The Rich Roll Podcast - Ingrid Newkirk Is Animal Rights’ Provocateur In Chief

Episode Date: May 4, 2020

A true force of nature, today's guest needs little introduction. Meet Ingrid Newkirk. The original doyenne of animal activism, Ingrid is the legendary and infamous co-founder and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a non-profit she personally shepherded into the largest animal rights organization in the world, currently boasting more than 6.5 million members and supporters. Under Ingrid's stewardship, PETA quite literally put animal welfare on the map. Operating under the principle that animals are not ours to experiment on, eat, wear, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way, PETA has a storied and often controversial history of exposing countless acts of gruesome and horrifying animal abuse, with it's media-savvy provocateur in chief grabbing headlines and creating significant awareness, policy changes and legal protections along the way. Named a top businessperson of the year by Forbes, Ingrid has been profiled in countless publications -- including twice by The New Yorker -- and has appeared in seemingly every prominent media outlet including the Today Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Larry King, Politically Incorrect, Crossfire, Nightline, and 60 Minutes. Irrespective of your opinions about PETA, Ingrid is someone who has dedicated every breath to what she believes in. Combating injustice. Taking action to change what many of us simply want to deny or avoid. Looking suffering straight in the eye. And doing something about it.  That level of purpose -- the courage to speak truth to power, tenacity to weather persistent criticism and stay the course for change -- is rare. It's impressive and laudable. Behind it all, there is an undeniable sincerity to Ingrid. A fascinating, complex, and charismatic character, she’s also deeply sensitive. Quite self-aware. And surprisingly funny. Today Ingrid shares her story. Note: This conversation was recorded pre-pandemic on February 18, 2020. Therefore there is no coronavirus discussion. However, I think Ingrid's message is profoundly of the moment given the undeniable role animal agriculture plays in fomenting disease. The visually inclined can watch it all go down on YouTube. And as always, the audio version streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. In this moment of forced repose, my hope is that we reflect on humanity's misguided entitlement to dominion over all things. Our intelligence is not the gauge of the animal kingdom. And our relationship with the living beings with whom we share this imperiled planet is broken. Ingrid is here to recalibrate that relationship. Peace + Plants, Rich

You shouldn't just be being kind to animals within the context of using them. They're other nations. They're just like us. We are animals. We need to stop seeing them as hamburgers and handbags and tools for research. We need to see them as other individuals and treat them with respect. Leave them in peace. You are not a god as a human being, and they are not trash. They are feeling emotional, complex intelligences, and yet you have them in chains, in cages.

You're hitting them with a bullhook or a whip. You're throwing things down their throats to test your medicines and cosmetics. throwing things down their throats to test your medicines and cosmetics, hands off, just the same way we now understand with certain other human beings. I would say it's so easy if you really care, and so many people do care, is just don't buy anything that comes from an animal because either the animal gave up their life for it, or they're kept in confinement for years and years, or it was stolen from them and they needed it. You know, every living being deserves respect. That's Ingrid Newkirk, and this is The Rich Roll Podcast.

The Rich Roll Podcast. What is good, people? I'm Rich Roll, your fellow homo sapien member of the animal kingdom, wishing you well-being from what I think is, if I'm not mistaken, now week eight of voluntary quarantine here in the United States. I hope this finds you safely ensconced in your domicile, healthy, and making ends meet amidst the challenges. And to those who can't afford to remain at home, our healthcare service and food workers, thank you. Good to be here with all of you guys today. My guest today needs very little introduction. The one, the only, the singular, and at times

infamous animal rights force of nature that is Ingrid Newkirk. You guys knew this one was coming at some point, right? Well, if not, or if for whatever reason Ingrid's name doesn't ring a bell, she is the legendary co-founder and president of PETA, the nonprofit People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which is the largest animal rights organization in the world with more than 6.5 million members and supporters. Today, she shares her story. I love talking to her, and it's coming up in a few, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment

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this organization quite literally put animal welfare on the map. Because before Ingrid, there really was no significant animal rights movement to speak of. And without her work, her passion, her stewardship, the cultural, legal, and regulatory landscape that dictates norms around how we think about and treat animals certainly would not be what it is today. This is someone who has dedicated every single breath to what she believes in, combating injustice, taking action to change what many of us simply would prefer to deny or avoid by instead looking suffering straight in the eye and actually doing something about it. And that kind of will, that level of purpose,

the courage to speak truth to power, the tenacity to weather that level of persistent criticism and stay the course for change, I think is really rare. It's impressive and quite frankly, laudable. Behind it all, there is an undeniable sincerity to this media savvy and at times controversial provocateur. She's complex. She's also very kind, deeply sensitive. And as you momentarily will discover, extremely charismatic, self-aware, and actually surprisingly

funny. I just think there's a lot to be learned from her example. So today's conversation is of course about her work with PETA. It's about the history and current state of animal rights and activism, including a dive into animal lab testing, which is a subject I freely admit to not knowing as much about as I should. It's also a rumination on what can be learned from the intelligence and emotionally rich lives of our underappreciated animal friends and why the beings with whom we share this planet deserve our respect, which is the focus of Ingrid's new book, Animal Kind. But more than anything, this is a philosophical dissection of beliefs and of values and how Ingrids have indelibly shaped policy

and culture around the globe. Final note, this conversation was recorded pre-pandemic on February 18th. Therefore, there is no coronavirus discussion. However, I think her message is profoundly of the moment. I would have loved to have heard Ingrid's thoughts on how our imbalanced relationship to animals has actually created the circumstances for this type of pandemic disease. But short of that, I would like to reference a small portion of Bill Maher's closing monologue in last week's episode of Real Time, which, in case you missed it, he, in my opinion, perfectly captured an

unappreciated truth behind our current calamity. To paraphrase, animal cruelty leads to human catastrophe. America's factory farms are just as despicable and problematic for our health, not just the animals' health, as the wet markets in Wuhan where the virus erupted in the first place. Most, if not all, infectious diseases are zoonotic. They start in animals and jump to humans. Are you surprised when diseases thrive when animals are forced into inhumane conditions, the opposite conditions the CDC is recommending for us, we can't keep trashing the environment, including animals, and not expect to face catastrophic repercussions.

I'd say that's perfectly put. Humans need to stop seeing ourselves as gods. Our intelligence is not the gauge of the animal kingdom. And so in this moment of forced repose, it is incumbent upon us to rethink, reimagine, reinvent our many broken systems. And perhaps most important among them is our relationship with the living beings with whom we share this imperiled planet. Ingrid is here to recalibrate that relationship.

Ingrid, so nice to see you. Thank you for coming out here to talk to me today. My pleasure. Thanks very much for doing this. We're going to try to be an antidote to our soundbite culture, and we have all the time in the world to go as deep and as long as you'd like to go. That sounds very good and very unusual. Yeah, well, right. I mean, but I think much needed in this culture, right?

We've lost our ability to have mature conversations with nuance. That's right. There's no depth to things anymore. Although I enjoyed you on Bill Maher recently. That was fun. Oh, he's so kind. He really is. He's the first person I've ever heard,

the only person I've ever heard say that his dogs are the only ones who greet him as if he's the Beatles when he comes home. Yeah, well, he's one of those people that I think he has an aversion to humankind in a certain way. He does, but he also lets people he disagrees with speak their piece.

Of course. And then he argues honestly, which is something I very much respect about with him because he hears the arguments out. So he's not sort of a rushed Limbaugh where he's very opinionated and he only has people who agree with him on his show. He has the gamut.

Yeah, he does. It's always fun when he's jousting with somebody that he people who agree with him on his show. He has the gamut. Yeah, he does. It's always fun when he's jousting with somebody that he doesn't agree with. But he's on board with everything that you've been doing for ages and ages. He's a member of our board. He's an honorary board member, yes. And he has been.

He was one of the very first, if not the first. So he has a big heart for animals. Yeah. Well, congratulations on the new book, Animal Kind. Thank you. It's a lovely read. I found it to be, it wasn't what I was expecting. It's just kind of like this rumination on the beauty and complexity of animals of all species. If I can, I'll read the, which I have to read actually, I can't ever remember their talents, their emotions, the complex ways

they communicate, just anything and everything. And you pick up so much information, it's hard to figure out what's not only interesting, but relevant to how we treat them. And the second part of the book is learning how to treat them perhaps better than we have been. Right. You've divided it into two parts. The first part is kind of this exploration of the unique talents of a variety of species. And rather than anthropomorphize these animals, you really look at what makes them unique and special and in so many ways, more talented, more intelligent than human beings. The kind of underlying theme of the whole thing is, historically, we've looked at the animal kingdom

along this linear spectrum of intelligence and capability, right? And this really upends that by saying, the more we learn, the more we realize that it doesn't work that way, that almost every single animal has something about them that makes them not just more adapted to their environment, but talented in ways and in capacities that humans lack. So there's an argument to be made that their intelligence exceeds that of our own in so many ways and in countless ways, actually. Yeah, you're right.

I mean, we have, and I go into this in the book, we've had really pathetic ways to determine animal intelligence because we've set the standard at human intelligence, which is one intelligence among many. And, you know, the animals, the other animals, may not be able to make a nuclear warhead. That might be a really good thing. They may not pollute the rivers with chemicals from leather tanneries. You know, hats off to them. So that's what our intelligence has brought about. I mean, other things too. We have anesthetics. We have all sorts of things because we're so creative.

We have all sorts of things because we're so creative. But I always think the average human being, take me, I couldn't make a cell phone. I couldn't make an aircraft. I just use those things. I use this technology. So even the average human can't be judged by what humankind has come up with. So the book, Animal Kind, is to say, look, we're all animals. It's a great orchestra of life, if you will. But human intelligence is not the gauge because animals, as you say, they have extraordinary talents that far outdo from sense of smell, eyesight,

a homing instinct, feeling seismic waves before an earthquake happens, for goodness sake, knowing that a tsunami is coming, elephants in Thailand trying to break the chains and run before anybody else knew it was happening. But all the ways that they have devised to deal with our world, because we have taken over their world. It's now our world, you know. It shouldn't be anthropomorphism either. As you said, it's not as if humans are alone in having certain emotions like love and fear and loneliness and grief. That's a shared emotion. All those are shared emotions.

So there is now, and I go into this in the book, we've come from the great chain of being, which is where early mostly Christians, or maybe exclusively Christians, decided God was at the top, and then there were angels, then there were bishops, then there were kings and queens for intelligence, all the way down to peasants. And under peasants, believe it or not, actors, which would make people very upset. And then under them, stones. I mean, under them, snakes and reptiles, ugly animals. The snake is kind of at the bottom, right?

Because of its place in the biblical canon. Exactly. And so it was all very religious. And that's how we graded animal life and animal intelligence. And from that, we have come to, there's this thing now called the mirror test, which scientists have used for some years to see how intelligent animals are. And that is, can they recognize themselves in a mirror? Now, tribal peoples have sometimes failed this test, I should point out, but they don't

mention that because a tribal person might see their mirror image and think it's someone attacking them and attack the mirror. So chimpanzees, everybody says, oh, yes, of course, they pass it because they're primates like us. They're highly intelligent. We like chimpanzees. But this little fish called the wrasse, who's about the size of my finger, has also passed it.

She can recognize herself in the mirror and start preening, like Kim Kardashian or somebody. And then luckily she can't take selfies, but she's passed the test. So I think it's what we don't know about animal intelligence. Well, most people are familiar with the complexity of a dolphin's language or that of the whales. And we're aware of the migratory habits of many species of birds. But there's a lot of sort of new examples that I'd never heard of in this book that are pretty mind-blowing. I mean, what are some of your favorite, you know,

most kind of impressive? There are so many. And, you know, Rich, I collect information about animals. But in the research for this book, I learned a lot I didn't know. There is a moth who actually communicates with iridescence. And you have to be aligned. You probably have to be another moth. But you have to be aligned in such a way with their wings that you can see how the light catches them to know what they're communicating. see how the light catches them to know what they're communicating. And of course, cuttlefish, I did know this, can communicate with patterns of light and waves on one side of their body to say flirt with another cuttlefish and not show that at all on the other side where they might be

showing anger or being fierce against another cuttlefish that they want to stay away. Right. But we have tree frogs drum out their messages on bark. And we have actually city frogs now that use drain pipes to amplify their sound because human sounds in cities are now so loud. Right. You talk about that with birds and how they have to strain their voices now in order to get their calls heard and received.

And get up earlier because our rush hour gets earlier and our rush hour is more dim. And so the birds are getting up earlier so they can hear each other before humans take it over. Right. You even go so far as to talk about slime molds. You go all the way down to the single-celled animals. I think I put in slime molds because, to me, it's startling that a slime mold can actually navigate a maze. way of, for lack of a better word, thinking about things, working things out, that makes us surely stop in our tracks and think, if a slime mold can figure something out, I'd better not shortchange

the others. Because you said, you know, we know a lot about, say, how birds navigate by the stars, by low frequency radio waves that we didn't even know existed at all. Sensing like the magnetism of the poles, things like this. The Earth's magnetic field, they are absorbing that, using it, using it to navigate and to think about things. But we don't actually act on that. We think, oh oh that's interesting and that's why the second

part of animal kind was so important to me because it says hang on a minute if you've learned all these phenomenal jaw-dropping or inspiring things about animals then it's got to inform your behavior you can't just go that's interesting and move on and continue to disrespect them or not give them credit or think of them as those, those others, you know? Yeah, I think, and you make that point very plainly and clearly, but it's such a difficult sort of gap to bridge in the sense that it's not necessarily about the information. The information is important and the more that you can inform and educate people about the nuances of intelligence and the emotional lives of these animals and the ability that they have to communicate and all of that.

But what is really required to move the needle in terms of people's behavior? You know, if it was just information, we would have solved this problem a long time ago. Good point. And obviously with the environment, if it was just information, we would have solved that a long time ago. Or pick your subject. Yeah. We would have solved that a long time ago. Or pick your subject. Yeah, there has to be sometimes a threat or some almost cataclysmic occurrence that shakes us up. It usually takes some big thing that happens that makes you think, oh, this could impact me. Today, I do believe people have woken up, at least a lot of people have woken up to the environmental threat.

at least a lot of people have woken up to the environmental threat, but they are trying to wangle their way around it. Like, do I really have to make these changes? How many changes do I have to make? So in Animal Kind, I point out that eating animals, for example, and it should be enough to just say, good God, I'm a civilized person. I think I'm a kind person. I'm not going to put money into the slaughterhouse or transportation of these animals. But it's not enough. As you say, you need to think, well, what about my grandchildren then? Or what if I fly less? Or the new thing now is plastic straws. You know, great. Okay. Don't use a plastic straw. But let's start with not eating the fish. Yeah, exactly. And let's even look at... I'm such a good person. I'm not using a plastic straw. That's great.

While I'm eating my fish sandwich. Yeah. And you'd look at the trash in the ocean. Most of it isn't plastic straws. It's mostly discarded fishing gear. It's those big trawling nets. It's other things. Whales now we have off the coast of California even, who are being weighed down by crab traps. I mean, do you really have to eat a crab? Is it that important to you to eat a fish? You know, just leave it be. And so couple that with your straw. So I do think you're right. People need a jolt.

And so I try to give them the amazing things about animals for their sympathy, for their empathy, for their understanding. But, yes, at the end of the day, most people need to have a flood and earthquake at the end of the world. Right, it has to be personalized. I mean, people are inherently, I believe, empathetic and live their lives in that manner. But I think the further, the greater distance there is

between a decision that's made and the kind of impact of that decision, the more difficult it is to change the behavior. So for example, with plastic straws, like wetting that to the environmental, you know, downstream impact of that is so distant from the choice of whether you're going to put a straw in your cup at Starbucks that it's hard to, you know, it's hard to get people to change. I think the food that is on our plate is a little bit more direct

because you see the animal product and you can understand that something had to be killed for that. But still, you're not the person doing the slaughtering, right? Or if you're wearing a leather belt or whatever it is, it's easy to sort of remain myopic to that. But the closer, I think education goes a you know, goes a long way towards wedding those things together so that people can do their own inherent math and realize the downstream

impact of the choices that we're making. But it's tricky. I mean, you spent your whole life, you know, on this issue. And I got to say, on some level, it's got to be incredibly gratifying to see how far this movement has come since you got into this in the 1970s. Yeah. We weren't an overnight success, I can tell you that. All social movements. And that's something that actually gives me hope is I not only look at how society has changed. I mean, when we were starting, 1980, we were pioneers, believe it or not. Things like soy powder, you had to buy in a co-op. If you could find it, mix it with water by hand or with a whisk. And now you go to the supermarket and you stare for 10 minutes thinking, do I want the macadamia?

It's just ridiculous. So, yes, how far's just ridiculous. So yes, how far we've come, but all social movements go through the same thing, you know, ridicule, discussion, acceptance. And I think we've come quite a long way, but yeah, I'm not necessarily gratified so much as I try to be optimistic because I can only be hopeful looking back at how far we've come. And people who are in their 20s today, I mean, this is like the feminist movement. You have no idea with women's rights how far we have come. With everything, civil rights, how far we have come. Much, much further to go.

Right. So the foot's not coming off the gas. Not at all. No, you can pry my dead fingers from people for the ethical treatment of animals. Well, let's take it back. I mean, you were born in England, but you were really raised in New Delhi, right? Is that where you spent your formative years? Well, India. My parents were in New Delhi and I was shunted away to hill station boarding schools because it's too hot in Delhi in the summer. And so, yes, I was raised by nuns in the hills, which is why I'm pretty much allergic to nuns today. I can only imagine. But your mom worked with Mother Teresa.

She did. And when I went home for the holidays, there was an orphanage in New Delhi. There was one in Calcutta. And we used to pack pills for lepers. We used to stuff toys for the kids. We used to go over and play with them and all that kind of stuff. Wow. But she also took in animals. She always said to me, it doesn't matter who suffers, but that they suffer. And if there's something you can do about it, shake a leg.

Well, your real interest in animal suffering and animal rights wouldn't come until much later, but obviously that's a powerful seed that was planted early. I always, you know how some people are drawn to art? I don't understand art at all, but I always was drawn to animals. And so it wasn't later. It was at that time in childhood, I was the one saying, oh, mommy, look, there's somebody beating a bull by the side of the road. Or, oh, look, there's a dog in that drainage ditch. And I always had that. Did you have personal interactions with Mother Teresa? I didn't. I never met her.

Oh, you didn't. No, never met her at all. My mother Mother Teresa? I didn't. I never met her. Oh, you didn't. No, never met her at all. My mother did, but I didn't. Yeah. She worked with her directly at times? Yes. And there were lots of volunteers, mostly expatriates, who were over with free time and were able to help with charities in India. So my mother was big on unwed mothers.

She looked after that because they were ostracized, cast out in society. And children, she always loved children and animals too. But yeah, lepers, the lot. So you take your fine Catholic private school upbringing and somehow find your way to Maryland at some point. public private school upbringing and somehow find your way to Maryland at some point? I did. It was a circuitous route, but I actually married somebody in Europe who was American, and we came back to the U.S. to live. And I was studying for the brokerage. I was going to be a stock broker. There's something very comical about that. Well, it's even stupider because I've always loved math and I thought I wanted to be a pure mathematician, but I also wanted to travel a lot in my youth. And so I thought, well, what's numbers? Oh, all right, I'll become a stockbroker. So I was busy doing that when somebody moved away next door to me and left all these kittens behind.

I don't know, two dozen or something. And I thought, oh. Just moved out and left them. Just moved out. And I thought, oh, I need to take them to somewhere that looks after them. Looked up in the phone book. We didn't have Google then. Found the nearest animal shelter.

Put them in my VW bus, drove them to the shelter, and I was just astounded. This was the United States of America. It was filthy. It was harsh. They put the kittens down immediately when they took them into the back room. I was stunned. Went into the kennel, and they were yelling at the dogs who were

confused. And all those childhood feelings of caring about animals came rushing back to me. And I thought, I'm not a stockbroker. I need to care about animals. And I applied for a job in the kennel. It was really that crystal clear that moment. Oh, it was. I hate injustice. And there's nothing that gets me more upset than people bullying. And they were bullying those animals in that place. And I thought, I have to work here. And how long did you work there? Well, I worked there and I blew the whistle on them. So I was chucked out. I went out on my ear. I went to the council and I worked hard and got the people in charge of that shelter thrown out. Is that how you got into law enforcement then?

It is. I then became a cruelty investigations officer and started. I then went to sheriff's rookie school for the police department to learn how to prosecute cases. And that's what I did. What was the state of that department at the time? Of the cruelty investigations? Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to get a sense of kind of what the perspective was in terms of enforcing anything against this kind of behavior. It was pretty pathetic.

against this kind of behavior. It was pretty pathetic. It still is in some jurisdictions, and we still have to fight hard at PETA to get prosecutors to take some cases seriously. But back then, it was almost non-existent. I read the law in the state of Maryland. All these laws are written for laypeople to understand. They're not complicated.

And you have to divide them by the elements. And I thought, we need to use this. So I went and met with the state's attorney and I made my case. I got deputized. I had a law enforcement background then because I decided I needed to be trained. And I began to bring prosecutions. And the judges I found in most cases were completely sympathetic. Many of them had a dog or a horse or something, and they didn't like what they were hearing, and so they cracked down on the people who were starving or beating or whatever they were doing to animals.

Right, wow. So how was PETA born out of this? Well, from there, I was asked to go and clean up what was then the D.C. Dog Pound, the Washington, D.C. Dog Pound. And I had some friends who were in government who advocated for me, and I became the first lay poundmaster, which I thought was a really butch title. I liked it very much. And I went and took over the D.C. what is now animal shelter and put in place the first spay and neuter clinic that there was and made sure that no longer could universities come waltzing into our place and take their pick of the animals and use them in experiments, which is what was going on. And no longer could dog fighters and people who wanted a guard dog just come in, plonk $5 on the table, and take out some big aggressive dog.

So I tried to change all that and pretty much did, made it into a fine place, had wonderful help, and bequeathed it to the Washington Humane Society to run. And then while I was doing that, formed People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals because I read Peter Singer's book, Animal Liberation, and thought, oh, good grief. You shouldn't just be being kind to animals within the context of using them. They're other nations. They're just like us. We are animals. We need to stop seeing them as hamburgers and handbags and tools for research.

We need to see them as other individuals and treat them with respect, leave them in peace. So it changed my whole perspective. Yeah, that book has had such a profound impact on so many people and culture at large. It's still as relevant today as it ever was. and said, you know, some people said, well, we'll always have slaves because they're stoic, they don't cry out in pain, you can do all these things to them, they're not as intelligent. And as Congressman Dellum said once on Capitol Hill, when they were hearing a bill about animals, he said, if you took the word slave out of an old congressional appeal, a hearing, and put in the word animal, or you did the same here, put in slave, you would have the same arguments being made by those who wish to continue to exploit whomever they wish to exploit. So you can, I mean, I didn't grow up with the same kind of prejudice. I mean, I didn't grow up with the same kind of prejudice.

I grew up with the Raj, with British people thinking that they were so superior to Indians. My father would clap his hands and somebody would come running to see what he wanted. You know, people looked down on Indians. Indian immigrants to the United Kingdom were treated very, very badly. I grew up with that. I formed the first Beatles fan club in school in India, and it was a convent. And Mother Superior came into our hall where we were all gathered and said, Stand, Ingrid Ward. That was my name then.

She said, I understand that you have started a fan club for the Beatles. Do you know that they come from a slum? And that was it. Working class people. The worst thing you could say. You know, working class people were denigrated as if they were stupid know-nothings. And so I translate this to animal rights and think you know not of what you speak. And hence, animal kind, this is who they are.

You are not a god as a human being, and they are not trash. They are feeling emotional complex intelligences, and yet you have them in chains, in cages, you're hitting them with a bullhook or a whip, you're throwing things down their throats to test your medicines and cosmetics, hands off, just the same way we now understand with certain other human beings. Yeah. At this time, other than Peter Singer's book, I mean, there was no animal rights movement, so to speak. There was nothing. I think not even the word vegan. You know, vegan was a person from Las Vegas or from the planet some Vegas or something.

No, animal rights wasn't even a concept until Peter Singer put it into the vernacular. And not even the vernacular. I mean, it was just floating about. And we had the first animal rights conference. Because before that, there used to be health vegetarian conferences. That was it. It was all about laxatives and living longer. And so we had the first animal rights conference. And we talked then about, can we show you what you're not being shown by advertisers? It's not a happy little pig in an apron dancing his way to your sandwich or barbecue. You know, this is what they're doing. They're notching their ears. They're cutting off their tails. They're castrating them. No painkiller. And people were stunned. We said, look, we've been inside a laboratory.

We went inside that silver spring. Right, right. I want to talk about that. And this is what we found. It's not a few animals being treated well because they may hold the cure to saving a baby. You know, it's just wanton abuse, neglect, disregard for them. And nobody is looking at better ways. If you just want to be more efficient, forget the animals for a minute.

People aren't putting the money into where we could be more efficient for our own selfish sakes. So we changed the conversation and we uttered the word vegan and we uttered the words animal rights in that first conference. People must have thought you were bananas back then, though. Oh, yeah. Many people did, and we were mocked. We had a demonstration in Washington against a chicken slaughterhouse. And it made, because it was so weird that anyone would care about a chicken, in 1980, it made the front page of the Washington Post. It was on every radio station. I worked for the government at the time, and I remember listening to the radio, and no matter what station you tuned in, it was, there are people protesting chicken slaughter.

Like, what the hell are these people doing? Is that when you realize the power of the media? I mean, you're no stranger to knowing how to grab headlines. I mean, you're a master provocateur. Well, we have to be. I mean, you know, it's just, you want to reach the most people that you can. And obviously leafleting on the street, one pamphlet at a time,

we still do. And it's what you, back then it was what you could do. There was no internet, you know, but we did learn. And back then, as you mentioned earlier, people were more willing to discuss things in depth so we could make the case of who animals are and why we need to look for other ways instead of just abusing them, making them suffer. You think that it's harder to do that now? Oh, it's much harder. Today it's sex, it's conflict, it's politics, of course. I mean, who can avoid that right now? Yeah.

Well, you're the crazy chicken lady in 1980, but PETA really got on the map by virtue of this Silver Spring monkey case, right? So walk us through that, because that really set in motion a lot of change. It did, and that again made the front page of the Washington Post. It also made 60 Minutes in Australia. It made the whole run of press that there was to be had. I think why it struck a nerve is that most people had been sold a bill of goods, and they did believe that, oh, it's not so many animals, and they must be treated okay. believe that, oh, it's not so many animals and they must be treated okay. That researchers had perpetuated, made sure that they said, we're scientists, don't question us. And in fact, they would say that quite openly, who are you to question us? We're scientists. They were above the law. And we were able to show by going into this one laboratory and showing videos, actually it was film at that point, and

photographs, mostly photographs, and getting expert opinions of the hideous condition that these 17 monkeys were kept in. Tiny cages, rusted wires, breaking their fingers off because their backs had been operated on and they didn't have that much nerve sensation in their arms being just left in these tiny boxes in a room being given electric shocks in a converted refrigerator having their testicles squeezed with pliers to see if they felt all these things we were able to bring it out into the light of public opinion, put it on the news, go in with a search warrant, bring the animals out. And for the first time, people thought, good God, I've been able to see inside. It's not like we've been told at all.

Right. And we got bags of mail, sacks of mail from all over the country saying, how can I help? Which are truly the most magic words, the words I love to hear today. Was that the first time that anybody had sort of covertly photographed what goes on kind of behind closed doors with animals? No. Before that, there had been two other situations in New York where somebody had leaked films, leaked photographs of monkeys being used in space exploration tests, pre-space exploration tests. And the other at the New York Museum of Natural History. And they were both very awful, but they hadn't circulated because nobody had

really been able to do anything. There had been a protest outside the History Museum. But with this, we had primatologists, anthropologists, veterinarians from all over who we took into the lab at night and showed them the conditions, showed them the monkeys with festering wounds, showed them everything, and they filled out expert statements. And with those expert statements and the photographic evidence, we were able to get a search warrant. That was the first time, and that made it all break open. So images ended up on the front page of the Washington Post. Several times.

Yeah. And it becomes like a huge deal, right? Supreme Court case and ultimately culminates in the passing of the Animal Welfare Act in 1985, right? The amendments to it. There was already, thanks to the Animal Welfare Institute, there had been 1996 or 1976, I can't remember now. There was the animal. no, it must be 1976,

there was an Animal Welfare Act. Nobody was enforcing it, which the Silver Spring monkeys case made crystal clear. And there was no interrelationship between the people who gave the money, say the National Institutes of Health, the biggest funder of animal experiments in the world and the so-called inspecting body, the United States Department of Agriculture where the inspector came maybe once every year, two years sat in the front office, had a cup of coffee asked the experimenter if everything was okay and left without even looking at the animal. So these things really were made possible to understand

through the Silver Spring Monkeys case. And what was the specific issue that was before the high court? Well, what had happened was the lower court had found the experimenter guilty, a jury trial on several counts. He then appealed, and we went to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court sent it back. Custody of the animals was actually the issue, sent it back to the lower court to rule. So this thrusts you into the limelight in a pretty big way. It did. We were amateurs. We didn't know what we were doing really, except we knew how to bring

a case. I mean, how many people were working at PETA at the time? Well, there were five of us as the core, and there might have been a few dozen who had come out. I remember Reagan was elected, and there was a big parade in Washington. And we went out with a banner. It was all very patriotic looking, stars and stripes and red, white, and blue. And it was that old Frank Sinatra song, take back your mink, take back your pearls. And we had changed the lyrics and people had seen that on national television because the parade was being televised. And one of the people, the main announcers, had actually sung it thinking it was just a patriotic song, realizing it was the first ever animal rights song. And all these people started to get in touch with us to say, yeah, I don't wear fur.

I don't want to wear fur. And yes, I don't want to exploit animals. How can I help? So all together, yes. So all together, yes. And at what point do you make this conscious decision about the strategy that you're going to deploy? You're nothing if not controversial for a lot of these various forms of protests over the years that grab headlines but also really ruffle a lot of feathers, too, and make people angry? Well, we always say, you know, we're not here necessarily to make friends. We'd like to.

Yeah. Well, we're still talking about these things, right? And that's in no small part due to the edgy nature of how you staged these events. We like to make sure it's conversational. So people might put us down. And in the old days, certainly that was par for the course, is people say, have you seen what those PETA people are doing? But they'd say it at a dinner conversation, and then everyone would talk about it. And I think people would say, well, yeah, I mean, they're crazy, but... And then they talk about the issue. You know, I don't like what's happening to animals for fur, for example, or so on. We try to be provocative because, I mean, what's the point? Someone on our staff said it's like a car crash.

If Peter is doing it, you have to look even if you don't want to. All the way up through, you know, it seems like every year, I don't know if you did it this year, but you'll tape some public service announcement type television commercial with the intention of saying this is our Super Bowl commercial and then creating additional press out of the fact that it gets rejected because no network's ever going to air these things that you create. We'd be delighted if they ever did air one of our commercials on the Super Bowl. And we do have a couple of donors who said if they ever do, we'll give you the money. But no, they don't air it. And we go in knowing they probably aren't going to. This year we did a fabulous one. It's still online.

I didn't see this year's. Oh, okay. Oh, it's so good. What is it? I don't know if I can convey this. You have to look at it. It's on Peter.org. It's a bee who is humming the national

anthem and floating. It's all animated, floating around and visits or flies over all these other animals. There's a bear, a deer, a fox, a fish who take a knee. Oh, I did see this. Yes, I did see this. It makes me cry every time I see it. I have to tell you, I'm a sentimentalist, but I think it's just beautiful. And at the end, it says, you know, every living being deserves respect. And of course, Lisa Lange, who is in our office, is the creative person behind this. She's sitting right over there. Former podcast guest too. Hi, Lisa. She went to an agency. They crafted it so beautifully. It's perfect. And we then, Lisa went to Colin Kaepernick and said, is this all right with you, the concept? And he said, yes. And so, because we didn't wish to be disrespectful in any way,

we wished to show he's a vegan, that we're all in this together, that respect should be for everyone. It doesn't really matter who you identify with. It's not just for me as a woman, women's rights. There's a principle. It's not just you because you're whatever you are, race, religion, age. It's because there's a principle. Discrimination is wrong. Bullying is wrong. Respect respect is everything looking out for the other guy and he said great right so we we put it up nfl stepped in apparently they went to fox i mean you know they don't like anything to do with it and uh anything that involves taking a knee oh no no knees will be taken which is a sad thing in so many ways. But over 4 million people have watched it right away. And it's still going strong on the internet.

Yeah. And as provocative as anything you've ever done, I would think. In a different way, in a more kind of subtle way, I suppose. And my sense is that looking at the movement and the evolution of the movement from 10,000 feet, there was a moment in time where in order to get people's attention, you would have to do these crazy things just to get people to even consider the issue, you know, that, that that's beneath that. But the movement has matured to such a point where there is adequate mainstream awareness about what's going on, at least on some level.

And as such, the tactics have to evolve as well. Like, it's not necessary to kind of do some of those things you were doing in the 80s and 90s anymore. In fact, it might be counterproductive. There's a more, you know, kind of a different tactic that you can take now in order to provoke the discussion? I think what people don't know about PETA is that we have an enormous corporate negotiations arm. We're behind the scenes, and we always have been, but it gets bigger, behind the scenes talking to retailers and others who use animals in exploitive ways, cause them a lot of pain and suffering. But actually, while we no longer have to crawl with our hands and legs in steel traps,

for example, outside stores, although Canada Goose is certainly still catching coyotes in steel traps and stuffing geese into slaughter crates, fur is dead. It really is. That was our slogan. It's happened. None of the big houses, Gucci, Galliano, Donovan, Versace, none of them have fur anymore. However, that said, we are not mainstream in other ways because we have become mainstream, which we have to be careful about with fur, with eating animals. But we still have things to do because we've been in every sheep shearing shed, try to say that quickly, on every continent except Antarctica. And in every single shed, we have found things that would turn people's stomachs about the way wool is taken from the sheep.

I mean, sheep being bashed in the face, being held down. I've seen those videos. It's horrible. And more people should. Leather, you know, I've been back to India, followed the cattle trail. People are amazed that India exports so much leather. They're a major leather exporter. Leather isn't environmentally friendly. It's full of decomposition, toxins, and what have you. But the cruelty to the cows is extreme. So we still- So ironic. Beyond ironic.

Given that it's India. Well, you look at also the cow is sacred, mother cow. Nandi the bull is sacred, and he's pulling these overloaded sugar cane carts. You have Ganesh the elephant who is sacred, who is in chains for life in a temple, going blind with trumpets in his ears and wedding parades. It's like anything, you know. Christians say, don't cheat on your wife. They say, don't steal. But yes, that's fine. People do. But no, we now have demonstrations outside fashion shows where our people are taking this odd mixture. grungy mess, pouring it, black muck, pouring it on their heads and faces, and appearing in

photographs around the world to say, please, leather is cruel. It's environmentally unsound. Get away from that too. It's just carcass. It's the bigger profit part of slaughtering a cow. If you're a vegetarian, you're supporting the meat industry by buying it. Yeah. And there is so much innovation happening right now in terms of new textiles. You know, it's interesting to kind of, you know, watch that evolve. I feel like the food space is a little bit further down the line in comparison to what's going on in apparel and garments, but it's changing quickly. Oh, it's phenomenal. And in Animal Kind,

I talk about that as one of the things that you can do is you just sometimes don't realize it, but if you look, we now have, if you want to look chic or trendy or my God, or if you want to be warmer than if you were wearing real fleece or fur, we have apple leather, grapefruit leather, pineapple leather, you name it. I just saw out of Mexico, there's coming cactus leather. I mean, phenomenal things. Nike has a range of shoes now made of ash. And I think Nike or Reebok has a range of sports shoes made of trash. I know. I just saw that. Nike's releasing this new shoe that's made out of completely recycled garbage. And recycled fishing nets.

So back to, if you want to save the oceans, you can save the oceans, save the cows, save the planet, all in one go. With fashion, how does it go? If you're gonna approach Michael Kors or Ralph Lauren or any of these big houses and you're having this backdoor negotiation with them, what does that look like? And often we will get the buyers and we will get the decision makers and we will show them. We will go to Milan or wherever it is. And some of them, like Zara, for example, has flown us over to their neck of the woods.

And we will show them the videos. And we'll say, this is exactly what this material comes from. It's not a material. It's not a natural fiber. It's from the animal. It's stolen from them. They're killed for it. They're abused. Their suffering is atrocious. It's not sustainable. That's one of the buzzwords now, the humane washing words or the environmental washing words. It's not sustainable. Cruelty shouldn't be sustainable. It's cruel or it's not. We've got Patagonia, we've got all these areas in Argentina where the sheep are decimating the land and the people's

income should not be dependent on that. You can have other things. You know, we didn't have to continue to grow tobacco to sustain people's livelihoods. So we go and we sit down and we show them, and then we show them the alternatives. And we show them, here's a faux whatever it is, fleece, wool, leather. Here's a range of them. And these are the companies. You actually bring in the samples.

We absolutely do. We're like carpet salesmen. We have a portfolio and it's got all these samples. And we say, here are the contact names and addresses and for these companies please get in touch with them and there actually is a new company now that has just started up that is trying to and i forget the name um but it's it's on the website but it started up trying to get investor money to help these companies just the way Impossible and Beyond and all these other companies. Good Food Institute, you mean?

What Bruce Friedrich's doing? It's a good food institute for clothing. Oh, for clothing. Exactly. And that's what's needed. That's a great idea. Yeah. And we're helping fund it at the moment, but it needs to have investor capital.

Uh-huh. And what is the general level of receptivity? I would imagine it varies. Really? It does vary. I mean, there are some old holdouts, but they've seen now what's happened with fur. You know, there were people who said, we will always use fur. And they don't anymore.

They had to go with the times. You look at Anna Wintour at Vogue, who was never seen on the hottest summer day without a full length fur. And we actually complained to the IRS that she needed to declare all these free furs she was getting. But just last week, a week before, she was in a Stella McCartney faux fur. It's just phenomenal. They know now that times are changing, consumer interests are changing. The next generations up don't like cruelty to animals. They don't like the fact that if you throw a fur coat out the window or even a pair of leather shoes out the window you can come back in a decade they're still there because they have been treated with mortants yeah decon anti-decomposition

chemicals so i'm still i'm still stuck on anna wintour i'm imagining her in her office in like 1994 like swearing about the thorn in her side that is Ingrid Newkirk. She was actually because you know we invaded her office. We went up the elevator, took over her office. She locked herself in her office. We had begged her. We had written to her. We'd shown her everything. Heart of absolute ice. And I sat at the reception in Vogue and answered the phone. And every single call that came in, they would ask for something, and I'd say, I'm awfully sorry. Vogue is closed today due to cruelty to animals.

Where was the receptionist? You just commandeered? Everybody fled. So what happened? She had to eventually come out of her office. Eventually the police came and took us out of the office. And it got great news, and people heard our story about what happens to animals in traps and fur farms. Have you had interactions with her since?

Yes, but they haven't exactly been pleasant. One of our members, some years back, threw a dead raccoon into her soup plate when she was dining at the Four Seasons Hotel. And that was in the news. After that, I actually— Probably not the best way to win her heart and mind. But you know, we had tried everything. Honest to God, it wasn't us. It was a member.

But people were angry with her because she had seen all the footage. She couldn't miss it. And French Vogue had decided they never, French Vogue of all places, had decided it would never show fur. And yet Anna Wintour's Vogue carried on just really pimping fur in almost every page. So then she had a birthday, I think. And I actually suggested, because there had been new research that showed if you are oblivious to suffering, that perhaps it's not your fault, that your mirror neurons might not be well developed, that your seat of empathy might not. And I offered to give her a

free brain scan so he could stop sending her letters, begging her not to wear fur. She did not reply. Oh, my God. Well, you said we were provocative. No, I know. You're absolutely right. Yeah, 100%, 110%.

It seems to me that, like, when you look at the food space, the way to win the war is to create plant-based analogs to people's favorite meat and dairy products, make them cost-effective and taste just as good, if not better. And I think that applies as well in the fashion context. You need the Stella McCartney who can create something beautiful and magical that isn't using these materials to kind of lead the way. And once you do that, if you can meet Anna Wintour's standards, like then, then all the rest of the chips fall in line. I agree. With meat and dairy, we call them taste-alikes because you don't really have to make an ethical decision. You can just have watched the taste that you've perhaps grown up with or your tongue has become accustomed to

without any effort. It's all there. It's in the store. It doesn't cost more to switch over to it. The same is true with clothing. And what we're finding, of course, is big companies now know that they've got better sports gear if they go away from the old animal. I mean, can you imagine someone climbing Everest now in a big fur coat? So those things, polyfill and all these things are available too, and that is changing the market. But yes, there always have to be pioneers. It's like Joaquin Phoenix standing up at the Oscars and saying... I mean, that was a watershed moment. Absolutely. He'd already veganized what the Golden Globes and the other award ceremonies up until that point. And then he stood there and he decided to talk about mother love. He decided to talk about mother love. He decided to talk about the love a mother cow has for her child and how thoughtless it is to just want a real cheese pizza honest. And we are grown-ups, aren't we?

I mean, that's what I say in the book, is it's time to come to grips with who we are. We tell our children that we're kind, we're decent, that we live by principles. We don't like oppression, domination, bullying, injustice. Well, do we? Because you can't pretend that animals are tables and chairs. They're not.

They're animate. You know, anima from life is that they feel. And how awful if we don't behave like adults and take personal responsibility. I was really moved that Joaquin, after the SAG Awards, left the ceremony and in his tuxedo went straight to the pig vigil. Oh, it was wonderful. And I know he does it all the time. He was there last night as well. He's a true activist. And I mean, you can be an activist, as I talk about in Animal Kind, you can be an activist just by deciding, well, I eat three times a day at least, and I'll make sure that that doesn't contribute. Or what I wear, I shampoo my hair, whatever you do in the normal course of your day.

But Joaquin is an activist activist. He's like James Cromwell, like a bunch of people. Pamela Anderson, wherever she goes in the world, she calls us and she says, what's happening in Lithuania or wherever she is for animals? And we tell her and she makes sure to do an action for animals in addition to whatever else she's doing. There are only so many people and they have such a command of people's attention that each one is gold dust, each one is precious, and his heart breaks for animals. Yeah, it's for real with him all the way through. When you look at the current state of affairs, I'm interested in how you choose your battles,

right? If we want to like the biggest culprits, the biggest problems, I mean, factory farming seems to be number one to me. And it's also, you're shaking your head, maybe you disagree, but let me just finish this thought in that also it's a situation in which there's massive popular support. Like nobody's sitting around going, yay for factory farming. Like even ardent meat eaters don't like that idea. And it just seems ripe to be reformed, if not completely overturned.

And innovation is working towards that. But I'm interested in where you kind of come down with the work that PETA is doing to combat the, you know, the tragic ills and suffering that that system creates. There's no question animal-based agriculture has had its day. It needs to go. The only people defending it really are two camps, the people who do it for a living,

the farmers, the factory farmers themselves, and their trade groups who will defend it in fact a farmer was addressing a conference a few years ago and said if ingrid newkirk were a cow i'd have her on the truck right now which i thought that's so nice i hope you're single anyway um yes got that are you on on Tinder? Are you on Tinder? Yes. So, yeah, there's that. But there's also, I was just at the Jimmy Carter Library in Atlanta, and one of the filmmakers for C-SPAN said to me,

I really don't like cruelty to animals, but, you know, I'm never going to give up eating meat. And so I said to him, well, then you can't eat anything from a supermarket. You know, you can't eat anything where somebody didn't walk up to that cow or pig or chicken, shoot them in the head when they weren't looking, and none of the other animals were either. You cannot do it. And he was so desperate to cling to this old habit that that's another group that we have to deal with. But the way we figure out what to do, I think, is we're opportunists because we have to see which way the wind is blowing and then help push it in the right direction. So we give away food. We were down when KFC did the finger-lickin' vegan chicken giveaway in Atlanta.

And we've been working behind the scenes with them, and that will be coming. We give out food, especially soy milk, almond milk, and so on, to kids who are lactose intolerant. Show them, you know, there's something else you can eat. But we look at where the largest animals suffer the most. And definitely that's in food production. Don't have to eat animals, please. But the second, I think, is experimentation. Because there may be fewer animals, and that's not saying few, it's fewer, but they suffer sometimes for 40 years in a cage, in a room, staring at the wall with no life whatsoever.

Someone taking biopsies, sticking things in their heads, taking their kids away, all that. The length of time is huge. And clothing, because as I say, every animal used for clothing is eaten. I can't think of an exception. Even ostriches used for feathers, they go into ostrich medallions at the specialty exotic restaurant. Crocodiles are eaten. You know, all these animals are eaten. So it's part and parcel of, it's one profit base. But we also do look at exotic cruelties like foie gras, where you can say to people, it's like fur. You don't need it. Why on earth, of all the things you cling to, would you decide I've got to have a stuffed goose's liver for Christmas?

That's got to be going the way of fur, though. Except in France and Austria and a couple of other places. But with Brexit, you might be able to stop it from being imported into the UK, for example, and that's another nail in the coffin of that. I feel pretty much briefed on everything that's kind of going on with factory farming, but the animal testing world is something I know very little about. So maybe illuminate the realities that are going on here. It's the same thing with taste-alikes, really,

is that you've got to move people away from what they're used to. And as with factory farmers, that's what they're doing, and they don't want to change. You have animal experimenters who have gone into the business early. They've been doing the same thing for donkey's years. No one has ever tapped them on the shoulder and said, excuse me, you're not finding out anything, but these animals are suffering and you're killing them. And so they carry on doing it. We have a system with almost no enforcement in it at all. And I'll give you one example. We have a thing called the forced swim test. This is so absurd and so cruel. They take small animals, drop them into a beaker of water with solid sides, They take small animals, drop them into a beaker of water with solid sides,

and the animals, of course, are panicked. They are going to drown. They dive to the bottom looking for a way out. They try to scramble up the sides, and they can't get out. And the whole purpose, this is used by universities as show and tell. It's used by pharmaceutical companies. It's to just document how many minutes it takes them to give up, to stop swimming.

And then you just record, this is typical, and we are knocking that test out. What is the purpose of that? Originally, it was some cockamamie, crude way to decide when an animal gets depressed, too depressed to carry on in the development of antidepressants. It still goes on. And what we find is the electric shock plate test in universities with hanging animals by their tails just to see how long they stop struggling. We have maternal deprivation experiments by psychologists, millions upon millions of dollars being spent all over the country with people in basement labs who are taking monkeys' babies away and then frightening them with plastic snakes,

with plastic spiders, with men in masks, and just recording their reaction. This goes on. One experiment will go on for 40 years, and nobody says, maybe you shouldn't be doing this anymore. We have organs on a chip, human lungs, heart on a chip. We have whole slivers of human brain you can grow in a petri dish. heart on a chip. We have whole slivers of human brain you can grow in a petri dish. We have human DNA on the internet. We have high-speed computers you can program now with human data. You know, what are we doing still taking these animals away from each other, keeping them unnaturally in total misery, and visiting all these horrors on them? What is the state of the law? Like, what does the law say when it comes to this kind of thing? Law hasn't been changed forever.

Most animal experiments are exempt from state law. That happened a long time ago, and nobody really wants to change it. There are big trade groups that fight. They won't even expand the size of a cage. We've been up on Capitol Hill year after year. I give up on legislation. I think it's, as with most things, it's education. And the new generations coming up, we have a film out now called Research Subjects. It's three women, happen to be women, who were bullied into using hundreds

of animals in order to get their PhDs. And each one of them at the time thought, wait a minute, this isn't helping anyone. This isn't advancing my medical knowledge. This is just the way it's been. And each one of them, not knowing of the others, tried to argue with their professors. And their professors said, no, no, no, you can't have your PhD unless you do this. You have to do it. They now all regret it. And other PhD candidates are coming forward to say, that's what we've been told too. It's the way it is in research labs. But times

have moved on and we are getting a force to be reckoned with of a new generation of scientists saying, I don't want to be, you know, keeping a chimpanzee or a monkey or a rat in a small cage. I want to be doing something cutting edge with science. Yeah. Well, it's not difficult for me to wrap my head around how horrible it is that an animal would be used to test cosmetics or or or you know antidepressants and things like that is there i'm sure you get crazy pushback here like is there an is there any argument where cutting-edge science and research concerning life-threatening diseases requires some level of animal testing in order to identify and kind of find these cures? I think I'll give you a two-part answer to that, which may or may not be satisfactory. But the

first part is, it's just as people cling to wanting to continue to eat meat and dairy, people somehow have this uncomfortable feeling that they don't like change, and they really cling to the idea that surely somewhere there is some experiment or a little raft of experiments where you really do about your protein, you might need. I think there's that, this clinging to the past, which doesn't really hold up. And the other part, we have places we can go now. We have things we can do. We need to push to take money. For example, for years, animals have been used in burn experiments. We have footage where they actually blow torch pigs. And I mean, it's not nice to look at.

Today, because somebody back then decided, let's put some money into seeing if there's another way to do that, we have cloned human skin. We can ship it. We can federal express it. We can put it on a plane. 80% of your body can be burned, and they can put cloned human can ship it. We can federal express it. We can put it on a plane. 80% of your body can be burned and they can put cloned human skin on it. We didn't learn from those animal experiments.

So the sooner we say, I demand that the government stop wasting, in one case alone, $36 million frightening monkeys, one single experiment, $36 million, and put that $36 million into something innovative technology, innovative methodologies, and we might get something sooner that will help human beings. I think those are the two things that we have to work on. Who is working on that right now? Is there activity around that? And also, are there any bills that are being sponsored right now to better regulate what's happening? We're working on it. We have 19 scientists in our Peter Science Consortium, and they're in all kinds of disciplines. And they actually are working with governments, both here and in Holland, in the UK and Germany, and in Japan,

in China even, to say, look, times have changed. Here's something you can do. It's quicker, it's cheaper, it's more expedient, and it doesn't cause animal suffering. We just, in the last 12 months, got the Environmental Protection Agency to call us into a news conference after years of working with them, going to their symposia, holding symposia ourselves, doing podcasts with them on alternatives to say, okay, we now have a roadmap. We are going to step away. We're going to stop using animals in toxicity tests, the Environmental Protection

Agency. So it is happening, but it requires constant vigilance and a constant push. And really, It is happening, but it requires constant vigilance and a constant push. And really, it requires people to talk to their members of Congress and say it's time for a new Research Modernization Act, which we have actually crafted and we'll soon be having a news conference on Capitol Hill about. That's great. Hopefully, yes. I mean, everything has to change. Yeah. Hopefully, yes. I mean, you have to do this dance, right? Where, I don't know if compromise is the right word, but you've got to work with people, right? And you've got to fan the flames of positive change while also remaining true to your values that originated this whole thing to begin with?

Sometimes I'm not a very patient person. And as some members of our staff will tell you, I have lost my temper. And actually, in the case of the Bobby Barasini orangutan act, where he used to beat them with a rebar behind the scenes every night, when attorneys came to see us and said, well, we're thinking of putting him back on the stage. I argued with them for a long time, tried to reason with them. They weren't buying it. It was a money deal. And I threw the rebar across the table at them and they decided, okay, then we won't be doing that. But no, luckily on our staff, we have wonderful patient negotiators, But no, luckily on our staff, we have wonderful patient negotiators, strategists, and so on. And we brainstorm a lot.

But yes, you do have to have patience. I definitely take comfort in looking back. Otherwise, I just couldn't carry on to see how far we've come and to see other, take a leaf out of other movements, where they had to make hard decisions every day, is should we attack on this or should we compromise on this? And we like to say we've got our heads in the clouds, but our feet on the ground. So we want total abolition. We don't want any discrimination or disrespect for any living being.

But we also, if you can do it A to B to C to D, we'll work with you because we want to get to Z. Yeah, you have to. Yeah, absolutely. You can't leap in most cases, sometimes, yes. But you can't usually leap from A to Z. Some of the biggest wins have to be what's happened with marine life parks and with the circuses and even the zoos, I guess, to some extent. Yes, roadside zoos, we're busy closing.

And I think we've got, I'll tell you the wrong figure probably, but I believe it's 84 individual isolated bears out of those places. We've closed a lot down. individual isolated bears out of those places. We've closed a lot down. We've taken out dozens of tigers and rehomed them in wildlife parks that are wonderful. I think the end of the roadside zoo is nigh. Zoos are changing. You've got the Detroit Zoo, for example, where the director has said, once these elephants pass on, we know we cannot deal with the needs of elephants. Zoos cannot. So we're not going to do that anymore. We're closing the elephant exhibit. So we do see change there. And we do see some cooperation between the better zoos, which are not acquiring anymore and are not doing research anymore on animals in the basement,

are not acquiring anymore and are not doing research anymore on animals in the basement, helping us close down the roadside zoos. We did just, as you know, get Seaworld to stop riding, having their trainers ride on dolphins' nostrums on their faces. How is that place even still in business? They're changing and they need to change faster because those orcas and those dolphins need to go back where they belong in the oceans. But there are more rides, they're doing concerts. They are diversifying now. They just need to get rid of that wretched name sea world or make it animatronic, make it 3D holograms of orcas, not real orcas who are losing their teeth trying to chew on the underground underwater bars.

Yeah. One of the arguments with zoos is that they do do all of this kind of, you know, work in terms of studying to better understand these animals. Like, walk me through, like, the validity of any of the arguments that kind of prop up and support the kind of zoo infrastructure as we know it. Big zoo. Yeah. Well, some of the worst zoos, of course, engage in animal experiments, which are not good. Fertility experiments and all sorts of things. And that's not something they make public.

So we do. They also, some zoos have been caught getting animals off the black market, endangered species and so on. We expose that too. Other zoos, as I say, are changing and they are actually helping get rid of the worst zoos. But I think they all see the writing is on the wall and they see that today kids don't really want to go to the zoo. They've got everything they could possibly wish to have on the internet. They can interact with animals. They can go undersea and interact with animals with virtual reality without harming a hair on an animal's head or a fin or anything else. So, yeah, zoos started

off, and I talk about this in Animal Kind, they started off as menageries, where one of the saddest things I've ever read was out of Africa. The author describes going down to the docks, I think it was Nairobi somewhere, and seeing giraffes years ago, who had been able to stride across the Great Plains in these massive herds. And there are two of them on a boat in a wooden crate and saying their world has shrunk to nothing now. And they're going to be taken across an ocean. They've never seen an ocean. How frightening. And they're going to end up, I think it was Hamburg, they end up in Germany in a zoo in a small pen. We still have zoos who cannot in any way provide for one giraffe, and they swap animals around as if they're commodities. That whole system of seeing

animals has to change. We did just have two judges, one in Brazil, one in India, who actually ruled that in both cases, elephants were not commodities. They couldn't be taxed like property, that they were refugees from abuse. It's the most wonderful thing. And that's the way I think law is going, will go, takes a long time, takes a lot of effort. Yeah, I've noticed that young people find zoos, you know, my daughter, like she doesn't like, I've taken her to a zoo and she's like, I don't ever want to go back there. And that's not an experience that I remember having as a young person. I think it speaks to a new generation of people who are just more conscious of these things than we ever were in our younger years.

You see the circus. I mean, when I was a kid, and that's going back, but even beyond then, more recently than then, the circus came to town. They would have the elephants go down from the circus wagons to the big top and actually help put the big top up, courtesy of a bullhook, you know, that fireplace poker thing. But kids would go out, line the streets, so excited to see exotic animals come to town right there in front of them.

Those days are long gone. And, of course, we closed down Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey, what we would call the cruelest circus on earth, for awful cruelties behind the scenes. I don't think people even know. They burned a lion to death going through the Mojave Desert. They had three baby elephants in separate incidents killed during training. They should never have been away from their mothers.

So people are learning about this stuff. They now know what a bullhook is, and they're saying no to circuses. I think the time of deciding that wild animals are props for us is not something young people think of. They think, oh, they're wonderful. Look how they live, how intelligent they are. Look at their lives in the wild. They're incredibleness, if you will. Yeah.

Yeah. And how do you think about the pet trade? Badly. I mean, look, our shelters are overflowing. We've got dogs, cats, even bunnies with nowhere to go. They're going to be put down because no matter how hard you try, going to be put down because no matter how hard you try, there aren't enough good homes to go around. And so how can we ever support somebody somewhere having a puppy mill farm and shipping in puppies to be sold in glass cages and up a shop or, you know, going to a breeder? We always say adopt, don't shop. And even people who you ordinarily wouldn't associate with understanding this concept seem to get it now, but so many

people are still buying. And no, pet shops are actually the reverse of what we should be doing. They're putting more animals on the market. We need to spay and neuter, number one thing, cut it off at the pass, answer prevention. And then secondly, always adopt, never shop. Don't go to a breeder, don't go to a pet shop. Close them down. Yeah, well, I think education has gone a long way towards moving that needle.

It has, but then again, there's such frustration when you see how many people have French bulldogs, pugs. There was just the Westminster dog show. You know, what is that but contrived breeds that humans have made with squashed faces, with dysplastic hips, with all these physical problems that will cost you a lot of money, if nothing else. And they're not, you know, the holiest, heartiest animals.

Well, just not to mention the entire strangeness of that whole affair, you know, parading these dogs around for some kind of prize. It's like little girls beauty pageants. It's very strange. Very, very odd. Yeah. One of the things that I see going on right now

is there's a tremendous amount of energy that goes into greenwashing because people are more aware and they do want to feel like they're making the conscious ethical choice. And yet there is so much energy and money behind marketing products in a way that's dishonest and disingenuous to make people feel like they're making that right choice when they actually aren't. Absolutely. And now there's humane washing. Right. Ethically treated animals, they're ethically, all these sort of terms that get phrased, that get thrown around that aren't, they're not really regulated or legally defined terms. They're just loosely, you know, constructed marketing phraseology. Usually rubbish. They're rubbish. I would say it's so easy if you really care, and so many people do care, is just don't buy anything that comes from an animal

because either the animal gave up their life for it, or they're kept in confinement for years and years, or it was stolen from them and they needed it. I go up to people in the grocery store, from them and they needed it. I go up to people in the grocery store, for example, because I see them if they've got a package of eggs. Oh, yeah, always, always. What do you say to these people? Well, you'll see this green grass on the eggs and it says free range, organic. And I say, excuse me, I noticed you're buying those. I'm sure that means that you care about getting away from cruelty to animals. And they'll say, yes, always. And I say, well, let me just tell you, if you go to the PETA website, you will see what a fraud this is. Because places like Nelly's

Eggs, we've been inside their sheds. And Nelly's Eggs, we're suing them right now. There's a class action suit. How dare you tell consumers they're humanely produced? These hens have less than the size of this book to stand in. They're crammed together. They have no pecking order. And they say, oh, well, they can go outside. They can if they can fight their way to that little hole that you've cut at several spaces in this hugely crowded shed. And chickens are afraid. And if they do go out because it's open and it's closed at night,

it's closed in winter, it's closed if it's raining, they will find probably a space not that much bigger than this desk that's just a bit of mud. So no, stop lying to consumers. Just don't buy anything that comes from an Amazon. It's not voluntary. What's the reaction that you get? Oh, I don't tell people all that. I just say, go and look at the video. And this is basically what we said. And people are usually grateful. And we actually have filmed consumers coming out of the grocery store and ask them, hey, you've got those organic, sustainable, free-range eggs. Let me show you a video. We show them a little bit of video,

and without exception, everyone goes, oh, my God, I had no idea. Well, I'll never buy those again. Well, really, I thought. Yeah. Consumer fraud, if you ask me. yeah yeah yeah i i think that that uh there's a lot of opportunity also with respect to to um to dairy and and with and with respect to wool because those are things that i think the average kind of less than informed consumer just can feel like well i'm not killing the killing the animal. I'm using their product, but they're treated fine and they're on a farm somewhere. Bless your heart for saying that. The two things are, well, it's just a haircut, isn't it, for sheep? And say, if you saw the video footage, you would know. And I've been to Australia where

most of the wool in this country comes from, And I've seen them cut to shreds. And they didn't think anything of it. I was there because they also take the lambs and cut the flesh off the backs of the lambs in a thing that's called mulesing that they've been doing since 1920. I was there to argue them on that. They didn't think anything of the shearing sheds. And so they just walked me through.

And the shearing sheds, the sheep are just walked me through. And the shearing sheds, the sheep are just trembling from head to foot. They've been cut to pieces. Sometimes they've lost a teat or a part of the side of their ear or something because the men are working so quickly. They're paid the most they can do. So nobody takes any care. But the other thing is dairy, nobody takes any care. But the other thing is dairy, is that people will say, and I said it too, is they don't kill the cow for dairy. But of course, where is this retirement home for all these dairy cows? There isn't one. Yes, they do. They kick her and shove her down the same ramp that the so-called beef cow goes down. But when she's in the worst possible shape, she's dried up or she's got mastitis. And along the way, it's far crueler than beef

because they've taken her beloved baby away every time for veal or whatever they've done. So, no. Where are the current biggest battlefields? Like where is PETA investing its energy at the moment? Why do we use gut-wrenching poisons, sticky glue traps, and so on, if we want to get rid of animals who are here first, but we now find inconvenient? There is animals in entertainment, which, as you say, it's just, you know, it's going away. We just have to push it over the cliff. But experimentation is a number one push because that really needs an awakening in the same way that we've woken up to the enormous waste and suffering that goes into meat and dairy production.

Yeah, I think just from my own experience, that's the area I know the least about. And I feel like that's an area where some education could really be beneficial to people. We've mostly knocked out cosmetics testing on animals. When Peter started, I think there was one company that you could import something from France. It was called Nature de France. You could get a soap and so on. Then there were five companies.

One was in Berkeley. You had to take your own bottle and get things filled up. And now we've got over... We're going back to that, by the way. Now there's stores that are like, their whole marketing thing is that you bring your own bottle but that's for a good another good reason but now you can just go in the store and we just got suave and um herbal essences the two of the last big holdouts they no longer test on animals and we've just got china to adopt its very first non-animal test china was a big holder so cosmetics now it's

research for research sake basic just inquisitiveness curiosity driven research and it's old-fashioned show-and-tell research and it's medical so-called medical research a lot of psychology mental health issues i, people can't get into mental health clinics. They can't get into drug treatment programs. And yet we are giving drugs to animals for decades all over the country. We are giving them mental illness. We are causing them enormous suffering and there is no applicability at all. Is there any country that has its ethical barometer perfectly calibrated to your worldview? Is there a model out there where there's a nation that has a regulatory

landscape and a legal system that is protecting animals far better than we are? I'm not saying perfect, but is there a model that we can look to and at least work our way towards? I think different countries do much better than we do in different areas. For example, Holland is definitely moving away from the use of animals in experimentation faster than we are. You have countries like Switzerland where it's, I don't believe it's legal anymore to keep a goldfish in a bowl, because they have to have so much surface area. And they're not props, they're not decorations. You have countries in Europe where you can actually, you're required to walk your dog three times a day, and not just pretend that, you know, you're just going out to do your business

and come home. You have to take them for a proper walk, because that's their, they have a life too. It's against the law not to walk your dog. Correct. I love that. A certain number of times for a certain number of minutes. We do have anti-slaughter laws against some animals in India, but that's mostly for religious reasons. It really depends where you are, different countries, different things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if somebody's listening to this, I mean, if you go, with respect to the food, like, you know, I think people are kind of up to speed. You go to most markets now, they have vegan options, everything's labeled, and it's easier than ever to kind of make those decisions. But a little bit harder with cosmetics and consumer products.

I mean, leather we can stay away from, but there's a lot of glues that are used in clothing, and it's difficult even for a well-intentioned, somewhat educated consumer to even know what they're buying, right? Where are the resources where people can go to learn a little bit more about this? Yeah. And I'm not really worried. I mean, this may sound odd, but I'm not really worried about the purism, if you will, of looking at every single thing, because we've got

a long way to go. And we need to move the market with the big things. At the moment, leather, wool, those kinds of things, dairy, let's move them out. We do have huge resources, Animal Kind, the book, I've got resources in it, peter.org, resources. We have lists of cruelty free companies and lists of companies that still test on animals. We have health charities. For example, you can give money because you care about certain, let's take birth defects, Easter seals. They still use animals in experiments. Get away from it. You can give your money to another charity instead.

So we have those health charity lists. We have the cosmetics lists. We have the clothing lists, food lists. You name it. Yeah. We have the genetics list, we have the clothing list, food list, you name it. Yeah. When you began this, the entry point, like the on-ramp, was simply an ethical argument about the treatment of animals.

But now we have people who are coming into this because of their concerns about health. I mean, that was my introduction to this whole thing. And now the environment, I think, has become a really huge point of interest for people that's bringing more and more people into this. So the spectrum of everything that you're doing has now broadened tremendously from when you began. It's true. We still have a long way to go, of course. And I am fond of telling people, you can fly from Los Angeles to London and back to Los Angeles, and you still haven't made the carbon footprint that you would have if you had two boxes of chicken nuggets. And people are amazed. They think, oh, it's flying.

So we still have a lot of education to do. A lot of people say, oh, it's so expensive to be vegan. It actually isn't at all. I mean, you look at cultures like Mexico and so on, beans, rice, salsa, pasta. Yeah, fabulous food for you, greens, whatever. So there's still a lot of education, but I think the generations growing up have their eyes open wider. I think they're more open to the compassion aspect of it, and they're going to teach the adults. They always do, don't they? They do. It is interesting what you said about purity, the purity argument. There is a strain

of puritanism that kind of underscores a large cross-section of the vegan community. And I think that's important. Somebody has to like hold that line and let us know where it is. But it also works across purposes, I think, with bringing people in. And I remember like Lisa sitting over here,

like I met Lisa years ago. She came here with a film crew to do an interview with me. And this was pretty early on in my, you know, evolution as a vegan, you know, plant-based person. And at the time, I think we had like a cowhide rug that we just had forever and maybe a leather cow. And I was like, we got to get rid of this stuff before Lisa comes over here. Cause I don't want to get shamed and like, how does this work? And like, I didn't know the landscape or the rule book about what's okay and what's not.

And I had a fear of that strain of Puritanism, you know, being directed in my direction, even though like I had kind of jumped the fence and was learning as I was going, and I've certainly progressed and evolved since that moment. But I think that's something that I think is common among people. And I know a lot, listen, there's a lot of vegan people

that listen to this podcast, but there's a lot of people that aren't. And I think that just the sheer idea of Ingrid Newkirk coming on the podcast and sharing her message, it's like, oh man, like I don't want to be judged for not being on this side of the fence or as far along in my evolution here.

Well, I was the ultimate slow learner. I had my first fur coat at 19. I fished. And it's funny because back then I would go along the pier and say to people who are fishing, you need to cut the spine because that'll stop them from feeling pain. You know, you need to cut the spine because that'll stop them from feeling pain. You know, you need to stop fishing. I don't believe that it's about personal purity. It's like some people will take yoga, it's just for health. There's a spiritual aspect to it. There's an ethical aspect to why we don't hurt animals. There's a moral aspect, there's a decency aspect. So it's good to point out to people that actually that came from suffering, or there's an alternative to that

other thing, or you can be compassionate and you're being unwittingly cruel. But to do it in a nice way, I'm always trying first to negotiate because I remember I was defensive when someone said something to me, even about spaying my cat back then. I didn't know why you should spay your cat. And I'm so glad someone told me about factory farms, told me about fur. I had experiences that opened my eyes. So I do think we have the obligation to educate, but not be condemnatory, because we're all learning. And then if people really don't budge, then I think you should be sharper with them and say, come on, you can do that. Here, I'll feed you. Here, I'll show you this. Let me take you out and show you this, especially if they're family or friends. All right. So where do you see PETA in the future and this movement? Like if it was up to you, what does this utopian world look like?

Paint the picture and we'll like land this plane. I'm not very good at crystal balling things. And I live day to day because we've got so much going on and so many things that we have to do. You're not retiring anytime soon. No. I didn't think so. Touchwood, nothing happens that will make me.

I won't be run over by a factory farmer. But no, I mean, this is my life and this is what I want to do. And I don't want to be on my deathbed thinking, I should have said something or I should have done something. I could do better. I wish I was smarter. But I want to do as much as I can. And I think Peter has that mindset at all our founding members have it, all our people have it, is that we want to get the job done and we know it's going to be a long job. So

we'll never have world peace. We'll never have the end of child abuse. But people work to get as much of it out of the way as possible, and that's us. We need everybody with us. There really is a very thin line between your life and your vocation. This is who you are through and through. Absolutely. You can't separate what you do from who you are as a human being. I feel so lucky. That is a very lucky thing, right? To be able to ply your passion and to live this purposeful life that has meaning and in so doing really change the world.

And you have. It's remarkable, the legacy of your career. And I commend you for that. Thank you. It's only because people have come on board. It's only because we've said your power of the purse counts, your activism counts. I try to do five things every day, what I would call outside my job. And that is putting vegan starter kits in the back of the airplane. I put them inside the magazines on all the seats before anybody comes in if I can. You are like a secret agent.

Talking to the people at the desk, removing the SeaWorld pamphlets from the hotel where I'm staying because nobody needs to be enticed to go there until they change their stripes. Talking to people is just suggesting something, speaking to the person at the checkout, mentioning vegan foods or clothing, complimenting something on something and saying, oh, that looks as if that's whatever. It's just working. Yeah. Well, thank you for the service that you do. Oh, thank you. For the animals and for humanity. You are a gift. And I'm in awe of your commitment to service.

It's really a beautiful thing. And the world is a better place for having you in it. So thank you. You're very kind. Thank you. Yeah. The book is Animal Kind. You can find it everywhere.

Support your favorite independent bookseller. And if you can't do that, you can find it on Amazon. You worked with Gene Stone on this book, who I know well. He's a wonderful man. Great guy. You did a great job with the book. I really enjoyed it. So thank you. And I wish you health so that you can continue to do the work that you do. I wish that to you too and everyone listening. Thank you. So if people want to learn more about you and the work that PETA is doing, PETA.org and you're easy to find on the internet. Yes. And please let us help you. If you want to transition in any way, we are there for you. Cool. Thank you. Peace.

Thank you. Plants. That Ingrid is a firecracker, right? I told you. She's funny, right? I can't say I saw that coming. Either way, I really hope this conversation served you, inspired you, entertained you, perhaps even provoked you, shifted your perspective a bit, which is always my goal here.

If you want more of Ingrid, you can follow her on Twitter at Ingrid Newkirk. An even better way to get more of her is to read her new book, Animal Kind, Remarkable Discoveries About Animals and Revolutionary New Ways to Show Them Compassion. It goes where this conversation simply couldn't animal kind, remarkable discoveries about animals, and revolutionary new ways to show them compassion. It goes where this conversation simply couldn't, it will not disappoint.

And as always, visit the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com to dive deeper into Ingrid's world and the specific subjects discussed today. If you'd like to support our work here on the show, subscribe, rate, and comment on it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. Share the show or your favorite episodes with friends or on social media.

I love seeing all the screen grabs and the quote images that we generate spreading around, being shared on Instagram. Super cool. And you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on today's show. Jason Camiello for audio engineering, production, show notes, and interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin for videoing the show, editing it, creating all those short clips that you see on social media, and of course, the full episode on YouTube. Jessica Miranda for graphics. Georgia Whaley for copywriting.

Allie Rogers for portraits. DK for advertiser relationships and theme music by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Hari Mathis. Thanks for the love, you guys. See you back here in a couple days with another amazing episode. Until then, may we tread more gently on this planet. I hope you are safe. I hope you are healthy. I hope you are connecting with your loved ones and really taking stock of this moment to connect with gratitude and to really inventory what is most important to you and what must go. Until that next episode, peace, plants, namaste. Thank you.