Uploaded November 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Once a year, Thailand hosts the world’s largest vegan event. It’s called the Jay Festival, and for nine days and nine nights, the streets of the Kingdom are covered with vendors hawking meatless delicacies.

The story of Jay Festival is well known, yet the more we read about it, the less it made sense. Why does veganism only apply for nine days a year? Why does the Thai Buddhist establishment permit even monks to eat meat? And why does this Buddhist holiday honor non-Buddhist Gods?

To find our answers, we ended up falling into a rabbit hole that took us all the way back to the very beginning- the first society ever to swear off meat, and the religious chaos that would accidentally trigger.

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0:00 - Introduction
1:18 - "Vegan"
3:22 - The Vegetarian Society of Bangkok
5:19 - Two Sides
6:38 - Ancient India
8:40 - Jain Food
11:59 - The Rise and Split of Buddhism
14:02 - Tofu, Tempeh, and Tea
16:47 - Today's Fried Chicken
19:32 - Jay
21:45 - The Nine Emperor Gods
24:07 - Yaowarat During Jay
25:53 - Food, Morals, and Hypocrisy

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Video Credits:

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