Weekend Viewing: The Minds of Animals

Jeffrey Kluger, floating in Charlie Rose's
empty void of an interview room.

Ah, Weekend Viewing. It's the equivalent of a teacher putting in a video for the kids because he or she wants to sleep in the back of the room.

Anyway, Charlie Rose is my favorite interviewer on television. He always has the most interesting guests and he always lets them get to the heart of the matter, instead of just fishing for soundbites. In this interview, we meet Jeffrey Kluger of Time Magazine, who talks about animal consciousness. It turns out that animals are more self-aware than most people realize. He also goes into detail about teaching apes to "speak" using pictograms. The implication is that since many animals have consciousness, perhaps we need to think more about their happiness and emotional wellbeing instead of making life hard for them.

So watch the video, kids. You can see it here:  http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11157, because I don't know how to embed Charlie Rose's content. I'll just be at my desk, working with my head down.