What Animal Festivals Tell Us About Being Human - "Forget The Camel" author Elizabeth MeLampy - Sentientism 232

Elizabeth MeLampy is an author and a Harvard-educated lawyer, with experience in animal law and environmental law. While in law school, she worked on issues related to farmedanimals, wild animals, and captive animals with Harvard’s Animal Law & Policy Clinic. She was also in the inaugural cohort of Emerging Scholar Fellows with the Brooks Institute for Animal Rights Law and Policy, where she worked onanimal law scholarship. After two clerkships—with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and the Federal District Court in Arizona—Elizabeth litigated with one of the top environmental nonprofits in the country. Her firstbook, Forget The Camel: The Madcap World of Animal Festivals and What They Say About Being Human, was published in 2025.

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

- Mark Bekoff episode https://youtu.be/-pwfNH-KgWI

- Kim Stallwood episode https://youtu.be/5-8vYRhJvaU

03:25 Elizabeth''s Intro

- "Sentient creatures matter"

- Forget the Camel "Animal festivals... I study them as microcosms of our relationships to non-human animals"

- "Try to make sense of how we treat so many animals differently"

- The Rattlesnake Roundup "They beheaded and killed rattlesnakes in public... then made bloody handprints"

- A Jumping Frog contest

- The real Groundhog day

- "There's a lot more that ties those events togetherthan separates them even though you're killing animals in one context and not in another"

- "The overarching paradigm of human superiority applies to them all"

06:10 What's Real?

- "I have both backgrounds very strongly... the religious spiritual side and the more scientific, naturalistic side"

- Grandfather and mum church ministers, grandmother aveterinarian and an anthropologist, father a software engineer

-  "Core pillars of my upbringing... Thinking about the world really critically, really analytically... on one side... on the other side... a Protestant Christian upbringing in the Church"

- "Core values, more than religious dogmatism, ofcompassion, of kindness, of generosity, of sacrifice... key Christian values... open hearted, open minded, compassionate lens"

- "I was really lucky to be raised in a version of the Christian church that prioritises those things"

- "The two sides [religion and science] work so closely together... it's not 'you believe in god or you believe in science'"

- "The mysteries of the world... things you could explore with a variety of disciplines... read the Bible... do a science experiment... all sorts of ways to figure out what is going on"

- Grandparents lived on an animal farm

And more... full show notes at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sentientism.info⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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