Ingrid Newkirk Is Animal Rights’ Provocateur In Chief

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Rich Roll?

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• 0:43Rich Roll?

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• 1:06Speaker 01

  ...be being kind to animals within the context of using them. There are 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. No, 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

• 1:51Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:16Rich Roll?

  That's Ingrid Newkirk, and this is the Ritual Podcast.

• 2:31Rich Roll?

  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

• 3:16Rich Roll?

  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.

• 3:59Rich Roll?

  Okay, so here's the thing. No matter how you come down on PETA, it really can't be disputed that 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

• 4:44Rich Roll?

  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,

• 5:27Rich Roll?

  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

• 6:08Rich Roll?

  focus of Ingrid's new book, Animal Kind. But more than anything, this is a philosophical dissection of beliefs and of values, and how Ingrid's 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

• 6:50Rich Roll?

  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

• 7:34Rich Roll?

  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.

• 8:21Rich Roll?

  Ingrid, so nice to see you. Thank you for coming out here to talk to me today.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  My pleasure. Thanks very much for doing this.

• 8:27Rich Roll?

  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.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  That sounds very good and very unusual.

• 8:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, right. But I think much needed in this culture, right? We've lost our ability to have mature conversations with nuance.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  That's right. There's no depth to things anymore.

• 8:48Rich Roll?

  Although I enjoyed you on Bill Maher recently. That was fun.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Oh, he's so kind. He really is. He's the first person I've ever heard, and 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.

• 9:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, he's, he's, he's one of those people that I think he has a, an aversion to humankind in a certain way.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  He does, but he also lets people he disagrees with speak their piece.

• 9:17Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 9:17Speaker 01

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

• 9:31Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  He has the gamut.

• 9:33Rich Roll?

  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.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  He's on our, he's, he's a member of our board.

• 9:44Rich Roll?

  Oh, he is?

• 9:45Speaker 01

  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.

• 9:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, congratulations on the new book, Animal Kind.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 9:56Rich Roll?

  It's a lovely read. I, I, I found it to be, it wasn't what I was expecting. It's just kind of like this, um, rumination on the beauty and complexity of animals of all species.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  If I can, I'll read the, which I have to read, actually. I can't ever remember it. The subtitle, because that's integral to it, is Remarkable Animal Kind, Remarkable Discoveries About Animals, and Revolutionary New Ways to Show Them Compassion. Because you're right, I did want to open people's eyes to who animals are and all their abilities, their talents, their emotions, the complex way, the 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.

• 10:52Rich Roll?

  Right. You've divided it into two parts. The first part is kind of this exploration of, 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, and in many, in so many ways, more talented, more intelligent than human beings. You know, the, 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, um, it doesn't work that way, that... Almost every single animal has something about them that makes them not just more adapted

• 11:37Rich Roll?

  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.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  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.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  But I always think the average human being, take me, I couldn't make a cellphone. 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

• 13:15Speaker 01

  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. All that's a shared emotion, all those are shared emotions.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  So there is now, and I go into this in the book, this, um, we've come from the great chain of being, which is where early mostly Christians, or if 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.

• 14:32Rich Roll?

  The snake is kind of at the bottom, right? Because of its place in the biblical canon.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  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.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  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 yeah, she's passed the test. So I think it's what we don't know.

• 15:43Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  About animal intelligence.

• 15:45Rich Roll?

  Well, most people are familiar with the complexity of, you know, a dolphin's language, or that of the whales, and, 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?

• 16:06Speaker 01

  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. 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

• 16:50Speaker 01

  against another cuttlefish that they want to stay away.

• 16:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  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.

• 17:10Rich Roll?

  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.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  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.

• 17:28Rich Roll?

  Right, you even go so far as to talk about slime molds. You go all the way down to the single-celled animals.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  I think I put in slime molds because to me it's startling that a slime mold can actually navigate a maze. And a slime mold has some 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.

• 18:17Rich Roll?

  Sensing like the magnetism of the poles, things like this.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Uh, 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, 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?

• 19:03Rich Roll?

  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.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  A good point, and obviously with the environment, if it was just information, we would have solved that a long time ago.

• 19:50Rich Roll?

  Or pick your subject.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  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, 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.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  I'm not going to put money into the slaughterhouse or transportation of these animals and all, but it's not enough, as you say. You need to think, well, what about my grandchildren then? Um, or what if I fly less? Or the new thing now is plastic straws. You know, great, okay, don't use a plastic straw.

• 20:55Rich Roll?

  But let's, let's start with not eating the fish.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And let's even look at-

• 21:02Rich Roll?

  I'm such a good person, I'm not using a plastic straw. That's great.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Well, I'm eating my fish sandwich. Yeah, and you'd look at the trash in the ocean. Um, 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 are, 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.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  But yes, at the end of the day, most people need to have a flood, an earthquake, invite the end of the world-

• 21:56Rich Roll?

  Right, it has to be personalized. I mean, people are inherently, I believe, empathetic and live their lives, you know, uh, in that manner. But I think the further, the greater distance there is between a decision that's made and the kind of, um, impact of that decision, the more difficult it is to change the behavior. So, for example, with plastic straws, like, wedding 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.

• 22:40Rich Roll?

  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 is, you know, goes a long way towards wetting those things together so that people can do their own inherent math and realize the downstream impact of the choices that we're, we're making. But, but it's tricky. I mean, you've spent your whole life, you know, on this, on this issue. And I gotta say, on some level, you've got to, it's gotta be incredibly gratifying to see how far this movement has come since you got into this in the 1970s.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, we want an overnight success, I can tell you that. You know, 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 or the, you know, it's just ridiculous. So yes, how far we've come, but all social movements go through the same thing, you know, ridicule, discussion, acceptance.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  And I think we've come quite a long way. But yeah, I, I'm not necessarily gratified it 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 twenties 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.

• 24:30Rich Roll?

  Right. So the foot's not coming off the gas.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Not at all. No, you can pry my dead fingers from people for the ethical treatment of animals.

• 24:39Rich Roll?

  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?

• 24:46Speaker 01

  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.

• 25:03Rich Roll?

  I can only imagine. But your mom worked with Mother Teresa?

• 25:09Speaker 01

  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. 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.

• 25:34Rich Roll?

  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.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  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. Now, I always had that.

• 26:09Rich Roll?

  Did you have personal interactions with Mother Teresa?

• 26:12Speaker 01

  I didn't. I never met her. No, never met her at all. My mother did, but I didn't.

• 26:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah. She worked with her directly at times?

• 26:19Speaker 01

  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.

• 26:45Rich Roll?

  So you take your fine Catholic, private school upbringing and somehow find your way to Maryland at some point?

• 26:54Speaker 01

  I did. It was a circuitous route, but I actually married somebody in Europe who was American, and we came back to the US to live. And I was studying for the brokerage. I was going to be a stockbroker.

• 27:11Rich Roll?

  There's something very comical about that.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  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.

• 27:40Rich Roll?

  Just moved out and left them?

• 27:41Speaker 01

  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.

• 28:26Rich Roll?

  It was really that crystal clear, that moment?

• 28:29Speaker 01

  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.

• 28:41Rich Roll?

  Hmm. And how long did you work there?

• 28:44Speaker 01

  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.

• 28:59Rich Roll?

  Is that how you got into law enforcement then?

• 29:01Speaker 01

  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.

• 29:15Rich Roll?

  What was the state of that department at the time?

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Of the cruelty investigations?

• 29:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, what was, I mean, just, I'm trying to get a sense of, of kind of what the perspective was in terms of enforcing anything, you know, against this kind of behavior.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  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.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  And so they cracked down on the people who were starving or beating or whatever they were doing to animals.

• 30:20Rich Roll?

  Right, wow. So when does, when, how is PETA born out of this?

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Well, from there, I was asked to go and clean up what was then the DC Dog Pound, the Washington DC Dog Pound. And I had some friends who were in government who advocated for me. And I became the first lay pound master, which I thought was a really butch title. I liked it very much. And I went and took over the DC, 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.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  And no longer could dog fighters and people who wanted a guard dog just come in, plonk five dollars 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.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  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.

• 32:11Rich Roll?

  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.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Oh, it's a terrific book because he takes you back to The anti-slavery movement, for example, 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 Delam 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

• 33:06Speaker 01

  to exploit. So you can, 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, we, 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

• 33:50Speaker 01

  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.

• 34:03Rich Roll?

  That was it. The worst thing you could say.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  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. No, 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.

• 34:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah. At this time, other than Peter Singer's book, I mean, there was no animal rights movement, so to speak.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  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

• 35:38Speaker 01

  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.

• 35:56Rich Roll?

  Right, right. I want to talk about that.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  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.

• 36:34Rich Roll?

  People must have thought you were bananas back then, though.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  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 being, 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?

• 37:15Rich Roll?

  Is that when you realized the power of the media? I mean, you're no stranger to knowing how to grab headlines. I mean, you're a master provocateur.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  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.

• 37:57Rich Roll?

  You think that it's harder to do that now?

• 37:59Speaker 01

  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?

• 38:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, you're the crazy chicken lady in 1980, but Peter really, you know, got on the map by virtue of this Silver Spring monkey case, right? So walk us through that, because that was really, that really set in motion a lot of change.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  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.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  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. 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 seventeen monkeys were kept in.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  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.

• 40:05Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  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.

• 40:17Rich Roll?

  Was that the first time that anybody had sort of covertly photographed what goes on kind of behind closed doors with animals?

• 40:25Speaker 01

  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

• 41:06Speaker 01

  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 photographic evidence, we were able to get a search warrant. That was the first time, and that made it all break open.

• 41:25Rich Roll?

  Hmm. So, images ended up on the front page of the Washington Post.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Several times.

• 41:30Rich Roll?

  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?

• 41:43Speaker 01

  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, it must be 1976. There was an Animal Welfare Act. Nobody was enforcing it, which the Silver Spring Monkey's 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,

• 42:26Speaker 01

  asked the experimenter if everything was okay, and left without even looking at the animals. So, these things really were made possible to understand through the Silver Spring Monkey's case.

• 42:37Rich Roll?

  And what was the specific issue that was before the High Court?

• 42:41Speaker 01

  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.

• 43:05Rich Roll?

  So this thrusts you into the limelight in a pretty big way.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  It did. We were amateurs. We didn't know what we were doing really, except we knew how to bring a case.

• 43:15Rich Roll?

  I mean, how many people were working the PETA at the time?

• 43:17Speaker 01

  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 Pals." 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,

• 44:02Speaker 01

  "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.

• 44:11Rich Roll?

  And where, at what point, like, do you, do you make this conscious decision about the strategy that you're gonna deploy? Like, you're nothing if not, like, controversial for a lot of these kind of,

• 44:25Rich Roll?

  you know, various forms of protests over the years that grab headlines but also really ruffle, ruffle a lot of feathers, do, and make people angry?

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Well, we always say, you know, we're not here necessarily to make friends. We'd like to.

• 44:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  But we're here-

• 44:38Rich Roll?

  Well, we're still talking about these things, right? And that's in no small part due to the, you know, the edgy nature of how you staged these events.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  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. These people would 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.

• 45:24Rich Roll?

  All the way up through, you know, every, it seems like every year, I don't know if you did it this year, but you'll, you'll tape some, uh, some public service announcement type television commercial with the intention of, of, you know, 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.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  I know.

• 45:47Rich Roll?

  These things that you create.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  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 will, we'll, 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.

• 46:05Rich Roll?

  I didn't see this year's. Okay.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Oh, it's so good. It's, 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, um, who take a knee.

• 46:29Rich Roll?

  Oh, I did see this. Yes, I did see this.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  It makes me cry every time I see it. I have to tell you, I'm a sentimentalist, but, um, I think it's just beautiful. And at the end, it says, you know, every living being deserves respect. And of course, Lisa Lanz, who is in our office, is the creative person behind this.

• 46:48Rich Roll?

  She's sitting right over there. Former podcast guest, too. Hi, Lisa.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  She went to, um, an agency. They crafted it so beautifully. It's perfect. Um, and we then, Lisa went to Colin Kaepernick and said, uh, 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. Doesn't really matter who you identify with. Like, it's not just for me as a woman. Women's rights, there's a principle.

• 47:22Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  It's not just you because you're whatever you are, uh, race, religion, age. It's because there's a principle. Discrimination is wrong, bullying is wrong, respect is everything, uh, looking out for the other guy. And he said, great.

• 47:36Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  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, so it was rejected.

• 47:46Rich Roll?

  Taking a knee.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  Oh, no knee.

• 47:48Rich Roll?

  No knees will be taken.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  Which is a sad thing in so many ways, but over four million people have watched it right away. And, uh, it's still going strong on the internet.

• 47:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And, and, and as provocative as anything you've ever done, I would think, you know, uh, i- in a different way. And in a more kind of like subtle way, I suppose. And my sense is that, like, 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, and as such, the tactics have to evolve as well. Like, it's, it's not necessary to kind of do some of those things you were doing in the eighties and nineties anymore.

• 48:45Rich Roll?

  In fact, it might be counterproductive. There's a more, um, uh, you know, kind of a different tactic that you can take now in order to provoke the discussion.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  I think what people don't know about Peter 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, uh, is certainly still catching coyotes in steel traps and stuffing geese into slaughter crates. Um, fur is dead, it really is. That was our slogan. It's happened.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  None of the big houses, Gucci, Galliano, Donna Visace, 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, in, 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.

• 50:15Rich Roll?

  I've seen those videos. It's horrible.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, 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, you know, decomposition toxins and what have you. But the cruelty to the cows is extreme, so we still.

• 50:40Rich Roll?

  So ironic, given that it's India.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  Well, you look at also, you know, the cow is sacred, mother cow. Nandi, the bull is sacred and he's pulling these overloaded sugarcane 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. It's charcoal and syrup, I think.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  It makes some grungy mess, pouring it, black muck, pouring it on their heads and faces and appearing in photographs around the world to say, please.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  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 vegetarian, you're supporting the meat industry by buying it.

• 51:52Rich Roll?

  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.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  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 polo, real fleece or fur, we have apple leather, grapefruit leather, pineapple leather. You name it. I just saw out of Mexico, this 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.

• 52:52Rich Roll?

  I know, I just saw that Nike's releasing this new shoe that's made out of completely recycled garbage.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  And recycled fishing nets. So back to if you want to save the oceans, you know, you can save the oceans, save the cows, save the planet, all in one go.

• 53:09Rich Roll?

  With fashion, how does it go? Like if you're gonna approach Michael Kors or Ralph Lauren or any of these, you know, big houses and you're having this backdoor kind of negotiation with them, what does that look like?

• 53:23Speaker 01

  It's actually pretty simple is that we ask for a meeting and we start at the top and we see who we get. 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.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  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-

• 54:45Rich Roll?

  You actually bring in the samples?

• 54:47Speaker 01

  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, but 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-

• 55:21Rich Roll?

  Oh, you Good Food Institute, you mean? What Bruce Friedrich's doing?

• 55:24Speaker 01

  It's a Good Food Institute for Clothing.

• 55:26Rich Roll?

  For Clothing, yeah, that's a great, that's a great idea.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we're helping fund it at the moment, but it needs to have investor capital.

• 55:34Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. And what is the general level of receptivity? I would imagine it varies.

• 55:39Speaker 01

  Good, 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 this free fur 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.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  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. Deco- anti decomposition chemicals.

• 56:42Rich Roll?

  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.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  She was actually, because you know, we invaded her office.

• 56:57Rich Roll?

  Yes, I know.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  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 had shown her everything. Heart of, 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.

• 57:20Rich Roll?

  And hang, hang up. Where was the receptionist? You just commandeered the, oh, they took-

• 57:24Speaker 01

  They, everybody fled.

• 57:26Rich Roll?

  So what happened? She had to eventually come out of her office.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  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.

• 57:37Rich Roll?

  Have you had interactions with her since?

• 57:40Speaker 01

  Um, 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. Um, and that was in the news. After that, I actually-

• 57:59Rich Roll?

  Probably not the best way to win her heart and mind.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  But you know, we had tried everything. Honest God, it wasn't us, it was a member. But people were angry with her because she had seen all the footage. She, 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 her 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...

• 58:47Speaker 01

  And I offered to give her a free brain scan, so we could stop

• 58:51Rich Roll?

  Oh, my God.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  sending her letters begging her not to wear fur. She did not reply.

• 58:59Rich Roll?

  Oh, my God.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  Well, you said we were provocative.

• 59:03Rich Roll?

  No, I know.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  You're absolutely right.

• 59:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, 100%, 110%. I, I, it seems to me that, like, when you look at the food space, the way to win the war is to create plant-based analogues 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. Like, you need the Stella McCartney, who can create something beautiful and magical that isn't using these materials to kind of lead the way.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 59:36Rich Roll?

  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.

• 59:45Speaker 01

  I agree. And with meat and dairy, we, 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 been, become accustomed to, without any effort. It's all there, it's in the store. It doesn't cost more to, to switch over to it. The same is true with clothing. And what we're finding, of course, is that big companies now know that they've got better sports gear if they go away from the old animal thing. I mean, can you imagine someone climbing Everest now in a big fur coat? So we, those things, polyfill and all these things are available. To and that is changing the market. But yes, there always have to be pioneers.

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  It's like Joaquin Phoenix standing up at the Oscars and saying.

• 1:00:35Rich Roll?

  I mean, that was a that was a watershed moment.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  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 the love a mother cow has for her child and how thoughtless it is to just want a real cheese pizza topping. And I just thought, I love you with all my heart. You wonderful man.

• 1:01:04Rich Roll?

  It was a very courageous, bold and beautifully honest and heartfelt speech that he gave.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  Honest. It was honest. And we are grownups, 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, you know, 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.

• 1:01:50Rich Roll?

  I was really moved that Joaquin, after the SAG Awards, left the ceremony and in his tuxedo, went straight to the pig vigil.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  Oh, it was wonderful.

• 1:02:01Rich Roll?

  And I know he does it all the time. He was there last night as well.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  He's a true activist. And I mean, you can be an activist, as I talk about now, 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.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  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 he, his heart breaks for animals.

• 1:02:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's for real with him.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:03:02Rich Roll?

  All the way through. When you look at the current state of affairs, I'm interested in how you choose your battles, right? Like if you, if we want to identify 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, it's, 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 right to be reformed, if not completely overturned. And innovation is working towards that.

• 1:03:45Rich Roll?

  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.

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:04:30Rich Roll?

  Are you on Tinder?

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  Are you on Tinder? Yes.

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  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-licking 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.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  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 forty 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.

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  You know, all these animals are eaten, so it's part and parcel of its 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? You know?

• 1:07:08Rich Roll?

  That's got to be going the way of fur, though.

• 1:07:10Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:07:30Rich Roll?

  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.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:09:03Rich Roll?

  What is the purpose of that?

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  Originally, it was some cockamamie crude way to decide when an animal gets depressed, too depressed to carry on, in the development of antidepressants.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  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 forty years, and nobody says, maybe you shouldn't be doing this anymore. We have

• 1:10:05Speaker 01

  organs on a chip, human lungs, 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.

• 1:10:30Rich Roll?

  What is the state of the law? Like, what does the law say?

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  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,

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  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, try 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 to. 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.

• 1:12:01Speaker 01

  I want to be doing something cutting edge with science.

• 1:12:04Rich Roll?

  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, 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, and kind of find these cures?

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  I think I'll give you a two-part answer to that, um, 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 need to, to eat animals or use animals in experiments. The same way people might say, but you know, if you're, if you really worry about your protein, you might need. I think there's that, this, this clinging to the past, which doesn't really hold up. And the other part,

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  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 blowtorch 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. Eighty percent 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

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  stop wasting, in one case alone, thirty-six million dollars, frightening monkeys, one single experiment, thirty-six million dollars, and put that thirty-six million dollars 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.

• 1:14:27Rich Roll?

  Who is working on that right now? Is there, is there activity around that? And also, are there any bills that are being sponsored right now to better regulate what's happening?

• 1:14:36Speaker 01

  We're working on it. We have nineteen 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, in 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. It doesn't cause animal suffering. We just, in the last twelve 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.

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  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 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.

• 1:15:46Rich Roll?

  Hmm, that's great.

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  Hopefully, yes. I mean, everything has to change.

• 1:15:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah. As you're telling all these stories, I'm thinking that you're a very interesting combination of passion, you know, that meets this kind of abolitionist perspective that also requires a tremendous amount of patience and diplomacy, right? Like, how do you reconcile those two things? Because in order for you to do what you do and to make incremental progress, 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, you know, your values that originated this whole thing to begin with.

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  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, strategists, and so on. And we brainstorm a lot.

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  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. It's, "Should we attack on this, or should we compromise on this?" And we like to say we've got our heads in, 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.

• 1:18:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you have to.

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. You can't leap in most cases, sometimes yes, but you can't usually leap from A to Z.

• 1:18:08Rich Roll?

  Some of the biggest wins have to be what's happened with marine life parks and with the circuses and, and even the zoos, I guess, to some, to some extent.

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  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 eighty-four 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. It's, zoos cannot, so we're not going to do that anymore. We're closing the elephant exhibit. So we do see change there.

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  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, 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.

• 1:19:24Rich Roll?

  How is that place even still in business?

• 1:19:26Speaker 01

  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 they are, they, there are more rides, they're, they're doing concerts. They are diversifying now. They just need to get rid of that wretched name SeaWorld or make it animatronic, make it three D, holograms of orcas. Not real orcas who are losing their teeth trying to chew on the underground underwater bars.

• 1:19:55Rich Roll?

  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.

• 1:20:14Speaker 01

  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, and 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.

• 1:20:56Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:21:41Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  You know, they 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.

• 1:22:30Rich Roll?

  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 who are just who are just more conscious of these things than we ever were in our younger years.

• 1:22:56Speaker 01

  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 bull hook, 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 and 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.

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  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 bull hook 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.

• 1:24:13Rich Roll?

  And how do you think about the pet trade?

• 1:24:18Speaker 01

  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, 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 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.

• 1:25:04Speaker 01

  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, ounce of prevention. And then secondly, always adopt, never shop. Don't go to a breeder, don't go to a pet shop. Close them down.

• 1:25:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, I think, I think education has gone a long way towards, towards moving that needle.

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  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 holdest, heartiest animals.

• 1:25:57Rich Roll?

  Well, just not to mention the entire strangeness of that whole affair. You know, parading these dogs around for some kind of prize.

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  It's like little girl's beauty pageant. Very, very odd.

• 1:26:08Rich Roll?

  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.

• 1:26:35Speaker 01

  Absolutely, and now there's humane washing.

• 1:26:38Rich Roll?

  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.

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  Usually rubbish, they're rubbish. I always 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 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, for example, because I see them, if they've got a package of eggs.

• 1:27:17Rich Roll?

  Oh, no.

• 1:27:18Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, always, always.

• 1:27:20Rich Roll?

  What do you say to these people?

• 1:27:22Speaker 01

  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 Peter website, you will see what a fraud this is, because places like Nellie's Eggs, we've been inside their sheds, and Nellie'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

• 1:28:06Speaker 01

  can go outside. They can if they can fight their way to that little hole that you've cut at several spaces in this, you know, 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 animal, it's not voluntary.

• 1:28:39Rich Roll?

  And what's the reaction that you get?

• 1:28:40Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't tell people all that. I just say, go and look at the video.

• 1:28:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:44Speaker 01

  And this is basically what I said. And people are usually grateful.

• 1:28:47Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:28:48Speaker 01

  Uh, and we actually have filmed consumers coming out of the grocery store and asked them, hey, you've got those organic, sustainable, free range eggs. Uh, let me show you 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.

• 1:29:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:10Speaker 01

  Consumer fraud, if you ask me.

• 1:29:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, 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 animal, like I'm, I'm using their product. But, you know, they're, they're treated fine and they're on a farm somewhere.

• 1:29:37Speaker 01

  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 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

• 1:30:22Speaker 01

  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, 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.

• 1:31:09Rich Roll?

  Where are the current biggest battlefields? Like, where is PETA investing its energy at the moment?

• 1:31:18Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of honing in on one place. We have food, clothing, experimentation. Pest control is another one. Why do we use gut-wrenching, poisoned, sticky glue traps? And so on, if we want to get rid of animals who were here first, but we now find inconvenient.

• 1:31:40Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:32:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think, you know, just from my own experience, like, that's the area I know the least about, and I feel like that's an area where, you know, some education could really be beneficial to people.

• 1:32:12Speaker 01

  We've mostly knocked out cosmetics testing on animals. When PETA started, I think there was one company that you could import something from France. It was called Natura 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...

• 1:32:30Rich Roll?

  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 to fill it.

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  But that's for another good reason. But now you can just go in the store. We just got Suave and 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 holdout. So cosmetics, now it's research for research's sake, basic, just inquisitiveness, curiosity-driven research, and it's all-fashioned show-and-tell research, and it's medical, so-called medical research, a lot of psychology, mental health issues. I mean, people can't get into mental health clinics, they can't get into drug treatment programs, and yet we are giving...

• 1:33:20Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:33:30Rich Roll?

  Is there any country that has its ethical barometer perfectly calibrated to your worldview? Like, is there any, like, is there a model out there where there's a nation that has a regulatory landscape and a legal system that that is protecting animals far better than we are? I'm not saying perfect, but is there, you know, like, is there a model that we can look to and at least work our way towards?

• 1:33:54Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:34:36Rich Roll?

  It's against the law not to walk your dog.

• 1:34:38Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:34:38Rich Roll?

  I love that.

• 1:34:39Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:34:54Rich Roll?

  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 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 you know, there's a lot of glues that are used in in clothing and and it's difficult even for a well-intentioned, somewhat educated consumer to even know.

• 1:35:29Rich Roll?

  What they're buying, right? Where are the resources where people can go to learn a little bit more about this?

• 1:35:34Speaker 01

  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

• 1:36:15Speaker 01

  birth defects, Easter seals. They still use animals in experiments. Get away from it. You can give your money to another charity instead. So you can, we have those health charity lists, we have the cosmetics lists, we have the clothing lists, food lists, you name it.

• 1:36:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah. When you began this, the entry point, like the unwrap, was simply an ethical argument about the treatment of animals. But now, we have people who are coming into this because of their current concerns about health. I mean, that was my introduction to this whole thing. And, 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, of, you know, everything that you're doing has now broadened tremendously from, from when you began.

• 1:37:07Speaker 01

  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, you know. 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.

• 1:37:39Rich Roll?

  Plopper food.

• 1:37:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, fabulous food for you, greens, you know, 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.

• 1:37:59Rich Roll?

  They always do, don't they?

• 1:38:00Speaker 01

  They do.

• 1:38:01Rich Roll?

  It is interesting what you said about purity, the purity argument. There is a, there is a strain of puritanism that, that kind of, you know, 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.

• 1:38:44Rich Roll?

  And I was like, we gotta get rid of this stuff before Lisa comes over here, because I don't want to get shamed and like, how does this work? And like, I didn't know the landscape or the rulebook about what's okay and what's not. And I had a fear of that strain of puritanism, you know, 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, that I think is common among people. And I know a lot, there's, listen, there's a lot of vegan people that listen to this podcast, but there's a lot of people that, that aren't. And I think the, just the sheer idea of Ingrid Newkirk coming on the podcast and sharing

• 1:39:26Rich Roll?

  their, her message is like, oh, man, like, I don't, you know, I don't want to be, you know, I don't want to be judged for not being, you know, on this side of the fence or as far along in my evolution here, so.

• 1:39:37Speaker 01

  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 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.

• 1:40:22Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:41:06Speaker 01

  Let me take you out and show you this." Especially if they're family or friends.

• 1:41:12Rich Roll?

  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, like land is plain.

• 1:41:25Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:41:33Rich Roll?

  You're not retiring anytime soon.

• 1:41:35Speaker 01

  No. Touch wood, 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 PETA has that mindset at. All our founding members have it, all our, 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, you know, but people work to get as much of it out of the way as possible. And that's, that's us.

• 1:42:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:18Speaker 01

  We need everybody with us.

• 1:42:19Rich Roll?

  There really is a very thin line between your life and your vocation. Like these are this, this is who you are.

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:27Rich Roll?

  Through and through.

• 1:42:27Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:42:28Rich Roll?

  Completely, right?

• 1:42:29Speaker 01

  This is what makes you.

• 1:42:29Rich Roll?

  You can't separate what you do from who you are as a human being.

• 1:42:32Speaker 01

  I feel so lucky.

• 1:42:33Rich Roll?

  That is a very lucky thing, right? To be able to ply your passion and to live this purposeful life that has meaning and, and in so doing, really change the world. And you have, it's, it's remarkable, the legacy of your career, and I commend you for that.

• 1:42:48Speaker 01

  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

• 1:43:04Rich Roll?

  What are those?

• 1:43:05Speaker 01

  Putting vegan starter kits in the back of the airplane.

• 1:43:10Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 1:43:10Speaker 01

  I put them inside the magazines on all the seats before anybody comes in if I can.

• 1:43:14Rich Roll?

  You are like a secret agent.

• 1:43:17Speaker 01

  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. I'm 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.

• 1:43:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, thank you for the service that you do.

• 1:43:48Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:43:49Rich Roll?

  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.

• 1:44:01Speaker 01

  You are very kind. Thank you.

• 1:44:03Rich Roll?

  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.

• 1:44:15Speaker 01

  Great guy.

• 1:44:15Rich Roll?

  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.

• 1:44:23Speaker 01

  I wish that to you too, and everyone listening.

• 1:44:25Rich Roll?

  All right, cool. 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.

• 1:44:33Speaker 01

  Yes, and please let us help you. If you want to transition in any way, we are there for you.

• 1:44:38Rich Roll?

  Cool, thank you. Peace.

• 1:44:40Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:44:40Rich Roll?

  Plants.

• 1:44:44Rich Roll?

  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. 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.

• 1:45:28Rich Roll?

  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/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 Margot 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. Ally Rogers for portraits. DK for advertiser relationships and theme music by Tyler Pyatt,

• 1:46:12Rich Roll?

  Trapper Pyatt, and Hari Mathis. Thanks for the love, you guys. See you back here in a couple of 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.

• 1:46:42Rich Roll?

  Until that next episode, peace. Plants. Abstent.