Vance Lehmkhul is a vegan renaissance man: writer, journalist, cartoonist, and now, a vegan history detective. His book Revolutionary Peace cracks open the wild, untold story of how Philadelphia became the unlikely birthplace of America’s vegetarian and vegan revolt.

This isn’t just a history lesson. It's a street-level view of radical thinkers who saw food as revolution. We’re talking 18th-century Quakers, 19th-century anarchists, feminist firebrands, and proto-vegan agitators who linked animal liberation to every fight for justice.

Lehmkhul’s work proves something urgent: veganism was never just about diet — it was always political warfare. If you think today’s movements are divisive? Wait till you hear about the original plant-based rebels who scared the hell out of the status quo.

This one is for all history nerds, activists, and anyone tired of watered-down veganism.

Links

Vance Lehmkhul http://www.vegcast.com/vance/

Revolutionary Peace: How Philadelphia Launched the US Vegetarian and Vegan Movement

https://americanvegan.org/product/revolutionary-peace/

Veg History Walking Tours https://americanvegan.org/veg-history-walking-tours/

American Vegan Center https://americanvegan.org/avc/

American Vegan Society https://americanvegan.org

The Return of Benjamin Lay https://www.benjaminlayplay.com

Emi Leese

https://emilialeese.substack.com

http://thinklikeavegan.com

http://emilialeese.com

Instagram @emi.leese

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@thinklikeavegan/videos

Credits

Host: Emilia A. Leese

Guest: Vance Lehmkhul

Production & Engineering: Jim Moore of Bloody Vegans Productions; https://www.bloodyvegansproductions.com

Graphics: Catherine Dorrell https://www.messyvegancook.com

Music

Opening theme: “Flashbacks” by Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business

Interlude: "Dappling" by Matthew Gerstenberger

Closing theme: “Tear Things Up” by Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business

This podcast is part of iROAR, the Animals Podcasting Network https://iroarpod.com

Researcher Rimona Afana unflinchingly exposes the hidden victims of Israel's war on Gaza: the natural world and nonhuman animals. She reveals how advanced weaponry creates a psychological distance enabling destruction on a colossal scale, making ecocide a feature, not a byproduct, of modern conflict.

Website/Socials

Rimona Afana

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rimonaafana

https://web.gs.emory.edu/vulnerability/visiting-scholars/2018/afana-rimona.html

Ecodide/Speciesism: Legislating hieararchy, interdependence, death

https://www.facebook.com/ecocide.speciesism

Other links

Israel's Crimes Against the Dead and Unborn in Gaza

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/israels-crimes-against-the-dead-and-unborn-in-gaza

Emi Leese

https://emilialeese.substack.com

http://thinklikeavegan.com

http://emilialeese.com

Instagram @emi.leese

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@thinklikeavegan/videos

Credits

Host: Emilia A. Leese

Guest: Rimona Afana

Production & Engineering: Jim Moore of Bloody Vegans Productions; https://www.bloodyvegansproductions.com

Graphics: Catherine Dorrell https://www.messyvegancook.com

Music

Opening theme: “Flashbacks” by Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business

Interlude: Birds from Shwikeh, Tulkarem, Palestine by sounds_from_palestine -- https://freesound.org/s/802437/

-- License: Creative Commons 0

Closing theme: “Tear Things Up” by Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business

This podcast is part of iROAR, the Animals Podcasting Network https://iroarpod.com

There are those who study nature, and then there are those who listen to it. Alan Watson Featherstone is such a listener, a quiet revolutionary who has spent his life translating Earth's silent longing into action.

In this episode, we walk with Alan through:

The act of rewilding — not just restoring land, but restoring relationship

Why healing broken ecosystems is the most radical hope we have

How a single sapling carries within it an entire future

A man of many gifts — photographer, storyteller, planter of forests — Alan founded Trees for Life in 1986 and for three decades served as its guiding spirit, transforming Scotland's barren glens into cathedrals of green. A vegan since 1979, his life reminds us that compassion must stretch beyond our species

This is not a lecture on ecology. This is an invitation to remember, to see, as Alan does, that every act of rewilding is a love letter to a better future for everyone

Website/Socials

Alan Watson Featherstone

https://alanwatsonfeatherstone.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-watson-featherstone-8063961a

X @AlanWatsonFeat1

Photography https://www.naturepl.com/search?s=Alan+Watson

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@alanwatsonfeatherstone9676/videos

Other links

Findhorn community https://www.visitecovillagefindhorn.uk

Trees for Life https://treesforlife.org.uk

Ishmael https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(Quinn_novel)

Kathleen Jannaway https://youtu.be/2ai7lnUsVPE?feature=shared

Auroville https://auroville.org

Jack Whitten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Whitten

Birchfield https://birchfieldhighlands.org

Emi Leese

https://emilialeese.substack.com

http://thinklikeavegan.com

http://emilialeese.com

Instagram @emi.leese

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@thinklikeavegan/videos

Credits

Host: Emilia A. Leese

Guest: Alan Watson Featherstone

Production & Engineering: Jim Moore of Bloody Vegans Productions; https://www.bloodyvegansproductions.com

Graphics: Catherine Dorrell https://www.messyvegancook.com

Music

Opening theme: “Flashbacks” by Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business

Interlude: "Contemporary Music Too" by Matthew Gerstenberger

Closing theme: “Tear Things Up” by Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business

This podcast is part of iROAR, the Animals Podcasting Network https://iroarpod.com

Capitalism didn't just commodify animals - it turned suffering into an industry. Meet John Sanbonmatsu, the revolutionary philosopher tearing apart the meat-industrial complex in his incendiary new work The Omnivore's Deception. This book is an indictment of the entire capitalist food regime

Sanbonmatsu doesn't debate reform. He demands total dismantling of the oppressive structures that treat life as profit. This is food system analysis as class war, revealing how your burger funds environmental racism, worker exploitation and mass extinction. The only moral response is revolution

Website/Socials

John Sanbonmatsu

https://www.johnsanbonmatsu.com

Other links

Karen Davis essay https://www.upc-online.org/thinking/rhetoric.pdf

Emi Leese

https://emilialeese.substack.com

http://thinklikeavegan.com

http://emilialeese.com

Instagram @emi.leese

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@thinklikeavegan/videos

Credits

Host: Emilia A. Leese

Guest: John Sanbonmatsu

Production & Engineering: Jim Moore of Bloody Vegans Productions; https://www.bloodyvegansproductions.com

Graphics: Catherine Dorrell https://www.messyvegancook.com

Music

Opening theme: “Flashbacks” by Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business

Interlude: "7am" music by Matthew Gerstenberger and voice by Chiyako

Closing theme: “Tear Things Up” by Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business

This podcast is part of iROAR, the Animals Podcasting Network https://iroarpod.com

This episode goes back to basics. We hear about animal rights, welfare, compassion and kindness. It all sounds like good things and stuff we should have. So I want to share with you why when I talk about animal ethics, I centre my words around rights instead of welfare or compassion and kindness

Website/Socials

Emi Leese

https://emilialeese.substack.com

http://thinklikeavegan.com

http://emilialeese.com

@emi.leese or @thinklikeavegan, Instagram, Facebook, X and Threads

Credits

Host: Emilia A. Leese

Production & Engineering: Jim Moore of Bloody Vegans Productions; https://www.bloodyvegansproductions.com

Graphics: Catherine Dorrell https://www.messyvegancook.com

Music

Opening theme: “Flashbacks” by Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business

Interlude: "On the Forbidden Balcony" by Matthew Gerstenberger; Seismicity on Soundcloud https://on.soundcloud.com/3Pf8g

Closing theme: “Tear Things Up” by Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business

This podcast is part of iROAR, the Animals Podcasting Network https://iroarpod.com

When you hear the term zoonotic disease, what does it mean to you? What do you think of and who is responsible for them?

Maybe you think about Covid 19. How about HIV-AIDS? Is your impression that zoonotic illnesses are something relatively new? Or uncommon?

In this episode, I'll explore just how far back in time zoonotic illnesses go and think about how our entanglement with other animals affects us -- and them -- on a cellular level

Website/Socials

Emi Leese

https://emilialeese.substack.com

http://thinklikeavegan.com

http://emilialeese.com

@emi.leese or @thinklikeavegan, Instagram, Facebook, X and Threads

Credits

Host: Emilia A. Leese

Production & Engineering: Jim Moore of Bloody Vegans Productions; https://www.bloodyvegansproductions.com

Graphics: Catherine Dorrell https://www.messyvegancook.com

Music

Opening theme: “Flashbacks” by Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business

Interlude: "Pinglie" by Matthew Gerstenberger; Seismicity on Soundcloud https://on.soundcloud.com/3Pf8g

Closing theme: “Tear Things Up” by Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business

This podcast is part of iROAR, the Animals Podcasting Network https://iroarpod.com

Ida B. Wells and the relevance of her work to the animal justice movement

Zane McNeill and Nathan Poirier discuss Ida B. Wells' historical and contemporary legacy and relevance to critical animal studies

For more than 40 years from the late 1800s, Ida B. Wells fought for justice for Black Americans. Wells was a journalist, newspaper owner, feminist, suffragist and organiser. In particular, she called herself a lynching agitator and she’s probably still best known for this work

McNeill and Poirier discuss the historical and foundational influence the Black feminist body of work plays for critical animal studies. This influence is all too often not made clear. While barely mentioning nonhuman animals,” the essay on Ida B. Wells, “fundamentally belongs within critical animal studies via consistent anti- oppression” by studying historical gender and racial activism through the efforts of an early and important yet understudied Black feminist”.

Their book is entitled Expanding the Critical Animal Studies Imagination: Essays in Solidarity and Total Liberation (2023, Peter Lang https://www.peterlang.com/document/1298884)

Website/Socials

Zane McNeill @zane_crittheory on X

Nathan Poirier https://www.facebook.com/nathan.poirier.7792

Emi Leese

https://emilialeese.substack.com

http://thinklikeavegan.com

http://emilialeese.com

@emi.leese or @thinklikeavegan, Instagram, Facebook, X and Threads

Credits

Host: Emilia A. Leese

Guests: Zane McNeill and Nathan Poirier

Production & Engineering: Jim Moore of Bloody Vegans Productions; https://www.bloodyvegansproductions.com

Graphics: Catherine Dorrell https://www.messyvegancook.com

Music

Opening theme: “Flashbacks” by Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business

Interlude: "Memories/Generations" by Matthew Gerstenberger; Seismicity on Soundcloud https://on.soundcloud.com/3Pf8g

Closing theme: “Tear Things Up” by Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business

This podcast is part of iROAR, the Animals Podcasting Network https://iroarpod.com

What should we say to vegans?

Benny Malone returns to the podcast to discuss with me what people should say to vegans instead of the usual excuses. Benny joined me in Season One in the episode entitled "Discussing Veganism with Others" where Benny talks about his top five fallacies vegans encounter when talking with others and I talk about my top three tips when engaging with others about veganism.

Benny is the author of How to Argue with Vegans, an analysis of anti-vegan arguments. He’s an autodidact in science, nature and philosophy. And if there’s a book about veganism out there, he’s read it cover to cover.

Website/Socials

Benny Malone

@BennyMalone on Facebook @benny_malone_ on on Instagram and @BennyMaloneUK on X

Emi Leese

https://emilialeese.substack.com

http://thinklikeavegan.com

http://emilialeese.com

@emi.leese or @thinklikeavegan, Instagram, Facebook, X, Threads

Credits

Host: Emilia A. Leese

Guest: Benny Malone

Production & Engineering: Jim Moore of Bloody Vegans Productions; https://www.bloodyvegansproductions.com

Graphics: Catherine Dorrell https://www.messyvegancook.com

Music

Opening theme: “Flashbacks” by Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business

Interlude: "Gendrone" by Matthew Gerstenberger; Seismicity on Soundcloud https://on.soundcloud.com/3Pf8g

Closing theme: “Tear Things Up” by Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business

This podcast is part of iROAR, the Animals Podcasting Network https://iroarpod.com