Should we eat meat?

Humans have been eating other animals for close to 2.5 million years–a fact that is evidenced by cut traces on fossil animal bones, surviving stone tools, and analyses of our ancestors’ teeth. Does this evolutionary fact render meat-eating physiologically necessary and morally justifiable? Our ancestors did a lot of things to survive; is that sufficient reason to continue the practice? How they obtained this meaty source of protein was arguably very different from the industrial practices of animal agriculture that are justifiably criticized for their cruelty to non-human sentient creatures and their contribution to the global climate crisis.

Can we as a species continue to eat meat? Or in doing so are we literally eating ourselves out of house and home? What about lab-grown Franken-meat, which Governor Ron DeSantis recently made illegal in the state of Florida? Is lab-grown meat a solution, or does it just feed the problem?

And how and why is the unassuming “Impossible Burger” now a subject of the culture wars? 

In this episode, we discuss the following thinkers/ideas/texts/etc.:

• Patti LuPone, “Ladies Who Lunch”  

• “League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis” (Frontline documentary, 2013)

• Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainary, League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions, and the Battle for Truth (2013)

• Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882)

• Governor DeSantis Signs Legislation to Keep Lab-Grown Meat Out of Florida

• Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics

• Cicadas are back on the menu (and here are some recipes!)

• The Kiffness,  Eating the Cats ft. Donald Trump (Debate Remix) 

• Using Organ Meats in Your Kitchen with Nutritionist Torie Borrelli + Nourishing Liver Pâté Recipe

• Seth Millstein, “Why Eating Meat Is Bad for the Environment and Climate Change, Explained” 

• Zoë Schlanger. The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth (2024)

• Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity (1961) 

• Cătălin Avramescu, An Intellectual History of Cannibalism (2011)

• Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Cannibal Metaphysics  (2014) 

• Soylant Green (Film, 1973) 

• Peter Weatherall, “Meat Song”  

• Food Pyramid 

• Tim and Hope Walz 

• Impossible Foods 

• Beyond Meat