Ramnani: Hi, I am Dr Sapna Ramnani, and you're listening to share it with me and the journalist living with a speech impairment, and that means my voice is a little more difficult to understand. But I didn't want that to stop me from asking the questions that matter in this podcast, I use an AI voice to help me bring those questions to life. The voice is synthetic with the thoughts, the emotions and the intent behind every question and comment are completely my old you'll hear that AI voice throughout the interview, but know that I'm here guiding every moment of the conversation. Hi, everyone and welcome the very first episode of share it with me. I'm so excited to kick things off with Jamie Woodhouse, a brilliant seeker and the creator of sentientism, a philosophy that's all about using evidence and reason when extending compassion to all sentient beings. In this episode, Jamie breaks down what it really means to be sentient, what that matters, and how this idea connects to the way we treat each other and the animals we share this planet with. We also get into the importance of a feeding lifestyle, and while caring for our fellow creatures is more than just a personal choice, it's a global responsibility. It's a thoughtful, inspiring conversation, and I honestly couldn't think of a better first guest to help set the tone for what Share It With Me is all about. Let's jump in.

Woodhouse: Hi, Sapna, how are you?

Ramnani: Hi, Jamie, I'm fine. Good to hear it. How are you?

Woodhouse: Yeah, I'm doing really well. Thank you doing very good.

Ramnani: Yes, too. So thank you. It is really nice to meet you and thank you for your time. It is an honour to have you here. Can you tell me a bit about yourself?

Woodhouse: Yeah, so my name is Jamie Woodhouse, and I guess my main interest these days is developing and popularizing this really simple world view called sentientism, which I guess we'll talk about today. But I've I had a fairly sort of standard corporate career for many years, and now I do some of that type of work, some of that consulting work that I used to do for a big company, but I also run a range of different projects that are mostly in the NGO charitable spaces. But this sentientism idea is becoming bigger and bigger in my life.

Ramnani: So be good to talk to you about and for people who don't know anything about sentientism, what is it? Can you explain?

Woodhouse: Yeah, of course. So I describe it as a world view or a philosophy, and in a sentence, you can summarize it as evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings. So like lots of other world views, you know, religious world views, or non religious world views, like humanism. I think it's trying to help us answer some really big, deep questions. And for me, the most important questions are, you know, what's real? How should we understand reality, assuming we want to try and make it better? So that's a question of epistemology. But there's also deep and important question of ethics, you know, who matters and what matters, and how should we live a good life? So sentientism tries to answer both in a very simple way. It says, when we think about what's real, we should use evidence of reason to try and understand reality by engaging honestly with reality. And that question of who matters, the clue is in the name that all sentient beings should get, our compassion and our moral consideration. And in short, a sentient being is any being that can experience things, that can have feelings, that can experience good things, which we might call flourishing, or bad things that we might call suffering. Simply that includes all living humans. You know, all of us are sentient. I'm pretty sure you are, Sapna, I'm pretty sure I am, but also extends out to include, you know, an enormous amount of the animal kingdom, at least, and may even go beyond that. ...

Ramnani: Thank you so much. It was a real pleasure talking to you today, and I am looking forward to having your podcast out there.

Woodhouse: Yeah, thank you. It's such an honour to be your first guest. I'm looking forward to many more in the future, and I hope maybe I can even count you as a celebrity sentientist too.

Ramnani: I don't think I will ever be that famous, only a matter of time. Now you have a podcast. It's only a matter of time. Okay, great. Thank you for your time.

Woodhouse: It's such a pleasure. Thank you. Please stay in touch.