Jesse Eisenberg recently sat down with Dr. Mike on The Checkup podcast to discuss his kidney donation. During the conversation, however, the discussion briefly turned to his family’s unusual Thanksgiving traditions.
Eisenberg began by explaining the dietary philosophy he grew up around. “I come from a family of vegetarians,” he said. He quickly clarified that while his family holds firm beliefs about animal welfare, he personally has not fully adopted those same habits, especially when it comes to eating meat.
He then described what Thanksgiving looks like in the Eisenberg household, painting a somewhat humorous picture of the experience.
“When we just did Thanksgiving, what we do is Thanksliving where we adopt turkeys, put the turkeys’ pictures on the table while we eat tofu, and my sister reads from Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals book where she stands up and reads,” he said.
The reading, he explained, is not lighthearted. It often focuses on the harsh realities of industrial farming.
“They clip the beaks off the turkey with a boiling knife, you know,” he added.
The ritual, he suggested, carries an element of moral pressure for anyone in the room who still consumes meat.
“And so we’re not eating meat, but we’re also shamed about meat eating as a concept,” he said. “And we adopt these turkeys. And the pictures of the turkeys are on the table with names and what they like doing, like facing into a nice breeze or something.”
At one point, Dr. Mike asked a practical question: where does someone even adopt a turkey? Eisenberg responded by pointing to a specific type of animal rescue organization.
“Oh, you know, from like maybe the Farm Sanctuary, which is a place upstate which rescues animals,” he explained.
Despite being exposed to these messages year after year, Eisenberg acknowledged that he continues to eat meat. He openly recognized the contradiction between his knowledge of factory farming and his personal choices.
“I say all this because I’m a meat eater,” he said. “I leave that knowing everything that my sisters read in the book about the hot knife and factory farming and I eat meat.”
He did not attempt to justify the behavior. Instead, he framed it as a moral inconsistency he is fully aware of.
“And I recognize totally this is not ethical,” he continued. “You know, this is something I think we’ll probably look back on the factory farming system as completely unethical, retrograde, and I don’t do that. So I’m not like a great person.”
When Dr. Mike suggested that perfection is not required to be a good person, Eisenberg pushed back, arguing that awareness creates responsibility. In his view, knowing about a problem but choosing not to act carries its own ethical weight.
“No, but I think if you know a lot about something and you still choose not to engage with it, then yeah, there’s some ethical gap there,” he said.
He explained that his upbringing gave him unusually deep exposure to the realities of animal agriculture.
“I know so much about the factory farming system because I grew up in a family of vegetarians and vegans, and so I don’t do anything about it,” he said.
That awareness, he concluded, makes him feel more accountable than someone who simply does not know.
“So yeah, I think there’s a gap there in my ethics,” he added. “If I was ignorant about it, I wouldn’t have as much complicity.”
