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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.
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
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
- Dad is an Indian philosophy professor
- Investigating eastern and western traditions and religions
- "People have their traditions and I love that...but
- "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
- "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
- JW: How broken epistemology can lead "good" people to do terrible things
- The ethical and epistemological errors that justify animal
- 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
- "You don't need to be well versed in philosophy... we
- Examining what's driving our actions... fear (of others,
- JW: Uncommon common sense re: ethical and epistemic basics
- Humans building convenient hierarchies "as long as
- "Animal agribusiness has never been nice... 10,000
- "To the being - you only have one life"
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!
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
- "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
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!
Hakeem Jimo is co-founder and CEO of Veggie Victory, Nigeria’s first plant-based food tech company. Hakeem and his partner, Bola Adeyanju, also founded Nigeria's first vegan restaurant, V Café, and now run the VChunks meat alternative product company - designed to help veganise Nigerian cuisine. Hakeem is also country director for ProVeg Nigeria.
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!
00:36 Welcome
01:59 Hakeem's Intro
- Nigerian father, German mother, growing up in Germany, now in Nigeria
- 10 years of veganism and vegan entrepreneurship
- Establishing ProVeg Nigeria
03:45 What's Real?
- Not much supernatural thinking in small-town Germany "there were more cows than humans"
- Lutheran evangelical protestant society but "we went to church twice a year... it was not a very religious background"
- Nigeria: "A completely different ballgame... the spiritual, religious world plays a much bigger role in Africa... religion is everywhere here... and I like it... In Africa I started to pray... you don't have that sense of control."
- Christianity, Islam as well as natural / traditional religions from the pre-colonial era
08:33 What Matters?
- "Every day I see these two sides", Germany (enlightenment, studying philosophy) and Nigeria (travelling as a journalist in W.Africa: "a completely different way people see the world")
- Only recently exploring the Bible (via podcasts) "just to understand historically"
- Finding references to treatment of animals in the Old and New Testaments
- Nigeria: "Religion is much more taken... by the letter" vs. the German way "it's just a parable"
- "If you're coming from a western background you just
- "How do we actually convince people... whether I'm in
- "I walk through the streets here... it's funny... even though everybody is black and in Germany everybody is white I see features... very similar behaviours"
- "I see really the universal parts... that's where things come together... trying to change the world and not just a few enlightened people"
13:16 Who Matters?
- Step-father in Germany was a farmer "neighbours got
- Hearing stories about factory farming "they were
- "Nobody in rural Germany was talking about sentientism or veganism "
- University in Hamburg "there was an alternative meal
- Travelling to West Africa and eating #streetfood
- "You start learning... what's the implications... I realised... this is good... let me become vegetarian"
24:35 A Better Future?
48:41 Follow Hakeem
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/hakeemjimo/
- https://proveg.com/ng/...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.
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!
This episode is a cross-post of my discussion with Richard Brown on his Consciousness Live YouTube podcast. Make sure you go and subscribe there too.
Richard is a professor of philosophy at City University of New York. His work is focused on the philosophy of mind, consciousness studies, and the foundations of cognitive science but he also works on the philosophy of language, metaethics, philosophy of physics, logic and the philosophy of logic, as well as the history of philosophy. As you can imagine, this made it an enjoyably brain-stretching conversation for me. Richard was also my guest on Sentientism way back on episode 57 if you want to see the tables turned the other way around.
I hope you enjoy listening as much as I did talking with Richard - feedback and suggestions are always welcome. As ever I'm only one Sentientist so others will disagree!
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.
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 Sentientism Patreon and are kindly contributing to our production costs - helping us steadily nudge the world towards "evidence, reason and compassion".
Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form.
Laura is Education Officer at The Vegan Society and Chair of The Vegan Society's Education Network. She is a qualified primary school teacher and well known for introducing the phrase ‘vegan-inclusive education’ to the education sector. Laura worked for several years as the UK’s only vegan inclusion education specialist under the pseudonym ‘Primary Veducation’ and continues to offer training to school staff on what it means to be vegan and how to appropriately teach and treat vegan learners in their care. Laura also empowers vegan learners and parents/guardians by facilitating the creation of peer-developed and reviewed resources and offering supportive interventions.
Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
00:00 Clips!
01:14 Welcome
03:20 Laura's Intro
- Supporting vegan learners & their families in
- Former primary school teacher "my first love"
- Supporting the educators. Building the world's first and
- Leaving teaching after becoming vegan "I felt that
- Vegan daughter starts school "They told me that they
- Working with friends to create the UK's first vegan menu
- Starting "Primary Veducation" as a free consultancy
- "Theorising vegan-inclusive education"
- "To live through that [discrimination] was mind-boggling... I felt like I was by myself... on my own... all of these things were just completely flipped... I had to find this voice... I believed I was the only vegan the village... who would even care?"
- Finding a vegan community. A wave of vegan parents wanting help "I realised it's not just me... shouting in this echo chamber"
- "Everything I'd been taught... by people who I respected... my parents, my teachers, religious leaders... told me that one thing was correct... it wasn't"
- "Everything felt undone... it did feel utterly heartbreaking... something good has come out of it"
11:44 What's Real?
- Grandmother born Christian, converted to #judaism
- Attending Jewish school, Synagogue and Sunday School
- Mother "wanted my brother and I to be the most Jewish
- "Religion... become something... neither of us... are
- Brother & family atheist
- Valuing Jewish community, tradition, culture, food...
- "A lot of the just have blind faith and don't question... god did this, god created that, we live the way the 10 commandments tell us to - anything other than that is just outrageous"
25:30 What & Who Matters?
44:57 Making a Better World?
01:17:12 Follow Laura
- Laura at The Vegan Society
- @laura_diamondo
- Veducated:An Educator’s Guide for Vegan Inclusive Teaching
...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.
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!
This episode is a bonus cross-post of my discussion with fellow Sentientist Amy Halpern-Laff and Jon Moscow on their Ethical Schools podcast. Make sure you go and subscribe there too!
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.
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 Sentientism Patreon and are kindly contributing to our production costs - helping us steadily nudge the world towards "evidence, reason and compassion".
Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form.
Jimmy Videle is a farmer, naturalist & researcher. He is author of The Veganic Grower’s Handbook and co-founder of NAVCS-Certified Veganic. His writing has appeared in many publications including CounterPunch, Countercurrents & LA Progressive.
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!
32:03 What and Who Matters?
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!
Troy Vettese is an environmental historian who specializes in environmental economics, animal studies, and energy history. In 2019 he completed his doctorate in history at New York University. From 2019 to 2021, he worked at Harvard University as a William Lyon Mackenzie King postdoctoral research fellow. He has collaborated with Drew Pendergrass, an environmental engineer, on numerous projects including their book Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics .
Troy is currently revising his dissertation on neoliberal environmental thought into a book, tentatively titled 'Beyond Externality'. In addition to his academic work, Vettese writes on a wide array of environmental topics for a popular audience, and has had essays published in the Guardian, the New Statesman, Jacobin, N+1, Book Forum, and Boston Review.
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!
01:04 Welcome
02:58 Troy's Intro
- Half-Earth Socialism "what does it look like to have
- The Half-Earth Socialism computer game & maybe a
05:44 What's Real?
- #Ecosocialism and #neoliberalism in conversation with each other
- Growing up in a fairly conservative but non-religious household
- Being a Young Tory, reading Milton Friedman
- In early 20's "a crisis of faith in terms of this conservative worldview" due to the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis
- Reading Marx and New Left Review
- Exploring the environmental crisis
- A sensitive child, then a toxic masculinity phase as a
- Gravitating towards ecosocialism
- Didn't "grow up with red diapers" (being brought
- #greenwashing measures "I wanted to understand where these ideas had come from... no one had done an intellectual history of these things"
- Challenging the common leftist view that the right &
- "I thought the left should have more concrete ideas
- "'We'll figure it out after the revolution'... that's not enough"
- Mother who ran for the Green party in elections
- Not religious now
- "Sceptical of thinking that there's one true path...
- The neoliberal view of the market as the optimal information processor
- Being rational but also appreciating the
- The "spark bird" that gets you into #birdwatching
- #deleuze "Becoming animal" vs. #Haraway's notion
17:50 What Matters?
27:33 Who Matters?
54:15 A Better World?
01:29:55 Follow Troy
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!
Tom is an internationally acclaimed artist, published author, and social justice activist. He is an expert and consultant on animal liberation history and strategy, and the global animal rights movement. His first book, Your Neighbour Kills Puppies was released in March 2024. The book is the previously untold story of one of the world’s most powerful social justice campaigns, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC). Tom became involved in the animal liberation movement at the age of fifteen when he attended his first hunt sab. Over the years that followed he devoted his life to helping animals and co-founded one of the UK`s most successful regional animal rights organizations, SARC (The Southern Animal Rights Coalition). Tom is a regular contributor to Forca Vegan magazine, and other periodicals. Under the professional name ‘Tattoo Tom‘, Tom has also achieved a highly successful and acclaimed career as an artist.
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!
00:49 Welcome
- Nicola Harris and Anita Krajnc episode @PlantBasedTreaty
03:18 Tom's Intro
- 20 years in the #animalliberation movement
- Founding the Southern Animal Rights Coalition
- Closing a military research facility, a puppy farm, several chicken units
- Getting fur and foie gras out of shops
- #SHAC (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty) co-ordinators
- "The model we came up with was so effective... that
- "The government in the UK essentially framed us and
- 3 years on bail before-hand and 2.5 years on license
- Since release, finding a very different animal liberation
- Lord Sainsbury's intention "to eliminate the
- "The movement I knew didn't exist... new groups like
- Taking up tattoo artistry because "I was essentially
- "Stabbing people for money" :)
10:10 What's Real?
- "I actually dropped out of a philosophy degree to do
- Growing up in a non-religious family, probably atheists
- Christian grandparents "it was good for them... I saw
- Cartographer dad, psychologist mum, quite analytical /
- "I didn't learn when to stop following that logical path"
- "I was raised to be kind to animals and respect nature... to value life"
26:13 What and Who Matters?
01:04:53 A Better Future?
01:45:00 Follow Tom
TomHarris.me
Shacjustice.com
@Tattoo_tom
...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.
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!
Dr Sabine Brels is a lawyer dedicated to advancing animal protection law worldwide. She teaches international and comparative animal law and published books on animal related-issues in French and English. In the last 15 years, she directed Global Animal Law (GAL) project and worked as legal advisor for the World Federation for Animals, the Eurogroup for Animals, and Compassion in World Farming. Besides her consulting work, she is currently leading the World Animal Justice NGO that she founded in 2023.
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
- Sabine's previous appearance on episode 66
02:15 Sabine's Intro
- #internationallaw , #animallaw and #animalrights
03:17 International vs. national law
- #icc #icj #unitednations
- Laws of genocide, humanitarianism, crimes against humanity...
- Policy, law, regulation, enforcement
- Regional law e.g. EU, Asia
07:34 World Animal Justice
- Bringing non-human animals into international law
- "An animal law revolution"
- #CrimesAgainstAnimality or #sentientity ?
- "Massive crimes against animals happen every day, everywhere worldwide... it's our collective responsibility"
- "Every day the entire European Union population is killed... that's a reality for animals... 450 million of animals are killed per day... this is only for food... every second it's 5000 animals killed"
- "It's not acceptable when we know that we can do otherwise... that this is avoidable"
- Companion, stray, laboratory, sport, working, wild animals "they are all victims of crimes against animality"
- Crimes against humanity: massive murders, sequestrations, enslavement, deportations, torture, violence including sexual violence "this is what is actually happening against animals every day... and it can still be legal in some places"
- Anti-cruelty and pro-welfare laws: "usually to reduce the suffering of these exploited animals or to condemn some acts of cruelty... against companion animals"
- "1/3 of countries today still have nothing to protect animals - not even the basic anti-cruelty laws"
- "Some of the most cruel practices are still legal in some countries..." force-feeding for #foiegras and #bullfighting in France are "a kind of torture for animals"
- The potential for a global consensus at least against some of those most egregious practices "That's wrong for animals but also for our human dignity"
- India and some South American countries: have granted some rights to great apes or large mammals based on poor treatment in zoos
- WAJ: "Go faster and higher... criminality against animals is huge"
- Welfare / anti-cruelty approaches "we are not taking this concern for the gravity it is"
- "If we were doing the same to humans... it would seem unbelievable that it would be still legal... we would cry about genocides and crimes against humanity"
- WAJ's network of experts and NGOs spanning 5 continents
28:22 WAJ Expert Network and Strategy37:00 Impacts on Animal AgricultureFollow Sabine and @WorldAnimalJustice :
- WAJ contact: [email protected]
- WAJ Website
- WAJ introductory Video
- WAJ Linkedin
...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.
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!
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