This week I'm joined by writer and academic Christopher Sebastian McJetters. We're talking about what speciesism—the view that certain species should have more rights to freedom and life than others—has to do with racism, sexism, and homophobia. Following our recent episode with Jasmin Singer about help being more vegan-friendly, I was thrilled to hear some of you were inspired to try eating more plant-based. It's a resolution that a lot of people are making in the month of January, as we try on those New Year's resolutions. (There's even a campaign called Veganuary that can help.)

But I wanted to have this broader conversation with Christopher about why caring about animal rights is a social justice issue that is related to being anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-homophobic. My hope is listening will help deepen your resolve to eat more plant-based for the animals/environment/health, or at least expand your circle of compassion a little wider. I hope you find this conversation helpful, empathy-building, and inspiring. 

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Christopher Sebastian is an author, researcher, and lecturer. He writes about food, politics, media, and pop culture. He currently teaches news writing for social media and has guest lectured at Columbia University, Cambridge University, Cornell, and the University of Oxford. Find out more about him at https://www.christophersebastian.info/

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HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: As you might have noticed, I'm moving the podcast to biweekly for the time being so that I don't burn out and don't have to bug you quite as often about fundraising to support the podcast. I still will sometimes, but not as much. (@rachel-krantz on venmo, icymi :))

Thank you so much to everyone who has supported the podcast thus far, and I promise that even though it'll be slightly less frequent, the quality will hopefully be that much better.