Summary: Part I: Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn, What the Health: The Startling Truth Behind the Foods We Eat. Kip Andersen’s awakening as a filmmaker came as a result of An Inconvenient Truth. After seeing the film, he dramatically changed his lifestyle and believed he was doing everything he could to help the planet. But his life took a different direction when he found out animal agriculture is the leading cause of environmental destruction. Together with Keegan Kuhn he co-produced his first film, Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret, which became an overnight viral success and ignited the environmental movement. Following this success, he was invited to speak in front of the European Parliament and a new cut, executive produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, was exclusively released on Netflix in September 2015. In 2017, Kip and Keegan released their follow up film What the Health, an investigative documentary exposing the link between chronic debilitating disease and diet, sparking an international viral response yet again with its Netflix release, executive produced by Joaquin Phoenix. Andersen is the founder of A.U.M. Films and Media, a 501c3 nonprofit focused on creating films and media that promote thriveability, compassion, and harmony for all life. He is also a serial entrepreneur, as well as a certified Jivamukti and Kundalini yoga teacher. Andersen is a graduate of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo school of business and has called San Francisco home for more than a decade. Keegan Kuhn is the award-winning co-director of the highly acclaimed documentary film Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret, executive produced for Netflix by Leonardo DiCaprio, and What the Heath, executive produced by Joaquin Phoenix. Kuhn is the owner and operator of First Spark Media, a digital film production company tailored to creating films for social justice. Kuhn’s skills as a director, producer, cinematographer, editor, animator and composer have been utilized in film subjects as diverse as modern Alaskan homesteading, gender inequality, animal rescues, Buddhism, endurance sports and environmental destruction. He is motivated by a deep desire to shed light on untold stories of the most downtrodden in our society, and to raise awareness through greater visibility of social justice issues. Kuhn is the owner of the camera accessory company First Spark Gear and creator of the educational music project True Nature. He lives with his partner Shani in the East Bay of San Francisco, California. Part II: Kathryn Gillespie, The Cow with Ear Tag #1389Kathryn (Katie) Gillespie earned her PhD in Geography from the University of Washington in 2014. Her research and teaching interests focus on: feminist theory and methods; critical animal studies; critical race theory; postcolonial studies; incarceration/prison studies; gender and sexuality; human-environment relations; and food and agriculture. Her current research sits at the nexus of black feminist theory, postcolonial studies, and critical animal studies, focusing on human-animal relations and racialized histories of coloniality at the Louisiana State Penitentiary farm and rodeo. Her dissertation research examined the gendered commodification of the lives and bodies of animals in the dairy industry in the Pacific Northwestern United States. This work was published as a book, The Cow with Ear Tag #1389. She has published in numerous scholarly journals and has co-edited two books: Critical Animal Geographies: Politics, Intersections and Hierarchies in a Multispecies World [Routledge, 2015, co-edited with Rosemary-Claire Collard] and Economies of Death: Economic Logics of Killable Life and Grievable Death [Routledge, 2015, co-edited with Patricia J. Lopez]. Katie volunteers with Books to Prisoners (a Seattle organization that receives and fills book requests from prisoners throughout the United States), Food Empowerment Project (a food justice organization in Cotati, CA), and Pigs Peace Sanctuary (a sanctuary for pigs in Stanwood, WA).
