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

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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