Rebellion, Roots & Responsibility with Dora Hargitai on Animal Rebellion, Systemic Change & the Fight for Earth's Future (Originally aired December 2019)

The Bloody Vegans Podcast is coming back soon and while we get everything ready for what's coming next, we're reaching into the archive to bring you some of the conversations that started it all. Watch this space.

First up from the back catalogue: this gem from December 2019. Jim sits down with Dora Hargitai activist, orator, and a driving force within Animal Rebellion for a conversation that feels just as urgent today as it did when it was first recorded.

Dora's journey into veganism began not with a grand awakening, but with a small booklet picked up in an Aldi in Scotland. From there, a quiet curiosity became a conviction, and eventually a calling. Having worked in the oil and gas industry before pivoting to an MBA focused on sustainability, Dora's path took her through the heart of the Extinction Rebellion uprisings of April and October 2019 and ultimately to helping build Animal Rebellion into a movement that links animal agriculture directly to the climate emergency.

In this episode, Jim and Dora explore what it really means to challenge the foundations of the systems we live within from the demands of Animal Rebellion and their presence at Smithfield Market, to the thorny questions of how we value nature, monetise veganism, and talk to one another across deep divides. Dora brings her characteristic warmth, clarity and unflinching honesty to all of it.

Whether you've been vegan for years or you're just beginning to ask the questions, this one's worth your time.

Topics include: the birth of Animal Rebellion, nonviolent civil disobedience, the Smithfield Market action, systemic change vs. individual action, vegan monetisation, activism in its many forms, and reasons to stay hopeful.

A Note From 2026

A lot has happened in the years since Jim and Dora recorded this conversation. The December 2019 UK general election Dora references, which she and many others hoped might be a turning point for climate policy, returned Boris Johnson with a substantial majority, and environmental ambition in government largely stalled in the years that followed. The "11 years" climate deadline Dora cites reflects the scientific framing of the time; the window hasn't got any wider since, and the urgency she describes has only deepened. On the corporate side, BlackRock, whose CEO Dora cautiously praised for his 2018 letter calling for more sustainable business values, has since significantly retreated from its ESG commitments, largely under political pressure from the American right, a retreat that perhaps illustrates Dora's own point about the limits of working within the existing system. And on the Amazon, the picture has been mixed: the election of Lula in Brazil in 2022 brought renewed protections and a measurable slowdown in deforestation, offering at least one of the rays of hope Dora was looking for. The questions she raises here, about systemic change, collective action, and what we owe each other and the planet, remain as open, and as pressing, as ever.