PETA Founder INGRID NEWKIRK turns 75: A Lifetime of Animal Advocacy
How can we show more kindness, respect, and love to the animals we share this planet with? What lessons can we learn from non-human animals about living in greater harmony with nature?
Ingrid Newkirk is the Founder and President of PETA, actively leading the organization and advocating for animal rights. PETA is the largest animal rights organization in the world with more than 9 million members and supporters globally. Under her leadership, PETA has achieved significant victories, such as ending car-crash tests on animals, pushing major fashion brands to go fur-free, influencing Ringling Bros. to become an animal-free circus, and helping pass a law that allows the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve new medications without conducting cruel tests on animals. Ingrid has written 14 books and has been featured in major publications like The New Yorker and The Guardian, and was the subject of HBO's documentary I Am an Animal and was named one of Forbes’ “100 Most Powerful Women.” She joined One Planet Podcast to reflect on her 75 years as animal rights advocate.
Duration:
41m
Broadcast on:
21 Jun 2024
Audio Format:
mp3
How can we show more kindness, respect, and love to the animals we share this planet with? What lessons can we learn from non-human animals about living in greater harmony with nature?
Ingrid Newkirk is the Founder and President of PETA, actively leading the organization and advocating for animal rights. PETA is the largest animal rights organization in the world with more than 9 million members and supporters globally. Under her leadership, PETA has achieved significant victories, such as ending car-crash tests on animals, pushing major fashion brands to go fur-free, influencing Ringling Bros. to become an animal-free circus, and helping pass a law that allows the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve new medications without conducting cruel tests on animals. Ingrid has written 14 books and has been featured in major publications like The New Yorker and The Guardian, and was the subject of HBO's documentary I Am an Animal and was named one of Forbes’ “100 Most Powerful Women.” She joined One Planet Podcast to reflect on her 75 years as animal rights advocate.
INGRID NEWKIRK
They’re not human traits. They’re all shared traits because, of course, we all love. We all love our families, or not. We all grieve if somebody we love disappears or dies. A family dog, perhaps. A grandfather. We all feel loneliness, we all feel joy. We all really value our freedom. And so I think, if anything, looking into the eyes of the animal, even online, you see a person in there. There’s a someone in whatever the shape or the physical properties of that individual are. And that lesson is that I am you. You are me, only different. We are all the same in all the ways that count…Any living being teaches you– Look into my eyes. And there you are, the reflection of yourself.
So we need to learn from the animals how to live more gently and consume less and be more thoughtful and look out for each other in this great circle of life.
About the Founding of PETA
We formed a little group of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to show people exactly what goes on behind the scenes. Places they'll never see. They only see what's in the forefront that looks all happy and joyous and available. And then with that group, we don't want to make people sad. We don't want to make people just angry. We want to empower everybody to be an important, conscientious consumer. And through their actions and what they buy and do, they are helping animals every single day, many times a day.
On Animal Communication
We definitely know that all animals have language. They talk to each other, they understand each other, and they have interesting ways of communicating that only recently have we figured out even in part because rhinos use a breath language, fish use luminescence, squid can actually send different messages, one on one side of their body, and one on the other side of their body with color and light and patterns, so they can ward off an enemy on one side by looking very fierce, and on the other side, they can be greeting a friend. So, we do know cows have facial expressions that are so subtle you can't really notice them, and that cats and horses use their ears and their tails and their whiskers, and so on. Animals communicate with sounds, too. And we know that elephants rumble and they purr and they almost growl but they do it subsonically under the ground. And you need instrumentation to capture that sound. Humans can't really get the nuance of it. And it's not just sound. It's that a mile away, another herd of elephants hears that they don't just think oh, there's a herd over there making a noise. They know that that means there are people with guns threatening our children, or we have found water, come over here and enjoy it.
So yes, all animals have language. Birds have amazing language, and you have to sometimes capture it and slow down the recording to find all the notes that they're using in between, like dolphin clicks, that you can't hear with the human ear.
Newkirk holding a news conference on Capital Hill urging President Bush to free the Silver Spring Monkeys (Copy) (Copy)
When Ingrid was a cruelty officer for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, examining starving dogs whom she confiscated (Copy) (Copy)
Ingrid at Animal Rahat, a PETA-supported organization that helps some of the most neglected animals in India (Copy) (Copy)
An ad featuring Ingrid hanging naked at a meat market next to pigs’ bodies (Copy) (Copy)
Ingrid pulling a horse cart in Mumbai to protest the use of horses (Copy) (Copy)
Ingrid protesting dogs being drowned at Taiwan shelters. The drownings were stopped after this protest (Copy) (Copy)
Ingrid being arrested after running in front of hunters to free pigeons before they were slaughtered at the Hegins pigeon shoot (Copy) (Copy)
Ingrid marching naked to protest the sale of fur in Bonn, Germany (Copy) (Copy)
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
Just looking at some of your protests. You've been arrested after running in front of hunters to free pigeons before they were slaughtered at the Hegins Pigeon Shoot. You've been photographed hanging naked from a meat hook at a meat market next to the bodies of pigs for the ad for the Go Vegan campaign. So you've really created these powerful images that people can't ignore. Can you discuss some of those campaigns and how they resonated with people?
NEWKIRK
I think things do change because of agitation. So agitation is vital. I mean, nobody who is in a cause should be there to win a popularity contest, whether you're working for children or the elderly or working for peace animals, it's all against nonviolence, aggression, domination, and needless cruelty and suffering. It's all for respect. So you have to be vigorous. You have to use your voice. You can use it politely, but if people don't listen, at PETA, we escalate. So we always start off with a polite letter, a polite entreaty. We always try to, as I say, do the homework. So we have the options that we put out on the table to say, look, instead of doing this, you could do that, and we will help you transition to that.
And when we began, which was 1980, there was no internet. We started by handing out leaflets on the street, having a banner at national parades, which could be seen on television, doing undercover investigations like the Silver Spring Monkey case, which made the front page of The Washington Post. And in the beginning, you could actually go on a talk show and spend an hour discussing things in depth, seriously, showing photographs, having facts and figures. Today, it's the era of the soundbite. And so very few people get a very serious look at the issues. And so you have to adjust as the media has adjusted. And that's why sometimes we use gimmickry, because just having the facts, sadly, isn't enough. You can't give people just solid facts. It's boring to them. So you have to create a ruckus and make them have a look. I mean, sometimes we're like a car crash. Nobody can avoid turning around to see what it's all about. And that's why we've used sensuality and sexuality, and we've used humor, we've used all those things, with everybody voluntarily getting in on the act to say, "I want to do something to make people aware of the reality, the horrors that animals are enduring." So that's how we've adapted.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
As you think about the future, what would you like young people to know, preserve and remember?
NEWKIRK
I would like them to know that if they care about being kind, then please look at the smallest animal, the biggest animal, and look at them all as your brothers and sisters, really, or your friends. They're not food. They're not shoes. They're not living test tubes. They're not here for you to be entertained by. So when you look at anything that contains an animal, their hair, their flesh, anything...a parrot on someone's shoulder that somebody says, "Do you want to have your picture taken with that parrot?" Just think, are they volunteers? If I were in their shoes or their paws or their claws, would I want to be there? And then you will know, your heart will lead you, your head will lead you as to how you should conduct yourself. And please know that if you become a vegetarian, that the mother cow whose baby ends up as meat, so please do not eat dairy, and please do not wear shoes made of her flesh. So there we are. That's my message to young people today.
This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interview Producer and Associate Text Editor on this episode was Sophia Reecer. Additional production support by Katie Foster.
How can we show more kindness, respect and love to the animals we share this planet with? What lessons can we learn from non-human animals about living in greater harmony with nature? Ingrid Newkirk is the founder and president of PETA, actively leading the organization and advocating for animal rights. Under her leadership, PETA has achieved significant victories, such as ending car crash tests on animals, pushing major fashion brands to go for free, influencing wrinkling brothers to become an animal-free circus, and helping pass a law that allows the US Food and Drug Administration to approve new medications without conducting cruel tests on animals. Ingrid has written 14 books and has been featured in major publications like The New Yorker and The Guardian, which is the subject of HBO's documentary "I Am An Animal" and was named one of Forbes' 100 Most Powerful Women. She joined one planet podcast to reflect on her 75 years as an animal rights advocate. Ingrid Newkirk, welcome back to one planet podcast and the creative process. Thank you, Mia. Delighted to be here. Thank you for doing this show. I also should wish you a happy birthday. Yeah, thank you very much. And the same person I always was, except my knees are a bit weaker now. And so as you look back on these 75 years, most of us do know a bit about PETA, but just tell us for those who don't know the whole history, how you came to found it, and your path to becoming the animal rights activist you are today. Well, Mia, I grew up like many people, really loving animals. I had a dog who was like my brother when I was growing up. And I really felt that I was a kind person. My parents were kind, but we ate animals, we wore animals. I had my first fur coat when I was 19. I didn't think about the products that I bought. And I even went to the circus and I saw elephants stand on their heads and bears own bicycles, all that sort of thing. And so through a series of experiences, I came to realize that I was supporting very cruel operations that denied animals everything that is precious to them. And so after that time, I thought, well, if I as an animal person didn't realize what was going on, how meat comes to the table, how leather shoes are made, how cosmetics are tested in rabbits' eyes, how wild animals are taken out of the forest, their homes, and used it in circuses, kept in cages, then there are a lot of people, just like me, who need to also know what I have learned. And so we formed a little group of people for the ethical treatment of animals to show people exactly what goes on behind the scenes, places they'll never see. They only see what's in the forefront that looks all happy and joyous and available. And then with that group, we don't want to make people sad, we don't want to make people just angry, we want to empower everybody to be an important, conscientious consumer. And through their actions and what they buy and do, they are helping animals every single day, many times a day. Tell us about some of those animal friends you've had along the way. They've been your teachers, our mentors in a way. Our house had so many wonderful animals, families, family members. In my life, starting with the dog who was there when I was born, surely, I grew up thinking I was his brother, and I don't know what he thought, but one animal sticks out in my mind because they're all wonderful. And that is my Conchita Marie, who was, she's gone now, a little mixed chihuahua, foxteria, something, who knows. We took over, Peter took over, an animal shelter in Maryland. And it had been a disgrace, it was filthy, it was cold, it was awful, hour. Somebody won the contract to reform it. So he went in at midnight one night to take it over, it was the beginning of a new era, and all night we cleaned, and there was one, this little dog who happened to be Conchita Marie, in her cement canal, in the cold, she was almost bent in half like a banana, she had a crack, and she was standing on her wet floor, and I thought, oh, she's one of those little dogs for you, you know, it's feisty, and she'll try to bite me because I'm a stranger, so I put a coat over her, and picked her up and moved her to a comfy place in a room on that little comfy bed where she could be warm and snuggled. We worked all night, and in the morning came I was going to push her back in her ghetto. I just couldn't do it, I thought that she's too small, so I took her home, and I looked and looked for her owner, they had been to the snow on the ground, and she'd been found outside, and she was almost hairless, and I kept her advertising, no one ever came for her, and in the end I said, all right, I'll keep you, and from that day on she was the naughtiest dog I could ever imagine, barking at everybody, but she was the love of my life for many, many years, she died when she was probably about 17. It's always sad when we lose a close companion, it goes beyond any words or any ways we can express that closeness. You know, as you say, when we reflect on our future on this planet, there's so much that we can learn from non-human animals in terms of living in harmony with nature, and what are some of those things that you've learned? Well, it's true, I mean why should it be one day when we think about our entire home and the future of the planet, it needs to be that we think about the earth, the animals, what we can do for our health, all those things every day, and you're right, because if you take a place like Alaska, which was forever millennia, a pristine wilderness with waters that were clean, lambs that was fertile, beautiful trees and flowers, and all the species from whales to turtles to beavos to musk rats to insects, all over the place, billions upon billions of animals. It was still clean as a whistle, still pristine. They know how to live in harmony, and they know how to protect the earth. No one taught them, there wasn't a lesson in school, there wasn't a video that they've managed it, an income human being, and we put up oil rigs, and we drill, and we put up our skating rinks and our shopping malls and our highways. We need so much, but it's not need, it's greed, so we need to learn from the animals how to live more gently, and consume less, and be more thoughtful, and look out for each other in this great circle of life. It's really a beautiful message, and I love just trying to imagine if it were possible for human beings to live in greater harmony with the planet, the way non-human animals do. I just love reading up in your books about the different ways they communicate, and just their language. This has been a thing that some people, even very enlightened people have used to say, were distinguishes us from animals, that they don't have a language, this is so false, and also this other idea that they don't have a conception of death. Sometimes I hear people say that, and I don't even understand that as a statement. We definitely know that all animals have language, they talk to each other, they understand each other, and they have interesting ways of communicating that only recently have we figured out, even in part, because rhinos use a breath language. Fish use luminescence, squid can actually send different messages, one on one side of their body and one on the other side of their body with color and light and patterns, so they can ward off an enemy on one side by looking very fierce, and on the other side they can be greeting a friend. So we do know cows have facial expressions that are so subtle, you can't really notice them, and that cats and horses use their ears and their tails and their whiskers and so on. Animals communicate with sounds too, and we know that elephants rumble and they purr, they almost grow, but they do it subsonically, under the ground, and you need instrument representation to capture that sound, humans can't really get the nuance of it, and it's not just sound, it's that a mile away, another herd of elephants hears that, they don't just think, oh, there's a herd over there making a noise, they know that that means there are people with guns threatening our children, or we have found water come over here and enjoy it. Yes, all animals have language, birds have amazing language, and you have to sometimes capture it and slow down the recording to find all the notes that they're using in between, like dolphin clicks that you can't hear with the human ear. Really, they're just artists, I feel like it's only only when we maybe even approach or somehow get a little bit close to the abilities of animals, we call someone a great artist or a great athlete, after years of training, can you imagine being able to speak one side of your body with the different colors, it's too amazing. And there are artists too, Mia, of course, as you well know, I mean, divers went down into the sea, and they couldn't figure out what these alien patterns were, magnificent circles with all sorts of swirling patterns, all symmetrical, geometrically perfect, in this vast design, and it looked as if alien beings had descended from another planet and made this pattern on the ocean floor, turned out it was this tiny fish who uses his fins to carve this out so perfectly so as to impress a female fish, and we've also seen, for example, the bowerbird, the bowerbird goes out and collects anything shiny or pretty just as we might decorate our homes, the way an octopus decorates their home with shells, the bowerbird brings back yellow flowers and red flowers and even little plastic things that he finds and he makes an entrance way that is so spectacular to his beautifully woven nest and makes a little walkway that's all decorated so as to say to a prospective partner, look, look what I've done, come and admire my handy work, and it is admirable, I couldn't do it, but they are very artistic. Oh, definitely, and what's interesting about all these instances is this artistry is not one of being dominant over nature, it's still utterly in harmony. Oh, it absolutely is, and when you see a bird or even a squirrel, make a nest, you have to be absolutely stunned at the talent, I mean if you look up in a tree, can you imagine going and finding a twig somewhere and putting that first twig in the crook of a tree up so high and then going and getting a second twig and trying to keep them from falling off the branch and then weaving all these other twigs in in this intricate design and then filling the bottom of the nest with moss or sometimes our birds and squirrels will pick up plastic to try to make it rain-proof, they've learned what that is, sometimes they'll take discarded cigarette butts and stick that between the twigs to repel insects. I mean, this is all so clever, it's so artistic, it's so talented, and it's almost impossible for a human being with fingers on both hands to figure out how we could do that ourselves yet they do it and they do it every year and they do it again if a stall knocks down their nest. We should be in awe and respect animals, absolutely. We are all animals, of course, as you know, is that we tend to say humans and animals but really we're all animals, biology 101 teaches us that and people tend to say, oh, such and such an animal has this human trait or they share this human trait, they're not human traits, they're all shared traits because of course we all love, we all love our families or not but we all grieve if somebody we love disappears or dies, a family dog, perhaps a grandfather, we all feel loneliness, we all feel joy, we all really value our freedom and so I think if anything, looking into the eyes of the animal, even online, you see a person in there, there's a someone in whatever the shape or the physical properties of that individual are and that lesson is that I am you, you are me only different. We are all the same in all the ways that count, little things don't count on how much fur you have or don't have, whether you have fins or you don't have them, any living being teaches you, look into my eyes and there you are, the reflection of yourself. It goes back to what you were saying about whether we once had the different language abilities that animals have, whether we've lost them and I think that that extra sensory perception, some people are tuned in, you know, and then there's others that aren't but I do think it is possible and when you're young, when you have fewer barriers like when you're a child, I remember I was so young but I went into a field and there was a buffalo and they were terrified that I'm this baby field with a buffalo but there was a trust and when that trust is there, you can't be harmed. So I don't know if I understand what the buffalo is thinking but interested not to be threatened by me. Well that is true to me, I think you've touched on an extremely important point because other animals recognize human children and their vulnerability much more than humans recognize the vulnerability of other animals children. Often there are cases of a dog or a bear or a wolf or any animal in the woods, in the forest, in the jungle who will protect a human child until that child can be found and these are not myths, these are not fables, these are real stories where somebody is so thankful that that dog or whichever animal it was laid on top of that or next to that child to keep them worn through the cold or to protect them from marauding predators or whatever or went in a little pig, went into a lake and pulled a child out to have it fallen in. Animals alert us to fires, they smell with their wonderful sense of smell, smoke or flame before we do and come and wake us up to say get out of the house. So I think yes they have amazing senses that we don't have or have forgotten. And so what do you think your sense of injustice and awareness of advocating for animal welfare stems from? Well it was always absolutely furious if I heard of anybody doing something like and it did happen, beating a dog or starving a horse or something like that but for years even though my family and I considered ourselves quote animal lovers, we never connected the dots. So we ate lots and lots of different kinds of animals and had dairy products come all and lots of chews, I have leather shoes that I was very fond of, my last pair of leather shoes was a pair of bass regions that I thought were fabulous and wanted to have a falcon on my arm because my uncle was a falconer and all these things that just I was so slow to realize that half of the things I did with animals like ride horses after up in India went on elephant rides that they were exploitive, they were darneering, they were really not respectful of animals, liking and loving animals shouldn't mean taking from them, stealing from them, killing them and just not considering how they feel about things, they're not volunteers. So slowly as my eyes opened and I gained experience seeing animals in trouble like a fox in a steel trap, like a pig abandoned on a farm, all these things that I saw I thought I need to tell other people about these things because they may never know, there'll be as oblivious as I was as my family was and I want to be sure to also not have them be upset and cry or get angry but know that there are wonderful alternatives to every cruel thing, so I had to set out to do work to get those lists ready for them or shampoos that weren't tested in on animals eyes and beautiful fabrics that you could have and so on and meals that didn't come from animals and that's how people for the ethical treatment of animals was born. And I can't there's so many great things because now some of those choices are mainstream and now veganism is mainstream but with Peter of course sometimes you use non-traditional methods of getting your message across like your Helen wheels exhibitions, life-size Peter exhibit designed to look like a transport truck with images of real pigs heading to slaughter, painted on the outside of these trucks, highlighting in this very visceral way that humane meat is a myth. Yes we're bold and our modus operandi is to make sure someone sees and hears about the plight of animals, so that may involve doing something really gimmicky, we're not afraid of making idiots out of ourselves. Anything we can do to turn heads start discussion, we don't mind if people disagree with us, I mean we'd rather they didn't but if they do and a lot of them do because it's the first time they've heard a provocative message that challenges things they've always been doing, then at least it starts the discussion and they may then hear about it in another forum another way and that all adds up and so that helps them get towards change and change does come as we've seen, you just have to go to the grocery store and see all the things marked vegan even in a small town or in a regular supermarket and you just know it's arrived, so there were many pitfalls, people mocked us mercilessly when we first started to say fur is dead, fur is cruel, little girls shouldn't wish to grow up to be fur whereas a society of success, it's not success, it's a sign of callousness or ignorance and people said how dare you, when we said elephants don't belong in the circus, people screamed at us as they were going into the circus, they swore at us, they mocked us, I mean we've always had to put up with that sort of thing but it doesn't bother us because we see that over time all message resonates and people come to think well maybe elephants should be respected and should be left in the wild and maybe it isn't ripe to have them stand on their heads and do stupid tricks and maybe we don't need fur and now of course people are saying maybe we don't need leather or wool or feathers, we're not survivalists, we don't need to kill and exploit animals and factory bomb them for their skins and their hide and their flesh and we don't need to test things on them, we've got technology, so everything that we have said from the start which has been considered entirely envelope pushing is now being worn away to be well maybe they have a point. Yes indeed and you were I think among the first you actually inspired a lot of environmental movements as well who understand that you have to get those images out, tell us how you came to embrace different media to get your message across. Well media has changed so much across and when we began which was 1980 there was no internet, we started by handing out leaflets on the street having a ban on national parades which could be seen on television, doing undercover investigations like the silver spring monkey case which made the front page of the Washington Post and in the beginning you could actually go on a talk show and spend an hour discussing things in depth seriously showing photographs, having facts and figures, today it's the era of the sound bite and so very few people get a very serious look at the issues and so you have to adjust as the media has adjusted and that's why sometimes we use gimmickry because just having the facts sadly is internet, you can't give people just solid facts, it's boring to them so you have to create a ruckus and make them have a look, I mean sometimes we like a car crash nobody can avoid turning around to see what it's all about so that's why we use sensuality and sexuality and we've used humor, we've used all those things with everybody voluntarily getting in on the act to say I want to do something to make people aware of the reality of horrors that animals are enduring so that's how we've adapted, yes and we should just say you're just reflecting back in the mirror because sometimes it's just the image itself that's shocking so that you have to amplify it in any way so I'm just looking at some of your protests of you being arrested after running in front of hunters to free pigeons before they were slaughtered at the Higgins Pigeon shoot or even when photographs hanging naked from a meat hook at a meat market next to the bodies of pigs for the ad for the Go Vegan campaign so really creating these powerful images that people can't ignore, can you discuss some of those campaigns and how they resonated with people? I think things do change because of agitation, so agitation is vital, we know body who is in a cause should be there to win a popularity contest whether you're working for children or the elderly or working for peace, animals, it's all against non-violence, aggression, domination and needless cruelty and suffering, it's all for respect so you have to be vigorous, you have to use your voice you can use it politely but if people don't listen at Peter we escalate so we always start off with a polite letter or polite and treaty, we always try to as I say do the homework so we have the options that we put out on the table to say look instead of doing this you could do that and we will help you transition to that it's like in school you have people poor children are given a frog and told to kill them while they arrived at Harvard and formaldehyde and they're told to dissect them, we think that's obviously a desensitizing lesson which can lead to them being desensitized to other issues including to the fate of their own classmates that they make bully and so we say here's an alternative it's called a synthetic frog or a safe rod and it's made of plastic and you can cut it open and take out the little organs with your four steps, there are no intestines to dangle in little girl spaces and there's no stench of formaldehyde and you can reuse it so we're always doing that all the time and everything we do is to say come on let's work with you but if we have to escalate we escalate and I'll give you one example for example baboons and pigs used to be strapped into these cars with no sides on them and slammed into brick walls and that was to record the injuries the damage the deaths and we went to all the car companies and said may we meet with you with our scientists may we come up with alternatives to this so that you stop doing that piece and baboons or anyhow and they wouldn't listen they turned a dappier to us they wouldn't meet and so we began by petitioning them you began by having people who had that nick of car right to them with a picture of their car saying I will never buy this brand again they still didn't listen we ended up we went into auto showrooms and handcuffed ourselves into the models of those cars they still didn't listen so in the end we had members of ours donate their used cars of that kind whatever it was and we set fire to the north side auto showroom and boy then they sat up and listened for the first time they decided I don't know where this campaign is going that these people are tenacious and they are determined to stop our animal use and so they stopped it and when you see mannequins on television or on the internet about car safety that's because of our campaign no car company in the world uses animals now it's all mannequins it's all technology and so that was the example of how you couldn't just walk away when they ignored you and think well let the baboons and pigs die badly you have to say listen listen to us we're trying to be polite we're trying to be nice we're giving you the alternatives but we are not going away until you stop and so when you're in India you assisted your mother who volunteered for mother Teresa and I'm wondering if your mother was as outspoken as you are when I was the child in India and my mother was a sort of full-time volunteer for all sorts of things children really called to her and so she volunteered a lot for mother Teresa's orphanages in old Delhi and together we would make toys for the children she always made wonderful teddy bears and little cloth dolls and we would stop them and deliver them to the orphanage she also took in unwed mothers who were cast out by their families and looked after them but everything she did she worked for a leper colony for a while and we used to pack pills together when I was found from school rolled them up and sent them to the colony but she always said it doesn't matter who suffers it's that they suffer and what can you do to stop that suffering and that's the environment I grew up in she was mild married she would give the shirt off her back to anybody our home was always filled refugees there were Tibetan refugees actually people would come over the mountains from Tibet after the Chinese invasion who were living in Delhi and had nothing and she would buy things from them their handicrafts and give them a place to stay but she also would stop the car if she saw an animal in trouble and we would minister to that animal either take them home or get them veterinary care or in one instance I remember she wasn't with me but from her lessons I made sure to stop a man beating a bullock was pulling a cart and was totally exhausted and it collapsed wow and it's wonderful how that informed your sense of compassion and fairness and I guess also on the other side of that your father worked for the defense industry so maybe you're awakening tweets I'm just telling me a little about that my father designed bombing systems for war and that's why we were in India because if the Indian government had contracted with him from a private company he didn't work for the government because India was expecting a war with China which luckily didn't not materialize but yes he also thought of himself as a kind man but a practical man he had a sort of disciplinary and Victorian sense of being but in his practicality for example there was a rooster next door to us at one point who was making a lot of noise and he made sure that the rooster was killed so it was that old fashioned view of he would never imagine doing anything unkind to a dog or anything other kind a tool that fell within his understanding of what that met which was sort of never depriving them of their freedom to roam if he had a dog teaching his dog how to count he would give his dog treats and say one two three and he adored his dogs but there were blind spots and we all had them yes really we all have blind spots so would you say to those who feel that animal rights activism competes with human welfare concerns I always remember when I first came to America I saw a life magazine pictorial and it was white young men and women most young men going down to the south to register black voters and you can't say it now but they were screaming for you white and words at them and they were saying what about the white babies in Appalachia why aren't you looking after them you know there are white people with problems and here you are down here looking after these end words and I always thought you know it's the same thing is that we're all one it's all about discrimination we are one animal among many why should we consider our compassion only go to ourselves our media family maybe our race maybe our country maybe our religion maybe our species why not just be tired why not be compassionate why not open your heart and say if there's anything I can do for anyone that's fine and some others like my mother had a talent for children and I have a way of understanding other species some of them not all of them are not that I'm discriminating against them it's just you have a natural understanding wouldn't don't and so people understand animal liberation is human liberation because if you only care about humans then care about them clubbing their arteries with animal flesh and dying of heart disease cancer stroke high blood pressure so if you only care about humans which is very selfish and narrow-minded then care about animal rights because you will care about humans too you will not destroy the rainforest to grow animals and the rainforest means climate change for all human beings in tea it's of course in your book animal kind and your other books you mentioned having this ability to understand or communicate in some way with the non-human animals that we share this planet with and you're talking there about the ways that Peter has embraced technologies and media forgetting the message out and now with the rollout of generative AI we see on the horizon maybe the possibility of furthering our ability to communicate or at least decipher the language of animals so what are your reflections on this and developments in that regard some of it's quite good and some of it is a little worrying but I think one of the things about AI is it can distill a massive amount of inflammation in a very short period of time so the facts are on our side when it comes to the use of animals in experimentation it's old-fashioned it's out of date it's ineffective almost 100% of the use of animals in experimentation doesn't work when someone tries to translate it into human use that's why we have all these disclaimers on drugs saying watch out for side effects from anaphylactic shock to death so AI can actually distill this information and say but state-of-the-art methodologies exist whether it's human organs are sure it's high-speed computers that are programmed with human information not something from a rat or a monkey which is physiologically unaligned with us and so it allows scientists experimenters to quickly see their options rather than have to dig around and debate them I do believe it also helps shame people who are clinging to old ways of using animals by saying modernize get with it it's 2020 or it'll be 2025 so technology has been our friend in many ways although of course you've got people like Elon Musk who are trying to generate a brain chip and put it in human heads he actually has just done a breast one and has gone through hundreds of pigs and monkeys and the stories coming out of his labs are very frightening as to what his callousness and how he has treated those animals and how badly they have shared and died so it can go both ways and I know that Peter has also recently re-rigined with the aid of chat GPT genesis the first book of the bible so it's a kind of new vegan cruelty-free story of creation so that's interesting because it's about reorientating our thinking how can we create more empathetic or compassionate classes within our school systems that would reorientate our thinking to respect all of animal kind well Peter we have some really excellent teaching modules teaching kits lessons for teachers to use and they're all free so if you know a teacher you have a child in school or a grandchild in school please just contact us it goes beyond a dissection that desensitizing exercise that some children are put through and we're working intensively on that but also everybody talks about bullying in school and it's been some awful cases of suicide among children who are bullied and it is the nature of children to try and one up other children and be superior to them just as it's the nature of many human beings to be superior to other animals not just relate to them or understand how they're feeling so we have a kiss about bullying a long ago when the first SPCA came about the wonderful man who founded it called Henry Berg was in school in New York teaching children to be kind and he used to say if you teach a child to be kind to a caterpillar you do as much for the child as you do for the caterpillar because if you can teach a child to relate to somebody who is so different in looks in behavior and culture and language why I should say communication because all animals have ways of communicating many just don't understand or have not even twigged then you teach them surely that it's easy to be empathetic to another child or later on to a grown-up who's come from another country or maybe mentally disabled or physically disabled rather than mock them and bully them and make fun of them so or be mean to them or even kill them as we see there are racist killings or sorts of things going on and he was criticized by people who said you've got human suffering all around you and rapes and murders and yet here you are in school teaching the kids to be kind to animals and that's what he said that's his answer was it's a road it's a progress and if you start with animals surely even if you only care about humans this will have a knock on effect and you know looking back at your accomplishments Peter has been going now so 1980 it's began yes 44 wow another birthday there so what are you most proud of and you know what sacrifices have you made in this journey of yours i've never made any personal sacrifices i feel that i've been absolutely privileged to have found something that counts something that i care about and something i can do every single day of my life how many people can say that so i could have gone in another direction and never found this and it would have been upfall in so i have been so lucky to be able to help animals all the time i may not always be successful but at least this is my job it's my life is what i want to do and what i hope to do well if i can i do my best so that's it the no sacrifice is a troll so as you think about the future and the kind of world that we're leaving the next generation what would you like young people to know preserve and remember well i would like them to know that if they care about being kind then please look at these smallest animals the biggest animal and look at them all as your brothers and sisters really all your friends they're not food they're not shoes they're not living test tubes they're not here for you to be entertained by so when you look at anything that contains an animal their hair their flesh anything a parrot on someone's shoulder that you know somebody says do you want to have your picture taken with that parrot just think i'll leave on tears if i run their shoes or their pores or their claws would i want to be there and then you all know your heart will lead you your head will lead you mr how you should conduct your zone and please know that if you become a vegetarian that the mother cow who loves her baby ends up as meat so please do not eat dairy and please do not wear shoes made a parrot lash so there we are that's my message to the young people today thank you Ingrid new cook for all that you and Pete does to promote ethical treatment of animals for your ongoing courage and commitment to speak up and give voice to those who can't otherwise express the ways we make them suffer and just your life's work in reminding us that we're all the same in the ways that matter and that the animals we share this planet with deserve kindness respect and love we all live on one planet we call home thank you for adding your voice to one planet podcast and the creative process thank you mia and if anybody would like any resources pita dot org we have alternatives to every cruel thing we have kind thing for every cruel thing so please cover up and everything is free and downloadable thank you in good thank you very very much thank you mia thank you bye bye one planet podcast is supported by the Jan Michelle see foundation this interview was conducted by mia funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students associate interview producer and associate text editor on this episode was Sophia research one planet podcast is produced by mia funk additional production support by katie foster theme music is written and performed by huan sanches we hope you've enjoyed this program if you'd like to get involved in one planet podcast and be part of the climate change solution just drop us a line at team@oneplanetpodcast.org thank you for listening
