Welcome to Happiness Unleashed with your host, Brittany Darrenbacher, presented by Live Happy.

We intrinsically know that animals and nature have a lot to teach us, but today's guest takes that education deeper than most.

Vanessa Shakur is an author, naturalist, and former pro-boxer, whose new book,

Earthly Bodies, Embracing Animal Nature, Dives into the parallels between our human struggles

and the experiences of our wilder neighbors.

Looking at 23 wild animals from wolves to sea lions, Vanessa explores how developing empathy for wild animals can help us with our own understanding of humanity and see just how

interconnected we are with the planet.

So let's take a walk on the wild side and have a listen.

Hi, Vanessa. Welcome to the show. Hi. It's great to be here. I am so excited to have this

conversation with you. When I started your book, I didn't put it down. I finished it that day.

Oh my gosh, amazing.

Yeah, and I just absolutely loved this book.

And so much so that my husband, who he was working, he's doing his thing in the other room, I kept running in and being like, did you know that and sharing something from the book, you know, from one of the chapters. And so I just almost felt like a little

kid going into this interview, just so curious, so many questions. And so thank you so much

for being here. Yeah. I'm just excited to be here. What inspired you to write this? What inspired you

to write earthly bodies? I would say in a way, you know,

this book started when I was really young. I mean, I've always had a really deep emotional

connection to land and other species. Just like most kids, I didn't just spend time in nature.

I communed with nature. I spoke to other species. I felt one

with the wild and part of it. And, you know, as I grew older, like many of us do, I started to

understand that there was this real dissonance between humans, animals, and other animals, and

this idea of human exceptionalism, that this illusion or these

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