Rationally speaking is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education.

For more information, please visit us at NYCCEceptics.org.

Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.

I am your host, Massimo Piliucci, and with me as always is my co-host Julia Galev.

Julia, what's our topic today?

Massimo, this episode, we're going to take a rational look at the case for vegetarianism and veganism.

This is a topic that I've written about

several times for the rationally speaking blog, and Michael Dodora, another contributor, has also written

about it, and we've had guest bloggers discuss it too. And it reliably draws some of the longest

and most heated comment threads on the rationally speaking blog. So I think it's high time that we

laid out the relevant evidence and arguments. Sounds good. Why don't we start? Actually, I have a little list of different

types of vegetarianism, which may be useful for our discussion, also for our listeners,

but perhaps we should actually start by acknowledging, first of all, what our position is, what we are.

Oh, well. And then talk about it why we are maybe perhaps or what the problems may be.

Okay, I don't know if I can do mine briefly.

Well, so in practice, the way I eat most closely resembles a vegan.

I don't usually call myself a vegan just because I differ from

vegans and my reasons for what I eat or don't eat somewhat. And in fact, I think I

probably don't have a lot in common with most vegans in terms of my reasons for doing it.

So you're a differently principled vegan.

Well... Or something like that. Okay. The best... I've sort of cycled through a few different

terms just because it's always useful to have a shorthand or label. The closest one that I've

...