Follow this link to hear the episode & read the show notes. Transcription by Amy Carpenter. [Car horn. White noise from distant traffic etc.] Ian: We’re in the middle of London within sight of the British Museum, just next to a glass, stone and concrete office block. And carved into its wall there’s a tribute to the “Women’s Freedom League”, worked for equality between men and women from its headquarters on this site.… more
How has western vegetarianism risen, within living memory, from fringe to mainstream choice? And how has veganism gone from nowhere to everywhere? Episode 15: Liberation This final episode recounts the growth of veganism, vegetarianism, and the modern animal advocacy movement. Ian treads in the footsteps of the handful of pioneers who set up the vegan movement in the 1940s, and meets a life vegan born in 1951. He investigates the sixties counterculture that combined the philosophy of ethics, activism, and new ways of living and working, visiting one of Britain’s first vegetarian wholefood co-operatives. And as vegetarian and vegan movements increasingly link up around the world, he looks at developments in China and India. In New Delhi, he meets the vegan politician who is also the most prominent animal advocate in the world’s largest democracy.… more
Follow this link to hear the episode & read the show notes. Transcription by Amy Carpenter. [Traffic noise. Rustling sounds. Voices.] Ian: I’m at my local health food shop in East London, surrounded by a cornucopia of modern vegan sausages and burgers, and mock-meats of every mock-animal. Not to mention supermarket staples, like peanut butter, almond butter, and breakfast cereal.… more
In the nineteenth century, in America and Germany, new forms of vegetarianism emerge – from the individualistic consumer vegetarianism of America, to the back-to-nature European “life reform” movement. Episode 14: Diet Reform As animal agriculture industrialises and meat consumption rises, the ways that food reformers respond are familiar to people today – the plant-based meat, the celebrity athletes, and the reformers who worship nature, sunshine, and fresh air. Ian goes to the shops to discover just how many vegetarian staples he owes to pioneers like John Harvey Kellogg. In Sabarmati, northwest India, he visits the Ashram of Mahatma Mohandas K Gandhi. Play or download (62MB MP3 44min) (via iTunes) or read transcript… more
Follow this link to hear the episode & read the show notes. Transcription by Amy Carpenter. US Army band in an archive recording of period song “Army Bean”: ‘Tis the bean that we mean! [fades and continues in background]… more
In the late nineteenth century, the new vegetarian movement is intertwined with other struggles – including Victorian reformers, the Indian reaction to British colonialism, and most importantly, slavery. Episode 13: The Vegetarians After their foundation in 1847 and 1850, the vegetarian societies in Britain and America rose swiftly faced new challenges. Dr Adam Shprintzen, author of the history of US vegetarianism “Vegetarian Crusade, tells Ian how the American Vegetarian Society poured its energies into an anti-slavery vegetarian settlement in the Wild West. And how its founder, Englishman Henry Clubb, ultimately took a bullet for the union in the Civil War. Under British rule, Hindu vegetarianism faced a mix of threat and opportunity. In India, Ian meets historians DN Jha, Burton Cleetus, and Bhaskar Chakraborty, who explain how, faced with rule by distant Christians, vegetarianism became more important as a marker of caste and identity. Ian also sets off on a cycle tour of vegetarian Victorian London, and talks to the first modern academic to study vegetarian history – Dr Julia Twigg. Play or download (58MB MP3 41min) (via iTunes) or read transcript… more
Follow this link to hear the episode & read the show notes. Transcription by Amy Carpenter. Tim Newman: This is out of its sheath, so it’s just a long thin sword, with a handle that’s wrapped with twine.… more
In the 1800s, overlapping circles of utopians, mystics, and romantics in both Europe and America develop arguments against meat until “vegetarianism” finally becomes a real movement. Episode 12: Radicals & Romantics In the aftermath of the American and French revolutions, the sects and philosophies that embrace a “vegetable diet” multiply – from ecstatic cult to puritan crusades, to utopian community to public-spirited congregation. No longer are they isolated groups – they connect with each other in books, magazines, and letters. Until a single word catches on – “vegetarianism”. In the United States of America, Ian discovers the the vegetarian sword and shoes of a 1790s “free love” vegetarian sect in a local Massachusetts museum, and visits the failed vegan commune where Louisa May “Little Women” Alcott lived as a child. And in Salford, NW England, he walks in the footsteps of a nineteenth century vegetarian church, with local historian Derek Antrobus and the vegetarian history specialist Dr Samantha Calvert. It’s a story that also takes in the French bohemian “cult of the bearded men”, the man who invented the modern idea of Robin Hood, the woman who invented Frankenstein and his creature, Sylvester Graham, and, finally, the creation of modern… more
Follow this link to hear the episode & read the show notes. Transcription by Amy Carpenter. [Traffic and building noise] Ian McDonald [in Paris]: We’re in the courtyard of the brick and stone baroque Hotel Tubeuf in Paris, now being renovated as the headquarters of the National Library of France. But from here the French East India Company in the 18th Century controls swathes of India, unwittingly connecting the ideas of ahimsa and vegetarianism with the Paris of Voltaire and Rousseau.… more
The philosophers of Paris discuss reports of Indian vegetarianism, question the morality of eating animals, and inspire radicals who preach vegetarianism from the barricades of the French revolution. Episode 11: Enlightenment Ian traces a winding path of vegetarian inspiration from the personal diary of an Indian vegetarian working for the French, to the darkest corner of British imperial propaganda, to the Enlightenment’s favourite Paris café, to a rural retreat that inspired a social revolution, and to the squares where citizens plotted a real one. Play or download (61MB MP3 43min) (via iTunes) or read transcript… more