Podcast 22
22. Sailesh Rao, PhD | Compassionate Food Systems for Planetary Healing
In this episode of the Engaged Jain Studies Podcast, Professor Christopher Jain Miller interviews Dr. Sailesh Rao, Founder and Executive Director of Climate Healers. Listen as Dr. Rao describes the contours of a compassionate global food system, and understand why that food system must be plant-based in order to solve some of society's most pressing concerns including poverty, food insecurity, and climate change. See how the compassionate food system Dr. Rao describes is in alignment with the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and how it can help the UN meet several of these SDGs. Leave inspired to help the planet transition toward a compassionate, plant-based food system. Finally, learn about Dr. Rao's upcoming Compassion Studies Initiative course, 2020 | Compassionate Food Systems for Planetary Healing.
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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES & LINKS
- Climate Healers | Transform yourself; transform our world.
- 2020 | Compassionate Food Systems for Planetary Healing
- Course Membership - Start Your 14-Day Free Trial
- Compassion Studies Initiative @Arihanta Institute
- Arihanta Institute | Ancient Wisdom for Modern Living
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ABOUT OUR PODCAST GUEST
Dr. Sailesh Rao is the Founder and Executive Director of Climate Healers, a non-profit dedicated towards healing the Earth's climate. He is an environmentalist by occupation and systems engineer by profession. He invented the protocol for transforming early analog internet connections to more robust digital connections, while accelerating their speed ten-fold. Still today, any data accessed on the internet likely passed through a device implementing this protocol.
He is also a Human, Earth and Animal Liberation (HEAL) activist, husband, dad and since 2010, a star-struck grandfather. He has promised his granddaughter, Kimaya, that the world will be largely Vegan before she turns 16 in 2026, so that people will stop eating her relatives, the animals. He has faith that humanity will transform to keep this pinky promise to Kimaya's generation, not just for ethical reasons, but also out of sheer ecological necessity. He has been championing the Vegan Rewilding solution to our global environmental, health and ethical crises since 2009.
ABOUT OUR PODCAST HOST
Christopher Jain Miller is the co-founder, Vice President of Academic Affairs, and Professor of Jain and Yoga Studies at Arihanta Institute. He completed his PhD in the study of Religion at the University of California, Davis and is also a Visiting Researcher at the University of Zürich's Asien-Orient-Institut and Visiting Professor at Claremont School of Theology where he co-developed and co-runs a remotely available Masters Degree Program focusing on Engaged Jain Studies. His current research focuses on Engaged Jainism and Modern Yoga, and he is the author of a number of articles and book chapters concerned with Jainism and the practice of modern yoga. Christopher is the author of Embodying Transnational Yoga: Eating, Singing, and Breathing in Transformation (Routledge 2024), as well as co-editor of the volumes Engaged Jainism: Critical and Constructive Approaches to the Study of Jain Social Engagement (SUNY 2025) and Beacons of Dharma: Spiritual Exemplars for the Modern Age (Lexington 2020).
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