It's time for a new chapter.

For more exclusive content and personal writing from me, check out my Substack here.

On my Substack, I share not only my own reflections and personal thoughts on veganism, but also my journey and struggles. You’ll get a deeper insight into the issues that matter most to me and, in doing so, I hope it helps you feel more connected to your own veganism as well. It’s a space where we can connect and explore the intersection of compassion, reason and rationality together. By joining my Substack you also support the work that I do!

Through my Substack you can also receive regular free 'Good News Roundups' - a collection of positive and inspiring stories from the world of veganism.

If you’d like to support my work separately to Substack, you can also make a one-off or monthly donation here or through my PayPal.

If you’re interested in reading my books, you can find them here:

📚 My latest book How to Argue With a Meat Eater (And Win Every Time) + if you’ve read the book, you can leave a review here!

📚 My first book This is Vegan Propaganda (& Other Lies the Meat Industry Tells You).

Additionally, if you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you could leave a review or rating. Your feedback helps the podcast reach more people, and it truly means a lot to me. If you think this episode would resonate with someone you know, please share it with them too.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode and for all of your support. I look forward to speaking to you again in the next episode!

Transcript

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Welcome to the Disclosure Podcast. If you enjoy this episode and the work that I'm doing here, then please consider checking out my Substack where I post regular articles. You can also support my work by becoming a paid member of my Substack, through which you will also gain access to weekly articles or by making a donation through my website. Links for everything can be found in this episode's show notes. For those of you who do support my work, thank you so much. I am incredibly grateful and appreciate it very much. Leaving a review for this podcast is also really helpful and encourages more people to listen to it. I hope you find this episode interesting and informative, and thank you for listening. So, hello everyone. It's been a little while since I last uploaded a podcast episode, which is a shame because I used to really enjoy podcasting, and it's why I'm so thrilled to be bringing it back. And the episode title for this episode is A New Chapter. Thank you for watching. Hello, welcome back to the Disclosure Podcast. I'm really looking forward to recording more solo episodes like the one that you're listening to right now, but also more interviews with guests. I used to really enjoy interviewing people and that was a personal highlight of the podcast before. I was going to talk to really interesting people about a wide range of different subjects related to veganism and animal exploitation and plant-based diets and such. And so I'm going to be doing that again, of course. I've got some really fascinating conversations lined up and I can't wait for you guys to be able to listen to them, watch them if you're watching on YouTube as well. And one of the other reasons why I'm calling this a new chapter is because I'm introducing a Substack. Now, for those of you who don't know what Substack is, it's essentially a platform where I can post articles, where I can write articles And I can post that on this substack and you can engage with the substack in a couple of ways. The first way is that it will be emailed to you. So when I upload a substack, it will essentially be emailed to you kind of like a mailing list. So if you sign up to a mailing list, maybe you've signed up to my mailing list before and you'll know that you'll get an email to your email and you can read through it. Well, the substack operates in that way as well. So when I post a substack, it will go to your email and you can engage with it like you would a mailing list. But you can also go onto my substack and it'll essentially be kind of like a media page. Like maybe you go on a particular news site. It'll kind of be like that. You'll be able to see all the different articles that I've posted. You'll be able to engage with them, comment on them, that kind of thing. Now, maybe for those of you who've signed up to my mailing list previously, one of the reasons that you might have done that is for something called the Good News Roundup. And a Good News Roundup is essentially where I collate some of the good, positive news stories from the world of veganism and animal rights. And then I essentially email those to you so that you can see all the positive things that are happening and realize that Yes, the world is quite doom and gloom right now. And my goodness, isn't there 101 reasons why we can feel worried and disappointed and distraught? But there is also the sense of change happening within that, around that, despite that. And the Good News Roundup is about reinforcing that view and filling ourselves with a sense of confidence and hope and understanding that there is change amongst the chaos. So for those of you who signed up to my main list before, don't worry, it will go basically through Substack. So essentially you'll still get the Good News Roundup. It's just not coming through the same platform. It'll be coming through Substack. However, also on my Substack, you can become a paid member. So as well as receiving the free content, like the Good News Roundups and occasional free articles, you'll have access to all of the articles that I will be writing. And also you'll be supporting the work that I do. So if you're interested in supporting wider work and also accessing all the different articles that I'll be posting then by becoming a paid member you can do that and I just want to say to any of you who do want to become a paid member of my sub stack well thank you so so much I really do appreciate all of the support that you've all given me throughout the years writing has become a really big part of my life obviously because of the books that I've that I've published so far I mean, writing's always been a big part of my work because I might write videos, write captions, write posts, but writing books opened that quite broadly. And I found it really rewarding and enriching and really enjoyable. Again, the sub-stag, the idea behind it is that like the podcast, yes, I'll address topics. Yes, I'll be debunking some misinformation. Yes, I'll be addressing certain things, but also it's about expressing myself personally. And I find that easier to do in the written form because you can think, you can mull things over, you can really ruminate and you can express yourself. And I really enjoy that. And so what I'll be sharing on my Substack will often be quite personal about what I'm feeling, how I'm engaging with the world around me, some of the experiences that I've had, what essentially this ongoing journey is looking like for me. So if that sounds like something you'd be interested in, then that's also what will be there on my Substack. And what I'm hoping is that through expressing these personal aspects, expressing myself more emotionally, let's say, what are my feelings and thoughts and concerns, but also on the flip side, why I'm feeling optimistic and positive and what gives me inspiration. Through doing that, I hope that it will also validate the experience of being vegan for you and provide you with the space where your experiences are being affirmed and where your world around you starts to hopefully make a little bit more sense through the interpretations of the world around me that i will be conveying one thing that i've really reflected on i suppose in the past two years let's say is the importance of our community and the importance of affirming to ourselves why we live the way that we do and finding validation from one another previously a lot of my content was really catered towards okay i want to get this content out to get people to go vegan and i'm still going to be uploading that content as well. There's still debates that I'll be uploading and other videos on my YouTube channel that will be addressing certain topics and addressing certain issues. But I think in the past year or so especially, the content that's resonated most with me and from some of the feedback I've had from you guys, the content that I think has resonated most with you has often been that content which addresses the experience of living vegan. And I think that is so important now because of some of the concerns that exist, some of the pushback that there is, and some of the gaslighting that exists, some of the campaigns of misinformation and disinformation, the way that social media and the algorithm on social media pushes a lot of very dangerous and toxic content. And that applies to vegan content as well. A lot of anti-vegan content, a lot of unsubstantiated anecdotal content, a lot of sort of right-wing content which has the edge of pushing meat and pushing red meat in particular and carnivore diets and these sort of harmful alternative meat-based diets. And I think because of that, it can feel sometimes for us as vegans that we are being barraged with a lot of very negative things. And that can weigh heavy on us. Of course, it can weigh heavy on us. I also will just probably discuss why I don't think that's fully representative of the whole situation we find ourselves in. There's lots of things to be positive about, but undeniably, there is this kind of contradiction where these two things can be true at once, where there are reasons to feel positive and to feel hopeful, but undeniably, there's lots of reasons why we might feel slightly pessimistic, why we might feel like, like the progress that we were making has been somewhat stalled and that, pardon the pun, the appetite for this conversation has been somewhat diminished in recent years. And not just diminished in terms of people engaging with it, but diminished in the sense that the meat industry and social media commentators who are anti-vegan have managed to create forms of conversation or narratives which have proved to be fairly effective when it comes to attacking the validity of plant-based alternatives, attacking the validity of maybe even the sustainability messages around veganism. And we see that with the rise of regenerative, so-called regenerative agriculture and grass-fed beef and the push to eat red meat because it stores carbon and attacking plant-based diets for not being sustainable like we've been told they were because of almond farming or whatever it may be These are not necessarily new for us as vegans. We were dealing with this five, six years ago. But I do think that the way that they've been used and the way that they've been weaponized and the way that they've been disseminated online has led to a lot of confusion and doubt around the merits of a plant-based diet and the merits, let's say, of living vegan. And that's incredibly frustrating for us for two reasons. First, because it's completely untrue. It is so annoying, isn't it, to be watching this this content, are engaging with this content and seeing it and just knowing how it's been deliberately misrepresented or is misrepresenting the evidence. It has deliberately been twisted to push a narrative, an agenda, a bias. We see how these things are playing out because we actually know the the mechanisms behind that. And there was this really interesting report that was published recently, which was looking at this campaign of disinformation that was conducted by this PR company called Red Flag, which as a name, can we just say like, if you're calling yourself Red Flag and then you're going out spreading disinformation deliberately, I mean, wow, okay. Is that some deliberate thing? I mean, surely not, but of all the names to choose for your company that spreads disinformation, disinformation and misinformation on behalf of the meat industry, red flag, wow. You've got to smile about that, right? But it was really fascinating to read that report because it showed just how these campaigns of disinformation operate and how these PR companies are being hired by the animal agriculture industry to basically spread doubt and to basically take over a certain narrative and co-opt it and then start to incorporate their messaging in such a way as it diminishes and demeans the actual evidence from scientists, let's say. And in this particular expose, it was looking at a report called the Eat Lancet Study, which was published back in 2019, I believe. And it was met with such a ferocious push that it was actually kind of surprising. Like, where did this come from? Well, this expose was showing that this pushback was a highly and heavily orchestrated campaign of disinformation spearheaded by a PR company called Red Flag, funded by the animal agriculture industry. Right. So there's a lot of reason why you might feel quite frustrated. And so I won the podcast and my work, maybe more generally, to be tapping into this experience of being vegan. Because I need that as well. I need that. I need this feeling of community, this feeling of validation, this feeling that, yes, the world isn't where we want it to be, but we have one another. And the way that we feel is valid and the experiences and emotions that we have within us or that we experience around us, they're valid and they're reasonable. We might need to find ways of dealing with them and coping with this contradiction, this juxtaposition of living in a world where all these things are so obviously bad, but happening and condoned by the masses, even if ignorantly condoned. We have to find ways to deal with that. But part of that is acceptance. And part of acceptance is validation. It's feeling the way that we feel and rationalizing that, not shaming ourselves or pushing those emotions and feelings down. It's understanding them. experiencing them, validating them for ourselves and one another, and then finding ways to move on and deal with this experience that we have. And of course, I'm very, very, very cautious not to try and portray this situation in such a way as to say that we vegans are the ones who, out of the vegan thing, are the ones suffering. it's the animals who are suffering the most, but that doesn't mean that we can't feel valid with the emotions that we feel and the experiences that we have. Yes, we may not be the true victims of this particular movement, this particular issue, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't validate one another and experience the things that we feel without judgment, without shame. And I've realized that, and I've strongly felt that within myself, and I want to be able to experience that with my audience, you guys, the people who engage with my content, the people who supported me through all of these years. Because I think now we are in such a turbulent time where we hear about ex-vegans and we hear about people turning their back and we hear stories about how, oh, the number of people going vegan isn't what it was or the people who are interested in it. And we hear all of this and it's hard to decipher what's true and what's sensationalist and what the evidence shows. And I don't think it's quite as simple as maybe some of these narratives say that it is. But I think it's really important that for those of us who are so passionate about this, and we all are so passionate about this, of course, it's so important that we have the support of one another. And I want this podcast and I want the platforms that I have to be a space where, yes, we can bring people in and hopefully get them to go vegan and we can, you know, the debates or whatever I'm doing, hopefully is encouraging people to be vegan. But through that, I want to create a positive emotion for us, for us vegans. because feeling positive, feeling hopeful, feeling validated, even validated in the sense where something is not pleasant, where something is uncomfortable, something is upsetting, but we can experience that, we can talk about that, we can rationalize that, we can get to the bottom of that together and then feel that together and then exist together as a community. That is so important. I so strongly believe that. So I've uploaded a couple of videos in the past 12 months or so, which have talked about some of these issues, living vegan in a non-vegan world, what it's like, to have a vegan experience at Christmas, these kinds of things. And we'll touch on those subjects and we'll touch on much more as well. Of course, it's not just about that. We're gonna talk about misinformation and disinformation. We're gonna talk about a wide range of different things, but I think all under this sort of umbrella, this idea, of affirming this to ourselves, of finding community with one another, finding a space where we can be vegan and we can express ourselves and we can feel validated and we can feel comfortable and we can feel like we are not the ones who are living in this paradoxical state where actually it is the world around us that lives in this paradoxical state where good, compassionate, kind people are engaging these horrible, violent atrocities every single day. And it's not because they are bad or even conscious of that, but because we live in a world where there is advertising and media and these propaganda campaigns which are normalizing this system of violence and harm and that is a heavy burden heavy weight that we have on our shoulders to live in that world of contradiction this paradoxical society this confusing immoral society even if not necessarily immoral because the people engaging in it are consciously doing something immoral they're just they're ignorant and that ignorance isn't necessarily any fault of their own. It's more like a prescribed ignorance where there's this system of animal exploitation that exists in such a way and is normalized in such a way as it sort of prescribes ignorance. Because you have to seek out the information, you have to seek out the videos, the studies, you have to kind of go a little bit beyond just the surface level of existing in the world to start to maybe understand just how ubiquitous and normal and torrid and cruel and horrible the system of animal exploitation is. Anyway, that maybe goes into a little bit of detail about some of the things I've been thinking about recently and the podcast. What are some of the issues I want to talk about? Why I want to carve out this space? There are a lot of very fascinating subjects right now that are worthy of addressing. And I say fascinating, not because they're wonderful, but the opposite. I mean, they're kind of terrible, really, aren't they? But fascinating in the sense of, from an analytical perspective, from a from a discussion point perspective, there is a lot in there that is worth unpacking and worth sort of going into more detail about. And part of that will be around sort of the wellness pseudo spiritual place. It will be around sort of right-wing populism. It will be around not just the right-wing populism, but maybe even the failings of left-wing advocates, left-wing populism to address this particular issue, this incredibly vital and important issue, which has been overlooked across the political spectrum. And what does this gap within left-wing conversations and within left-wing ideology mean for veganism and what impact will that have? There's such a broad spectrum of conversation to be had. And for those of you who have read my second book, How to Argue with a And when every time you'll already know that I'm really interested in discussing sort of the political spectrum and the different arguments used across the political spectrum against veganism. In fact, if you're interested in misinformation and in disinformation, then my second book, How to Argue with a Meat Eater, goes into a lot of detail about those subjects and points to different case studies and different examples and breaks them down to provide clarity and context around veganism. how these campaigns work, how this messaging interrupts the information landscape and distorts the narrative in the minds of the consumer, in the minds of the public. If those are topics that are of interest to you, then in my second book, I do discuss those in quite a bit of detail because it's something that I'm really passionate about. And actually, I think we have to understand how these things work to be able to properly address them and deal with them. And I think that applies to people on an individual level. I think sometimes as advocates or as activists, we can have this sort of barrier where we think that any attempt to try and understand someone's behavior or to kind of get to the bottom of why someone believes the things that they do or how they've come to this worldview, we sometimes, I think, worry that that is in a way a form of condoning that viewpoint because but it isn't. And if we can understand why and how someone has got to the position that they're in, it means that we can become better at convincing them of why it is that they're wrong. And so one of the reasons I'm passionate about going through the misinformation and disinformation is not just because it's important to address it and we need to debunk it. And my second book is all about debunking these arguments, these fallacious arguments and this misinformation and disinformation. It's important for us to debunk it because it's validating for us to go, i knew this was wrong this is all the reasons why it's wrong gosh like this is crazy am i crazy no i'm not look this is how it works this is how these campaigns operate this is how this misinformation is spread this is why people believe these terrible things because of how these things operate and how this system condones such things and then enables other people to participate in these industries without consciously reflecting on them and you know, critically reflecting on the morality or immorality of them, that space is validating for us because it allows us to exist more comfortably in this world because we can understand it a little bit better. Not agree with it, but understand it. That's so important, I think. And it also means that we can become, hopefully, better advocates, stronger influencers. I don't mean influencers in terms of social media influencers, but influencers influences in terms of our own personal lives, our friends, our family, the people that we engage with. If we can understand their behavior, it can make coexisting with them easier. Not easy, but easier. And it can also make getting through to them easier. Not easy, but potentially easier. And I suppose in essence, that's what I wanted this episode to kind of be about. Just sort of addressing some of the things I've been thinking about, what I've been mulling over. quite consistently recently. And also what direction I move my content in. It's not a radical departure from what it is that I have been doing, but it will be more consistent and it will allow me to engage with you more and it will be more personal. And I think that that's so key for us to validate one another. Like I've said many times, validate one another and foster this community that we have together in a time where it is turbulent and the winds of chaos are blowing extremely strongly That's how it feels, being battered constantly by this barrage of strong, chaotic disturbance around us. And it's important that we remain resolute, anchored in rationality, anchored in compassion in a world where such a thing seems to have disappeared or maybe has never existed, at least not existed in the way that we, of course, want it to. So it's important that we remain anchored in rationality and in compassion and in togetherness, in community. Anyway. Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate it. Do let me know down below in the comments if you're watching this on YouTube, if there are any issues you'd like me to talk about, any particular conversations that you'd like me to address, any experiences that you've had that you think would be worthy of kind of going into detail around, not necessarily the experiences individually, but sort of the wider context around them, the arguments, why people say these things, what is the psychology behind why people act... the way that they do. If there are any particular subjects that you think would be of particular value for us to discuss on this podcast, then do let me know. And I'm really looking forward to uploading some of these interviews that I've got with some really fascinating people. So stay tuned for those as well, because I just always feel so humbled and so privileged to be in the company of people who are so clever, who are so committed, who are so dedicated to their work and who produce such excellent quality of work as well. And I just love talking with people who are like that because they inspire me and I truly believe that they will inspire all of you when you get to listen to them as well. Anyway, thank you so much for listening. I really do appreciate it. For those of you who are interested in checking out the sub stack, I'll leave links down below for you to do that. And I really appreciate all of you who sign up. And of course, all of you who sign up to become paid members as well. Thank you so, so much. I really do appreciate it. All right, guys, thank you so much for watching or for listening. And I will speak to you all in the next podcast episode. Thank you so much for listening. If you've enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe to the Disclosure Podcast on whichever platform you listen to it as doing so means that you can always stay up to date with new episodes. Leaving a review and sharing the podcast is also really helpful. And if you'd like to support the podcast and my work more generally, you can either make a donation through the link in the show notes or sign up to my sub stack where I post weekly and share my thoughts and feelings about the experience of living vegan. In the show notes, you can also find links to purchase my books. Thank you again for listening.