The early 1960s and 1970s saw a major shift in environmental consciousness and animal awareness, led by pioneering women—and in this episode we profile them all. The first was Rachel Carson, whose book Silent Spring (1963) helped launch the modern environmental movement. The second was the Quaker Ruth Harrison, whose book Animal Machines (1964) was the first work to expose factory farming, and, tellingly, for which Rachel Carson wrote the foreword.

The third was the novelist Brigid Brophy, whose op-ed in the London Times first introduced the phrase “animal rights,” and who argued for the moral consideration of fishes. The fourth was the philosopher Roslind Godlovitch, who first alerted utilitarian Peter Singer to Harrison’s book, which changed the trajectory of his thinking about animals, and who herself, with Singer, the co-founder of the Oxford Group of philosophers, who galvanized thinking about animals in the 1970s and 1980s. The fifth was Carol J. Adams, who conceived the ideas that would form her groundbreaking The Sexual Politics of Meat (1989) while taking classes from the radical feminist theologian Mary Daly in 1974.

In these episodes, we meet these women—whose collaborative and brilliant work has been so often overlooked in the history of animal advocacy since 1960. We’ll also hear from lawyer and writer Jim Mason, who toured American factory farms with Peter Singer as research for Animal Liberation (1975) and Animal Factories (1980). And we’ll hear from a hungry otter, too.

Episode 5 is available on all seven of the podcast links above.