goals and the rest of us don't, in a decadent society. thank you all, of course, for coming out on a tuesday night to be with us, and we're really grateful that ross joined us tonight on the day his book is released. it's a privilege to have you here with us. there's a reception afterwards. you're able to stay around and answer more questions. >> doesn't start until 8:00 p.m. so -- >> excellent. join me in thanking ross. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> now on c-span2's booktv, more television for serious readers. [inaudible conversations]

>> good evening. i'm tony clark from the carter library. can't tell you how excited i am to see you all for the audience, watching this. it has rained all day long, and it is raining very hard right now. and to see you all turn out tonight, i think is a tribute to ingrid and her organization and the book. so thank you all very much. i appreciate it. if you have not been to our author program before, i would encourage you to good on to the judgmenty carter library website. we have two to three authors, sometimes four, every week, and they are just fascinating. later this week we have a book called "wilmington's lie" about the rise of white nationalists and wilmington, north carolina, back in the 1880s. we have judge douglas ginsburg, talk us about his book, voices

of the republic, a tie-in with a pbs series on thursday. we have a whole bunch of wonderful authors so i encourage you to take a look there and come back see is again. i'm delighted for tonight's program. inning grids newkirk was born in sure surery, england and lived in europe until she was seven years old and then her parents -- she and her parents moved to new dehli. she stuffed toys for orphans, feeding stray animals, creating her view that anyone in need, including nails -- animals is worthy of concern. she found peta and since that time it's grown into the world's

largest animal rights organization. her passion and dedication to making the world a better place for all living beings has inspired countless others and it is the subject of tonight's book "animalkind." "how we should treat animals. meese join in the in becoming ingrid newkirk. [applause] >> thank you very much, everybody, fork coming out. think you are the atlanta braves who came through all that incredible deluge out there. it's a privilege to be here at the jimmy carter presidential library. i have several anecdotes about president carter because i was humane law enforcement officer in washington, dc when he was president. and there was a time, for

example, when the wild turkey bourbon company decided to toss a real wild turkey of the white house rails, and he landed in a tree, and my job was to good out and persuade the secret service that he was no threat to the president. president didn't have to worry about this bird and they should leave him in peace and not shoot him. and so about two days later, the bird flew off across the potomac and went to live happily ever after on roosevelt island. the mow reality temperature concerned president carter's middle east peace initiative. one christmas, a long time ago, i traveled to bethlehem in palestine where jimmy carter's envoy and i were both giving talks at the international

conference on nonviolence. so the very first night there was a banquet, and there were representatives from all over the world who were there to talk about respect for others, understanding peace and nonviolence. on the way to the dinner we passed through the market square, and there was the butcher who was slaughtering these bleeding goats and sheep and the market square. we saw it all. and we arrived at the banquet hall and we sat down, and there was -- it was christmas and there was a very large picture of jesus holding one of this gentle lambs, and then dinner was served and each of us was given a lamb shank. and i thought, back then, no one was connecting the dots. and somebody needed to say something, and of course, several of us made the case that this was not the time to serve a

violent meal at a nonviolence conference. the very next day, i was sitting in the hall and listening to the speakers, and they one by one would come up and talk how they had been imprisoned injustly, they had had their homes bulldozed, their olive groves seized and so on. and each speaker basically ended by saying these words, please respect us. we are human beings. and i sat there and i thought and i was the only speaker at the time to address the plight of the animal nations and the animal individuals, and so i made the case that the identity of victims of violence is not important. what is important is that there is needless violence. so, i found myself at the end of my speech saying, one day, i

hope to come here and i hope that we will be able to say, please respect us, because we are living beings. doesn't matter if we're human or not. and then that night, we were all staying in a monastery it and was a monastery hotel, even had a bar. and i went back to the hotel and i heard the woman at the reception talking about how excited she was there was a christmas market, and she was going to be buying these sweaters at the christmas market, and then she spotted me and she said, oh, i heard you talk today. i just like to know how you can talk about animals when little children are being shot. and i didn't say to her, well i don't know how you can talk then about sweaters and the christmas market when little children are

being shot, but instead, i just said to her, surely our hearts are big enough to care about little children and animals because they're all victims of violence so. so last nation millions of people were watching the oscars, and they were reminding of this disconnection, this disconnect. they were asked to connect the dots. they were asked to consider that we are linked, not ranked, and joaquin fines says whetherrer where talk become set racial or indigenous rights or animal right we're talking but injustice. we're talking about the fight against the belief that one nation, one people, one race, one gender, one species, has the

right to dominate, control, abuse, and exploit another with impunity. he said, i think we have become very disconnected from the natural world, and many of us, what we're get of is an ego centric, human humano centric v. we feel entitledded to artificially inseminate a cow win she gives birth and then we steal her baby. and even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable, and they are, and then we take the milk that's intended for her calf and we put it in our coffee, and our cereal. so, i love joaquin phoenix for pushing that envelope for makening people think and sticking up or the animals who are often forgotten. recently he made the golden

globes vegan and then after that another one ask then after that the -- when he asked them, could you please not serve animals the way i did in bethlehem could you please not serve animals in a nonviolent place, he said please don't serve them at a celebration. they said, well, we can make it almost vegan but we need to sever a little fish. and -- serve a little fish, he became vegan when he saw a fish gutted on the deck of a ship. so he said, no, you can't do that. and so they said, all right, we'll make the whole thing vegan. so, he is the person of the year and we're very proud of him. [applause] >> so we should get to the book. when we were children, many of us red books and saw films and what have you of mythical

animals with wonderous powers, pegasus the flying hours, dragons, unicorns, you name it. and what james stone and i have set out to do in animalkind is show that animals who are all around us, every single day, not mythical at all, do have what you might call super powers but people badly underestimate the other animals. even those who care deeply about them sometimes. you may be showing love for an animal by calling them your fur baby but often they're not babies at all. they're absolutely whole and they're complete and their thinking and they're feeling individuals, and they have interests that need to be taken into account. experimenters often call other animals, nonhuman, and if i

weren't 0 so sad i would find that amusing beau that's sort of like calling me a nonhamster. it makes so little sense. they're not non anything. they're whole begs with enormous and often thoroughly unrecognized intelligence. they have emotions, love, fear, pain, joy. they like to be free. often totally ignored. and that's what joaquin whereas talking about with a mother's love for her calf. it's not even considered a factor if somebody wants a cheese topping on their pizza. not a thought for that cow. so i'm going to give you ten examples of animals real life super powers. i won't give you nye more than that because you won't buy a big. we can't survived for ten minutesser in their ice about the western painted turtle can

hold this breath under the ice for eve 100 days -- over 100 days. if you go to airport these days, which i do almost every day, it's not an airport anymore. it's a maize of restaurants, fastfood places, place where you eat and then get on the plane and they give you a snack and then they try to sell you food, apparently they think that human beings can't go for 100 miles or so unless they can -- they're eating. but the tiny god width, a bird from new zealand, guys 7,000 miles -- flies seven thousand miles without stop for food or water. no human being can come close to that. a squirrel buriys their nuts by the position of the stars. just imagine that. and if they know that another squirrel is watching, or a human being is watching, they use

sleight of hand and pretend to bury the nut here but they bury it somewhere else. we use a gps. we use maps and satellites but pigeons use low frequency radio waves, among other things to navigate. a time when human beings didn't even know there were radio with as. pigeons knew it all along, and pregnant you have seen investigative footage that peta has taken of pigeon racing which sounds absolutely harmless. what could be more harmless than pigeon racing. it is. a lot of races take place over open water. boats offload the birds in mid of 0 the sea, or they fly the birds from, say, from back to spain or germany to scott land

the birds have to cross immense body of water, and birds, i pigeons are petrified of crossing those bodies of water, especially when they can't see land on the other side. but you know how it's fun? pigeons of course know about cross-currents and all these other reasons to be afraid. the reason they fly, and very few make it, statistics are absolutely shocking, is because the pigeon racers know, pigeons mates for life, they're wonderful mothers and fathers. both the father and the mother pigeon make milk in the crops so if you see a pigeon with their beak down another pigeon, it could be kissing because they do that, too, but they may by also feeding their baby. and they -- pigeon racers keep

the mate or the eggs or the baby back in the attic in the nest when they take the other one away. and that is why they risk they're their very lives and many lose their lives to get home. this is taiwan. something like 95% of thousands upon thousands of birds, beautiful, gentle little birds, perish. mountaineers use oxygen masks around 23,000 feet. and they have to use special suits to keep warm. but the barheadded goose can fly without any of that at 26,000 feet. tiny garden snails taken a few miles from therapy home -- i'm not recommending anybody do this -- they'll find their way

back because it's their home. they'll spend two years if they need to and yet? at the speed of .029 miles an hour, and snake does the same thing. so, elephants. i learn a lot about elephants in writing this book. things i didn't know how the use their trunks to snorkel when they good swimming and can pick up a person clip the use you use your thumb and for finger burt we used to think the rumbling sound they made was indigestion. wasn't anything such thing. it was subsonic communications. it's now called silent thunder. and they send messages to herds of elephants that are far, far away, maybe it's a drought and they found a water hole and they tell those elephants who are long way away, you can come here

and get something to drink, or today the chinese are capturing baby elephants from places and taking them to national parks and if the babies are being captured, places in africa, the wardens report that you can find another herd, all the way at the end of the park, up against the fence, trembling, because they have heard from these elephants our babies are being taken. the little mouse, ultrasound vibrations, a mechanism only sunshine our idea engines, we can't hear it but their friend can. chimpanzees can outsmart college students in memory tests. you put a smarty pants college student there and a young chimpanzee next to them, put symbols or numbers on a board and then take they were away

quickly. the chimpanzee will be able to say, put them back in the right place far quicker than the college student. they have almost photographic memories, which means you must never, ever show them your atm pin number. i had a -- years ago, at the university of washington who taught washoe, american sign language, and washoe taught her son a special name and they would invent words leak water bird and water fruit if they saw something and didn't know the name. well, he had one of his research students walking a juvenile chimpanzee through the grounds, both of them getting some exercise, and the juvenile chimpanzee decided decided to by and went up the tree and the college student was thinking, i've got to get back to class. so pulled the leash -- it was

around the chimpanzee's next and the chimpanzee just pulled the college student right up into the tree. eels are part taser. they carry electrical charges that are strong enough to sun a human being in a split sect. our military as tried to replicate spider silks that it is ten times tougher than kevlar, and forget spider-man because the gecko has these electron infuses suction cups on his feet and can go up the side of a wall and absolutely be upside-down above you without any problem. and as for dogs, i have learn so much about dogs. i already knew their noses are vastly, vastly superior to ours, their spence of smell. i didn't know this. they are now being used by law enforcement officers to catch

child progressers -- pornographies because they pup the picture odd a thumb drive and the dog can smell the thumb dry inside ale metal box inside a cabinet. no human officer can do that. also means because their knows are so acute, that you can never hurry them along on their walk. because they are reading the numbers that's their internet out there. they're not out there to just do their business so you can go on and do whatever you want to do. that is their excursion. that's their big moment. they don't want to be sitting in the house with their legs crossed looking at the wall. you have to let them have their time. it is their walk. it's also the reason those noses you can never, ever eat in front of them because they smell it so keenly they want it more than you do.

and there's much, much more. do you know, dogs -- somebodyford out how to give an mri to dogs without stressing them. and what they've discovered is a very same part of their brain, the dog's brain, lights up when you give. the treat as a businessman's brain lights 'if you give him a raise. i'm just -- not commenting, just telling you. so the search for intelligent life forms in the paper, the news every week. people going out looking for signs of intelligent life on other planets but intellent life forms are already around us. a crow, just a few months of age, without being taught, has figured oat how to drop rocks into that water so that the food floats to the top, so that he can take it out. show me a human baby who can do

that. cows and horses can open complicated, multiple problem get a locks and cows have taught themselves to operate water pumps when they're thirsty. it's absolutely extraordinary. they all watch, they all have to pay attention to what humans are doing and then learn from that. there is a pig in the philippine s who is made fun of because he looks like that. heels the filipino watery pig, and people might write him off but his a smart little fellow, and what the filipino warty pig has been seen doing is where there are electrified fences that they're not always on, the pigs will take walks and push them with their snouts up against the fence, and if the fence guess ping, ping, ping, they know it's electrified and

don't go near it. er is nicer no sound they 0 good routh through. we have seen the video 0 dogs who wait until their humans have gone out, and then everything is quiet, and they do this and they push the chair. take white they need and my favorite videos are where they put the chair back. i did a lot of research into monkey intelligent stories but one of my favorite stories is a a-taught a monkey how to pick flowers and i'm not in favor of having servant monkeys. in fact in a little bit we're going to be showing an expo say of how a lot of coconut products come into the united states from places like thailand where they are pucked by monkeys who are --

picked by monkeys who are kept on chains to a small hut and their entire life is being trained brutally to go up the tree, come down and then they go mad in their little huts for the rest of their lives. this botanyist who trained the monkey and they were in asia and walking along the top of what was a precipice, a sheer drop of thousands of feet, and the about tonnist saw there was an ore orchid. and he told the monkey go get the orchid, and the monkey looked at him, looked at the precipice, and didn't budge. and the botanist lost his temper with me monk can he and ordered him, you go down and get the orchid. and the monkey looked at him,

looked back at the precipice, went over to the side, found a vine, hand over hand, pulled it out, picked the orchid and gave it to the botanist. who was the clevererrer of the two. and then there are the singular undervalued i little animal fish. i'm going to mention one fish called the rath. this is also called the teeth cleaning fish. there is -- there is a thing called the gold standard of animal intelligence. it's the mirror test. and if you show tribal people the mirror for the first time they think they're being attacked and throw something at it, break it. the chimpanzee's pass the mirror test. recently the little rath, here she is, looking at herself in

the mirror. she has figured out that's me. and what she does actually is not only look at herself but she starts preening like kim kardashian. [laughter] then there are dolphins. everybody loves dolphins and dolphins have unique whistle names for each other. each dolphin is given a name, a whistle name, when they're born, and they keep it for the rest or their lives and this is amazing because if they haven't seen or heard from a particular toll fin in -- dolphin in 20 years and hear the whistle, they'll know who it is. which is in sharp contrast to my high school reunion which i went to in england, not so long ago, and everyone said to everyone else, you haven't changed a bit. and then you saw them peek at the name tag to see who they

were talking to. not so with dolphins. we talk about empathy, sympathy, understanding in the book, and all the wonderful things that animals do. and just as it was coming out, we had the fires in australia, which i know upset so many people, anyone with a heart, because of the kangaroos particularly and he koala bears. i just want to messenger another animal that was -- mention another animal that was caught in the fire. australia is the biggest experter of wool and the whole country is nothing but sheep ranches. if you look on at the gluetoggle you can find pick tours of the kangaroos and the koala but the gentle sheep. sheep can recognize other sheep and human beings from photographs and they look after each. other the dearest, most gent.

family animals. when the flames came, the sheep ran and ran and ran, but they ran up to the fence, and then the couldn't go any further, and that's where they burned to death. and i thought about that at the time because it reminded me of north carolina when we had those awful tornadoes and that big storm that came in, and we knew it was coming for days, and nobody had the courtesy to let the animals out of the barns. just let them drowned as the water backed up, and nobody in australia had the courtesy, the decency to cut the fence. so i think of those forgotten animals quite a bit. the other thing is around this time, there were the los angeles fires and he saw those on the news. well, i was watching a news feed

and they had a horse farm, which was completely ensome routed in smoke and behind the horse barn you could see the flames coming down towards it and the there was the road and there are were horse trailers on the road to get the horses out and they were getting ready to go because things were coming, and there were two horses about to be loaded, and one of them was a stallion and you suddenly saw him -- his ears pricked up. he heard something. and he turned around, and you think, no, no, the broke away, ran back down the road, went down the path, into this smoky ranch and your heart was in your mouth. he heard a m rea rewhiny and he went in and the next thing you'll in the is their mare and her follow being lead out to the

road to be loaded into the trailer. i thought it's california, if this horse was the rock he is a star of some california blockbuster but, no, just a horse. but what a hero, what wonderful man. that horse is. so, an animalkind we show how animals experience the joys that humans sometimes deprive them of. crows amice themes in updrafts, jumping awful buildings and letting themselves be carried up high again and crows slide down, no covered cars and roofs. just for the fun of it. there are cows that they keep in australia, keep them in sheds in the winter and have been in the shed for months and they know,

now we get to go out. so first they come out cautiously and then the think, we're out. and you see them -- these massive cows just leaping about, with pure joy. and no one can believe that a bull -- and i run a bull sanctuary. what kind of idiot runs a bull sanctuary. i run a bull sanctuary in india but a bull who weighs late rally a ton, would like to play with a tire, just like a dog. chickens jump for low, hanging

apples. takes them while. she wants that apple. not giving up here. up she goes. rats giggle when they're tickled and we all know that dogs love to jump for joy. simpling pleasures. animals dedeprived of simple pressure. in animal kind we take people back to a time when using animals as tools of convenience, no matter the risk to their limb and their lives was considered quite normal. pigeons idea as mention messengers and now be weather. wells fargo delivered by pony express and now we use drones. canaries in coal mines, and sometimes they were killed and now wave ha sip the tick human

nose. ringling bros. and barnum & bailey circus once considered exotic and now we have virtual reality. you can go under the sea and touch and may with animals without hamping harming a hair 0en their heads. until we push -- what's takes is to be aware of who animals are and push for changes so they don't get hurt. companies very brazenly said they absolutely had to test their cosmetics and household products on animals. it was required. it wasn't. they said they had to kill a rabbit for a pregnancy test. no more. dog has to be used in smoking experiments. no, gone. monk constituent had to be sent into space. we stopped it. we were told that humans had to eat meat and human babies had to drink cow's milk. not their own mother's milk, not

giraffe milk, company's milk -- cow's milk. apparently nature intend that. now there are so many plant milks, you to supermarket and stand there for ten minutes thinking i don't, die want the oat milk, macdamea, al mont, soy, chocolate, low fat. don't tell me there's nothing you can eat if you stop eating dairy. in the book,gen and i offer tons of ways to help the human animal help the rest to recognize that we are animals ourselves. biology 101. we are not gods and the animals aren't trash. the animals are not like us. the animals are us. and in fact there are so many ways to help that we list in the book that i said to gene, it's like christmas at buckingham palace. all these presents number the tree and you can't decide which

one to open first. so doesn't matter there are ideas for everyone, even if you're poor as a church mouse, if you're rolfing in money, you're a student, if you're a professional, whatever is, the animals need you and need your help, and this book comes in two parts, the first is who are the animals, what don't we know about them? and there are so many extraordinary things that we don't know and secondly, knowing about their, their all-inspiring talents, amazing ways they communicate. their emotional lives. their love for even other. now what are we going to do about pit and that's part two. by the way i did notice that beyoncé and jay s announced they're giving free concert tickets for life to people who become vegan and i saw she small

sprint that says 30 years and i said you don't in the vegans, we live much longer than that. i'm going to live you with three quotations that sum up the book. anne frank wrote how wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. albert einstein wrote: the world is a dangerous place, not because of eve veil, as much as because people look on and do nothing about it. and my favorite is henry bestom, who said, three things in life are important. the first is to be kind. the second is to be kind. and the third, is to be kind. so, thank you so much for coming tonight and braving the weather. i hope you enjoy the book, i really think you will. and if you know someone who has a dog or hamster that hasn't

gotten beyond that this is the perfect gift for. the. so buy a crate of them, keep them nell house and you'll never have to figure out what to give a person for an occasion, and please speak to your library, local libraries and schools and ask them to carry it, too, because the reason i wrote this book is to open hearts and minds and to get people to make this a kinder world in fact, to be animalkind. thank you very, very much. [applause] >> so we have copies of the book for sale in the lobby, ingrid will be signing them and it's interesting in the book she says, animals need all the friends they can get. and this gives you a chance to know how to become a friend.

let's thank ingrid one more time. [applause] >> if you'll join news the lobby. thank you all very much. [inaudible conversations] >> if you miss any of the live coverage of the government's response to coronavirus outbreak, watch it anytime at c-span.org/coronavirus from daily briefings by the president and white house task force to updates from governors of the hardest hit states. it's all there use the charts and maps to track the virus global spread and con femur cases in u.s. county by county. our coronavirus web page is your fast and easy way to watch c-span's unfilters coverage of this pandemic. >> well, as regular viewers of