64: "The conversation has to start with you" - Jenny Splitter - Journalist and SciMom Founder - Sentientist Conversation Sentientism

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?”

Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.

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

- "Perilous bounty" by Tom Philpott

- #JustTransition for industrialised & indigenous cultures


...and much more. Full notes on Sentientism.info and YouTube.



Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall https://sentientism.info/wall/ here: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist.

Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. Main one is here on Facebook.

Thanks Graham for the post-prod.


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Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sentientism/message