
Sentientism
We discuss the biggest questions: "what's real?", "who matters?" and "how to make a better world?" with scientists, celebrities, activists, writers and philosophers.
The Sentientism worldview is "evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings." It's a simple, yet radical, philosophy that's grounded in reality (naturalistic epistemology) and has compassion for all sentient beings (mostly human and non-human animals). Naturalism & sentiocentrism combined.
Find out more at https://sentientism.info/ or join a group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism. Also on YouTube!
Latest episodes

Jul 24, 2024 • 1h 11min
"The Farm Bill is corrupted, spoiled, rotten" - Robert Grillo of Free from Harm - Sentientism 206
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!

Jul 18, 2024 • 1h 34min
"I plant seeds for children... to think for themselves" Louisa Jane Smith of The RE Podcast - Sentientism 205
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!

6 snips
Jul 8, 2024 • 1h 17min
"Marx for Cats" - Leigh Claire La Berge - Sentientism 204
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!

Jun 30, 2024 • 30min
Teaching the Sentientism Worldview - webinar recording - Sentientism 203
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!

Jun 22, 2024 • 1h 30min
"What if you're the people you've been waiting for?" - John Barry of Queens University Belfast - Sentientism 202
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!

Jun 11, 2024 • 1h 21min
"The Solutionary Way... we can't wait!" - Zoe Weil - Institute for Humane Education - Sentientism 201
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!

Jun 2, 2024 • 1h 43min
Cheese Challenge & Pescetarian Paradox - Maja Cullen, Devon Docherty, Carol Jasper - Sentientism 200
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!

May 24, 2024 • 1h 20min
"Reductionism is well-named. It reduces what you can do." - Michael Levin - Sentientism 199
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!

May 21, 2024 • 1h 25min
"We need to imagine a different world" - Emilia Leese - author and host of Think Like a Vegan - Sentientism 198
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!

May 12, 2024 • 1h 31min
Hip Hop is Going Green - Keith Tucker of Hip Hop is Green - Sentientism 197
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
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