from the cruise ship that ran aground off the coast of italy. rescue workers finally resuming the search for missing passengers. let s go outfront. good evening. i m erin burnett. tonight, we are live in charleston, south carolina. tonight, newt gingrich, whose performance tonight here will make or break his run at the presidency. no doubt the former speaker is surging in the polls. you can look around, you see that left, right and center. the latest show him within striking distance of mitt romney. he s also ignited a fire storm, slamming the media over his ex-wife s allegation that he wanted an open marriage. i think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office and i am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that. i caught up with newt gingrich today about an hour and a half away from here in a town called orangeburg, sou
sensitive to temperature and water quality beautiful. these creatures are starting to disappear. we have 6,000 amphibious species, we will lose 3,000 in the next few decades. hopefully when kids read these books they ll be inspired. i have one more thing to show you. okay, really quick. okay. open this and take this out. i trust you. yeah, good. what is it? i can tell you spend a lot of time in the kitchen. i do. opening tupperware. my nails. epic fail out in the field. this is your classic american frog so gabe and lucy in brooklyn eventually in book number eight they re heading to the amazon and they see this guy s older cousin. whoa! wow. how is that? this is brooklyn and that s the amazon. you probably would see this at 1:30 in the morning on broadway. an amazing creature. this, again, shows the beauty and importance of amphibians. this protects itself with these poison glands. wow.
there is. and can i just say i love the fact i have a little neighbor boy, sam, he goes out and catches butter phillies and has this great little butterfly and we live right by new york city. it s important for kids to get out there and do that. the big problem we have today, alex, kids and their families are losing their connection to nature and the real spirit of the books is to connect people to nature. we launched a website called jeffcorwinconnect.com. you can actually learn what you can do in your own back yards. now did i call for the salamander and you brought the snake? i did. okay, excellent. can you do a single shot? you re growing. this is like an intervention. a reptile intervention. oh, my god. you never thought you could hold a rattlesnake. take it. don t move, alex. don t move. i m only kidding. it s so cold and wow. this, for me, again, this is a creature that gabe and lucy find. they re exploring the backyard with their cousin, they turn
families to get in touch with nature. right. and i think we re lucky in the united states. we have over 85 million acres of protected habitat. we ve got 392 national parks. but if you live in brook lip, what are you going to do? you can go in your own backyard and have great discoveries and we could have started these books anywhere. basically we follow lucy and gabe, a brother and sister, they given this incredible odyssey across the united states. but i wanted to have it begin in a backyard in brooklyn. and you spanned the spectrum. here is this one, the great alaska adventure. these books go all across and you re going to find all sorts of critters. basically these books are designed to celebrate american natural history and, you know, alex, you can t appreciate and you can t protect what you do not know. and, for me, this is a marvelous, amazing creature. of course you know what this is. a turtle. and you can actually find this in your backyard in brooklyn. really?
snake whether you live in the bronx or you live in brooklyn or in manhattan or miami. this is a creature you can see. this is the eastern snake garter snake. you ve heard garter or garden snake? garden. i want people to get the specifics and facts. named because it matches the garter you would have to hold up your we have time for one more quick. can i just say that i ve often fantasized about going out and being an intrepid explorer with you on the trail, me and my kids watching the show, epic fail. that would not happen. i m serious, that snake, no. you would did a great job. one of the important messages these kids learn when they re on their adventures, they learn the value of life. this is an incredible creature, the spotted salamander. what we ve learned is the world is in trouble because they re so