Sentientism 146: Bursting "The Reality Bubble" - Ziya Tong - Science broadcaster and author - Sentientism
Ziya is a television presenter, producer, author and board member. She was the co-host of Discovery Channel’s long-running primetime science magazine, Daily Planet. In 2019 she wrote the book “The Reality Bubble“. Ziya serves on the boards of a range of NGOs and charities, including PEN Canada, We Animals Media and WWF International.
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
01:46 Ziya's Intro
- Science broadcasting @discoverycanada
- Author of "The Reality Bubble" exposing human blind-spots
- NGO board roles including @WeAnimalsMedia (animal photojournalism led by Jo-Anne McArthur)
- Tweeting about earthlings: https://twitter.com/ziyatong
03:32: What's Real?
- "Being a bi-racial person gives you a sort of split view... Chinese... Eastern European"
- Communism & capitalism, eastern & western
- "I never really... took one true dogmatic reality"
- "I consistently shed layers of what I previously thought of as reality"
- Yoda: "You must unlearn what you have learned"
- A science journalist career "naturalistic in one sense"
- "With science you can reveal a lot... the whole book [The Reality Bubble] is about that... but it always puts a lens between you and the subject"
- Black holes & mites on our eyelashes
- "The humanities are much more subjective"
- Polymaths spanning humanities & the sciences "that blend is what's interesting to me"
- "Indigenous perspectives... have so much to share with us about how we perceive reality"
- Swimming sea wolves in British Columbia "new to science - but indigenous peoples had known about these wolves for their entire histories"
- The Consilience Model: Science and indigenous perspectives "Two eyed seeing"
- Plant medicines like #ayahuasca "which open up an entirely new door to reality"
- "I don't believe reality stands on firm ground... I'm happy to run around the ice flow as it shifts... reality should never be solid"
- Science & indigenous perspectives "are both based on observation"
- "To a neutrino this mug wouldn't be here at all"
- "We have to question our every-day common sense notions of reality"
- Humilty & error-correction
- Risks of dogma within science "we looked at animals as if they were machines"
- Brought up Roman #catholic , dabbled with #buddhism / #sufiism
- Rumi: "There's a hundred ways to kiss the ground"
- #Vipassna #meditation - a 10 day silent retreat "you are really guided by yourself"
- Feeding ants & saving an ant "I promised not to kill anything" as part of the 10 Buddhist precepts
...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.
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