Veganism, Bad Arguments, and Moral Philosophy with Dr Jack Symes

Dr Jack Symes is a philosopher at Durham University, UK. As well as being the author of multiple books on religion and philosophy, Jack regularly delivers invited lectures at leading universities, such as Harvard University, Dartmouth College, and the University of Oxford.

Jack regularly appears on mainstream platforms, such as BBC Television, BBC Radio, The Joe Rogan Experience, Jubilee Surrounded, Piers Morgan Uncensored, Glastonbury Festival and more. He is also the host of The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast, one of the UK’s most popular higher education podcasts. In 2024, Jack was awarded the BBC New Generation Thinker Prize.

- https://www.jacksymes.co.uk/

- Jack's YouTube

- Jack on Jubilee Surrounded

Today's episode:

In this episode, I chat with Dr Jack Symes about his recent appearance #debating meat eaters on Jubilee Surrounded. We also discuss whether the motivation for why someone goes #vegan matters, if religion has been positive or negative for animals, whether there should be meat taxes, and much more. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:31

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. For those of you who do support my work, thank you so much. I am incredibly grateful and appreciate it very much. Links for everything can be found in this episode's show notes. 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. Hello everyone, and welcome to this episode of the Disclosure Podcast. On today's episode, I'm thrilled to be joined by Dr. Jack Symes. Dr. Jack Symes is a philosopher at Durham University in the UK, as well as being the author of multiple books on philosophy and religion. He is also regularly invited to speak at some of the most prestigious universities in the world, including Harvard University, Dartmouth College, and the University of Oxford. Dr. Jack Symes regularly appears on mainstream platforms, including BBC Television, BBC Radio, The Joe Rogan Experience, Jubilee Surrounded, Piers Morgan Uncensored, and Glastonbury Festival, among many others. Jack is a host of the Pan Sycast Philosophy Podcast, which is one of the most popular higher education podcasts in the UK. And in 2024, Jack was awarded the BBC New Generation Thinker Prize. So, Dr. Jack Symes, thank you for joining me today.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

That was such a lovely introduction. You're so good at this. You're very, very kind. I feel like you're moging me compared to my interview with you. Well, I feel bad for not starting off and singing about all your accolades.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Well, to be fair, this is the thing I always get most nervous about. And I get a I get a guest on, and then for some reason I decide that I have to try and memorize some kind of biography before we start.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

You smashed it? How long did it take you to memorize it?

SPEAKER_01 2:32

I did it this morning. Not and normally I would do it maybe the night before, but I woke up a little bit earlier this morning and I said, right, four paragraphs.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

100%. I'll take one thing.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Oh, that's very kind. That's very kind. But there is one thing, because you and I did a podcast together uh for your podcast recently. And one of the things that when I was watching that one through, you did the split screen on the podcast shot.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

I thought that's nice, didn't it?

SPEAKER_01 2:57

I was like, I'm definitely gonna do that.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

Well, I edited the one that me and you did, and I sent it to my editor and said, in the future, come on, you need to raise your game. I I'm showing you up. This is it. That's nice.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Well, I'm definitely gonna steal that idea. So thank you for that one. But it's a pleasure to have you on. And um, yeah, for those of you who haven't uh listened to the podcast that you and I did together, for any listeners, you know, Jack, you're you're a passionate vegan um as well as a passionate philosopher. And I realized that I don't think I know what your vegan story is or vegan journey. Now I want to talk a little bit about the Jubilee surrounded in a moment, but before we do that, maybe you could tell us a little bit about what you know inspired you to make the change.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Yeah, like you, I was meat eating as a teenager, uh, as a young lad. So you don't really think about it, you eat what you're given. And then I think I was 21 and I was travelling Australia. I was doing some farm work at the time as well, and I was 21, and I just had this uh this final burger, right? I said I'm gonna 21st birthday and I have this final burger, and then I'm just gonna go vegetarian because the arguments given by the philosophers like uh Peter Singer at the time, some arguments um in in like the Aristotelian philosophy as well, had taken hold, and because I had lots of time to sort of think and reflect on them, I was just like, I just can't keep pretending it's okay. So I made the switch, and yeah, maybe about five years later, so about 26, which was about seven years ago, uh I had a conversation with some friends who were vegan, and they gave me the things that we often say to vegetarians quite often that if those are your reasons, then this thing follows also. And I was just like, I couldn't ignore it when it was like in my face. Friends who weren't even philosophers, friends who were just taken over by the arguments as well. And yeah, I I decided to go vegan then, and my little brother as well came vegan at the same time. So I ended up like our whole family, like my mom, her her fiance, uh, my little brother, my two sisters, all ended up being vegan or vegetarian. So we've all had that like a journey together, which has been great. That's incredible.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Wow, you're like one of the those rare stories where the whole family sees some version of uh of clarity. I wish wish I had a similar story to tell. Oh, you don't my family still aren't vegan after all the stuff you've done. Well, to be fair, you know, I I think in in my first book I make a joke, which is you know, I'd rather speak to ten dairy farmers than than my own mother about veganism. And it's a joke, but it's also deadly, deadly true. And I have spoken to far more farmers than than uh than I've had. I've had conversations with my own my own family.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Well, I tried to convince my mom in particular for quite a long time. She's very stubborn. Uh well, I used to think she was very stubborn, and then I I sort of put my foot off the gas, I let the argument sit. And she said it was like a phenomenological thing. She just one day was eating and it she said it was as if her meal had a face. Oh wow. And it was just like this uh this the experience of it, the discomfort of it, the fact she couldn't ignore it. And I think being a a family of dog lovers as well, like when you lose a dog, like, oh my god, like it's it's it's awful, or any pet, right? And I think when you lose a pet who which is in your in your life part of the family, and you know, you're there with them before they get put down, and you and you there go into the vet with them, and I the idea that like you would then eat that creature, just it's mind-blowing. And it and it's at those moments where I'm most militant, like I I get angry, like I get upset. Like the idea that we'd do that, and then I'd go and sit with people who were just like eating meat. I get I get a little bit overly militant there. It's sorry, we're taking a bit of a dark. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

It's it's funny because often when people talk to me that they'll they I think I always try and and remain calm in in conversations that I have with with people who who disagree with me. I think that's important, but I do feel you know that sense of frustration. One of the things that I that I've felt in the times that we've sort of you know spent together so far is you also seem incredibly you're very calm, you're very relaxed, you're very I think when we first met, I sort of, I think I said to you in private that you kind of had this sort of calm assertiveness to you. Do you do you feel angry? Do you get frustrated?

SPEAKER_00 7:11

Do I get angry and frustrated? Not in philosophy, because I consider veganism to be the consequence of a bunch of sensible philosophies, and I want to focus on talking about the ideas and moving people in that way. And I think when you're talking about it with someone, you're not there in front of an animal being slaughtered. And I think if when you're confronted with the evil of it, that is upsetting, that does make you angry. And it's important, I think, to recognize that emotions are evaluative, right? So people think that emotions aren't subject to rationality. But there are times where you know, if I'm scared of getting on a flight, you'll go, it's not sensible to do that. Your evaluation's wrong. And so I think like being angry and being upset are proper responses to these things. It's not just when we say people are being overly emotional, sure, but merely emotions, they are they do function as evaluations. So I think that's fine. But no, like I'm when I'm doing philosophy, I've I've came across a bunch of awful philosophical arguments in my time. And I obviously work with students who you know have their views and I'm trying to move them and help them see things to different arguments, and you know, those those times can be like frustrating if you do it, but would you do it enough times? Like it doesn't really bother you. Like it's just part and parcel of having a philosophical conversation.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

Was your journey to veganism mostly led by your rational philosophical viewpoints or by your emotional connection to the ethical issue?

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Yeah, I came kicking and screening. Did you know I don't want to like admit the thing I've been doing all that time is wrong. Yeah. I've been spending 21 years of my life doing something. Now I'm gonna go, I was doing something worse, or you know I wouldn't say bad person, but obviously it's better to not eat meat than eat meat. And it's hard to go, yeah, like I I've been doing something for 21 years, either knowing about it or not knowing about it, and it was wrong, and I need to change my mind.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

You just have to you you you can't carry on doing it. You've just got to you've got to make the shift.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

But most people do carry on doing it. That's that's kind of the the problem we have. I think it's rare. I I mean, I'm I'm not immersed in the philosophy world, so maybe it's it's not fair for me to use words like rare, but from my perspective, it seems rare to meet, you know, a prominent philosopher who also lives by example. Dude. I feel like most philosophers love to talk about moral issues, but when push comes to shove, it's just more of an intellectual exercise rather than a one that you know translates into real-world choices.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

Yeah, there's a passage in Hume's dialogues on natural religion where he says something like that. He goes, like, we engage in all these metaphysical speculations and reduce all of causality to absurdity. But then you put down your pen, you go to your pub with your friends, and it's all forgotten about and laughed about as something which was silly. Yeah, so many philosophers. Um, yeah, you think about the arguments, you don't shift your mind. But you know, I know a good proportion that that do, the ones that say veganism's right but do otherwise, stick out like a sore thumb, right? Because the contradiction's there in front of you. But you know, there's been some great projects, uh, like Veg First. I think that's pioneered by people like David Clough, who's now at Aberdeen University, where academic conferences should default veg first before meat. And I can't remember the last conference uh conference that I went to in philosophy where it was meat on the menu, right? People have to opt in. Um, but I do sometimes laugh with some of the organizers at these plays. I always poke my head in and ask uh you know how much meat's been ordered. And someone told me recently that someone said uh I need meat for protein on their uh on their form. The world's greatest thinkers. I was just thinking, like, are we are you allowed to debate the uh the attendees? You're allowed to respond, single them out in the crowd, make them stand up.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Oh dear. Do you think that that modern philosophy has has so far failed to deal with the with the animal issue?

SPEAKER_00 10:54

You do you you asking me, or do you you think it has?

SPEAKER_01 10:57

Oh, I think it has, but I'm wondering if you failed to deal with it. Yeah, I think I think so far that it hasn't, or at least the conversations within the philosophical world aren't breaking through into mainstream discourse.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

I don't necessarily think that's true. I think that Peter Singer's work has obviously had a huge uh cut-through into the public consciousness on this. Um his book's obviously done very, very well. I think there are views like Martha Nussbaum's which are there and and sort of have more of a policy-looking uh direction, like she informs public policy on this stuff. Um, and I think a lot of the times, I'd agree with Rebecca Goldstein that a lot of the times that when philosophers sort of work things out and think about stuff, that it does end up coming a part of public conversations on the topic they're speaking about. And, you know, even our mutual friend Alex O'Connor, right? He's obviously done the research in terms of animal ethics and and presented a lot of those arguments and then returned to the dark side. But I wouldn't say that he's you know clearly he took those arguments in um moral philosophy and veganism and brought them to the public and they had cut through.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

That's true. I guess, well, from my perspective, do you think that that people's philosophies change their morals, or do you think that people's morals determine what philosophical viewpoint they then choose for themselves?

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Go both ways. I think we both agree that more often than not, again, to cite David Hume, the reason is a slave to the passions. We have these desires, we have these motivations, and then we try and reconcile our reasons with the things we already think and feel. But I I am a like an Aristotelian in the sense that you can, I think we are motivated by reasons, that people can be swayed by reasons. I take my own uh change of mind on this to be a part of that. I imagine yours was probably similar in terms of arguments, reasons, and motivations. And I I've I've met a lot of people in philosophy have moved to religion or to atheism because of reasons, despite family or community pressures. So I remember having a second-year student in philosophy of religion. She said, I've I've become an atheist because of the stuff we've been discussing. I said, Oh, great, I'm really glad you changed mine. She said, No, no, like my family hate me, like actually hate me. Right. I was like, No, it's not worth it. And she was like, No, I need to follow the reasons. And so I think people do when they're exposed to them and when they haven't got their backs up. I think debate and the stuff you do is really good at changing people's minds because when you're in the seat against someone in a debate, your ego's there, you can't lose, it's embarrassing, blah, blah, blah. But when you watch into other people debate, I think it functions in the same way like a documentary or a film, and it lowers those um barriers and you're able to sort of watch as a as an onlooker and and then to form your own decision on it. So I think people are swayed in in the right context.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

That's interesting. Yeah, I suppose you're right. When you know, obviously you'll know from doing the Jubilee surrounded as well, that really it's not about the people you're talking to. They're sort of a vessel for you to create conversations that the viewers then have to engage with themselves, you know, personally in their own in their own lives. So I suppose those those debates obviously we want to change the people that we're debating, but I I think it's more an opportunity to put arguments out there that then you know people can decide what to do with on their own accord. Um, you know, I suppose the reason I was asking those questions about philosophy and and and values is one of the questions you asked me when when when I was on your podcast was, you know, what philosophical viewpoint do I sort of adhere to? And it I've been thinking about that quite a lot actually. I've been thinking a lot about that podcast. It raised some interesting questions for me. Um and I and I've I'm still not really sure to be honest. And I I've wondered if if the labels of philosophy constrict people so much that it sort of shuts down their ability to think more freely for themselves. Do they become constrained by the the label that they they assign to themselves?

SPEAKER_00 14:58

I don't think so. I think it's helpful to have labels to sort of give a whole package and range of ideas quickly. And I think you can then break into the nuance afterwards. I I think yeah, I don't think you need to go like I'm a utilitarian, and that means that you're a hedonistic utilitarian that only cares about pain, pleasure, happiness, suffering. I think you can go, I'm a utilitarian, but I also think that these things are valuable as well, like consciousness, uh life, uh intelligence, power, things like that. So I think it's just the the helpful ways of understanding things, I think, in terms of like um, let's say a give an example, like a female and a male both give uh an account in a court of law and the in the female's account isn't take as seriously as as the man's. And and it's hard to sort of put your finger on um exactly what the nature of the wrongdoing there is, but when you describe it as like an epistemic injustice, then you've got a a phrase to capture exactly what's going on, and that's really helpful. So sometimes like naming the thing is helpful and also conveying a bunch of ideas. But if you're not have you let's bring this back to you, have you thought of um you weren't sure of the philosophy underpinning it. I we spoke last time that you begin from a place of like non-human animals are sentient, right? They have capacities for and an interest in living and to avoiding pain and suffering, and so we should and help them fulfill those preferences. Have you thought about how to capture that in terms of like a a deeper meta-ethic, if it was?

SPEAKER_01 16:30

Yeah, well, I think there's a term, is it sentientism? Which is if it's super clunky to say, isn't it? But as far as I understand it, it's kind of humanism, but it includes non-human animals within that, so it's sort of a secular moral worldview.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Feels feels right to me. And but I don't necessarily know what I don't necessarily know what the sort of broad elements of that are beyond sentient beings have moral worth and should be treated accordingly. But I don't know what what what what within that necessarily you know I would I would subscribe to. Because I suppose even within that you could be a deontological or utilitarian. So I'm not really sure to be honest. It's still something that puzzles me. Again, because like I said to you before, nothing nothing seems to fit neatly. There seems to be inconsistencies in all of that. So I can't find myself naturally choosing one over another because I think, well, what about this or what about that?

SPEAKER_00 17:21

Or I think that there are going to be people, especially a part of the vegan movement, quite rightly so, want to go, let's we don't need to be doing this philosophizing. It's clearly and obviously wrong. So let's just go about and make the change. We don't need to ground it in some deep meta ethic. I I do think that if if veganism is going to stand the test of time and it the best arguments are always going to shine through, and to convert people, that the the deeper argument is always going to be sort of helpful. My my worry is with sentientism is that it might commit the basic sort of observation as justification move, uh, problem or fallacy, the azort fallacy, the naturalistic fallacy that's made by the meat eaters. So you go, these things are sentient, and then you need the therefore they ought to be. Like where's the or where's the um reason for that being a moral principle?

SPEAKER_01 18:14

But is it not that the sentience means that they have experiences that that matter? Is that not the the justification there? That they are sentient, therefore they have the capacity to feel pain, pleasure, happiness, suffering.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Yeah, I I think that falls into the same problems that people like Singer and and and the philosophies past have have struggled with as well. Like what what makes that an objective feature of of moral concern? What makes that what gives it gives it its ought, what breathes fire into the the normative claim? Why is it true that one ought to look after sentient creatures? And and that's the justification that's needed. So, you know, boring people on YouTube and and philosophy more generally will tell you you need a a god to give those orders, and that's the sort of thing that would give them their normative force.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

It's interesting, but if if if the reason you're acting, quote unquote, morally is because of a god's are you not acting because of fear of of the consequence rather than because of a moral virtue? You know, you don't want to go to hell, so you that's why you don't murder. Whereas if if you're you're an atheist, the reason you don't murder is because it's ethically wrong to murder, not because you know it's necessarily gonna equal eternity in hell.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

I think historically that that's a good explanation for why a lot of people would have done if they genuinely believe in the prospect of hell. But I think that even the universalists who would claim that all people will end up unified with God in a state of bliss will have a motivation to act well uh merely because it's good and good is good, and that's the end of the matter, right? You need if God is the perfect form of goodness and God's commandments reflect that goodness, now you know what is good and why you ought to do it. And I I think that that does make sense. Um I'm not a traditional theist by any stretch, so I'm I'm just using it for illustrative purposes. And no, I don't I I don't think that even if even if your motivation was that it's out of fear, that that's a separate thing, a psychological fact about people, rather than a metaphysical fact about the nature of objective morality and what the yardstick for good and bad might be.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

When people make ethical decisions, quote unquote ethical decisions, do they make those decisions because they're driven by a need to reduce feelings of un discomfort within themselves, or because they they genuinely I guess it could be two things, but I think Alex O'Connor actually I think he said this to me years ago and it stuck with me. Um something along the lines of when we make quote unquote good choices, it's because we want to feel better. So you give money to a homeless person and you say, Well, it's because you know I want to help the homeless person, but it's also because you saw the homeless person and they made you feel uncomfortable, their presence. So you giving them some money has relieved some unease within you. And I think without meaning necessarily strawmanning him, what he was trying to say is that we don't make good choices for ourselves. We make well, we don't make good choices for others, we make good choices for ourselves. What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 21:16

I think it's uh it's a popular argument that you hear a lot of the time, which is about, I guess, the egotist or the the the argument from selfishness that someone might say the only reason we ever do good things is because ultimately it's good for ourselves or makes us feel good. And when those sorts of arguments come our way, I think we need to say to our opponent, give me an example of when that would be falsified. Give me any example of when you think someone could genuinely act for good and good's sake.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

And oh, you know, I it obviously I've just given you a bunch of ones where it doesn't happen. And you can ask them, what about Deirdrick Bonhoeffer, who tries to uh help Jews flee during the Second World War and ends up being executed in a concentration camp? How about the the firefighters? Fighters who run into the Twin Towers as they're falling to save people, knowing that they're very likely going to be dying. Like they're not doing it so people go, you know, they so they get a fucking hot dinner when they get home and a round of applause. Like these people are doing it because it's the right thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

And if you want to then go, oh, but there's these other reasons, I think you're playing skepticism. And the more likely explanation is because they think it's the right thing to do. But outside of that, to bring it to veganism, to bring it to moral motivation, I think it's absolutely fine for you to be motivated towards the good, and a side effect is that you feel good about it. Right. And see there being a problem with that. I think it would be worse though if your goal was to just make yourself feel good and this person is just a means to your own selfish feeling good. So I think both those things can be true. When it comes to veganism, as you'll know, a lot of vegans go, well, you're not really a vegan unless you have the right sort of motivation. I don't think this is a sensible thing to say for a whole host of reasons. But one of the things I will say on it is that if you have the right motivation, then it's definitely going to be better than having the wrong motivation. But that doesn't mean that you're not doing the right thing. And it doesn't mean that other people aren't vegans if they don't happen to align with your belief in God or your general meta-ethic. What would be a wrong motivation in your eyes for being vegan? A wrong motivation for being vegan. Let's say somebody thought that crop deaths were uh like they maximized death by being vegan because they bought some of these nonsense conspiracy arguments on, like, you know, like if you really want to kill as many animals as you can, you should go vegan. If someone heard that and then was motivated to go vegan because they wanted to hurt everyone. But they wouldn't be vegan then, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:48

No, they shouldn't be. But they wouldn't, they wouldn't be vegan. They they would be eating plants, but they wouldn't be vegan. What do you mean? Because I think I disagree with you. I think that that veganism it is very much about connecting with the ethics of animals. So if you were to eat in a way in an attempt to maximize the amount of harm you're causing to animals and the diet you chose just so happened to be a plant-based diet, you wouldn't be vegan. You'd be someone you isn't vegan eating a plant-based diet.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Well, there are three accounts in philosophy of moral character, what it means to have a certain moral character. One is dispositional, one is action, one is motivation. All three versions of these accounts have their problems. I do think the motivation account is the best account. So if you've got a disposition to be, let's say, be a pianist, every time you see a piano, you'll play the piano. But let's say this person never encounters a piano. Are they really a pianist? Right? The action-based account, let's say you're a good person or you're a vegan, as long as all of your actions align with it. And this is the view which you're contesting here. That obviously has problems. Let's say I was a pharmacist who wanted to kill everyone in the town, but then I'm so stupid that I muddle everything up and end up helping everyone in the town.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:02

Right. It it would seem like I'm still a bad person. Yeah. The motivation account, uh the problems are at least uh at least here because imagine you were, let's say, locked in a prison for all your life and you're a freedom fighter. So you're motivated to do lots of good, but you never have the opportunity to bring that good into existence. It seems like there is something lacking there as well. Merely having the right motivation might be contingent in terms of your assessment of one's character depending on the opportunities they're given. And this was Aristotle's point all that time ago. I want to go and agree with you and say it's much better to have the right motivation, that veganism is best captured as a moral philosophy. I also want to go, it doesn't matter what you think in terms of religion, health, what your priorities are. I think if we're going to convert people, the very best way to do that is to reflex their views back at them. So if they go, hey, I care about being an athlete, I care about health, I care about the environment, I just care about myself, I don't want lockdowns. Whatever it is, I think you can again religion, whatever, whatever it is, I think you can go, well, if that's true, then you ought to be vegan. Right. Like during during that Jubilee debate, I didn't talk about my own view, like my own philosophy, worldview, anything like that, from maybe like an hour in when someone was like, Are you religious? Like, what's going on? Because it was always the doctor, like, you should think this too, or um, again, the athlete that you should think this too.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

Right. Well, say you're so say say you're talking to an athlete and they're saying, you know, I've looked at the evidence, eating a plant-based diet is is good for me, um, doesn't compromise my athletic ability, maybe even benefits it. So I'm gonna eat a plant-based diet, but I'm still gonna buy leather. Are they vegan? If they're still buying leather, uh no, they're not. So then how how do you make an argument for them to be vegan from the athletic perspective without talking about a need to consider animals?

SPEAKER_00 27:07

Oh, that's a good question. Um, I think you draw on you start with the athleticism, you avoid the consumption of the products, and then inevitably this person is gonna have interests in one, for example, being able to engage in boxing right in front of an audience without lockdowns, without masks, blah, blah, blah. Uh, they they maybe they don't want vaccinations because of that, monetary ones. Maybe they want to be able to live in a have children and live in a world which isn't gonna be destroyed because of climate disaster. Uh, maybe they, you know, maybe they want the food to stay affordable. Like maybe they're concerned about immigration. Like, there's just a whole host of reasons that people are inevitably going to be on board with that I think, yes, motivating people through the best argument for veganism, which is the moral argument, is often going to be the best way. But when we're trying to convert people, I think hearing their perspective, listening to them properly, and then going, well, given that these are your interests, this should be your interest too, I think is uh is is the quickest and most effective way of bringing people on on board. And not to say people go, oh vegans are too preachy, and it's all being moralistic, blah blah blah. I've got no time for people saying that sort of garbage is just uh it's just a diversion.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Um so let's let's say that it let's let's change this and say we're not talking about animals anymore, we're talking about women. And let's say there's a hypothetical situation that um being being misogynistic increased the risk of pandemics. And you're trying to convince someone to not be misogynistic, would they be a feminist if they agreed not to be misogynistic because they wanted to reduce the risk of pandemics? They don't care about the women, they just want fewer pandemics.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

Um there'd be I think you can just say they'd be misogynistic in motivation but not in action. But they would still be misogynistic. Yeah, in motivation but not action. And I think that's uh I I I think given those three accounts that again the disposition is one someone has the opportunity to be misogynistic, yeah, given the fact they're misogynistic, um, I I'd be happily say that they're misogynist. But take a an example like uh let's say water has the disposition to freeze at zero degrees, but exists on a planet on which zero degrees can never be realized. You know, it is that something would you say that's a power, something it is. Um that that seems difficult to me given the fact it doesn't have an opportunity to be realised. So I think it's a little bit messier. But I I'm not disagreeing with you, and I think that motivation is better to have than not to have. And I think when I do think that factory farming, our treatment of non-human animals is the worst thing that's ever happened uh throughout history. Um I think it I I don't think other things come quite as close to it, and so I think there is an emergency, right? I think I think I d I don't really give a shit like whether or not someone is stopping the trains to Auschwitz because they hate trains or not, like fucking let's stop the trains. Like uh I sort of the the quibbling when if I can get one person today to stop eating meat and and stop consuming non-human animal products, then like good, like let's get another one.

SPEAKER_01 30:39

Yeah. I totally agree with you in the sense of whatever gets people there is good, but I also think I think there is value in veganism sort of being being not reduced to something that it that is that it's that is less than what it is, you know. I think it is important for people to recognize that animals are part of veganism. Now, there's so many good reasons why people should stop eating animal products, but I think that veganism is an ethical connection to animals, and the consequence of that is people stop eating animal products. But it it's far bigger than just that, you know, it's a mindset shift rather than just a consumption change. And so I totally agree with you, you know, whatever would get those trains stopped, but ultimately you wouldn't say that the person is no longer anti-Semitic just because the reason they've stopped the trains is because they don't like trains, and I think that's an important distinction.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

Yeah, no, that's fine. I think that's I think it's a valuable distinction. I think pragmatically, again, I think we agree that whatever we can do to move people on these points. I think we were speaking last time we had a discussion about uh like hu treatment of humans and such, and that there are so many ills towards humans and injustices towards humans, and we need something separate for non-human animals. I I I worry that we can't even get people to care about the thing they claim in these debates to care about to begin with, and they're happy to to buy things and and contribute towards um slavery and and exploitation of other humans. They're happy to, you know, consume pornography or or go and and engage with sex work from people that are trafficked abroad. Like these people are already engaging in that stuff. And so I I I sort of I think if I can't even if they're not even there yet, what's the best way of bringing them here? Let's focus on their selfish perhaps motivations and see what comes out of them to be the most effective and quick way of doing that. Um, but I'm with you that the the real argument and the main thing is the moral argument. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:30

I mean, I think you're absolutely right, you know, if a a pig in a gas chamber doesn't care, you know, your motivation for why they're there, and they don't care the motivation for why they wouldn't be there theoretically, they just don't want to be there. That's the most important thing. So we need to get them out of the, you know, the pigs out of the gas chambers, the chickens out of the gas chambers, the cattle out of the stumbox and the and the slaughterhouses, and then we can start maybe worrying about people's true motivation. So I do agree with you on that point, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

And I want to go, and to be clear, like I do want people to have the right motivation. I think that's really important. I think the right motivation corresponds with the good, and goodness is an intrinsic value that should be maximized. So the emo the m as many people as possible as we can get to have the right motivation, the better of a like moral action we're committing ourselves. And so I think that that's that's definitely sensible. But I do feel the emergency of just sort of going like, come on, let's just let's just get some minds on the ground, sort of changed.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

Yeah. Well, we need more people consuming fewer animals. That's that's the bottom line, isn't it? And whichever, you know, however we get there. Um, you know, I think I think all of these different arguments have their place and they're all valuable. Um, okay, let's talk a little bit more about religion. Do you think that religion has been a net positive for animals or a net negative for animals? That's a great question. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 33:47

Uh this is this is really fun. Um I think that the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic perspectives have been pretty bad on the whole. I'd say awful. And I don't think that's a consequence necessarily of Christianity and its texts. I think that comes out of uh the people and the cultures. Uh not cut the same can't be said of the um of the Jewish and Islamic texts, which obviously uh um reduce a little bit of suffering, but you know, we're comparing it to the Eastern traditions, Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism, uh all the isms, they do uh they do a very good job of uh yeah emphasizing the value of non-human animals. So it's hard to go like net. Christianity is the biggest world religion, followed closely by by Islam, uh Hinduism's up there in the top three as well. So it's hard to give a an overall number. Yeah. They haven't done near as good of a job as they should have done.

SPEAKER_01 34:45

It's the probably the most sensible thing to say. Do you think that I mean again, religion's so broad, but do you think that veganism overlaps with let's take Hinduism and Sikhism and such and Jainism, what about sort of Abrahamic religions? Do you think veganism is a natural fit within those religions? I think so.

SPEAKER_00 35:01

I or natural fit that's a good question. Right. So I think the Christian and and the Jewish tradition in which the creation story involves giving humans a vegan diet, is the first step. So if you think the world was created perfectly and God's perfectly good, then God couldn't have created a fallen world. And when the world falls through uh the the original sin, then the world is worse definitionally and becomes better at the end of time when the these rules are reinstated. So I think in terms of assessing creation and assessing the texts and taking them at face value, then that's better to be vegetarian than not vegetarian, uh, or vegan or not vegan. So I think that's the a nice natural fit. I think there are there are lots of things later on in the New Testament that speak to this as well. The Jewish and the um Muslim creation stories, uh the Muslim creation story rather is different in which we're told we can eat non-human animals. But I think there are consequences from both of these that mean, again, that they ought to be vegan. So say if you were Jewish and you've got kosher laws, or you're um you're Muslim, you've got halal laws that you need to follow. Uh there's a study uh by the ISPU in the United States that found about 20% of Muslims require um halal meat, and about 40% of Jews require kosher meat. They say, always looking for it, we need it. So it baffles me that there are tens of millions and hundreds of millions of creatures, proportionately, who are being slaughtered without proper stunning. Proper stunning. Sure. Yeah, do you know what I mean? Uh one in three of the non-penetrative stuns needs to be retaken, and one in seven of the non-penetrative stuns needs to be retaken. So even with stunning, you can have animals carved up consciously in excruciating pain. But given the proportion that need it, there's a um, there's an asymmetry between the amount of non-human animals that are slaughtered uh through through religious practice and those that require them. It's also the case that the overwhelming, if 99% of these creatures are from factory farms, which are gonna be uh against these texts as well. Like in in the Quran, we in the hadiths rather, there's a woman who's sent to hell for all of eternity for keeping a cat in a cage too small for the cat to live in. So every single animal that you're eating uh as a Muslim is gonna be from in that sort of cage, in that condition. So if you take the text seriously, you should be avoiding that at all costs. But the final thing to say is there are so many cases where businesses are falsely advertising kosher and halal meat. So if you think that your salvation depends on it, then it's gonna be best to avoid those practices. Um, you can't ignore the stories. There's a McDonald's that was uh sued in the United States uh for falsely advertising halal. Like it's it's not just like little companies, it's it's big companies too. And then add on to that your responsibility towards stewardship, that creation is a gift from Alau or from Yahweh, which you have a responsibility to look after. And take on board that the environmental destruction, that the human deaths cause from zoonotic diseases, 75% of all zoonotic diseases emerging from non-human animals. Like, come on, like the it's so obvious that the environmental damage, the way these animals are treated, avoiding making sure you're doing something that goes strictly against your text. I don't see any reason why you ought not to be vegan. And I see you know tens of reasons for why they ought to be.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

Absolutely. Um could you make the argument, therefore, that because you know, considering the zoonotic disease emergence rates, which would be a a design feature, but does that mean does that suggest that God has put in a f some sort of fail-safe to try and stop us from from harming animals? You think that's that might be a design feature? Is it a design feature that he's created diseases that that spread from from the animals we exploit into us? That's a good question.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

I don't think God has so much to do with like the like those finely uh zoomed in laws of nature mechanisms as perhaps uh we'd like to think. Um I'm not I'm not sure. I I imagine immediately you you go, there are lots of things that seem to you and I as non, neither of us are Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, and I think we could name a bunch of gratuitous evils, things that seem were necessary, or things that could sort of serve that function. Here's an example. It might be like, has God created hurricanes to make sure there aren't too many human beings and make sure there's a good balance? And you sort of go, No, that that it seems like hurricanes are a natural phenomenon and a rise through the laws of nature aren't a specific thing that God would put on his blueprint of the world. Sure. That makes sense. He's probably got better ways than uh think a perfectly good God had better ways than inflicting all these plagues and diseases.

SPEAKER_01 39:50

But uh maybe that's uh Old Testament God slightly more pessimistic about God's intentions, I must admit. Um it's interesting with the halal thing, uh especially in the UK, you know, halal slaughter gets a lot of negative attention because of its roots in Islam, and also because, of course, it's you know traditionally non-stun, although a lot of halal slaughter in in the UK does does use stunning. Um so it's not necessarily as rigid as people believe, but there is still non-stun that takes place. Do you think that the left has failed to deal with religious slaughter because of fears around cultural assimilation and also racism, anti-Semitism? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 40:28

Wokism will be the death of us all. I think it's 30 million which are non-stunned in the UK. Is that right? But I saw someone go up to 100 million recently, but I think that was someone perhaps playing into the rhetoric there.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

Yeah, I think that's the idea that all halal is is like non-stun when that isn't necessarily the case.

SPEAKER_00 40:45

I'd put my if I if I was a gambling man, which I am, I'd go 30 million uh probably minimum non-stunned, which is a lot a hell of a lot for one country, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 40:55

But then we slaughter one 1.2 billion land animals, you know. So we're talking massive numbers of animals being slaughtered for every everyone.

SPEAKER_00 41:01

How many of those are there? 70 million in the UK population? Yeah, so nearly for every um what every other person there's a creature that's uh killed without being stunned in the UK. It's a lot of animals, isn't it? Yeah. Um do I think, yeah. I think that I used to be a religious studies teacher um before uh working at university as a philosopher, and there is a feeling of pluralistic respects all religions and all views and all faiths, and uh these are things that um ought not to be uh unduly criticized. There is that that feeling there. Uh, on top of that, I think the the the minority view that is veganism alongside those views is the sort of perfect storm for uh for allowing those practices to continue. Um I think the first and foremost thing is that we all can get behind um rejecting factory farming, which is you know the thing which people tend to just agree on. Like whoever you debate in, they always go, I don't support factory farming. I think get people on where they agree and move them, speak to uh Jews and Muslims about the the food they're consuming. But do I think it's the do I think it's the product of like left-wing political correctness? I don't know, because I struggle with this one. Like, do you I don't know what to do sometimes. I I I I do find it myself in a bit of a limbo state because it there obviously is a massive issue in the whole of the farming industry, and I do criticize kosher and halal meat, um more perhaps quite a lot actually. Um but I don't know how to like I don't know how to go about it without playing into the rhetoric, without um shifting the focus in the wrong way. Where it's interesting, we're talking about right motivation earlier, and there is something obviously very uncomfortable with um an anti-Semite joining me on the on the march against uh Jewish ethics, right? In terms of that like that that doesn't feel great. So I think right motivation is important. Um I just think yeah, they've got an obvious reason to be vegan and they should do it.

SPEAKER_01 43:15

Certainly. I guess that part of the problem is we have this because the right have so effectively sort of taken not kosher slaughter so much, but well, obviously many on the right don't like kosher slaughter because of being anti-Semitic, but the problem is they've sort of taken this argument and they've weaponised it from the perspective of their Islamophobia or other anti-Semitism. And I think it's making you know, like say the Green Party, potentially the most sort of animal friendly of the mainstream parties in the UK. Zap Plansky is a vegan. But they're not talking about, you know, he's not saying that if he was elected prime minister they would would ban non stun slaughter.

SPEAKER_00 43:52

Do they have any stuff on veganism in policy or anything like this?

SPEAKER_01 43:56

I don't know about veganism specifically, but they're quite good at animal welfare. I think they've spoken about. Wanting to ban Greyhound racing, um, look at horse racing, raise it as a as a topic of conversation. I think good luck with that one. I would I would love for horse racing to be banned. I think that's a big national conversation that that that still needs to be had. So I think that they would naturally generate conversations and I think that they are much more in alignment with the idea that farming needs to change, whether they push sort of quote unquote vegan policies through, I'm not sure, but probably a good set of animal welfare policies. I want to see a uh a meat tax. Are you happy with the meat tax? I think a meat tax is the wrong approach. I think it's targeting consumers. I think we need to change subsidies. Because you know, we when when when we buy animal products, not even when we buy them, when we pay our tax bills, we you know, a portion of that is being is being used as subsidies. So that goes to fossil fuels, but it also goes to animal farming. So our tax money has already been used to drive down the cost of production for animal products. For it then to be made more expensive at the checkout seems to be punishing us twice. I I would I would say change how subsidies are distributed, take them away from you know feed crops and from livestock farming and land ownership and put them towards you know plant-based agriculture and less intensive forms of of um you know agriculture, plant plant-based agriculture, because that would naturally increase the cost of animal products. Good. Okay, I like this.

SPEAKER_00 45:16

Could you do both? Could you have you uncomfortable about the sort of dystopian idea of the rich being able to eat the flesh of innocent creatures?

SPEAKER_01 45:23

I think it's just punishing the middle and working classes to raise the cost of food at the checkout. I think that it's the wrong way to approach things. And I also think that it allows corporations and these big industries to get off the hook. You know, they're the ones who should be paying the costs, they're the ones who should be being regulated and being made to bear the burden of what they've created. You know, people in the UK or around the world, they buy factory farm meat, but they never voted for it. They never chose it.

SPEAKER_00 45:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:46

And I think part of the problem is it's so ingrained now that it's hard to get people to change. But if we didn't have factory farming, I don't think people would be voting for it to create it. So I think it's just that people have been born into this system. So I I I think that really our disdain should be placed at the policymakers and the industries themselves. And I apply that from a financial perspective. I think that they should they should be regulated, they should be um, you know, have their subsidies withdrawn, those kinds of things.

SPEAKER_00 46:13

I I I agree with you completely on on on that. I I do think there's more I don't see any issue uh in sort of punishing the the middle class with increasing meat prices, given that I I think we've might have spoken about this before. There's this Oxford University of Oxford study in 2022 that found that veganism across they looked at 175 different countries and made sure that the things that we were putting in the basket had all the nutrients that you needed for uh for a healthy life, and found that veganism was the cheapest across Europe and across America, uh and the United States of America. Vegetarianism were close second, yeah. Then meat, um, and then the pescatarian diet, one of the most expensive. Yeah. And I and I don't really have an issue with just going like, you know, it's already more expensive. Just price people out of it. Like I I when I was a teenager, uh, I smoked a little bit, right? And I can imagine, you know, if they got really expensive, then then I would have stopped. You increase the price of sort of anything, and people will stop, uh, you'll look for alternatives.

SPEAKER_01 47:14

I agree, and obviously, yeah, as you say, the cost of smoking has made it far less easy for people to start smoking now. And the majority of what you're paying for when you buy a packet of cigarettes, I think, is tax, isn't it? But also part of the reason for that, and this is maybe more of an argument for increasing uh for putting tax on meats. Part of the reason for that is to cover the healthcare costs, you know. And I think maybe there is an argument that diet choices uh one of the biggest burdens to the NHS, maybe the biggest burden, heart disease, diabetes, and such. And maybe we could recoup some of those costs by putting on a meat tax, which is actually there to support the NHS rather than punish people for buying meat, so to speak. But then you have to convince people that's a nice way of thinking it, but that but then you have to convince people that meat, dairy, and eggs is is genuinely having this massive impact, and that's still sadly a contentious debate, even though the science shows that it shouldn't be contentious. So it's all about messaging, I suppose, and framing and and sort of incentivize nudges rather than maybe some more draconian measures. Not that it not that raising you know meat prices is draconian, but people would perceive it as being such. And we live in such a Nigel Farage should have a field day. That's the problem. And this is this is one of the biggest issues is I still think that veganism and animals is such a politically toxic issue that people are afraid to go near it because as soon as they do, the right would have a field day. You know, farage would have a field day at the idea that we're gonna make meat cost more, we're trying to stop people from eating steak. It's just I mean, it's it's red meat, you know, to their base, and and that's part of the problem. How do we put these conversations forward seriously from a political perspective without this this massive pushback?

SPEAKER_00 48:48

Well, but I think that if we have a policy that is pro-animal rights welfare that ends factory farming or hypothetically, or at least gives non-human animals legal standing in some sense, then the price inevitably is gonna go up once you you take this issue, which the majority of people in this country agree with that factory farming is is bad, wrong, keeping animals in these little cages is wrong. You've seen these sort of like 80-90% of people think things like this. And so if you play onto that, the thing they think, and then from that you go, okay, we're gonna end factory farming, then given that the access to um you know what you might call conscientious farming, um it the price will go up anyway, and that seems like a good step.

SPEAKER_01 49:34

So, anyway, let's let's move the conversation onwards because I want to speak to you about the Jubilee surrounded that you did. I think a lot of vegans were so happy about that. And um and also I think I think we were probably feeling that it was about time that there was you know someone representing us in Jubilee. So um thank you for doing that. You say it through gritted tea. Someone. Do you have anyone in mind? Exactly, exactly. So what do I have to do? Ten years. I have to go outside the Jubilee offices next time. Pick me, please. No, I was really thrilled that it was you and also quite relieved because I think if I'd got an email, the first thing I'd have done was was just had such a nervous reaction to it. I did to be fair, I get quite anxious about things.

SPEAKER_00 50:15

Um things, like debates and stuff. Yeah, I've done so many debates. I've seen I've seen old videos of you like debating farmers who are really angry. Yeah, like there's a difference between which 20 people who are like all on camera who aren't gonna hit you and being out in like the trenches.

SPEAKER_01 50:32

True, but I suppose um I I think it's the anticipation of something. But I mean, of course, anxiety is so much about anticipation, but you know, if I if I rock up somewhere and there's a farmer and we end up debating, yeah, I don't have time necessarily. I remember I did this debate with uh this woman called Millie Weaver, who used to be a I say reporter, quote unquote, for for InfoWars. Um that's now been run by the Young Yin, I think, the satire thing, which is just wonderful. But um anyway, I didn't know she was gonna be there and she rocked up and all of a sudden, like we just had this 45-minute debate. Um, and I found myself just really enjoying it. And I think it came across okay. Um, but if it was like right in six weeks you're gonna go and you're gonna do this, I'd be like, six weeks, I'd be like, oh my god, this is it. Now I've got, I've got anyway, less about me, more about you.

SPEAKER_00 51:16

How did you find that? I really enjoyed it because uh it's a topic which obviously I think's massively important, and I was able to set the time aside, get my mind in order, uh, remind myself of all these things that I've learned over the years and consolidate it and and and bring it to an argument. And I hadn't done a proper debate before, so it was my first proper debate, and I'd only I had spoken about veganism in lit in limited spaces, so it was bringing it all like it like it was adrenaline. Uh it was a rush of adrenaline in doing it. But I do, you know, I'd I'd love a it sounds so lame. I'd love a deadline or like a thing to go like, here's this big thing that's happening, and you can throw yourself into it. Right. Um, so I think first and foremost though, it's like it's a topic that mat I think there's no other topic that comes close to it in terms of mattering. So I do feel and I understand you, especially when like you're talking about these topics that are like they actually matter, like there will there'll be lives that animals will be tortured or killed, sort of depending on how badly you represent veganism. I think that's true. I don't think people are going to move away from veganism, but I think there's this thing where you can go move people towards veganism. I think you've got a responsibility to maximize those people. I mean, at the end of that debate, the uh the the moderator, John Regulato, who ended up jumping in on the debate, so ended up being 1v21. Uh, he at the end of it said, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Let us know if you've been moved to veganism or veganism to meat eating. And he said, But that would be weird. And that just captures it, right? Like, yeah, no one thinks the meat arguments were gonna work anyway. Yeah. It's true.

SPEAKER_01 52:56

And I think that is true. I think it's it's super unlikely that you're gonna have this passionate vegan and they're gonna watch that or watch whatever and then go, Oh, god, yeah, that vegan argument wasn't very good. I'm gonna go back to eating animal products. It is super unlikely.

SPEAKER_00 53:08

It's weird because on the one hand, it's the easiest debate to win because I think all of the reasons point to veganism, to the point where you can talk about other people's point of views and sort of play and engage in this sort of reductious argument format. At the same time, it's one that really matters. Um, but I did I really enjoyed the debate. I I really enjoyed philosophy, uh, arguing with people. I think it's great fun, it's what I've always loved doing, and it's a topic that I love. And there were a bunch of people who were came on the show who said they were going to reduce meat intake, and the moderator said he was going 90% vegan, and I'm chuffed with like 90% vegan, I'll take that every day of the week. Yeah, well, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 53:49

And you've got to think that for all of those people, there's many, many more people watching, you know. I think it's got three quarters of a million views at the moment. So if again, this isn't maybe not the best way to do stats and numbers, but you've got 21 people there. If one fifth of those people have said they're gonna make changes and you translate that to, you know, those people watching. Why do you math? Well, let's just say it's a good number, okay. Let's just call it 150,000 or something ridiculous like that. But that I mean, but but you know, you've got to think about like the imprint that has on people, and I think that's so you know, it's it's remarkable that you were able to come across in a way that has inspired those people there who were arguably going to be the hardest people to get through to because they've gone with the mindset of not being convinced. So you're getting through to those people, and then obviously you've got the people who are watching who are going to be much more receptive. Um, look, I should say a lot of the people who watch it probably already are vegan, so I don't want anyone at home to to pull me up on that bad you know mathematical formula that I just proposed.

SPEAKER_00 54:44

If you take uh three-quarters of a million people, um proportionally, I'd be I'll be surprised because Jubilee does so many different topics and they have a lot of returning uh viewers that I wonder how many of them will or wouldn't have been. And so, yeah, that maybe your math your mass was already shaky before we started breaking down further. I did my GCSE. I left it there. I wonder what what were your thoughts and some of the arguments presented, things perhaps you would have went. I wouldn't have used this argument, this would have been a better alley. Was there anything that you were thinking and watching where you were you know Well you thought it could be different.

SPEAKER_01 55:19

Well, there was one thing that came to mind, but um but it wasn't it wasn't something that you should have done differently. It was more do you remember that guy who was quite angry? Maybe his name was Brian. I can't remember. Brian kicked off about the soy. Angry boy. Yeah, and I've heard this argument a few times. It's really embedded within the regenerative agriculture people, which is the idea that soy is not being produced for animals, it's being produced for humans. And it's I don't think he said this, but it's it's based on this. Um it's based on the fact that when you split a soybean, you get meal and oil. You definitely didn't say this. Yeah. And per kilogram of whey oil, the sea soy oil is worth twice as much per kilogram of soy meal. But when you split a bean, it's not 50-50. 80% of a bean is meal, and only 20% is oil. So even though per kilogram oil is worth more, you get four times as much meal per bean as you do oil. So actually, the meal is worth twice as much per soybean. Now that's some good maths, hopefully, right there. Fingers crossed, I didn't make a mistake there. Um, so this so it's based on this, this, this kind of like half-truth, or like the beginning of the truth, but they just stop at the bit that's convenient for them and they go, ah, well, the oil's worth more. We're not feeding the oil directly to animals, we're using that for industry and for you know biofuel and such. Therefore, it's not being grown for animal agriculture, but it is, you know, it's just a it's just the fact you I think you quoted Hannah Ritchie and and and some other great researchers in that field. So yeah, it's just one of those funny arguments that you most people don't hear and most people don't know, but sadly I I've just come across it so much. Because if um yeah. But no, and nothing else. I think you did a I mean, I I'm not you know, I think you did a great job. Vegans think you did a great job, I'm sure. So um, we appreciate that. Um were there any arguments that you thought? Well, I suppose if that was your first foray, were you surprised by the arguments? Were they better or worse than you thought they'd be?

SPEAKER_00 57:05

Well, like you say, I literally did have like six weeks to the the email comes through, you're doing it, um, and and then because it matters a lot, I wanted to sit down and just make sure I had all the arguments in place. And yeah, because I obviously worked in philosophy for a long time, my my forte is predicting arguments against your view, like that that's what you're trained to do really early on. And so just thinking all of them through, get your head in the your mind in the head of a meat eater and try and give all these objections. Uh, me and my fiance like to argue a hell of a lot, so we took it in turns, you know, being the meat eater and not. And so there was no arguments that were new or surprised me. Yeah, there were arguments that were there which um I had responses to, but in the heat of the moment when you've when you're there, like some there was a young lady who was saying, like, but how do you know animals are conscious? How you know the problem of other minds, how do you know that? And rather than just give the, you know, I I think I told her I'd slit her throat and she'd certainly know about it, which isn't the appropriate thing to say. Um probably explains why I'm having time off from the university at the moment to do something like this. It's uh they uh like there are experiments in psychology, like Edward Tolman's in the 1930s, where he puts two mice in a maze and one learns behavioristically and one learns by just going around the maze and forming a mental map, and they're both just as proficient at doing it. How could you explain the proficiency if this didn't have a conscious mind to be able to sort of build the build that mental space? And there are there are better things to do. The best arguments here are the biggest mistakes. One, I insinuated you can get B12 from nuts.

SPEAKER_01 58:36

That's true, that's true. You did do that one point. But it was right at the end that it might have slipped under the people.

SPEAKER_00 58:41

I was eating a bag of nuts this morning, and I looked from the back and I swear it said B12, but I think it might have said something does not contain B12. Well, some vegan wrote to me that they're just like, Why are you learning about nuts though, dude? I was like, I'm sorry. Uh Jesus ate fish. Yeah, sure, why not? There plays the same account in Luca players elsewhere without the fish, and scholars are always a little bit confused about why he eats the fish. Like, what happened to the fish when he ascended to heaven? Let's not go back down the Jesus route. Uh, outside of them, the the biggest mistake, I think there was Dr. Peace, who was the first person to sit down and come on, and I wanted to hit the ground running. And you want to make sure you establish yourself in those settings, you're able to sort of control the debate, and I didn't listen to him properly the first time. Then Brian comes on and we have a shouting match, but then I think after that the debate changes, and there's a bit of jousting here and there, but I think the views are heard properly, the debate unfolds properly for the most part. But and then Dr. B comes back on the second time, and I hear him out, and he basically agrees with sort of veganism right to the end. Some of the things he says that I don't think is sensible. Are like however much suffering you need to sustain human beings, and that non-human animals somehow have meaningful lives because they're of use to us. Like I think that's those are awful things to say. Yeah. But for the most, you know, if I heard him out properly, I think we would have had a more of a productive conversation.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:06

Well, I was happy with that, weren't you? Yeah, certainly. I think and so you should be. I mean, you're you're talking for like an hour and a half. You would, you know, when you're debating for 90 minutes, and it's a sort of scattergun of arguments in that time. Some people shouting at you, some people ranting and raving we've got plants. I mean, it's just it's just you know, you're gonna look back and think, oh, I should have said this differently, and I just think it's natural, isn't it? I I I do that with debates that are only 12 minutes long, 19.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:27

Was there any arguments from the meat eaters that surprised you? Because you must have heard it all by this point.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:32

Nothing that surprised me. Well, actually, I think I was surprised by how boring and predictable they were. I just thought, really? Because it's like you've had six weeks to prepare. So have they, right? So have they, and then and then the best that so they've had six weeks to prepare, and then the best they can do is sit down and say plants feel pain. And do you know what what okay?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:51

I don't want to rant. Okay, but I think she was a comedian. I didn't know this at the point. Right. Someone told me afterwards that girl's a comedian and she's she's obviously trolling anyway. Like you know that, right? By how she's saying it.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:02

Well, sure, it was a troll. Okay, fine. All right, I I bit. Okay, I took the bait. All right, she wins. I took the bait. There we go. But I guess it's just I find it I find it frustrating because you know, when if I sit down and debate someone in a university, they have just come across me and had a spur of a moment thought, I'm gonna sit down and debate you. So I don't expect their arguments to be good or unique or well thought out. I accept that. But people who are who are spending time preparing and then they come on and and they're using the same arguments, and and not only that, but they're so and a lot of them were willing to listen to you, but then you had those who are not willing to listen. It's just like you've had so long to prepare. Did you not at any point think this is my argument? Let me stress test this before I go on the show, before I sit down with the vegan. It's just this, I don't know, it's like it's just bad faith. And I think it's it frustrates me that they've utilized that opportunity just to regurgitate something they've read online but haven't taken any time to fact-check themselves.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:57

Yeah, I mean, off camera, like all these people apart from Brian who I still think wanted to throttle me at the end of it, uh, were really the blood pressure's up, I think, isn't it? Yeah. They wanted to like chat afterwards, and there was one young lady who didn't have the opportunity to come up, which I didn't realise at the end, and sat and spoke to her a while about the health stuff. Like they're they're all they're all really nice people who on the before I was doing it, I was like, who's gonna take a day off to fly to Los Angeles or come across town and argue for meat eating? Like it's a it seem it seems like an odd thing to sort of go out and argue for. And so I didn't I was didn't know who was gonna turn up. Um there I think there are a bunch of smart people in in like in in the group. Like you you know what internet comments are like, and it obviously rude and obnoxious and calling people morons, but like you know, there's like two doctors there, a couple lots of people with degrees in either philosophy or not, and you know, there's some smart people there. And it just I think it just shows how bad the arguments for meat eating are, the arguments against veganism are. Like you can you say you can have six weeks of notice and you can have degrees in the field and you can turn up and try and argue for it. I'd love to actually, as an experiment, maybe we can do this one day, one of us play the meat eater and really try and steel man the meat eater as best as possible. We might end up doing more damage than we think. Sorry, we just won't upload it, it's fine.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:19

Oh, that sounds like a plan. Yeah, we should, yeah, we could definitely try that. I mean, I think there is value in the you know, obviously taking the perspective of the opponent, so to speak, and and seeing if you're in their position, where would you take the arguments? So I think there is definitely value in doing that. It's very gracious of you to to think of them, but I uh to think of them in that way, but I suppose it's also true because it's not it's not a reflection of them, it's a reflection of how poor the arguments for eating animals are. I guess it's just they've not necessarily had the desire to reflect on how poor those arguments are.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:52

But then why would you be so passionately in favour of eating meat to the point where you go and debate for it?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:56

Because you're on camera and because there's uh nearly a million people watching.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:01

I'm so naive, aren't I? But why would you do something to elevate your own profile in one of the biggest shows on the internet? Like Yeah. Oh dear, I'm naive sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:10

And people and debate bro culture is taken off in a new way, hasn't it? It's been growing for the last five or six years around Charlie it maybe peaked, if not, has it's been catapulted since the death of of Charlie Kirk. It's been it's taken on a a sort of life of its own. It's it's big. People love seeing little clips of people getting owned or destroyed on on YouTube. I guess this has been a part of uh we're I think we're the same age, or roughly, aren't we? Growing up in the noughties, that's right. Seeing hitch slaps on the internet and stuff. Like it's been there for a while, but in the last few years, debate content has really taken off. So if people can not merely try and profit off it in some way, obviously there'll be I thought there'd be some of these people that we spoke about last time when we had a conversation that sort of sell courses or information or like meat-based diet propaganda and speak hook you up with a dietitian and profit from it. I thought there'd be some people like that, but I think there was just a couple of people with books, there's a couple of people um who are on there regularly as debaters, there are people who I think just want to come on, and probably two or three people who d are genuinely interested, are jet are genuinely up for the discussion and sort of nothing else. Interesting. Yeah, and you can and you can walk them easy because they've got no motivation.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:28

It's interesting. I'm kidding. Do you think that something like that is is a uniquely American thing? I mean, obviously, people in the UK watch those debates and such, but like that kind of format. Because even the way they have to run to the chair and grab the chair, and it's all it's all you know set up to be dramatic and entertaining. That seems to be the first the first priority rather than the the you know debate substance.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:49

Yeah, survival of the fittest in the States, isn't it? I mean, if you've got a disability, you've got no chance. You'd come all the way there, run to the chair.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:56

But do they get to choose where they sit or they're assigned because there's obviously advantages based on what? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:00

You you turn up and they're all sat there waiting. Uh you get shuffled off to a to a green room and um and then they patiently and excitedly wait for you to come out hoping that it's going to be their favourite celebrity or it's going to be Ed Winters. I don't think they're gonna they they definitely knowing they're coming to debate veganism, may have thought it was gonna be you. And then I come in with like 200 followers. One guy said to me at the end, he was like, What do you even do? So I sort of feel bad because one of the motivations is they might get to, you know, the sort of people who have been on there, Kirk and Peterson, Piers Morgan, all of your favourite intellectual giants. Yes, exactly. Yeah, the cream of the crap, right? Yeah, someone said that why are you doing this? It's like you but they people think my academic career is going better than it actually is. You've had the inverse effect of the belief thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:50

It's a highlight of my fucking yeah. But anyway, it's been a pleasure speaking with you again. Um, I really appreciate you coming on having a chat. It's been uh yeah, it's been super interesting. And uh yeah, hopefully we can do it again sometime.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:03

Yeah, let's definitely do it again and let's do uh 2v2 against the couple. You were talking about trying to find meat eaters. I wonder who would yeah, take us on.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:12

I'll have to have a look. Maybe we can do something like that. That'll be really interesting, and uh I'm sure fun. And uh I'll I'll be anxious before, and you can be super calm and relaxed and excited before, and then maybe we'll balance each other out.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:23

We each start arguing with each other about what what is a proper vegan. 3v1 in the end. Just fulfill the stereotypes of vegans not being able to agree on other things.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:34

Just going, none of you are vegan. Your motivations are wrong. Anyway, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. And uh yeah, thank you to all of you for listening to this episode. And I hope you've enjoyed it. Uh let me know down below in the comments what you thought about what Jack and I have spoken about, and I look forward to seeing all of you in the next 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 substack 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.