Rachel is a multi-award winning writer, podcast host & media consultant. Her memoir, “Open – An Uncensored Memoir Of Love, Liberation, And Non-Monogomy” was published in 2022. She is on the advisory board for Sentient Media & the board of directors of Our Hen House. Rachel does nonprofit media consulting, especially for vegan organizations & brands.
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:
00:00 Welcome
01:34 Rachel's Intro
- Journalism, writing memoir "Open", normalising veganism & liberation
06:12 What's Real?
- Growing up culturally Jewish. Parents wanted to leave behind the stricter ordinances (e.g. gender)
- Jewish school (daily prayers, dress codes) "I was not having it"
- Moving to a more liberal Jewish school
- "Tikkun olam": helping the world as an ethos. What you do in this life - not an afterlife. Giving back
- Immigration lawyer dad working w/Catholic charities
- Trip to Israel w/a religious group. "I was very disillusioned... they didn't talk about Palestinian people... didn't address the conflict at all"
- Stark contrast w/parents' sense of Jews as: "we're liberals, we've suffered... so we care about other social minorities & discrimination"
- "The oppressed becoming the oppressors"
- Proud to be culturally Jewish but "I identify less & less w/religious aspects... the more I examine them the more there's speciesism or sexism baked in"
- Always sceptical of a patriarchal god
- At 9 yrs, trying to make sense of the death of a cousin. Bargaining w/god & praying to protect loved ones
- Realising bad/good things happen for no reason & interrogating the idea of god
- Agnostic now. "As sceptical of staunch atheism as I am of staunch religiosity."
- Humility, interconnectedness. Meditation, dancing with trees
- Limits of knowledge (now or ever)
- Credence & probabilities vs. binary beliefs
- Psychedelics: the science & the experience. The comfort of universal interconnectedness
- "I'm not convinced of any afterlife or a soul that will go on"
- Terror management. Coming to terms w/the fear of death (maybe a next book!). We know we'll die but don't want to! Coping via religion, group continuity as a response...
- "Can I confront this reality [death] & make friends with it?... what would that open up in terms of freedom?"

...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info and on YouTube.
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Thanks Graham.