Episode 29: Roger Yates speaks about the history of the vegan social movement

Welcome to Episode 29 of Always for Animal Rights! For this episode, the vegan sociologist Dr. Roger Yates returns to the show to speak about the founding and history of the vegan social movement.

A long-term vegan, Roger is a co-founder and organizer of the Vegan Information Project in Ireland. His 2005 PhD dissertation focuses on the social construction of speciesism, and in the 1980's, he was a Press Officer for the Animal Liberation Front. His blog is called On Human Relations with Other Sentient Beings.

In this interview, Roger tells me about how the vegan social movement began in 1944, what values the first vegans stood for, and why it's important for us to educate ourselves about our movement's history. He also discusses the Movement for Compassionate Living, the 1976 BBC "Open Door" television program about the Vegan Society, and one of the world's first vegan plantmilk companies. This blog series, written by Roger about the history of the vegan movement, is what inspired this discussion.

This is a fascinating interview, and I hope you'll listen in!

Excerpt from Issue 1 of "The Vegan News", 1944
(the entire issue can be read for free at https://issuu.com/vegan_society/docs/the_vegan_news_1944)

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/553/48185.html.
2. Listen to or download the podcast from Archive.org at https://archive.org/details/afar-june-24-2020.

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 28: Kate Stewart and Matthew Cole discuss how nonhuman animals are depicted in popular films and stories for children

Matthew and Kate's book, with cover art
by vegan illustrator Hayley Wells

This week on Always for Animal Rights, I am pleased to present my recent interview with the vegan sociologists Matthew Cole and Kate Stewart. Kate and Matthew are the authors of the 2014 book, Our Children and Other Animals: The Cultural Construction of Human-Animal Relations in Childhood. They have also written many academic articles about human-nonhuman relations, such as "The Conceptual Separation of Food and Animals in Childhood", published in 2009.

In this interview, Kate and Matthew discuss the following topics:

• their conceptual map that illustrates how humans categorize nonhuman animals, not according to the animals' innate characteristics, but according to how humans want to exploit them;
• how popular films and stories for children reinforce (and occasionally challenge) speciesism;
• how the animal toys provided to children by fast-food companies are designed in a way that prevents children from "making the connection" between the dead animals in the fast-food bag and the living animals who the child might care about; and
• how vegan children's books challenge dominant speciesist narratives in society.

This is such an interesting topic. I highly recommend that you read their article (linked above), after you've listened to this episode!

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/553/48042.html.
2. Listen to or download the podcast from Archive.org at https://archive.org/details/afar-june-10-2020.

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. 

Thanks for listening!