The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Carole Baskin, Founder & CEO of Big Cat Rescue & Tiger King Star

Episode Date: April 23, 2021

Bigcatrescue.org

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com.

Hey, we're coming here with another great podcast. We're certainly excited to have a most wonderful and beautiful guest on the show with us today. I got a chance to meet her through the Clubhouse app. you're on that you have to have an iphone right now hopefully they'll open up to android but if you are on that check it out she's on there a lot she's making a lot of friends appearing a lot of different things and doing a lot of different media her name is carol baskin and this episode is brought to you by a sponsor, ifi-audio.com, and their Micro-iDSD signature. It's a top-of-the-range desktop transportable DAC and headphone app that will supercharge your headphones.

It has two Brown-Burr DAC chips in it and will decode high-res audio and MQA files. We're using it in the studio right now. I've loved my experience with it so far. It just makes everything sound so much more richer and better and takes things to the next level ifi audio is an award-winning audio tech company with one aim in mind to improve your music enjoyment of quality sound eradicate noise distortion and hiss from your listening experience check out their new incredible lineup of DACs and audio enhancement devices at ifi-audio.com. She is an American big cat rights activist and CEO of Big Cat Rescue, a nonprofit animal sanctuary near Tampa, Florida.

She drew public attention when she was featuring the 2020 Netflix documentary series, Tiger King, about the Oklahoma based private operator, Joe Exotic. She's also been on the big tube, a big tube again, I should say with Dancing with the Stars. So she's been on twice. And so we got her on the show today. We're going to be talking to her and it's been interesting to learn about her journey and everything else. And hopefully we'll find out more. To see the video version of this, go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss, hit that bell notification button. So you get all the Carol Baskin videos. There might just be one or two. She's always going to be welcome back. And then you can see all the other stuff we do with all the other brilliant authors. Go to goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss. Go to all our groups on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn,

all that stuff. You can see it there. I want to welcome the show. She's been waiting and she's in her animal print environment. This is why importantly, you should go see it on YouTube. Carol, welcome to the show. Hey, all you cool cats and kittens. It's Carol Baskin. And I'm so happy to be here with Chris Voss today. I love that. You're just themed to the big cats throughout everything you do. So that's pretty awesome. Give us your plugs, Carol, so people can go look you up on the interwebs where you want people to connect with you and all that good stuff. The people from SociaTap,

S-O-C-I-A-T-A-P.com forward slash Carol Baskin just set up an account for me where you can get like all of my links there, which is so cool. I've never heard of SociaTap before, but that's where they can get links to everything. And the one thing I hope everybody will do after they listen to this is go to

cubtruth.com and listen to the videos there, watch the videos there and take action for the big cats to protect them. There you go. There you go. We do a lot of book authors on the show and that's normally the thing of the show. So do you foresee a book coming out of your story anytime soon? I believe there's a documentary. I think I heard about one of the research videos we did there. They're going to do a docudrama. Is that true? And Stars. But we've been in the media over 2000 times a year and yet still nobody had actually heard of me until those two events. So it's amazing how much you can be out there doing before anybody actually hears about you. But I was recently approached by

Sky Horse Publishing to do a book. And I told them I'm not ready yet because my thing isn't done yet. Until I can end the abuse of big cats and save them in the wild, it's an unfinished story. And so there's just no point in trying to write a book without an ending. But what I have been doing since the beginning of 2020 is on my YouTube channel, releasing a day from my diary. I've kept a diary since I was a child. And so if you go on there, you can see every single day of my life and every stupid thought I ever had. And some of the adventures were pretty amazing.

And we're up to about 2007 there, I think. That's awesome. That sounds like most of my blog and my Facebook posts and everything else I blur down on social media. I'm single, so I just make everyone my wife and kids, my virtual social wife and kids. So I just share everything like diet or what's going on in my head today. And I think pretty much, I think at this point, people sometimes wonder about me, but that's okay. Let's talk about who you are now.

Right now, is there a documentary coming out or not a documentary, but drama coming out? Is that true or did I mishear that? No, you're right there. We've actually been working for many months with Think Factory, the production company, and they have a pilot sold to potentially do an entire series about the work at Big Cat Rescue. We're just still in that negotiation of the contract phase. We're actually filming. We're already filming for it, but we're still trying to make sure that we're protected because before Tiger King, nobody had ever mistreated us or abused us in the way that we feel those producers have.

And so now we're having to be really careful when we deal with the media. Yeah, I'll get to that question in a bit about how you felt about the production. So we'll save that for a middle part of the show. And I'm going to use that as a teaser for people watching. So they watch all the way. Let's talk about. OK, so you've got that coming. So people should definitely follow you.

So they should do that. One of the things that I approached this show with was I got a lot of feedback from a lot of different people. And there's a lot of people that have a lot of different opinions from you or about you. And a lot of the problems with those sort of issues, because I have a small amount of popularity compared to you. I've never been on the big screen. But is the perception of who we are and who we really are. If you could tell people who Carol Baskin is, what would you tell people who they are to try and shape,

say, this is who I am. And maybe we can fix some of those perceptions. That's one of the things I've loved about Clubhouse is because you're unfiltered and unedited there. And if I had been unedited in Tiger King, I think it would have been a very different experience for people. But when you are at the mercy of whoever is editing

and whatever role they want to put you in, then you don't have a whole lot of say in that. But as far as who I am, I really am a one trick pony. I have one goal in life. And that is that I have a vision of a world where all wild cats live free. And everything that I do is leading toward that day. And so the very first step, I believe, is ending the captivity of these wild animals and phasing out the private

possession of them so that we can save them in the wild before it's too late. And that's all that I am really about. But as you can imagine, the people who are making a living off of exploiting these animals hate me because they don't want that message out there. And so that's been why all of the horrible things that have been said about me have been said about me is to deflect the attention away from the real issues. So let's talk about your company, Big Cat Rescue. When did you start that? What got you motivated to want to save big cats or care about big cats? Tell us the story of how this started and what you guys are doing now with that company and why it's important. My goal in life from the time that I was a child was to protect domestic cats and kittens from being killed in shelters.

I didn't even know about the big cat issues until I was in my 30s. And I had done bobcat rehab and release since I was 17. So the cat gets hit by a car. The vet can fix him up in 30 minutes to an hour. But then there's months of rehab for that animal to be able to be set free. And that's what I would do since I was 17. And I was in my 30s at an auction when a fellow next to me started bidding on a bobcat. We were there, my husband and I were there buying llamas. And I leaned over to the guy and I said, when the cat grows up, she is going to tear your face off.

And he said, I'm a taxidermist. I'm just going to club her in the head in the parking lot make a den decoration out of her whoa yeah and so i started crying and my husband started bidding and we brought her home but she had been declawed she had been raised in captivity which meant she could not be released back to the wild for both of those reasons and so she was a horrible pet as you might expect they are the most vicious animal on the planet, in my opinion, and really difficult. And so my husband decided he wanted to find somebody she would not beat the snot out of because she was going after our German Shepherd and going after him. And so this guy said he'd sell him the kitten, but we had to drive up to Minnesota in person

to do it. So we did. And it turned out to be a fur farm. And they had 56 bobcats and lynx. And I asked them, cause there's no sign out front that says fur farm. And I asked them, was there this big of a market for them as pets? And they said, no, we're going to slaughter whatever we don't sell as pets at the end of the year. And so we came home with 56 bobcats. And then the next year, 28 more in the next year, 22 more. And then people started calling and

saying, hey, I heard about you and the links. Would you take my lion? Would you take my tiger? I'm like, what? What are you doing with a lion or a tiger? And so in every case, I thought I can fix this. How hard could it be? Well, it turns out it's been about 30 years of hard, but we are finally closing in on a federal bill that will put an end to this nonsense. And I really expect that will become law this year. And there was some kerfuffle with the guy in prison about that law. Tell us about what that law is, what you're trying to do, and are you the main proponent behind it trying to push that? We had been involved in this law since 1998. And we worked with a group back then. It was Tippi Hedren with

the Shambhala. She had a big cat sanctuary out in California. And the Humane Society of the United States and the International Fund for Animal Welfare. We all worked together from 98 until 2003, because it usually takes several sessions before you can get a bill through Congress. Just there's so many things going on. They have this very limited funnel as to what they'll ever even hear. And so we got it passed unanimously in 2003. And what it did was it made it illegal to sell a big cat across state lines as a pet, but it didn't make it illegal to have a pet. And so that's what we've been working since 2003 to close is to close that loophole so that people can't buy them. And the only reason, or you can get them for free.

The only reason that so many of these cats end up in backyards and basements is because of the cub cutters. The people who are breeding hundreds of these cubs every year, using them for a couple of months and then discarding them any way they can get rid of them because they're a huge liability by the time they're 12 to 16 weeks old, they can take a finger off of a child. And so that's how they end up in backyards all across America. So this bill will finally close that by making it illegal to pet the cubs and it will phase out private ownership. So people who have them, they can keep them. They just can't buy or breed more. So you're just cutting that off so they can do the more exploiting. I know that with Joe Exotic, he was running like one of these huge tourist trap things or whatever, and people are coming through. And imagine there are other people that you've been calling out

that maybe have that similar around the country. Will that shut those down and make it so that those animals aren't being exploited for money, basically? Well, it'll stop the cupheading. It wouldn't have stopped. It wouldn't have put him out of business. And in fact, when we started really doubling down on this was in 2011. And we had a huge group meeting of all of the big animal rescue groups, including World Wildlife Fund and the animal welfare institute and all those people i just mentioned before and born free all of us sat around the table to figure out how are we going to deal with this big cat crisis because there are thousands of these cats across

america in horrible conditions and at the time we found 56 of these big breeders who were just constantly breeding lions and tigers and ligers for this pay-to-play industry, where you pay to pet a cub or to walk with a cub on a leash or something like that. And now, after all of these other states have finally passed bans and partial bans, there's only maybe four or five of those places left, but they're still producing dozens of cubs every year. And so we're gaining on it, absolutely. But we need this federal bill in order to just completely close that gap. But all of those, the 56 that were around before, they managed to find other ways to run their zoos that didn't require all of this really cruel handling and exploitation of the cubs. And so Joe could have done the same thing.

In fact, during our lawsuit with him, we had met in mediation in 2015 to come to an agreement. And he agreed that he would stop the cub handling and that he would pay back just a very modest sum each month based on his over a million dollars. He was never going to pay it back at that rate, but it was just to make the case that you can't go around using other people's names. He agreed to that. And then 10 days later, refused to sign the paperwork. And that was when Jeff Lowe got involved. And so the whole agreement fell apart, but we were more than happy to let him keep his zoo and keep doing everything else. We just didn't want all of that public abuse going on. Was there something in your childhood that made you, see, I'm a dog person. I have two dogs. And ever since then, I've had trouble with

animals being abused and hurt. I can't watch videos, even like lions eating other zebras and stuff. I can't really watch that. Was there something in your childhood that happened that made you just really fall in love with these animals or that puts that kind of special thing in your heart that makes you you want to save these save animals in general i guess tease that the very first picture of me was me and my mother holding me and my father holding a cat right next to me and on the back of the photograph i learned just a couple years ago that the cat's name was tiger which of course i did not remember as an infant, which I thought was so hilarious. Was that not handwriting on the wall? But I actually believe that we are eternal and that we keep coming back to make the world a better place.

And so I think when I was on the other side of the veil, it was like, all right, we're going to lose a tiger this time around and somebody doesn't get in there and fix this. And so I probably signed up for this ahead of time. And it's just been the awakening bit by bit as I've seen bits of this to go, oh yeah, that's what I was supposed to be doing while I was here. So with Tiger, with the Joe Exotic series, Tiger King, when I prepared for the show, I had not watched the Tiger King show. And last night when I sat down, I started going through some of the different research and videos and interviews you did, and one of them was you felt the editing was unfair.

And I've been really familiar with the reality series. I think it was a Burnett. One of the big ones was The Apprentice, and evidently there was an idiot on the show, and he would misfire on who he was supposed to fire. He wouldn't follow the script, and he would fire the wrong person. They would have to go back to the videotape,

and they would have to demonize that person to fit the narrative of what the moron screwed up. Let's put it that way. So they do that a lot in these, these reality shows. Do you feel that's what was done to you with the editing of Tiger King? And let me finish one thing, if you don't mind my apologies. I felt after when I'm doing the research for the show, it might be better that I hadn't watched the show because then I don't come to you with any pre-text or pre-collusions or pre-misconceptions. So I want my audience to be aware of that as we have this discussion. And I think that maybe would be more fair to you. And that's what I decided to do with this show. Sorry for that side note, but if you want to give me your input on that, what do you think? Yeah, that's really an interesting way to do it.

I would actually, if you have any interest in it, I would suggest watching the show because you'll be absolutely mortified when you are sitting there thinking, my gosh, look at that. If you look at how I'm, they did it over five years. So like I'm in different outfits, my weight changes a lot, my hair color and length changes a lot. And yet what they'll do is they'll have some scene with something going on and then they'll piece me in there like this all happened in sequence, which it did not. And it's obvious to anybody who goes back looking for those clues. But when you're not looking for that, you don't see it.

And an awful lot of what they did use was from 2018. And I think that was probably when their focus changed. They just didn't tell us that their focus had changed. And so for when they started working with this, and like I said, we always work with all of these film crews. We do it for free. Anybody who wants to talk about the issues and wants to talk about saving tigers, we are all in.

And so there was a movie that just recently came out called Hidden Tiger that we were part of. We worked with them for five years. The conservation game with the emphasis being on con that just won the social justice award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. And we were involved in that one for five years. And so it wasn't uncommon for us to work with people that were in this industry for years. And so when the producers of Tiger King came to us, they said that they were animal conservationists and that they cared about protecting animals. And one of the people who was a producer had actually worked on The Cove, which is a great film that showed the exploitation of dolphins and people who were showing that like with blackfish did you ever see blackfish no so what they were saying is they wanted this to be the blackfish for big cats

and blackfish was a documentary that showed all of the abuse that goes on at these sequariums where they have orcas and dolphins and once people saw how cruelly these animals are treated and how much they suffer and die in captivity they wouldn't support that in sea world you know their stocks just plummeted they had to change their behaviors they don't do the shows anymore they don't take animals out of the wild anymore they don't breed anymore of these orcas for life in a swimming pool all of that changed because of blackfish and so oh that's right yeah so that's what they told us we were working on and they said the name of it was called stolen wildlife which that makes sense that's going along with that same theme we introduced them to all of the experts they could ever want to talk to about why this is cruel all of the veterinarians all of

the people that are real conservationists that are really saving cats in the wild that say none of these captive-born cats can ever serve any kind of conservation value. They didn't pull any of those people into Tiger King. And they even went so far in 2018 as to create an entire sizzle reel, which is like what they take around

and show to the buyers for the shows. And they were trying to sell it to CNN and they showed it to me and my husband. And it was everything that we had been working on. It was talking about all the issues and we were talking about why this was something that people needed to stop doing, that the cub petting was driving all of this abuse.

And so they said, there's all of these people that are in this industry, and they're doing all these horrible things to all these animals, but there's one person who's speaking up against it and wanting to protect the tigers, and that's Carol Baskin. And that's what they said was their sizzle reel. And so as late as 2018, that's what we believe they were working on. In 2018, they said, our release forms are outdated they were years ago and we want you to sign a new one and on the new one they didn't put the name of the show in there and they said it was to be determined sometimes they change their

names as they work on these things over the years and so i thought maybe they came out with something a little bit catchier had no reason to think anything otherwise. And they ask questions that these animal abusers say about me all the time as far as if you think about this, if you are exploiting cubs and ripping them from their moms and then charging anybody who's got 10 bucks in their pocket to have their picture made with a cub and you've got kids dumping these poor tigers on their heads and stepping on them and pulling their whiskers and poking them in the eyes. Most of the cubs don't even survive the handling. And when they do, then they end up going into these horrible situations of being kept in backyards and going into canned hunts and being killed for their parts and ending up creating this legal smokescreen because it's legal to have these cats in America currently.

It's a legal smoke screen for illegal activity. So like if you get caught with a tiger tooth around your neck or a tiger skin rug, you can just say that was your pet. Even if you had shot it in the wild and brought it home, nobody can tell the difference. So that's why it's such a huge impact on the cats in the wild. If you're doing all of those horrible things and the media calls you out on it because I have called you out on it and they're like, what do you think about Carol saying you shouldn't be doing this? The first thing they say, because they know it'll work, is did you know she killed her husband and fed him to the tigers? Now they don't care anything about cubs. It's, oh my gosh, that's such exciting stuff. Let's go

talk about that. And they have done exactly what they wanted to do and manipulated the media into constantly running off on this stupid goose chase. Because I had nothing to do with the disappearance of my husband. And I was the only person in his life who was actually trying to protect him. But it's worked for them all these years. So when the producers came to us and said what do you say when Joe Exotic says this about you and I would tell them this is why they do this and this is what was actually going on and here's the receipts showing that my husband had dementia he had been diagnosed with being bipolar but he hid it from me so he wasn't getting medicated he had been flying and crashing planes he had crashed in the gulf once

before his fan was found at the airport the most likely thing is he crashed into the gulf for the fourth time and just didn't manage to walk away from the fourth plane crash he walks away from three plane crashes and yet he he really was he had some guardian angels going on for him for the longest time. When I answered those questions for the producers, I thought that it was because of what they were telling me, as we just have to lay those things to rest. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that they were going to so misrepresent what these people were saying without giving me any airtime to show any of the evidence that would obviously make it clear to everyone involved that these people were just lying and trying to deflect away from the issues. And so that was the most shocking thing to me was that

they would take that purposeful editing stance against me. And the only thing I can figure is that CNN didn't buy it. And so they looked for somebody that wanted something entertaining and decided, hey, we got all this footage, we could actually twist the plot to let's take the one person who's actually trying to protect the tiger and make her the villain. Won't that be fun? And it was really protective for them. It turned out to be one of the most watched shows ever. I was told that they sold it for $16 million. I don't know if that's true. It was somebody in the industry that said that was what he had heard about it. So they have an awful lot of reasons to continue to mislead the public. And who knows what a season two is likely to look like.

That's really interesting because I used to have an acting agency. We were familiar with doing films and selling films and stuff like that. And that was my assumption as to what had happened. A lot of people don't realize a lot of these shows that are reality shows, quote unquote, even the Kardashians, they're scripted. These guys sit down and they do the plots ahead of time. They map it out. A lot of them were scripted. I cited The Apprentice where they would have to go through and backdate. They'd have to tell the backstory and be like okay we got to find cuts and pieces and i don't think a lot of people really get that sort of manipulation is being played with them they're like it's reality tv this must be happening in real time

and you're right the the to tell a good story or if you really want to make something salacious which is going to get you the most money and the most crazy media is to make a salacious story. And there has to be a good person and a bad person in this battle of good and evil. It's the oldest movie plot line in the book. So yeah, I thought it was interesting on the whole aspect of it. And maybe we'll have you on again, if you would like, after I watched the Tiger King series. But I was really concerned about watching it because I was like, I wonder if that's going to filter my pre-conceived notions notions because I know this video has been manipulated. I just know that I don't have to watch it. And I kind of know the plot from everything I've heard.

Let's talk about that a little bit. I'm interested in how people feel and what their experience is. So people wrote a lot of songs and viral memes about you. How do you feel? Did that hurt your reputation or your business cause, what you've been trying to do? And how did that feel to experience that? And do you think that maybe a book would correct that? Or is there some way that you can fix that? Or is that maybe what you're doing on Clubhouse now? Actually, before I forget, because I'm an old lady and I do forget,

I come into the room and I'm like, why am I here? I actually created a page at bigcatrescue.org forward slash Netflix. And if you sit down with that page and watch the show, then it takes you minute through minute of here's what they had on the screen versus what was really going on. And so it's a great way to actually see what it is that I'm trying to talk about when I say that there were things just taken totally out of context. As far as how I feel about things, fortunately, I'm an Enneagram 8. Are you familiar with the Enneagram? So it's like personality testing, the Myers-Briggs you've probably heard of. Enneagram is like nine different personality types. And my personality type is the challenger or the protector. And so I think that's just in my nature that if I see somebody being mistreated, in this case, animals being mistreated,

I'm going to go to the mat for them. But also part of that personality description, for the most part, is that we're like, unfiltered in what we think and what we say. And we expect that everybody, we all think that everybody's just like us. And so for me, if you hate something about me, if you think, God, she is the ugliest woman, or I hate the way she does that with her voice. If you just tell me that I'm like, Oh, that's interesting. Let me see if I can work on that. It just doesn't, there's no, there's nothing you could ever say to me that's going to make me feel bad about myself, but it might make me think for a while, could I fix that? And I like it when people are straight to the point with me.

Don't tap dance around it and worry about my feelings because I'm probably going to miss whatever it is that you're trying to tell me. I'm just going to totally be like, I don't have any idea what that person just said. And as a result of that, when people say all of these hateful things and they had all of these memes going on out there, I just don't take it personally. And there's just, I don't know if there's anybody, even my husband or my daughter or my mother, who could say something to me that I would take so personally that it would hurt me. Because I can't change what anybody else is thinking or saying or doing. The only thing I can change is the way I react to that and what I think about that.

And I'm just not going to choose to suffer at the hands of somebody else. I think it might have been harmful to somebody that wasn't in a neogram 8 that didn't already have kind of that personality. In a way way it would have been a whole lot harder i know for my family it was much harder on them than it was for me and i can understand that because if somebody was saying these things about my mother i would be outraged i would just be in such a state of a fit wanting to protect her and wanting to set the record straight and it's just i'd move heaven and earth to protect her reputation or my daughter's reputation or my husband's reputation. But for me,

it's not about me. It's about the tiger. And so I just can't take it personally. Yeah. That's really a great perspective to have on it. Cause I think we talked to them before the show. I get a lot of sling. I got a lot of arrows on YouTube, but nothing, the amount of viralness, the amount of things that people did and we became your own, your, your own internet sensation, if you will. Not a lot of people experiencing that. So I was curious about the human experience and how you approach that and how you dealt with it, because that's really important.

And I think it gives us some insights to who you are. And I imagine that would be hard on your family because people do want to protect you. They care about you. And they're like, this is the person maybe I know and love. And it's interesting how the world can take that misrepresentation to that extreme level. And I've often wondered what that was like and how it made people feel. Yeah. Yeah. I think it bothers my family even more, the fact that what you just said, there's like this instant celebrity status that was nothing that I was ever expecting or looking for or had any skills to deal with.

And with me, I'm just like, I'm going to keep doing what I have to do. I'm going to go to work every day, just like I go to work every day. I'm going to ride my bike to work every day, just like I ride my bike every day. And I'm not going to let what people are out there doing change that. And yet it scares the bejesus out of my family because I get accosted every single day going to and from work. I can't go in anywhere. I can't go into a grocery store. I can't go into a drugstore. I can't go anywhere without people wanting to come up and take selfies with me. Nobody has come up being mean, not one. Every single person that has come up to me in person has been so sweet and so kind. And when they're coming up, even when they're really being demanding about doing a

selfie, like one of the ones that scared me the most was this big, dark SUV with the tinted windows. And I live in this really bad neighborhood. And this thing ran me off the road. And then all the doors flew open and all these guys jumped out and they started running toward me. And I was like, oh my God, they're going to kidnap me. I am so dead because I just couldn't get away from them fast enough because I had been thrown off balance by the fact that they just jerked the car right in front of me. And it was everybody wanting a selfie. And I'm just like, stay back. I don't know if you're a hit man or what you are. I'll do your selfies, but it's going to be at a socially distanced. I get a tiny bit of that. People run up to me at shows. They're like,

the Christmas show. And you're just like, whoa, dude, I don't know who the hell you are, man. Just calm down. But nothing at the level that you're experiencing. It's quite a thing to have you do that. One of the other things that people have either misconceptions with you about or whatever is some of the things about your husband. And so I wanted to clarify that too. What do you think happened to your husband? And that's really it. I think he crashed. I think Occam's razor makes sense that it's just the simplest explanation. Back when it happened, I had so many different theories. And of course, I was working with the police and trying to run down every possible lead. And so I was going through all of his phone records and calling everybody he had been

dealing with. And I started finding out he was dealing with all kinds of strange people and scary people and involved in things that were really like with Costa Rican mafia and some scheming that he had done here locally with some people that were pretty unsavory. And so I wanted to be sure that we exhausted every possibility, even though we found his van like two or three days after he disappeared, we found his van up at the airport. And I thought, just like everybody else did, it could have been planted there. And so even though that was a very likely thing for him to just go out, fly out over

the Gulf and crash, I still felt like I wanted to make sure that we had exhausted everything else. And now 23 years later, I really think that's the thing that makes the most sense. I think if it were any of the other things that I was concerned about, because of the fact that I had to take over and finish those business dealings that he was in, somebody would have killed me or tried to kill me. That didn't happen. And so I don't think it was any of those things. I don't know about Costa Rica because when I went there, I wasn't as exposed to some of the people that he was. So I don't know whether it could have been that, but it just, that's the only thing that makes any sense to me. Yeah. The, I had some friends that have done some business

in Costa Rica and you're going to foreign country, anything can happen. It was, so is the plane missing then it was never found. We had so many planes. I didn't know. And what he was looking to do was to buy an ultralight. He was taking taking ultralight but you know what an ultralight is yeah the little gliders that yeah so he was wanting to take those down to Costa Rica he was putting them on barges and shipping them down there and some people have said he was doing that because he was smuggling drugs down there but I thought he was doing it what he told me he was doing with it was working with the sanctuaries down there to protect the exotic cats. And so what they would do is they would fly over these places where people were poaching and that kind of stuff. But at any rate, I knew he was looking for experimental planes. And one of my volunteers was the one that actually brought this scenario to me.

He said, what about this? And I think this makes more sense than anything else. So Don wasn't licensed to fly. He had lost his, there's two different stories. He told me he lost his license the day he caught it doing touch and go's at a closed airport, which is illegal. And then in Tiger King, they said he never even had a license. So I don't know which is true because I never actually saw it. But the only way he could fly because it was illegal was for him to take off and land from airports that were closed. And even though he had a number of airplanes, he had to keep it under 200 feet when he have to stay under that so that it doesn't pick up the transponder in the plane.

And because of the fact that if you're flying at 200 feet, some little updraft or downdraft can really cause you a lot of grief. And so as soon as he could, once he took off, he would go straight out to the Gulf and fly over the Gulf, up the state of Florida or down the state of Florida, depending which way it's going. Because the water is smooth out there. And so you don't have all of those updrafts and downdrafts. And so again, if you're at 200 feet, and he would also just fall asleep, I actually got my pilot's license, because I was afraid he was going to kill us, he would take off and then just fall asleep. And I wanted to be able to bring the plane down and landed if I had to, if that happened. So that's why I learned to fly. What the volunteer had suggested was, what if Don found somebody that was willing to sell him experimental ultralight thing that they built in their backyard? Don has them meet him at the

airport here, and it was in pilot country estate. Meet him there before anybody gets there in the morning, and then they fly up in that guy's plane to take that guy home. So that guy flies in the experimental, they both fly back in the experimental so that Don can drop the guy off at his house. And then Don flies it back to Tampa. As he's coming back into Tampa, if he crashes, and it was all over the news, if you're the guy that sold him that experimental plane, do you want to be telling anybody that you did that? And if it was anything illegal about how that thing was built or what they were doing, clearly he had to know what he was doing was illegal with Don by virtue

of the fact that they were taking off and landing at a closed airport, which is not illegal. That's why I kept thinking at some point, if that person is out there, they would come forward, but it's also possible that they don't know or that Don bought something from somebody and had it parked at the airport. Nobody, there's just, we weren't keeping track of those things very well. I didn't even know how many planes we had until after he disappeared. And it took me quite a while tracking those down around the state because they were all over the state. They were all the way over on the others, on the other coast, some of them. And so I just, I don't know. When you say, was there a plane missing? I don't know. But

I don't know how we would ever know unless wreckage could wash up during or after a hurricane or something like that. But if it's a small plane, I just don't know how much would ever even be there to wash up. That's interesting. Bob Denver, he was doing experimental playing stuff and that's what killed him. Bob Denver, the singer, the guitarist and stuff. Yeah. So when people accuse you of different stuff and they're making assumptions based upon the movie and stuff, is there something you'd want to say to them about getting to know you better or jumping to those assumptions? Is there anything you would say to them? If you could sit down with them and say, here's what I think about that. Is there anything you would say to them? If you could sit down with them and say, here's what I think about that.

Is there any thoughts you have on that? That's actually why I wrote the page at bigcatrescue.org slash Netflix. Because if anybody does care, all of the evidence is there and they can make their own mind up. They can go through Tiger King minute by minute and look at what's on the screen

and then look at what the receipt is on the page there that proves it otherwise. But I don't think most people care to do that. And I think that there's even a, there's a reason why people don't care to do that. And one, some people just don't care. Most people probably just don't care. But even if you did care, if you were one of those people who got sucked into that hole doing the Carole Baskin dance on TikTok and sharing those god-awful memes with everybody about how I started COVID and all of that kind of stuff, what does that say about you if you go back and learn the truth and say, you know what, I was doing all these hateful things and I was wrong. People don't want to say that. Nobody wants to say they were wrong. So they will entrench themselves in saying they were absolutely right and just closing their eyes to anything that

would prove otherwise. Yeah. And it's a bit of laziness too, where people just don't want to do the research and learn and go, well, we shouldn't get to know this person better. But I'm a big believer in like John Lennon song. Imagine, I think we should all understand people better. That was one of the reasons why I chose not to try and cram Tiger King before you came on. I didn't want to lay down any pre misconceptions and I wanted the purity

bringing you on the show and going, who is this person? And what are they about? And I, I just felt that was a fair thing to do. And if, then if you want to come back, maybe later after I watch the show or something, we can figure out. It would be interesting. I haven't talked to him, but he's like done an interview before and after

watching. Yeah. And, but I'm sure I'll see all the stuff that's in it. The other question I was, I've never been in a situation where someone has plotted to murder me. How did it feel when you found out about Joe Exotic had set this forth and you get sucked into the whole thing of sending him to jail? How does that feel when it first hit you? I imagine the feds sat down with you and said, hey, there's this. It's funny when the feds did finally call, they called my husband. They didn't call me, but yeah, they never did call me. But what people don't know, because all they have is the information from Tiger King, it wasn't just that. I mean, in 2004 was the first time that Joe and I had crossed paths.

I didn't realize it. I didn't think I knew him until 2009. But we were both in a news article from 2004 that was later pointed out to me was when he started getting all crazy and cursing my name and everything else. And then by 2009, I had figured out that he was 21 of these different organizations that were exploiting cubs were all him under different names. And so I have this website at 911 animal abuse.com. And what that is like, for exactly that reason, these people hide behind different names so that you don't know all of the citations that they have for animal fuse following them around and so I had created a page and said Joe Drybogle and then here's his 21 names and here's all the citations

and of course that really lit a fire under him to hate me and it was in maybe 2012, 2013. He had a little internet YouTube channel that he would go on every night screaming about me and ranting and raving. And he got a copy of my diary from somebody that had stolen it back in the 90s. And so he would make a career of reading my diary out to people. And what he would do is read a sentence or two, and then he would just ad lib. And it was like, that wasn't what I said in there. And so that was another reason why I wanted to actually release my diary so that people

could see what the truth was behind that. But on these shows, he was constantly trying to whip up his audience, which I understand was about 40 people at the time, into getting them to kill me. And he would say things like, she's coming after your pets, she's going to take away your dogs and cats. It's just the first step to stop these, stop people from having tigers. And somebody has got to stop her, we need to rape her, we need to break her legs, we need to kill her. And he would do this, like over and over. And of course, you know, I told the police, and they were like, no, we can't do anything about it. He's just

talking. And he started doing things like actually coming to the sanctuary and we would find bullet holes and things. And he was flying helicopters over the property. Not he, but he was hiring somebody to fly the helicopters. And his husband at the time said that Joe was wanting to put grenades in glass jars and drop them over the sanctuary so that when the glass hit the ground, it would explode and kill the people down here. I turned all of that into the authorities. They didn't do anything. In 2015, the first person called me and said, Joe tried to hire my husband to kill you, and I thought you should know about this. And then another woman called me and said, Joe tried to hire me to kill you, and I thought you should know about this. And every single time we turned this over to law enforcement.

And it wasn't like, it wasn't just Joe. All of the people that I have gone after for all of the things that I think are abusive to cubs, mostly these people breeding for the cub industry. These people had been threatening me from since the 90s. And some of them actually physically threatening me attacking me when I would go to speak at public events I would have to hire bodyguards in some places where I knew these people were going to be and so this has just been my life for the last 30 years of dealing with this horrible industry of people who do not want the cub petting industry to end. And all that anybody heard about

was just the derelict guy that he paid $3,000 and then the undercover FBI agent that he hired. And so those were the two that actually were brought to trial and as evidence against Joe. And then all of the people that brought all of the charges against all of the exotic animal issues all of the charges against all of the exotic animal issues. I think it was something like 17 charges of killing animals and selling animals, endangered species that ended up putting him in jail for 22 years. So when you say,

how do you feel about finding out somebody's trying to kill you? It's like, somebody's been trying to kill me for 30 years. It's not new to me. That puts that that that puts it down you're used to getting a lot of arrows it sounds like across your life even before tiger king and some of this viral stuff and yeah i was first exposed to him somebody sent me like five years ago or something this video of him doing some song he was like singing on the thing and he had some hit he was trying to make. And I remember watching it just thinking, wow, that's that guy seems stable. Not. And then later I saw the next time I saw him, somebody he had a video where he tried to take guns into a Trump rally. And he was all upset afterwards about how they would bring his guns in the Trump rally.

And I'm like, yeah you you might want to have this looked at up here buddy and i think after that the the joe exotic thing came out with the movie so i think we're getting compressed for time but real quickly i want to just touch on your dancing with the stars was there anything you brought away from the dancing and stars experience that maybe was a surprise to you or anything you thought about that that you thought was interesting? Yeah. I can't dance. Neither can I. So, you know.

I knew that going in and I told them that going in. I had never danced this much in my life. But they said, these pros are really pros. They'll just spin you around the floor. You'll pick it up. No problem. They had no idea how inept I was. And I felt so bad for Pasha.

He was so patient. And I was just all over his feet and running into him and just could not memorize this stuff. And it was the hardest thing physically I think I've ever done. It was just so hard, but everybody was really lovely. And the great thing was that it gave me the opportunity to use their platform to talk about the issues and talk about protecting big cats. And even after they scratched me from the show, they still sent me so much press. And they'd say, you know, people wanted you to stay on the show just so they can keep talking to you about these big cats.

And so we're going to just send them on over to you. And they've done that for all these months still. There you go. There you go. Is there anything that we don't know about Carol Baskin that you'd like to share? over to you and they've done that for all these months still there you go there you go is there anything that we don't know about carol baskin that you'd like to share is there anything that you feel because i i wanted to be fair to you with all the noise that you get and the viralness and stuff is there anything you don't know that you want to share or is everything pretty much out

there on the record because it seems like you've done 30 you know plus years of being out there in the media and doing stuff is there anything people should know about you i'm allergic to cats oh that's brilliant are you seriously allergic to cats i am look at my eyes they are always like so puffy because i have two domestic cats at home that is brilliant Is there anything you've been able to find to resolve that? Any medication or anything, or you just have to suffer through it? I've been on Claritin since the 90s. And if I'm not on Claritin, I just want to claw my face off. I just, I get so bad.

It's just unbearable. And I keep thinking at some point, this drug is not going to work for me and I'm going to be in serious trouble. But it's worked all these years so far. Shout out to Claritin. I should be the spokesperson for Claritin. I've often worried over the years sometimes if I get a little kind of, I have huskies. And so they shed and they blow their coats twice a year.

And sometimes I'll get like kind of allergenic or clearly I'm not good with words. But I always worry. I'm like, what if I ever got allergic to my own dogs? But that's quite the struggle you've got going on. Sometimes the things that are the love of our lives are also the struggle of our lives. Did I describe most people's marriages? Maybe. So what's the future plans for Carol Baskin? What do we have to look forward in the future from you and what are you trying to do? We are going to pass this bill this year that makes it illegal to abuse these cubs and that will phase out the private possession of big cats. And the biggest stronghold that I have seen

against really treating animals are the zoos. And it's because people believe what they've been told for years, which is that if you don't have these animals where kids can see them, they're not going to care about animals and they're not going to protect them. We have 200 years of zoos and telling us that. And in that period of time, we've lost over 95% of the exotic cats in the wild. So that's not working. We need a new model. And we actually created a new model in virtual reality and augmented reality. And in the 180 3D videos that we do, we put out a new video,

two new videos every week on our YouTube channel. One is a flat file and the other one is a 3D 180 that you would see in a headset. And I think that's going to be the zoos of the future. They're going to turn all of those buildings and infrastructure they have into like location-based experiences. You go into the building, you put on your headset, all of a sudden you're in the Himalayas and you're seeing the snow leopard and you've got all of this cold air blowing at you and you feel like you are really there and you're seeing those cats in real time doing what they really do

from these remote-controlled internet streaming cameras. That's educational. That's entertaining. And that's something kids will really love and then want to protect those places. And if the money from all of the subscription fees and the advertising fees from those experiences goes back into local communities to protect their habitat and protect those animals, then it's a win-win for the entire planet. That's pretty brilliant. I know in Clubhouse, there are some investor friends that I have that are running around and they're investing in different projects. Are you open to investors,

just in case one's listening? I actually wrote a page just about this at bigcatrescue.org slash earth, and I released it on Earth Day. What was that yesterday? Because I really think that there are some people in Clubhouse and on BitClout that are the movers and shakers that will make this happen. That was my alarm. There you go. There you go. So, Carol, it's been wonderful to have you on the show and share some of the stuff that you have with us.

Thank you very much. Does your plugs on what people want to take and go to and see on the Internet? Please go to CubTruth.com, CubTruth.com. And there's a couple of little short videos there that really will educate you about why cub handling is always bad for the cats and killing the tiger in the wild. And then at the end, if you want to take action to protect the cats, there's a button to do it right there. There you go.

Thank you very much, Carol, for coming on the show and spending some time with us and just sharing how you feel and your experience and stuff. This has been really interesting. Thank you so much, Chris. I coming on the show and spending some time with us and just sharing how you feel and your experience and stuff. This has been really interesting. Thank you so much, Chris. I look forward to talking to you again. Thank you very much. To my audience, thank you as well for tuning in.

Go to YouTube.com forward slash Chris Voss, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, all those different places. Thanks, everyone, for being here, and we'll see you guys next time.