Jo-Anne McArthur is a photojournalist, public speaker, animal rights activist and author. She is best known for her We Animals Media project, a media agency and photography project documenting human relationships with animals. Jo-Anne offers presentations about human relationships with animals in educational and other environments and provides photographs and other media for those working to help animals.
Jo-Anne was the primary subject of the 2013 documentary The Ghosts in Our Machine, directed by Liz Marshall, and with Keri Cronin, she is the founder of the Unbound Project, which aims to celebrate and recognize women animal activists. Her first book, We Animals, was published in 2013; her second, Captive, was published in 2017; and a third, Hidden, which featured a foreword by Joaquin Phoenix, was published in 2020. Jo-Anne has been awarded a range of commendations for her photography and activism, including several commendations in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards and joint first place in the COP26 photography competition.
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
2:23 Jo's Intro
- Striving to be open, active, helping, empathic, compassionate, humble
- Founding We Animals Media "What was once me with camera is now me & 15 staff & over 100 contributing photographers globally"
- "My own ethos about being generous in the world"
3:57 What's Real?
- #catholic background but not very religious family
- "Know the stories, know the moralistic tales... which are largely quite good & translate across many religions... do unto others... take care of one another"
- "I am personally #atheist / #agnostic atheist... I do have a very #spiritual sense of the world... did I just contradict myself? I don't think so."
- "Everything is interconnected... I am from the earth and will go back to the earth."
- "It's a beautiful system this earth has evolved over billions of years... I am in awe of that."
- "If I have a spiritual leaning it's towards reference for the earth"
- "My dad commented... I seemed like an earth worshipper... indigenous ideology? pagan ideology?"
- "I go through the world in awe of what is around me"
- "You protect what you love... I do love the plants... trees, birds in the trees & the old dog I adopted & other people..."
- "Perhaps that reverence has led me to be a full time activist for others"
- "There were no clashes (with supernatural religious beliefs)... it just seemed to me that the scientific experiment is what holds truest to me... how biology works... how the cosmos works... I just gravitated towards that"
- "3 of my 4 parents are very religious now... we don't talk about it very much because we disagree on some major things"
- "They feel that I will go to hell if I don't find Jesus so they pray for me... yet we have a gorgeous, wonderful, close relationship"
- "We disagree on these things but we can still love one another"
- "It was quite a religion free zone at my house. I was free to develop my worldviews."
- "My parents guided me but also took a back seat to the things that were apparently precious to me... protecting others"
14:22 What & Who Matters?
34:42 A Better Future?
...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.
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