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...

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. Just search for the word "Sentientism" on your favourite platforms (⁠FaceBook is our...

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...

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...

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...

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...

This episode is a bonus cross-post of my discussion with Leslie Rosenblood, host of Podcast For Inquiry. Podcast For Inquiry is produced by the Center For Inquiry Canada. Leslie describes it as a podcast for scientific, skeptical, secular, rational and humanistic (and maybe now sentientst) inquiry. Make sure you go and subscribe there too. 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...

David specializes in European philosophy, the history and philosophy of science and the philosophy of animal minds. He is interested in the problem of consciousness, the study of lived experience and the value of the humanities. David lives in San Francisco, California. He is Associate Professor of Humanities at San Francisco State University. He has previously worked at Johns Hopkins University, Laurentian University, Dillard University, and Emory University (where he received his Ph.D. in...

This episode is a bonus cross post of my conversation with ⁠Nick Pendergrast⁠⁠⁠ on the 3CR ⁠⁠⁠Freedom of Species⁠⁠ radio show and podcast he co-hosts. In this, my third time as their guest (thank you!), we talk about the "Logic of the Larder" - an argument that animal farming could potentially be good for animals. You can subscribe to 3CR's ⁠⁠⁠Freedom of Species⁠ wherever you listen. ⁠⁠3CR is a community radio station based in Melbourne⁠⁠⁠, Australia. Nick and the other co-hosts have a...

Jonathan is an ethics strategist, writer, social change advocate and public speaker. He is Executive Director of the Organisation for the Prevention of Intense Suffering (OPIS), a Swiss-based think-and-do tank that promotes the prevention of human and non-human suffering as our overriding global ethical priority. His book, The Battle for Compassion: Ethics in an Apathetic Universe, explores the question "What matters?". His new book The Tango of Ethics: Intuition, Rationality and the...

Welcome to episode 184 of the Sentientism Podcast. A podcast about what's real, who matters and how we can make a better world. The Sentientism worldview answers those deep questions by committing to evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings. This episode is a bonus cross-post of my discussion with Ariel Pontes. His Ghostless Machine podcast includes a series of dialogues where he has friendly disagreements over controversial topics with a variety of guests. I had the...

Chris is the Director of Bryant Research and the Head of Policy at the Alternative Proteins Association. He is a social scientist and an expert on alternative protein markets and marketing. He has published several papers on consumer acceptance, policy, nutritional value, and other social dimensions of cultivated meat, plant-based meat, and fermentation-derived animal product alternatives. He has worked with alternative protein companies and non-profits, including THIS, Formo, Ivy Farm...

Yamini is Senior Lecturer in International and Community Development at Deakin University. Her work makes substantive contributions to the rapidly emergent field of South Asian Animal Studies through a twin focus on animals in political and urban life in India. It addresses species as an explicit identity category in Indian national politics through the intersections of #anthropocentrism, #sectarianism, and #casteism. Her book Mother Cow, Mother India offers one of the first empirical...

Welcome to episode 182 of the Sentientism Podcast. A podcast about what's real, who matters and how we can make a better world. The Sentientism worldview answers those deep questions by committing to evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings. This episode is a bonus cross-post of my discussion with Adrian David Nelson. His Waking Cosmos podcast (here on Apple) explores the nature of consciousness, reality, ethics, and life’s place in the universe. The video version of our...

Christof is a neurophysiologist and computational neuroscientist best known for his work on the neural basis of consciousness on which he worked with Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick for 24 years. He is the president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. Christof describes his passion in life as "to understand how I came to be in this wonderful, mysterious universe. Not so much me, personally, but me as a conscious, experiencing thing surrounding by other...

Tobias co-founded the Center for Reducing Suffering with Magnus Vinding. CRS is a research center that works to create a future with less suffering, taking all sentient beings into account. More broadly, Tobias is involved in the effective altruism movement which applies evidence and reason to find the most effective ways to help others. In his new book, Avoiding the Worst: How to Prevent a Moral Catastrophe, Tobias lays out the concept of risks of future suffering (s-risks) and outlines ways...

Melanie Joy, PhD, is a Harvard-educated psychologist specializing in relationships, communication, and social transformation. She is the award-winning author of six books, including the new How to End Injustice Everywhere and the bestselling Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows and Getting Relationships Right: How to Build Resilience and Thrive in Life, Love, and Work. Melanie is also an internationally recognized speaker and trainer who’s presented her work in fifty countries across six...

Kendra is a professor at Huron University and a fellow of the OxfordCentre for Animal Ethics. She is a leading expert on animals and work, animal protection organizations and policy, and gender equity. Kendra has led multiple research projects enriching our understanding of human-animal work and animals’ own forms of labour in important new directions including through development of the concepts of humane jobs, interspecies solidarity, and ecosocial reproduction. Kendra's latest book is...

This episode is a bonus cross-post of my discussion with Jordi Casamitjana on his Vegan Reflections series for the VeganFTA YouTube channel. Make sure you go and subscribe if you haven't already.  I hope you enjoy listening as much as I did talking to Jordi - feedback and suggestions are always welcome. As ever I'm only one Sentientist so others will disagree! If you want to hear me interview Jordi for Sentientism check out episode 104 on the Sentientism YouTube or podcast. These are the...

Arin Greenwood describes herself as an animal writer, novelist and lawyer. Her young adult book "Your Robot Dog Will Die" was published in 2018. Arin was animal welfare editor for The Huffington Post and now writes about dogs, cats, and other animals for The Today Show, The Dodo, The Washington Post, Slate, Creative Loafing, the American Bar Association Journal and many other publications. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who...

Molly is a writer, copywriter, editor, creative strategist and an animal rights activist. She is Founder and CEO of the non-existent farm, Elwoods Organic Dog Meat. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. We discuss: 00:00 Clips 01:35 Welcome 03:20 Molly's Intro -...

Dr Iyan Offor is a Senior Lecturer in Law at Birmingham City University conducting interdisciplinary, theoretical research focusing on global animal law, environmental justice, intersectionality, posthumanism and law in the Anthropocene. Iyan is passionate about delivering legal education and research that will lead to the improvement of protections for animals and the environment in law. Iyan teaches international environmental law and human rights, legal theory, legal research, and...

Jane is an Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Deakin Law School. Jane obtained degrees in Commerce, Law (with Honours), and a PhD in human rights law from Deakin University, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Teaching (Teach for Australia) from the University of Melbourne. Jane has published research in relation to the human right to education, the human rights of disabled people, animal rights, and animal related laws. She has taught a variety of units, including human rights law,...

This episode is a bonus cross-post of my discussion about Sentientism with Claudia Hirtenfelder on her wonderful podcast, The Animal Turn. Make sure you go and subscribe if you haven't already. Go back and listen from the start too! Claudia has hosted so many mind-expanding conversations spanning five seasons so far. In ⁠Sentientist Conversations⁠ we talk about the three most important questions: “what’s real?”, “what (and who) matters?” and "how can we make a better future?" The...