Welcome to the Our Henhouse interview.

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And how did I got that out of the way?

We are super excited to talk about octopuses and about success today.

I think sometimes we get so mired in the negatives doing animal rights work that it's just so exciting to talk to some folks who are actually getting some stuff done or actually saving some animals.

And our guest today are Amanda Fox, who is the executive director of the Animal Rights Initiative, which is based in the state of Washington, though, from what I can see,

has a reach well beyond that state. And she works there on both legislative advocacy efforts and

other types of campaigns. Allie Taylor, who has been on the podcast before, of course, is the

president of voters for animal rights, or VFAR, where she has led numerous legislative campaigns

in New York City and in New York State,

and Brenna Anderson, who is the senior policy advisor at the Humane League,

where she provides support to members of the Animal Policy Alliance

through local, state, and federal policy research, model legislation drafting,

and legislative and campaign strategy development.

I'm so excited to have you all here today,

and I'm so excited to be talking about something that happened that actually worked.

And I'm really excited to be talking about octopuses, because like who doesn't love an octopus?

Amanda, let's start with you before we actually get to octopuses specifically.

And I do believe that is the proper plural, but tell me if I'm wrong.

I'm sure that all of you have had to learn what is the problem for octopus.

But can you just set the stage a bit and tell us a little about the Animal Rights Initiative

and what it is in your work there?

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