Join us for Part Two of our series with Big Cats advocate and “Tiger King” star Carole Baskin. Carole opens up about life after sudden fame, sharing her journey, her passion for animal welfare, and the mission behind Big Cat Rescue. Don’t miss this inspiring conversation with one of the most recognized voices in big cat conservation!
—
Listen to the podcast here
Lions, Tigers, And Carole Baskin, Oh My! Part 2
Starting With Carole’s Past Trauma
Welcome back to Understanding the Human Condition. I’m your host, Dr. James Flowers, joined by my lovely co-host, Robin French.
This week, we’re going to wrap up a two-part series with Carole Baskin from Tiger King and Big Cat Rescue.
I love it. We’re going to start with Carole explaining a traumatic event from her past.
Let’s watch.
It’s also been revealed that you were assaulted as a teenager, and you experienced domestic violence in some of your former marriages. How do you recover from that abuse, and how did that affect you?
When I was assaulted, I was fourteen and I was raped by three men at knife point and because I was raised in a fundamental Christian household and my parents believed that whenever a woman was raped or harmed, it was because she was somewhere that she wasn’t supposed to be. She was doing something she wasn’t supposed to do. I had snuck out of the house with a friend of mine that night to go down and visit with these people. I didn’t know, I was ignorant. I didn’t know what kind of people lived in the world, but I had done something wrong.
I really internalized that and had so much, I had such a lack of self-esteem that I attracted into my life one abusive situation after another. It wasn’t until 2002, when I was trying to lose weight because I’ve always been fat, and I had gone to a hypnotherapist for the first time. You guys probably know this whole thing, but for me, it was like brand new. You’re walking down the beach, and you see a little girl, and you talk to her. I’m like, I don’t want to talk to the girl.
Exactly. No, don’t make me. That’s right. You hit the nail on the head. You just said, when I was young, and you talked about some of the abuse when you were young, and what happens when we’re older is we bring that forward, and we tend to marry and have relationships with the people that are similar to what we went through in childhood. With that said, how’s your marriage? Healthy?
That hypnotherapy session that I went through was a wake-up call. I thought, I am attracting the same person back into my life over and over and over again. I vowed that day I was going to go out, and the next person that I thought there was no way I would be attracted to, that person at all, in a million years, that was the one I was going to pursue, and I met Howard.
Sometimes, the person we’d never imagine being with turns out to be exactly who we need.
There you go.
That was smart.
He was the antithesis of anything that was ever attractive to me. I’ve always liked older men, and he was older, but he was very straight-laced and wearing a three-piece suit. He walked very stiffly because he had been in an auto accident years ago that left his spine kind of messed up. I remember thinking I could loosen this guy up some, but I also thought, there is just nothing about him that makes me want to go over and talk to him, so I’m going to go talk to him.
Good for you. Where’d you meet him at? Out and about in the restaurant, or where?
It was a friend. We had a mutual friend named Mary Key. She’s not a therapist, but she kind of does coaching for businesses. She was really interested in ending the overpopulation of dogs and cats in shelters here in Florida. She had come to me and she said, “I’m going to have this speaker come in. He’s been really successful in other places in bringing down the numbers of cats that are being killed. Would you like to come?” Of course, I wanted to be there. Howie was like her best friend, her best male friend. She broke him into it because she always wanted to get him to donate his time to these animal causes that she was so into.
We both actually showed up for the event an hour early because neither of us had bothered to read the email that came after we got the paper invitation. We were the only two people there for an hour with nobody else to talk to. That was the beginning of the relationship. That was on November 1st of 2002. We got engaged November 1st of 2003, and we got married on November 1st of 2004. We still haven’t had our first fight, and it was his first marriage. He was over 50. He had never been married before. He wanted to create a constitution of how we would treat each other when things are bad because when things are good, it’s easy. But when things are bad, that’s when you need to pull out the constitution and remind each other what you agreed to.
I do believe opposites attract. Opposites attract. I can imagine that he had absolutely no idea what he was getting into with Carole Baskin. I bet you have given him some amazing journeys in life, and that he is just like, “I am so happy that I did this and that I’m on this ride with you.” That’s pretty amazing.
Views On Exotic Pet Owners
Let’s talk about your views on exotic pet owners. How would you describe the characteristics of those folks?
I was on a panel where they were talking about how some law school is actually putting together a study on the psychology of these kinds of people because it’s fascinating. There seems to be a common thread that I’ve seen across all of these people who own these exotic animals in a couple of things. I think one is that they have a really deep-seated desire to manipulate people and to control the people in their orbit. It’s very cult-like in most situations. I think that they use the exotic cats as a way of showing, “If I can control this tiger, then I am all-powerful in that tiger’s world, and there’s nothing more powerful than a tiger or a lion, and therefore I am to be feared and followed and revered,” and all of that.
They tend to lure in either young women or young men, depending on their proclivities. Once they get them in and get them attached to those cubs, and they have them hand-raising those cubs and feeling that motherly, nurturing connection to the cubs, then what they’ll do is take those cats and hold them hostage by saying, “If you don’t do what I tell you to do, I’m going to hurt this cat. I’m going to sell this cat to some horrible place. I’m going to do something awful to this cat.”
Interesting.
They manage to keep control over the people in their world by doing that.
They use the animal really as a token of, “Do what I want you to do, or I’m going to hurt this animal.” I am sure that the personality characteristics of someone like that in that population in the big cat world are probably similar in any other exotic animal world, like monkeys and even pythons and things like that, wouldn’t you think?
I don’t have any personal experience with people from those realms, but I would think that that’s true. If you think about one of the characters from Tiger King, Doc Antle, he has an elephant and then a bunch of tigers. It seems to not be just being able to show your dominance over a cat, and being able to control an elephant, I think, shows for him, gives him the feeling that he’s controlling something huge.
Is one of the reasons, Carole, that there are so many people out there that want you gone because you take care of these animals with pride and with care and the right way, and they are out there around the United States abusing these animals in the form of, “I’m going to open a roadside show and I’m going to charge to see these animals and people hold these animals”? What’s the difference between the way that you at Big Cat Rescue operate and these angry people out there that really want you gone and closed down?
It’s not because of how I take care of the animals. It’s because I don’t believe these animals belong in cages. I’m having success in getting laws changed, although we have not been able to affect it at the federal level, other than we had a bit of a success in 2003. I’ve been trying to end the private ownership of big cats at a federal level since 1998. We went every two years until finally the Captive Wildlife Safety Act passed. What that did was it made it illegal to sell a big cat across state lines as a pet. What we saw in 2003 was I had to turn away 312 big cats in 2003. That was in addition to the ones that we rescued.
For animals, captivity is abuse. Let’s end the private ownership of big cats—these magnificent creatures belong in the wild.
Every other year, that number was doubling because of these people that were doing cub petting and then discarding the cats, and then a couple of years later, they’re 500 pounds, and people can’t deal with them. They’re trying to get placement for them. All the sanctuaries were absolutely full and overflowing. You couldn’t place a cat anywhere in 2003, but when that law passed, what I saw was, for the first time ever, the number of those big cats in need dropped to like 160.
As states have come on with bans and partial bans, it’s dropped and dropped and dropped. What that means is that the industry of using these cubs for cub petting has also diminished dramatically. These people who could make $100,000 off a single cub are seeing far fewer people are willing to pay to do this. They have fewer places they can get rid of the cubs when they can’t use them any longer. They see the writing on the wall that this bill we’re working on just closes that loophole by stopping the cub petting and phasing out the private ownership.
What’s another thing that’s really interesting is when we started doing this, there were close to 60 of these places that were doing cub petting. There’s now five. They see that I’m putting them out of business. They’re not out of business. They could still run a zoo. They just can’t run that kind of an abusive way. I’m not trying to stop them from having a zoo. I’m just trying to stop the abuse. That’s why they hate me. That’s why they want me silenced. Why they never want me to show up at any of these hearings. That’s where I usually get attacked, is when I go to some of the public hearings because they don’t want me to come into the room.
A true connection doesn’t require dominance. We don’t need to cage or control to appreciate the beauty of animals.
To testify or talk. I know Jack Hanna, unfortunately, has Alzheimer’s, but were people like Jack Hanna or the large city zoos advocates of yours and helping you get some of these laws passed?
No, the film called The Conservation Game just came out in April, and it aired at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. What that film shows, it’s not available yet because they’re still trying to sell it to Netflix or Prime or something. What it showed is that Jack Hanna was one of the main reasons why this whole petting industry took off, because he would take these cute little cubs on TV.
Everybody thought that was so cool. They wanted to touch a cub. They could go out and pay $10 and have their pictures made with cubs. What happened was Jack Hanna was getting his cubs from these backyard breeders and using them on the shows, and putting people from these horrible places in Columbus Zoo polos and representing that these people came from the zoo. The whole time, he’s saying, “This animal came from the Columbus Zoo. It’s going back to the Columbus Zoo, or it’s going to go to some fabulous sanctuary.” When in fact, when he was cornered by the people making this film, he said right on camera, he didn’t know where these cats were.
None of the guys that you saw on TV taking these animals anywhere had any idea where these animals were going, or if they knew, they weren’t saying, that said just about as much, because we found where some of those cats went, and it was horrible. When the public saw that at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, it actually won the Social Justice Award. You can imagine, with everything that happened in 2020 and 2021, for an animal film to win the Social Justice Award, it was good. The very next day is when his family came out and said, “Jack’s got dementia. He can’t talk to the public.”
That’s right. Interesting. Got it.
I have a wild card question. Now that we’re on the subject of zoos, what is your opinion on zoos? Every major city seems to have one. What’s your thoughts?
I think they’re going to have to remake themselves because children do not want to see animals languishing in cages. I don’t know how kids today got to be so smart. Maybe it’s because of all of the really good videos that show these animals living in the wild. I have heard so many kids say that they don’t want to see animals in circuses. They don’t want to see them in zoos. They don’t want to go to the zoos. The zoos are suffering dramatically from a loss of patronage well before COVID hit.
What we tried to do is figure out, most people understand that you shouldn’t be wearing cats, their coats, you shouldn’t be going to the circus, but zoos are like the last hurdle I see. We felt like for zoos to remake themselves, they have to see a model that works for them. That’s why currently we have about a dozen live webcams around the sanctuary, and we’re installing 30 more, so we’ll have 46 live webcams. I launched a cat coin on Rally.
What I’m trying to get people to consider is the idea of using a crypto coin that funds these 360-degree internet streaming live cameras in the wild, where these cats actually live. When you sell that token or that coin, the money then, through a smart contract, actually goes back into those local economies where those people are living around lions, tigers, snow leopards, or whatever, turning everybody in the region into a game warden because they only get the money, they only get the higher standard of living, if they’re protecting those ecosystems. That protects them for everyone, and that gives us all equal access.
Innovating Conservation With Crypto And Virtual Reality
Some people may not be able to afford a $500 headset or afford the subscriptions to all of these different feeds, but they could go to the zoo. They could use the zoo’s equipment. The zoo could do this in a much more immersive way. Imagine going into the polar bear exhibit and you put your headset on, and they’re blowing freezing cold air at you at the same time and smelling fish, and you’re like in the world with the polar bear. That is the kind of thing that kids can really get behind and the future that I think we need in order to save the planet.
Amazing. Was that your idea to launch this coin?
I’ve been trying to get people interested in cryptocurrencies and augmented reality and virtual reality since 2012. Everything is a long, hard slog for me because I’m just apparently not very good at it, but it’s finally all coming to fruition.
That’s amazing. Carole, is there anything that you want to say to anybody out there in the world that you want people to know about you that they may not know or may have a misconception about?
One of the things I was hearing before actually Tiger King came out, people would say, “She knows more than what she’s saying.” I thought, “That’s just not true.” I have written down in my diary for my entire life. I’ve written every stupid thought that ever went through my brain. I started recording them and releasing them before Tiger King came out, but now if you go to YouTube.com/CaroleBaskin, I think we’re up to 2007 of the years that I’ve released up until then. You can hear every thought I ever had, everything that I ever did, every dumb thing I ever did. I didn’t hold back anything. I put it all out there. People can make their own decisions if they really care to look.
Is there a book in your future?
I’ve had a number of people ask me to write a book. People are like, “Your life is so wild, you should write a book,” but my story is not done yet. If I can fix this problem of big cats in cages, I’m not to the end of the book yet. I really want to get that done before I spend time talking about it.
Did we answer the question? What are her thoughts on understanding the human condition? What does that mean to you?
I think when people don’t understand themselves, they’re not looking far enough back. My personal belief is that we’re eternal, and that we just keep coming back to this amazing magical dance that’s called life. We do it purposely half-blindfolded, because what fun would it be if we remembered the last go-round? I think while we’re on the other side, we get together with everybody and we’re like, “We checked this off and this off, but we didn’t get this, this, and this, so let’s all jump back in there to get there. We’re going to do it again and get it right this time.” I think if people have that kind of eternal realization of who they are, that nothing that happens in any of our lives is going to be considered something horrible or bad. It all has to happen because we signed up for it.
Our lives are stories, half-written by the lessons we’re here to learn. Sometimes, we’re all just back for another chapter.
We sure did. Thank you so much, Carole Baskin, for being our guest on Understanding the Human Condition. What’s the best way for the audience to reach you in a positive way if they would like to reach you?
Message To Supporters And Future Plans
Big Cat Rescue is on all of the social channels, and that’s where you’ll find the really amazing cat videos and cat photos and cat people. We have hundreds of people who monitor our channels, and we’ll be happy to engage with you and talk to you about the issues. You can find me on all of those social channels as well as Carole Baskin or Carole Baskin Cat, but I’m just not really active on social channels myself as far as being able to answer a whole lot of questions there. You’re a whole lot better off if you go to the Big Cat Rescue channels.
When you reopen and you’re able to reopen, come down and visit and make a donation. How do people make a donation?
They can go to BigCatRescue.org/Donate.
Excellent.
Thank you for asking.
You bet.
Dr. Flowers, if they want to reach you or the J. Flowers Health Institute, where do they go?
I think the easiest way, what Carole just said. Go to JFlowersHealth.com. It’s the easiest way to do it.
Thank you again for spending your time with us. We really appreciate it. We were so excited. I don’t think we slept for a week waiting for her to do this interview. Thank you very much.
Thank you for all you do for animals and especially big cats, and we really appreciate your time. For more information about J. Flowers Health Institute and its concierge services, go to JFlowersHealth.com, or our phone number is 713-783-6655, and be sure to mention this podcast, please.
I’d like to remind everyone watching or listening to us that there are numerous platforms that you can find us, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, and iHeartRadio. Share this episode and subscribe, please. Thank you, everyone.
Carole, take great care of yourself.
Thank you, Carole.
Thank you.
Take care. Bye.
