Episode 53: Vegan sociologists Kate Stewart and Matthew Cole speak about speciesism in the media and popular culture

This week, I am pleased to present my second interview with the vegan sociologists Dr. Kate Stewart, Principal Lecturer in Sociology at Nottingham Trent University, and Dr. Matthew Cole, Lecturer in Criminology at The Open University. Matthew and Kate are the authors of the 2014 book, Our Children and Other Animals: The Cultural Construction of Human-Animal Relations in Childhood, as well as a number of academic articles and book chapters about the sociology of veganism and human-nonhuman animal relations.

In this interview, Matthew and Kate speak about the following topics:

• how children are socialized into accepting and participating in animal exploitation in society
  
• how the mainstream media and popular culture normalize animal oppression and marginalize veganism
• why some people become very hostile in response to the mere mention of veganism or vegan food
  
• why, for many of us, being vegan is actually easier than being non-vegan
• whether a vegan world is possible
  
• what we can do to help normalize veganism in society.

We spoke about the Doctor Who television series (as it relates to veganism and animal ethics) later on in this episode. My guests also discussed their research into the speciesism of animal farming games that people play on their mobile phones, among other topics.

It's a very interesting interview, so I hope you'll listen in!

You can also find my first interview with Kate and Matthew on Episode 28 of the Always for Animal Rights.

Note about Doctor Who: At the end of this section of the 2005 Doctor Who episode "Boom Town", the Doctor orders "steak" and chips at the restaurant, and then in this section (still at the restaurant), he lectures Margaret (a murderous alien) about why she shouldn't kill innocent people. We discussed this scene in the interview.

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/553/51787.html.
   
2. Listen to or download the podcast from Archive.org at https://archive.org/details/afar-april-28-2021.
   

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Go vegan, stay vegan, and let's remember to stand up and speak up for animal rights today and every day. Thanks for listening to the show!