146: Bursting “The Reality Bubble” – Ziya Tong – Science broadcaster and author – Sentientism

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.

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Ziya is a television presenter, producer, author and board member. She was the co-host of Discovery Channel’s long-running primetime science magazine, Daily Planet. In 2019 she wrote the book “The Reality Bubble“. Ziya serves on the boards of a range of NGOs and charities, including PEN Canada, We Animals Media and WWF International.

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 Welcome

01:46 Ziya’s Intro 

– Science broadcasting  @discoverycanada  

– Author of “The Reality Bubble” exposing human blind-spots

– NGO board roles including  @WeAnimalsMedia  (animal photojournalism led by Jo-Anne McArthur)

– Tweeting about earthlings: https://twitter.com/ziyatong

03:32: What’s Real?

– “Being a bi-racial person gives you a sort of split view… Chinese… Eastern European”

– Communism & capitalism, eastern & western

– “I never really… took one true dogmatic reality”

– “I consistently shed layers of what I previously thought of as reality”

– Yoda: “You must unlearn what you have learned”

– A science journalist career “naturalistic in one sense”

– “With science you can reveal a lot… the whole book [The Reality Bubble] is about that… but it always puts a lens between you and the subject”

– Black holes & mites on our eyelashes

– “The humanities are much more subjective”

– Polymaths spanning humanities & the sciences “that blend is what’s interesting to me”

– “Indigenous perspectives… have so much to share with us about how we perceive reality”

– Swimming sea wolves in British Columbia “new to science – but indigenous peoples had known about these wolves for their entire histories”

– The Consilience Model: Science and indigenous perspectives “Two eyed seeing”

– Plant medicines like #ayahuasca “which open up an entirely new door to reality”

– “I don’t believe reality stands on firm ground… I’m happy to run around the ice flow as it shifts… reality should never be solid”

– Science & indigenous perspectives “are both based on observation”

– “To a neutrino this mug wouldn’t be here at all”

– “We have to question our every-day common sense notions of reality”

– Humilty & error-correction

– Risks of dogma within science “we looked at animals as if they were machines”

– Brought up Roman #catholic , dabbled with #buddhism  / #sufiism 

– Rumi: “There’s a hundred ways to kiss the ground”

– #Vipassna #meditation  – a 10 day silent retreat “you are really guided by yourself”

– Feeding ants & saving an ant “I promised not to kill anything” as part of the 10 Buddhist precepts

…and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.

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