Jane Goodall

Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert. I'm Dan Shepherd. This is a very, very exciting episode for me. If you've heard the show, you know, I'm an anthropology major, talk about it ad nauseam.

And of course, the queen of anthropology, well, Margaret Meads up there. But Jane Goodall, my goodness, Jane Goodall. What a human being Jane Goodall is. She is a primatologist and anthropologist and an advocate for the environment, animals, and the natural world.

For the last 30 years, Jane has been focused on biodiversity protection, fighting the climate crisis, addressing intensive farming, empowering young people through the youth program, roots and shoots, and so much more. She also has a new podcast, the Jane Goodall Hope Cast. So please check out Jane's new podcast, the Jane Goodall Hope Cast. Enjoy the queen of primatology.

He's an archangement. How are you doing? Well, I've never been as exhausted and busy in my whole life as during this lockdown since March. It's been every single day being virtual Jane.

And yeah, generally you would be traveling around and talking. And within that schedule is built in some little breaks for yourself, I'd imagine. Yes, this is no break at all. Since March, it's been virtually every single day.

Are you being held captive against your will? Because you can signal us with like, raise your eyebrows if someone's forcing you to do all this. Oh, I'm being forced all right, but then I agree to it. So well, it is a huge delight for us to talk to you.

We've been attempting to schedule this for a while. I think you were going to speak at UCLA, my alma mater, and we were going to speak in person, which I was excited about. But I'll take you anyway, I can get you. OK.

I was hoping today we could go through all the stuff you're up to that you're working on, your podcast, Jane Goodall Institute, Roots and Shoots. But if it's OK with you, I would really hope to frame this in a broader theme of being female. I think today that's a very relevant thing for us to be looking at how a female perspective can be so helpful, why there should be more leadership roles for women and the value of that. And I can't imagine someone more significant in that way than you.

I think you're in the Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Mount Rushmore, of women who have really put their stamp on the world. You reject that? You don't like being compared to her? Well, she was such an icon.

Yeah, I hate to break it to you. So are you. Yeah. Well, OK, so when you started your work, I think 1957, maybe is the first time you go to Gombe to study the church?

Not Gombe. No, 1957, I went to Kenya and met Louis Leakey. And then I had to go back to the UK for a year while he found the money, because I hadn't been to college. And who was going to give money to this young untrained girl to do something as absurd as going to study chimpanzees in a forest?

Yeah, not a lot of people you could have pointed to to say, hey, look how good this works. But yes, you went back. You went to Cambridge. I think you were the eighth person ever to get a PhD without having an undergraduate degree, which I think is fascinating.

I'm curious how many there are now. But when you started very, very male-dominated field, is that safe to say? Well, yes and no. I mean, there was almost nobody going out studying animals in the wild.

There were three people, and they were all males. George Shelley was studying Mount Incurilla, and there were two American men in South Africa studying Czech mob baboon. But that was it. There was nobody else out there.

OK, well, the thing that you were unique in and novel in, and that you got a ton of criticism for, can I just say one thing I'm going to tell you, I was an anthropology major, so I worshiped you and I wanted to do primatology. So just know that there's a lot of baggage for my love for you in this. But my understanding is that you were really the first person to be doing an anthology where you were not naming the subjects numbers. So generally, when people studied animals prior to you, they would just say one A, one B, whatever their nomenclature was.

And you were really the first to name them and recognize their personalities. Well, remember, I hadn't been to college when I first went out. Lewis Leakey, my mentor, he's the one who picked me for this study. And he wanted a woman.

That was one key thing. He wanted a woman. He felt they might be more patient in the field. So that was one good thing for me.

And secondly, he wanted somebody who hadn't been to college because he wanted a mind uncluttered by the reductionist thinking of the animal behavior people of the time. So there was nobody out in the field. And the numbers were given by most of these people to the animals in labs and animals in captive situations. So the reason I named them, well, why wouldn't I?

It's just natural to give an animal a name, not a number. Yeah. Well, really quick about Lewis. Do you think maybe his confidence in you and the other two women that he shepherded through, Diane Fosse, who then went and studied gorillas.

And then I can't pronounce her name who did orangutans. The Ruttigaldikas. Yes, yes. Do you think maybe he was in a position to feel that way?

Because his own wife was so prolific as an archeologist and they had made discoveries together. Do you think that made him more open minded to that? It's quite possible. I don't know.

I hadn't thought of that before. But yeah, it's possible. I think that in general, the criticism for you naming them was you were kind of displaying empathy. And empathy was the opposite of objectivity, which science is going for.

That was the singular kind of criticism. And I have to say that sounds very, very similar to the outmoded male position that women in general are too emotional and not objective. They're emotional, not logical. And that to me, the critique of you is more than what's on the surface at that time.

Well, it's absolutely true that when I got to Cambridge, big criticism was you cannot have empathy with your subject. You've got to be objective. And there's no space for having empathy. And I disagreed so much because when you have empathy with your subject and they do something extraordinary, if you have empathy, you say to yourself, well, I think I know why they did that.

And then you can put on your scientific logic and say, OK, well, now let's prove. Am I right or am I wrong? And ask questions. I listened to your interview with Dave Matthews, which, by the way, is a thrilling friendship that you guys have on your podcast, the Jane Goodall Hope cast.

And you gave the example of seeing a young champ break her arm and then go to her mother. I think what you were describing was when this little baby broke her arm. And she was a first baby. And the mother was inexperienced.

So every time the baby cried, which obviously was very painful, the mother just hugged her tighter, which made her cry louder. But there are many examples of chimpanzees showing true altruism to each other, like an adult male rescuing an orphaned infant who isn't even related to him and saving his life. Yeah. But the point I love that you made is, yes, I had these emotions.

I was heartbroken for this inexperienced mother. But my notes are as thorough as notes could be, it is as objective as one can be, one doesn't preclude the other. And I think that was such a novel idea. Yeah, you're absolutely right.

It was. I have tears were pouring down my face because even this little baby was named Little Jane. She was the only one who's ever been named for me. And, you know, she was three months old.

And at that time we hadn't watched many infants growing up. So she was about the fifth, I think. And it was just tragic because it was the mother in such confusion. The baby so badly hurt.

It was nothing we could do. So I'm going to go even further with this. I would argue that your novel approach of having empathy opened your eyes in a way that someone studying them, even for the same duration that you studied them, they would have missed things. I think they would not have been open because they were this other, this animal, this lower thing, that they would have missed the parallels.

I would even argue your enormous contribution, the legendary contribution, is that you discovered that chimpanzees use tools. That was thought to be something only humans could do in a great definer of what made us human. And you demonstrated that and you kind of destroyed that fantasy. Yes.

And also we were supposed to be the only creatures to have personality, the only creatures to have minds capable of problem solving, and especially the only creatures with emotions. And, you know, I was taught as a child by my dog. Of course, animals have personalities, minds and emotions. It's ridiculous.

Yeah, when the scientists told me that when I got to Cambridge, I really wondered, did they really believe what they were saying? Or was it just, they couldn't prove it, therefore it's better not to talk about it? Well, I have a whole theory on why they haven't. I think it serves an actual purpose to alleviate our ethical issues with how they're treated.

But before we get there, you could also say they have culture as well, which is something we would have thought was only us, right? Yeah, absolutely. A dense culture, if you look at one population versus another, they have their own unique set of things they've learned and are passing on and traditions and all these things that certainly meet the definition of culture. Yeah, behavior passed from one generation to the next to observation, imitation and practice.

That is a definition of human culture. But when I first mentioned culture, I didn't have any other examples really, but it just seemed intuitively that, of course, as you see the babies watching, then in other places where I'd heard, there was banging open nuts with rocks, which Gombe chimps don't do. The young ones, they're all learning that. So of course, they're cultures.

But I was given so much flack over that, you cannot talk about culture. Yeah, so I think the fact that you were naive enough, having not been in college, and then again, I really think it has a lot to do with you being a woman in that situation, that you were empathetic and that through that, we get some of the greatest discoveries about that species. And I really do think other people would have missed it. I think you're right that many people would really do.

And you know, I've been reading in the shadow of man that first book I wrote about the Gombe chimps, it's going to be one chapter a month. And it just took me right back. And I was reading and thinking, every little detail is there. It was magic to read what I was learning about their different personalities.

I mean, it was just magical to see how I did it back then. Now, as the person, as Jane the person, there had to be terrible days in the field. There had to be incredible loneliness at times. You were in your 20s, there was not.

You just took your head. Being alone is very different from being lonely. And I've always loved being alone. I mean, even when I was a child, I would climb the tree out there, because I'm in my family home and spent ages alone up in the branches.

And I go out with my dog under the cliff tops on my own. They were quite wild in those days. So I've always loved being alone. The only time I was a little bit lonely, you know, my mother came with me to start.

Well, again, really quick, I think that's hysterical as well. That's another male female thing. They were 24 and they insist your mother joins you. That wouldn't have happened to a male scientist.

No, they did. That's not true. They did not insist my mother joined me. They said, I couldn't be out in the field on my own.

Oh, OK, OK. And she volunteered to come. OK. And it was amazing.

People say I was brave. I wasn't brave. It was what I wanted to do. She was, you know, she was left alone with these big baboons invading the tent because they're very entrepreneurial.

And they quickly grab anything that might be a new food. Buffalo's wandering around, snake spiders. She was the brave one. And she was un-novelace, yeah?

Well, she wrote a couple of books. OK, that's two more than I've written. So I'm going to call her a novelist. All right.

So obviously had her own set of determination, as all I'm pointing out, a determined person. The whole family. Well, you said the time you were lonely. Yeah.

Yeah, when she first left, it was just before I saw tool using. And I really missed having somebody to share the excitement with. You know, I have this cook and a guy driving the boat. And they listened.

They were interested. But it didn't mean as much to them as it would have to her. Yeah. I mean, why wouldn't the chimps use tools, of course?

Right. Right. They weren't high-fiving each other when you discovered that they were getting termites out. Now, there was no period where, of course, because I'm trapped in my own point of view.

And as much as I may have been interested in that, were you ever at any moment going, wow. But I'm also missing out on this huge human experience. I could be in London having drinks with friends. Did that ever enter your mind?

Were you ever concerned about what you were, quote, missing? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely not. OK.

Although I've been very social before I left. You know, I wasn't a little shy, retiring creature. I was out there having fun and going to dances and things like that. But I didn't miss it.

I didn't miss it. Because you were so focused and so fulfilled by this pursuit. Yeah, I was there in the forest with all the magic of the forest around me and learning new things every day and all these amazing chimpanzees with a different way of doing things, complete magic. Now, for those of the listeners who aren't super familiar with just what level of threat different primates are, you're arguably with the most dangerous.

Wouldn't you agree? You're most dangerous? Yeah, chimpanzees as compared to say gorillas or other big great apes. Well, I mean gorillas can lose their temper.

There's one young man who was studying chimpanzees in Congo. And he was attacked ferociously by a male gorilla who obviously just had a confrontation with another male. He was mad. And how this guy survived, I simply don't know.

And you know, rhinotans can be violent. And they're all strong. So yes, chimpanzees with each other, they can kill each other. It's lucky.

They didn't want to kill me. Yes, let me just say from a personal point of view, I have trekked up to the gorillas. I felt pretty safe. And then we also went into a forest on the hunt for chimpanzees.

And there were a lot more rules. And it was taken much more seriously. Like this has the odds of going bad far more than the gorilla experience would. Well, that's probably because of the people running the program.

OK, I blame them. But as you point out, they're incredibly strong. I had four times stronger than a full-grown adult human. Eight times stronger than me, I'm sure.

I mean, they are very, very strong. And they can be very, very violent. And were the scary moments? Yes, there were.

There were. Oh, yeah. But none that ever made you rethink or question what you were going to do. No.

Of course not. I'm opposite of that. I don't think. And I couldn't let Lois leaky down, could I?

No, no, no, no, no. Yeah, that's someone's approval I would certainly be in search of. Did you always have that obstinate disposition going through life? Or did it sort of come when you had this passion?

I think I probably always had it. Yeah. I think you're born with that or not. Yeah, you were, for sure.

And I have a pretty bad dose of it. Can I ask you, while you were watching chimpanzees over these many, many years, how were the male, female roles in chimpanzees similar to our own? And how were they different? And was that something that interested you?

Well, I was interested in everything. What I loved was watching mother, child behavior, development of infants, relations with brothers and sisters. But the males are dominant. They have a dominant hierarchy.

They dominate all females. And they're very promiscuous, which, of course, some people are too. So, you know, they're not all monogamous. And so, basically, when a female comes into Estrus and she's ready for mating, she may be mated by all the males when after the other.

The very sexually popular female flow was mated 72 times in one day. Oh, my goodness. She was pretty exhausted at the end of the day. Oh, gee.

Wow. She was followed by this string of males. And the adolescents who don't really get a go, they will hide behind a bush and shake a little branch. And sometimes the female will look at the alpha male and then creep off behind the bush.

And there's even evidence, I remember reading a paper called Lion in Primates and how they'll also give a call, like if there's perhaps a predator in the area so that all the alphas run towards it and then they get a shot at the female while the alphas are out. I think that sort of thing happens sometimes too. But mostly that happens when, for example, chimps hunt sometimes. And hunting is a very exciting thing.

So if the top male sometimes shows possessiveness and other males are not supposed to mate his female, that happens often, but if the alpha male gets distracted and he's looking up at the hunt, that's when the other males run in and get a go. And if the alpha male, the possessive male catches them, who do you think he attacks? Oh, I hate the horse. The male male.

The female. The female. Yes. That's pretty, um, That's kind of consistent with humans.

Yeah. If he attacked the male, the female would run off and have more fun. Oh, well, huh. I didn't think of this as a digital aspect.

You would be creating another window of opportunity. So I have a quick question for you. Does it correlate perfectly with sexual dimorphism? Like, is the level of male dominance proportional to how much bigger males are than females in species?

Well, certainly between chimps and bonobos, the male bonobo is more or less the same size as the female and you don't get the same system of sexual relations. And bonobos as well, they have a much broader sexual experience than pan-trogliditis, right? They're doing more things. Well, the female bonobo is having this pink swelling.

All the time. So they solve a lot of disputes through sexual behavior. And females reassure each other by rubbing their sexual swearlings together. So I was so glad that Lois Leakey didn't send me to study them because the geographic would never have supported it, because they couldn't in those days have had all these pink bottoms in their pictures.

That's a wonderful photograph in me. I think it's the second geographic article which would have been in, let's see, 69, I think. And the photograph taken by my husband Hugo is a wonderful photo of five males sitting in a row. They're all little rows.

looking at the camera, hair slightly hot, and all with these big erections. And when you look at the photograph, there's a mist, little strange mist at loin levels. Wow. Wow.

He captured the perfect moment. Well, in those days, there was no photo shopping. And I saw a note to the engraver blend in too far. LAUGHTER Blend in too far.

That's how the geographic was, then. Even one photograph, it's lovely. The setting sun and it's up against a beautiful evening light. And I'm holding the walkie-talkie to send a message to my mother who's done to tell her I'm staying up for the night.

And I get back this picture with the note to the engraver. And around each nail is a circle. And it says, remove from nails. Oh, you're kidding?

Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Oh, man. What's changed?

Yeah. What a change. Yeah. Now, of course, because I'm male, I had a particular interest in Frodo.

He almost looked like a silverback. He was so disproportionately muscular. I was fascinated by him. Did you name him after Frodo Baggins?

He was, but that's before I realized his personality. It was entirely not like... I was going to say, he did not live up to the name Frodo. No.

What Frodo was, as flint was before him in this dominant F family, he was a spoiled brat. He had an older brother who supported him, an older sister who supported him, a top-ranking mother. And so he could get away with murder. I mean, he could attack and tease a much older individual, knowing that his family would run to his support.

And he became a real bully. Yeah. And he was enormous. He was considerably bigger than most of the other males, wasn't he?

Not really. He just looked bigger because he had so often his hare bristling. Okay, okay. But he was more solid.

Yeah. He was very solid built. So knowing that you are empathetic and that you are not trying to deny whatever emotional feelings, could you come to hate any of them? Like, would you be frustrated with Frodo?

Because he did act like such a spoiled brat so often. And of course, his victims are other chimps you love. Yes, of course. I was mad at him.

Yeah. You know, I was mad when they did things which were really unpleasant and horrible. I mean, I think of them like humans. Right.

And there are people who do things that irritate you or make you angry. Same with the chimps. Yeah. Yeah, but it would be hard for me if I was in that position to try not to correct behavior versus just observing.

No, no. No, if you were in that position, you wouldn't feel that's a tool for one thing. If you tried to intervene in something like that, that would be the end of you. Oh, yeah.

Well, I might get myself. Oh, he was a monster. I mean, he was so strong and violent at times. So the very ironic part of your life, it has to occur to you is that you went deep into a jungle and you are entirely anonymous.

And then at some point you emerge in your a world figure. I think that must be one of the most bizarre trajectories to being recognized the world over. Most people come to Hollywood where we're at to get that kind of recognition. But you went deep into the jungle.

That transition for you, is it confusing? Is it natural? What does that experience? Well, when it first happened, I was, you know, basically a shy person.

And first of all, all these journalists wanting to interview me and I tried to get out of it. And then I remember the first time somebody coming up to me when I was walking through Santa Fe actually, and this woman came up and she started tears in her eyes saying, you know, she actually said, can I touch you? Uh huh. Can I touch you?

Well, I thought this is spooky. This is awful. I'll shake your hand. And so at the beginning, you know, people would come up in airports and they'd want selfies and could I sign something?

And at first I was really, I hated it. I put on dark glasses. I let my hair down, but it still went on. And then I thought, well, by this time I'm trying to raise awareness.

I'm trying to raise money for the Institute, trying to develop our youth program. And so I thought, well, this is obviously something that's happened. I can't do anything about it. I didn't ask for it.

So I will use it. So taking brochures around handing them out saying, do you have children? And they must join roots and shoots. Give them a brochure.

Well, yes, it sounds like you accepted the reality of what it was, which is there's no going back. So how do we make the best of the situation? Yeah. Just so you know, if I met you, I would attempt to groom you.

I would have played along. I would demonstrate your status. I would have groomed you back. Oh, wonderful.

This would have been wonderful. I probably have groomed your beard. Let's start there. Yeah.

Stay tuned for more of our share expert. If you dare. To your point, our best friends, they have a nine year old girl. I mean, we've interviewed Bill Gates and Hillary Clinton.

You name it. None of this stuff has reached their radar. They could care less. But the nine year old find out we were interviewing you and she was beside herself.

She had to dress up as someone you admired. She's gone as you several times. And I think what an amazing thing that you were born in 1937, maybe. And here's a gal even better 34.

And here's a little girl born in 2010 mimicking you. I just think it's so specular and for a wonderful reason, not because you have a humongous butt and show it on Instagram. Like I'm delighted that there are young women who address up like you and that my daughters are excited. It's so wonderful.

So with your notoriety and your deep love for the environment for conservation for animals, you've been a part of a couple of different really, really successful organizations. The first of which is the Jane Goodall Institute, which was established in 1977. And I believe now there's 10,000 groups in 100 countries. That's going on to the youth program, Jane Goodall Institute.

We have 24 separate institutes in 24 different countries. Oh my goodness. And the program for young people is a program of the Jane Goodall Institute. Got you.

So Roots and Shoots is under the umbrella of Jane Goodall Institute. Yes. Okay. Now Roots and Shoots has 4,500 groups in 70 countries.

Do you agree to that? About 70. Yeah. 68, 69, 70, 72, something like that.

Those groups we don't even know about because, you know, they discovered one the other day and far away in the rainforest of Guatemala or Ecuador or something. Oh my God. And we get young people going from one school to another and they love this program. So they started in the new school.

So it just, it grass roots. Yeah. Walk me through what Roots and Shoots does. What's the objective and its youth centric?

So what is the goal? How does it work? So it works that a group gets started. Let's say it's mostly in school and very often there's a teacher who tries to get it going.

Or it may be a high school student or something like that. Or it may be in a university or somebody may start it in a kindergarten. So you get the group of young people who care and you tell them now, you know, choose three projects to make the world better. One to help people, one to help animals, one to help the environment because the choices they make will depend on how old they are, if they're rich or poor, if they're living in the town or the country, if they're living in China or the United States or Abu Dhabi or something like that.

Lily should start one. Yeah. She'd be so great at like doing. Yeah, she really was.

She's a boss. Okay. Wonderful. So I think that's what I thought when I was traveling around America through the airports, handing out my little brochures, you could follow my progress by seeing when your group started up.

Wow. You're like just dropping seeds. Yes, that's right. So okay.

Now let's go back to I think the general reservation in the past of acknowledging that animals have an emotional capacity or an intellectual capacity. I think the hesitation there is if that is recognized, then you must immediately go to what the ethical dilemma of eating them is or studying them or any of these things. Well, studying them with intervention, studying them in research laboratories, certainly eating them. It's more than the eating of them.

It's the way they're kept in the factory farms. It's horrendous. And then on top of that, there's the harm it does to the environment. You've got to feed them, you cut down habitats to grow the grain, you use fossil fuel to get the grain to the animals, to the animals, to the meat, to the table.

They produce methane gas, which is like CO2, the greenhouse gases. I think 32 times better at heating up the atmosphere than CO2. I mean, it is really the lethal gas up there. Okay.

So I don't want anyone to call me a hypocrite because I do eat meat. Obviously I don't feel morally great about it. And I think I've tended to focus on exactly what you just mentioned, which is the manner in which we're getting the meat. It feels like it could be vastly improved.

But you know something. If you love the taste of meat, these alternatives to meat, I can't tell the difference. It's identical. You're right.

You're right. We eat these light life burgers and they're insanely delicious. You're right. There is no reason to not embrace those.

I agree. No. I guess, and tell me why I'm an idiot. I'm going to give you an opportunity to point out my flaw.

Okay. So I have no problem acknowledging the value and complexity of animals. I'm not into Nile of it. To me, it's quite obvious.

I guess I go to a place where, well, I'm an omnivore and omnivores eat meat. I'm not going to give you any other animal that's an omnivore. I don't feel guilty about playing my role in the food chain. Now, I'm obviously playing an absurd role that I wasn't really designed.

So I also acknowledge that. But I think that's what I fall back on morally. Do you want to blow some holes in that? I will.

First of all, you are able to comprehend the exact nature of the creature that you're eating. And you know that that is an animal that has emotions that can feel fear and pain plays a role in its society or it would do if it was allowed to. And so that makes you separate from the other animals. There's also something else to do with health.

And we have the gut of a herbivore. And the herbivore has a long gut because it's got to get the goodness out of leaves and graphs and things. A carnivore has a short one because it's got to get rid of the meat before it rots in the intestines. So we're harming our health this way.

Plus these poor animals are given hormones to make them grow faster and antibiotics to stop them dying because of stress. So those antibiotics, the bacteria are building up resistance because they use all the time. Is there a hierarchy in your mind or no? Like what about eating insects?

Are you more in favor of that? Well, that's something I haven't really come to grips with, you know, because there's even people now talking about the fact that some plants may have purpose. Oh, they were done. We just got to go ourselves.

So there's a trick. Well, I have to say that if I was asked to choose between eating a pig and a mealworm, I would choose the mealworm. Okay. And I don't think it's too terribly bad to eat insects somehow.

Okay. Eggs, how do we feel about eggs? Oh, well, if eggs from hench clucking around in the farmyard, I don't mind so much. But the factory farms are horrendous.

Yeah, they're bad on the environment. Oh, and the milk coming from these dairy cows and these... Well, I mean, you watch some of the secretly filmed video and you feel ill. Yeah.

That's what stopped me when I learned about factory farms for the first time. It was in the late 60s. And next time I looked at meat on my plate, I thought, this symbolizes fear, pain, death. Not appealing.

No, not very appetizing. Yeah, it doesn't make me very hungry when you lay it out like that. And you know what else? When I'm talking to people, I never say, oh, you bad person, you eat meat, you shouldn't be like, oh, I want you to go to this to Google and check out Pig Casso, not Pig Casso, the artist, but Pig Casso.

You watch that. Okay. Well, here's what happened to me. I watched Forks Over Knives eight years ago and I went vegan for a year.

I doubt Forks Over Knives is alarming is what you just told me to search. So I'm going to watch it. I might as well go grocery shopping first because I'm sure I'm going to have to make a decision afterwards. But you're really, I mean, I felt so much better when I stopped.

I felt like, did you feel better when you were vegan for a year? I didn't do it right. I didn't put enough time into... What I did is ended up eating a bazillion carbohydrates and no, I didn't feel much better.

I think I felt worse. I'll own a failure on my part. And the choices now are so good, aren't they? Well, they're way different than I did it in 2012.

Exactly. I mean, if it's come on a long way. You know, to be honest, what got me off of it is I was going back to Detroit non-stops, my father was ill and you just couldn't eat vegetarian in 2012 and Detroit. Now in LA, it's pretty darn good and easy.

Overall, are you optimistic or pessimistic? Where are you at on our state? Well, I'm both. Okay.

If we all get together, we've got a window of time. We can start slowing down climate change. We can start healing some of the harm that we've done. Nature's very resilient.

We're coming up with our intellect with more and more ways of clean green energy, renewable energy and things like that. But the thing is, we don't have that much time. So how do we get people involved? That's why I work so hard on roots and shoots.

And I'm so thrilled because many children are changing their parents. Oh, yeah. Mine do daily. It's so annoying, but I do get drunk along.

That's a lot of it. She was 10. She couldn't speak English. She came to my lecture, which of course was translated.

And she said to her parents, I'm going to learn English because I want to talk to Dr. Jane. And she started a roots and shoots group and her mother helped her. And now she's fluent in English.

She's doing all kinds of amazing things. But I got a letter from her mother. She said, Dr. Jane, I have to tell you, she doesn't speak English either, but her daughter translated it.

That I was just a housewife and I went shopping and I never thought about it and I didn't think about anything. Now I become a thoughtful person. And I think about what I buy and how it was made and did it hurt the environment. She said, this program of yours does not just change the children.

It's changed all their parents too. Yeah. That's lovely. Of the things you've done, what is most rewarding, that stuff inspiring a little girl in China?

Or is it the fact that you probably played a huge role in the fact that chimps are still here? I don't know. If I'm asked what's the one main thing, I think one thing that I really feel the chimps helped me to do this, but to change the scientific attitude towards animals. Mm hmm.

Yeah, that's pretty darn profound. That's a paradigm shift. Yeah, it's a paradigm shift. It's a starting roots and shoots because that now has its own life.

If I die tomorrow, roots and shoots will carry on. But that's such a good point. Yeah. For somebody who wants to enact change, trying to figure out how to do it in your absence is I imagine the hardest thing to figure out, which you've done.

Yeah. Okay. Now your podcast, I want to know, do you like interviewing people? You've been interviewed your whole life and I was in a similar situation, which I'm an actor and I've been doing interviews for 15 years and I'm like, oh, I know how to be in an interview.

And guess what? I did not. I knew how to get interviewed. I had to learn how to interview.

Have you enjoyed hosting Jane Goodall Hopecast? Well, when I was told I had to host it. I was shocked. I said, I can't do that.

Who are your captors? I'm under V. Yes. So anyway, then I found I could do it.

It's like the first time I had to give a lecture. I felt that for the first five minutes I literally couldn't breathe. I was terrified. But then suddenly I realized that I don't know something from the audience that filled me with I don't know what it is, but it's a kind of magic which comes to me when I'm out there in front of a crowd.

And that's why this virtual business, virtual lectures, looking at a little camera on the top of a screen, that is so hard. And that to really put every ounce of energy into trying to give a proper lecture without an audience. Yeah. You know, this is a topic I bring up all the time.

There's a term for that. I can't remember it. I am always having majored in anthro. I'm always trying to get people to recognize how social of an animal we are.

Like we have this very obvious understanding that dogs are social. So they behave this way in this predictable way and they respond to this. And we seem to underestimate that we're the like apex social animal and that all the things chimps need we need probably times three. This notion of us being an island, that is not how we were designed to live.

And I think you look at all of our mental health issues. We underestimate just how social we are and how much we need each other. And you standing in front of an audience makes total sense to me because you are feeling the full brunt of community. Like this is what you were designed to do.

That's right. I do feel like I have a sort of purpose in this life. And I just have to try and do it. You know, when I was little, I wanted to write books because I was so shy and I started writing when I was four and my mother used to write it down for me.

I found stories I wrote when I was five. I've got one lovely one. So I always wanted to write. I wanted to write poetry.

But then, you know, 10 years old, Africa, wild animals, books, that's what I wanted to do. Because women weren't that sort of scientist then. So that was my goal. And is it true you still have the chimpanzee stuff animal your dad gave you as a child?

Yes, he's in lockdown in Washington, DC, where he was part of the exhibit they put on, becoming Jane or something like that, which I haven't seen yet. And then lockdown came to be still there. Oh, no, he's in quarantine by himself. I told him I couldn't have him.

He was too precious. Yeah, they made him a glass bullet proof case. He was hand carried. He's on display like the pope.

Well, there's an ever an auction. I know there's the only thing I'd ever want to own of somebody. You know, I think I'd be a good steward of that teddy bear. Should I ever have a teddy bear?

It's a chimpanzee. You'd be a bad steward if you can't tell Jim. Well, they're both mammals. It's an easy mistake.

My last question about your podcast. I find if I'm just being honest and candid with you, I find that the experience of having fame is underwhelming and more of an inconvenience. But I will say the thing that I most enjoy is that I get to meet someone like you. And I have to imagine that you're not impervious of that too.

Do you enjoy the fact that you can meet people that you're greatly interested in? Of course, because there's people I want to meet because they could really make a difference. There's none that you just they're not even going to make a difference. But like John Travolta, you love Saturday night fever and by God, you could have a conversation with John Travolta.

No. Well, I hate to say, but I haven't had time to go to cinemas for so long. I don't know the film starts. Well, I was trying to make that one easy for you.

That was 1977. A dear Saturday night fever. I didn't see that film. Do you have a favorite film?

Lord of the Rings. Oh, OK. It's a good one. You think about Lord of the Rings.

It's exactly like what's going on now. If you think that Mordor is greed and riches and all these despots who are out there and that we need to grow the fellowship to fight that, to fight the Black Riders who are out there, all these big businessmen who couldn't care less about anything else. And even, and I even thought of that recently, but if you remember, Galadriel gives Frodo a little vial of dust and when he sprinkles it, all the trees that have been cut down by Mordor come to life and grow up again. So the whole thing, it's like a parable of what's going on.

Right. Prophetic. Yeah. It is prophetic.

Yeah, I hadn't made that connection. No, I made it. Yes, you did. It's proprietary to you now.

Jane, you're so wonderful. I appreciate your time so much. I really want you to tell your captors that you need a little break, though, OK? They're not my captain.

Don't worry. I'm not a weak and feeble person. You are not. No, you're anything but.

I do have a job to do and the job requires me to do what I'm doing now. So my mother taught me if you're going to do something, do it as well as you possibly can. Well, your mother should be incredibly happy because you've done exactly that. And I thank you on behalf of my children, future generations.

I'm so grateful to you for dedicating so much of your life and time and energy to trying to make this place somewhere we can live for more than another 100 years. Thank you. It's been absolutely lovely talking to you. I was really looking forward to it.

Well, we won't meet one day and I will groom you. It'll be the best grooming of your life. I guarantee it. I will groom you'll be in.

OK, have a wonderful rest of your day and we appreciate you so much. Thanks. OK, bye, Jane. Stay tuned for more armature expert.

If you dare. And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate, Monica Batman. Hello is Monica there. Page me Mrs.

Padman Mrs. Padman. Wow. You're huge on my computer.

Oh, too big? No, your life size. We are not together, obviously. We are not together.

We are separated by about 800 miles. And what are you doing? 800 miles away? I just decided to get out of town.

Just fucking hit the road. North to Alaska or South to LA. Get out of town. I'm shooting season two of Top Gear America in Utah.

And how is it going? Oh, man, it's so good. It's so good. Oh, sorry.

Oh, what the hell happened? How's my peppermint tea? Oh my gosh. I'm making a real life ding ding ding ding.

Yeah, so so much fun jumping trucks, racing, station, German station wagons today, horsing around, cutting up with the guys. Oh, wow. You know, that kind of stuff. You love a cut up.

I do love to cut up. And you have been very productive this weekend. Yeah, I've had almost no fun. I've been only active.

You have fun doing that, though, right? Yeah, well, I wouldn't say fun. It's just really satisfying. So what I did was...

Satisficers? Yes, I decided to get my life together. It was time. It was overdue.

It was way overdue. I was feeling, in all honesty, a bit out of control. I needed to gain some control back. Yeah.

So the best way to do that is shopping, which I did. The second best way is to clean and organize. So I cleaned and organized everything. You know my scary closet that's like very scary because it's a big old mess.