

Sentientism
Jamie Woodhouse
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!
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!
Episodes
Mentioned books

Aug 21, 2024 • 1h 12min
Talking to the most important people in the world (maybe) about Sentientism - The RE Podcast - Sentientism 210
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!

Aug 13, 2024 • 1h 19min
"Not personhood... beingness" - Professor Maneesha Deckha - Sentientism 209
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!

Aug 7, 2024 • 1h 51min
"Good ethics does start with what's real... with what's true" - Philosopher Joel MacClellan - Sentientism 208
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!

Aug 3, 2024 • 1h 15min
"To see a socialist radical turn into a conservative reactionary just mention animal rights" - Mark Humanity author of "The Humanity Trigger" - Sentientism 207
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!

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
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