Want a philosophy or worldview that's grounded in reality and has compassion for all sentient beings (mostly humans and other animals)? Then you might find Sentientism interesting. It's "evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings." In this podcast, you'll hear about "what's real" and "what matters" from a wide range of celebrities, academics, activists, writers - and interested lay people like me. Find out more at https://sentientism.info/ or join one of our open-to-all, global community groups, like: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism
Ronen Bar is a social entrepreneur and the co-founder and former CEO of Sentient, a meta non-profit for animals focused on community building and developing tools tosupport animal rights advocates. He is currently focused on advancing a new community-building initiative, The Moral Alignment Center, to ensure AI development benefits all sentient beings, including animals, humans, and futuredigital minds. For over a decade, his work has been at the intersection of technological innovation and animal advocacy, particularly in the alternative protein and investigative reporting sectors.In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?"Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.00:00 Clips01:11 Welcome02:40 Ronen's Intro- Social entrepreneur "using storytelling to promote reason and compassion for all sentient beings"- Investigative journalism (care homes then slaughterhousesin Israel and abroad)- Leading the Sentient NGO, including using on-animal investigative cameras to "enhance animal storytelling... of particular named animals" not just the story of a slaughterhouse- Alternative protein non-profits- The Moral Alignment Center "making sure that #ai is apositive force for all sentient beings"- "What is good?... I don't think those questions are asked enough in the AI space"- Starting new fields and communities- How the advent of powerful AI forces us to revisit thesefundamental "what's real?", "what matters?" and "whomatters?" questions- The ethical question is neglected in AI, but "it is in the minds of people... Ilya Sutskever... Ray Kurtzweil... Sam Altman..."07:23 What's Real?- Growing up in Israel "a very religious country" but in a secular family- Wider relatives #orthodox and ultra-orthodox- Asking self "what do I know for sure... 100%...? the obvious answer is subjective experiences at this moment"- Being less sure of everything else but "my subjective experience is certainly true"- #illusionism ? "It's funny to think of it [subjective experience] as an illusion because subjective experience is the only information you will ever receive in your life"- "Science is just the discipline... of trying throughrationality to predict the subjective experiences of humans" (even the results of scientific measurements come through our experiences)- JW: "So if it is an illusion it's still all we've got!"- "Starting from your own subjective experiences... itactually brings you more compassion... "29:40 What Matters?36:00 Who Matters?41:03 A Better World?01:33:20 Follow Ronen:- Ronen on the EA forum- Ronen on LinkedIn- Moral Alignment Center on LinkedIn - Alien Journalist Dictionary- Email: ronenbar07@gmail.comAnd more... full show notes at Sentientism.info.Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form.Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Anders Reagan is a peace entrepreneur, philosopher, academic, and technologist. He is founding director of the Peace and Conflict Science Institute (PACS), an academic think-tank and advocacy organisation with special consultative status at the United Nations that aims to put peace and rights mechanisms on more rigorous, evidence-based foundations. Anders is also an AI Consultant at the University of Oxford.In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?"Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.00:00 Clips01:06 Welcome02:58 Anders' Intro03:58 What's Real?- "My upbringing and emotional impetus for initiatingthe academic journey that I went on... happened because of a clash between a non-theistic, agnostic background and a religious, Christian environment"- Born in Boulder, Colorado "rather liberal"- Agnostic parents, father interested in Buddhist traditions- Moving to Arkansas at 7 yrs old "quite conservative leaning"- "A sudden transition happened with our social relationships... encountering people who had a Christian religious doctrine at such a core place... in their personality"- "Oftentimes the first question you'll be asked is 'what church do you go to?'... and at the time we didn't have any answer"- "It is an ingratiating tactic... These people are so kind and approchable... they're clearly looking for common ground to build off of"- "But when you respond with 'I'm atheist I don't go toany church at all'... the reaction... would be suspicion, confusion..."- "My mum... took the tactic of saying we would 'homechurch'... either indicating that we have no religion at all or we're way more intense than the rest of you" :)- At 7 years old: "That was intense... I didn't haveany concept of god or theism or religion - I'd never heard of any of these things... it was like living through a culture clash even though I hadn't left my own country"- "We eventually did find a home in a Unitarian Universalist fellowship... very welcoming of what they called liberalreligion... people who had found themselves ostracised by other congregations... LGBTQ+... Muslims... the Wicca faith... they would congregate in this space... exchange ideas... trying to find common ground across all of these different religious doctrines... I found that to be very enriching"- "Sunday School programme which offered a survey ofreligions. By the time I finished that programme... I felt like I had a pretty thorough understanding of the full range of religious and spiritual traditions"21:54 What Matters?42:14 Who Matters?01:09:40 A Better World?01:32:30 Follow Anders- Andersreagan.com- PACSInstitute.org - Anders' LinkTree- Anders on LinkedIn- andersjreagan@pm.meAnd more... full show notes at Sentientism.info.Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form.Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Mike Berners-Lee is Professor in Practice at Lancaster University and director and principal consultant of Small World Consulting. His books include How Bad are Bananas?, The Burning Question and There Is No Planet B and he is a contributing author to The Climate Book created by Greta Thunberg. His latest book is A Climate of Truth.In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?"Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.00:00 Clips01:02 Welcome03:03 Mike's Intro- "A professor of what... I'm not really quite sure... a professor of the future?"- Academic: Climate change, carbon flows, sustainable food systems, AI, technology- Small World Consulting "help organisations to respond to the environmental and wilder polycrisis that we are accelerating towards"- "Trying to create a better world for humans and other beings to live in"- From climate change to "the climate emergency... crisis... breakdown"- From trying to deal with climate change in isolation to..."all these things are just so joined up... climate... nature... food... population... social questions... politics... economics..."- "You can't deal with that separate from questions about what matters, who matters, does truth matter... you have to go deeper and deeper..."- Philosophy "I'm very pragmatic about it."- "It's important to work at all of these levels at once"- "I lose patience [with fellow academics] when they lose contact with everyday reality"- "How much of how we basically think and how we basically run society is fit for purpose... and how much we need to go back to the drawing board?"- The Anthropocene "the era in which suddenly it's humans that are so powerful"- "How we do economics... politics... how we think... it all dates back to a time when we could just expand our activities... the world was a robust playground... we could get away with anything we liked... Now we're right up against the stops... a hard physical boundary"- "We've given ourselves enormous physical power and wejust haven't given ourselves, yet, the wisdom with which to wield that power"- "We're like babies running around with machine guns"09:52 What's Real?- Mathematician parents "they also went to church"- "They asked a lot of questions [about religion]... they were not literalists"...21:53 What Matters?34:00 Who Matters?51:05 A Better World?01:24:30 Follow Mike: - "A Climate of Truth" A very simple guide to what's going on in the world…"- Mike on BlueSky @mikebernerslee “I'm on BlueSky and I'm not on X… Please do avoid any social media in which you do not trust the owner… please switch right now”.- Mike on Sentientism.infoAnd more... full show notes at Sentientism.info.Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form.Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Heather Browning is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Southampton. Her primary research interests are animal welfare, ethics, and consciousness.Walter Veit is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Reading and an external member of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy at the Ludwig MaximilianUniversity of Munich. Much of Walter's recent writing has been on animal minds, welfare and ethics, as well as evolution.As we've already covered our standard Sentientism "what's real?", "who matters?" and "how to make a better world?" questions in our previous conversations in episodes 48, 54 and 158, here we focus on Heather and Walter's new book "What Are Zoos For?"In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?"Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.Find our previous conversations with Walter and Heatherhere, here and here.00:00 Clips01:12 Welcome- Heather's episode 54, Walter's episodes 48 & 15802:15 Intros (see bios above)- Heather "How do we study what's happening inside theminds of animals... what the world is like for them... the ethical implications"- Walter "I study the diversity of minds... in animals... neurodiversity... in humans... in AI systems"- "Our zoo book... how should zoos run... take a non-anthropocentric perspective"03:40 What Are Zoos For? And Who Are They For?- The range of human views about zoos: entertainment /conservation / fascination vs. exploitation- Heather's background as a zookeeper and a zoo animalwelfare officer- Combining an understanding of zoos from the inside plusphilosophy- Instead of the zoo industry vs. total animal liberation"a more balanced perspective... from the point of view of the animals and not just human ethics"06:44 Pillars of Human Zoo Justification- Entertainment, conservation, education and research- "There's definitely been a shift over time"- "In the beginning they were very much places of entertainment. The original proto-zoos were owned by rich and powerful people... to demonstrate their power"- "This history... entertainment... domination of animals... leads people to be very concerned about what zoos do"- Monica Murphy & Bill Wasik episode08:35 Types of Zoo Today- "There's a great diversity of zoos... we're not just defending all zoos as they currently exist"- Best practices, improving welfare standards "they should increase"16:15 Challenges to the idea of “good zoos”25:52 Zoos, the wild, agriculture, companions, sanctuaries35:50 Parallels with human situations?44:25 The life histories of zoo animals59:55 Should human animals just leave other animals alone?01:10:12 What can we do?01:11:44 Follow- What Are Zoos For?- Heather Browning- Walter Veit And more... full show notes at Sentientism.info.Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form.Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in ourgroups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Natalie Bennett is a politician and journalist who was the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales from 2012 to 2016. She was given a peerage (Baroness in the UK House of Lords) in 2019 and is working to abolish her own post bycreating an elected upper legislative chamber. Her journalism in Australia, Thailand and the UK has been published in the Bangkok Post, The Guardian, TheIndependent, The Times and many other newspapers. Her latest book is "Change Everything: How We Can Rethink, Repair and Rebuild Society".In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?"Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.00:00 Clips01:09 Welcome03:03 Natalie's Intro- "Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle for really formal occasions - this is not a formal occasion"- Leading @GreenPartyofEnglandWales & the "Green Surge"- "If we had a democratic electoral system... a fair electoral system... we would have got 40 MPs... democracy would be a good idea"- Journalism @guardiannews @BangkokPostOfficial - "My first politics is #feminism ... I became a feminist at age 5 because I was told 'because you're a girl you're not allowed to have a bicycle'"- "...consistently being told not only could I not do something because I was a girl... I shouldn't even want to do it because I was a girl."- "I swerved close to a PhD several times and then runscreaming in the other direction"... a broad academic background... agricultural science then Asian studies degrees then a masters in mass communications (Donna Haraway, AI- "What we have now, so called generative AI, is notintelligence it is actually big data... we almost had intelligence 20 years ago and we're still at the point of almost having intelligence... I'm very much an AI sceptic"- The environmental impact of AI- Politicians lacking scientific background is "a huge problem"06:59 What's Real?- "I'm very fundamentally... essentially a materialist... but what life generates is very complex"- Attending a church school & then Sunday School"the polite thing to do... the same grandmother... who didn't think I should ride a bicycle because it wasn't ladylike"- Sunday School at 8-9 yrs: "It was really boring... Isaid to my parents I didn't want to go any more and so that was the end of that"20:10 What Matters31:05 Who Matters54:13 A Better World?01:12:58 FollowNatalie:- NatalieBennett.org- @NatalieGreenPeer “I'm absolutely hyperactive on socialmedia“- Natalie's Change Everything Substack – including a recent article on how the UK government are teaming up with Saudia Arabia on historical preservation as Saudi are working to erase much of their own history- Natalie on WikipediaAnd more... full show notes at Sentientism.info.Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form.Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in ourgroups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Matthew Halteman is professor of philosophy at Calvin University and a fellow in theOxford Centre for Animal Ethics. He wrote Compassionate Eating as Care of Creationand co-editedPhilosophy Comes to Dinner: Arguments about the Ethics of Eating (with Andrew Chignell and Terence Cuneo). His latest book,Hungry Beautiful Animals: The Joyful Case for Going Vegan, was published in November 2024.In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?"Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.00:00 Clips01:12 Welcome- Our Sentientism guest mutuals: Jasmin Singer, Mariann Sullivan, Christof Koch, Elan Abrell, Christopher Sebastian, John Sanbonmatsu...04:19 Matt's Intro- "A kid from the mid-west - my people are agriculture people"04:30 What's Real- "A Mennonite boy... anabaptist tradition of the Christian faith"- "A group... who focuses much more on... the ethics than the meta-physics"- "I remember being really surprised... to realise that other kids had different versions of the Christian faith..."- "The tradition I grew up in was really focused on... god is love and Jesus said... love god with all your heart... love your neighbour as yourself"- "The question in my tradition... was 'are you loving people'... unconditional love, unconditional grace... are you being the hands and feet of Jesus Christ on the ground"- "My family... the group of Mennonite scholars that gets tapped to write the book about Mennonites... my dad was the Mennonite economist... my aunt was the Mennonite feminist theologian..."- "My uncle... wrote a systematic theology...the Catholics and the Protestants had been doing this for centuries and the Mennonites were always focused on what happens on the ground... being the hands and feet of Jesus showing unconditional love to a suffering world."- "I've always thought that arguments about what is real tend to distract us from the real question... how do we show love to our neighbour... lifts up the people who are suffering... brings the people on the margins to the centre"- "Culture wars... debates over worldviews... have not shown a very impressive track record of success in this regard"- "We spend so much time fighting over what is real that we miss the fact that in a lived experiential way we have way more in common than we disagree about"- "For finite, error-prone creatures like us the really interesting conversations are on the ground where we're grieving, where we're suffering, where we're celebrating..."And more... full show notes atSentientism.info.Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More atSentientism.info. Join our"I'm a Sentientist" wall viathis simple form.Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in ourgroups. The biggest so far ishere on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Justine Karst is Associate Professor at the University of Alberta in Canada. As an ecologist she studies the mycorrhizal ecology of forests. She is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Ecology and President of the International Mycorrhiza Society. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips 01:13 Welcome - Justine on the Many Minds podcast - The #woodwideweb 03:45 Justine's Intro - "I'm pretty into mycorrhizas" 04:30 What's Real? - #catholic parents "they both left the church when they got married" - Raised in a non-religious home - Summers with grand-parents who felt "we need to get a healthy dose of religion because we were missing it from all the other months of the year" - "I was and I still am a very curious, curious kid... I was really fascinated by a lot of the [church] stories and the rituals... but there was no time for asking questions." - Bible stories "some of them are extraordinary - they don't always make sense to a kids mind or an adult mind" - Dad "the Spock in the family", mum an artist - Cousins mostly religious. An argument at ~10 yrs old about evolution and whether He Man has more muscles than Justine :) "No - he has the same number of muscles as me - they're just more developed" - Getting in trouble with grandma for telling cousins we evolved "from something ape-like" - "I'm not somebody that ever talks somebody out of their faith... not anti-religion... I deeply respect people's values and beliefs and faith even though it's different... I find it very easy to co-exist with people who do have a faith." - Enjoying good faith conversations with religious people about nature "I really appreciated how he would give me space to ask questions" - "I'm not religious, I don't believe there's a god, but I am totally open to being wrong about that." - "I practice science with a small 's'... I am someone who loves an elegant experiment tied to field observations - that's what I'm here for." - "Some people could say that I'm a reductionist... reduction is kind of a dirty word... but I can kind of live with it." - "There's definitely been some events in my life that do make me pause... is there something else going on here?"... coincidences vs. something else? 52:30 What and Who Matters? 01:19:15 How to Make a Better World? 01:28:40 Follow Justine: - Justine's Karst Lab - Justine on BlueSky - Justine on Twitter “I kind of abandoned that account… I just got tired of the ads and the crappy algorithm”. JW: “That platform almost now seems to be an attempt to destroy public epistemology and ethics – almost the antithesis of what we're trying to do with this [Sentientism] worldview.” And more... full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Jim Mason is a lawyer, journalist and animal rights activist. He was introduced to philosopher Peter Singer, guest on Sentientism episodes 156 and 218, in 1974. Their book Animal Factories was first published in 1980 and revised in 1990. It provides a critical review and photographic documentation of factory farming practices in North America. Jim's book, An Unnatural Order: The Roots of Our Destruction of Nature looks at the historical and cultural roots of the Western belief in God-given dominion over the living world. Jim was elected to the U.S. Animal Rights Hall of Fame in 2001. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:15 Welcome 02:47 Jim's Intro - Raised on an animal farm, milking cows, killing chickens - Vegetarian since 1955 and more recently vegan - Born during WWII, growing up in 1940-50s rural America - Religious indoctrination "a family of Bible thumpers... I had to be in church every time the door was open" - Methodist Christianity - "A dual indoctrination of farm culture... and religion... the most intense Christian indoctrination" - "I was brought up on human supremacy and using animals and animal exploitation as a way of life" - Until early 30's "I never really departed from that agrarian mentality" - "I became an atheist at Sunday School" - Mourning the loss of dog Butch "my main companion... a brother to me" - "I asked the preacher... 'Will I see Butch in heaven?'... he finally droned on... 'No we don't see animals in heaven - animals don't have souls'... By the time the service was over I began to consciously think 'I am an atheist - I don't believe this stuff'" - "I have since graduated from atheism to anti-theism... I don't like any form of theism... it's anti-science... we'll find a better kind of based for our spirituality other than superstition." 06:41 What's Real? - "It's human supremacy. We're made in the image of god. And since I've become an atheist I've realised that we've made god in the image of ourselves... We created a god that looked like us to give us power over the world." - Old Testament upbringing... "[not] Christian Nationalist or fundamentalist... good old mainstream Protestants" - Era of segregation and "women's oppression had not occurred to us yet"... Trad Wives "church, children, kitchen" - God, bible, Jesus "we were sinful and we had to come to church to purge ourselves... a whole system to train us to behave..." 26:56 What Matters? 42:20 Who Matters? 01:02:34 A Better World? Follow Jim - JimMason.website - @JimMasonAUO (“reluctantly – I think it's [Twitter] in it's death throes”) - Jim on Wikipedia And more... full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Peter Singer is a professor of bioethics with a background in philosophy. He works mostly in practical ethics and is best known for his books "Animal Liberation Now" and "Why Vegan?" and for his writings about global poverty. You can find our first Sentientist conversation on episode 156. His new book, Consider the Turkey, is available now from Princeton University Press. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:12 Welcome - Sentientism merch :) - Sentientism in the classroom03:45 Touring China - "If those of us in the animal movement can't have some influence on China... what we're doing in the West is a sideshow" - "China has more farmed animals than any other country in the world and it has really no national animal welfare laws..." - "China's meat consumption has been growing enormously since the country became more prosperous... That's something I felt I wanted to try and have an influence on" - The difficulty of influencing China from an outside perspective - "Try to plant some seeds there... animal ethics... raise some questions about what we're eating..." - "Encourage some of the professors... to teach more courses... practical ethics... animal ethics..." - Boycotting vs. engaging with autocratic states? - "I don't think that [boycotting] is going to lead to any progress... harden attitudes... 'If these westerners don't want to speak to us... we can manage perfectly well on our own'... and they can... It's really important to engage with them." - "It's still possible to make a difference by influencing individuals... a lot has happened because some people have moved away from eating animals... helping to put some pressure on the meat industry and on supermarkets" - "Professors who have quite a lot of autonomy in what they teach... not complete... but... to put on courses in practical ethics and animal ethics" - How are epistemology and ethics different in Chinese culture? - "I don't think anybody made a statement that I would regard as faith-based... referring to god or some divine purpose" although Buddhism / daoism - "Certainly open to the facts... science of animal sentience... nobody questioned that... nobody questioned evolution..." - "Very much like talking to an audience in the west that was university educated where also you don't get very many challenges to a science-based view" - Religion and autocracy/authoritarianism as two different sources of dogmatism? 25:52 Consider the Turkey Follow Peter - PeterSinger.info (and you can chat to PeterSinger.AI there) - Peter's Bold Reasoning Substack - Peter on BlueSky - Peter's Lives Well Lived podcast with Kasia de Lazari Radek And more... full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Noella Williams is a Brooklyn-based freelance culture writer whose writing has appeared in Marie Claire, Teen Vogue, the Washington Post, Vox and elsewhere. Noella's reporting ranges from Black culture to queer identity to intersectional veganism, internet culture, and more. She describes herself as a "journalist, vegan foodie, pokemon trainer, dj, and abolitionist." One of her most recent pieces, for Vox, was "I'm a Black vegan. Why don't you see more of us?" In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 00:57 Welcome - Noella's Vox article - Marina Bolotnikova episode - Sentientism merch & mug :) 03:40 Noella's Intro - Florida to New York - 5 year vegan "a big part of my life... a huge lifestyle change... how veganism has changed me... also been reflected in my writing" - Writing on Black / Queer culture, music, politics, food, home & lifestyle, video games, veganism "whatever interests me" - Birdwatching and catching Pokemon :) 06:10 What's Real? - Growing up in the Florida Bible Belt - Black Baptist Church on Sundays and Wednesdays - Christian school from kindergarten to 8th grade - "Huge involvement in church... school... choir... everything had it's basis in Christianity" - Both parents religious "they're both Caribbeans" - "I am not religious any more" - Agnostic since a year after graduating high school "that also coincided with me going vegan and realising I was queer" - Christianity: "It was what I knew and breathed and slept with... that was everything I knew as a kid" - "I started questioning things more at high school... perhaps middle school" - Being asked to sign a very strict pledge at school: "No secular music... drugs... alcohol... this is kind of wild" - "The misogyny in biblical texts was on my mind a lot... religious figures like a pastor... use the bible as a text to justify... a wife submitting to a husband" - "The homophobia eventually came along... a lot of biblical stuff is very 'man and woman'" - "Things were written by different prophets and... I can't generalise the Bible as a whole but... there's a little bit of irony here... how different these things being said are..." - "Maybe this isn't something I should use to guide my life let alone my moral compass" - "My father has a rule that... as long as I was in his house I have to go to church Wednesdays/Sundays" 24:00 What Matters? 31:40 Who Matters? 50:49 A Better Future? 01:18:05 Follow Noella - NoellaWilliams.com - Noella's Vox Article - Noella's Links on Campsite - @yonoella - Noella on Insta And more... full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Altamush Saeed is an animal and environmental law professor. He teaches Pakistan's 1st Animal Law Advocacy Course and is Founding Managing Partner At Environmental and Animal Rights Consultants, Pakistan's 1st dedicated Animal and Environmental law and policy firm. Altamush is known for his non-profit work on Interspecies Justice for which he has won multiple awards. He also co-founded the Charity Doings Foundation, a non-profit that aims to save all life, be it human, animal, or the environment in Pakistan. Amongst many other advisory roles he serves as a strategic academic advisor and advocate for Muslim Veganism and Environmentalism at Green Islam. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:11 Welcome - Islam and non-human animals - Animals as survivors/victims of natural disasters 03:00 Altamush's Intro - 3 masters degrees: animal, environmental and human rights law "I always see the three disciplines as together" - Teaching law - Founding and running a non-profit and a law firm - Becoming a documentary film-maker 05:00 What's Real? - "I've had multiple identities" - Growing up in Pakistan - Doctor parents... a good education... privileges - "Animals are kind of invisible" - "this anthropocentric mindset... fuelled by the idea that you're unable to see beyond your own needs... until they're met at a proper scale... it's hard for people to see beyond human beings... that's the lived reality in Pakistan." - Pakistan as an Islamic nation "part of our constitution... we have laws on Islam... laws on animal rights in Islam... codified, however not implemented properly." - "Initially I didn't see animals... that's how I started my non-profit" - "A cat came into my life... even though I physically rescued her she was the one who mentally rescued me... that's the day when I started seeing animals for who they really are..." - JW: Religious belief based on faith/revelation/authority or on evidence and reason? - "It's actually both of them... I do believe in the text... the Quran... taught about that from a very young age... we pray... community... good human rights stuff" - "All Muslims are khalifa which is basically a ruler. But the actual word is steward... a sovereign who has responsibility for everything..." - "That's not normally how it's read... you are the most superior being... everything has been made for you... you have divine permission to do anything including eating animals." - "I used reason... the most driving reasoning for me was the mercy of Allah... there are constant references that his mercy overpowers his anger" 13:05 What and Who Matters? 17:00 Who Matters? 41:52 A Better World? 01:04:48 Follow Altamush - Altamush on LinkedIn - Altamush on Instagram - @earcpakistan - Charitydoings.org And more... full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Thom Norman is the co-founder of FarmKind, a new non-profit focused on raising money for some of the best farmed animal charities. FarmKind is designed to help donors both have a big impact for animals and donate to the organisations they care about most. It allows users to split donations between an expert-recommended super-effective charity and their favourite charity, then provides a bonus on both. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 00:56 Welcome - Cameron King episode 02:30 Thom's Intro - Co-founding @farmkind - "What's the thing I can do best... to tackle the issue of factory farming?"... "We believe the single biggest thing... is to donate to the right charities... we help people to do that" - Finding charities that do great work and making donating to those charities super-easy 03:44 What's Real? - A very, very religious family "church is an integral part... of their worldview... also social structures" - "Broadly a positive thing" - Anglican, Church of England Christian - Asking philosophical questions that "hit up against some bible verse or god - and that's the end of the conversation" - Conversations with some Christians about animals: "Humans are made in the image of god... we are above other animals... that is kind of the end of the conversation" - "As someone who increasingly... took the suffering of animals very seriously... I don't think that's where the conversation should end... and for many Christians that's not where it ends" - "You can think that humans matter more than animals and still think that animals do matter" - "We can still agree on basic things like 'suffering is bad'... 'animals suffer'... 'if there are things we can do to prevent suffering'... 'then it seems obvious that that's a good thing'" - The people working within religious communities to emphasise more universal sentiocentric compassion... #ahimsa, #stewardship, care and compassion, mercy - Reading religious apologetics and secular points of view - "I don't know what I think... a pragmatic pragmatism?... what version of the world do I see that allows me to operate... to move through it... even if epistemically or ethically that's not 100% perfectly logically sound" - Humility... "We need to be clear that we're not sure that we're right" - Donating to the most effective charities "is not the only thing people care about"... so FarmKind allows donation splitting... head and heart donations - The tension between different values... more rational and more intuitive / personal - "It's very important we don't disregard those emotional reasons" 15:03 What Matters? 26:00 Who Matters? 38:24 A Better World? 01:08:37 Follow Thom and FarmKind - Farmkind.giving (sign up to the newsletter!) - @FarmKindThom - Thom on LinkedIn And more... full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Bill Wasik is the editorial director of The New York Times Magazine. Monica Murphy is a veterinarian and a writer. Their previous book, Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus, was a Los Angeles Times best seller and a finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. Their latest book, "Our Kindred Creatures" makes a case for seeing the fight against animal cruelty as a crucial thread in America's history. Readers are introduced to the activists, scientists, andmoguls who helped create our modern views on animals, with our intense compassion for certain species and ignorant disregard for others. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:09 Welcome - "Our Kindred Creatures" as an example of Sentientist History? 03:30 Monica and Bill's Intros - Writing two books together: Rabid and Our Kindred Creatures - "...Monica's interest in animals [as a veterinarian] that I think got me interested" - Telling the story of how the animal welfare movement came to the USA in the decades after the civil war - The emergence of the modern way of thinking about animals "some of them are like members of the family... others of them in huge numbers are excluded..." - "Everyday people in cities... were living among all kinds of animals in a way that feels very foreign to us today" 07:18 What's Real? - Meeting in a church youth group, Bill's family more devout than Monica's - "It was not a creationist church... there was a sense that we weren't going to doubt what science was telling us just because we were part of a religious tradition that had a different story" - "'In a world in which there's no god why should we care at all about human suffering?'... runs implicitly through the book - many of the people we write about are religious" - Links between religion, the abolition of slavery and animal ethics "though of course the slavers themselves had various bible verses that they waved around" - "Today we're Unitarian Universalists... go to church on Sundays and Bill sings in the choir" - "Our Unitarian church is a very humanist church... animals don't' come up much... some other Unitarian churches have animal affinity groups" - "There are also a lot of atheistic Unitarians... our church leans atheistic... the younger people even more so" - "Whatever concept of god that I have wouldn't conform with traditional ones - it's more notional" - "We came back to religion because of our son... he was a very loud atheist... a disrespectful atheist... we wanted him to expand his thinking" - "Even though we occupy three different spots in our family on the atheistic side of the spectrum we're very at home in this church" 25:27 What and Who Matters? 52:43 A Better World? 01:12:27 Follow Bill and Monica - @murphydvm - @billwasik - Our Kindred Creatures And more... full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Richard Twine is Reader in Sociology at Edge Hill University in the UK, working at the nexus of critical animal studies, environmental sociology, the sociology of climate change and gender studies. He is co-director of The Centre for Human Animal Studies, an interdisciplinary forum for research and activities that engage with the complex material, ethical and symbolic relationships between humans, other animals, and their environments. Richard is the author of many articles, papers and books for both academic audiences and the wider public, including "The Climate Crisis and Other Animals". In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 00:43 Welcome 02:34 Richard's Intro - Philosophy, psychology, history, natural sciences, bio-technology and sociology - Ecofeminism (Carol Adams, Val Plumwood), Regan, Singer, then Critical Animal Studies - The "flawed awakenings" of climate change awareness and non-human animal ethics 05:28 What's Real? - Non-religious, implicitly atheist, socialist parents and household - Attending Sunday School with a Christian friend "It didn't have any effect - it was just another space to play" - A religious teacher who "made us recite the Lord's Prayer at the start of every day... that was odd... that kind of drove me away from religion" - Asking for an exemption from religious education at secondary school "Probably sociologically limited because it's actually good to learn about religion... but I already knew that wasn't something that I wanted to spend my time doing" - A materialist outlook "when we die, we die... decompose and feed the rest of nature... a kind of beautiful thing... I don't believe in an afterlife" - Avoiding dogmatism about materialism. Interested in near-death experiences - "I'm on board with that aspect of Sentientism - reason and evidence... but I would also add that my atheism isn't simplistically rationalistic... elements of romanticism in it... Shelley... beauty and wonder of nature giving us some kind of meaningfulness in our lives... that's enough." - "There's a poor track record with religiosity and conservative ideology... distanced me from it... used to justify patriarchy, anthropocentrism, colonialism, capitalism etc." - A hobbyist interest in UFOs and UAPs "stems from my childhood... subscribed to a magazine called 'The Unexplained'... I've always had that interest but ultimately - give me some evidence." - Conspiracy theories and cover-ups "I'm sceptical but I'm fascinated" - Richard's "'Alien' Disclosure and Critical Animal Studies" blog post 26:48 What Matters? 32:59 Who Matters? 58:29 A Better World? 01:21:12 Follow Richard - RichardTwine.com - @RichardTwine - The Centre for Human Animal Studies at Edge Hill University - @CfHAS - The Climate Crisis and Other Animals And more... full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Jesse Tandler is Managing Director of New Roots Institute. He oversees programming, people operations, and implementation of New Roots Institute's strategy. Jesse is a writer, academic, and has been an educator for nearly two decades. He earned a B.A. from UC Berkeley in 2002 and an MFA from the New School in 2007. Shortly thereafter, he began teaching high school students about the ethics of our food culture. Later, during his PhD work, Jesse continued to include environmental and animal ethics on the syllabi of his undergraduate classes at the City University of New York, where for five years he taught philosophy, literature, writing, and rhetoric. In 2017, he moved to Los Angeles to apply his years of research and educational experience in the non-profit sphere. Outside of New Roots Institute, you may find him practicing yoga, appreciating beauty in its myriad forms, reading in one of his preferred languages, or teaching food politics at UCLA. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:09 Welcome 02:55 Jesse's Intro - Continental philosophy, teaching food politics and running New Roots Institute (was the Factory Farming Awareness Coalition) 03:32 What's Real? - Jewish pre-school - "I assumed there was a god because that's what the adults told me" - At 6-7 yrs old "It seemed slightly improbable to me because there was no other evidence for it" - At 4-5 yrs "I started getting really concerned about death and what was going to happen when I died... the annihilation of my consciousness" - "I asked my dad and he said 'of course there's no god'... I felt validated actually" - Next 15 years "a very atheistic worldview... probably some contempt for religion and people who believed in something that seemed completely impossible to me... I was pretty loud about it..." - "Very few atheists around me..." A 9th grade debate: "Is there a god... it was pretty much me against the class" - "It became a point of identity for me... in middle school and high school" - "Some of my points of identity - like being a meat-eater - had changed drastically" - College at Berkeley, psychedelics "It opened me up to the possibility that I might just not be seeing everything... my five senses were limited... I had a circumscribed intellect... it was unlikely I had access to whatever the reality out there is." - "Us looking at the universe is like a dog looking at the TV... the dog has no idea what's going on with the TV... I barely have any idea..." - 2 layers: phenomenon "what we experience" then "something else going on that we just don't really have access to - maybe some kind of spiritual access.. intuitive access.. but we can't figure out empirically." 20:38 What Matters? 35:38 Who Matters? 46:47 A Better World? 01:19:29 Follow Jesse: - New Roots Institute - Jesse on LinkedIn - @jmtandler And more... full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Arran Stibbe is Professor in Ecological Linguistics at the University of Gloucestershire. In his teaching and research he focuses on how language makes us who we are as people, and the role of language in building the kind of society we live in, using discourse analysis and ecolinguistics. Ecolinguistics examines how language encodes the stories we live by, and shapes how we see ourselves and our relationship with other animals and the earth. This involves linguistic analysis of a wide range of discourses, from advertising which encourages people to buy unnecessary and ecologically damaging products, to the inspirational language of nature writing. He is founder of the International Ecolinguistics Association. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:00 Welcome - "I'm a massive fan of Sentientism. It's a crystal clear worldview that you're expressing... it's an important message that needs to get out there." - Arran's book "Econarrative" 03:39 Arran's Intro - Ecological linguistics... "I get to analyse any kind of discourse that I want to... then I critique the stories that are emerging... based on my ecological philosophy... respecting living beings and wanting them to flourish" - Discourses from Men's Health magazine to the Pork industry handbook to nature poetry, creation stories... "positive ones and negative ones" - "Searching for new stories to live by" - Consulting with @greenpeace and others on messaging - Stories... Ben Okri: "Stories are the secret reservoirs of values... if we change the stories that individuals and nations live by then we change the individuals and nations themselves" - "If we pay careful attention to the language we can understand these stories that fundamentally underpin our unequal and unsustainable and quite cruel society" - Stories as "cognitive models in our minds that influence how we think, how we talk and how we act"... individuals and across a culture e.g. "The masculine man being strong & not showing emotions & eating lots of meat... a hegemonic story" - Narrative: "A more traditional kind of story you might tell to children at bedtime... sequences of events..." - "I would go with this #meme idea... but I think it's even more fundamental than that... so much of what we're thinking is part of this wider social cognition..." - "Is it a simplification to think of a separate being... you wouldn't exist for more than a few minutes on your own in space... your continued existence depends on breathing..." 11:27 What's Real? 26:35 What and Who Matters? 46:15 A Better World? & much more. Full notes at sentientism.info. 01:12:52 Follow Arran - Arran at the University of Gloucestershire - The Stories We Live By – the free online course - The Ecolinguistics Association - Stibbe, Arran (2024) Econarrative: ethics, ecology and the search for new narratives to live by. London: Bloomsbury - Stibbe, Arran (2021) Ecolinguistics: language, ecology and the stories we live by (second edition). London: Routledge Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
This episode is a cross-post of my discussion with Louisa Jane Smith on "The RE Podcast". Her audience are some of the most important people in the world - religions and worldview teachers and their students. Make sure you go and subscribe there too. As well as hosting the podcast Louisa is a Religious Education Teacher and Head of Life Skills at a school in England. She a member of the National Association for Teachers of Religious Education (NATRE) executive committee as well as being a public speaker and author. Louisa was also my guest on Sentientism episode 205 if you want to hear more about her philosophical journey so far. If you're a teacher or are just interested, why not join our next free webinar on "Teaching the Sentientism Worldview"? I hope you enjoy listening as much as I did talking - feedback and suggestions are always welcome. As ever I'm only one Sentientist so others will disagree! I also wanted to extend a warm welcome to everyone who has recently joined one of our online Sentientism communities. More people join us there every day - whether they think of themselves as Sentientists or not. The groups are open to everyone. Just search for the word "Sentientism" on your favourite platforms and you'll find us there. FaceBook is our biggest group so far with 2,300 members from over 100 countries. Soon we'll have 14,000 subscribers on YouTube too. It's great to have your support there. Also check out the new "In action" section of Sentientism.info. We're building pages there about Sentientist Education, Politics, Rights, Economics, Justice, Agriculture, Environmentalism and more - come and help us work out what a more Sentientist world might look like. A final thank you to Denise and Tarabella who found our secret Sentientism Patreon and are kindly contributing to our production costs - helping us steadily nudge the world towards "evidence, reason and compassion". Thanks for listening! Follow Louisa - @TheREPodcast1 - The RE Podcast - Louisa on Instagram - The RE Podcast on Facebook Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Maneesha Deckha is a law professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. Her work initially spanned human rights, injustice, feminist theory, post-colonial & decolonial theory and later, inter-species justice and its links and intersectionality with human social justice. Maneesha founded and directs the Animals & Society Research Initiative at Victoria University. She is the author of the book “Animals as Legal Beings”. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 00:55 Welcome - Maneesha on The Animal Turn and Think Like a Vegan podcasts hosted by: - Claudia Hirtenfelder Sentientism episode - Emilia Leese Sentientism episode - SentientistEducation 03:05 Maneesha's Intro - "To consider how different oppressions for different groups, both human and animal and even other non-humans, are systemically structured and are related and overlap - and also how they might be different" - Working long before and since the "Animal Turn" in academia "when not too many people were discussing animals" - Research: animals legal subjectivity, animal ethics, feminist perspectives "connecting work... looking at issues of gender, race, culture, species in tandem" - "Addressing questions that affect women, that affect children, that affect animals - through that intersectional lens" - Starting and Directing the Animals & Society Research Initiative at Victoria University - Public facing projects e.g. the "A Deeper Kindness" documentary 06:55 What's Real? - Growing up in a Hindu household... celebrations, stories - The radical diversity of Hinduism "all these gods and goddesses and quite a few of them are multi-species... Lord Ganesh" - University courses on Hinduism and Buddhism - "I always looked at that... as myth" - The ethos of learning... being introduced to modernist, scientific & secular views - "I approached the world in a more secular, atheist frame... atheist understood as being compatible with Hinduism... not really believing in these gods and goddesses but somewhat happy that these stories are there... the diversity of thought that it brings up" - "When we have a physical sensation or emotional sensation that it's real... that pain is real... that suffering is real even if it's psychological" - Learning about social construction and the influence of language at university "we cannot access... reality... without mediating that access through concepts, through language" - "We can't really know something 100% for certain... because it depends on how we frame it on the interiority of our mind which of course almost always depends on language" 26:30 What Matters? 37:25 Who Matters? 01:07:47 A Better World? 01:15:50 Follow Maneesha - “I'm of that age where I'm not too excited about social media” - Maneesha at the University of Victoria - A Deeper Kindness documentary series - Human Children, Nonhuman Animals, and a Plant-Based Vegan Future Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Joel is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University New Orleans. After completing his B.A. in philosophy at the University of Akron, he was a United States Peace Corps Volunteer in Panama working in environmental education and sustainable development. He completed his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Tennessee. Joel was a scholar-in-residence at Wesleyan University in 2013 as the New York University Animal Studies Initiative's Animal Ethics and Public Policy Fellow. He held visiting assistant professorships at Washington State University and Binghamton University, SUNY, before coming to Loyola. His main areas of research are applied ethics, especially environmental ethics, and the philosophy of science. One of his many academic publications is "Minding Nature: A Defense of a Sentiocentric Approach to Environmental Ethics". In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 00:50 Welcome - Joel's PhD thesis re: #sentiocentrism - Our Sentientism FaceBook group where Joel is a member 02:47 Joel's Intro - Asst Prof of philosophy at Loyola - Director-elect of the environment programme - Coaching the Ethics Bowl - Institutional Review Board and animal usage ethicist - Peace Corps volunteering in Panama - Analytic philosophy focus - Applied, environmental, animal ethics - Philosophy of science and biology - British #empiricists - Grew up as a "latch-key kid" in Akron countryside "being in and messing around with nature" & rescuing animals ("Boy" turned out to be a girl...) - Mother a nurse "seeing... the fragility of life very early on" - Dad sold musical instruments "grew up around music and art" - "All manner of outdoor adventuring... rock climbing, kayaking" - "I'm a pretty hard-core board gamer... Evolution... Wingspan... nature themed board-games" - "Within philosophy applied ethics can be a bit of a perjorative... not real philosophy" - "I'm still trying to delay answering the question 'what do I want to be when I grow up?'" 11:02 What's Real? - Raised in a minimally #protestant #Christian family "church on Sundays and that was about it" - Mum was "more spiritual than religious". Church for the singing and community more than belief - Dad: "We go to church because that's what we're supposed to do" - An inauthenticity about it "going through the motions" - "I've never been religious or spiritual" - "I think we're all born atheistic at least in the sense that we don't have any active beliefs in anything supernatural... we start as empiricists..." - Being puzzled as a kid at realising most humans are religious "I thought I might have been broken!" - Sunday school after church at 10 yrs old hearing about Noah's ark "there's so many species of beetle - this doesn't make any sense at all... basic critical thinking" 32:53 What Matters? 51:50 Who Matters? 01:22:19 A Better World? ... and much more (full show notes at sentientism.info) Follow Joel - Joel at Loyola - Joel on LinkedIn - Joel at PhilPeople Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Mark Humanity is a long-time vegan activist. He currently lives on the edge of a rainforest in New Zealand and is on the Board of the Vegan Society of Aotearoa, New Zealand. Mark has been involved in animal rights since a teenager, initially in Ireland's embryonic movement and later in the much more developed UK movement. A hunt saboteur for many years, Mark has been vegan since 1989 and got involved with the NZ Vegan Society via his vegan outreach Initiative called “Vegan Living Auckland”. He is currently helping raise two plant-based children and has a background in mental health nursing. Mark is the author of "The Humanity Trigger". In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 00:34 Welcome - Tom Harris episode - Corey Lee Wrenn episode - Philip McKibbin episode 02:13 Mark's Intro - Anarcho-punk and vegan activism - Now “anarchish” - Writing “The Humanity Trigger” about two centuries ofdirect action for animals in Ireland - Vegan Society Aotearoa board - 20 years as a psychiatric / learning disabilities nurse - Now stay at home dad raising two vegan kids on the edge of a rain forest 03:28 What's Real? - “Things that still exist irrespective of whether people believe in them or not – are what's real” - Raised in a staunchly Irish Catholic family and society - “our sense of reality growing up was filtered through the eyes of a deeply authoritarian… fascist-adjacent dictatorship of the Roman Catholic church” - “The government were simply puppets at the beck and call of the church when the church chose to intervene” - Attending church run by Redemptorist priests / monks “on the surface they preach very worthy things… giving to the poor… vows of chastity & poverty & obedience…” - The monthly Redemptorist “Reality” magazine: “Very medieval thinking… resurrections… ascensions to heaven… virgin births… that was all reality” - “I tried to believe it because it was what everyone around me was saying was true.” - “Anyone that even thought or even asked questions about it was deemed to be dangerously… on the slippery slope” - “If you haven't been brought up in a strictly religious environment it's very hard to imagine what it's like when everyone around you believes in the devil… god… jesus… heaven and hell…” - Transubstantiation “Jesus does come down into that bread – his body is in that bread… it is literal – it is not meant to be taken as a metaphor” - “I tried to believe it but I couldn't” - Comics, 2000AD, Pat Mills, Alan Moore “I read into those scripts… Flesh… Strontium Dogs, some of Judge Dredd… non-human animals had agency… were lead actors in these scripts… were the heroes and villains” - The influence of punk on other Sentientism guests: Delci Winders, Kristof Dhont, Nick Pendergrast, Nicola Harris, Luke McGuire, Nico Delon, Jamila Anahata, Tom Harris 19:05 What and Who Matters? 34:30 A Better World? ... and much more (full show notes at sentientism.info) Follow Mark - Mark at Earth Island Books - The Humanity Trigger Book - The Humanity Trigger Web Site - The Vegan Society Aotearoa Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Robert Grillo is an activist, author and speaker for all species. He is also the founder and director of Free from Harm, a non profit dedicated to helping end animal exploitation. He founded Slaughter Free Chicago in 2018 which has now grown into the Slaughter Free Network. As a communications professional for over 25 years, Robert once worked on large food industry accounts where he acquired a behind-the-scenes perspective on food branding and marketing. His book, Farm to Fable: The Fictions of Our Animal-Consuming Culture, explores the powerful narratives driving our culture of mass animal consumption. Robert's other published works include contributions to The Humane Hoax, Caged: Top Activists Share Their Wisdom on Effective Animal Advocacy and Circles of Compassion: Connecting Issues of Justice. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 00:55 Welcome - Free from Harm's "Humane Farmer" transfarmation stories: https://freefromharm.org/humane-farmer/ 03:25 Robert's Intro - Author, speaker, activist - Free from Harm's mission: "advance a #plantbased food system and challenge the dominance of animal agriculture through bold and innovative grass-roots action." - Evolving from an on-line resource to "on the ground activism" 05:16 What's Real? - At 10 yrs old father passed away. Creative, jazz, painting, architecture - Exploring dad's library... ways of thinking, ethics - "He was a non-believer - not a spiritual person" - Mother also non-religious - Ordinary middle-class upbringing - "I was definitely an outsider... I didn't really fit in... now I embrace it... causes me to question... being open to new ideas and scepticism... I feel like it's a strength" - The risks of scepticism spilling over into conspiracism - "Sometimes it's a small group of people that sense an injustice... that mainstream society doesn't... that's the role of activism... awakening and triggering of popular support to bring justice." - JW: Why epistemology matters "it's not just a popularity contest..." it's the weight of evidence - Spirituality / supernatural / transcendent?: "We have so much to deal with here that I don't have time for that stuff... I'm not seeking it out at this point in my life" 12:56 What Matters? - Experiencing father's suffering and death as a child. "I developed a sense of empathy" - "I didn't really come into an understanding of the suffering of other animals... until much later in life" - Emotional (e.g. empathy, care) vs. intellectual (utility, justice, rights) moral influences - Sympathy, empathy & compassion 17:28 Who Matters? - The risks of care/empathy in narrowing our moral scope - "I came to realise what the real conditions were for the animals that suffer in our food system... their suffering was like our suffering." - Watching documentaries and @mercyforanimals investigative footage - "Humane, sustainable farming?... empty marketing promises." 28:44 A Better Future? 01:07:30 Follow Robert - robertgrillo.com - https://freefromharm.org/ - @Free_from_harm - @robert_grillo Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Louisa is a Religious Education (RE) Teacher and Head of Life Skills at a school in England. She is host of the RE podcast, an RE Subject reviewer for Oak National, a member of the NATRE (National Association for Teachers of Religious Education) executive committee and the Surrey SACRE (Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education) as well as being a public speaker and author. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 00:45 Welcome - Kids today are "The most enlightened generation... so socially aware... so aware of, for better or worse, the bigger picture... so passionate about things that really matter." - Jamie's appearance on The RE Podcast talking about Sentientism - "The reason we love RE [religious education] is because we love those big questions... this is like a proper geek out for me!" - The balance between neutrality and authenticity for RE teachers... how much to talk about your own worldview 05:45 Louisa's Intro - 22 years of RE teaching in UK secondary schools - The RE Podcast "little lockdown project... I'd been wanting to do something creative... the first dedicated podcast for students and teachers of RE" - "I had no idea what a podcast was... the RE community... have been so supportive... now nearing 4 years of doing this... I absolutely love it" - Religious Education "fairly unique... to British schools... a national entitlement... every child up to the age of 18" - How RE has evolved from religious instruction "how to be a good Christian" to now: "religion and worldviews - everybody in the world has a worldview... we all stand somewhere... show respect... compassion for people who think differently... religious and non-religious worldviews" - NATRE exec - Oak National online teaching platform 09:19 What's Real? - #catholic mum, #atheist dad, brought up Catholic (christening, school, church) - "You just accept the reality that you are given by your caretakers. And that was then reinforced at school... reinforced at church... with my friends..." - Despite atheist dad: "At no point did I really consider that atheism was a valid worldview" - At 8 yrs old "My dad had this big conversion... from being a complete and utter atheist and hating religion to becoming quite an evangelical Christian... he had a religious experience... he heard a voice... felt a pressure... waves of energy going through him." - Going to protestant evangelical church with dad "so very different from my Catholic version... quite exciting... my whole family left the Catholic church and went to the Protestant church." - "It was quite fundamentalist... to the point of it being quite judgmental" - "University was the first time I really questioned anything... taken out of my little religious bubble... exposed to... alternative ideas" - "A lot of the things I'd been told just didn't hold up... going to hell... attitudes to homosexuality..." 35:34 What Matters? 46:15 Who Matters? 01:11:26 A Better Future? 01:30:50 Follow Louisa - @TheREPodcast1 - The RE Podcast - Louisa on Instagram - The RE Podcast on Facebook Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Leigh Claire La Berge is Professor in City University of New York's English Department. Her work focuses on aesthetics and political economy. Her first book, "Scandals and Abstraction: Financial Fiction of the Long 1980s", tracked the convergences of finance, realism and postmodernism in literature and culture throughout the 1980s in the United States. Her second book, "Wages Against Artwork: Decommodified Labor and the Claims of Socially Engaged Art" explored the twin rise of new forms of socially engaged art alongside what she called "decommodified labor," or labor that is not recompensed. Along with Alison Shonkwiler, Leigh Claire is the co-editor of the collection, "Reading Capitalist Realism". She recently published a book about animality and economy entitled "Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary". She is working on a new book called "Fake Work: How I Began to Suspect that Capitalism is a Joke" about her experience with corporate labor, Y2K, and management consultants. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 00:58 Welcome 02:32 Leigh Claire's Intro - "In an English department you don't just find people who read novels or who write novels... but also who do philosophy, critical theory..." - "Relationship between economic forms and the constitution of reality" - "... different cultural objects... artworks or films or TV shows or novels... mediate between what we perceive as economically real and what might be economically possible" #economics - #philosophy major, working for a management consultant in Manhattan - Seeing the corporate world... accounting... profiteering... record-keeping "I was genuinely surprised... this cannot be the way that capitalism works... but it is!" - Studying #politicaleconomy "manifestly politicised understanding of economic forms and economic structures" - "Scandals and Abstraction" on financial scandals represented in film & literature - "Wages against artwork" on art, economy and also animals (e.g. an exhibit of live birds) - Thinking about animals' presence in the economy - Explaining political economy to artists "What if you were talking to cats?" - The Marx For Cats video series "The cats loved it!" - Writing "Marx for Cats" - "A history of the capitalist world system... as told through cats, with cats and for cats" - "Cats are also amazing anti-work creatures... anti-authoritarian creatures" - "Cats have been understood to be anti-authority for at least 1200 years" - Royal lions, wildcat strikes, sabotabbies... - Animals that can be companion and work animals because "capitalism... it both structures our external reality and our most intimate, internal, familial realities." 12:03 What's Real? - "By the time I was 6 or 7 it was clear that church was not going to be for me" ... and much more (see sentientism.info for full show notes) 29:15 What Matters? 33:57 Who Matters? 58:11 A Better World? 01:13:22 Follow Leigh Claire - @marxforcats on Twitter - @marxforcats on Instagram- Marx for Cats book - Leigh Claire at CUNY - Marx for Cats video series - Watch out for “Fake Work” Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
This is the audio from our "Teaching the Sentientism Worldview" webinar. The webinar was aimed at religious education / worldviews / philosophy teachers in the UK but will hopefully be of interest to everyone! Let us know @sentientism on any social media platform if you'd like to attend a future webinar and / or follow Sentientism on Eventbrite to be notified of future events. Here's the video recording on the Sentientism YouTube (don't forget to subscribe!) if you want to be able to see the slides I'm referring too. I'm happy to send these out if of interest so just get in touch if you'd like a copy. Here are more #SentientistEducation resources - feedback and ideas always welcome! We also have a dedicated Sentientist Education FaceBook chat here. I think you might have to join the main Sentientism FB group first to access it. All are welcome! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
John is an activist academic, a green political economist and former Green Party politician in Northern Ireland. He is Professor of Green Political Economy in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen's University Belfast. His main research interests span politics, economics, the ethics of sustainability/ sustainable development, green moral and political theory, green political economy, vulnerability, resilience , civic republicanism and green politics, Irish/Northern Irish politics, Q Methodology and sustainable energy politics and policy. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what's real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:01 Welcome - "Summer in Ireland... best weekend of the year" :) - Zion Lights episode 03:34 John's Introduction - Green political economy - Co-chair the Belfast Climate Commission - "A recovering politician" led the Green Party of Northern Ireland - "I've always been politically active... I feel compelled... at this moment of crisis... a polycrisis... climate, ecological, social... animal welfare horrors of our current social order" - "A dissident political economist - I don't accept either #capitalism or endless economic growth" - "Our current economic system has now passed its sell-by date... industrialisation, globalism, the horrendous suffering of the more-than-human world" - Pessimism amongst climate scientists "describing in many respects... an uninhabitable world in the future" - "We cannot continue in a business as usual manner in the academy while the world is on fire... we need to practice what we teach" - "This time, not only of crisis... of great opportunity... we can fix so many problems... science... political will... justice focus" (global, inter-generational and inter-species justice and equity) - "We have all the solutions... What we lack... is the political will and the ethical courage of our convictions" 07:33 What's Real? - Growing up in working class Dublin - "Not just as a lapsed but a completely collapsed #Catholic... I've been an #atheist all my thinking life" - At ~10yrs old asking "What's the evidence for this off-world, male, white deity?... Not really finding satisfactory answers from the priest or from teachers." - "I do hold some affection for Catholicism..." - The denial of evolution & #creationism among some Northern Irish Protestants and Evangelicals. Often #climatechange denialism too - Flaws of Catholicism: abuse of women & children & abuse cover-ups "effectively brought down the church... in Ireland... from its position of power" - General acceptance of science within Catholicism - "A form of poetry... religious perspectives as beautiful stories... they're fairy tales... beautiful but they're not real... can have certain morality lessons" ... and much more! 21:50 What Matters? 39:54 Who Matters? 55:43 A Better Future? 01:27:03 Follow John: - @ProfJohnBarry - John on LinkedIn “I like subverting LinkedIn – there's far too many shiny, happy business-type people” - John's MarxistLentilist Blog - John on Academia.edu - John at Queens University Belfast Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
Zoe Weil is the co-founder and president of the Institute for Humane Education (IHE). She is considered a pioneer in the comprehensive humane education movement. She has authored eight books both for adults and children, including her latest, "The Solutionary Way" – available for pre-order now! Zoe writes the Becoming a Solutionary blog at Psychology today. She has made numerous TV and radio appearances and has given six TED talks, including “Extending our Circle of Compassion.” Her first Sentientism conversation with me was back on episode 37. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what's real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:15 Welcome - Our first conversation: https://youtu.be/4NaSEJ4q8NQ - Most good (MOGO), least harm - Star Trek as a utopian inspiration - Mr Spock and Dr Spock "both of them have had a big influence" 03:42 Zoe Introduction - Co-founder and President of The Institute for Humane Education - IHE: "Educate people to create a world where all humans and animals and nature can thrive... huge, huge goal and vision" - K-12 schools and graduate programmes with Antioch University - "It's going to keep my busy my entire life" 04:37 The Solutionary Way - Subtitle "Transform your life, your community and your world for the better" - "An antidote to polarisation... actually solving the problems that we face... in a way that is good for everyone" - "We are not a single issue organisation... justice and compassion needs to be spread for everybody so that the world can be truly humane" - Solutionary lens "you approach problems as solvable" instead of "us vs. them approaches" - Critical thinking "what's true, what's false... lies at the foundation" - Systems thinking "see the connections... identify causes... leverage points..." - Strategic thinking - Creative thinking - Solutionary Framework: 4 phases, 12 steps - Prioritising problems & identifying the one you want to solve "Learn and learn then really dive deep... identify a narrow enough problem that you have the capacity to solve" - The Solutionary Way in schools... 4th graders have big concerns but might not be able to address them in full... so what can they "feasibly solve"? - "We have identified a leverage point which is the educational system through which we are working on... all problems" - "K-12 educational system is fundamentally working at the root cause of every other societal system" - "What happens in our educational system prepares us to be citizens" - "A profoundly important core strategy... at the same time many of the problems that we are facing are so immediate... we can't wait" - "Sometimes the people who care most... wind up doing work that is counter-productive... they may burn more bridges than they build" - Dealing with activist burnout and depression - Polarisation and populism in modern discourse... denial of a shared reality... denial of shared values... blaming instead of solutions 17:52 A Shared Reality? 25:17 Shared Values? 57:29 Thinking About Solutions 01:05:50 Education 01:17:10 Follow Zoe and buy "The Solutionary Way"! - June 25th book launch (pre-order now!) - The Solutionary Way - @ZoeWeil - The Institute for Humane Education Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
Devon Docherty, Carol Jasper and Maja Cullen are psychology researchers from the University of Stirling. Carol is a lecturer, Devon is a teaching assistant and Maja is a research assistant. Devon is also a researcher, writer and animal advocate with Surge and Earthling Ed. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what's real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:09 Welcome 03:25 Devon, Maja and Carol Introductions - Psychology (human-animal interactions, clinical health) and animal advocacy - Their papers on the paradoxes and dissonances of vegetarianism and pescetarianism - Quantitative research: "science doesn't have to be about numbers... if we want to understand people... we need to do that with words... listen to their experiences... their own narratives... we all have positionality." - "Science teaching so often is based entirely in pseudo-objectivity... subjectivity can be really powerful." 06:53 What's Real? Carol: - Growing up in a #presbyterian family. Attending Sunday school. Exploring celtic / pagan mythology and spirituality. - Reading the Bible "a really beautiful book... but how can the old testament... be real?" Dad's response: "a way that people used to understand the world around them... in the absense of other explanations" - Now constructing narratives in a scientific domain - Belief in the supernatural? "I'd be really hesitant to say that we have all the answers... consciousness... I want to believe that there's a ghost in the machine although I know there isn't" - Celtic confluence of the ephemeral and the tangible "intertwined together... I very much believe in the concrete real but also I like to think there's things we don't know and we don't understand yet... we should always be trying to find out more." - "Maybe it's just... physical energy... but I like to think there's something beyond us... hope there's some other... maybe there's some hope that they could come and help us get everything right." Devon: - "It's really complex being a human sometimes." - #catholic family and school "very strict catholic teaching" - "Religion never really resonated with me" - "The teacher was telling us that animals don't have souls... That was the moment that I realised that I really do have these strong views." - "I had a dog at the time... she was just as full and complex of a being as I was." - Moving away from religion to "do my own thing" - "I'm pretty terrified of death" - Focusing on morality "That's my thing - rather than anything outside of the realm of what we can see and how we can treat other people" - JW: Psychological motivations for religious belief: fear of uncertainty, fear of death, a hope that god has a plan - "I got to learn more and more about the Catholic church and realise how much I disagree with it" - JW: Epistemological and ethical reasons people move away from religion Maja: - Growing up in Germany, then moving to Scotland - "It was rare... to meet someone who wasn't christened" ... and much more! (full notes at sentientism.info) 47:55 What and Who Matters? 01:12:05 A Better World? 01:37:15 Follow! Carol: @DrCarolJasper, @veganfoodtrainerMaja: @maja_cullen_Devon: @devonmdocherty, Devon on LinkedIn, @earthlinged Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
Michael is a developmental and synthetic biologist at Tufts University where he is the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor. He is also an associate faculty at the Wyss Institute at Harvard. Michael is a director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University and the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology. He is also co-director of the Institute for Computationally Designed Organisms. Michael's Levin Lab focuses on "Embodied Minds: understanding diverse intelligence in evolved, designed, and hybrid complex systems" and works "at the intersection of developmental biology, artificial life, bioengineering, synthetic morphology, and cognitive science". This work includes the bioengineering of novel living machines and has clinical applications in regenerative medicine. Michael has editing roles at a number of academic journals and has published more than 350 papers. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what's real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:18 Welcome - "We biologists have plenty of spherical cows" 03:50 Mike's Introduction 04:37 What's Real? - A "not religious but highly spiritual" Jewish background - Hebrew school " I harrassed everybody with questions.... how souls are supposed to work...the hard problem of consciousness... the answers weren't terribly forthcoming." - At home "an emphasis on inquiry... asking big questions... things that matter" - "The question of 'how do I know?' figured prominently in my childhood" - "Rationality is an amazing tool but one can also ask questions about its limitiations... what are the things that we're not seeing" - Being sceptical about the approaches you're bringing to a problem - "I pretty much only have one supernatural belief which is that the universe is understandable... Once you've taken that on everything else becomes possible... I can't think of anything that would be truly supernatural..." - "We are finite beings" trying to understand reality then "you have to ask yourself 'how is this working out?... is this helping me have a more meaningful life... be a more ethical person... have better relationships with others?'" - "I don't really think of myself as a biologist... my fundamental commitment... has been to understand embodied mind" - "I'm interested in cognition, intelligence and inner perspective in a wide range of diverse systems... some of which are alive" - "I think cognition is a broader category than life" - "It just so happens that life is, so far, our best example of how that can scale" - "Molecular networks scaling into cells scaling into tissues scaling into organisms and beyond" - Collective intelligence, goals... "biology is an excellent playground for these things" - Cognition, mind etc. "All of these cognitive claims... where you think something is on the spectrum... how much mind... I don't think these are terms describing particular systems. I think these are terms describing our intended relationship to them... an engineering interaction protocol" 51:04 What and Who Matters? 01:08:53 A Better World? Follow Michael - drmichaellevin.org - thoughtforms.life - @drmichaellevin Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
Emilia is co-author of the book Think Like A Vegan and host of the Think Like a Vegan podcast. She is involved in the Birchfield Highlands re-wilding project in Scotland, edits the quarterly magazine for The Heath & Hampstead Society in London and has developed life skills and ethics workshops for underserved youth. Professionally, she has been a corporate finance lawyer for over 20 years. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what's real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:25 Welcome - Shared Sentientism guests with @thinklikeavegan : - Troy Vettese episode - Josh Milburn episode - Aysha Akhtar episode 04:41 Emilia's Intro - Corporate finance, vegan writing / podcasting, rewilding in Scotland, magazine editing 05:45 What's Real? - Growing up in Italy - #catholic school "which I hated... it never made sense to me that only some people... would go to heaven" - Letting teachers know at 5-6 years old "this doesn't make any sense"... "they kind of stopped asking me questions" - Dad is an Indian philosophy professor - Investigating eastern and western traditions and religions "I said 'none of it matters'... it matters what I do here and now" - "People have their traditions and I love that...but for me ultimately I don't need to have any of that" - "The fundamental of all of them is love... just practice it" - "That love then turns in to a respect and a valuing... of sentient life... and everything that's around us" - "Plants & funghi... even minerals and mountains... they may not feel anything but that doesn't matter... it's all connected" - "The fate of the least among us... is extremely important" - "Bees and insects... how they go, we go" - "I don't need an outside force to tell me to do the right thing" - "A certain basic fairness... treat everyone the same unless there's a morally relevant reason to treat them differently" - "I have personally witnessed things that I cannot explain... there's lots of things I don't know... so I've decided that's fine" - "You have to leave space for changing your mind... we learn everything!" - JW: How broken epistemology can lead "good" people to do terrible things - The ethical and epistemological errors that justify animal agriculture - Maneesha Deckha's "beingness" concept - "We as advocates have to be better at our own rhetoric" - "We live in a capitalist, non-vegan world... so there will be inherent things that you are not going to be able to solve" - "You don't need to be well versed in philosophy... we can all get there" - Examining what's driving our actions... fear (of others, change, deistic reprisal, social norms, admitting we were wrong) - JW: Uncommon common sense re: ethical and epistemic basics - Humans building convenient hierarchies "as long as you're at the top" - "Animal agribusiness has never been nice... 10,000 years ago... 5,000 years ago... there's always objectification, exploitation and death... that doesn't change" - "To the being - you only have one life" 26:20 What Matters? 53:13 Who Matters? 01:00:42 A Better World? 01:22:00 Follow Emilia - EmiliaLeese.com - Think Like a Vegan Podcast - @emiisgoodeating Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
Keith Tucker is founder and Executive Director of Hip Hop is Green, a nonprofit organization on a mission to support holistic wellness and transform urban communities environmentally. He has been a visionary and social entrepreneur for over 30 years. He has worked with hundreds of businesses, youth groups and community organizations and many icons in the entertainment business as a creative promoter and an ambassador for the culture of hip hop. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what's real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:19 Welcome 02:44 Keith's Intro - Founder and ED of Hip Hop is Green - "I'm a father, a brother, a friend, a husband and currently I'm a human being living on earth" 03:19 What's Real? - Growing up in Seattle, raised by mother, grandmother and grandfather - Religious grandparents - Going to #baptist church - Attending strict #catholic school, taught by nuns "I remember sister Sheila - boy she was mean" - Catholic high school in California - "Some rough times." Drugs (from 13 yrs old), street-life "in with the wrong crowd" - Grandmother and mother "I'm so blessed and fortunate to have had them in my life... gave me a great foundation of morals and values and patience and determination" - Lending a bike and having it stolen "I'm a very giving and nice person... I have to beware... trust has its limits" - 31 years clean & sober now - "My values who I am today were actually both shaped by good things that happened to me and bad things that happened to me" - "Just really good people", not because of their religion... - "...spiritual as well... my grandmother used to call it motherwit... I still have that today... I just get a feeling... it's always 100% right every time... everybody has it to... some people listen to their motherwit more than others" - "Back in the early '70s it was a different world... in school they could paddle you in class... in front of everyone... there was no such thing as non-bullying" - Being taught the Bible "I never really questioned anything... absorbed it into who I am... although I wasn't following most of the Bible to be honest at that point... I was more interested in having fun and partying... not really focusing on why I'm here, who I am and what my purpose is" - Last time used drugs. Motherwit voice spoke very loud "you may not live through this." Attending a treatment centre, guided by the motherwit voice "it's not luck" - April 7 1992 "I need to change my life... I kept that commitment all the way through to today... the weight had been lifted off me." - Finishing treatment, moving to the Texas countryside - Starting to figure out "who is Keith Tucker... what is my purpose?... Baptism through fire." - "I am not Christian or religious today.... but I am very spiritual and I believe in god." - "I walk in my purpose and in god's purpose every single day... helping people and serving people is what my purpose is" - "The people that were enslaved... were introduced to the Bible... as a system to keep their minds enslaved." - "Using religion to chain people's minds" 29:30 What Matters? 47:30 Who Matters? 01:05:40 A Better World? 01:28:24 Follow Keith - Hip Hop is Green - @hiphopisgreen - HHIG on Instagram Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
Hakeem Jimo is co-founder and CEO of Veggie Victory, Nigeria's first plant-based food tech company. Hakeem and his partner, Bola Adeyanju, also founded Nigeria's first vegan restaurant, V Café, and now run the VChunks meat alternative product company - designed to help veganise Nigerian cuisine. Hakeem is also country director for ProVeg Nigeria. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what's real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 00:36 Welcome 01:59 Hakeem's Intro - Nigerian father, German mother, growing up in Germany, now in Nigeria - 10 years of veganism and vegan entrepreneurship - Establishing ProVeg Nigeria 03:45 What's Real? - Not much supernatural thinking in small-town Germany "there were more cows than humans" - Lutheran evangelical protestant society but "we went to church twice a year... it was not a very religious background" - Nigeria: "A completely different ballgame... the spiritual, religious world plays a much bigger role in Africa... religion is everywhere here... and I like it... In Africa I started to pray... you don't have that sense of control." - Christianity, Islam as well as natural / traditional religions from the pre-colonial era 08:33 What Matters? - "Every day I see these two sides", Germany (enlightenment, studying philosophy) and Nigeria (travelling as a journalist in W.Africa: "a completely different way people see the world") - Only recently exploring the Bible (via podcasts) "just to understand historically" - Finding references to treatment of animals in the Old and New Testaments - Nigeria: "Religion is much more taken... by the letter" vs. the German way "it's just a parable" - "If you're coming from a western background you just shape your belief system" vs. "people are handing over authority to another level" - "How do we actually convince people... whether I'm in Germany or Nigeria?" - "I walk through the streets here... it's funny... even though everybody is black and in Germany everybody is white I see features... very similar behaviours" - "I see really the universal parts... that's where things come together... trying to change the world and not just a few enlightened people" 13:16 Who Matters? - Step-father in Germany was a farmer "neighbours got together and bought a pig... the butcher coming to the farm" - Hearing stories about factory farming "they were using nicotine to disinfect the chickens... there's something wrong here"... overfishing... foot and mouth disease - "Nobody in rural Germany was talking about sentientism or veganism " - University in Hamburg "there was an alternative meal in the canteen"... a vegetarian partner aware of history of US colonialist animal agriculture - Travelling to West Africa and eating #streetfood "when I'm on a #vegetarian diet I don't get sick!" vs. getting typhoid fever from a road-side meat barbecue - "You start learning... what's the implications... I realised... this is good... let me become vegetarian" 24:35 A Better Future? 48:41 Follow Hakeem - https://www.linkedin.com/in/hakeemjimo/ - https://veggievictory.com/ “We are winning with the veggies!” - https://proveg.com/ng/...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
This episode is a cross-post of my discussion with Richard Brown on his Consciousness Live YouTube podcast. Make sure you go and subscribe there too. Richard is a professor of philosophy at City University of New York. His work is focused on the philosophy of mind, consciousness studies, and the foundations of cognitive science but he also works on the philosophy of language, metaethics, philosophy of physics, logic and the philosophy of logic, as well as the history of philosophy. As you can imagine, this made it an enjoyably brain-stretching conversation for me. Richard was also my guest on Sentientism way back on episode 57 if you want to see the tables turned the other way around. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I did talking with Richard - feedback and suggestions are always welcome. As ever I'm only one Sentientist so others will disagree! A warm welcome to everyone who has recently joined one of our online Sentientism communities. More people join us there every day - whether they think of themselves as Sentientists or not. The groups are open to everyone. Just search for the word "Sentientism" on your favourite platforms (FaceBook is our biggest group) and you'll find us there. Also check out the new "In action" section of Sentientism.info. We're building pages there about Sentientist Education, Politics, Rights, Economics, Justice, Agriculture, Environmentalism and more - come and help us work out what a more Sentientist world might look like. A final thank you to Denise and Tarabella who found our Sentientism Patreon and are kindly contributing to our production costs - helping us steadily nudge the world towards "evidence, reason and compassion". Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
Laura is Education Officer at The Vegan Society and Chair of The Vegan Society's Education Network. She is a qualified primary school teacher and well known for introducing the phrase ‘vegan-inclusive education' to the education sector. Laura worked for several years as the UK's only vegan inclusion education specialist under the pseudonym ‘Primary Veducation' and continues to offer training to school staff on what it means to be vegan and how to appropriately teach and treat vegan learners in their care. Laura also empowers vegan learners and parents/guardians by facilitating the creation of peer-developed and reviewed resources and offering supportive interventions. Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:14 Welcome 03:20 Laura's Intro - Supporting vegan learners & their families in education (vs. discrimination, being misunderstood) - Former primary school teacher "my first love" - Supporting the educators. Building the world's first and only CPD (continuous professional development) training course helping educators in being "vegan inclusive" - Leaving teaching after becoming vegan "I felt that the curriculum clashed with my ethics too much" - Vegan daughter starts school "They told me that they weren't going to provide a lunch for her... I was crying around the supermarket getting a packed lunch... my daughter is the most compassionate, kind & loving girl... I think she's being discriminated against." - Working with friends to create the UK's first vegan menu in her school - Starting "Primary Veducation" as a free consultancy - "Theorising vegan-inclusive education" - "To live through that [discrimination] was mind-boggling... I felt like I was by myself... on my own... all of these things were just completely flipped... I had to find this voice... I believed I was the only vegan the village... who would even care?" - Finding a vegan community. A wave of vegan parents wanting help "I realised it's not just me... shouting in this echo chamber" - "Everything I'd been taught... by people who I respected... my parents, my teachers, religious leaders... told me that one thing was correct... it wasn't" - "Everything felt undone... it did feel utterly heartbreaking... something good has come out of it" 11:44 What's Real? - Jewish family. Russian-Latvian-Irish-British - Grandmother born Christian, converted to #judaism - Attending Jewish school, Synagogue and Sunday School - Mother "wanted my brother and I to be the most Jewish we could possibly be so we could fit in... Bar and Bat Mitvah's" - "Religion... become something... neither of us... are particularly driven by anymore" - Brother & family atheist - Valuing Jewish community, tradition, culture, food... "it's familiar" - "A lot of the just have blind faith and don't question... god did this, god created that, we live the way the 10 commandments tell us to - anything other than that is just outrageous" 25:30 What & Who Matters? 44:57 Making a Better World? 01:17:12 Follow Laura - Laura at The Vegan Society - @laura_diamondo - Veducated:An Educator's Guide for Vegan Inclusive Teaching ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
This episode is a bonus cross-post of my discussion with fellow Sentientist Amy Halpern-Laff and Jon Moscow on their Ethical Schools podcast. Make sure you go and subscribe there too! A warm welcome to everyone who has recently joined one of our online Sentientism communities. More people join us there every day - whether they think of themselves as Sentientists or not. The groups are open to everyone. Just search for the word "Sentientism" on your favourite platforms (FaceBook is our biggest group) and you'll find us there. Also check out the new "In action" section of Sentientism.info. We're building pages there about Sentientist Education, Politics, Rights, Economics, Justice, Agriculture, Environmentalism and more - come and help us work out what a more Sentientist world might look like. A final thank you to Denise and Tarabella who found our Sentientism Patreon and are kindly contributing to our production costs - helping us steadily nudge the world towards "evidence, reason and compassion". Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
Jimmy Videle is a farmer, naturalist & researcher. He is author of The Veganic Grower's Handbook and co-founder of NAVCS-Certified Veganic. His writing has appeared in many publications including CounterPunch, Countercurrents & LA Progressive. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what's real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:01 Welcome 03:08 Jimmy's Intro - 20 years in farming - A naturalist... observes and scientifically tries to understand nature "my passion". Over 10,000 hours of field research "a lot of time outside" - Author of The Veganic Grower's Handbook "how to grow... without the products of animals or having any animals on the farm" 04:50 What's Real? - German Roman Catholic mother, Italian Catholic father - Church every Sunday, communion at 5-6 yrs old - 12 yrs old heading toward confirmation - Only child, parents divorcing, a tough patch at high school "It's probably a little easier if you have siblings... I went into my own little bubble... I always felt very comfortable alone" - Attending weekly catechism, dad asks if Jimmy still wants to go... "Dad... I really wanna just play baseball... this was our religion!" - "When you're really worried about what people are thinking about you you spend less time delving into the bigger questions... at that time it was the purpose of... 'I want people to like me'" - Music scholarship to college in California... meeting lifelong friends... hippy influence... "this idea that love could rule all... the biggest moment - flash of my life... wow love" - "The idea of god... I was never totally comfortable" - Having to confess sins "I didn't have any... I'd have to make something up..." - "I always believed that there was god... but I always had a tough time with this god... always judging us... always making us feel bad... like victims... and we're only going to be saved when we die... when we have a chance... to go to heaven" - In my 19-20''s "I realised that wasn't going to be my path" - The #iching & "Animal Spirit Guides" by Steven Farmer "Maybe nature is also telling me something... nature has a message and all I have to do is listen and learn" - "I have my hands actually in the earth... I'm feeling something that most people don't" - Living on top of some of the earth's oldest rocks "I also want to believe that that rock has knowledge from 4 billion years ago" - "For me... a bacterium is as sentient as I am" - "Maybe it is all natural... maybe there's nothing mystical about it at all... start thinking about what it is to be a wolf or a deer or a hemlock tree... how can we see the world then?" - "To even believe that we are the only sentient being on the planet... it's as arrogant as we can get" - "What I believe now... #animism... the original religion... maybe it's the way nature looks at the world... every living being has a breath or a soul... anima..." 32:03 What and Who Matters? 01:09:03 A Better World? 01:41:32 Follow Jimmy - Facebook - The Veganic Growers Handbook - observatory.wiki/Jimmy_Videle - humaneherald.org/publications/ - Certified Veganic - Boileau Biodiversity Crowdfunder ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
Troy Vettese is an environmental historian who specializes in environmental economics, animal studies, and energy history. In 2019 he completed his doctorate in history at New York University. From 2019 to 2021, he worked at Harvard University as a William Lyon Mackenzie King postdoctoral research fellow. He has collaborated with Drew Pendergrass, an environmental engineer, on numerous projects including their book Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics . Troy is currently revising his dissertation on neoliberal environmental thought into a book, tentatively titled 'Beyond Externality'. In addition to his academic work, Vettese writes on a wide array of environmental topics for a popular audience, and has had essays published in the Guardian, the New Statesman, Jacobin, N+1, Book Forum, and Boston Review. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what's real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:04 Welcome 02:58 Troy's Intro - Half-Earth Socialism "what does it look like to have an ecologically stable society... a good relationship with other beings on this planet and also to ensure a good life for everyone" - The Half-Earth Socialism computer game & maybe a future board-game 05:44 What's Real? - #Ecosocialism and #neoliberalism in conversation with each other - Growing up in a fairly conservative but non-religious household - Being a Young Tory, reading Milton Friedman - In early 20's "a crisis of faith in terms of this conservative worldview" due to the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis - Reading Marx and New Left Review - Exploring the environmental crisis - A sensitive child, then a toxic masculinity phase as a teenager (callous, eating meat, machismo), then, alongside the crisis of faith in conservatism, a wish to return to childhood passion for nature - Gravitating towards ecosocialism - Didn't "grow up with red diapers" (being brought up in a left wing family) so feeling inoculated as knows the political right very well as "I came from the right to the left" - #greenwashing measures "I wanted to understand where these ideas had come from... no one had done an intellectual history of these things" - Challenging the common leftist view that the right & neoliberalism doesn't have any real intellectual depth "I took it more seriously than most socialists" - "I thought the left should have more concrete ideas of their own... match the rigour of these conservative ones" - "'We'll figure it out after the revolution'... that's not enough" - Mother who ran for the Green party in elections - Not religious now - "Sceptical of thinking that there's one true path... one true way of relating to each other or to animals"... relativism, Kuhnian (paradigms)? - The neoliberal view of the market as the optimal information processor - Being rational but also appreciating the spiritual/subliminal/subjective? "that's why I'm a big bird watcher" - The "spark bird" that gets you into #birdwatching - #deleuze "Becoming animal" vs. #Haraway's notion of "becoming with" 17:50 What Matters? 27:33 Who Matters? 54:15 A Better World? 01:29:55 Follow Troy ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
Tom is an internationally acclaimed artist, published author, and social justice activist. He is an expert and consultant on animal liberation history and strategy, and the global animal rights movement. His first book, Your Neighbour Kills Puppies was released in March 2024. The book is the previously untold story of one of the world's most powerful social justice campaigns, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC). Tom became involved in the animal liberation movement at the age of fifteen when he attended his first hunt sab. Over the years that followed he devoted his life to helping animals and co-founded one of the UK`s most successful regional animal rights organizations, SARC (The Southern Animal Rights Coalition). Tom is a regular contributor to Forca Vegan magazine, and other periodicals. Under the professional name ‘Tattoo Tom‘, Tom has also achieved a highly successful and acclaimed career as an artist. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what's real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 00:49 Welcome - Nicola Harris and Anita Krajnc episode @PlantBasedTreaty 03:18 Tom's Intro - 20 years in the #animalliberation movement - Founding the Southern Animal Rights Coalition - Closing a military research facility, a puppy farm, several chicken units - Getting fur and foie gras out of shops - #SHAC (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty) co-ordinators "the largest and most dynamic grass-roots animal liberation campaign" - "The model we came up with was so effective... that the American and British governments were both really terrified... while I don't think any of us necessarily set out to create a blueprint that could end capitalism... I think we probably came dangerously close" - "The government in the UK essentially framed us and set us up on bogus blackmail charges... I received a 5 year prison sentence for... a lawful campaign... I served 2 years." - 3 years on bail before-hand and 2.5 years on license afterwards with a tag "which was probably the toughest bit... I wasn't allowed to talk to my brother... a constant threat that they were going to send me back to prison." - Since release, finding a very different animal liberation world - Lord Sainsbury's intention "to eliminate the anti-vivisection movement... he succeeded for a good decade" - "The movement I knew didn't exist... new groups like the Save Movement, Animal Rebellion, DxE... started forming" - Taking up tattoo artistry because "I was essentially banned from talking to any other activist... any other vegan... all of my friends I wasn't allowed to talk to them" - "Stabbing people for money" :) 10:10 What's Real? - "I actually dropped out of a philosophy degree to do more animal rights activism" - Growing up in a non-religious family, probably atheists - Christian grandparents "it was good for them... I saw the positives" - Cartographer dad, psychologist mum, quite analytical / logical focus - "I didn't learn when to stop following that logical path" - "I was raised to be kind to animals and respect nature... to value life" 26:13 What and Who Matters? 01:04:53 A Better Future? 01:45:00 Follow Tom TomHarris.meShacjustice.com@Tattoo_tom ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
Dr Sabine Brels is a lawyer dedicated to advancing animal protection law worldwide. She teaches international and comparative animal law and published books on animal related-issues in French and English. In the last 15 years, she directed the Global Animal Law (GAL) projects and worked as legal advisor for the World Federation for Animals, the Eurogroup for Animals, and Compassion in World Farming. Besides her consulting work, she is currently leading the World Animal Justice NGO that she founded in 2023. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what's real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:09 Welcome - Sabine's previous appearance on episode 66 02:15 Sabine's Intro - #internationallaw , #animallaw and #animalrights 03:17 International vs. national law - #icc #icj #unitednations - Laws of genocide, humanitarianism, crimes against humanity... - Policy, law, regulation, enforcement - Regional law e.g. EU, Asia 07:34 World Animal Justice - Bringing non-human animals into international law - "An animal law revolution" - #CrimesAgainstAnimality or #sentientity ? - "Massive crimes against animals happen every day, everywhere worldwide... it's our collective responsibility" - "Every day the entire European Union population is killed... that's a reality for animals... 450 million of animals are killed per day... this is only for food... every second it's 5000 animals killed" - "It's not acceptable when we know that we can do otherwise... that this is avoidable" - Companion, stray, laboratory, sport, working, wild animals "they are all victims of crimes against animality" - Crimes against humanity: massive murders, sequestrations, enslavement, deportations, torture, violence including sexual violence "this is what is actually happening against animals every day... and it can still be legal in some places" - Anti-cruelty and pro-welfare laws: "usually to reduce the suffering of these exploited animals or to condemn some acts of cruelty... against companion animals" - "1/3 of countries today still have nothing to protect animals - not even the basic anti-cruelty laws" - "Some of the most cruel practices are still legal in some countries..." force-feeding for #foiegras and #bullfighting in France are "a kind of torture for animals" - The potential for a global consensus at least against some of those most egregious practices "That's wrong for animals but also for our human dignity" - India and some South American countries: have granted some rights to great apes or large mammals based on poor treatment in zoos - WAJ: "Go faster and higher... criminality against animals is huge" - Welfare / anti-cruelty approaches "we are not taking this concern for the gravity it is" - "If we were doing the same to humans... it would seem unbelievable that it would be still legal... we would cry about genocides and crimes against humanity" - WAJ's network of experts and NGOs spanning 5 continents 28:22 WAJ Expert Network and Strategy37:00 Impacts on Animal AgricultureFollow Sabine and @WorldAnimalJustice : - WAJ contact: contact@worldanimaljustice.org - WAJ Website - WAJ introductory Video - WAJ Linkedin ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
This episode is a bonus cross-post of my discussion with Leslie Rosenblood, host of Podcast For Inquiry. Podcast For Inquiry is produced by the Center For Inquiry Canada. Leslie describes it as a podcast for scientific, skeptical, secular, rational and humanistic (and maybe now sentientst) inquiry. Make sure you go and subscribe there too. I also wanted to extend a warm welcome to everyone who has recently joined one of our online Sentientism communities. More people join us there every day - whether they think of themselves as Sentientists or not. The groups are open to everyone. Just search for the word "Sentientism" on your favourite platforms (FaceBook is our biggest group) and you'll find us there. Also check out the new "In action" section of Sentientism.info. We're building pages there about Sentientist Education, Politics, Rights, Economics, Justice, Agriculture, Environmentalism and more - come and help us work out what a more Sentientist world might look like. A final thank you to Denise and Tarabella who found our Sentientism Patreon and are kindly contributing to our production costs - helping us steadily nudge the world towards "evidence, reason and compassion". Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
David specializes in European philosophy, the history and philosophy of science and the philosophy of animal minds. He is interested in the problem of consciousness, the study of lived experience and the value of the humanities. David lives in San Francisco, California and is Associate Professor of Humanities at San Francisco State University. He has previously worked at Johns Hopkins University, Laurentian University, Dillard University, and Emory University (where he received his Ph.D. in 2015). He is the author of "When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness" and co-host, with Ellie Anderson, of the Overthink Podcast. His work has been covered by The New York Times, CNN, ABC, The Atlantic, Le Parisian, El País, and Forbes, among others. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what's real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:14 Welcome - Our two way para-social relationships - Sharing #naturalistic thinking & an interest in expanding our #moralcircle based on #sentience 04:48 David's Intro - Continental philosophy, teaching humanities, animal minds/ethics/politics, the science of consciousness & co-hosting @OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy - "There's something equally mysterious & fascinating & alluring... about the minds of other creatures." - Links between animal academia & animal movements (rights, welfare...) "Most of it is happening beyond the ivory tower of higher education... it's happening on the ground with people who are committed to the goal of #animalliberation" 08:10 What's Real? - "It's hard to know how much weight to give to those early experiences..." - Raised #catholic - A small town in Mexico where "Catholicism was the economic driving force of town life... 5-10 thousand people that would be overrun by a million religious pilgrims 5 times a year" - Manifestation of the virgin Mary with indigenous roots with a reputed power to do health miracles - Disenchantment "I really saw the church & faith largely as a story that we the locals told in order to bring in tourists... As a child I never really understood that we were really meant to believe the content of the stories" - A "great 11 year old awakening" and a "show-down with my mother... I don't want to go to church... I don't actually believe any of this... my mother had no problem with that which further just confirmed my suspicion that a lot of this was just surface" - "Catholics... we tend to be very bad at reading the bible - we usually just get our lessons from the priest... for me it seemed like smoke & mirrors" - "From my early teen years I leaned towards a naturalistic outlook of the world and the cosmos... I do think the world is composed of matter, of motion, of the fundamental forces of physics..." - "That does not necessarily mean that I am a #rationalist ... I don't think that our human cognitive architecture is necessarily so imperious and mighty that it is poised to uncrack all the mysteries of nature..." 34:59 What Matters? 57:05 Who Matters? 01:14:15 How To Make A Better World? 01:22:42 Follow David - David at SFSU - Overthink - When Animals Dream - @DrPenaGuzman1 ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
This episode is a bonus cross post of my conversation with Nick Pendergrast on the 3CR Freedom of Species radio show and podcast he co-hosts. In this, my third time as their guest (thank you!), we talk about the "Logic of the Larder" - an argument that animal farming could potentially be good for animals. You can subscribe to 3CR's Freedom of Species wherever you listen. 3CR is a community radio station based in Melbourne, Australia. Nick and the other co-hosts have a fascinating range of guests, conversations and also music with a message. Nick has been a guest on Sentientism too - have a listen to episode 88 if you'd like to hear his thoughts about what's real, who matters and how can we make a better world. You might also be interested in Sentientism episode 156 with Peter Singer where we discuss his uncertainty about the Logic of the Larder. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
Jonathan is an ethics strategist, writer, social change advocate and public speaker. He is Executive Director of the Organisation for the Prevention of Intense Suffering (OPIS), a Swiss-based think-and-do tank that promotes the prevention of human and non-human suffering as our overriding global ethical priority. His book, The Battle for Compassion: Ethics in an Apathetic Universe, explores the question "What matters?". His new book The Tango of Ethics: Intuition, Rationality and the Prevention of Suffering goes further in proposing a rigorous reassessment of how we think about ethics. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what's real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Clips! 01:00 Welcome 03:34 Jon's Intro - Molecular biology PhD - Ethicist - Writing "The Battle for Compassion" and "The Tango of Ethics" - Running the "think and do tank" OPIS (Organisation for the Prevention of Intense Suffering) "Trying to put the ideas into practice" 04:41 What's Real? - A scientific family, physicist father - "A naturalistic, mechanistic way of thinking about the world" - "It's not that there was no #spirituality at all... a #Jewish household that was more traditional than religious... Reciting things that I didn't necessarily understand the meaning of" - "...a brief phase where I did take things [religious prescriptions] more literally... but that didn't last very long" - "Seeing the world as inherently physical" - "Not to say that the subjective doesn't matter... the subjective is the essence of what matters" - Maternal grandfather "I remember him describing himself as a Humanist... his way of saying 'don't take the supernatural too seriously'" - "I think spirituality is an important part of life... but I don't think of spirituality in the supernatural sense... I think of spirituality in terms of the experience... a feeling that there is an intense meaning possible in life." - "During spiritual experiences we might suspend the very rational perspective. You can't really be fully plunged into a spiritual experience if you're also trying to analyse things scientifically at the same time." - In circles with people, lighting a fire, reciting poetry... "it feels like a source of meaning at times to get into that other state of mind." - "It's this dance between two very different perspectives" - "How do we reconcile the need to understand reality as accurately as possible using the tools of rationality and science and how do we also extract meaning from our existence?" - JW: Instead of a scientistic denial or a mystical reification of the subjective... a recognition that our subjective experiences are part of the objective world we all share... and are the source of its value - Subjective experience is determined by the physical "but you won't actually know what it's like... without having experienced it yourself" 13:25 What Matters? - "Subjective experience... it's the most important part of reality... the only part of reality that really matters when it comes down to ethics..." 46:40 Who Matters? 01:03:37 How To Make A Better World? 01:19:43 Follow Jon and OPIS - https://www.jonathanleighton.org/ - https://www.preventsuffering.org/ ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
Welcome to episode 184 of the Sentientism Podcast. A podcast about what's real, who matters and how we can make a better world. The Sentientism worldview answers those deep questions by committing to evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings. This episode is a bonus cross-post of my discussion with Ariel Pontes. His Ghostless Machine podcast includes a series of dialogues where he has friendly disagreements over controversial topics with a variety of guests. I had the pleasure of being his first. Make sure you go and subscribe. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I did talking to Ariel - feedback and suggestions are always welcome. As ever I'm only one Sentientist so others will disagree! In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the three most important questions: “what's real?”, “what (and who) matters?” and "how can we make a better future?" The Sentientism worldview answers those questions with a commitment to "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." Find out more at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks to Tarabella and Denise for chipping in with our production costs via the secret(ish) Sentientism Patreon. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
Chris is the Director of Bryant Research and the Head of Policy at the Alternative Proteins Association. He is a social scientist and an expert on alternative protein markets and marketing. He has published several papers on consumer acceptance, policy, nutritional value, and other social dimensions of cultivated meat, plant-based meat, and fermentation-derived animal product alternatives. He has worked with alternative protein companies and non-profits, including THIS, Formo, Ivy Farm Technologies, Aleph Farms, Wild Type, ProVeg International, Mercy For Animals, and the Good Food Institute. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what's real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Clips! 00:53 Welcome 02:55 Chris' Intro - Social science research and analysis helping those "trying to move our food system away from animals and towards alternatives" - "Industrial animal farming... one of the biggest utility sinks" 06:46 What's Real? - Growing up in a "nominally religious" household... "vaguely Christian" - Turning to #atheism and thinking "what is the answer then... what does matter?" - An interest in philosophy at university "realised that philosophy was the thing I had been talking about" - Going #vegetarian - #effectivealtruism "an incredibly powerful tool... applying empirical evidence to altruistic intentions... trying to come up with the best ways of doing good... given limited resources" - "I had a good go at #hedonism in the interim though" - Naturalistic #epistemology and "being willing to be wrong about things" - The dangers of unquestioned assumptions - Crash testing ideas that go against the mainstream (e.g. are "processed" foods really unhealthy?) - Choosing good sources, doing research and running experiments - How people form and update beliefs: cognitive dissonance, motivated reasoning, working backwards to justify what we want to believe or do (e.g. consuming animal products)... - Even before that: ignorance (not knowing) and neglect / avoidance (not thinking about it) "Most people have probably never thought about that question [e.g. what % of animals are factory farmed]". "It's important to reach those people [~50%?] with just the reality and the facts" - Strongly and weakly-held beliefs - "For some people that's progress... at least they're having to do the mental gymnastics whereas before it had just never occurred to them" - "The fact that so few people have thought about it should be some kind of weird hope for vegetarians and vegans" - Push [away from animal products - ethics, environment, health] and pull [towards the alternatives - cheap, healthy, appealing, available] factors. "Really for long time we didn't have very good pull factors... appealing alternatives to offer people." - Motivated reasoning: "If I lose this argument I'll have to go vegan and only eat beans... but if you can have burgers and nuggets and everything else... I'm not very motivated to try and defend this view any more" - Social norms & the expectations of others "Not just what I think of veg*ism but what do others think of it" ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
Welcome to episode 182 of the Sentientism Podcast. A podcast about what's real, who matters and how we can make a better world. The Sentientism worldview answers those deep questions by committing to evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings. This episode is a bonus cross-post of my discussion with Adrian David Nelson. His Waking Cosmos podcast (here on Apple) explores the nature of consciousness, reality, ethics, and life's place in the universe. The video version of our conversation is now here on his YouTube channel. Make sure you go and subscribe to both if you haven't already. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I did talking to Adrian - feedback and suggestions are always welcome. As ever I'm only one Sentientist so others will disagree! We now have over 4500 subscribers on YouTube too. It's great to have your support there. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the three most important questions: “what's real?”, “what (and who) matters?” and "how can we make a better future?" The Sentientism worldview answers those questions with a commitment to "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." Find out more at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks to Tarabella and Denise for chipping in with our production costs via the secret(ish) Sentientism Patreon. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
Christof is a neurophysiologist and computational neuroscientist best known for his work on the neural basis of consciousness on which he worked with Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick for 24 years. He is the president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. Christof describes his passion in life as "to understand how I came to be in this wonderful, mysterious universe. Not so much me, personally, but me as a conscious, experiencing thing surrounding by other conscious organisms and trees, stars, and the sea." Over the last decade, he has worked closely with the psychiatrist and neuroscientist Giulio Tononi. Together they advocate for an Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness - often seen as a modern version of panpsychism that only ascribes consciousness to entities with some degree of irreducible cause-effect power. Christof is the author of the books Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist. , The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach, and Biophysics of Computation: Information Processing in Single Neurons. His forthcoming book, Then I am Myself the World, is due out in 2024. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what's real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Clips! 01:09 Welcome - "My dog... Mr. Felix... a sentient being" - The dedication from Christof's forthcoming book "Then I Am Myself The World": "... to all fellow travellers on the river of time who howl, bark, cry, screech, whine, bellow, shriek, buzz, sing, speak or those without a voice - for it is only in compassion with all life that we can redeem ourselves." 03:52 Christof's Intro - Physicist turned neurobiologist - "I've always been fascinated by the question of #consciousness" 04:45 What's Real - Growing up in a devout Roman #catholic family, raised kids Catholic - "One thing that always irked me... the belief that my dogs... somehow didn't have a soul and wouldn't be resurrected... that always bothered me... whatever it is we all share" - "I lived in two worlds - like many scientists do. On Sunday you go to church and you pray... during the week, the rest of the time, you're a scientist - you try to explain everything using natural explanation... this split... I couldn't support any more" - "Progressively I lost my faith... I'm a naturalist... I try to explain everything... using natural laws" - A priest acknowledging that non-human animals are "parts of god's creation" and can suffer, but "they do not partake in the same way we do" - Human exceptionalism "many religions believe that humans are exceptional... we're in charge of the universe... everything gets subsumed under human demands - that struck me as wrong" - "Who has what faith - it's totally random - it depends where you were born and in which family you were born... how can this be true?" - JW: Topics that draw even some naturalists back towards the mystical: Origins & nature of the universe, life, humanity, consciousness... 13:47 What and Who Matters? 39:45 What are Consciousness and Sentience? 1:14:09 A Better World? 1:17:35 Follow Christof - christofkoch.com - Christof at the Allen Institute - Christof on Wikipedia ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
Tobias co-founded the Center for Reducing Suffering with Magnus Vinding. CRS is a research center that works to create a future with less suffering, taking all sentient beings into account. More broadly, Tobias is involved in the effective altruism movement which applies evidence and reason to find the most effective ways to help others. In his new book, Avoiding the Worst: How to Prevent a Moral Catastrophe, Tobias lays out the concept of risks of future suffering (s-risks) and outlines ways to steer the world away from s-risks and towards a brighter future. You can get his book for free on Amazon or read the PDF version. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what's real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:10 Welcome 02:09 Tobias' Intro - CRS: "How can you best reduce suffering?" - Tobias's book "Avoiding the Worst" and S-Risks - A 2 step approach: 1) who & what matters, 2) empirical understanding & action 03:33 What's Real? - "I am #atheist since I am old enough to think about these issues" - "I have a naturalist worldview - my answer to what's real is what we can scientifically observe & measure..." - JW: For many religious people the biggest S-Risk "is that of being sent to hell by a supposedly benevolent god" - Cognitive biases: wishful thinking (hoping s-risks aren't possible), confirmation bias (looking for evidence that supports our existing beliefs - ignoring contradictory evidence), scope neglect (struggling to understand or emotionally respond to very large numbers) - JW: Animal agriculture as an understandable S-risk vs. #longtermism, large scales, artificial sentients - "Factory farming is a moral catastrophe of incredible scale" - JW: The ethical (e.g. "only humans matter") and epistemological (e.g. "animal farming is humane") errors that can cause massive harms - Animal advocates' neglect of wild / free-ranging animal suffering ethics "the vast majority of sentient beings on earth are not humans... are not factory-farmed animals... but animals living in the wild, in nature - and they also suffer very serious harms... predation... starvation... diseases" - @AnimalEthics video course on wild animal ethics - "This might be the most important source of suffering at this point in time"- Risks of belief digitisation (jumping to yes/no instead of probabilistic credences) when considering low probability outcomes and/or large scale impacts - Dealing with uncertainty - "It's not necessarily what we are emotionally made for..." - The expected value approach and "Pascal's mugging"... "taking speculative scenarios sufficiently seriously but not getting too crazy over it" - "I would not think of S-risks as a Pascal's mugging... The broader idea of a large-scale moral catastrophe in the future doesn't seem that far-fetched to me at all" - "We already have a similar dynamic... in terms of factory farming. Why is it so crazy to think that something similar and even larger scale could happen in the future." - "The topic is quite neglected. I'm just a random guy on the internet and I've managed to write the first book on the topic." 20:30 What Matters? 27:40 Who Matters? 48:45 A Better World? 01:10:40 Follow Tobias - Avoiding the Worst - CRS - Tobias' site ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
Melanie Joy, PhD, is a Harvard-educated psychologist specializing in relationships, communication, and social transformation. She is the award-winning author of six books, including the new How to End Injustice Everywhere and the bestselling Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows and Getting Relationships Right: How to Build Resilience and Thrive in Life, Love, and Work. Melanie is also an internationally recognized speaker and trainer who's presented her work in fifty countries across six continents. Melanie is best known for her groundbreaking theories on the psychology of violence and nonviolence and building healthy relationships. Her work has been featured by media outlets around the world, including the New York Times, BBC, NPR, and ABC Australia. She is the eighth recipient of the Ahimsa Award—previously given to the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela—for her work on global nonviolence; and she also received both the Peter Singer Prize and the Empty Cages Prize for her work developing strategies to reduce the suffering of non-human animals. Melanie is the founding president of the international organization, Beyond Carnism. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what's real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:04 Welcome 02:51 Melanie's Intro - The psychology of violence and #nonviolence , oppression and social transformation - The psychology of eating animals and the work of @BeyondCarnism 04:05 What's Real? - #catholic father, #protestant mother, neither particularly religious - Attending #presbyterian #Christian church (occasionally) and nursery school - Later, father re-discovered Catholic roots and became very religious. Jewish step-mother converted to Catholicism - Mother joined #unitarianuniversalism church - "I was never religious myself but I was very interested in religion... my first major was comparative religious ethics... fascinated by all things spiritual... the occult..." - Very interested in #Judaism for a while - "Always asking about meaning and what's true and what's real... sort of the way my brain was wired" - Partially raised by #Quaker uncle and aunt "very progressive and socially engaged... very strong #socialjustice orientation" while father and step-mother were increasingly conservative - "Everybody else in my family... is very progressive... my grandfather was even a #communist or at very least a #socialist " - Quakerism and UU: "Integrating this sort of spiritual orientation which wasn't believing in a god, but believing in something more... that has to be very socially engaged... that was very attractive to me." - "I'm not a Buddhist... but I have been guided by the principles of #buddhism " - "My understanding of the world has been very much informed by witnessing and observing my family and the way they understood their own traditions and practices" - "Liking to be in churches and liking to be in synagogues and wanting to be in temples... I felt very drawn" 26:43 What Matters?38:46 Who Matters?44:34 A Better World?55:45 Follow Melanie - How to End Injustice Everywhere - Beyond Carnism - Infighting.org - MelanieJoy.org - @DrMelanieJoy - Melanie on Insta - Melanie on FaceBook ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
Kendra is a professor at Huron University and a fellow of the OxfordCentre for Animal Ethics. She is a leading expert on animals and work, animal protection organizations and policy, and gender equity. Kendra has led multiple research projects enriching our understanding of human-animal work and animals' own forms of labour in important new directions including through development of the concepts of humane jobs, interspecies solidarity, and ecosocial reproduction. Kendra's latest book is Defending Animals: Finding Hope on the Front Lines of Animal Protection. She is the author of dozens of scholarly articles, book chapters, and public reports, as well as the path-making Animals, Work, and the Promise of Interspecies Solidarity. She is the co-editor of Animal Labour: A New Frontier of Interspecies Justice? Kendra has also published more than sixty columns including for The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Salon, Ottawa Citizen, Winnipeg Free Press, Edmonton Journal, The Conversation, iPolitics, and National Observer. Her work has so far been translated into French, Swedish, Japanese, Korean, German, and Bahasa Indonesia. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what's real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Clips! 01:17 Welcome - 3 previous guests did blurbs for Kendra's new book: Ziya Tong, Marc Bekoff, Jeff Sebo 03:02 Kendra's Intro - "I'm not related to Ann Coulter... we have slightly different worldviews" :) - "The primary purpose of my life is to improve and save animals' lives" - "Cultivating empathy and compassion" - Discriminatory "isms" and proactive, agitational, generative "isms" - "Foregrounding sentient beings is a very powerful mobilising way of thinking about the positives... trying to find unity and common cause" - JW: "Just rejecting the negative isms isn't quite enough... we also some sort of positive stance about what we do care about... who should matter." - "We need to critique the problems... we also simultaneously need to be developing and proposing alternatives and solutions" 05:55 What's Real? - Riding horses before walking, "learning how to be kind to animals" - Raised by left-wing atheists - "To this day I maintain a very progressive worldview... however... I have become less ideological" - "Crucial to have an ethical core... but that the process of inquiry... evidence gathering and analysis... is absolutely essential" - Dialogue with groups who have different views "while recognising that certain worldviews are antithetical to justice and equity for humans and other beings" - Field research "experiencing things with your body... being out engaging... not reclining into the ivory tower" - Amplifying and communicating with broad audiences "Public intellectual is one of the best compliments you can give someone... your ideas matter... using ideas to inspire action" - Open mindedness based on evidence and data "but never losing those core commitments... equity... solidarity... justice" - Lisa Kemmerer episode 15:11 What Matters? 26:36 Who Matters? 49:10 A Better World? 01:02:04 Follow Kendra - https://twitter.com/DrKendraCoulter - https://huronatwestern.ca/profiles/faculty/kendra-coulter-phd/ - https://www.instagram.com/gifted.horse/ ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
This episode is a bonus cross-post of my discussion with Jordi Casamitjana on his Vegan Reflections series for the VeganFTA YouTube channel. Make sure you go and subscribe if you haven't already. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I did talking to Jordi - feedback and suggestions are always welcome. As ever I'm only one Sentientist so others will disagree! If you want to hear me interview Jordi for Sentientism check out episode 104 on the Sentientism YouTube or podcast. These are the two blogs we discussed: The Meaning of “Animal” in Veganism. The zoologist Jordi Casamitjana explains the different meanings of the term “animal” in the context of veganism, and in all its dimensions. Dr Sailesh Rao, The Vegan Engineer Healing the Breaking World. Jordi Casamitjana interviews Dr Sailesh Rao, a systems engineer trying to heal the planet and build the vegan world. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the three most important questions: “what's real?”, “what (and who) matters?” and "how can we make a better future?" The Sentientism worldview answers those questions with a commitment to "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." Find out more at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks to Tarabella and Denise for chipping in with our production costs via the secret(ish) Sentientism Patreon. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
Arin Greenwood describes herself as an animal writer, novelist and lawyer. Her young adult book "Your Robot Dog Will Die" was published in 2018. Arin was animal welfare editor for The Huffington Post and now writes about dogs, cats, and other animals for The Today Show, The Dodo, The Washington Post, Slate, Creative Loafing, the American Bar Association Journal and many other publications. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what's real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome - Kyle Johannsen episode 02:01 Arin's Intro - Dog lover, animal writer, former lawyer who has "written a couple of books" - Writing about animal welfare then working with animal advocacy and sanctuary organisations - Austin Pets Alive https://www.austinpetsalive.org/ 03:57 What's Real? - Growing up in a #Jewish family "And I'm still Jewish" - Secular Judaism "We identify as Jewish, we have a Jewish community, I had a Bat Mitzvah... we celebrate a lot of the Jewish holidays but it doesn't necessarily have a belief component to it" - Parents "go in and out of how spiritual they feel at any given moment" - "I don't feel like I know enough about the universe to say there's definitely no such thing as a higher power... I barely know what's happening inside my own house most days" - "My instinct is as a secular jew" - "There are people who know more than I do... I believe in expertise... I also believe in humility" 07:53 What Matters? - Regardless of whether there is a universal being... we do have knowable duties... to those who can feel happiness and those who can suffer" - "The hard part is figuring out what those duties are and how they exist in a practical sense" - "What difference does it make... if there's some sort of universal being... you should act in a good way regardless" - The #torah story of Abraham and Isaac "where god does tell Abraham to kill his son... that's not a story about 'you must be good' that's a story of 'you must follow my instructions'" #Divinecommandtheory - JW: "We can have a hope that god might be benevolent... but if they're not we still have to do what we're told" - Naturalistic #epistemology and/or #ontology - "In Judaism we don't have hell... it's mostly 'you'll just really disappoint your mother'" - Morality, amorality and immorality - Moral foundations, #moralrealism or #antirealism - #Psychopath and #Sociopathy JW: "even they can find an intellectual path to not harming others" - JW: "Almost everybody has something you can start with... cares about their mother or their children or their friends... starting with the values they already hold... working with that... consistency" 21:20 Who Matters? - "I've been #vegetarian since I was six years old... I made the connection between the animals I enjoyed spending time with and what was on my plate... at that point it just became unthinkable to keep eating them." - "My husband... who doesn't share that same moral impulse... what do the normies think?" - The animal welfare world: "Even in that world there's a lot of inconsistency - animal shelter events will serve meat... director eats meat 01:15:20 Follow Arin - aringreenwood.com - @arin_twit - Arin on FaceBook ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message
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