Mike: Our podcast website is still zoo wtf. That’s wtf, as in work till forever. Our Twitter is @zooierthanthou. Follow me @dogmikeZC. And find sigma on her telegram group @feralSFW. That’s all one word, feral. SFW. Safe for work. Hmm.

Sigma: A reminder that we have a form that enables anonymous submissions to the podcast on our website, zoo.wtf. You can recommend Tasty Mocktails to toggle.

Mike: Tails. Hmm.

Sigma: Ask Zooey for the best vacation getaways, or helpfully remind us to physically touch the grass while we’re away from our desks. You can also simply email us at [email protected].

Mike: Or mail yourself across the world, it’s cheaper than airfare.

Sigma: Share this podcast with anyone who needs time off to work on themselves so they can better enjoy the work they love.

Mike: All non humans who contributed to this podcast would like to go for a walk, maybe stop and smell the flowers.

Sigma: A sloth can spend 90 percent of their life hanging on tree branches. How’s that for a bit of quiet solitude?

Mike: I’m Mike the Dog, and I might even take a bit of a vacation myself after this.

Sigma: And I’m Sigma, the miniature dragoness, known to friends as Sigma, the dragon shaped hat. And you’ve almost finished listening to Zooier Than Thou, Stay defiant, fellow zoos.

We’ll see you next time you feel like howling at the moon.