The Rich Roll Podcast - Ed Winters Is A Vegan Propagandist

Episode Date: March 28, 2022

In today’s episode, Rich discusses all things vegan with Ed Winters (aka ‘Earthling Ed’), a vegan advocate and animal rights activist, author, and content creator who has lectured at Cambridge, Harvard, Google, Facebook, and many other institutions. Ed’s new book is entitled, This is Vegan Propaganda (And Other Lies the Meat Industry Tells You). FULL BLOG & SHOW NOTES: bit.ly/richroll670 The visually inclined can also watch ihis episode on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Peace + Plants, Rich

The simple thing that we do every day, consume foods, can have such a huge impact that we don't even realize. Like it's one of the most important decisions that we make every day for ourselves, but also for the health of the planet and every single being that coexists here with us. It can feel, I suppose, kind of maybe a little bit over-exaggerated to make such a claim, but our choices impact the future, you know, impact us in every single way that we can possibly think of in that sense. So when I started to realize the enormity and scale of the problem, I kind of felt that I needed to do something about it, that simply just living this way myself wasn't enough because I'm still kind of allowing these actions to continue. And before I was vegan, I kind of didn't know.

And I think about how I'd have reacted if someone had given me this information. You know, would I have changed earlier? You know, would I have had that realization before? And I think about all the people in the world who align with the same values that I have and who would probably make that change like I did if they kind of realized the same things that I realized. And so being silent in the face of adversity

is still allowing that adversity to continue. It's still a form of complicity because you're being a bystander to that exploitation and damage continuing to happen. So I realized I needed to speak up in some way. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey everybody, how you guys doing? It's Rich Roll here.

I am your host. This is the podcast. Welcome to it. Prepare thyself for today. We're gonna wade into the waters of veganism. Listen, it's a topic I care a great deal about, but I get it. I understand that it is an admittedly emotive subject for many, perhaps a divisive or treacherous topic for others,

but fear not, today's waters are warm. Thanks to my esteemed guest, Ed Winters, who is a young vegan advocate and animal rights activist, most known as Earthling Ed on the internet. Ed is an educator, he's a public speaker, an author, and content creator with a large cult following on YouTube, who has lectured at many UK universities, including Cambridge. He served as a guest lecturer at Harvard. He's spoken at several Ivy League institutions and major corporations like Google, Facebook, The Economist, and has also appeared across a multitude of mainstream media outlets, including the BBC. Ed is also the co-founder and co-director of Surge, which is an animal rights and animal sanctuary nonprofit. In 2018, he opened

Unity Diner, which is a 100% vegan restaurant and cocktail bar in London that donates all of its profits to animal causes. And he more recently opened No Catch Co, which is a growing plant-based fish and chips restaurant and soon to be chain. The occasion for today's conversation is Ed's new book, This is Vegan Propaganda and Other Lies the Meat Industry Tells You, which in addition to just being a perfect title is really a tremendous breakdown on veganism from all vantage points.

And it's intended for both skeptics and the converted. On the back cover of said book, you will find a quote. It's called a blurb in publishing parlance by yours truly, where I say quotes, when it comes to the vegan movement, Ed Winters is a truly unrivaled once in a generation voice, a modern day Peter Singer and the advocate for our moment. In the vein of his polished reason-based viral videos, this is vegan propaganda makes the

bulletproof case for the vegan lifestyle. Equal parts erudite and accessible, it's a must read for a world living out of sync with our innate humanity. End quote. Good stuff, right? We had a great conversation and it's coming up fast, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming

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or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, so the thing about Ed is, well, firstly, he's incredibly poised. He's cerebral, but it's really his calm demeanor and this unflappable equanimity that he has, particularly in discourse and debate that really stands out. And although he's just 27, he truly is one of the most compelling and powerful voices

in the vegan movement. And I'm delighted to share this wide ranging conversation on all things V-E-G-A-N-ism, including it's underpinning moral philosophy, Ed's rebuttal to many of the common arguments against veganism, the many ways in which cultural forces drive cognitive dissonance around our food and consumer choices, the ethical and environmental implications of those decisions. We also talk about how to be an effective advocate

and many other topics. So if you find yourself at all vegan curious, but haven't quite found the will to commit, I think, or I suspect that Ed just might be the catalyst you've been waiting for. We cover a lot today, but there's so much more. So if you find yourself eager to continue your investigation, I of course encourage you to pick up Ed's new book.

This is Vegan Propaganda, of course, but to also spend time on Ed's YouTube channel because it's all there, people, all of it. I think that's enough from me. So without further ado, I give you Ed Winters, aka Earthling Ed. Welcome to LA, man. It's so nice to meet you. I've been wanting to meet you for a very long time.

It's somewhat surprising that we haven't crossed paths in person, but I've been following your work for quite some time and always knew that I wanted to have you here. And we're in the perfect moment to have you here because you have this amazing new book coming out. This is Vegan Propaganda, which is a title for the ages. Like this is made for the internet.

Like it's so cheeky and obviously contemplates the fact that the first thing that a naysayer might say is that this book is vegan propaganda. Yeah, exactly. Right? That was the idea behind it. I mean, we always, when we were kind of coming up with the title for the book, we went through so many different iterations behind it. I mean, we always, when we were kind of coming up with the title for the book, we went through so many different iterations for it.

And we kind of landed on this idea of propaganda because I'd made a video and I'd used the word vegan propaganda as kind of like a thing that people say about it, about the information. And we're like, let's run with that. You know, there's something there. So we like messed around with it a little bit

and we're like, this is vegan propaganda is a good kind of tongue in cheek disarming of that phrase that we kind of hear often as vegans. I think it's perfect. Oh good. I love it. Oh good. In thinking about you and your advocacy and the way you sort of comport yourself in the world

and carry this message that you care about so deeply. I think that what is so indelibly powerful about you specifically is this very intentional, elegant style of communication that you have. And this level of like patience and unflappable equanimity, like equanimity really is like the touchstone in how you kind of interact with people. When you talk about veganism and address the pantheon of arguments

that get hurled in your direction as a defender of this way of life. And in that, there are so many different aspects of the vegan lifestyle. There's health, there's in the environment, sustainability, there's compassion, all of that. But your primary animating forces is really rooted

in ethics and moral responsibility. So I think a good place to start is just to unpack that a little bit and kind of how you got into this to begin with. Yeah, I mean, the way that I see veganism is that it is a moral issue. I often say to people, like even if eating animal products was just as bad for the

environment or the exact same for the environment and had no negative repercussions on your health, and it was exactly the same both ways, even though it isn't, but even if it was that case, there's still a moral reason to be vegan, you know, the animals. And so for me, I've always come at it from that moral angle. And I think that the other arguments really supplement and solidify that reason to be vegan in a way that kind of makes it undeniably the right thing to do. But that moral framework has always been really important to me. And it was the decision or that was the kind of thing that led me to the decision to change

myself. And I went vegan in 2015. And I'd been vegetarian for about eight months before then. And the reason I went vegetarian is because I came across this story about a truck carrying around 6,500 chickens crashing on the way to a slaughterhouse near Manchester, which is a city in Northern England. And I was reading this story and just feeling so dreadfully sorry for these chickens.

The journalist was describing how many of them had died. There were more who were alive, but they were on the side of the road. They were mutilated. They had broken bones, broken wings. And I realized that they could suffer, which is such a strange thing to realize, because obviously the animals who we farm can suffer. But how often do we ever stop and think about that?

I never had. And so I was thinking about these chickens who were suffering. And then I realized, well, hang on a minute. It's not the chickens on the side of the road. The destination they were heading to is hardly much better, potentially even worse than for many of the chickens because of what they endure in these slaughterhouses. So I felt like a hypocrite because in my fridge was a KFC and I used to love fried chicken. It was like my favorite food. I had a KFC outlet that is about maybe a five, 10 minute walk from where I used to live in London. And I went there so often that I became very accustomed to the workers and they knew who

I was. And we had this kind of like rapport going and it was just this kind of bi-weekly, twice weekly kind of pilgrimage that I went on to get my fried chicken. But anyway, my fridge was some leftover fried chicken, but now I'm empathizing with chickens in a way I never have before. And I thought, hang on a minute, what are my values when it comes to animals? And one thing I often ask people is, are you against animal cruelty? And we all say that we are. People who commit cruel acts to animals are seen as some of the worst people that can exist. And we really look down upon violence towards pets like dogs and cats and such, but we turn a blind eye to the cruelty that's inflicted on farmed animals and indeed

animals that are exploited in other ways as well. So when I ask people, are you against animal cruelty? What I'm trying to do, I suppose, is highlight that contradiction, our values. You know, when we say about cruelty and I say to people, can you define what that means to be cruel to someone? You know, people will always say that it's about causing to people, can you define what that means to be cruel to someone? You know, people will always say that it's about causing physical or mental, you know, emotional harm. It's about doing something unnecessary that negatively contributes to someone else's wellbeing. And then when we think about what we do to animals, of course it's cruel. You know, we mutilate them, we exploit them, we forcibly impregnate them, we take their babies away from them and then we take their life from them prematurely for an unnecessary reason. I mean, to me, that's like the definition

of being cruel to an animal. So I realized that in that moment, thinking about the KFC, thinking about the chickens and realizing that there was this kind of disalignment in the person I thought I was when it came to animals and the person I actually was. And so I kind of reached this fork in the road, if you'll pardon the pun, but this fork in the road where I could choose to kind of bury my head in the sand, kind of hopefully repress those feelings and just get on with my life

and not worry about animals anymore. Or I could accept that there's something not quite right with my values and my actions. And I chose the latter and went vegetarian because I didn't know anything about dairy or eggs. And then I saw Earthlings, which is a documentary that exposes what happens in US farms and slaughterhouses.

The movie we all begrudgingly watch. Yeah, exactly. We have to get dragged to watching it and then we're never the same. It is a hard watch, isn't it? It's like an hour and 40 minutes of objective, I guess, undercover hidden camera footage that just shows what happens to animals. And after that, I went and spent time with Rupert

the hamster, who was my first real pet. And I don't like to use the word pet so much, but more like companion animal, you know, he was kind of my companion. And I had Rupert in my hands and I was looking at Rupert the hamster and I gave him some broccoli because broccoli was his favorite food. He loved broccoli, absolutely loved it. So I gave him some broccoli and I was looking at Rupert eating this broccoli of his cute little paws. He always looked so adorable. And I was looking at him thinking, there's so much about Rupert that creates moral worth for him. He's an individual, he has likes and dislikes and he loved the broccoli, but he didn't like other things like kale, for example. He had likes and dislikes, things that made him Rupert the hamster. And I thought about all the animals who were exploited and all the different ways that we exploit them. I wasn't eating meat,

but I was still consuming dairy and eggs. I was still perpetuating systems that exploited animals in other means. And it really dawned on me in that moment that the issue of what we do to animals isn't just really about food. Food is a symptom of the problem. The problem is a mentality that creates the justification for these systems to exist in the first place. The fact that we view non-human animals or these non-human animals with such little worth

that we can then justify doing everything that we do to them. That's the problem. And I realized that veganism isn't just about eating plant-based food, it's about challenging that mindset that values non-human animals as having such little worth that we can do these unspeakably cruel things to them and not bat an eyelid about it most of the time.

A lot of people have an analogous experience where they're witness to some type of animal cruelty and they're compelled to kind of reckon with how that measures up against their value system. But not that many people use that as a lever or a tipping point to actually make change. I mean, there's so much packed into that. There's the level of cognitive dissonance,

this idea like, you know, we all flinch and look away from things like earthlings and slaughterhouse videos and stuff like that for the very reason. And you talk about this, like the very reason that it will compel us to confront that dissonance. And if we do that,

then perhaps we either need to make that change that we don't wanna make, or we have to live with that level of disconnect, which creates kind of like, just a lack of integration with just being human, right? So you had this moment, like, what was it about your background or, you know, leading up to that, that you were kind of primed to make that change that so many struggle to make? Well, I think as vegans, we often think of this one moment, you know, I saw earthlings that made

me vegan. But what we forget or don't often realize is that for our whole life, there are all these little moments that are building up to this kind of realization. And so throughout my whole life, I was raised with this mentality that animals should be cared for, that people that do bad things to animals are wrong, that we should try and protect our environment. I was raised with these values and I was raised with the, I guess the concept that a world with reduced suffering is preferable. So this was kind of like the mentality I had, but I'd never really connected all of these components with, you know, being vegan or with the consequence of not being vegan. about these different points in my life. For example, I stopped going to zoos before I stopped eating meats and dairy and eggs. And the reason I stopped going to zoos

is because I had seen the documentary, Blackfish, and the documentary Blackfish made me not want to see, go to aquariums. But then I went to Barcelona Zoo, and in Barcelona Zoo, I saw a bear. And this bear just looked so solemn and so sad. They were just sat down in this very small enclosure looking around. And I kind of followed their eyes. They looked around the enclosure and

looked at the four walls they were trapped in. And it dawned on me that these animals are also being kept in captivity like the orcas at SeaWorld are. So then I left Barcelona Zoo and never went to another zoo after that. So I had these kind of moments that made me realize that what we're doing to animals isn't something that's good for animals, it's definitely not, but also is something that contradicts kind of the values that I have towards how we should treat them.

And really just this last piece of the puzzle was just being kind of confronted, if you like, with the objective reality of, you know, this is what you're paying for when you go into a supermarket and you buy this. You know, we may view these decisions as being unconscious because they are unconscious, but they have this very real tangible consequence

that we often don't think about. And so I was forced to go, when I go into a supermarket or I go into a restaurant or wherever it is, and I give my money to these industries, I am personally funding these very things that I'm feeling very upset about to continue. And how do I, as a person who wants to reduce suffering,

who thinks that a world that, you know, obviously we're never gonna create a utopia, but a world that is trying to reach that utopia as much as we can, how does pain for slaughterhouses to exist? How does that work in this kind of vision of the future that I would like to live in? It doesn't.

So it was all these little moments, but then just this overarching realization that I'm not living in alignment, that I'm fundamentally a hypocrite when it comes to my treatment of animals. And that was the final piece to go. There is a problem here that is bigger than just this food problem.

It's a mentality issue. And as a consequence of that, I have to be that example of what I want to see. Right. So where does the transition from simply living this lifestyle turn into, this is my life's work? Yeah.

That's a big leap, right? It is. I had been vegan for a little while. And my partner, she had been watching some YouTubers. We'd been watching a lot of, you know, absorbing a lot of information about veganism. I'd learned about the environmental stuff. I'd learned about the health impact, both, you know, individual chronic health, but also kind of a global infectious disease risk problem as well. Antibiotic resistance, all these things. I'd

learned about the true scale of the problem and how just the simple thing that we do every day, of the problem and how just the simple thing that we do every day, consume foods, can have such a huge impact that we don't even realize. It's one of the most important decisions that we make every day for ourselves, but also for the health of the planet and every single being that coexists here with us. It can feel, I suppose, maybe a little bit over-exaggerated to make such a claim, but our choices impact the future, you know, impacts us in every single way that we can possibly think of in that sense. So when I started to realize the enormity and scale of the problem, I kind of felt that I needed to do something about it, that simply just living this way myself wasn't enough because I'm still kind of allowing these actions to continue. And before I was vegan, I kind of didn't know. And I think about how I'd have reacted

if someone had given me this information. Would I have changed earlier? Would I have had that realization before? And I think about all the people in the world who align with the same values that I have and who would probably make that change like I did if they kind of realized the same things that I realized. And so being silent in the face of adversity is still allowing that adversity to continue. It's still a form of complicity because you're being a bystander to that exploitation and damage continue to happen.

So I realized I needed to speak up in some way. And that started off by just being, you know, uploading YouTube videos. And the first ones I did was very rough and I was super nervous. And, but I felt that it was important to try and communicate this message because so many people just have never heard about it before,

at least have heard about it, but have never really sat and thought about the reasons to be vegan. So it was really YouTube from the get-go. Yeah, for you. Pretty much. You are a true millennial. Yeah, I guess I tick that box, don't I?

Did you study philosophy or argumentation or discourse? Like you have such a facility with language. And like I said earlier, just this composure about you that feels very crafted and skilled. Like where did you learn how to do that? I mean, it was really trial and error. It's very kind of you to say,

but there was no real kind of education that I went under. I studied film and TV at university. I had this aspiration of being some big movie director, but quickly realized that that's not what I wanted to do, but I could have those transferable skills and apply it to being a YouTuber, of course. But for me, it was just a process of trial and error. I kind of had these conversations with people in the street, just very rough conversations at the beginning where I'd go out to places like, you know, Leicester Square or Trafalgar Square in London and try and strike up conversations with members of the public and ask them hopefully prompting questions. But I quickly realized what worked and what didn't work. And I quickly realized that having an aggressive tone

or using certain language or kind of putting someone in a defensive mode doesn't help people reach a positive conclusion. And I had conversations with people where I overstepped the mark a little bit, where I maybe was a little bit too, or at least I came across a bit judgmental. I came across like I had this air of superiority

and I thought, well, who am I doing this for? Because being an advocate, you are trying to represent something and being an advocate for this movement means I'm trying to represent something or someone who isn't me, you know, the animals whose voices we ignore because their screams are behind walls of slaughterhouses. So if I'm trying to be an advocate for them, then I can't allow this kind of self-serving philosophy of wanting to make myself feel good by allowing these emotions to overtake me, this kind of anger or this frustration,

that's self-serving. But if I'm trying to be an advocate for them, someone else, I need to think about their best interests. And I quickly realized that allowing these kind of self-serving emotions wasn't productive and trying to be this, I suppose, almost voice of someone's conscience. You know, when I'm in these conversations, I'm trying to not impose myself, but really just allow someone else to understand themselves better, you know, themselves, trying to allow

them to understand how they view these situations, you know, what attitudes do they have? And so, you know, I try and revolve these conversations around asking questions and trying to get people to understand their own beliefs rather than telling them what my beliefs are. Yeah, well, you're very effective in that. And I wanna put a pin in that, I wanna come back to effective advocacy

in the later stages of this conversation, because I think that's super important and interesting. But on the thread of sort of advocating on behalf of a vegan lifestyle, I feel like the Overton window has really expanded. Like even in the last couple of years, like this is now part of the mainstream discourse. People are not confused about what it means so much. People are interested in and intrigued by it. So I wanna kind of establish the moral landscape here and then expand upon that to,

for you to just kind of advocate on behalf of this in your own words, like why should somebody go vegan? I mean, you do these, you go around to colleges and I wanna talk about how you set up these booze like Lucy and Peanuts and say, everybody should go vegan, prove me wrong and all of that. So you've had hundreds, if not thousands of these interactions. But if somebody came to you and just said, Ed, tell me why I should be vegan. How do you respond to that? I think it comes down to a number of factors. But the first

thing to acknowledge is that we can be vegan. What sets apart our current time from times in the past is the fact that we have the option in a way that previous generations didn't throughout history. So the first thing to acknowledge is that it's a choice. And once we recognize it's a choice, it then becomes a moral issue. Obviously what we do to animals is a moral issue because we all think that animals deserve

some form of moral consideration. That's why we say animal cruelty is wrong. And we even talk about animal welfare because we have an understanding that we want to reduce suffering. So we recognize that what we do to animals is a moral issue. And then we recognize that what we do to animals is a choice and isn't something that we have to do. So then we have to look at why we think animals deserve moral consideration.

And I always think about it from my own perspective as a human first. And I recognize that as a human, because I have things like sentience, individuality, the capacity to feel, whether that's pleasure or pain, happiness or suffering, that I have an awareness of my surroundings, basically that I have this sentience, that that assigns me moral worth because when someone harms me, it's causing me suffering. When someone does something to impede on my life, it's causing me suffering. Once one does something to impede on my life, that's impeding on my life, right? And that's kind of broadly why we recognize that arbitrarily harming other humans based on superfluous reasons such as sexuality or ethnicity

or whatever it may be, sadly enough, we recognize that's obviously wrong because these people are sentient individuals who have these capacities in much the same way that we all do, of course. So if I'm assigning moral worth to myself based on these characteristics and traits, I have to work out whether or not the non-human animals also tick these boxes. You know, are pigs, chickens, cows, marine animals, are they sentient?

You know, are they conscious? Do they have the capacity to suffer, feel pain, also pleasure, happiness perhaps as well? And we know that they do. We recognize that with the animals we have in our homes, that dogs and cats have these personalities, things that make them Fluffy the cat or Boxer the dog, whatever name we might assign to these animals.

We recognize this about them. And we know that they have this broad spectrum of emotions. And we know that with the animals who we farm and who we exploit as well. And so when I think about them as individuals, I have to think about, well, what moral justification do I have to arbitrarily harm them and unnecessarily kill them? And you can't morally justify that in the current context of a modern day society. So it's about recognizing that these animals from a moral perspective should have worth that transcends the reasons we use to exploit them.

You know, taste, food, nutrition, you know, we can get nutrition from plant-based sources instead. So when we recognize it's unnecessary and we recognize that these animals have these capacities that becomes what I would describe as it becomes a moral obligation to be vegan because it's the best way to reduce suffering to its fullest extent when it comes to our treatment of animals. We're all against animal suffering, all against animal cruelty. So it's about working out how we apply that logic the most consistently and farming them in any way or taking them to a slaughterhouse to kill them, which is what happens to every farmed animal, even if they're raised for dairy and eggs,

you know, they still meet the same miserable end prematurely, that can't be changed while we still farm them. And that causes suffering and cruelty. So the best way to extend that to its fullest extent is by no longer paying for these things to happen to them in the first place. There's so much cognitive dissonance that comes into play. And there's this leap to really embracing

the individuation of these animals. And I feel like society is structured to entrench that cognitive dissonance and prevent us from empathizing with the individualistic nature of these animals. We all know with our pets, yes, we can see that and we understand that, but then this wall comes down

when it comes to other species, particularly farmed animals for our food, we understand that, but then this wall comes down when it comes to other species, particularly, you know, farmed animals for our food, where we're not so quick to make that leap, right? Like how do you, the psychological aspect of it, to me is almost more interesting than the intellectual arguments. It's like, you can make those intellectual arguments

and we all get it, but there's a gap between that understanding and behavior change that lies in this very murky terrain around how the human animal operates. It's so important. And what you said that I think is really profound because it's really easy, I suppose, in principle, to get people to understand the reasons

why change is important. But as you say, there are these barriers, social, psychological, emotional, that can restrict us from making those rational choices. I mean, the third section of the book is really trying to address that. And I think we have to understand the mechanisms behind why we have this attitude. And, you know, broadly speaking, we categorize animals into three kind of groups. We have, you know, wild animals, we have pets, and then we have farmed animals. And by categorizing animals in that way,

it allows us to treat them differently based on the categorization we've given them. So in a sense, what we do is we otherize farm animals and we've otherized humans throughout history to find, you know, to then provide a justification for causing unnecessary harm. And that's what we do with farmed animals. We've otherized them. And so we kind of view them as being abstractions. You know, we have pets in our home and we assign them individual personalities, but pigs and chickens, well, they're just this abstract concept. Pigs are dirty, chickens are stupid. So by kind of assigning just this one characteristic or these broad characteristics to an entire species, it makes what we do to them more palatable because we're

not viewing them as individuals. And I think part of the problem with the scale of animal agriculture is it further allows us to detach from that individuality of each animal. Even when I'm advocating, I'm quite conscious to make the point of, whilst it's terrible that we farm 80 billion land animals and we kill somewhere between 0.8 and 2.3 trillion marine animals

every single year. Whilst that is obviously terrible because of the numbers, what's important is that those numbers are made up of individuals, solitary individual animals who are experiencing everything themselves. So I think because we've otherized animals and we've created these abstract concepts of what these species that we farm represent, it then allows us to not have to really engage with the actions that we're committing. Yeah, it's similar to our difficulty in empathizing with a genocide versus the one kid who's stuck in the well.

Exactly, that's exactly right, isn't it? So I think that part of this problem is the detachment from the process. Where we live in the cultures where we currently are, there is this huge detachment from the slaughterhouse, the farm and the supermarkets. And I think in the US, there was a study done in schools that said that a lot of school children think that chocolate milk comes from brown cows, right? There's this huge disconnection from what we're paying for and what we're consuming. And so there is this element of having to become more conscious as consumers, intellectually recognize the reasons to make the change,

but then challenge some of those barriers that exist, that cognitive dissonance, the confirmation bias that we can all grapple with at times. We have to be mindful and conscious of these external factors that influence our behavior, because by being mindful of those external factors, we can then try and by being mindful of those external factors, we can then try and work out whether or not our actions are aligning with our rational thought processes. And I think it's just as simple sometimes as going to a supermarket,

looking at the foods we normally buy, and just taking a moment to pause, just thinking about who is this from? Who did this used to belong to? When I buy meat, this is a piece of flesh, so where did that this from? You know, who did this used to belong to? When I buy meat, this is a piece of flesh. So where did that come from? And just trying to take a moment to be more thoughtful in our decision-making can help us sometimes see through

those unconscious barriers that can drive our behaviors. Yeah, yeah, it's so fascinating. I think you say in the book, you cite these statistics, people are polled about their relationship with factory farming. Most people say it should be abolished or we shouldn't have it. But 99% of those people, you know,

the next day go to the supermarket and just pick up whatever, right? So it's so weird that we're that way or that we understand that pigs are as smart as dogs, if not smarter, probably smarter, right? That they have personalities, et cetera, and yet bacon, right? Like people just can't get around it.

We're gonna get into all the various arguments that you field, but on the subject of continuing down this path of just, you know, making the case for veganism, it becomes harder and harder to defend our habits the more educated we are. And that's really kind of the tip of your spear, like prioritizing education,

but being in a place of allowing people to make their own decisions around it. Absolutely. We as a species are of course, ignorant about so many things. And ignorance isn't a bad thing because we can't ever know everything. But at the same time,

the antidote to ignorance is education. So there can be, I suppose, this belief that non-vegans have that vegans can be judgmental, have an air of superiority. And I'm sure some vegans do tick those boxes. But by and large, I think that the role of a vegan advocate

is really just to try and provide some education to someone who just has never heard of these arguments. I think what we have to understand is that, you know, good people do bad things. We're all, you know, guilty of that. We all live in some level of moral ambiguity. Absolutely, we can never be morally puritanical, can we? And so I think we have to recognize

that good people can do bad things and that these bad things are driven by often external factors such as advertising, such as a detachment from the reality of what we're purchasing, such as this proliferation of information and industry funded studies that creates doubts in the eyes of the consumer. There are so many things that lead us to making the decisions that we make. And I think just having that recognition that we are all capable of doing bad things, but at the same time, we're all capable of doing better. And education can be an antidote to that, you know, to that ignorance. Aristotle, I say in the book says that, you know, the roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet. You know, obviously what we do to animals is a deeply uncomfortable topic.

And I suppose that the broader consequence of the environmental damage, the personal health consequences, these things are terrifying and frightening. And it's often very uncomfortable to learn something that contradicts the way that we've lived our entire life. But the consequence of that,

the fruit of that is something so important, which is that we're creating a better food system, which as a consequence of that, the fruit of that is something so important, which is that we're creating a better food system, which as a consequence of that improves so many of these issues that we're currently facing as a species. Are you able to maintain hopefulness amidst all of this? Or do you find yourself descending into cynicism? It can really vary.

Some days I can feel cynical. Some days I feel probably overly optimistic. But I think by and large, I have a huge amount of faith, whether that's misguided, I'm not sure. But I think humans are an incredible species because we are obviously so intellectual. We're obviously capable of doing so much. And whilst we are deeply flawed in so many ways,

we're also capable of achieving something better. And I think one of the reasons why I enjoy having these conversations and going to college campuses and such is because it allows me to connect with people I would never normally connect with. Cowboys, farmers, people have very different views to me, but it allows me to sit down and talk with them

for 30 minutes, 40 minutes, and really get to know them and understand how they feel. And I often leave these conversations feeling very optimistic because I recognize that, you know, deep down, we all want the same thing, which is, you know, a better world fundamentally. We might have differing views on how we get there, but we all have this idea that we want, when it comes to agriculture, at least, that we want a more sustainable system, a more ethical system, a more just system, a system that reduces disparity for people in low economic scenarios. We all want to strive for that. It's just, we haven't quite reached the commonality

of how to get there. But these conversations I have with people, they reassure me that when we sit down and talk about these issues, and these are big moral concerns, these are big philosophical topics, just a conversation can really help us reach an air of commonality, which leaves me feeling a lot more empowered than I probably would without that aspect of my advocacy. So you've lectured and taught at many colleges, you've traveled all over the place. You were a guest lecturer at Harvard,

which is super interesting. I think you're doing an online thing with Harvard, like next week, right? Which is cool. But in addition to that, like I mentioned earlier, you set up these booths on college campuses and you entertain these conversations with people about veganism.

You share those clips on Instagram and on YouTube. So you've had so many of these conversations and every argument conceivable, I'm sure has been foisted upon you that you've had to field. How many of those conversations end up, because you're only choosing which ones to share, right? You're having many more of them. Like, do you get the sense that you're moving the needle or at least leaving people with something to think about? I mean, that's my sense. Occasionally you'll have a frustrating one,

but overall my feeling is that young people are engaging you in good faith and they may have their head in a different place, but there's a lot of kind of mutual respect that goes both ways in these conversations. And irrespective of the outcome, like that gives me hope. Like I think that's cool to just witness.

Yeah, I mean, exactly right. We tend to upload nearly all the conversations that take place. And I've just been traveling for the past few weeks. I've got so much content because think about the US, people are very open to telling you their views. And that can-

That's a loaded statement in and of itself. It's a polite way of saying there's a little bit of, you know, division that occurs here sometimes, but people are very open to that. And that's part of the reason why I like being here. And so I've had, you know, most of these conversations, but you are right by and large, which is that there is this,

I think, respectful dialogue that hopefully takes place. And I try very hard to facilitate that. So when people sit down, you know, the camera operator will start moving the cameras, you know, checking the memory cards, checking the batteries. And we do that deliberately so that I have two or three minutes just to sit and talk to someone, not about veganism. You know, what do you study? Where are you from? Do you like it? Just really build up a bit of rapport because if we're going to engage in these conversations where I'm going to be challenging people fundamentally on their lifestyle and their belief system, we need to make sure that we got into that with this positive mindset. So trying to just make someone feel comfortable immediately is very important because if we want people to be vulnerable, we have to express

vulnerability in ourselves. We have to be able to, I suppose, make statements that almost... I guess what I'm trying to say is it's important for us to be able to own up to things that they're right about as well. And I think in a debate, what can often happen is people have this reluctance to accept that they're wrong or accept that the other person's made a good point. It's always, no, I have to be 100% right and nothing they say can be valid. And I think just taking that moment at the beginning to build up the rapport lowers both of our defenses to be open enough to be able to say,

that's a really good point that you've made. Or I understand why you're saying that. Or yeah, I've never thought about that before. Because we have this kind of almost very early friendship emerging from just this moment of rapport building. And I think having those kind of techniques of just taking the time to listen to someone, asking them thoughtful questions, you know, trying to understand their argument, there is this, I think, fracturing that's occurring within society where we're kind

of caricaturing people and their beliefs based on, you know, certain principles of, you know, their identity. And we don't actually take the time to understand people's beliefs anymore. And I think why I like having these conversations is I'm interested to understand why people think the way they do. Now, how did they reach that conclusion? Why do you think this is the way that it is? Because it makes me better as an advocate as well.

How am I supposed to be, I suppose, competent at debating people if I don't understand what their point of view is? So I think that builds respect as well, just listening and being genuinely interested and sincere in your, I guess your care of their beliefs. Yeah, and to that point, I assume it's intentional on your part

to purposefully attend colleges with animal husbandry and animal agriculture departments like Cornell and Texas A&M. Like those are, you know, like there's a lot of students that I'm sure you interacted with who are actually studying how to be animal agriculturists on some level. And that I'm sure you're confronting

a lot of cognitive dissonance. I mean, they're being indoctrinated is the wrong word, but they're being kind of trained and educated in a particular way of life and profession that is at odds with your core moral philosophy. Yeah, that exact scenario played out at Texas A&M recently. This guy sat down, this really proud Texan

from rural Texas, told me he didn't like the cities, he just liked being out in the middle of the wild west. And he was studying animal ag and animal ag science. And so he sat down very respectfully and was just like, I'm really interested to hear your point of view. And I was like, well, that's great. Now I'm interested to hear yours. And so we started this conversation and he said, well, I was told today in my class that dairy cows like to be farmed. They queue up to be milked. And so it's a consensual thing. And I said, well, that's a very interesting statement, but it kind of misses the finer details, which is that we've selectively bred dairy cows to produce excessive amounts of milk. Dairy cows need to be milked because they're producing milk. It's uncomfortable for them not to

be milked. So there's a reason why dairy cows will walk themselves into the milking parlor. It's because they have to be milked. Otherwise it causes them pain, mastitis, all of these things. But it doesn't make them willing participants in their exploitation. Just because they go through this predetermined biological process where they have to have their milk released, should be done by their child, of course, but in the absence of their child must be done through the machinery.

Just because they willfully walk into that environment doesn't make everything else we do to them consensual. So there is that indoctrination that exists within these courses because farmers, by and large, are raised in farming communities. And this is a really important thing to recognize. And they're raised with a belief system that's given to them by their parents and their grandparents. These are family farms passed down generation to generation. And as a child growing up in that environment, seeing what the farm means to your family and feeling the expectation that you have to go into that farming scenario yourself, plus you're in a community that's just farmers and farming families.

So your friends are farmers and you grew up with farming children. It's all you've ever known. So what choice do you have? But to pursue that, I think it requires an exceptional amount of humility and dedication for a child to break out of that. So then they go to universities at colleges that are studying, teaching animal ag science. So they come from farming communities with farming families, go learn about farming and then become farmers. And it's all they've ever known. I think it's easy to understand why many farmers may not sit down like that Texan did

and have a conversation with me. You know, why they may feel threatened by the presence of someone who's outspoken about their veganism, because it's not just challenging their livelihood, it's challenging their entire existence identity. Yeah, completely. Yeah. Right?

Like I can easily empathize with the level of defensiveness or resistance that, you know, somebody in that position would have towards you. Absolutely. And I think that's- With your long hair and your, you know, it's like, come on, dude. The opposite of a Texan cowboy.

What do you know about my life? Yeah, exactly. So how does that go? Like how did it play out with that guy? Really well. I mean, I was lucky in the sense that he was very receptive and open-minded and he didn't leave with this revelation

that he was gonna stop studying animal science and become vegan. That didn't happen. But at the same time he left, I would hope, with an understanding about veganism, but also an understanding about vegans that you didn't have before. I think that vegans often have an optics problem.

Sure. That we have this perception of us, which is really damaging. And a lot of the time we don't necessarily help ourselves with that perception. I can be the first one to say that. Yeah, I mean, it's incredibly emotive and divisive, as you have said, regardless of whether you're pro or con,

just saying the word, people get agitated no matter what. So first of all, what does it even mean? Why does that word tend to provoke people one way or the other? And you're correct, like vegans can be their own worst enemies. And there's a lot of infighting and confusion amidst the community that is not helpful.

No, so I think optics are a massive part of that problem. And I think very quickly, I realized that being a messenger isn't necessarily so much about what you say, about how you say it, how you come across. And with that cowboy, and hopefully with most people that sit down and talk to me or engage with me in one way or another, I just want them to leave with the feeling that, oh, okay, vegans can be this way. You know, vegans can listen. Vegans can be respectful. Vegans can engage in a thoughtful manner. You know, they're not going to call me an animal murderer as soon as I sit down. And I think

that that's an important aspect of what I try and do is just trying to, I suppose, reframe people's perceptions of what being vegan means. Because it's easy for us to distance ourself from doing something if we don't like the person who's doing it. So if we can't disagree with the message that causing unnecessary suffering to animals is wrong, the next best thing is to disagree with the person saying it. And so people are looking for any excuse to, I suppose, disembark from these conversations, to not have to engage. And if we as vegans perpetuating a stereotype that people don't want to engage with,

then that's how they distance themselves from these really important issues. So the first thing we have to do is be, I suppose, personable and approachable so that people will then want to listen. And if we fail at that first hurdle and we don't come across as being that person. Yeah, it's over just like that.

And not only that, you have to overcome all of these other barriers and hurdles because the media is hard at work at characterizing. You talk, there's a whole thing in the book about this, and you've made videos about this, the mischaracterization on behalf of the media to paint a broad picture of vegans and veganism as, you know, insane militants and, you know,

violent people who want to kill babies, et cetera, all of that kind of stuff. So people come in with their preconceived idea that you have to rebut. So you almost have to be all the much more sort of patient and conciliatory. Yeah. And it's, it, and it's hard at times, but you're right.

There is often a concerted, maybe a concerted effort is a little bit too dramatic, but there is often an abundance of media articles and press releases that are staunchly against veganism. Whether that's veganism makes you ill, young girls are going vegan because they're trying to mask their anorexia or phyrexia, that vegans kill more animals,

that we're destroying the Amazon rainforest. There are these narratives that are consistently perpetuated, even though they're consistently debunked. And there is this, I think, issue with people's perceptions about veganism, not coming from any, I suppose, detailed research on their part,

but merely just because they've seen sensationalist headlines about vegan activists. It's passive media consumption that is buttressed by, the advertising industry and dairy checkoff programs, et cetera, that are feeding us this narrative about how to eat meat is to be masculine. And if you're gonna be vegan, you're a soy boy, and that's for sissies and all of that.

So there's that kind of piece as well, which for young men can be very powerful as a lever in thinking about these issues. It's so important. And I think the meat and masculinity link is a really important one for us to consider. You know, it's easy to, I suppose it's easy for us to look at men who consume meat for

that reason and view them as being these really terrible people who are just all about their ego and are fragile and all of this. But it kind of does a disservice to the incredible amount of pressure that comes from advertising, that comes from public perception and peer pressure. There are studies that show that men can feel very disenfranchised in social environments where they feel that their masculinity has been questioned by their friends and that they're less likely to choose plant-based options

in these social situations, even if they rationally understand the reasons to do so, that peer pressure and that societal pressure of these expectations about what being a man means and how that equates to diet really puts a lot of burden on young men especially to fulfill that. And of course, there are lots of issues with this kind of hyper masculine attitudes that's perpetuated, especially now I feel maybe more than has been in the past, but I think overlooks the fact that there is this concerted effort, probably from

many areas from industry and also from the media to perpetuate that narrative. You turn on the TV and these fast food chains are using images of sexualized women or images of men talking about eating meat like a man. That's a message that's perpetuated a lot. And it weighs heavy on the psychology of young people growing up and who they want to be and how they feel they should conform. Well, let's go through some of the main arguments against being vegan since you have fielded all of them. At the top of that list really is this argument

around personal choice, like get out of my business. Why are vegans always trying to make me go vegan? Live and let live. To what say you, Earthling Ed? What say me? Sometimes I think vegans can try and make the point that it's not a personal choice if it affects someone else.

I hear that a lot. You know, it's not a personal choice because there's a victim, but you know, fundamentally it is a choice when we go into a supermarket or a restaurant, what we choose to buy is up to us to decide. No one else can make that decision for us. So the first thing to recognize is it is a choice.

But then by the recognition that it's a choice, it means that we don't have to do that. And when we talk about moral issues, well, everything is a choice. You know, I could leave today, find someone and mug them, you know, rob them. I could find a dog and kick them and stomp them to death. You know, I can choose to do all of these things, but they're not morally justified as a consequence of being a choice. So whilst what we do to animals and what we choose to buy when it comes to animal products isn't deniably up to us to choose, that doesn't mean that it's justified as a consequence of that because every action,

moral or immoral, is a choice. And I suppose I always say, what about the choice of the animals? When we say about personal choice, often people make the argument that they're trying to protect people's sovereignty and people's ability to make individual decisions. But what it overlooks is the fact that our personal choice is impacting the desire of trillions of others around the world. And so what about that choice? If they had that choice, they wouldn't walk into a slaughterhouse. We're so detached from that equation though.

It's very difficult for us to do that math because of the distance and the barriers that are put up to prevent us from really understanding that. Plus the fact that it feels like my personal choice has so little impact on this broader problem at large. Me ordering a cheeseburger or picking up some ground beef at the supermarket isn't gonna really impact the state of factory farming.

But at the same time, every mass movement for our history has been formed of individuals. And so whilst as an individual making personal decisions, we may feel like the impact that we have is small and as an individual choice, it is. But an individual choice combined with millions of other individual choices starts to have a huge impact. And so it's about being empowered to recognize what we can achieve. And we look across the world and we look at so many problems. And you know, as individuals, there's very little we can do about that. You know, we can donate to charities, but can we stop war? Not as an individual necessarily. We can go protests and marches. Sometimes that

doesn't make a difference either, of course. But when it comes to the agricultural system and the way the food that we consume is produced and the consequences of that is entirely something that we as individuals and consumers have the power to change. There are subsidy systems and there are legislative problems from governments and politicians. But fundamentally, if we as consumers come together and vote with our wallets for a different world,

we can create a massive amount of change. And so it's one of those rare issues potentially where we as individuals have the power to completely change that system. So I think it's about being empowered to recognize the responsibility, but also the ability that we have to bring about change. Right. And recognizing that capitalism fundamentally responds to shifts in demand, right? So if the demand shifts and people are desirous of plant-based milk options, that's what you're going to see in the supermarket. And of course that is what we're seeing.

We're seeing the proliferation of plant-based options at not only restaurants across the world, but the fast food outlets, like they are responsive to consumer demand. And to the extent that we can consolidate and marshal the messaging around that demand and get more people enthusiastic about this. These companies, it's not mustache-strolling people

sitting around a boardroom conspiring to make people unhealthy and kill as many animals as possible. They're trying to meet their quarterly earnings. And if they figure out a way to do that by dint of exploring the plant-based world, then that's exactly what they're going to do. So I think it really is powerful.

And it's not dissimilar from this discussion around individuation. In the same sense that we struggle to individuate these animals, we have to also be able to understand that the individuals amongst us comprise a greater whole that is indeed very powerful. And, you know, YouTube and podcasts and things like that,

I think have played a huge part in, at a minimum, shifting the consciousness of the younger generation to really care about these things. Definitely. What's unique about this issue in a sense is, throughout history, we've never had the opportunity to hear the other side of the story. Parents, grandparents, they were raised until the past 10 years or so. What we knew about animal agriculture came from animal agriculture. We were told the animals are treated well. Why would we ever question that?

We go into a supermarket and we see these promotional posters telling us one thing. This is all we're fed. You know, this is all we hear. So what's unique about now is that we have this opportunity to go, well, actually, is there something else to this? You know, is there more to this? Is there another side to this coin? And when we can do that, you know, look into that, see what happens.

There is this now growing awareness about the impact that animal agriculture has on the environment, on our health. These things are stemming from a public awareness, a shift in public consciousness that is also stemming from a proliferation of information through podcasts and YouTube that hasn't existed before. So it's creating a unique situation for us to engage

with ideas that potentially, you know, older generations didn't have the luxury of engaging with. Right. I hear you, Ed, but I procure all of my meat from regenerative farms. It's all locally raised, hormone free, the whole thing. So I'm doing my part. Yeah.

It's a common argument now, isn't it? Regenerative. And those animals are important in regenerating my part. Yeah. It's a common argument now, isn't it? Regenerative- And those animals are important in regenerating the soil, which is a key to solving the climate crisis. Yeah, regenerative is like the new sustainable word, is the new buzzword that these industries are using a lot.

I think the first thing to recognize is this idea that people are supporting these systems comes from a good feeling. It comes from the sense that we need to do something differently, but we're kind of still stuck in this paradigm of wanting to continue consuming animals. So we're trying to find rationalizations to continue that. And this idea of regenerative beef farming or lamb farming comes along and it ticks the boxes of allowing us to continue eating animals, but also means we can regenerate the soils and it gets rid of all the problems. And it alleviates all of that cognitive dissonance.

It takes everything that we want, but is it true? That's when it becomes a problem. So the idea of regenerative animal farming is, as you rightfully say, it creates a system which can put nutrients back in the soil. It reduces the use of kind of artificial fertilizers

and crop reduction, can reduce the strain on places like, you know, the Amazon rainforest and such, which has currently been, you know, decimated for feed production and cattle grazing and all these terrible things. But when we think about regenerative farming, what we have to recognize is that it uses up an incredible amount of land. So if we think about the US, for example, so the USDA states that currently about 41% of the landmass of the US is used for animal farming. When it comes to plant farming for just for human consumption, it's only 4%. So in the US, 10 times more land is used to produce animal

products than plant products for humans directly. And when we look at beef farming in particular, well, it's about 20% of the entire landmass of the 48 contiguous US states is used to produce beef, which makes about 3% of our caloric needs. So this is with a system that uses feedlots. This is with an efficient system when it comes to land use. So simply put, even if we believed in regenerative farming, we cannot continue to consume as much meat, dairy, and eggs as we currently do. It'll be a fraction of that anyway, because there isn't the land or the resources to produce the animal products or the quantity that we currently consume using these systems. So even if it was a viable alternative, we'd still be dramatically reduced the amount that we consume. But when we

look at regenerative farming, there's a couple of aspects to look at. First is biodiversity, and second is emissions. Those are like the two main things that proponents of this system of farming will talk about. So when we look at biodiversity to begin with, the idea is that grazing animals increases biodiversity because kind of monocropping and of course indoor factory farming is terrible for biodiversity, which it is. But at the same time, is grazing animals the best thing for biodiversity? Or is there an alternative?

And when we look at biodiversity, it's very simple to recognize that forests, woodlands, long grass meadows, wildflower meadows increase biodiversity more than grazing pasture lands do. So what we need to do is work out how we can maximize biodiversity gains. So when we look at animal agriculture and we look at it globally, it uses 76%, sorry, it uses 83% of all agricultural land. So over four fifths of agricultural land is used to graze animals. Now, if we switch to a plant-based diet, we could reduce the amount of agricultural land

that we need by about 75%. And that's feeding everyone on a plant-based diet. We can still reduce that amount of land by 75%. So that means that we have all of this land now that we no longer need to use for agriculture that we can do something else with. And the primary thing we can do with that land is rewild it. And that just basically means returning the land

that we currently use for agriculture back to some form of natural state, whether that's swamps, peatlands, forests, woodlands, wildflower meadows, whatever it may be, we can return that land back to nature. And as a consequence, increase the fauna and flora of the world, increase the biodiversity that exists. So that's what we need to do if we want to prioritize biodiversity gains. When it comes to emissions, there is an idea that grazing animals, ruminant animals, sequesters carbon into the soil,

which it does. And the reason it does that is through photosynthesis. So when an animal grazes, they're turning up the roots, they're consuming the grass, which is encouraging and stimulating the regrowth of these plants, which sequesters carbon through photosynthesis and stores carbon in the soil. And something about the way that they're walking

on the land and seeding it in some respects has some sort of beneficial impact. Yeah, and then the manure replaces some of the lost nutrients in the soil. But there's a couple of ways of looking at it. Firstly, from an emissions perspective, when we look at the meta-analyses on these farming systems, they're still producing net emissions.

So the grazing animals is still producing emissions. And even in the most generous circumstances, we're looking at only a 20 to 60% of emissions being offset in these regenerative farming scenarios. But I think what's really important about this is whilst soil is a carbon sink, it's not a limitless carbon sink. So after a period of time, soils reach something called soil carbon equilibrium, which means the amount of carbon that can be stored in the soils is maximized. So at that point, even if grazing animals offset all of the emissions

that they produce, which it doesn't, but even if it did, at some point the soil reaches full saturation of carbon. You saturate it. And at that point it's net emissions, right? Just 100% emissions. Not net sequestration. It really puts to the test

the whole Alan Savory kind of philosophy around this. And there's a study or an article called like Grazed and Confused that is a really great read that explains all of this in great detail. Well, Alan Savory released this TED talk, which went super viral where he made the claim, I believe it was something like just 50% of, you know, pastulants could, you know, reverse climate change or something if they were grazed in the manner

that he advocates for, which is an unsubstantiated claim. And Grazed and Confused is a great example because it looked at 300 sources and it looked at all, you know, these farming scenarios to try and work out whether there was any veracity to the claims being made and realized that, well, yes, it can sequester some carbon. It's nowhere near going to offset the emissions. And with the soil carbon equilibrium, you reach a point where you're not offsetting anything. So as a long-term strategy, even if it did work,

there's no legs to it. Because at some point, you either have to take the animals and farm them on more land, which means creating more agricultural land, or you have to stop the animal farming. So when we talk about sequestering carbon, the question becomes, well, is grazing animals

the only way that we can put carbon in the soils? Because by having to offset the emissions the animals produce, we're limiting the capacity for our soils to sequester carbon. Why are we trying to offset these emissions when we can just not have these emissions to begin with? And if we weren't grazing cattle and lambs and such, we wouldn't have to offset the emissions they produce.

So again, when we look at sequestering carbon, the best thing that we can do is create forests and woodlands and long grass meadows and wildflower meadows, because that not only increases biodiversity, but it also sequesters carbon and does so in a way without having to offset any of the negative emissions produced by the animals in the first place. Right, and just to be clear,

regenerative farming is far better than factory farming. It is a step in a positive direction to some extent, but it will never be able to scale the meat current meat demand. It's not really a solution to any of these problems. And the argument that it is a valid participant in reversing climate change is really, you know, the error in all of this.

It's dangerous. The Grazen-Confused study said that only one gram of protein per person per day, on average globally, comes from solely grass-fed animals, just one gram. We need, obviously, a lot more than that. When we look at animal products, I think, it's something like, you know, 20, 22 grams or something is maybe coming from animal products right now. So if we want to get the protein that

we get from animals right now, but only from systems of solely grass-fed production, well, it's just not going to be possible. You know, the United Nations says that 26% of Earth's ice-free land is used for grazing animals, but that's currently what it is. So it has its benefits when you compare it to factory farming. You know, obviously the systems that these regenerative proponents are talking about are substantially better in many ways to the system that we currently have

of mass feed production and factory farming and the huge manure lagoons that are obviously just terrible in so many ways. But the question is, is it the best thing that we can do? And does it genuinely solve the problems that we're trying to address? And when you view it against the alternatives, the plant-based food system that's more sustainable but also rewilded landscapes those concepts and that system of agriculture and land management is substantially

better in every single way than a system of regenerative farming and often proponents of this way of thinking the regenerative animal agriculture way of thinking, will try and point the finger at the way the current plant-based food system is set up. And I see a lot of people going, well, monocropping is not gonna save the planet. You're gonna poopoo this, but you're eating your monocropped, factory farmed plant foods.

Yeah, well, firstly, if we swapped to a plant-based diet, we would reduce arable land by 20% anyway. So even to switch into a plant-based diet would still would reduce arable land by 20% anyway. So even just switching to a plant-based diet would still be preferable from an arable monocropping perspective just straight off the bat. But I think what's disingenuous about that is it's trying to say

that there's no better way of producing plants. I recognize that the plant-based food system is far from perfect. It's significantly better, but it doesn't mean that it's as good as it could be. So by trying to say that regenerative animal farming isn't a viable solution, isn't saying that we shouldn't try and make

what we currently do better when it comes to plant farming. And we should be adopting, you know, better forms of plant-based agriculture. Yeah, regenerative plant-based farms. Bingo. You don't wanna just do that. Exactly. And then we've got things like vertical farms,

which are incredibly exciting prospect. And even when it comes to lab-grown meat, if you wanna look at producing meat sustainably, you know to lab-grown meat, if you want to look at producing meat sustainably, you know, lab-grown meat will be, when it's scaled up and financially efficient enough, will be more sustainable than regenerative farming anyway. So it's seen as kind of like this almost compromise, but effectively it's still causing huge amounts of damage

to our environment and of course, resulting in premature death of animals. And there's an alternative that exists and will continue to become more sustainable into the future as we engage with these more technological advancements within plant-based production as well. Right, so that kind of covers the environmental arguments

around regenerative agriculture. But another thing that comes into play when people are opting for grass-fed beef is this idea that these animals are living a much higher quality of life. But I think there's a lot of confusion over the definition of grass fed and how that definition is sort of weaponized

in a way that people, consumers who are trying to do better might not be aware of. The idea behind grass fed, a lot of it is kind of a marketing term because grass fed animals can still be fattened on feedlots at the end of their life. Like the last 15% of their life or something like that, where they go and then they're just eating grain to get them as fat as possible.

Exactly. And it's still considered, it can be labeled grass fed. That's right. And I think the percentages may vary country to country. I think in Australia, it might be as much as 25% of their life, the final quarter. So it doesn't mean that these animals are raised solely in these pastures. And even on these pastures, they can be supplemented with different feeds anyway. And also there are still components of animal agriculture that exist, such as the mutilations, the branding, these things still exist even in

grass-fed farming productions. And they're still killed in slaughterhouses as well. So, you know, people often say to me, you know, I'm against factory farming. Everyone, even if they support it, says they're against it and likes to have this aspiration of supporting these kind of grass-fed systems because again, it's seen as a compromise. But ultimately when we view this issue at its kind of most barest form, it's again about this notion of reducing exploitation and suffering. And so while-

The animal's still getting a bolt in the head and its throat cut, no matter what. So it may be better, quote unquote, but is it objectively the best thing that we can do? No. So we shouldn't be comparing this middle scenario to the extreme of factory farming. We should be comparing it to the other side,

which is not exploiting animals in the first place. When it comes to the environment, when it comes to health, and when it comes to the ethics, the not exploiting animals is better in all of those different ways, even compared to this middle kind of compromise, if you like. That opens the door to a conversation

around the sort of dark side of greenwashing or incremental change because these small changes and the marketing that kind of wraps around them makes people feel better about their choices and kind of ameliorates any type of activism because people are sort of sedated into believing that their actions are lining up

when their values when in fact they're not. Yeah. We all like to be told good things about our bad habits. And, you know, greenwashing and this kind of concept humane washing are really important tools that industries will use

and companies will use to make us feel good about our bad habits. And so, you know, a lot of us are familiar with the concept of greenwashing or companies trying to overstate the sustainability impacts of their products. But humane washing is something similar. You know, we go into a supermarket, we see a box of free range eggs. That's an example of humane washing. It makes us think that we're buying a product that is quote unquote humane. And the names of the farms and the picture of the red tractor and the,

you know, beautiful looking fields and all of that. Exactly, or the five-step welfare program or whatever it might be. There are so many examples of it because fundamentally these industries and the suppliers, the supermarkets know that we care about these issues. They understand that.

And they know that if we had, or we saw a label that said, this piece of pig that you're about to buy was slaughtered in the gas chamber using this method and they were raised in this way. And here's a picture of the farm. We would probably go, oh, that tin of chickpeas seems pretty good now.

So they have to sell us an ideal and they have to sell us what we want to buy. And that's really dangerous because what we want to buy is a complete odds of what we're actually buying. So it's about being, I suppose, again, a bit conscious of these choices that we're making. And the word humane is a really interesting word because we use it all the time to describe what we do to animals. It's acceptable

to kill an animal if it's done in a humane way, or what happens in China is obviously terrible, but in the US or the UK, our slaughterhouses are humane because they have these regulations. but in the US or the UK, our slaughterhouses are humane because they have these regulations. But the word humane, if we open up a thesaurus and we find synonyms, means compassionate, benevolent, kind. And if you're a humane person, you're inherently, I guess, a good person, a kind person. But then how do we benevolently or compassionately exploit or kill someone against their need? And sometimes people say, you can't call an animal a someone. I've heard this a lot recently, you know, they're not a someone.

And I said, well, if they're not a someone, what are they? A something, you know, they're either an individual or an object. And when we use language in this way, it again reaffirms this notion that what we do to animals is a moral issue. When we recognize that they are some ones

and not some things, it makes the notion of doing something negatively to them that cutting their throat, for example, the idea that that's humane obviously becomes nonsensical, but we're constantly told this idea of being high welfare, compassionate, nice for the animals. The animals are happy to be a part of the system. When deep down, I think we all secretly realize

that that's not necessarily true, but it's easier to believe the lie sometimes than it is to accept the uncomfortableness of the truth in that scenario. Yeah, a lot of that is rooted in a lack of transparency, like this inability to make that connection, obviously. And I watched this debate that you did on television with the dairy farmer who said,

well, we are transparent and we have people come and they visit the farm and we show them everything. And you said, do you show them the part where you slit the throat? And he said something like, I'd like to think that we're transparent about that. And the host of the show to her credit said, well, it's a yes or no thing.

Like, are you transparent about that or not, right? Clearly he's not, but he's on television. He's trying to, you know, get through this experience. And I don't see a future in which there will be transparency around that. And that is very much at odds with your generation and the generation beneath you that demands a level of transparency that, you know that my generation has sort of been myopic about.

Like there is a consciousness that is brought into consumer choice that younger people have where they expect transparency because they've acclimated to it because they've grown up with it. And the idea that a corporation or an industry would lack that is anathema. Yeah, and I think there is also

a heightened sense of scrutiny now where we don't just demand transparency, but I guess we also recognize that these labels and these terms and these adverts should be scrutinized and we shouldn't take everything on face value. And I think that is something that is kind of emerging and new and people are still kind face value. And I think that is something that is kind of emerging and new and people are still kind of maybe coming to grips with that

because, yeah, fundamentally, these industries are not transparent and the dairy farmer is a good example of that. There is a perceived transparency. There's an illusion of transparency and that illusion of transparency can be perpetuated when we drive and we see animals grazing. In the UK, for example,

it's very common to see animals grazing, lam the UK, for example, it's very common to see animals grazing, lambs, cows. It's not an unusual thing to see. So that creates this illusion of firstly transparency, but secondly, I guess this notion of being humane because we think, well, how bad can it be? Because I saw a dairy cow chewing on pasture earlier. So there is this constant perpetuation of this illusion of transparency. I think farmers themselves, I think that they can be unconscious in that as well. I don't think that that dairy farmer, for example, knows that he's not been transparent or thinks that he's not been transparent. I think he thinks he's been very open. He does these open farm Sundays where members of

the public can come and see his cows grazing. And I think he thinks that he is genuinely being this very open, nothing to hide kind of farmer. But farmers themselves don't go into the slaughterhouses, don't necessarily walk onto the kill floor. You know, they drop the animals off, drive away. So even they themselves can often be, I guess, oblivious or maybe willfully ignorant to what happens in some of these places you know

of course they're aware but even they themselves maybe don't have the full picture of transparency that we would like them to have and indeed they should have because for a lot of farmers it can be uncomfortable I've spoken to many farmers who will say that dropping animals off at slaughter houses is really hard and they they form connections with these animals but they kind of say well we have to do what we have to do they've kind of found that justification that allows that difficult moment in this process of farming to occur this disconnection this justification of well we have to do it and when we justify something by saying we have to it becomes easy to justify almost anything terrible if we create the mentality that it's a necessity and i think farmers do the

same they convince themselves it's a necessity and therefore that makes dropping off these cows that they maybe misguidedly, but maybe themselves individually really believe they have a connection with. And I think that's hard. So I think there's a lack of transparency everywhere and a lack of, I guess, objectivity and honesty. Yeah, and of course that lack of transparency makes it more difficult for us to understand the emotional experience of the people that actually work in these slaughterhouses and have to operate in the kill room,

such that even if animal rights isn't your thing or you have a hard time like connecting with that and you care about humans, this should be an issue that you care about because there are a lot of people that work in these places who have to endure that sort of psychic toll day in, day out. And there's a lot of literature out there

about the long-term emotional implications of what it's like to be employed in that capacity. It's a terrible job that none of us want. There's a reason why slaughterhouses are in kind of rural areas, often areas with little job opportunities. And quite simply put, no one wants to work in a slaughterhouse. No one goes to school, goes to college because that's what they want. They are victims of circumstance, victims of environment. There's incredibly high turnover rates in slaughterhouses because people take these jobs out of the feeling of necessity

and then they can't handle it. And then those that do stay find ways to handle it. That might be drug and alcohol abuse. It might be violence that perpetuates outside or permeates outside of the walls of the slaughterhouse. You know, there are studies that show that in, you know, boomtown counties near large slaughterhouses, the rates of domestic

violence, of rape, of assault, of violent crimes is exponentially higher and exponentially increases. And even when they look at the variables and they look at other kind of maybe working class jobs, such as steel production, car production, those rates of violent crime increases aren't seen. It's something very unique to slaughterhouse work. And it's very easy to understand why that is. Most of us would never want to kill one animal. Now imagine you're in a slaughterhouse where eight hours a day, five, six days a week, you're killing hundreds, thousands maybe of animals.

Your job is to endlessly pull a knife across someone else's throat. How do you reconcile with that? How do you leave at the end of the day and not bring that home with you? We expect Sloth House workers to hang up the blood soaked aprons and then just be these completely mentally competent people at the end of the day. And that's an unfair thing for us to place on these people. And then on top of that,

not only are they having the pressure of the job, but they have the pressure of being on low incomes, being in deprived areas where they feel completely trapped because there isn't the availability of working in a different place. That's the job in the town. And if you don't have that job, then maybe you can't afford to live.

Maybe you'll be homeless. Maybe you can't feed your family and you've got kids to look after. There are all of these extra pressures and burdens that can lead people to doing things that they wouldn't want to do, but they feel they have no choice to. And we're fulfilling and creating that scenario for our purchases. And it's a terrible industry

in every conceivable way, even for the humans in that scenario. And that doesn't detract from the fact that what they're doing is obviously morally wrong, but they are merely fulfilling the expectations of the people who are paying for it. The blood is on their hands, literally, but we're the ones who are really have the blood in hands because we're who are paying for it. You know, the blood is on their hands, literally, but we're the ones who are really, you have the blooded hands because we're the ones paying for these things to exist in the first place. Yeah, and I've talked about this before,

but that, you know, a version of that scenario scales up as you go up the chain of command at these farms, because most of them are controlled through debt structures by these large food companies like Tyson and Cargill, et cetera, who basically underwrite the construction of these massive farms and create a system in which it's very difficult to meet your debt demands, creating a certain type of indentured servitude

with these farmers that they can never really scale out of. They have to continue to grow or perish essentially. And that's not what a lot of these people who farming has been in their family for generations kind of signed up for. Certainly not. I mean, there was a huge boom in these corporations in the 1980s with Smithfields, Tyson, JBS, of course. And they

have a complete monopoly of the market. In the UK, we have a similar thing with like Moy Park, which is a big chicken producer, two sisters. So it's a similar thing across many countries, not just in the US, but the US has a uniquely terrible problem with it, which is just, you know, these huge companies, they sign contracts of all these producers. It's mainly poultry producers and pig producers. And those farmers who maybe don't want to sign these contracts are faced with a problem, which is that these companies with the farmers who are contracted to them are constantly driving down the cost of production. And for driving down the cost of production, they're producing cheaper and cheaper food, which means that these kind of more independent farmers, they can't financially operate under the strains of the market because it's costing them so much more to produce the

food they produce. And they're not going to get a good, no one's going to buy it. The suppliers and distributors aren't going to pay the same amount of money for it to cover the costs. And so a lot of these farmers end up with their hands tied because they have to sell into these corporations. And as you say, they then have all these debts and the contracts might stipulate that they have to update their machinery every so often, have to update the methods of farming. And so those are more debts, more loans,

more financial problems. And so they become trapped in the system where they can't really get out about incurring huge financial problems, which again could make them homeless, could mean they have to leave their communities, not be able to support their families. And so there is this external pressure,

which we often don't realize, which is constantly fueling the continuation of these industries. And many farmers may wake up one day and not want to continue farming for whatever reason that might be, maybe an ethical realization, but then have no choice based on the financial strains

that have been incurred due to these corporations and companies and the monopolization they have on the market. The other big argument that I wanna talk about is this idea that if you wanna kill the maximum number of animals, the best way to do that is to go vegan. So this is an argument that was promulgated

by the great Ted Nugent on the Joe Rogan experience recently. And I've heard this one fielded before many times, and we can kind of get into that a little bit, but explain the basis for this argument and then let's try to deconstruct it. Yeah, I mean, the basis for the argument stems from something which is absolutely true,

which is that plant-based farming store results in animal death. Crop production, harvesting results in animals being killed. We can't get around that for the time being. So it's always important that when we advocate for veganism, myself, I have to make the important consideration, which is that veganism isn't perfect. It's not going to eliminate all exploitation. It's not going to eliminate all death. It's really a reduction of these things, a huge reduction, but a reduction nonetheless. So it comes from an important point to recognize, which is that veganism isn't perfect. And we're not devoid of harm by choosing plant-based foods. But the problem is it's kind of extrapolated up

into this really over-exaggerated thing where vegans are killing all these mice and these rodents and all these birds and all these other animals at the same time. And well, first of all, that's not strictly true. When we think about rodents and we think about birds, it's very hard to catch a mouse, let alone run them over with a combine harvester. They've put like radio trackers on these animals before, harvested fields and then found that the populations haven't really been decimated. They just kind of go leave the fields. You've got this big combine harvester making all this noise, noise vibrations in the ground.

The animals don't stick around. But insects, of course, are killed and will be killed en masse in crop production. And the idea is, I suppose, to try and create a sense of hypocrisy that vegans are causing death. So therefore there's no point being vegan. But of course, it's about reducing the harm that we cause.

And when we look at crop production for animals, we look at the mass production of feed in South America for animals. Even if we just take the basis, the system that we have now, significantly more animals are gonna be killed in the production of animal foods because not only do you have 80 billion land animals

and 0.8 to 2.3 trillion marine animals, but then you also have all the animals that are killed in crop production as well to feed the animals who we farm, including even the farmed fish who are fed things like soy and stuff as well. So it's a problem that exists for plant-based farming, but the problem that exists there

exists in all of the animal agriculture space. And on top of that, you have all the violence that's committed to the animals who we eat directly as well. So it's kind of a non-starter in that sense. Yeah, I mean, a couple of things. First of all, the mice thing, the flashpoint for that was a study or an article that was misinterpreted because it was completely focused

on a situation in Australia where they have like this rampant, crazy, like mouse epidemic that surfaces from time to time that they have to deal with. And so those numbers were sort of co-opted and extrapolated to make a broader argument that isn't necessarily accurate outside of Australia. Yeah, exactly. The mouse plague argument, yeah,

that was run with globally. And as you say, it was used to try and paint a picture of the global agricultural scene. But yeah, the mouse plagues are just these random events which occur where there's a huge growth in mice populations and they just overrun fields and people's homes. But again, the problem is these mice aren't just targeting

fields that are used to produce crops. They're used for humans. They're going everywhere. Everywhere. And most of the crops anyway are growing food for the animals. Yeah, yeah, exactly. They hay, straw, barley types of grass for animals and animal product production. So it's kind of, again, a non-starter in the sense of,

yes, of course, farmers will kill these mice when they're trying to protect the food they've grown directly for humans. But the problem exists for feed and crops being produced for animals and more of that land crops being produced for animals. And more of that land has been used for animals. So more mice have been killed

for the animal product production in the first place anyway. Yeah, I think it is important to, one of the things you said earlier is in terms of like how you interact with people when you have these conversations is to acknowledge the merits in your counterparts argument. And I think there is, it is important for vegans in the vegan community

to at least acknowledge that when they're buying something under the impression that it's cruelty free, to some extent that's true, but nothing that we do, you know, lacks a certain kind of downstream impact. I had the biggest little farm couple, did you see that documentary? The biggest little farm?

I'm familiar with it. Yeah, it's nearby here. And I had them on the podcast and he was explaining to me that when he was trying to grow avocados, that the gophers kept eating the trees and they had a gopher problem or whatever. And in order for these trees to grow, there had to be a certain amount.

He was like, listen, I don't wanna kill any of these animals but he felt like he had to in order for this crop to thrive. So his point being, obviously, when you're buying your avocado, you need to understand that it's not as simple or as elementary as you might imagine. And I said, yeah, you have to acknowledge that. Like you have to acknowledge that there is some truth,

there's a kernel of truth in this. And if we wanna be good advocates for this lifestyle, we have to acknowledge where things are not as black and white as perhaps we wish they were. Of course, I mean, nothing is black and white really. And you're absolutely right. We have to acknowledge the imperfections of what we advocate for as well.

And then we can improve those. On the Joe Rogan podcast, it was a different one with a guy called Chris Kresser, who James Wilkes went against when he did the Game Changers debates. And in this other episode, Chris Kresser has this study and he uses this to provide justification

for the argument that vegans kill animals, which is again, a good justification. It's true, but not necessarily in the scale that they like to think it is. And he used this one, I think it says 7.2 billion animals are killed in crop production in the US. But the conclusion of the article is that firstly, those numbers are over-exaggerated

and take extreme measurements. And secondly, that we can work to produce plants in a way that reduces that. And with things like vertical farming, with things like indoor crop production in these kind of underground dwelling basements as well, there's no animal deaths. So of course, right now the system isn't perfect, but the recognition that it's not perfect then allows us to push ourselves to make it better, which is something we can absolutely do in plant farming as well. Yeah, but just back to this idea,

if you wanna kill a lot of animals, go vegan, and what a straw man argument that is. I mean, you've made a video about this where you state some really impactful data, not the least of which is 75 to 80% of all soy is grown for animal feed, only 6% is for humans. And 9.5 billion land animals are killed in the US alone. And that's something like 55 billion if you include fish.

77.3 million acres are used in the US for plants for humans, but 127.4 million for animal feed. So animal farming uses 10 times more land. 83% of all global land use is used for animal farming. So, you know, it's crazy when you look at it through that lens that the idea that like vegans are the problem here. It doesn't make sense.

And also not to mention the downstream implications of animal farming, like let's just take poultry farms and the waste and the runoff and how that gets into our water systems and kills biodiversity in rivers and creates algal blooms in the ocean. Like, are we counting those deaths and that damage as well

when we're making this calculation? Definitely not. And what's even scarier still is the numbers that we have when it comes to animal slaughter are just the animals that reach slaughter. So it doesn't take into account all the animals who die on farms, which is in the tens of millions again. So the data that we have or the data that we often use

is not even representing the full scale of the problem. I mean, in the UK, we have the worst water bathing quality in Europe and our rivers are all polluted with chemicals and some of that sewage. But the biggest cause of that problem in most of our rivers is runoff from the agriculture industry, animal agriculture often, mostly.

And even when it comes to like free range chicken farming, it's free range poultry farming that's polluting one of our biggest rivers, the River Wye. And that would be a system of farming that we think is more sustainable and more ethical, but that's actually causing the problem when it comes to the pollution of this river across England and into Wales and such. So it is a huge, fully encapsulating issue that we can often try and, I suppose, ignore or demean

by pointing at these straw man arguments. And Ted Nugent in that clip with Joe Rogan goes off on this wonderful spiel about how, you know, if you eat the tofu sandwich, it's really terrible for all these reasons. And he tries to link that into, I think, like deforestation in the Amazon. But when you look at the data in South America, for example,

it's reported that 96% of all the soy produced in South America is either used as animal feed or for soy, like cooking oil. So not in tofu, not in soy milk, not in tempeh, not in the meat alternatives, but animal feed and then cooking oil, which is easily avoided, of course. And even Ted Nugent hit this really kind of completely bewildering post where he shared all these bags of soy pellets that he had that he feeds to the deer that he hunts. So he has like canned huntings,

he has deer in this enclosed space. He feeds them soy to fatten them up and then shoots them to eat them. And then goes on Joe Rogan and berates vegans for eating tofu because it's made from soy. It was this kind of wonderful moment of this pure irony. Well, it's also a dig at the soy boy idea. So it's not a mistake that he chose soy

to illustrate that point, right? Certainly not. All right, how about this one? Ed, we've eaten meat for thousands and thousands of years. This is how humans developed. Meat was fundamental to our brains being the way that they are. And being vegan is just extreme.

Like let's just be balanced and prudent. Yeah, a good argument, isn't it? I hear a lot, obviously we have eaten meat for thousands of years. Eating meat allowed us to survive during times of food scarcity, during cold spells, allowed us to evolve and become the species that we are today.

There's no denying that meat has formed a cornerstone of human history and indeed survival in many ways. But the point is, it's about where we're at now. And in a current modern day society, we know we don't have to eat meat. And we can hardly make the argument that going to McDonald's is helping us survive or helping us evolve. You know, quite the opposite, in fact. So meat consumption now is destroying our species, destroying the planet, causing all sorts of problems. So actually, it's no longer

even serving the purpose that it used to in the past. So it's about what happens now, and now we don't need to. So it's irrelevant. You know, the longevity of an action doesn't provide justification for it to continue. But the brain evolving one, I think, is super interesting. There's the idea that eating meat allowed our brains to grow, but actually when you look at something, I suppose, a little bit more logical, it makes more sense that it was the consumption of carbohydrate dense foods, tubers, potatoes, wheat, rice, that allowed our brains to grow because our brain's primary fuel is glucose. And so when we think about carbohydrate dense foods, these are the foods that provide us with fuel is glucose. And so when we think about carbohydrate dense foods,

these are the foods that provide us with the most glucose. So when we started cooking foods and we started being able to digest things like potatoes and wheat and rice and such, it allowed our body to consume more glucose. And as a consequence of that, would presumably allow our brains could grow bigger. And even when they look at sort of DNA and they

look at kind of fossilized remains of people, they identify enzymes in our mouths that were there to help us break down starches and to break down carbohydrates and digest them. And so all the evidence points to the fact that carbohydrates were not only an essential part of our diet, but were the reason that our brains grew because we're providing our brains with the fuel source that it needs to work at its most optimum. But even if the meat brain argument were to be true, we live in a society now where we don't have to be obligate omnivores, we can choose to be herbivores.

And the science is pretty clear that you can thrive on a vegan diet at any age, whether you're pregnant or a small child, we're both living examples of that. So again, it goes back to choice. Yeah, absolutely. Like you can spend all your time making those arguments about whether we're herbivores or omnivores

and looking at our teeth and all of that. But to me, like none of that really matters. It's like, here we are living now. And you look at the many harmful implications of the way that we consume meat and treat our animals. And it just doesn't make sense. No, and again, yeah, you're absolutely right. We can get bogged down with a forward facing eyes.

You know, I hear that a lot or, you know. I haven't heard that one. Oh yeah, forward facing eyes are the signs of a predator. You know, prey have eyes that can see all around because it allows them to see predators more easily. So yeah, because we have forward facing eyes, yeah, the canine teeth, even though our canine teeth is really quite rubbish.

But the lion thing, it always goes back to the lion. What is that? I have no idea. It's so baffling. I don't think- It's like lions do this. Like all these guys walking around thinking that they're lions. It's bizarre, isn't it?

On the one hand, I have conversations and the same person will tell me that humans are different to animals because we're more intelligent. And then later in the conversation, they'll go, well, humans are animals and so are lions. So, it's this irony. Like which one is it. Which one is it? Exactly. But we do like to compare ourselves to other animals because again, I think we're trying to constantly appeal to the

idea that it's natural and normal and that it's acceptable for us to do it because there's a historical precedence, a historical precedent, sorry. And there's like this kind of naturalistic precedent that exists with what other animals do. But again, we can get bogged down on that, but the point remains now where we are, with the information that we have, with the food that we have available to us, with the knowledge that we have, we don't have to. And the fact that we have forward face and eyes

doesn't mean that we're now justified to cause so much suffering to animals when we could just eat the plants instead. It's a very good point. In all of these interactions and conversations that you've had on college campuses with young people, have you ever met an argument that you couldn't manage? Like, what do you think is the strongest argument

that you've had to field against veganism? I think it's people's personal health situations. Sometimes someone might say something to me about the health of a family member and I'm not necessarily sure how to respond to that I don't know the the nuances and intricacies of that individual scenario when it comes to like the moral issues when it comes to the environmental issues I've never heard anything that's made me go oh you know that's you know something I'm not sure how to, or, oh, that's a point I've not considered. But I think that people can come up

these health arguments that are very individualistic. Or I tried it and this is what happened to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it could be hard to argue against that because without knowing the personal situations, what people were eating, if they were supplementing, how they were going about it, it's hard to necessarily tell them

that their experience was wrong in that scenario. It's just more of a case of trying to explain to people that perhaps there was a deficiency or something you could have done differently to try and negate those problems. But I think more broadly than that, something that I really empathize with is when people talk about family scenarios,

social situations. That's the huge lever. It is. And I think that's one of the biggest drivers for people. It's just those social environments, whether it's with family, whether it's with friends. 100%. And that's the thing I really empathize with. They could be completely convinced

that this is the right thing to do, and they could have a deep rooted desire to do it, but their environment and their surroundings prevent it because the social ostracization, or just the drain of having to contend with that is too burdensome for a lot of people. Yeah. And you use that word ostracization, which is a really important word to use because humans, we're social animals. We thrive being in communities, being with others. And throughout history, our survival has depended on the participation of others,

you know, having these communities where we had these roles, where we, you know, could integrate together. And, you know, being outside of that, you know, not having that sense of community, being ostracized was catastrophic. So now when we think of veganism, it can be perceived as kind of a form of self-ostracization. You know, we're removing ourself from the safety of veganism, it can be perceived as kind of a form of self-ostracization. We're removing ourselves from the safety of the community, the safety of the tribe, the safety of our social groups. And so it can be very daunting because it seems like we're stepping outside of the comfort zone. And there's a historical kind of primal fear of doing that because of the reliance that we had on others for survival. It's different now, of course, but that primal fear I still think remains. And so one of the most important things about being vegan

is that it normalizes being vegan and it makes it more accessible for others. And it's kind of like a snowball effect where the more people who go vegan, more people will go vegan simply because more people are going vegan and it becomes more normal and more accepted. And that's how we can hopefully help people

in those environments. But I mean, I totally hear people when they say that because it is hard to look at a family member or go into a meal or a social situation where everyone's doing one thing and you used to do that. And they're expecting you to continue doing it and then tell them you're not, and then explain the reasons why you're not,

and also be aware that they're gonna give you loads of excuses to why you're wrong. And you're gonna have to feel those excuses while still trying to enjoy yourself and not treading anyone's toes and upset anyone or cause an argument. That's exceptionally daunting. So whilst it doesn't morally justify what we do, I totally empathize with people in those environments. And I think it's about creating a sense of normality around being vegan so that it becomes more accepted, becomes more mainstream, becomes more mainstream, becomes something that people don't feel as intimidated by.

With family, I think especially, my family aren't vegan. You know, they're perfectly supportive of what I do, but they're not necessarily open-minded to hearing why I do what I do. And when it comes to family, I think what's particularly challenging is our parents hopefully try and raise us to be kind of good people with good morals, good values. They want us to integrate into an everyday society and be good citizens. Hopefully that's the idea.

And so when we turn around to our parents and we say, look, I've gone vegan. And in my situation, it was, look, I've gone vegan because I think what we do to animals is wrong. I'm kind of criticizing their parenting. I'm saying that they raised me with bad morals, that they raised me with bad values. And for a parent to hear that, and in the case of my parents, I know they tried to raise me to be hopefully a good person.

To hear that, even though I'm not explicitly stating that, but I'm implicitly stating it, I think it's hard for a parent to hear. And so there are these dynamics, social, familial, that are very challenging for us to acknowledge and address and can be very intimidating. There's these social structures, these hierarchies that exist within families, and for a child to go to their parents and say something like that, I think can be daunting and challenging for a parent to hear. And I understand why that can then make it difficult for people to

want to make that change. Yeah, I'm very compassionate about hear. And I understand why that can then make it difficult for people to want to make that change. Yeah, I'm very compassionate about that. And we should just acknowledge the fact that we're having this conversation in Los Angeles and you hail from London. Like these are incredibly vegan friendly environments. And most people don't live in places like that, right? And I think that speaks to another criticism

or argument against veganism, which is this idea that it is elitist. And I think there is a strain of this movement that has been co-opted by a kind of elitist notion because in this burgeoning wellness industry where high priced items are associated with, kind of living your best life, going to the fancy markets

and getting the latest superfood and all of that, veganism gets kind of wrapped up into that narrative and creates an aspirational lifestyle perhaps, but an inaccessible one for a lot of people that turn them off to the stronger arguments that all root back to this idea of moral philosophy. I think part of the problem is, you used the word wellness, I think that plant-based diets and veganism

have become somewhat synonymous with this idea of individual wellness. And that's why I always try and emphasize that veganism is a moral issue where obviously it has great benefits. Well, it's also about collective wellness. Oh,'s why I always try and emphasize that veganism is a moral issue, where obviously it has great benefits. Let's talk about collective wellness. Oh, collective wellness is true. But I suppose when we're talking about kind of the pricier things that we can buy, there is this idea that it's kind of fulfilling that stereotype of maybe an LA person who's into those pursuits. And so I think I try and acknowledge that veganism is a moral philosophy.

And there are people who eat vegan on a budget. And of course you can be an expensive vegan. You can go to Whole Foods or Irwan or whatever it may be and spend a lot of money buying meat substitutes and stuff. But that's not what veganism is. Veganism is about trying to reduce the harm we cause. And there was a study that just came out from University of Oxford by a professor called Marco Springman. And he was looking at food prices. And he said, in the UK, at least, shopping and buying whole foods, so the healthier plant-based foods, reduces your food bill by about

a third. So you can save money doing it that way. But there is this connotation that being vegan means eating beyond burgers and impossible burgers and buying kind of like superfood powders and stuff. And that's not what it is. And it's great if you want to do that. I mean, that's all power to you if that's what you want to do, but it doesn't have to be like that. And I think just trying to help people understand that veganism doesn't mean having to shop in these places, but can mean shopping and buying whole foods, legumes, whole grains, potatoes, all these foods that should make up the majority of our diet anyway, is a really important way of making sure

that we can break through that elitist stereotype. Now, it is important to recognize that there are people who live across the world, but even in the US, they don't have the means to be able to live as comfortably as you and I do. Of course not, that's fairly obvious. And the way the socioeconomic structure is set up,

there are situations of food disparity where people don't have the accessibility that we're used to where we live. And we have to look at how we can challenge that and change that. Now, there is something fundamentally wrong when buying a beef burger from McDonald's is cheaper than buying a pun of blueberries from a supermarket.

There's obviously something wrong because the production of animal products costs a lot more than the production of fruits and vegetables and whole grains. So it shouldn't be that way. But the way that the system is set up now is that huge amounts of subsidies are given to agriculture and animal agriculture receives the most amount of subsidies to drive down production costs and make it cheaper for consumers. At the same time as doing that, we have this system of

factory farming, which drives down production costs even further. So we're just constantly finding ways to bring down the cost of these foods. And then these fast food chains are opening up in areas where people don't have the money to be able to maybe travel to some supermarkets. They don't have the money to be able to run a car to pick up groceries and who don't have supermarkets in their area and the availability and accessibility that a lot of us have. And so we're forced out of that situation to feed their families on a budget, which can often mean buying this subsidized, cheaply produced meat, dairy, and eggs. So we have to challenge that system. And the best way we can do that

is firstly being vegan ourselves and asking for a different food system in general. And then through doing that, we can start to ask for a change in subsidy policy. For example, according to Bloomberg last year, the agriculture industry in the US had its third most profitable year in half a century. But how does that make sense? Because it was during the pandemic, restaurants were shut down, there was

food problems. And the reason was because there was so much money given in bailouts and subsidies. So the animal farming industry had a very profitable year because of the government handouts that were granted to them. So if we can reverse that situation where we can stop giving subsidies to harmful industries and instead use these subsidies to drive down production costs for plant foods, to incentivize technological advancements in the plant-based food space, we can alter the price of these products, make them more accessible and available. And by being vegan, we're changing the supply and demand scenario, which means that Beyond Meat and Oatly and all these plant-based companies can scale up production,

can reduce costs over time as well. And what we can do is we can reverse the current paradigm, which is that meat, dairy and eggs are generally cheaper and plant-based alternatives are generally more expensive and make not only whole foods even more inexpensive, but also meet people's demand for the alternatives as well in a way that is more financially viable. It's a broken system.

Yeah, it really is. And I despair of the lack of political will to untie this knot around subsidies that's driving so many of these problems. It's one thing to speak about the grassroots movement and shifting demand through aggregating consumer habits around healthier choices. But the change also has to come from the top down in terms of government getting its head around this. And I just don't, when you see this sort of musical chairs that occurs between

governing bodies and regulatory bodies and C-suites of these giant food companies, it's easy to like lose my ability to be enthusiastic about a potential good future in terms of fixing this problem. Yeah, it's daunting and it may sound slight depressing, but even right now, the US Secretary of Agriculture is a guy called Tom Vilsack. And before he was the current Secretary of Agriculture,

he was the CEO of the Dairy Export Council. This is normal operating procedure. It's just revolving door. So it is troubling. And I think this is why we as consumers have to feel more empowered because our elected officials currently aren't gonna change anything.

Yeah, no one's coming to save us. No. So I guess there is, yeah, there is an empowering, that's something that can like provide us with a sense of agency. Definitely. I mean, even think about climate change and environmental policies and the Green New Deal

and these issues that have been spoken about now when Al Gore released an inconvenient truth, they weren't being spoken about. So something's changed. And I think that's because there is now an appetite within society for these to become political issues. Now politicians just generally follow the trend of what is seen as a viable voting concept. And right now changing subsidies from animal agriculture to plant-based farming isn't a viable voting concept. It's not going to win votes or probably lose votes. So we have to make these issues

something that politicians will stand on. Because I'm sure there are politicians that would be more outspoken, who maybe would agree, but they don't want to risk jeopardizing the votes that they have in the constituents they represent. So we as consumers have to make that choice first. And then we have to demand that there is legislative change that is implemented as a consequence

of us wanting it to happen. Cause it won't happen if we keep perpetuating the same systems we currently do. Yeah, even at COP26, animal agriculture wasn't really on the agenda to be discussed, which is just infuriating. It's unbelievable. It's crazy, isn't it? Even at COP26, this Tom Vilsack,

the secretary of agriculture here in the US, whilst everyone was debating about reducing methane emissions by 30% by 2030, he was saying to the press that in the US there is no need to reduce the amount of meat or livestock that are being produced. During COP26, he said that, and it's just contradicting all of the science that's coming out, even from the United Nations

who are telling us we need to switch to plant-based food systems, we need to transition in that direction. While they're breaking for lunch and going and eating meat and cheeseburgers and stuff like that. So frustrating. It's like, it's just like unbelievable, right? Like you had a, you did a podcast with Jack Harry's a while back where you guys discussed this

under this rubric of like, can you be an environmentalist if you're not vegan? It was kind of a broader conversation around what advocacy means and how we define it. But certainly in the wake of COP26, it's like, guys, we need to sit down and talk. Seriously, yeah. Like what are we doing?

It's very frustrating that there has been such little conversation about this. And I think I mentioned in the book that there have been some kind of studies that have shown that when you look at articles about climate change, I know like a few percent of them even mention animal agriculture,

let alone make that a focus. So even within these, I suppose, what you'd consider to be friendly media outlets, places like the New York Times or the Guardian or wherever it might be, where we would like to think that they would be the ones to maybe talk about this issue, there is still a reluctance to mention it.

There is still a reluctance to tell people about these problems. Even with George Monbiot just like going nuts in the Guardian all the time. I mean, thank goodness that he exists and it's that voice in the Guardian because if it wasn't for him, it would feel like we had no one backing us up

in that media space. And it's very frustrating because people need that normalization of these ideas in the media they consume. There's something called the illusory truth effect, which is that basically the more you hear something, the more you are likely to believe that it's true, even if it isn't.

And so if we're constantly hearing that consuming meat, dairy and eggs is fine, it's not a concern, it's moral, it's humane, we're gonna believe that even if that's not the case. And so we need this proliferation of content telling people why that's not true so that we can challenge this illusory truth effect, so that we can challenge this current paradigm

of the media and people's perceptions of veganism being something that's bad when in effect it's incredibly good in so many ways. Well, it's a good news, bad news thing. The bad news is mainstream media isn't gonna cotton onto that narrative anytime soon, but there's stuff like this and what you do that's becoming increasingly more and more salient

and powerful in terms of shifting citizen ideas around these important topics. Certainly, that's the important thing about social media, isn't it? And I think the important thing about people realizing that their voice is valuable and important and that we have the power to influence our immediate social circles.

There's a consequence of that. There's a ripple effect where we influence those people, they can influence people in immediate social circles. But as a consequence of that, there's a ripple effect where we influence those people, they can influence people in their social circles. And we as individuals can achieve a lot. And it can be disheartening, of course, to see that there are these subsidy policies and there are these corporations monopolizing the markets

and there is this proliferation of misinformation. That is demoralizing. It can feel like we're up against this almost inassailable beast of a problem. But ultimately, there are shifts happening and there are cracks forming in the, you know, the otherwise sturdy armor of these industries and the cracks are forming. And we are starting to get the message heard by people who maybe wouldn't have heard it otherwise. I think it's just really important to recognize that change comes from individual action, forming a mass movement, a collective action,

and we can all be a part of that. So it's about working out what we want the future to look like. Do we want this future to be a future which does seek to reduce suffering, that does seek to create fairer, more equal food systems that means that people can have options,

can have accessibility and availability of healthy plant-based foods? Do we want people to be more empowered to make individual choices? Do we want people to feel empowered to recognize that they themselves are a part of this huge planet, but also a very small planet where we have the power to influence change for the choices that we make?

And veganism is a stepping stone, I think, to recognizing the broader impact that we all have collectively, but also individually. And it's by no means the only step we need to take, but it's a huge step in the right direction in fixing, tackling, addressing, acknowledging so many different issues that up until this point, we have often turned

in our blind eye to sadly. Ordinarily, I would say that would be a great place to like put a pin in it. Cause it was like this super compelling monologue that you just delivered. But there's a couple more things I wanna talk to you about. I wanna learn a little bit about Surge,

which is your nonprofit organization that you founded or co-founded several years ago, that also has a media arm and now you have a sanctuary. Like how do you make all of these things work? I mean, we're gonna, and I wanna talk about the restaurants too. I'm super lucky to have a supportive community around me of people who work in the sanctuary,

who do the day-to-day stuff there, looking after these animals. We have over 130 animals now. So there's a wonderful group of people that are doing the day-to-day work there. With Search, so yeah, my partner and I, we founded it five years ago now. And we've just recently been growing the team.

We've got editors, animators, writers. And so it's just been a really wonderful process of us having this idea of what we want to achieve and do, but then finding other people that are mission aligned and incredibly talented people and having them part of this process as well has been really rewarding. Yeah, the animators and the filmmakers

and the editors that you have are unbelievable. Like the quality of the content that you're putting out is so elevated in comparison to everything else that's out there. So I would encourage you to keep going. You certainly will. And part of Surge is funded by Unity Diner, right? So you opened this restaurant

that's also ostensibly a nonprofit because the funds are channeled right back into the into surge that's right so we had this idea a few years ago that we wanted to do something that kind of gave back to the community but also could be used as a method of raising funds to allow us to do some of the things that we wanted to do primarily open the animal sanctuary that we currently have so we came up this idea of like a restaurant where we would be operating on a nonprofit basis, where as you say, the money would go into funding surge projects.

So we've done like tube ads, you know, advertising around London and the money's gone towards opening the animal sanctuary that we now have in the kind of middle of England. And so, yeah, it was just an idea that we had and it kind of snowballed very quickly. And then we were like, oh my goodness, we have this restaurant.

None of us know what we're actually doing. So fingers crossed we can work it out. And it's been amazing, amazing to meet so many people. And it's given me a newfound awareness of the importance of food. I think that this thing about veganism is kind of like a dual process where we need to give people the reason why,

but we also have to give people the how. And without the how, the food, the delicious alternatives, the recipes that exist, we can talk about the why as much as we like, but people won't make that change. And having non-vegans come in and try plant-based food, or at least try some of these plant-based foods for the first time, the burgers, hot dogs, whatever it might be. And hearing them say about how they'd never realized that plant-based food could taste like this, or they never realized they could have fish and chips that's vegan, for example, is a really rewarding thing.

That's the good, it's the no catch company, right? That's right. That you just started. How many of those do you have now? We have one currently, which was just opened and a plan in Brighton, yeah. So it's a completely vegan fish and chip shop and fish and chips in the UK is a big thing. It's like a huge industry. And I was raised on fish and

chips like so many British people were, and it's a really damaging industry and, and plant-based seafood options are kind of few and far between. It's still like a very new niche emerging market. Um, we have this toe fish products that we sell at Unity Diner, which people love. It's my favorite thing. And we were like, why don't we do something that try and takes on the fish and chip shop industry that shows that we don't have to keep pillaging our oceans and killing

trillions of marine animals all the time, that we can do it a different way. And so we opened up the shop in Brighton, which has been really well received so far. And our plan is to open up more, hopefully around the UK and kind of start to make a little bit of a dent in this fish and chip shop.

Yeah, well, you said food is a powerful form of advocacy. And I think that's a good reminder to pivot back to this conversation that I wanted to have with you around what constitutes effective advocacy. And we need all different kinds of advocates. We need Extinction Rebellion and we need PETA and we need people like yourself,

like whatever animates you and whatever feels correct in your blueprint or your constitution is needed in all forms, I think. But I think there are core principles around things that work and things that don't work. And as somebody who's like out in the field talking to people all the time, I mean, you alluded to it and we've talked a little bit about it,

but not everybody has your level of skill and argumentation or your linguistic abilities. So for people who are trying to figure out how to be effective advocates in their community, whether it's veganism or environmentalism or whatever it is that you're passionate about, how do you counsel that person so that they can be maximally effective

in what they're trying to do? Yeah, it's a really good question. You're absolutely right that we need so many different types of activism, types of advocacy, because we're up against this, I like different types of activism types of advocacy because we're up against this i like to think of it like a hydra you know like a multi-headed beast and we need different types of advocacy to take off all the different heads of this hydra and so it's important to not feel like you have to do activism in a certain way but just find the

voice that you have and i think apply the skills that you have and things that you already enjoy into into your advocacy because it's really important to be sustainable as well and to not feel burnout by doing things that are grueling and maybe contradict our passions in life. So if you're an artist or a filmmaker, you're a songwriter, I think combining those passions with advocacy is a really important thing. But for me, I always say that the primary thing that we should all do is take the time to educate ourselves as vegans, to take the time to learn what people's oppositions are. And we don't have to go too deep. I mean, I have probably gone deeper into these arguments than most people do. And most people need to basically, I guess, because I'm talking to so many different people from different walks of life. But I think primarily, you just

need to find the main objections, the main reasons that people have and work out how to respond to those. And I think that there are definitely ways of communicating that are more effective than others. And so it's about maybe taking the time to reflect on before you were vegan, how would you have responded? And I always think this, and I would love to sit down with myself seven years ago, eight years ago, and have the conversations I have now, but with myself back then, and to see how I would have reacted. I don't know how I would have reacted, but what I do know is that communicating in the way that I try to now would have been more effective than communicating in a more aggressive, more judgmental way. So I think trying to put yourself in that position of the person you're

speaking to and trying to reflect on what would have worked for you and can that be translated into what will work for them is a really important thing to do. But the cornerstone to it is education because education builds confidence. I felt deeply uncomfortable at the beginning because I was always worried that someone was going to say something I didn't know how to respond to. And I think a lot of my frustration and my maybe anger at the beginning when I was advocating came not from the person I was speaking to, but from myself. A frustration that I didn't know what to say, a frustration that I didn't know how to respond, that I was angry at myself for letting the animals down because I didn't have this great rebuttal to this one argument the person was using.

So the more I took the time to research, the more I took the time to learn and the more practice I had, the easier it got to be hopefully more level-headed, to be more empathetic, to be more understanding of the personal viewpoint the person has that I'm speaking to because I felt confident enough in my capabilities to be able to address what they were saying. I didn't feel worried about letting the animals down or the movement down.

So I think it's about education and then practice, get used to having these conversations. You could even, if you have a vegan friend, just have dummy conversations with them, practice. Like kind of what we did earlier, you said, but Ed, what about this? And they hopefully gave a good response. I think doing that's a really important thing to do

because it gets you used to vocalizing your feelings and vocalizing your beliefs. Because it's one thing knowing what you want to say, and it's a different thing actually saying it. So I think just practicing having that external vocalization is also very important. It's also the energy that you bring to the experience. I mean, I think empathy and listening are super important.

And just take your videos, for example, where you're in these conversations with people. I think there's sort of an internet sensibility, like, oh, I'm gonna watch this person own this other person or win this argument or beat this person. But that's not what's happening if you're watching what you're doing closely. Like you're engaging this person,

on their terms, at their level, you're listening, you're not interrupting, you're trying to understand their perspective, you're acknowledging them. All of these things are critical, not just in advocacy, but in human relations in general, right? And I think we're all so quick to, if there's frustrations around that process of argumentation, it's like, I'm trying to win, you know?

And it's like, if you can just let go of that and be present for that other person and try to understand where they're coming from, not only will it sharpen your own ability to form arguments, it will stress test your ideas and you'll get better. But I think it's about letting go of the outcome of it and just being available for the experience.

That is super important. It is. I think fundamentally, we all just want to be heard. We all just want to listen to us and take us seriously. And there is this division, this kind of binary that is more prevalent now than probably ever has been, where I think people just don't feel heard, where they feel maybe caricatured, stereotyped.

And it's really damaging. And so when I have these conversations, I guess the first thing I want to do is just make sure that the person knows that I'm not trying to own them. You know, I'm not going to put this video up. Vegan destroys foolish meat eater. Yeah, it's not schadenfreude.

Right, exactly. Which is, again, why I take those first few minutes at the beginning to build up a bit of rapport to just let someone feel comfortable knowing that's not my intentions. And sometimes I'll say, you know, don't worry, that's not what we're here to do. I just want a polite conversation

because I think it's really important that people know that so they can just let their defenses down. And when I upload them, these are long format conversations. It's not like some of the stuff you see on YouTube where it's this chopped up stuff where someone's made to look silly

and I'm not trying to do that. I want people to be able to express themselves. I want their arguments to be heard and I want my arguments in response to be heard. And the powerful thing about making a video is I'm thinking about the audience as well. And having just two people sit down and just rationally have a conversation

where they can shake hands at the end and maybe agree to disagree, but still have that ending means that the viewer who's watching has been taken along and they can create their own opinion based on two opposing arguments. How do they align? What do they think? So I'm not under any false pretense that the person who sits down with me is going to leave saying I'm going to be vegan now. I mean, it has happened, but more often than not, that doesn't happen. And I try to make the point to people, and I've been saying it more recently in the conversations I've just had,

which I'll be uploading for the near future. I try and say to people at the end, the reason that I'm here isn't to make you leave the table saying you're going to be vegan. I'd love for that to be the case, but I understand it's not. It's for you to hopefully leave the table with a more positive impression of veganism

than you had when you sat down. And that's why I think optics are really important because people don't often remember what they've heard. They remember how that person made them feel. You know, we have arguments with people and we can sometimes forget what the argument was about or what the actual points were. We can get bogged down and all that, but we remember how they made us feel. And so I want someone to leave that conversation having a positive feeling about it because they might then go and think about these issues a bit more on their own, because they feel comfortable and confident doing that, because I've made, hopefully, veganism something they feel positively about, that it isn't something that is attacking

them, that isn't something that's there to make them feel bad, to call them a murderer or an abuser, but it's instead just an interesting concept that they actually probably align with. And I think that feeling is often just as important than the actual points that I make. And that's why I try and construct the conversations around that. It's not about not holding people accountable either. And I think that's important.

You can hold people accountable and question them. And in fact, the way that by asking people questions and by having a more respectful dialogue, it allows you to ask questions that you may not be able to ask. It allows me to say things to people that I might not have felt comfortable saying, because we've built up an element of trust

and they know that my intentions for saying those things are not to try and get a clickbait title and not to try and make them seem silly, that my intentions are because I think this is an important point and I've built up enough trust, hopefully that they don't feel attacked and threatened when I say, do you think that's hypocritical?

Or do you think that's in disalignment with your morals? Or do you think that that's immoral? You know, these are big questions and to try and, to ask someone if they're acting in an immoral way is a big question to ask someone. But if we can do so in a way that is kind of created out of this respectful dialogue, it makes that question a lot more palatable

for someone to hear and to actually go, well, actually, yes, I think it is immoral what we do to animals. Right, but the important distinction being you're asking questions rather than levying judgmental statements at the other person. And I think the more you engender that trust and the manner in which the question is not only asked,

but formed so that you're not necessarily coming at them directly. Like, do you think you're an amoral person? But rather like, how does that decision make you feel when you see this other thing or something? You know, there's ways of like getting around it to have people stress test their own ideas without coming at somebody

from a judgmental stance. And language is such an important part of that. I try to, sometimes I'll use words like you, but I try and use words like we and us, how do we feel about this? Or do you think that it's wrong when we do these things to animals? I mean, I know that I'm not speaking about myself.

I'm not paying for some of these things to happen in the same way, but I think using we and us creates a sense of camaraderie, creates a sense of joint responsibility. It doesn't make it about this individual person being bad. It's about we as a collective are engaging in bad behaviors and we as a collective have a responsibility to work together. So language is very important. a responsibility to work together. So language is very important. And using different language techniques and using questioning and using different methods of communication means that we can talk about really important issues and really deep philosophical issues and what can be very divisive issues, but in a way that's actually constructive. And hopefully that happens. I can't sit here and tell you that it always works perfectly. I can't sit here and tell you that it always works perfectly.

I can't sit here and tell you that I've not had people who become upset, angry, that maybe don't leave feeling as positive as I'd like them to. It happens, but it's about minimizing how often that happens and then reflecting on why it happened. What did I say that caused that? Could I have said something differently?

And everything is a kind of process of trial and error because we'll never be perfect. But what we can do is, I guess, just strive to learn from our mistakes and constantly better ourselves. Yeah. You seem like somebody who knows how to set healthy boundaries.

You know, you don't personalize any of this. You're not letting it penetrate your psyche if someone's disagreeing with you. And I think that's part of why you're good at not getting too heated or reactive in these situations. And I feel like a lot of people who are sensitive, compassionate people who feel strongly about whether it's veganism or some other issue,

it's such an emotionally charged thing and they can't create that distance or that boundary between their emotional sensibility and the advocacy. So it spills into it and it actually ends up kind of corrupting what they're trying to achieve. I think what you've said is so important then. You're right.

I really try to detach myself from what people are justifying. If I was to sit there and think, oh, this person's saying that plants feel pain, therefore, you know, they're allowing us- We didn't talk about the plants feel pain argument. I mean, there's like 20 more arguments. We could be over like eight hours.

We could be. I hear it a lot. I heard the other day, actually, something very interesting. Someone was saying- Plant consciousness. Yeah, what about, they said, what about thyme leaves and rosemary?

Now, that's so, it seems so arbitrary. The line of conversation- Plant consciousness. Yeah, what about, they said, what about thyme leaves and rosemary? Now that's so, it seems so arbitrary. The line of conversation reached that. It's very specific. It's so specific. I think the point was that we don't need to, to flavor our foods. And so rosemary isn't necessary for us to be healthy.

Exactly, so if rosemary can feel, then we should, anyway, we've gone off on this weird tangent as you can clearly tell from that point. So many of the arguments live so far out on the margins as a way to justify behaviors, because when you hit the bullseye of it, it doesn't make sense. So we have to live in these weird, you know,

artificial, you know, examples that aren't really real life situations. That's true, that's true. And I have often say to people when they say about plans for pain, I say, are you saying that cutting the stalk of a broccoli is morally the same as cutting the throat of a pig or a cow? Most people realize that that's not the same.

Some people will try and take me a little bit further and they'll go, yeah, that's the same. And if I was to think about that and to think about what they're justifying, it would then be a lot easier, as you were saying just before, to have that more emotional response. And so there is this kind of, I guess, personal boundary setting. There is this kind of detachment that I have from thinking too deeply about it because it allows me to, again, distance the person from the action. You know, good people

can do bad things. So I need to make sure that I'm creating that distinction. They're justifying a bad thing, but that doesn't make them a bad person. These are all the reasons why they're justifying it. Yes, their excuses may seem arbitrary. They are arbitrary. Yes, they may seem nonsensical because they are, but at the same time, I can understand that there is this mechanism behind their thought process. There is this social, There is this mechanism behind their thought process. There is this social, cultural, personal experience that is leading them to this moment where they're now using this excuse. And it's not because they're this terrible person

who relishes in animal violence. It's there's all of this baggage that has brought us to that point. And having that understanding helps me just, you know, keep that distance from the truth of what we're talking about, to view it a little bit more intellectually, to view it a little bit more as an abstraction

rather than to think about this is what's happening right now and this is what they're trying to justify. That definitely helps. Right. So the book, This Is Vegan Propaganda, you did an amazing job with this book. Thank you.

This is gonna be a perennial bestseller. You really knocked it out of the park, I think. It follows somewhat the trajectory that we spoke about today. I mean, essentially you talk about your personal on-ramp into this movement and you address your general philosophy around veganism, and then you kind of take a seriatim us through all of the different implications

of animal agriculture from the philosophical and compassionate arguments to the environmental implications. There's a whole section on pandemics and health, et cetera. So I highly recommend everybody check it out. It's extremely well-crafted and I'm excited for you. Thank you, Rich. I appreciate that very much. And how are you feelingcrafted and I'm excited for you. Thank you, Rich. I appreciate that very much. And how are you feeling about it? I'm nervous. Yeah. I wanted to write a book that

people would feel confident giving to like a non-vegan that kind of like touched on every argument and hopefully made a good case for all of the different reasons to be vegan. But I also wanted to have those personal aspects to it. But I'm nervous, you know, I think because it is just me, you know, it's just my thoughts, my feelings. It's such a personal thing to write because you, of course, will well know yourself. And, you know, making the Surge videos is collaboration, having a restaurant's collaboration. It's all collaboration. And of course, there's so many people that have helped with the book, you know, from the publishing house and such, but having that real personal thing

that's gonna be out there for people to buy and review and judge, and I guess also importantly formulate their opinion about veganism over is quite nerve wracking. Yeah, I'm trying to remember if there has been a book about veganism that has approached it in this kind of comprehensive way in recent memory. I mean, it really is.

And when I gave you a blurb, I made this comparison to Peter Singer. I don't know how you feel about that, but I do think there are parallels. Like you are your generation's version of that. Like you have decided to shoulder this mantle, this responsibility. And this book is a product of everything

that you've been talking about in your videos for some time. And it's done in a way where I think, obviously it's gonna appeal to people who are vegan, but it really is written with this sensibility that it's not necessarily intended for those people. It's really intended for, you know, the vegan person who gives it to their friend or says, maybe you should check this out.

And it's very welcoming in that kind of tone and tenor. Oh, good. That's exactly what I wanted. I wanted a book that was a book that vegans could read and they would probably learn things maybe they didn't already know about. So it was a good tool for them to become better advocates. But I always wanted it to be a book that was for a non-vegan to read, that was for that reluctant family member, that skeptical friend, or even just the curious person in the bookshop. And the point of the title, I suppose, is to be grabbing, to kind of be a little bit

tongue in cheek. So people kind of raise an eyebrow. You know, the cover itself is quite bright. It's a bit different. It has this kind of like, kind of Soviet era. Soviet era, yeah. Exactly. It's all propaganda.

All propaganda. The whole thing. Yeah, exactly. Toss it in the garbage. She's really wanted to play on that. Exactly. It's all propaganda, the whole thing. Yeah, exactly. Toss it in the garbage. She's really wanted to play on that. Exactly, it's not worth the paper it's printed on. But we really wanted to play with the idea of it being this kind of propaganda piece so that people could read it and go,

oh, this is what these industries are calling propaganda. Oh, okay, now I understand why they call it propaganda. And everything's extensively referenced, there are citations. And I just wanted to kind of draw people's awareness why they call it propaganda. And everything's extensively referenced, there are citations. And I just wanted to kind of draw people's awareness to the fact that when farmers are accusing or when the industries are accusing vegans of spreading propaganda, they're not attacking vegans,

they're attacking the scientific literature, they're attacking our moral compasses. They're attacking something more objective than this vegan bias that can sometimes be perceived as existing. And it's really an attack on so much more than just vegans. And I think I want people to read the book and hopefully reach the end and go, okay, I understand that now. I understand why they call it propaganda and potentially there is another side to this story. And the way the book

is structured, having the first section about ethics and morals was important to me because that's why i came into this and is the most important thing for me but then having that middle section that talks about the environment pandemics chronic health to to show the true enormity of it but then the final section is about the mechanism behind it because as we've spoken about quite extensively today it's not just about having the understanding of why it's bad, it's about having the empowerment to understand why we act in the way that we do

and how we can get through that. And I think the first thing we have to acknowledge is the barriers that are in place, how our behaviors have been influenced, why they've been influenced. And through that, we can then put into practice changing our behaviors to align with all the reasons why we should.

And that's why I stretched it in that way to end with that hopefully a sense of empowerment about what we can achieve. Well, it definitely comes across and you should be very proud. Thank you, Rich. Ed, you're a powerful voice and I have so much respect for the work that you do.

If I can ever be of service to you, I just, you know, I think what you're doing is really important and it's just been cool to spend a couple hours with you. So thanks for doing it. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. It's great to connect and yet to pick your mind and to have this conversation has been really wonderful.

And I appreciate your support with the book as well. Absolutely, man. So everybody go pick up, This Is Vegan Propaganda. Ed is easy to find on the internet. He's at Earthling Ed pretty much everywhere, but start on his YouTube page and go down the rabbit hole of his many,

how many videos do you have now? And you've got tons of stuff. Quite a lot. And we try to create a variety of content as well, but I've got, by the time this podcast goes up, I'll probably have quite a lot more as well. I'm sure of that. How often do you upload?

Not as often as I should, but because I'm expanding the team, getting an editor who's helping me out and stuff, it'll be more consistent. And the past few weeks, I've got so many debates that we're just starting to work our way through. So there should be a good, healthier number of debates on my channel

by the time this goes up. Good deal. All right, man. Well, come back and talk to me again sometime. I'd like to. Thanks, Rich. Thanks, buddy. Peace.

Plants. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com

where you can find the entire podcast archive as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave

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