Why Are Vegans So Annoying? | Jack Symes Surrounded Follow-up

Summary

Surrounded – “Why Are Vegans So Annoying?” | Jack Symes Surrounded Follow-up

Podcast: Surrounded (Jubilee Media)
Episode Date: April 8, 2026
Guest: Dr. Jack Symes
Host: (Not named in transcript, referred to as Interviewer/Host)
Context: In this follow-up episode, Dr. Jack Symes (philosopher, author, and vocal vegan advocate) returns to discuss reactions to his participation in a previous Surrounded episode where he debated 25 opponents of veganism. The conversation is wide-ranging, touching on the emotions tied to food, common counterarguments against veganism, cultural and economic factors, the challenge of changing one's lifestyle, and the philosophical basis for vegan ethics.

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the heated and often personal debates surrounding veganism, examining why vegan advocates provoke strong reactions and pushback. Host and Dr. Jack Symes (with Nathan and John occasionally chiming in) reflect on arguments from the prior debate, break down objections, and get candid about the social, psychological, and ethical complexities of advocating for a vegan lifestyle in a skeptical culture.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Why Does Veganism Spark Such Intense Reactions?

• Host notes the controversy: “For whatever reason, veganism is a topic that sparks a lot of fire and fury on the Internet, from my experience.” (01:50)
• Jack Symes’ take: People don’t like being told that their lifelong habits are wrong, which triggers defense mechanisms and emotional debate. (02:15)
• John’s evolutionary framing: Justifying eating habits is linked to group survival and evolutionary history: “If me and you were out hunting ... I want someone to act on reasons and be sensible...” (02:15–02:39)
• Jack on agreement among opponents: Even skeptics tend to agree on stopping factory farming — “I struggle to find anybody who says, no, I love factory farming.” (02:51)

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2. Satirical Objections: “Plants Have Feelings Too”

• Nicole (opponent) pokes fun: Argues that eating plants is “murder,” suggesting a slippery slope if all suffering matters. (03:45–04:19)
• Jack’s response: Takes the point semi-seriously, noting that the argument is usually a “reductio ad absurdum” and there’s no compelling evidence plants feel pain as animals do.
  • “I don't use any evidence to suggest that plants can feel pain or suffer.” (06:32)
  • Cites Hannah Ritchie (2022): Going vegan dramatically reduces the number of plants consumed via animal agriculture. (06:32–06:56)

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3. Personal Journeys Toward Veganism

• Jack’s initial skepticism: Used to mock vegetarians in his family, until persuaded by reasoned argument:
  • “One, gratuitous suffering is bad. Two, animal farming causes gratuitous suffering. Animal farming is bad.” (08:39)
  • Ethical/philosophical argument (not emotional) clinched his decision. (08:54)

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4. Food, Memory, and Cultural Inertia

• Host on food/emotion: “One of the earliest memories I have is like, my dad making bacon in the kitchen ... it’s a very visceral experience.” (09:31)
• Jack: Rituals and nostalgia around food are powerful; these bonds partly explain resistance. (09:55)

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5. Health, Supplements, and Accessibility

• Medical concern raised: Critique that vegan diets require many supplements; compliance may be low for average people. (11:16–12:18)
• Jack’s counterpoint: Only B12 is truly essential for most—and Americans are already deficient in some vitamins due to poor diet in general.
  • “Did he say six or seven there? I don’t know where he’s getting that from.” (12:51)
  • “Nearly everybody in the US is vitamin D deficient. So I’m not interested in arguments where it doesn’t track across them.” (15:39)
• Empirical research cited: Large cohort studies (EPIC, Adventist Health Study) show vegan overall health outcomes are generally better (less obesity, lower rates of chronic disease). (16:19–16:56)
• On tech and transition: “You can literally put into ChatGPT ... and it will give you a really good guide to it.” (17:17–17:31)

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6. Why Hasn’t Technology Changed the Culture?

• Despite alternatives like Beyond and Impossible, meat consumption is rising—linked to meat industry lobbying and cultural ties (esp. masculinity).
  • Jack: “Agricultural lobbying ... spends hundreds of millions to produce animals as economically as possible.” (19:35)
  • “Meat eating can be very tied to masculinity ... there’s a sort of image to it.” (20:34–20:57)
  • Nathan: “Veganism can get thrown in with wokeism and liberal values ... and the liberals and the woke ... lost the culture war.” (21:19–21:31)
  • Veganism crosses political lines—some prominent conservatives and even extremists defend it for their own reasons. (22:13–22:32)

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7. The Privilege / Accessibility Argument

• Fodei’s objection: Veganism is unrealistic outside the Global North, e.g., in regions like the Sahara.
• Jack’s response: Cites Oxford study—vegan diets are generally cheaper across Europe/US; true privilege is having the bandwidth to ponder these questions, not affording vegan food. (26:28–27:27)
  • “I don’t buy that it’s a, a luxury...” (27:21)
  • Notes animal agriculture in Africa often feeds Western nations rather than locals, contributing to hunger, not solving it. (27:50–28:49)
  • “Meat eating is the luxury ... it depends on you having more money and being able to exploit other people...” (28:44–28:51)

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8. The Moral Math: Animal Suffering vs. Human Suffering (Holocaust Analogy)

• Gerard’s provocation: “How many cows dying is as bad as someone getting gassed in Auschwitz?” (30:03–30:12)
• Jack’s reasoning: Asserts a “hierarchy” of value—consciousness, powers of reflection, capacity for pleasure all scale with moral worth. (31:49–32:13)
• Jack: “The pain of the cow is worth just as much as the pain of the human being. In terms of pain, it’s one for one.” (33:14–33:19)
• Threshold argument: There’s no precise number, but there is a point—say, 1,000–5,000 cows—at which the suffering equals that of a single human, “all else being equal.” (39:01–40:00)
• Host and Jack agree: It’s a fuzzy, not absolute, metric—an “intuition pump” more than real arithmetic. (40:15–40:29)

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9. The Difficulty of Changing Habits

• Vidhir’s response: Intellectually convinced, emotionally or habitually unable to go vegan. (41:56–42:40)
• Host’s confession: Can see the logic, but it’s emotionally and logistically daunting due to relationships, habit, and culture. (43:10–44:37)
• Jack’s insistence: “People think they don’t have this power over themselves ... but once you’ve tried a week ... you commit to it and you don’t break it.” (45:58–46:11)
• Comparison to smoking or porn: “Quitting meat is a lot easier than ... not consuming pornography or not smoking.” (46:24–46:31)
• Host’s pushback: “Quitting meat sounds so much harder ... when I think of meat it’s like ... dinner with my family ... I gotta reinvent this dot. ... I don’t know how to untie that knot.” (47:07–47:57)
• Jack’s practical advice: Focus on easy substitutions—plant-based burgers, oat milk, tofu—“It’s not like your arm’s forced to pick up the other milk.” (49:03–49:17)

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10. Why Veganism, Among All Moral Problems?

• Jack: Veganism has ripple effects—reduces animal suffering, child starvation, climate impact, personal health.
  • “It probably is the best thing in my view that you can just sort of do today straight away to make yourself and the world a better place.” (50:45–50:47)

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11. Grief, Pets, and Empathy for Animals

• Host’s grief after putting down a dog: “The level of grief I experienced ... was sort of the emotional indicator that there was more weight to that life than maybe I had previously thought.” (55:24–55:59)
• Jack’s reaction: “My grief comes like in the form of anger and injustice ... how dare I think it was okay to sort of put this creature down and then eat its flesh.” (57:03–57:49)
• On animal interiority: Host wonders if AI and science could eventually let us decode animal language, which would cause a cultural reframe in how we perceive animal suffering. (56:01–56:56)

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12. Is “Natural” a Justification (Lion Analogy)?

• Common argument: Humans eating animals is natural, like lions eating prey.
• Jack’s response:
  • Just because something is natural or instinctual, doesn’t make it moral (“naturalistic fallacy”). (64:14–65:15)
  • We’re morally bound to use our reflective capacities to avoid harm where possible—unlike other animals.
  • “Just because the world is a certain way doesn’t mean it ought to be that way.” (64:18)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Jack on emotional vs rational triggers:
  “People don’t like to be told that what they've been doing for their whole lives is wrong and why would they?” (02:09)
• Philosophical core:
  “One, gratuitous suffering is bad. Two, animal farming causes gratuitous suffering. Animal farming is bad.” (08:39)
• On the pain of animals:
  “The pain of the cow is worth just as much as the pain of the human being. In terms of pain, it’s one for one.” (33:14)
• On the ‘natural’ argument:
  “Just because the world is a certain way doesn’t mean it ought to be that way.” (64:18)
• On making change:
  “People think they don’t have this power over themselves ... but once you’ve tried a week ... you've got the habit and it’s there and you commit to it and you don’t break it.” (45:58–46:11)
• On inertia and moral fatigue:
  “There’s so many massive problems for us to deal with. Like why veganism? ... Veganism has so many impacts beyond just the animals.” (49:30–50:37)
• On the meat-masculinity link:
  “Meat eating can be very tied to masculinity ... there’s a sort of image to it.” (20:34)
• On the hierarchy of value:
  “There are things that are valuable about being a thing in the world. Being conscious is good. Having a life is good.” (31:53)
• On animal empathy and loss:
  “My grief comes like in the form of anger and injustice ... how dare I think it was okay to sort of put this creature down and then eat its flesh.” (57:03)
• Host's candid admission:
  “I can acknowledge the suffering of animals, ... but then there’s this inertia. ... How do you choose which moral alley to fully commit down when there’s so many directions to be concerned?” (44:37)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Veganism triggers “fire and fury” – 01:50
• Plants feel pain satire – 03:45–06:56
• Jack’s personal journey to veganism – 07:38–08:54
• Food, nostalgia, and emotion – 09:31–09:55
• Health/supplement argument – 11:16–16:59
• Lobbying/masculinity/culture – 19:35–22:32
• Veganism as privilege – 24:04–28:51
• Holocaust/cow suffering comparison – 30:03–40:09
• Can’t go vegan? Inertia and honesty – 41:56–44:37
• Quitting meat vs. other habits – 46:24–49:17
• Why veganism among many issues – 49:30–50:47
• Grief, empathy, animal consciousness – 54:23–58:01
• “It’s natural!” (Lion argument) – 60:46–65:25

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Tone and Style

The conversation is consistently candid, philosophical, and self-aware. The host is empathetic, often voicing common doubts, confusion, and inertia around veganism, while Jack best combines rigorous philosophical reasoning and personal anecdote, always trying to gently but firmly debunk misconceptions, and keep the argument grounded in both evidence and empathy.

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Final Thoughts

This episode provides a comprehensive, nuanced look at not just the arguments for veganism, but why those arguments so often fall on deaf ears—habits, emotions, cultural ties, and perceived practicality are all powerful drivers. Jack Symes addresses each challenge seriously but with a sense of humor and understanding. The episode ends with the host’s earnest commitment to “aim for 90% vegan,” illustrating how moral change is often incremental, complex, and deeply personal.

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(For clarity, advertisements and non-content material have been omitted. All timestamps MM:SS refer to the approximate location in the original episode.)

Transcript

[Gerard]

How many cows dying is as bad as someone getting gassed in Auschwitz.

[John]

The pain of the cow is worth just as much as the pain of the human being. In terms of pain, it's one for one.

[Jack Symes]

I think quitting meat's a lot hard,

[John]

a lot easier than like not consuming pornography or not smoking.

[Nathan]

I think not consuming meat is way easier than those things. And people just need to go, like, right, I'm stuck.

[Interviewer/Host]

That's kind of crazy to me.

[John]

But

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[Interviewer/Host]

Dr. Jack Symes, welcome back to Jubilee for the Surrounded follow up. How you feeling after your episode?

[Nathan]

Feeling great. I really enjoyed it. It was good fun.

[Jack Symes]

I always love chatting about veganism. First time I've done like a debate, probably at that length in that style.

[Nathan]

But yeah, I was chuffed with it and it was good to see you

[John]

on the opposite chair as well. Defending, defending me, teasing or at least posing some questions.

[Nathan]

So there are some first times for everything and I really enjoyed it.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah, no, it was. I really enjoyed that episode. For whatever reason, veganism is a topic that sparks a lot of fire and fury on the Internet, from my experience. Do you, as, you know, an advocate for the cause, is that ring true to you?

[Nathan]

Yeah. People don't like to be told that what they've been doing for the whole lights is wrong and why would they?

[Jack Symes]

Right.

[John]

I think it taps into like an evolutionary thing. If me and you were out hunting and you were chasing one boar and

[Jack Symes]

me the other, I said to you, why are you chasing that boar? You best have a good reason for it.

[John]

I don't want to be out hunting

[Nathan]

with somebody who just does whatever, you

[Jack Symes]

know, their body feels. I want someone to act on reasons and be sensible so you offer this justification after the fact. And so I think veganism is really interesting because it captures so many of,

[John]

like, different philosophical problems with people knowing

[Jack Symes]

what they should do and then doing otherwise, because everyone sort of agrees on

[John]

the big main point, which is, let's stop factory farming.

[Jack Symes]

And, you know, I struggle to find anybody who says, no, I love factory farming.

[Nathan]

I think he should carry on.

[Jack Symes]

But just.

[Nathan]

It's a view I never encounter. So, yeah, people don't like being told

[Jack Symes]

that they've been doing something wrong forever, but I think that just brings out a certain emotion and exciting debate.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

All right, so I'm going to pull up the first clip. Are you ready to react? And I. I think you had. I got my cow mug.

[Jack Symes]

I thought it's a happy cow as well.

[Interviewer/Host]

I thought this was appropriate.

[Nathan]

Yeah, it's cute.

[Jack Symes]

I like it.

[Interviewer/Host]

Okay, so the first clip. This is going to be with you and Nicole. And so I think this was.

I couldn't tell if you were enjoying

this, but this is you and Nicole,

and she's kind of. She's poking fun at the debate, I think.

[Nicole]

So Killing plants is murder, though.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

Oh, dude, don't do this. Come on, you're joking. You're trying.

[Nicole]

You're ripping it from the ground, you're ripping it from its mother. It's murder. And I enjoy the trivial pleasure of doing what the lions, what the hyenas, what the tigers have done for history.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

So you think plants can feel pain?

[Nicole]

Yes, they can.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

So you want to reduce that pain?

[Nicole]

You know why? I have an azalea, and when I don't give it enough light, that thing dies. So it fills it.

[John]

Yeah.

[Nicole]

I think plants have feelings, too.

[Nathan]

Right?

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

Do you think we should reduce the amount of pain that plants are experiencing?

[Nicole]

Yes, we should. Plants matter. Hashtag, plants matter.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

Okay, so According to Hannah Ritchie, 2022, you get a 75% reduction in all of the land that you need for farming. So if given the fact you're getting 40 to 1 in your calories and 30 to 1 in your protein from plants to animals, then slaughtered, you get a 75% decrease in the plants that

[John]

you're going to kill if you go vegan for history.

[Nicole]

And I have to say this, when I go and don't give my fern enough light, it feels okay. When I don't give it any water, it feels right.

[Interviewer/Host]

Okay.

Now that. That was.

That was Nicole.

I felt like you were being pretty patient. It seemed like you were trying to argue. She was coming in with a bit.

But my. My interpretation of that bit is, you know, the, the argument for veganism is, is sort of too precious. Like if we over empathize or with anything, we can kind of find cause for concern. And so she was sort of, you know, poking fun, like caring too much about animals feelings is, is the same as caring about plants feelings. I, I'm curious, is that how it landed for you?

[Nathan]

I don't, I don't think she really like believed it sincerely.

[Interviewer/Host]

It's hard to know what Nicole actually believes.

[Nathan]

It was great though. I, I, I thought it certainly brought something different to, to the debate. I, I suppose in, in hindsight we, when someone's doing that, maybe it's just better just to play along with the bit than it is to sort of give serious philosophical points and responses. But my brain just sort of goes

[John]

straight into like there might be people

[Nathan]

who sincerely have this objection.

[John]

Really do they? I think it seems to be more

[Jack Symes]

of a reduction at absurdum argument. Right. That people are given that they're going,

[John]

well suppose you think that reducing suffering

[Jack Symes]

and pain in all instances is what you ought to do and if plants feel pain and suffer then you ought to reduce that as well. And that's the argument. And for the reasons I sort of

[Nathan]

gave in the tried to give him that aspect of the debate.

[Jack Symes]

I don't use any evidence to suggest that plants can feel pain or suffer. And I think as I said, the Hannah Ritchie study said that you get a 75% reduction in all of agricultural land if you switch to plant based and so you consume significant 75% less or significantly less plants on veganism than you do on meat eating because it

[Nathan]

takes a lot to, to feed these animals.

[Interviewer/Host]

So if you actually care, somebody truly cares. And that's because animals eat the plants that we're raising and.

[Jack Symes]

Yeah, exactly, yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

And I don't, I agree with you. I don't think she actually cares about the plants. If you rewind in your own life because I assume you, you weren't raised vegan. So at some point this was a conscious decision to. Do you remember a time where caring about animal suffering felt kind of absurd to you? Do you remember that mental construct? What was that like and how did, what broke that for you?

[John]

Well, meat eaters are the worst, aren't they?

[Nathan]

And I consider myself when I was a meat eater to be in that category. I mean that in the sense like you will just be nasty and lash out and sort of make, take, make fun of people who do otherwise and you know, everyone's sort of done the

[Jack Symes]

dumb Like, I'll eat more meat just

[Nathan]

to make up for it or just say.

[Jack Symes]

Or tried to give a health argument

[Nathan]

when they didn't have a clue about the actual health benefits. So my little sister and my older

[Jack Symes]

sister were both vegetarian growing up, and

[Nathan]

it, you know, just baffled me and my little brother. And so me and my brother ate

[John]

meat and they were both vegetarian. And, you know, we teased them more.

[Nathan]

We weren't that bad, but we certainly couldn't understand why you possibly do it.

[John]

And now me and my brother are

[Jack Symes]

both vegans, and the girls are still veggies, and we're all in the same camp, I suppose.

[John]

Yeah. Just. It seems to be like you can

[Jack Symes]

feel that pull just to give the justification.

[Nathan]

What brought me around to it, though,

[John]

wasn't like seeing an animal or seeing

[Jack Symes]

a documentary or anything like that. It was just the argument for. For not doing it. Like, one, gratuitous suffering is bad. Two, animal farming causes gratuitous suffering. Animal farming is bad.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Jack Symes]

And if it's bad, it should be.

[Interviewer/Host]

It was just the philosophical framing or the ethical framing itself. Yeah, no, in this episode, more than others, like, I felt a lot of people were kind of playing jester with you. And we'll see some more clips come up, but there's just something really interesting about what this brings up. And I wonder if it's also because, like, food is tied to emotion so much. So, like, we all, you know, have memories. I mean, I. I honestly, one of the earliest memories I have is, like, my dad making bacon in the kitchen just because it's such a.

[Nathan]

The smell.

[Interviewer/Host]

A smell. And it's just a very visceral experience. And so I. Not. I don't think that's an argument against what you're saying, like, the ethical argument, but I think it's. There's something about the. The ritual of eating.

[Jack Symes]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

And the fact that so many of us eat it, that it's like it's attacking all of that in our minds.

[Jack Symes]

Yeah. I think that's beautifully put.

[Interviewer/Host]

Like, they lash out at you.

[Jack Symes]

Yeah.

[John]

Maybe this, like, I guess hunting taps

[Jack Symes]

into that evolutionary part of your brain, as we spoke about on the show, where it just makes you.

[John]

It feels good. Just as having sex, staying warm feels good.

[Jack Symes]

Like, hunting for food might feel good. And there is, like, so much of our aesthetic cultural experience tied to meat eating.

[John]

Like, the idea of, like, the idea of being on a lake with my

[Jack Symes]

old man fishing genuinely sounds like a great day.

[Nathan]

Right.

[John]

It sounds wholesome.

[Nathan]

Yeah. It's like. It's the Sort of stuff from storybooks,

[Jack Symes]

but at the same time there's obviously that suffering.

[John]

But I can see the, the appeal.

[Jack Symes]

Right. If you didn't know about the nature of fish and their capacity feel pain.

[John]

Yeah.

[Jack Symes]

So I can see why people sort of do it. And the motivations aren't unclear to me. I just don't think they're strong enough motivations to do it.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah. Okay, I'm going to pull up the next clip. This is going to be. Now this is going to be a little bit more of an argument.

Nathan was a med student.

He's trained to become a physician. And I want to just kind of dig into the, the supplements and you know, vitamin deficiency concern 95% of people

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

in the 95% of people in the US are vitamin D deficient.

[Medical Professional]

Yes, that is fair and we do prescribe that.

[John]

But the thing is unique to veganism,

[Medical Professional]

as I've seen patients, as I've been rotating through different things, you rank the

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

diets in terms of healthiest. Would you go pescatarian, vegan?

[Medical Professional]

I'd go Mediterranean first. Yeah, pescatarian and then vegan.

[Nathan]

Okay.

[Medical Professional]

So, so here's the important thing.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

We're not too far away from.

[Medical Professional]

We're not too far. But here's the thing is that I think about my patients and I think about what is it achievable for them? And the problem with. And I think what's affordable. So affordable. But also, can I, can I.

[Nathan]

Of course, sorry.

[Medical Professional]

The other thing is I've seen medication non compliance. Like I myself take a medication for blood pressure and I suck at it. And a lot of other people. One of the, one of the biggest things in America is that some people, just, a lot of people actually are just not compliant with their medications.

[John]

So just, they don't take it.

[Medical Professional]

They don't take it. So it's either. We have them high bmi, take a bunch of medications, we do a vegan diet, we give them a lot of supplements, like five or six actually that you would need or you can have the medicine. You have the Mediterranean diet where you can just have a good diet without those supplements or added things in it.

[Interviewer/Host]

So you're pushing back, you're saying you don't need those supplements, you only need. What are you saying? You only need B12. Is that the only one you think

[Jack Symes]

take B12 and maybe keep an eye on your iron.

[Nathan]

There's just like, there's a few, like

[Jack Symes]

little, just nutrition shots you can take each day, like, and that will give you everything. But typically, you know, I've just been taking B12 for ever since I've been vegan and I'd be absolutely fine.

[John]

So I think some people seem to

[Jack Symes]

keep on an iron eye on their iron. But yeah, so you don't need to.

[John]

I think.

[Jack Symes]

Did he say six or seven there? I don't know where he's getting that from.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah, well, I chat.

I mean, chatgpt is not the end all be all. But, you know, if we just did

a quick, you know, question with them, they said vitamin B12, vitamin D, omega 3. And then it said those were kind of the big ones and then the, the lesser ones, but something to keep an eye on were calcium, iron and iodine. Yeah. But, you know, what do you think about his argument? Just like, hey, if we're asking millions of people to do this, we're introducing a large risk of vitamin deficiencies to a huge group of people.

[John]

Yeah.

[Jack Symes]

I think before, when I first started going vegan, I thought perhaps this would be one of the best arguments. And even then I thought it didn't outweigh the sort of suffering and pain and environmental damage that it caused. So I was motivated, thinking, like, suppose, like it did have some negative effects on our health. Well, I still think it would be better to go vegan on the whole. Like, take an example. You can imagine someone being like, say you had a local vampire, right?

[Nathan]

And someone had to. They had to eat people to survive.

[John]

You'd encourage them to, you know, to start eating things that were nearly, nearly

[Jack Symes]

about to die, right. And say their blood wasn't quite as good when they're about to die, then it gives them some knockoff. But it's better than going around killing

[Nathan]

like little kids and local people. And we'd hunt this person down properly and kill them if they were doing it.

[Interviewer/Host]

This makes me think of, Let the right one in.

[Nathan]

Let the right one in.

[Interviewer/Host]

It's a vampire movie.

[Jack Symes]

Oh, no, I haven't.

[Interviewer/Host]

The plot is vaguely similar to what you're saying.

[Nathan]

I've been forced to watch the Twilight shots at the moment, hence why I'm

[Jack Symes]

using that for an example. And also I'm confessing that's a different experience.

[Interviewer/Host]

But anyway, keep going with your vampire.

So they're taking a hit because they're eating the old blood.

[Nathan]

Yeah, yeah, I think, I think that's fair enough. And we want the puppy example I

[Jack Symes]

always give as well. Right. Say you had, you know, a shed in your garden and you had loads of little puppies in there and you

[John]

grew them fat quickly.

[Jack Symes]

Their organs fail Their legs break, you

[Nathan]

slit in their throats and you eat them. And, and you say, I say to

[John]

you, john, why the hell are you doing that?

[Nathan]

Like you're a monster, like that is monstrous behavior. And you went, oh, but it helps me get my vitamin D and my Omega 3. And then suppose I went, you could take a tablet for that. And you went, oh, no, but I

[Jack Symes]

like getting it from the puppies.

[Nathan]

And I'll be like, what?

[John]

That seems, that seems wild. But even then, the, the studies that

[Nathan]

I've seen have said that you can

[John]

absorb the vitamins better if it's in the form of a supplement because it's

[Jack Symes]

already detached from the fibers with vitamin

[John]

D. As I said to him, nearly

[Jack Symes]

everybody in the US is vitamin D deficient. So I'm not interested in arguments where it doesn't track across them.

[John]

And when it comes to.

[Interviewer/Host]

And let me actually break that down just so that I understand it and anyone listening could better understand it. So what you're saying is, yes, veganism may have some risks of deficiencies, but, but those risks are no greater and would be no more frequent than the deficiencies that exist in Americans diets or people's diets on average currently.

[Jack Symes]

Yeah, 100% that. But it goes further because the health benefits are greater.

[Nathan]

When we look, we want to look

[Jack Symes]

at overall health outcomes. And as I said a bunch of times throughout this debate, when you look at the Oxford EPIC survey looking at half a million people and the Adventist Christian one looking at about 70,000 people, the Christian one's great, the Adventist Christian one in the US because you've got 70,000 people who are all got the same sort of background. They're all doing the same stuff. They drink little, they smoke little. And the overall health outcomes for vegans are way better. They're less likely to be prone to disease, cancer, they live longer. They're less likely to be obese by 4 or 5 BMI points. So it drops them from obese right down to a healthier bmi.

[John]

And so those are the sorts of

[Jack Symes]

overall health outcomes that are huge when

[John]

it comes to like vitamin D and B12 and omega 3. You can get your omega 3 from

[Jack Symes]

NUTS or you can get it straight from the algae. You don't need the fish in between.

[John]

People think you just.

[Jack Symes]

Omega 3 comes from fish, it comes from the algae, but the fish eats. So cut out the middle fish.

[John]

Just take your B12 and make sure you've got a balanced diet. I like your reference to ChatGPT though. Right, because it might have been difficult 15, 20 years ago to do veganism

[Jack Symes]

but you can literally put into chat

[John]

GPC like this is normally what I,

[Jack Symes]

I might eat but help me out

[John]

and it will give you a really

[Jack Symes]

good guide to it.

[John]

I'm not saying like live your entire

[Nathan]

life and diet from it but you

[John]

want to know where to get this stuff.

[Jack Symes]

It's, it's pretty obvious but I don't. Last thing says my suspicion is the actual health arguments aren't the reasons why

[Nathan]

people do it because the studies sort

[Jack Symes]

of show with wise in health outcomes.

[John]

I think people are just used to

[Jack Symes]

it, they think it tastes better and they're creatures of habit.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah. Building on the technology thing, something that was interesting to me so when plant based meats came out because that actually really blew my mind when beyond and impossible first became products like what was that about 10 years ago, 2016. I actually bought a little bit of stock in those companies because the argument in my mind at the time was oh this is, this is a no brainer. If we can make meat artificially no one's going to opt in for real meat because it's just, you know the comparison is going to be so obvious

those investments have gone down. Don't say that to basically to zero. And so I mean that's something I'm

interested in you is like you make the case like hey chatgpt is going to make this easier. There's going to be information. We are having technological breakthroughs that make an animal free diet more and more accessible. But why? You know, if anything I've seen meat almost become more prevalent in our culture like with kind of the RFK junior cultural sphere and this sort of like you know I, Jordan Peterson's daughter, you know advocates for and I would love to get you and her in a conversation someday. She advocates for this meat only diet. And so it, you know it really is blowing my mind because it seems counterintuitive. The technology has made it feel like it's within reach but then the culture seems to be steering the other way. What's going on?

[Jack Symes]

Yeah, you put that nicely. I'm supposed to have a conversation with Michaela at some point. I hope we do get around to it because I think she's a really interesting case and offers some of probably the better arguments against fusionism.

[John]

The first thing is agricultural lobbying meat

[Jack Symes]

lobby in the US in particular you've

[Nathan]

got appalling animal welfare standards in the US and that's to in comparison to

[Jack Symes]

Europe and it's still very far behind. Hundreds of millions are Spent making sure that they're free to produce animals as quickly and as efficiently and economically beneficial to the farmers as possible. That's one reason.

[John]

But then that's not new, right?

[Jack Symes]

That's been happening for a long time and they've upped the ante in the wake of some of these plant based alternatives. I think there's a lot of problems with lobbying and it's not unique to animal agriculture.

[John]

And the thing you mentioned, the one thing that rings to me is that meat eating can be very tied to

[Jack Symes]

masculinity and we're seeing lots of stuff on the manosphere and it's sort of

[Nathan]

like it's becoming cliche. Sort of speak about in the last few weeks. Yeah, yeah, just like having a big

[Jack Symes]

steak and having a cigar and driving like a, a flash car or something. There's a sort of image to it.

[John]

And to be fair, when you study

[Nathan]

people, when you look at the surveys,

[John]

people they do report like meat eating

[Jack Symes]

being tied to the concept of masculinity. And that doesn't surprise us, right? We, there's cliches we hear in everyday life that speak to the same and there's, and there's that growth of that,

[Nathan]

there's growth of that conservatism, there's a

[John]

growth of return to traditional veganism can

[Nathan]

get thrown in with like wokeism and

[Jack Symes]

liberal values and stuff.

[Nathan]

And the liberals and the woke, if no one's keeping up, lost the culture

[Jack Symes]

war a couple of years ago, in my view.

[Nathan]

So we're unfortunately gets side in with that.

[John]

But it's not unique to liberalism or wokeism.

[Nathan]

You know, there are heaps of.

[John]

When I've spoken to Jordan Peterson about

[Jack Symes]

animal rights, when I've spoken to Joe Rogan about animal rights, when I've spoken

[Nathan]

to it, it sounds like I'm flexing now. Sorry, I'm just naming people.

[John]

Or when I've seen Ben Shapiro, for example, prob, one of your leading conservatives here in the US speak like he's very much like, oh no, like the case is extremely strong.

[Nathan]

Like this is very close to just going, yeah, you ought to be vegan.

[Jack Symes]

He might have said that, but he certainly came very, very close to it. And that's despite the pressure from his sort of audience as well.

[Nathan]

So it goes across the board. And I know that there are, you know, you've even got some neo Nazis who will remain nameless in the US as well, who are podcasters who defend

[John]

vegetarianism and veganism too.

[Nathan]

So it's not unique from the Nazi to the to the woke. Liberal veganism is the is the view of the day.

[Interviewer/Host]

I guess you gotta take what you could get.

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[Interviewer/Host]

win.com okay, so this brings up the

next clip I'm going to pull up. So this is. This is your argument with Fude and he. I actually kind of want to hear what you think. He's trying to argue because, you know, like other people, he got kind of. It got kind of personally testy a little bit, but I think he was being a little more playful.

[Fodei]

It's quite concerning and I had to get a bit serious about this. You come from a place, I believe you're British, correct?

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

Yeah.

[Fodei]

A place that's very greenery and I come from a greenery, yes. Meaning there's a lot of plant space in that region, isn't a bunch of trees, so on and so forth.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

I might be wrong, probably just much

[John]

as the U.S. true.

[Fodei]

But again, let me finish my point.

[Nathan]

Let me clarify.

[Fodei]

Come on. I come from a continent that has a place called the Sahara Desert that a lot of people depend on me. And you saying that everybody should aim to be.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

Aim to be.

[Jack Symes]

That's important.

[Fodei]

Yes. Yes. Again, let me finish my guy. Aim to be vegan. I think it's very unrealistic. In a sense.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

That's the realistic part. Should aim to be. Not that everyone has to be vegan and there is no circumstances when you can't kill an animal. It's the most sensible claim you could hear. Everyone should aim to be.

[Fodei]

Yes, but there's something called somebody just reading a book continuously and having fantasies and the world we live in.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

He's saying, I just read a book and have fancies.

[Fodei]

You come off as that.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

Why? I've worked on farms.

[Fodei]

Great. But have you lived in a place that people depend on me?

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

Have I lived in a place where people depend on me?

[Fodei]

Yes. Have you seen a. That's my point.

[Interviewer/Host]

What do you think Fodei is trying to communicate to you there?

[Nathan]

There's some places where plant based alternatives just aren't an option. Fair enough. That's why the claims should aim to be.

[Interviewer/Host]

I think there's sort of.

And this is me reading between the lines. I think he was kind of trying to make a little bit of the privileged argument as well, which is like you're, you're a white British dude, you come from a place where it's a wealthy nation, maybe there's an abundance of vegetation. That's not the case for everywhere in the world. How, how do you typically push back on, on that argument where it's like, you know, I'm not just, I'm not just. This isn't a luxury belief, which I think some people say veganism is.

[Jack Symes]

Yeah, there's a couple of things to say. The first is there was this huge study at the University of Oxford where they looked at 175 different countries and they looked at the cost of food there and looked at a well balanced diet. And they found that across Europe and in the US it's cheaper. I think it's about 30% to be about 30% or 20% cheaper to be vegan than to have a meat based diet.

[Nathan]

Having visited L a few times, like

[John]

just, just before Jubilee, walking around the

[Jack Symes]

shops, you sort of see the price of meat and everything else. Like it's huge. Everything's so expensive there anyway. And so cost of groceries is a great place to save yourself 20, 30% of your annual expenditure. You know, if you're spending 10 grand as a household, you're getting 2 or

[John]

3,000 back if you go vegan. So I don't think, I don't buy

[Jack Symes]

that it's a, a luxury.

[John]

I think it's a luxury to be

[Jack Symes]

able to spend the time and think about it.

[Nathan]

You know, I'M a philosopher. I'm not saying like, hey, I don't have the privilege of being able to

[Jack Symes]

think about things and, and spend my time researching and running around doing jubilee debates. Like that's a privilege. That's an amazing thing to be able to do for it, for a job. So I accept the fact that like

[Nathan]

my life now is, is of a

[Jack Symes]

certain privilege of course elsewhere. And he's talking about especially in Africa

[John]

with one of the leading problems there,

[Jack Symes]

Dr. Richard Oppenlander makes this case that in 82, 83% of cases of style child starvation, they're going, they're coming from countries where the overwhelming majority of their plant based agriculture is fed to non human animals which is then slaughtered and sold to more affluent countries in the West, Gambia, South Sudan, Ethiopia.

[John]

I think in Ethiopia, Ethiopia might be the leading like in terms of having the most animal products produced.

[Jack Symes]

And 80% ish is all sent to places like Saudi Arabia, which isn't a surprise.

[Nathan]

Right.

[Jack Symes]

We've got a poor country and we've got farmers that own all the livestock and they want to make the best money they can from it so they sell it elsewhere. So you know, it's not. I don't think meat eating is a luxury.

[Nathan]

No, sorry.

[John]

I think meat eating is the luxury

[Jack Symes]

because it depends on you having more

[John]

money and you being able to exploit

[Jack Symes]

other people to be able to eat that and taking food out of their mouths, putting it in a cow and then eating the cow instead.

[John]

But yeah, there's going to be some cases, but it should be someone who's living on the friggin North Pole, someone

[Nathan]

who's trapped on a desert island with a pig. You know, I'm not saying these people should be. Vivian. I think there are times when you

[Jack Symes]

can kill a person. Someone's about to commit a terrorist attack, kill the person. I'm not pacifist.

[John]

If you, if you're going to die in the pigs, it's between you and the pig.

[Jack Symes]

All power to you.

[Nathan]

You can kill the pig. The vegan community is one of the most divisive there is and there'll be

[John]

a lot of vegans who are unhappy with that.

[Nathan]

But you know, they can, they can

[Jack Symes]

try and kill me over it and I wouldn't mind.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah, okay.

So that actually brings up kind of the, the calculus around how you value life. And this was actually probably my favorite part. So you and Gerard kind of dig into this. He brings up the Holocaust. I'm gonna just play this clip for you. But it's basically like how do you do the math? And I want to see hear your reaction to this clip and then we can, we can go further.

[Gerard]

First, you started with the numbers of death of animals, right? Like that's a relevant metric for you. How many deaths of cows is equal to the death of one Jewish person in Auschwitz? Give me the number.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

How many cows for one Jewish people?

[Gerard]

I asked you why it was bad and you said, because the number of cows that are slaughtered every year. So I'm asking you, what's your ratio? Like, how many cows dying is as bad as someone getting gassed in Auschwitz?

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

Can we extract the Jewish personnel?

[Gerard]

I'm just using. I'm using the words I can think of.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

Well, I don't like to play into the answer.

[Jack Symes]

Are you cool?

[Gerard]

How about the Armenian genocide? Can we talk about that one?

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

How many cows are worth a human being? I think, I think. I think a human being is significantly more valuable than a cow.

[Gerard]

How much?

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

Why? Because a cow lives for 20 years and a human being will live for 70 or 80 years.

[Gerard]

So four times. So a cow is. Four cows is roughly.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

I'll give you a number. I'll say a thousand cows.

[Gerard]

A thousand cows is the worth of a human being? Is all human beings just arbitrary number?

[Interviewer/Host]

Okay, a thousand cows. We got there.

The Armenian genocide, the Holocaust.

Can you see ultimately what this.

[Nathan]

You see why I didn't want to tell them. Like, why. Why if someone asked you, how much is a Jewish person's life in Auschwitz compared to a cow? Like be dystopian number.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah, well, I. I'm glad, Gerard. I mean, I thought it was riveting. Riveting the way he framed it, but I see what you're doing.

Let's detangle some of the political stickiness here because ultimately this just boils down to a human life versus an animal life. And what is this math? You offered the number 1000 cows roughly is kind of the equivalency. Can you expand on that framework? I think earlier in the episode you mentioned a hierarchy. You see there being kind of a hierarchy. How does that work for you?

[Jack Symes]

I think there are a philosophical language.

[Nathan]

There are intrinsic values.

[Jack Symes]

There are things that are valuable about being a thing in the world. Being conscious is good. Having a life is good.

[John]

Having powers, knowledge, being able, having a

[Jack Symes]

capacity for pleasure and happiness.

[John]

I think they're all valuable things. And I think we can judge things,

[Jack Symes]

the value of things, based on that scale.

[Nathan]

So the more power, knowledge, goodness, consciousness,

[Jack Symes]

et cetera you're capable of, the more, the more valuable you are. I think that's true. Again, controversial in the vegan community because it's often used against animals, but I think it actually works for them. Why a thousand cows? I thought I said like 5,000 in the thing. It's so fast paced. I'm happy with a thousand.

[John]

The point is that the thousand or the five thousand would be a ceiling on it. It wouldn't be like the amount that it would be. I'm saying like very worst case scenario. In philosophy, we want to do all of the things being equal.

[Jack Symes]

So we're not talking like, is the person Hitler or Alexander Fleming?

[Nathan]

Right. Because if it was Hitler, obviously it's just a human. Yeah, but Hitler would be worth, you know, killing regardless of killing the cow. And then Fleming might be worth.

[John]

Fleming might be worth thousands upon tens

[Jack Symes]

of thousands of cows because he saves millions of lives.

[John]

It's really difficult to say what things

[Jack Symes]

you're measuring it by in terms of

[Nathan]

like how you, how you expand things out.

[John]

Because in terms of the pain.

[Nathan]

And here's the thing people might find

[John]

controversial, the pain of the cow is worth just as much as the pain

[Jack Symes]

of the human being.

[John]

In terms of pain, it's one for one. So if you slip, micro kick, it'll

[Jack Symes]

slip the cow's throat because of the sensitive tissue underneath, underneath your skin, because of the nerve endings on the surface. It's going to be excruciatingly painful for both of us. And I think in terms of pain, it's exactly the same.

[John]

And then you want to go, well,

[Interviewer/Host]

this is actually the pause there.

[Jack Symes]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

This is a question I have because I hear you. Like, I don't doubt that animals experience pain, but I do wonder if consciousness, because I think humans have an especially loud narrative quality to their consciousness which may not. Does that amplify pain in a sense of like, you know what I'm saying? And so that, that makes me, that gives me pause on like, is the suffering. Because like I would make the argument like the suffering of a chicken or a fish feels somewhat negligible to me. The suffering of an ant feels very negligible to me. Now those are just, that's just sort of like baked in intuition I have. Once you get to like dogs, mammals, cows, I start to. I see where you're kind of that balance.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

But for whatever reason, human suffering, because I know the depth of the conscious experience, it seems like it still has a premium. Like a premium for me. Like I can't quite see it as one for one.

[Jack Symes]

No. I think a lot of people share intuition I think you articulated it really well. I held that intuition for a while too. And I was hosting an event, a

[John]

debate with the British biologist, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.

[Jack Symes]

And in the debate he said something really stuck out to me. He said he was arguing with a

[John]

Christian philosopher and we're talking about pain and suffering in animals. And he said that presumption that you

[Nathan]

have, that the lower down the chain

[John]

of being you are, the more primitive

[Nathan]

of an animal you are, for lack

[Jack Symes]

of a better phrase, is a, is an ungrounded assumption.

[John]

And why? He said, well, if I put my

[Nathan]

hand on the hot stove, because I've

[John]

got this, as you know, there's more complex integrated consciousness.

[Nathan]

I can feel the pain, I can

[Jack Symes]

go, I shouldn't do that again. And I could bake that into my memory. I can tell myself not to do it again. Even stick something on the stove saying like, don't do that again.

[John]

But when it comes to a really

[Jack Symes]

simple sort of biological organism, Dawkins said,

[John]

it may be that they just have a very strong feeling of pain to make sure they never do it again.

[Nathan]

Right.

[John]

To make sure they keep. Stay away from it because they can't

[Jack Symes]

do the same thing.

[Nathan]

Thinking about it, making sure it building

[John]

in a behavioristic or even, you know,

[Jack Symes]

having a mental map of things they

[John]

should go towards and avoid. They, they need the strongest red flag.

[Jack Symes]

So big red flag, stay away from the pain.

[John]

That's an argument to the other side. I'm not convinced by this argument.

[Nathan]

I'm not convinced by the sort of

[Jack Symes]

argument that you articulated either.

[John]

I think we should be agnostic as to the overall capacity for pain for either of these beings and just say in philosophy we do credences, that is probability.

[Jack Symes]

Given the fact, I think there's a

[John]

strong probability that these creatures are going

[Jack Symes]

to feel pain and it's stronger than not giving that it's unnecessary. Then we should avoid it.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah, thanks for breaking that down, but I interrupted you. Were you going to break down kind of the hierarchy a little further?

[John]

Yeah, I think so. Take cow, it's a 20 year old

[Jack Symes]

cow, 70 year old human. Take the pain, that's fine. Let's say it's one for one, all of the things being equal or our best guess is one for one. What about the life of the human?

[John]

Were you sort of in your response

[Jack Symes]

you should have said we have this complex louder consciousness. You also have this narrative self and you have things that matter to you and you're able to appreciate. I haven't got a taste for it. Like classical music, all the theater, as

[Nathan]

well as, you know, eating food, right?

[Jack Symes]

So my dog can eat food. He gets dead excited when he's eating food. But I have this higher pleasure of going to the theater.

[John]

So that's one argument you might give.

[Jack Symes]

I don't think that was a particularly good one because, you know, the football fan, middle class football fan compared to the theater, go at. If.

[John]

If there were such things as higher

[Nathan]

pleasures, then we think that it's better to go to the theater than go to the football.

[Jack Symes]

But I think that's just arrogance and pompousness and should be taken seriously.

[John]

I think when the dog eats its

[Jack Symes]

food, push bin's as good as poetry.

[Nathan]

As Bentham said, when dog eats its

[Jack Symes]

food, it's just as good as me watching the football or eating food myself.

[John]

I think the easiest way to go is how long's their life. That's one thing. And humans, importantly, also have instrumental values. That is, they're able to change the

[Jack Symes]

world for the better as well.

[John]

So I think if you're a human being and you take more things away from the world, you know, you start wars, you're nasty to the people around you, you're an abuser, you're a selfish person who takes from the system more than you try and put into it. I think you have less value. And I think if you. But if you're, you know, Fleming or another moral saint, then you.

[Nathan]

You have higher value. So again, because we're doing all the

[John]

things being equal, it's hard to say, you know, how.

[Jack Symes]

What that greatness consists of.

[John]

But let's say, you know, a typical human with lots of people that matter to them and can make a generally good contribution to the world and has a long, healthy life compared to the cow. I think a thousand is the ceiling.

[Jack Symes]

I thought I said 5,000.

[Nathan]

I thought that's way too many. If it was a thousand, that would

[Jack Symes]

probably be around the ceiling.

[John]

The last thing I'll say is, why is it difficult? Because there's gonna be a threshold, right? It's hard to say when it's gonna happen. It's like a pile of leaves. I put a few leaves down. Is it a pile yet? Is a pile yet? And then all of a sudden there's enough leaves, and I can call it a pile or water droplets. I put them together. When do the water droplets become a cloud? And I think the same way we can sort of do this with how many cows or human animals worth the human's life? You go, one cow. No, two, three, four. Not quite there yet. I can't pinpoint exactly, but there will be a threshold, and I think that's cross. When I say, like, If I said 10 trillion cows for a human's life,

[Jack Symes]

I think that's evil through and through.

[John]

The threshold's been crossed. So merely because we can't identify the

[Jack Symes]

actual number doesn't mean that there isn't a threshold.

[John]

And that's why I hesitate to give the number, because it takes a little

[Jack Symes]

while to explain sort of the threshold argument. And that's why I said to him, 1,000, why not?

[John]

It's trivial. And by trivial, I mean call it 999, call it a thousand. I don't think the 999 would change my mind.

[Jack Symes]

Right.

[John]

I'm talking, like, vague boundaries, and that's fine.

[Jack Symes]

We've got vague boundaries for lots of things.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah, no, that makes sense. For me, the number seems maybe like a little higher than a thousand. But I hear what you're saying.

[John]

What number would you give it?

[Interviewer/Host]

I mean, I was honestly thinking something like 5,000.

[Jack Symes]

Oh, cool. All right.

[Interviewer/Host]

I know that's high. I know that's high. But it's like that. That's where I can. I start to feel that intuition that you're saying where it's like, okay, that starts to feel like a pile to me. It's interesting. Kind of building on this narrative element is, you know, I think Gerard was being really clever in building that narrative around the human because that amplifies the sense of suffering. Because if you were to kind of concede. Yeah, like, I think one Jewish person suffering in Auschwitz equals 3,000 cows,

that amplifies this idea that you're diminishing that

suffering because we tie so much tragic weight to that anecdote. Okay, so the last clip I want to pull up, and then we can kind of just. I want to talk about my own journey a little bit with you because I do find this very compelling. So you asked. I think his name is Vidhir. Back to the center at the very end. And he was the closest person. He had tried being vegan previously. He wasn't successful at sticking with it. And you really just kind of put him on the spot at the very end, like, come back and it's this really interesting moment. I like the way he responds to you, though. So let's just watch this.

[Vidhir]

I'm not gonna go vegan, but I don't want to leave you hanging.

[John]

Come on.

[Nathan]

You can't leave me hanging.

[John]

You'll try to go vegan.

[Vidhir]

I just don't want to say that I'll turn vegan in front of you and then not do it, because I'm not a Hippocratic.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

I'm not asking you to turn vegan. I'm asking you to try.

[Vidhir]

I have tried in the past, and I am. I'm promising you that I will be trying to reduce.

[Nathan]

This is like a living conversation, but

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

you accept all of the reasons and you think that you should do it yet.

[Vidhir]

Dr. Jack, I promise you that I will try to limit the amount of meat I eat, but I can't promise you that I will be vegan. Right, like, right away.

[John]

Try for a week.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

Meet me a week. Meet me a week.

[Vidhir]

I don't think I'll try.

[John]

Me a week.

[Vidhir]

I don't think I would be able to do.

[Interviewer/Host]

Do that.

[Vidhir]

I apologize. I'm a weaker man than you, but I won't be able to do that.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

Disappointed me, dude. Hey, it's lovely to speak to you, though.

[Jack Symes]

Thank you.

[Vidhir]

Appreciate it.

[Interviewer/Host]

All right.

[Nathan]

Dude, you're so disappointed.

[Interviewer/Host]

You were close, but. But not quite. But I. I really appreciate his intellectual honesty. You know, he's like, I'm not. Because a lot of times what we have is people come on this show and they're just super performative, and they're just trying to dunk on somebody so that millions of people will see it. And he's doing the exact opposite. He has this moment to sort of project his values and virtue signal. And yet he's saying, hey, I just gotta be honest with you. I don't see myself fully committing to going 100% vegan. And I can relate to that because I feel in a very similar place to him where it's like, the argument feels sound. I can acknowledge the suffering of animals. I can acknowledge the immorality of the way the meat industry has transformed and how egregiously horrific it is in its current state. And so all of that rings clear. But then there's just this. There's this inertia. Like, hey, there's so many things going on in the world. I'm worried about the climate, or I'm worried about politics, or I'm worried about screen addiction or how our electronics are made. Like, how do you choose which moral alley to fully commit down when there's so many directions to be concerned? So why, for you earlier, you were drinking a Red Bull, and you're like, I know that's unhealthy, but, you know, it's. It's something I gotta do. Now, obviously, animals probably aren't dying for Red Bull, but I don't know, maybe they are. But like, how, why is, why is veganism? You know, you, you're like, this argument is sound. I'm planning my flag and committing to this.

[John]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

When there's, it feels like there's so many directions to get pulled.

[John]

Yeah, I think it, I find it really depressing.

[Jack Symes]

I find it hard not to, you know, feel a little bit upset when I think about it, to be honest.

[Nathan]

Like, it's, it, it's, you think of historical examples of people going, yeah, like,

[Jack Symes]

I had this plantation and I've got

[Nathan]

these slaves and you know, I believe in human dignity and the equality of people, but, you know, I just can't, you know, I've got so many other things to focus on or I just

[Jack Symes]

can't do it for these reasons.

[John]

And it feels sort of like that

[Jack Symes]

with non human animals and factory farming especially.

[Nathan]

It's hard to sit there and sort

[John]

of someone goes, hey, you know, I believe it.

[Nathan]

I think I should do it.

[John]

Like the producer of my own podcast,

[Jack Symes]

my friend Paul, we've been friends for

[John]

nearly 10 years and he's bought the

[Jack Symes]

vegan argument for ages.

[Nathan]

And they're like, we'll do a show, you know, whatever it is. And we're in Boston to today. We just did a show yesterday and then it was, we sat down for dinner and he's eating pepperoni and stuff. It's just like, but he believes it.

[John]

He, he buys the argument and he thinks you should do it.

[Nathan]

He just doesn't do otherwise enough.

[John]

I just, I, I, I think I

[Nathan]

was trying to say during the debate

[John]

there as well, like, just, just do it. Like, just, just make the commitment.

[Jack Symes]

Like, people think they don't have this power over themselves, that they can't just

[John]

make a new habit, that they can't

[Jack Symes]

just flip the switch.

[John]

But once you've tried a week and then you go a little bit, you

[Jack Symes]

just try one week, then it goes

[John]

to two and then all of a

[Nathan]

sudden, like, you've got the habit and

[Jack Symes]

it's there and you commit to it and you don't break it. I understand that people in the same

[Nathan]

way of like, it might be porn

[Jack Symes]

addiction or it might be like smoking

[Nathan]

or whatever it is, like these things.

[Jack Symes]

There are things harder than others to sort of quit.

[John]

I think quitting meets a lot hard,

[Nathan]

a lot easier than like not consuming

[John]

pornography or not smoking. I think not consuming meat is way

[Jack Symes]

easier than those things.

[Nathan]

And people just need to go, like,

[Interviewer/Host]

right, that's kind of crazy. But

that quitting meat sounds so much harder.

[John]

You think, you think quit smoking, you think quitting me is harder than quitting smoking?

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah, I mean, really, I never was addicted to smoking, but I depends what

[Nathan]

you were smoking, I suppose. John.

[Interviewer/Host]

Well, I mean, what are we talking about? Okay, I've had my fair share of smoking. All I'm saying is

actually porn was the one that stuck out to me more. So.

[Jack Symes]

Yeah, people struggle to quit porn.

[Interviewer/Host]

If you told me right now, like quit porn forever or quit eating meat. Not watching porn seems much more doable. I think when I think of meat, it's like, okay, so like it's, I'm gonna have dinner with my family this weekend or, you know, I'm not gonna eat eggs anymore. Yeah, what's, what's the substitute? Like, there's so much inertia there. And then like I brought up in the debate, you know, your kids, it's like, okay, I gotta kind of reinvent this dot. I mean, it's so hard to get

your kids to eat anything that they specifically should. And so that's where it starts to

feel like, oh my God, I don't, I don't know how to untie that knot.

[Jack Symes]

Yeah, okay, fair enough.

[John]

Well, maybe I don't want to pin

[Jack Symes]

my colors to the flag and say that. I guess it's an unnecessary claim which

[Nathan]

is made that having that meat eating's

[Jack Symes]

easier to quit than, than other things. Like you say, for some people it

[Nathan]

is really baked into the, into their lives.

[Jack Symes]

Especially when you've got kids and stuff.

[John]

Yeah, I don't think, I don't think it's Matt. I don't think it's as difficult as

[Nathan]

people think it is or people say that it is. Yeah, you know, you just switch your eggs to like, you know, you get the tofu, which is already like egg based and it's got more protein and

[Jack Symes]

more nutrients than your eggs.

[Nathan]

And you know, you're doing something good for your kids there, you're doing something

[Jack Symes]

good for your body.

[Nathan]

You know, typically when we're going, walking

[Jack Symes]

around the supermarket, we will pick up new products, you know, just from looking at them. And I think just starting by picking up some vegan products as you're walking around is a good point to go.

[Nathan]

What you'll realize when you're eating it is you start to have that you

[Jack Symes]

expose some more things in the same sections and you sort of go from there.

[John]

The easy thing to do is like stop the meat. Just go to the meat free section

[Jack Symes]

and pick up the plant based burgers pick up the plant based chicken, switch

[John]

your eggs for tofu, get oat milk instead of regular milk or any other mil. Like it's not, when you're looking at

[Nathan]

the massive range of milks I got, it's not like your arms forced to pick up the other milk.

[John]

And that's why I think maybe it's easier in that sense, right, to stop smoking.

[Jack Symes]

I found stopping smoking difficult when I

[John]

was in my early 20s and it's way easier for me to pick up the other milk.

[Nathan]

Just it's the new supermarket.

[John]

But you said something really interesting as well, which was there are so many massive problems for us to deal with. Like why veganism?

[Jack Symes]

Why pick that one?

[John]

I think because the vegan has so many impacts beyond just the animals who are suffering for child starvation, global food

[Jack Symes]

inequality and access, climate destruction, it being

[John]

the third or maybe even in some people's views the first leading cause of climate change.

[Jack Symes]

I don't think you're a real environmentalist

[John]

if you're eating meat in Europe or

[Nathan]

in the United States. I think, and I don't buy the

[John]

argument that we have to wait for government reforms of fossil fuel industries to make that impact. If we stopped using all of these fossil fuels tomorrow, it wouldn't make a

[Jack Symes]

difference in terms of the climate catastrophe.

[John]

We will still be on our way to 2, 3 degrees by 2100 merely by our meat consumption and the animal agriculture industry. So I think if you care about the environment, if you care about starving children, if you care about non human animal suffering, if you care about your

[Nathan]

own health, you know, there are so many reasons just to, just to do it. It probably is the best thing in my view that you can just sort

[John]

of do today straight away to make

[Jack Symes]

yourself in the world a better place.

[John]

Because I looked at some studies afterwards and saw that a lot of the, because I was interested in your point. I looked some studies about the kids

[Nathan]

and saw that it was the same as sort of what was saying in the debate that kids who have vegan

[John]

diets, you need to make sure they're getting the B12, you need to make

[Jack Symes]

sure they get in their iron. That was flag too.

[Nathan]

But then the health benefits and compared to them being overweight, developing heart diseases and stuff like that was, you know,

[Jack Symes]

across the, across the board it seemed to be just as healthy, if not more healthy.

[John]

It seems a bit more difficult because

[Jack Symes]

there are far fewer studies on kids.

[Nathan]

But it looks, you know, if I was, if the.

[John]

In philosophy we do the truth demon. So a demon comes down and says to you give me what you think's the right answer or you go to hell forever.

[Nathan]

You have to get it right.

[Jack Symes]

I'd probably say it's roughly just about as healthy. I wouldn't claim that it's significantly healthier for kids.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah, makes me think of Monty Python.

He's like, what's your favorite color? Blue. No, green.

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[Jack Symes]

There's no one like you and there never will be.

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[John]

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[Interviewer/Host]

Anyway, okay, so I'm in a similar place as.

As the last guy. I can tell you. You know, I don't want to lie to you but I can say like this argument really rings true to me and so I, I really do want to commit to. To taking big steps towards being. Being vegan. And you know, I actually I had a impossible meat to two days this week and I had chickpeas last night so making steps. So yeah, I'm going to give it as good of a shot as I can but you know, I. I can't. I know there's going to be falters. So you know, I guess I can tell you I can commit to aim. Aiming to be like 90% vegan.

[Nathan]

Oh, that's so cool.

[Interviewer/Host]

Why don't we touch base? Why don't we touch base?

[John]

It's off the back of like when did you felt the arguments before and

[Nathan]

this has sort of just triggered the

[Interviewer/Host]

thought I have friends. Yeah, I've had friends who are vegan and you know, for me I just, I feel like I've heard Sam Harris talk about it before. It's just it is an obvious moral failing, the state of things and. Yeah. You know, my dog died last year.

[Jack Symes]

Oh, I'm sorry.

[Interviewer/Host]

Or. No, not last year. It was like two years ago. But I had never had a pet before and we had to euthanize him, you know, because he was really in bad shape. And that was a really profound experience. The witnessing of a life ending even, you know, like a life of a. A dog with severe dementia. And. Yeah, that was impactful and I. Even before then, I've always kind of thought that it just makes so much sense. So.

[Jack Symes]

Yeah, seeing you make the arguments.

[John]

I'm really sorry.

[Jack Symes]

Like, it, you know, it's heartbreaking putting a dog, putting your dog down. Any pet.

[Nathan]

What's.

[Jack Symes]

Good morning. Asking, like, what sort of thoughts?

[Medical Professional]

Like.

[Jack Symes]

Because I remember I put my dog down about a year and a half ago as well. And I sort of. I remember having some thoughts similar.

[Nathan]

I wonder what was going through your

[Jack Symes]

head when, when you were doing.

[Nathan]

In terms of like how that translated to animal.

[Jack Symes]

Like our treatment towards them.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah. Well, I'm sorry for your loss as well. I don't know. It was. I think it was just profound. The level of grief I experienced. I didn't expect my. I didn't anticipate myself grieving as hard as I did. And that was sort of the emotional indicator that there was more weight to that life than maybe I had previously thought. And because I had not grown up with pets, I had sort of dismissed pets as kind of, or maybe abstracted them as sort of like more complex appliances.

Like, you know, not to sound too

cold hearted, but it just. The reality of their life hadn't really hit me. And then when I. There was an underwater, like an aquatic documentary I watched in college. I just remember hearing the recordings of dolphins. And this is something I'm actually really excited to. For AI to maybe open up is. It was so undeniable. It was like the realization that alien life existed.

[Jack Symes]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

But it just exists underwater, you know,

where it's like, wow, they're speaking. There's so much obvious complexity in the languages that we're hearing. And so it'd be great to see a moment where humans maybe start to decode a little bit of that language and it might even open up the interiority of some animals that we coexist with. I think that could be a big reframe for how we think about life.

[Jack Symes]

Yeah, no, it's really, it's. I guess it's incredibly profound, I suppose the, the thought.

[John]

The grief. Yeah.

[Jack Symes]

When you put Down a dog is massive. The first thing to say I feel

[John]

my grief comes like in the form

[Jack Symes]

of anger and injustice. I sort of put.

[Nathan]

When a family member or put down

[Jack Symes]

an animal, like my first response is just anger and upset. Like I feel like some wrong's been done to them and I feel like it's unjust. And I think that I don't know how common that is. I don't know much about the phenomenology of grief for it, to give it a wanky phrase. But like I just, I get, I

[John]

get the anger and the anger sort of.

[Jack Symes]

I remember the thought, I was like,

[John]

and how dare people. Or how dare I think it was

[Nathan]

okay to sort of put this creature

[Jack Symes]

down and then eat its flesh, right?

[John]

Even though, even if, even I think

[Nathan]

this is the, the.

[Jack Symes]

One of the most difficult arguments is like roadkill or animals that are already dead or things that are going to waste.

[John]

And I think that is, that's where

[Jack Symes]

some of the biggest objections to veganism lie. And to, to be honest, I struggle to sort of pinpoint what it is that's wrong about that thing.

[John]

But it's the same sort of thing which would be wrong in chewing our

[Jack Symes]

family members corpse after they die, right? It's sort of the same thing that

[John]

they're not there to feel the harm.

[Jack Symes]

But how dare somebody sort of eat these creatures after the, after they've killed them. Is the.

[Nathan]

Is the sort of thought, we're animal lovers as well.

[Jack Symes]

Like, here are our dogs and then they sit down and serve meat and he's stuck. And that's how his. How his best selling book starts.

[Interviewer/Host]

And we're all.

[John]

It captures some incredibly true of all of human history that we're all animal lovers. We are animals, but only a very small percentage of people sort of take

[Jack Symes]

that Swiss logical conclusion.

[John]

Mainly because things are packaged up and

[Jack Symes]

you don't have to look the animal

[Nathan]

in the face and live with the

[Jack Symes]

animal before you eat it.

[Interviewer/Host]

Well, in Catholic school there was actually, it was, there was like a venial soul, I think, and a mortal soul. So there was actually a real categorization between wildlife and humans. And that kind of created the moral hierarchy. Yeah, that was pretty cemented in me for a long time. And then my wife was like, no animals are

suffering. And I was like, oh yeah, no, she's not.

But I've been talking to her because after we recorded your episode, I was like, hey, what do you think about steering more towards veganism? And she's like, yeah, whatever, I'm down and her and I have, you know, we always made it a point to eat meat free meals a few nights a week. I actually made this is tmi. They'll probably cut this out but I made vegan chili for a chili contest last year.

[Nathan]

Oh, nice. I hope that it goes up.

[Interviewer/Host]

It was actually really good.

I, I, I am drawn to even just the, the creative challenge of making savory food with these kind of new, new things that we have, like tofu and you know, what is it the, the yeast, you know that you can add to it.

[Jack Symes]

Are they just like the, like the

[John]

vegan mints or something? I've just got, when I went vegan

[Jack Symes]

I just got hooked on spicy food. Like couldn't have much spice. And now this like I just the hottest curries or the hottest Mexican food. I just went down a hole of just hot sauce and just sort of

[John]

all that stuff which maybe, maybe that doesn't serve the vegan cause well it

[Nathan]

makes it sound like normal foods bland. But I just got hooked up down that line.

[Interviewer/Host]

No, yeah, Indian food, I mean their dolls, you know, the lentil based foods, incredibly flavorful and a lot of that is vegan. One last thing I want to ask you before and let me know if you got a bounce.

[Nathan]

No, you're good.

[Interviewer/Host]

How do you square? I think this kind of came up in the first guy that debated you. There's sort of this argument that there's just a natural, there's a naturalness like nature deemed it as such that animals, some animals eat each other. And you know, we value the life of a lion and we would think it a great tragedy if that lion were to leave this planet. But we don't expect the lion to morally consider the, the value of the life of its prey because we kind of see it as its nature. It has to hunt that animal. Why do you think of the humans kind of differently? Like we have this responsibility to sort of maybe transcend our inherited nature.

[Nathan]

Yeah.

[John]

So there's two versions of the argument. One is that just lions will kill

[Jack Symes]

other animals and therefore it gives us

[Nathan]

the right to kill lions as well.

[Jack Symes]

Just as they don't have the, we can't impose the morality onto them.

[John]

That argument doesn't track for a whole range of reasons.

[Jack Symes]

The easiest way is maybe just to give a quick example and say, let's

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

say,

[Jack Symes]

let's say the psychopath or let's say the dog during the middle of the night jumps in your bed and starts licking you in places that people

[Nathan]

would frown upon it licking you.

[Jack Symes]

Right.

[John]

That doesn't give you the right to

[Nathan]

jump into the dog's bed and do the same to the dog. Right. Just because the dog doesn't have a choice in doing it does not mean you can go and do those things.

[John]

So that's to say just because one animal does it to another doesn't mean you can go and do those things to another animal. So that's one version of the argument. But you might be thinking, Jack, you're missing the point. The actual argument I'm saying is it's a part of nature. It's baked into nature.

[Interviewer/Host]

Right.

[John]

We are preordained given evolution by natural

[Jack Symes]

selection or God's laws.

[Interviewer/Host]

God made it this way. That's what a lot of people would say.

[John]

Yeah.

[Nathan]

We had the God debate and I think theists are often surprised. I think someone said we did Genesis 1:29.

[Jack Symes]

I said, so why did God create

[John]

the world, give us a purely vegan diet.

[Nathan]

And I think it surprises a lot

[Jack Symes]

of Abrahamic believers when they hear that. When they know in the Genesis story God creates the world perfectly or as best he can and he gives everyone a vegan diet. And at the end of time God will make us vegan again, the lion

[John]

will lay down with the lamb and we could.

[Interviewer/Host]

It's a separate one interpretation. I've never heard that. But if we. Let's. Let's transcend Christian Christianity though.

[John]

Yeah. The evolution or naturalistic argument.

[Nathan]

There are two things.

[John]

One is that the methods matter and two, that explanation isn't justification. The means matter. It's the case that we are preordained by natural selection to want to do

[Jack Symes]

things like engage in sexual reproduction.

[John]

But evolution doesn't tell us to have

[Jack Symes]

consensual or non consensual sex. It just says go forth and have sex.

[John]

But we think we should take that

[Jack Symes]

drive and choose the consensual sex over the non consensual sex.

[John]

In the same way, evolution dictates that we should take on a certain amount

[Jack Symes]

of protein and nutrients.

[John]

But it's important that we do that

[Jack Symes]

in the right way.

[John]

We can kill installs for animals or

[Jack Symes]

we can seek that stuff from elsewhere. The second thing to say is that it's the naturalistic fallacy in philosophy that an observation isn't a justification.

[John]

So just because the world is a certain way doesn't mean it ought to be that way.

[Jack Symes]

It's crossing that ISOR gap to take Hume's language.

[John]

So lots of things we do.

[Jack Symes]

I'll give two quick examples like St.

[John]

Augustine Vipper in the 6th century Christian theologian said that humans, we're built in with original sin. We want to lie, cheat, steal, be selfish. Right? But he thought just because we are that way doesn't mean we have to be.

[Jack Symes]

We can transcend that and do otherwise.

[John]

And similarly for the atheistic philosopher Thomas

[Jack Symes]

Hobbes, English philosopher of the 17th century.

[John]

He said it's a mechanistic world, probably no God, but in a state of nature. What are humans like naturally? Well, humans, life would be nasty, Brutus and short.

[Interviewer/Host or Moderator]

It would be a war of every

[John]

man against every man because we just want things for ourselves. We engage in countless wars, there's been far too many genocide, even though one would be enough. That's things that humans do by nature. But again, just because it's a part of our nature doesn't mean that it

[Jack Symes]

ought to be that way.

[John]

So if you think that lying, cheating, stealing, genocide, war and things that are in our natures, but we should transcend

[Jack Symes]

them, then I don't see why it'd

[John]

be different when it comes to torturing,

[Jack Symes]

mutilating and slaughtering animals.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah, no, I think that makes sense to me. That idea of like, you know, once you have this interior compass, exploring morals, there's a responsibility is sort of paired with that. What is going on in our brains and why we, we have that ability is another discussion. But I agree, I think it's there and, and I think points us in certain directions. Well, we're out of time. I gotta run. My daughter's actually, she's, she's homesick, so

I gotta go get her off the television.

[Nathan]

But Dr. Scientists.

[Interviewer/Host]

Oh, yeah, thank you very much. She's having the time of her life.

Unrestricted screen time.

[Nathan]

Doctor. Sorry, I just said I'm absolutely delighted that you've went. That you're reducing your meat intake or going 90% vegan. I will admit I was a little bit depressed after the last guy who was on the show and I just couldn't bring him around just to commit into it.

[Jack Symes]

So you've restored my faith and made the whole experience.

[John]

Well, it was worth it anyway because

[Nathan]

hopefully it changes some other people's minds. But it's nice to. Yeah, I'm really glad that it's brought

[Jack Symes]

you around even a little bit.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah, well, I mean, I think my hope is I, I can understand. I. The issue itself is very interesting because like we discussed, it brings up so many feelings, but you know, witnessing you on the show, it just, it reignited that kind of like, aha, like there's sort of a light bulb. And I think generally when something feels so obvious or or it sparks rage that sometimes an indicator that it's kind of an obvious truth. And yeah, it is an inconvenient truth. But I appreciate you coming on the show and just sort of like reigniting my interest in the issue and the arguments there. It was really fun to watch you. I hope you enjoy the final video when you see it out in the wild. But Dr. Symes, thanks for coming on the follow up. Thanks for being in Surrounded and hopefully this won't be the last time we talk.

[Jack Symes]

Great.

[Nathan]

So cheers.

[Jack Symes]

John, thank you so much.

[Nathan]

It's been a pleasure.

[Interviewer/Host]

If you want to see more follow up episodes of Surrounded, be sure to like leave us a positive review. Comment if you're watching the video on YouTube, you can subscribe to Tubily, Jubilee's second channel. You can also subscribe to Jubilee to see full Surrounded episodes. But however you want to support us, just thank you so much for listening. Remember, you could be wrong, so could I. Keep your mind open until next time.

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