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

(Update: Since this episode was released, sociologists Matthew Cole and Kate Stewart, lead researchers of the Donald Watson Archive Research Project, found that the word vegan was coined by Dorothy Morgan and Donald Watson in 1944, according to an unpublished letter written by Donald Watson in 1994.)

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!

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!

Episode 24: Chas Newkey-Burden discusses why vegan activism needs to focus on animal rights rather than plant-based consumerism

For Episode 24 of Always for Animal Rights, I am pleased to share my recent interview with the professional writer Chas Newkey-Burden. As part of his animal rights activism, Chas writes articles about animal rights and animal cruelty for mainstream media publications in the UK, including the Independent, the Guardian, and others.

In this interview, Chas speaks about his experiences writing about animal issues for the mainstream media, how people have responded to his articles, and how receptive the media is to publishing nonhuman-centric stories. He also tells me about why he went vegan and why he opposes "Ahimsa dairy".

This interview also covers why vegan activism that focuses on animal rights and liberation, rather than the promotion of plant-based products, is the proper way forward for the animal rights movement. This is very important for us to remember, especially since we’re seeing a surge in the popularity of "plant-based" products nowadays (which, as discussed in the interview, are often not truly vegan anyway). Animal liberation cannot be achieved through capitalism, and Chas provides compelling arguments as to why this is the case. Remember that veganism isn't about buying the latest plant-based consumer products; rather, veganism is an ethical philosophy and corresponding way of living that opposes animal exploitation.

It's a very thought-provoking interview. Here are some of Chas's articles that are discussed in this episode:

• "Burger King’s not so vegan whopper shows what happens when we believe big corporate shares our values" (The Independent, 15 April 2020)
• "Sorry vegans, Burger King's Impossible Whopper won't do anything to save animals" (The Independent, 4 April 2019)
• "If you're a vegan who wants to try a 'bleeding' burger, I'm suspicious – what's appetising about animal slaughter?" (The Independent, 12 November 2018)
• "We always believed Cheltenham Festival put profit before safety. Now we’re seeing the true moral consequences" (The Independent, 22 April 2020)
• "Dairy is scary. The public are waking up to the darkest part of farming" (The Guardian, 30 March 2017)
• "Dairy Is Scared: More People Are Discovering Its Disgraceful Truth" (Plant Based News, 8 February 2019)

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/553/47680.html.
2. Listen to or download the podcast from Archive.org at https://archive.org/details/afar-april-29-2020.

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

Until next time :)

Episode 23: Zipporah Weisberg discusses Critical Animal Studies, feminism, animal liberation, and the harms of biotechnology

This week on Always for Animal Rights, I am excited to share my recent interview with the independent scholar and animal liberation activist Zippporah Weisberg.

Zipporah, who currently lives in Spain, completed her PhD in Social and Political Thought from York University in Toronto in 2013. Over the following two years, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in animal ethics at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. In addition to having written academic journal articles and book chapters on animal ethics,  she has recently started a blog called Animal Unbound to share her observations about, as she says on her website, "the plight of nonhuman animals in our human-centred and technologically mediated world." She is also a contemporary dancer.

In this interview, Zipporah tells me about Critical Animal Studies and some of the theories of how the animal industrial complex was created. We also discuss the following topics:

• why animal liberation is a feminist issue (you can read Zipporah’s article about this here)
• why advocating for legal personhood for certain “human-like” animals, such as great apes and elephants, might be problematic
• how biotechnology harms nonhuman animals and distorts their experience of life
• why the concepts of ontology and phenomenology are important when we’re thinking about animal ethics
• where the animal rights movement is headed, and what we can do to continue advocating for nonhuman animals

Zipporah is also a contemporary dancer. In this photo,
she is dancing at an animal rights protest in Granada

It’s a really interesting interview. If you would like to read Zipporah’s academic journal articles about the topics she spoke about in this episode, you can download them for free after signing up for an account on Academia.edu (which is also free).

Due to time constraints, I was only able to broadcast the first half of this interview on the airwaves this week. However, the podcast version of this episode, which you can find at either of the links below, contains the entire 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/553/47631.html.
2. Listen to or download the podcast from Archive.org at https://archive.org/details/afar-april-22-2020.

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

Until next week!