Episode 27: Interview with the vegan artist Lynda Bell

For Episode 27 of Always for Animal Rights, I am pleased to present my interview with Lynda Bell, a full-time artist and vegan living in New Zealand. Lynda’s colourful paintings and illustrations depict a vegan world in which all animals, human and nonhuman, live together in peace.

Forest Picnic by Lynda Bell

In this interview, Lynda tells me about what inspires her as an artist, how she incorporates animal rights activism into her art, how she found out about vegan art supplies, and how people have responded to her artwork. She also discusses the meanings of specific paintings that she has made, including Forest Picnic, Happily Ever After, Sleeping Blissful, and The Protector.

As we know, art has the power to change hearts and minds. It can help people “make the connection” and decide to go vegan, and it can inspire vegans to take action to create a better world.

I love this interview! You can find Lynda’s artwork on her website at https://artbylyndabell.com. She is also on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Happily Ever After by Lynda Bell

How to listen to this episode

There are two ways you can listen to this episode.

1. Listen to the episode on CKCU FM's website at https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/553/47886.html.
2. Listen to or download the podcast from Archive.org at https://archive.org/details/afar-may-27-2020_202005.

You can also find Always for Animal Rights on Facebook and Instagram. If you'd like to receive an e-mail every time there is a new post on the AFAR blog, feel free to enter your e-mail address into the appropriate box in the right-hand sidebar of this site.

Have a nice week!

Episode 26: Interview with Dr. Natalie Khazaal about speciesism in the media

Photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals

Welcome to Episode 26 of Always for Animal Rights!

This week’s show features my recent interview with Dr. Natalie Khazaal. Natalie is an Assistant Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, and she is an American Council of Learned Societies fellow for her work on Arab atheists. Her work in the field of Critical Animal Studies includes academic articles on speciesism in the media and the EU’s vivisection policies; she is also the co-editor of the book “Like an Animal”: Critical Animal Studies Perspectives on Borders, Displacement, and Othering, which will be published later this year.

In this interview, Natalie explains how the mainstream media reinforces speciesist ideology in news stories regarding nonhuman animals. She also tells me how journalists can reject speciesism, and instead report on nonhuman animals’ stories more responsibly and ethically.

The article we discuss in this interview is the 2016 academic journal article, ““An Angry Cow Is Not A Good Eating Experience”: How US and Spanish media are shifting from crude to camouflaged speciesism in concealing nonhuman perspectives”, which Natalie co-authored with Núria Almiron.

After speaking about speciesism in the media, Natalie tells me about her upcoming co-edited book about human and nonhuman refugees and migrants.

This is a really interesting interview, and I hope you’ll listen in!

Go vegan today: https://goveganworld.com/why-vegan

How to listen to this episode

There are two ways you can listen to this episode.

1. Listen to the episode on CKCU FM's website at https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/553/47819.html
2. Listen to or download the podcast from Archive.org at https://archive.org/details/afar-may-20-2020

You can also find Always for Animal Rights on Facebook and Instagram. If you'd like to receive an e-mail every time there is a new post on the AFAR blog, feel free to enter your e-mail address into the appropriate box in the right-hand sidebar of this site.

Until next week!

Episode 25: Why vegans should never promote lab-grown "meat"

Photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals

Welcome to Episode 25 of Always for Animal Rights!

This week's episode features an interview with the professors Vasile Stanescu, PhD, and John Sanbonmatsu, PhD, who explain why animal advocates should not promote lab-grown "meat" (a.k.a. animal flesh).

In 2019, John and Vasile participated in a debate in which they pointed out that lab "meat" harms animals directly and serves to further entrench animal exploitation in our culture. This is what we discuss on this week's show.

This is a very important topic that animal advocates need to be aware of. I hope you'll tune in!

You can learn more about this issue at CleanMeat-Hoax.com. You can also read Vasile's blog post (which he mentioned in the interview) in which he makes the case that vegan advocacy is, and has been, effective.

You may also wish to read my blog post in which I argue that vegan advocacy is the most essential part of the animal rights movement.

About today's guests:

Vasile Stanescu is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies and the director of the Program in Speech and Debate at Mercer University. He is the co-Senior editor of the Critical Animal Studies book series and former co-editor of the Journal for Critical Animal Studies. He has written more than twenty peer-reviewed publications about Critical Animal Studies and the environment. You can find some of his articles on his Academia.edu page.

John Sanbonmatsu is an Associate Professor of philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He is the founder and main designer of CleanMeat-Hoax.com. He is the editor of the book Critical Theory and Animal Liberation and the author of The Postmodern Prince: Critical Theory, Left Strategy, And The Making Of A New Political Subject.

How to listen to this episode

There are two ways you can listen to this episode.

1. Listen to the episode on CKCU FM's website at https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/553/47786.html.
2. Listen to or download the podcast from Archive.org at https://archive.org/details/afar-may-13-2020.

You can also find Always for Animal Rights on Facebook and Instagram. 

Until next week!