Find our Sentientist Conversation here on YouTube and here on Podcast. Don’t forget to subscribe and share!

Jenny (@jennysplitter and jennysplitter.com) is an award-winning journalist & science writer covering food, agriculture, climate change, biodiversity, health & technology. Her work has been published across a wide range of media outlets including Vox, Forbes, Observer, The Washington Post, Popular Mechanics and New York Magazine. Jenny is a co-founder & contributing editor to the science communication project SciMoms. She is also a podcast host on the Animal Studies channel of the New Books Network & her newsletter, FutureFeed, chronicles change in the food system.

In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”

We discuss:
0:00 Welcome

1:05 Jenny’s Intro – journalism and SciMoms

• The Science Moms film

2:09 What’s Real?

• Growing up in California as reform Jewish
• Reform Judaism: “It’s definitely not heavy handed with the God stuff”
• Most of the parents were atheist and agnostic. It’s mostly about the ritual and the tradition and the history
• Jewish philosophy re: responsibility, community obligations & making the world better
• It’s less about the rules than the discussion
• Moving from a naive view of a caring god to “at some point I just didn’t really worry about it any more”

7:58 What Matters Morally?

• Complexity in reform Judaism moral discussions at Hebrew school
• “Closer vs. further away from God”
• “Of course I’m angry – I’ve just been told by my friend I’m going to hell”
• SkepChick & other atheist communities
• “Do no harm”, community, avoiding bad people, getting into the complex stuff
• COVID & re-thinking communities
• The evolution of morality, good & bad
• Moral scope & consideration
• Writing about the climate impacts of meat & going reducetarian, then just stopping eating meat
• Enjoying substituting out animal products in cooking
• Not wanting to do the big philosophical debate but changing behaviour anyway
• Morality then behaviour or behaviour then morality?
• Philosophical arguments vs. “real people” conversations
• Emotion, stories & logic
• Mollusc/invertebrate sentience?
• Assessing the suffering of farmed animals & fish
• Garrett Broad @ Fordham & why we care about some animals & not others
• “My cat is a vicious murderer”
• We don’t have to understand non-human animal sentience perfectly to be confident they can suffer
• Bio/ecocentrism, conservation and environmentalism. “We have to be thinking about ecosystems”
• Ecosystem services
• Indigenous practices re: non-human animals & environment
• “Perilous bounty” by Tom Philpott
• #JustTransition for industrialised & indigenous cultures

33:52 The Future

• An end to animal farming, fishing & exploitation?
• Latent popular support for a ban on factory farming?
• Regeneratively grazed animal agriculture isn’t the answer
• Factory farming is more efficient and less climate impactful than free-range!
• A focus on factory farming can be unhelpful
• Parallels re: unfounded resistance to GMOs
• What would a “meat free future” look like?
• Helping animal farmers transition (even escape!) “I don’t have the Tyson foods of hemp or mushrooms to sell to”
• Rancher Advocacy, #Transfarmation, Miyoko’s Creamery
• Switching government subsidies to fund transition
• Can journalism plant seeds in people’s minds?
• We need to get more specific about how to transition
• Motivated reasoning (on both sides). Identity, culture, ethics
• Tobacco, fossil fuels, animal agriculture industry parallels
• Capitalism & marketing
• Journalism & language about non-human animals & ethics. People are Googling “healthiest plant-based burger” not “the inner life of a chicken”
• “Humanity” is too hard to figure out. The conversation “starts with you”
• Arguments & social media zingers vs. active listening & productive conversations. Vaccines, food, ethics…
• Righteousness can start the conversation!
• Universal compassion doesn’t mean weakness
• The role of privilege
• Being cringy on Instagram
• The Boomer mindset.

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at sentientism.info​​​​​​​​​​​​​. Join Jenny on our “I’m a Sentientist” wall using this simple form​.

​Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. Our biggest so far is here on Facebook.

Thanks Graham for the post-production!