Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
Speaker 2: should know podcasts. How you doing, I'm good, I'm good.
Speaker 1: You I'm sweepy?
Speaker 2: Oh are you?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I'm a little beat myself. Is it just life or
Speaker 2: did you stay up till five am drinking?
Speaker 1: No, it's just hitting right around the old nap time,
Speaker 1: So you know.
Speaker 2: I'm with you. Do you ever doze off all your studying?
Speaker 1: Uh? No, but I you know, I still try and
Speaker 1: catch a short nap every day, and on the recording
Speaker 1: days that sometimes happens. But today was I was not
Speaker 1: able to gotcha?
Speaker 2: Well, we'll retire eventually. Hang in there.
Speaker 1: I'll sleep when I retire.
Speaker 2: Hey, So what do you want to talk about today?
Speaker 1: I mean, I prepped for a show on Jane Goodall,
Speaker 1: so did I. And she's the best.
Speaker 2: She is she is she is widely roundly, basically globally
Speaker 2: universally probably seen as essentially a great person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think she's cherished and for good reason. After
Speaker 1: did you watch the documentary for this at all?
Speaker 2: By the way, I didn't the Future one from twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: Jane, Yeah, yeah, no I didn't. It's great.
Speaker 2: It sounds great. I read a lot about it, as
Speaker 2: I do, but I haven't seen it. Yeah, I'll have
Speaker 2: to watch it still.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really good. Highly recommended if you're listening and
Speaker 1: if this hearing about her, you know, inspires you to
Speaker 1: learn more at all, because it's a great documentary of footage, beautiful,
Speaker 1: beautiful color film stock from back then when she was
Speaker 1: doing her studies. And it's not it's not like a narrate.
Speaker 1: It's it's narrated just by her thoughts and this beautiful
Speaker 1: score and it just shows it. It's just really really
Speaker 1: lovely the way it plays out.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. I heard the car chase in the middle
Speaker 2: is really great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't expect it, but very good.
Speaker 2: So drive drive, drive. Yeah, so we're talking Jane Goodall.
Speaker 2: For those of you who don't know who Jane Goodall is,
Speaker 2: she is one of the world's foremost renowned primatologists. And
Speaker 2: she did it the old fashioned way by going out
Speaker 2: into the jungle and learning as she did. It's called
Speaker 2: the school of hard knocks, I think. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 2: thing about Jane Goodall. She had a high school education
Speaker 2: when she started. She did not go to college, not
Speaker 2: for a while, and a guy named Lewis Leakey, a
Speaker 2: famous anthropologist, took a gamble on her on purpose because
Speaker 2: he was looking for somebody who could who was not trained, purposely,
Speaker 2: not trained so that they weren't bringing a bunch of
Speaker 2: preconceptions to them to study chimpanzees. And Jing Goodall fit
Speaker 2: the bill. As we'll see, she's loved animals since she
Speaker 2: was a kid, and after just a few months started
Speaker 2: excelling at it and eventually changed how the world sees chimpanzees.
Speaker 2: We didn't know much about him before, We had a
Speaker 2: lot of assumptions about him, and Jing Goodall showed that
Speaker 2: they were just let's just turn those on their heads.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how's that.
Speaker 2: For an intro baby?
Speaker 1: It's pretty good?
Speaker 2: Thank you?
Speaker 1: Do we I mean, do we get more specific? Even?
Speaker 2: Oh? I thought we'd get specific as we went along,
Speaker 2: but sure, go ahead.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So she was born in nineteen thirty four in
Speaker 1: England to her mother Margaret and her father Mortimer. Go
Speaker 1: ahead and forget I even said father Mortimer, because he
Speaker 1: was not around much and he does not feel much
Speaker 1: in her story. He divorced when Jane was but sixteen.
Speaker 1: But especially after watching this documentary, if we're going to
Speaker 1: salute Jane Goodall, we are going to have to salute
Speaker 1: her mother, because her mom was the one who was like, Hey,
Speaker 1: you want to figure something out, then go figure it
Speaker 1: out and go learn it and go do Instead of
Speaker 1: talking about something, go out and do it because no
Speaker 1: one else is going to do it unless you do it.
Speaker 1: And who cares that it's the nineteen forties and fifties.
Speaker 1: Who cares that you're a young girl. Just go out
Speaker 1: and do it, Jane, by God, and she did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, She very famously encouraged her to go dance on
Speaker 2: the rain, feel the rain in her skin because no
Speaker 2: one else will do it for you.
Speaker 1: That's right, And like you said, and this is what
Speaker 1: maybe set her apart from other scientists at the time.
Speaker 1: She loved, loved and loved animals like capital l O vee,
Speaker 1: and that sort of flew in the face of the
Speaker 1: dispassionate history of how you study animals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, biologists typically approached animals totally detached, totally unemotional.
Speaker 1: They were aware opposed to.
Speaker 2: That was how they were trained to and it makes
Speaker 2: sense in a way because this is there was a
Speaker 2: widespread fear and there apparently still is among you know,
Speaker 2: hardcore biologists and other ologists that study animals, that we
Speaker 2: humans have a just a great propensity for anthropomorphizing animals.
Speaker 2: And how can you study animals if you're just essentially
Speaker 2: presuming that they're behaving like humans. You can't if they're
Speaker 2: doing something that's actually not human like and you're just
Speaker 2: misinterpreting it, you're being misled by your anthropomorphism. So there
Speaker 2: was a real there was The workaround that they figured
Speaker 2: out was to just look at them dispassionately. They're just animals.
Speaker 2: I don't care what their names are, I don't care
Speaker 2: anything about them. I'm just going to study them as
Speaker 2: dispassionately as possible in the hopes of preventing from anthropomorphizing.
Speaker 2: That was the predominant view, and again it still kind
Speaker 2: of is. It's complete hogwash, the idea that there's just
Speaker 2: no inner lives to animals, and apparently there's still some
Speaker 2: academics that cling on to that, but it does make
Speaker 2: a little bit of sense where if you're worried about
Speaker 2: projecting your own feelings and values and emotions and thoughts
Speaker 2: onto the animals you're studying, then just don't get attached
Speaker 2: to the animals. And that's what she entered into.
Speaker 1: You know, he said, what they don't care what their
Speaker 1: names are.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm sure they have names like ragnor the Conquerors.
Speaker 2: Probably a pretty regular name for a cow.
Speaker 1: I would think so. But you're right, But she flew
Speaker 1: in the face of that. She loved animals as a child.
Speaker 1: She would just spend hours and hours and hours as
Speaker 1: a young girl drawing animals, talking about animals, writing about animals,
Speaker 1: and not just you know, birds are fun because they fly,
Speaker 1: like observing them like a little miniature scientist. So she
Speaker 1: had recollections about bringing worms to bed when she was
Speaker 1: a toddler, like one of her first memories. Another was
Speaker 1: when she went to watch a hen laying an egg
Speaker 1: and like document that whole process. Spent five hours in
Speaker 1: a hen house as a young girl, and her parents
Speaker 1: couldn't find her, and her mom, you know, called the cops.
Speaker 1: They thought she had wandered off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I saw very pivotally when she was younger.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what age, but she was a young kid.
Speaker 2: Still she was fascinated with the pigs that she saw
Speaker 2: on the English countryside, and she wanted to hang out
Speaker 2: with them, but they would always run away. So she
Speaker 2: taught herself to be super patient and to sit and
Speaker 2: get them to come closer to her and eventually feed
Speaker 2: them and won their trust that way, and that would
Speaker 2: later serve her very well when she started to study chimpanzees.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in fact, that patient's in the documentary you
Speaker 1: know you mentioned Lewis Leaky. He was a very famous
Speaker 1: paleontologist and anthropologist who gave her her break in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties when she met him in Kenya. I guess
Speaker 1: we should say she got there because she graduated from
Speaker 1: high school and was like, you know what, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna we can't afford college. I'm gonna go get a
Speaker 1: couple of jobs, hustle save money so I can go
Speaker 1: to Africa and study on my own. But she got there,
Speaker 1: and Leaky she said part of the reason she got
Speaker 1: the job was because he wanted someone with monumental patients.
Speaker 1: I ease, somebody who would sit there for what ended
Speaker 1: up being five months before she even saw chimpanzees.
Speaker 2: Basically, man, that guy would be like a senior VP
Speaker 2: at ZIP recruiter, just based on that one pick he made. Yeah,
Speaker 2: for sure, if you were around today, did you like that?
Speaker 2: That was a little buzz marketing for one of our advertisers.
Speaker 1: They haven't been around in a while, so okay, well
Speaker 1: for maybe they'll come back.
Speaker 2: So yeah, Lewis leaky. Apparently she started out as a
Speaker 2: secretary for him, right, yeah, And then I guess he
Speaker 2: found out that she wanted to do animal studies, and
Speaker 2: he said, okay, here's your chance. I'm going to send
Speaker 2: you to Tanzania to study chimpanzees. We don't know much
Speaker 2: about chimpanzees. We want you to go find out all
Speaker 2: about them. And so, at age twenty six in nineteen sixty,
Speaker 2: she arrived in Tanzania with her mom. Because the Tanzanian
Speaker 2: government I believe it was still a colonial government at
Speaker 2: the time, if not then at least a transitional government. Still,
Speaker 2: they required a chaperone for someone in her position, so
Speaker 2: she brought her mom along, who'd been a great supporter
Speaker 2: and booster all her life, like you said, And they
Speaker 2: also very importantly had an cook who was a local
Speaker 2: named Dominic and within a very short amount of time,
Speaker 2: both her mom and she came down with malaria and
Speaker 2: they were very fortunate to have Dominic from what I saw,
Speaker 2: because he helped nurse them back to health.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, he was a big He's kind of
Speaker 1: like part of the family from what I gathered.
Speaker 2: That's what I gathered too.
Speaker 1: This is at the Gombi Stream Game Reserve which is
Speaker 1: now the Gombi Stream National Park, and her mom didn't
Speaker 1: stay too long. She was there about four months. But
Speaker 1: while her mom was there, she helped set up a
Speaker 1: either set up or work with medical camp there to
Speaker 1: help provide you know, medical services to locals. So her
Speaker 1: mom was getting in there getting her hands dirty. Eventually
Speaker 1: would leave to go back to England and Jane stayed there.
Speaker 1: You know, she was not with Leaky. He didn't like
Speaker 1: stay there with her. He set her up with his
Speaker 1: job also apparently was you know, making passes at Erica's
Speaker 1: Jane Goodall and this kind of popped that throughout her
Speaker 1: career was a very pretty young scientist at a time
Speaker 1: when that was fairly unusual, I think, especially where she
Speaker 1: was located. And she was like, no, thank you, doctor Leaky.
Speaker 1: I'm not interested, but I appreciate you. You you know
Speaker 1: trust in trusting this position to me at least, but
Speaker 1: hands off.
Speaker 2: He said, that's what That's just what I wanted to hear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm sure he wanted to hear just that.
Speaker 2: So apparently she got set up with six months of
Speaker 2: funding initially, and she started to get really worried because
Speaker 2: at least three months passed and she was spending all
Speaker 2: day every day with a couple of locals who were
Speaker 2: walking her around the jungle looking like pointing out like
Speaker 2: this would probably be a pretty good place for chimps
Speaker 2: to show up. This tree has a bunch of fruit
Speaker 2: on it. They'd sit around. The chimps wouldn't show up.
Speaker 2: They did show up, they were covered up by leaves.
Speaker 2: She couldn't see what they were doing if she got
Speaker 2: if she moved to get a little closer so she
Speaker 2: could get about, they would all run away. That was
Speaker 2: when she saw them, Like she was her research was
Speaker 2: in great jeopardy. She was, you have to have chimps
Speaker 2: to study to get more funding and continue your research.
Speaker 2: So she was starting to get worried by month three
Speaker 2: or four. And I guess finally she won the trust
Speaker 2: of at least one group enough that they wouldn't run
Speaker 2: off when she would just kind of show up and
Speaker 2: hang out and feed or watch them feed. And I
Speaker 2: saw that one of the reasons, or one of the
Speaker 2: ways that she won the trust of the chimpanzee groups
Speaker 2: that she was observing was by kind of behaving like them,
Speaker 2: Like she ran around barefoot everywhere. She would hang out
Speaker 2: in the trees for a long periods of time and
Speaker 2: just kind of tried to treat them or behave as
Speaker 2: if they were her peers rather than study subjects or
Speaker 2: test subjects.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, she those one. At one point in
Speaker 1: the documentary, she's talking about the dangers of where she
Speaker 1: was and these poison snakes everywhere, and you know, all
Speaker 1: manner of ways in which you could die out there
Speaker 1: doing what she was doing, and she was and it
Speaker 1: didn't sound naive either. She just said, you know, I
Speaker 1: felt like I was supput And she's got that great
Speaker 1: British accent too, so it just everything sounds so great.
Speaker 1: But she said she felt like she was supposed to
Speaker 1: be there, and that if she just treaded carefully and
Speaker 1: respected the land and the creatures around her, then they
Speaker 1: would like allow her to stay there, like these snakes
Speaker 1: were not going to come bite her and send her away,
Speaker 1: because she's, like I was, I'm supposed to be here,
Speaker 1: And it was really kind of a lovely thing. She
Speaker 1: really seemed like she fit in such that finally, five
Speaker 1: months in, with time running out, a chimp named David
Speaker 1: Graybeard obviously she's giving them these names, and he had
Speaker 1: a kind of looked like me a little bit. He had,
Speaker 1: this little gray Beard trusted her. He was the first
Speaker 1: one of that group allowed her to get closer and
Speaker 1: closer and closer. He eventually alsome bananas, came back for
Speaker 1: more bananas, and he was the one that said to
Speaker 1: the other chimps, hey, this lady, she's not too bad.
Speaker 1: Look at her.
Speaker 2: So we then treat bananas.
Speaker 1: She's hanging out and the footage of her and we'll
Speaker 1: get to whether or not this was the correct thing
Speaker 1: or not later, but the footage of her dead, still
Speaker 1: holding bananas out in her hand and seeing these very
Speaker 1: large chimpanzees coming up and taking them from her hands,
Speaker 1: and the way she's acting is is breathtaking because nobody
Speaker 1: had done that before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was gonna say today you could see somebody
Speaker 2: doing that, And the reason why you could see someone
Speaker 2: doing this, because Jing Goodall was the first to do
Speaker 2: it exactly. She had no idea. She had no frame
Speaker 2: of reference for whether they were going to be violent
Speaker 2: toward her or whether they were going to throw their
Speaker 2: poop better or whatever. She had no idea. So that
Speaker 2: was a real risk that she was taking by interacting
Speaker 2: with them that directly. And then in addition to it
Speaker 2: being risky, it was driving any academic who was aware
Speaker 2: of her work completely baddie, because that is a big
Speaker 2: nice man. That's not at all what you do. Not
Speaker 2: only do you not like get attached to them, you
Speaker 2: certainly don't feed them, you don't interact with their infants,
Speaker 2: don't you don't give them names. That was another one,
Speaker 2: David Graybeard. Yes, I'm gonna go with you and assume
Speaker 2: that that wasn't his actual name, that she gave them
Speaker 2: that name. And that was driving like academics crazy, like
Speaker 2: she was doing everything wrong, and yet it was starting
Speaker 2: to really pay off in aces.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like, you're not supposed to name Jimps And
Speaker 1: she's like, have you ever bet at a gym? Jump right?
Speaker 2: It's like it's working, Yeah, it really, and it really
Speaker 2: did work, Like thanks largely thanks to David Graybeard, at
Speaker 2: least at first who who, like you said, said this
Speaker 2: lady's all right? And then her patience and then her
Speaker 2: feeding them an endless supply of bananas. All those three
Speaker 2: combined to win over the trust of large groups and
Speaker 2: families of chimpanzees.
Speaker 1: Should we take a break, I think we should. All right,
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with moron. Do you know who?
Speaker 1: Right after this?
Speaker 2: Okay, Chuck, So, Jane Goodall is feeding chimps bananas. At
Speaker 2: this point, she's named them, named all of them. I mean,
Speaker 2: she really kind of had to get very creative with
Speaker 2: the names because she would identify a family lineage by
Speaker 2: like a letter, so like the F family, all of
Speaker 2: the members for generations had first names that began with F,
Speaker 2: like Flow or Flossy or Fabian or Freud, and that's
Speaker 2: how she kept track of them. But again, other academics
Speaker 2: would have just given them numbers, like maybe they all
Speaker 2: started with the same number or something like that, but
Speaker 2: certainly not names. And from observing them that closely, and
Speaker 2: I guess, I guess interacting with them probably had a
Speaker 2: lot to do with it. But interacting with them allowed
Speaker 2: her to get that close, and by interacting that closely,
Speaker 2: she was able to see things that up to that
Speaker 2: point people had no idea chimpanzees were capable of. One
Speaker 2: of the first things she realized is that they have
Speaker 2: a huge, intricate, complex social system with hierarchies, like I said, families, alliances, territories,
Speaker 2: like all sorts of stuff that people just did not
Speaker 2: realize chips were capable of engaging in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, big time. Communication wise, she found out there were
Speaker 1: at least twenty different sets that they were making to communicate,
Speaker 1: and that's in addition to any kind of body language
Speaker 1: or behaviors they may exhibit towards one another. She was
Speaker 1: the first person that said, hey, these guys aren't just
Speaker 1: eating bananas and berries and things. They are omnivores. They're
Speaker 1: eating birds, they're eating insects, they're eating baby baboons. Sometimes
Speaker 1: she would figure this out later, much to her dismay,
Speaker 1: they would eat other chimps. But the big finding that
Speaker 1: she came out with that kind of shook signs to
Speaker 1: its core was that she observed chimpanzees engaging in object modification,
Speaker 1: which is basically sort of proto tool making, when they
Speaker 1: would take blades of grass and sticks and things and
Speaker 1: strip them down or bend them, or clump blades of
Speaker 1: grass together and shape them in certain ways to stick
Speaker 1: into ant hills most effectively and efficiently to draw out
Speaker 1: ants to eat them. And she was like, hey, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, Like, the big differentiator up until this point
Speaker 1: in the history of evolution between us and them is
Speaker 1: that we use tools. That's all everyone talked about was
Speaker 1: that we use tools and animals don't, and that's what
Speaker 1: makes us different. She's like, right here in front of
Speaker 1: my face, they are using object modification, which is basically
Speaker 1: a tool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you just you said it. It shook the
Speaker 2: scientific world to its foundations. Like that was just such
Speaker 2: a huge finding that Lewis Leaky declared very famously that
Speaker 2: we must redefined tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as humans.
Speaker 2: Like that's how big of a deal.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: Dramatic, it was, But I mean, up to that point,
Speaker 2: like you said, people just tools made a human. Anything
Speaker 2: that could make a tool technically qualified as human. Everything
Speaker 2: else couldn't make tools. So it was a big deal.
Speaker 2: And then on top of that, to me, even more
Speaker 2: groundbreaking is that they realized that different groups of chimps
Speaker 2: use the same tool in different ways, and that like
Speaker 2: say one group would use the short stick to get
Speaker 2: termites on it to eat them one by one. Another
Speaker 2: group would use a longer stick to let a bunch
Speaker 2: of them walk on and then eat it like a
Speaker 2: corn cob probably, and that they would pass how to
Speaker 2: do that down to different generations. And that's culture and
Speaker 2: its most basic definition that qualifies as culture. And I
Speaker 2: saw it compared to how Westerners use forks, but people
Speaker 2: in Asia use chopsticks. They're both the same tool they're
Speaker 2: used to they're implement to get food to your mouth,
Speaker 2: but they're just different and they're passed down through the
Speaker 2: culture their cultural differences. And that's the same thing with
Speaker 2: the different ways of using a termite stick, right, And
Speaker 2: that is culture. So she discovered that chimps have cultures as.
Speaker 1: Well, and some of them open their presence on Christmas Eve,
Speaker 1: some of them wait until Christmas more or all kinds
Speaker 1: of things she observed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a big surprise too. They're terrible at
Speaker 2: wrapping presents too, they're so sloppy.
Speaker 1: Another big surprise, Well, they just used the funny papers
Speaker 1: from Sunday, which can you blame them. Another big surprise
Speaker 1: was in nineteen sixty two when National Geographic then Geo
Speaker 1: Society that is, sent a filmmaker, a Dutch filmmaker name
Speaker 1: Hugo von Lowick there to film her work. She was
Speaker 1: not thrilled at this idea. She really enjoyed her solitude there.
Speaker 1: She did not want some dude mucking up the works
Speaker 1: and kind of quite honestly spoiling her scene that she
Speaker 1: had going on there. She really enjoyed climbing trees and
Speaker 1: being alone and not having to deal with some jerk
Speaker 1: with a camera. But she knew that's where the funding
Speaker 1: came from. They needed this footage if she was going
Speaker 1: to continue to get funding. She put up with the
Speaker 1: sky chainsmoking and throwing his cigarette butts around in the jungle,
Speaker 1: which upset her very much, But she was like, this
Speaker 1: guy really loved animals. He was also handsome, and she
Speaker 1: said it became pretty obvious pretty soon that I was
Speaker 1: also the subject of his films. Long story short, they
Speaker 1: fall in love and make a baby.
Speaker 2: Right that they nicknamed Grub. Did you see anywhere why
Speaker 2: they nicknamed their kid Grub? I could not find it.
Speaker 1: I would assume because of a grubworm.
Speaker 2: But what did he do?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Did he was he famous for writhing around in the
Speaker 2: dirt or something like that. Why would you name your
Speaker 2: kid grub well?
Speaker 1: I mean this kid was raised in the jungle. I
Speaker 1: imagine all he did was writhe around in the dirt. Okay,
Speaker 1: I mean there's footage of him. He was literally raised
Speaker 1: in a jungle in a cage. Sounds bad, but it
Speaker 1: was a big pin that they had previously used for animals,
Speaker 1: and she decorated it all up for her son just
Speaker 1: to keep him safe. It was very large. It was
Speaker 1: like a large, you know, pin, less than a cage,
Speaker 1: but was a cage. And the other thing she said, too,
Speaker 1: was that having her own human baby really helped her
Speaker 1: research it. It made her understand the how chimpanzee mothers
Speaker 1: behaved and vice versa. And she said it really just
Speaker 1: added a lot to her understanding of the family groups.
Speaker 2: NAT that's pretty neat so around this time, So what
Speaker 2: that was the early sixties. I think that her husband
Speaker 2: showed up and her son was born in the late sixties.
Speaker 2: Nineteen sixty seven, okay, in the I think in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty three National Geographic it essentially told the world that
Speaker 2: Jing goodall existed in what she was doing. There was
Speaker 2: an article cover article called My Life among the Wild Chimpanzees,
Speaker 2: and she was starting to recount this is the thing
Speaker 2: that she would become most advanced at, in addition to
Speaker 2: chimpanzee's studies, is telling the rest of the world about
Speaker 2: chimpanzees in order to get the world to keep from
Speaker 2: driving chimpanzees and other animals into extinction. That was her
Speaker 2: kind of second love.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And again they started, you know, her
Speaker 1: the fact that she was an attractive young woman came
Speaker 1: up in the press and the articles were framed as
Speaker 1: you know, Beauty and the Beast and nat Geo cover
Speaker 1: girl and stuff like that, which it bothered her some,
Speaker 1: but she did realize that that got more attention and
Speaker 1: that that inspired young women, you know, to develop interest
Speaker 1: in science and stuff like that. And so she was like,
Speaker 1: it's it's fine, this is what we're dealing with here
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties, and it's bringing you know, attention
Speaker 1: to my cause. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she would have a really good kind of a
Speaker 2: feel for that. And I keep speaking of her in
Speaker 2: the past ten she's not dead. She just turned ninety
Speaker 2: in April, and she seems to be doing just fine.
Speaker 2: Her foundation says she still travels about three hundred days
Speaker 2: a year doing speaking appearances on behalf of chimpanzees and
Speaker 2: nature and earth in general. And a good example of
Speaker 2: her kind of figuring out or knowing a good pr
Speaker 2: piece when she sees it, her opportunity when she sees
Speaker 2: it came in nineteen eighty seven Gary Larson, who did
Speaker 2: the Far Side, one of the great comic strips of
Speaker 2: all time.
Speaker 1: You know, oh yeah, that's going to be a subject soon.
Speaker 2: Okay, So he did a far Side one one comic
Speaker 2: panel or one panel comic of a female chimp grooming
Speaker 2: a male chimp, and the caption is the female chimp saying, well, well,
Speaker 2: another blonde hair, conducting a little more research with that.
Speaker 2: Jane Goodall tramp and the Jane Goodall Institute found out
Speaker 2: about this and sent Gary Larson a cease and desist letter,
Speaker 2: and that's where everything ended.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, of course not, you're just being coy
Speaker 1: good always out of town. Apparently she got back in town,
Speaker 1: heard about it, thought it was very funny, said Gary,
Speaker 1: you can tear up that cease and desist letter, and
Speaker 1: book your ticket for Africa.
Speaker 2: You're going, and you're going, and you're going.
Speaker 1: And that's what happened. She reached out to him, he
Speaker 1: came out there. He actually gave the Institute permission to
Speaker 1: use the cartoon on T shirts for fundraising. She wrote
Speaker 1: a preface for one of his book collections and it
Speaker 1: turned into like this school friendship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so prior to that, we kind of jumped ahead
Speaker 2: a little bit. But prior to that, she in addition
Speaker 2: to that National Geographic cover story, less than ten years later,
Speaker 2: she released her first book, In the Shadow of Man,
Speaker 2: And this is around where she really became like a
Speaker 2: science communicator, which she's been forever. She was one of
Speaker 2: the early ones, pre Sagan even. I mean, she released
Speaker 2: this book in nineteen seventy one and it was telling
Speaker 2: the world again about all of the stuff she had
Speaker 2: found about chimpanzees and really just revolutionizing our understanding of
Speaker 2: chimpanzees and animals in general. And her work was so
Speaker 2: significant that, remember she only graduated high school. Cambridge University
Speaker 2: came a knock in and said, hey, you want a PhD.
Speaker 2: Because we got a seat for you here, come take it.
Speaker 2: And she thought about it a while consulting Gary Larson.
Speaker 2: He said, Hey, I haven't met you yet. This doesn't
Speaker 2: make any sense, and finally agreed, Sure, I'll get your
Speaker 2: I'll take a PhD course with you guys Cambridge.
Speaker 1: That's right. She got a degree in the study of
Speaker 1: animal behavior, that's mythology in nineteen sixty six. No, we're
Speaker 1: all over the place of the timeline. It's fine. I
Speaker 1: hope everyone gets what is following the story. Sure, for
Speaker 1: about five years she worked at Stanford as a visiting
Speaker 1: professor and psychiatry. Also became a visiting professor of zoology
Speaker 1: at Tanzania's University of Daris Salam. While all this is
Speaker 1: going on, though, she's not like, oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: I'm just leaving Gmbhi. For years and years at a time,
Speaker 1: she was basically there from nineteen sixty to seventy five.
Speaker 1: It was her home. It was her emotional home, her
Speaker 1: spiritual home. She felt very, very tied to Gombi into
Speaker 1: that specific area, and you know that was where she
Speaker 1: started a family and was raising a son. It was
Speaker 1: her place.
Speaker 2: So I didn't see the documentary did they cover why
Speaker 2: she left? Was it because of her son? Because I
Speaker 2: saw that she was conflicted, and I realized she had
Speaker 2: to decide raise a sun or study chimps.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he had to be schooled formally schooled in England.
Speaker 1: But also there was the issue of her marriage, and
Speaker 1: that's you know, we might as well talk about it now.
Speaker 1: She started to travel some with her husband to other
Speaker 1: places for him to film because he didn't get all
Speaker 1: his work through that GEO. Eventually he has work with
Speaker 1: them completely dried up, so he had no reason to
Speaker 1: be there other than the fact that his wife was
Speaker 1: there and loved her work. But it was at a
Speaker 1: time and he was one of these guys where he
Speaker 1: was like, hey, you know, work comes first and I
Speaker 1: hope you can support me. She did that for a
Speaker 1: little while and then she said by that time, in
Speaker 1: a very English way, she said that had we had
Speaker 1: begun bickering, and that seemed to be the kindest way
Speaker 1: to say that. You know, their marriage was kind of
Speaker 1: on fragile ground and they would eventually part ways because
Speaker 1: of that and because of life and work, and it
Speaker 1: just seemed like it didn't work.
Speaker 2: Out, gotcha. So five years after she started, she established
Speaker 2: the Gombi Stream Research Center again in the Gombi Wildlife
Speaker 2: preserve game preserve, which means you can go hunt there.
Speaker 2: She very fortunately met and married a member of parliament
Speaker 2: in tan Zania named Derek Bryson, and he happened to
Speaker 2: direct the country's national parks and went presto Chanjo and
Speaker 2: turned the game reserve into a national park protecting Gambia
Speaker 2: and its inhabitants.
Speaker 1: Pretty cool, it is pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, he passed away from cancer five years later, and
Speaker 2: from that point on, Jane Goodall was a swinging solo lady.
Speaker 1: That's right, and you know, I'm sure it was a
Speaker 1: tragedy for her life, but she sort of ended up
Speaker 1: being married to her work and seemed very happy to be.
Speaker 1: She spent decades and decades at the Gambi Center, publishing
Speaker 1: hundreds of papers. All kinds of researchers and doctoral students
Speaker 1: have done field work there, gotten their PhDs through there.
Speaker 1: She is still very active, like you said, as part
Speaker 1: of the Jane Goodall Institute, which is basically run by
Speaker 1: Tanzanians and has just you know, she's it's easy to
Speaker 1: think now, like you said, like you see so many
Speaker 1: documentaries and so much footage of people doing research and
Speaker 1: just no one had done this stuff to that degree
Speaker 1: at the time, as far as just living among the animals.
Speaker 1: And it just can't be overstated how revolutionary this idea was.
Speaker 1: This twenty six year old, you know, young British woman
Speaker 1: was just like, yeah, that's what I want to do.
Speaker 1: I want to climb a tree and be with them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And Lewis Leaky had a knack for picking the
Speaker 2: right people for this kind of work. He also hired
Speaker 2: two other young women over the years. Diane Fosse, who
Speaker 2: studied gorillas in Rwanda who is very memorably played by
Speaker 2: Sigourney Weaver and Gorillas in the Mist. Yeah, and another
Speaker 2: woman named Berrute Galdicas who studied orangutangs in Borneo. And
Speaker 2: when you put Diane Fossei and Barute Galdicas and Jan
Speaker 2: Good all together, you had the group that were known
Speaker 2: as the Trymates.
Speaker 1: Pretty funny.
Speaker 2: We just couldn't not mention that it was just too good.
Speaker 1: I mean, we didn't give them that name. No, no, actually,
Speaker 1: to make it clear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, Chuck, we're starting to have a little too
Speaker 2: much fun. I say, we need to take a break
Speaker 2: and recompose ourselves, come back and just get serious again.
Speaker 1: All right, all right, so earlier in the episode you
Speaker 1: mentioned a family made up of the letter F where
Speaker 1: she you know, this is how she named and cataloged
Speaker 1: these groups in these families and it would help her
Speaker 1: keep track of things. And we're gonna tell you a
Speaker 1: little story that Livia dug up about the F family
Speaker 1: led by Flow, who was the mama to her young children.
Speaker 1: And Flow was pretty instrumental in good Alls understanding of
Speaker 1: just how these chip families worked. And then later through
Speaker 1: the just beyond the family, the whole group and local
Speaker 1: culture of that family.
Speaker 2: Right, and the whole group that they studied that the
Speaker 2: Flow in her family were members of was the cass Kela.
Speaker 2: And there were other groups that ended up being studied,
Speaker 2: if not by a good All, but by other research
Speaker 2: scientists and doctoral students who showed up over the decades.
Speaker 2: But kesse Kela was the group that she kind of
Speaker 2: made her name on and did her research on originally.
Speaker 2: And like you said, from studying these these families so closely,
Speaker 2: she watched like how generations interacted sometimes with their own
Speaker 2: kin group like Flow had a son named Fabian who
Speaker 2: overthrew his younger brother, who's overthrown by his younger brother
Speaker 2: Fagan to become the dominant male, and she noticed, like
Speaker 2: becoming a dominant male of your family or of your group,
Speaker 2: I should say, there's not one set way to do it.
Speaker 2: Some do it by Some chimpanzees do it by being
Speaker 2: kind and calm in the face of aggression. Others do
Speaker 2: it through sheer force and bullying. Vegan was known to
Speaker 2: just basically do it through trickery, like he would lead
Speaker 2: others in the group away from food and then run
Speaker 2: back and get it himself. Somehow he became the dominant male.
Speaker 2: But by studying these chimpanzees this closely, she was able
Speaker 2: to kind of see individual personalities and how those personalities
Speaker 2: work together to create a society.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's you know, well, it's a game of
Speaker 1: thrones up in there, basically. Yeah. He had Flow's daughter, Fifi,
Speaker 1: she became the dominant female. She gave birth to nine kids,
Speaker 1: one of which was a daughter named Flossi, So this
Speaker 1: is Flow's grand baby. Flossie ended up leaving that group
Speaker 1: for a neighboring community called the Matumba Community. Another one
Speaker 1: of her children was Freud, born in seventy one. Freud
Speaker 1: grew up and then along with Fifi and Vegan helped
Speaker 1: him rise within that hierarchy even though he was like
Speaker 1: not really cut out for the job. Became the dominant
Speaker 1: male in nineteen ninety three. So, like families are leaving
Speaker 1: communities joining up with others who had previously left the community,
Speaker 1: they're kind of grooming successors and like propping up other
Speaker 1: chimps is like helping them become the leader and the
Speaker 1: dominant male or female. And it's just just fascinating for
Speaker 1: her to sit there and like document all this stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very much Kevellian totally. Now we have to
Speaker 2: talk about Frodo, who was one of Fifi's sons, one
Speaker 2: of Flow's grandsons. He was born in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 2: and he is one of the more famous chimpanzees of
Speaker 2: all time because he was bad to the bone. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he was. You if you believe in chimps having an
Speaker 2: internal life and empathy and awareness of others' experiences, then
Speaker 2: you would consider Frodo a.
Speaker 1: Murderer, straight up murderer, totally for real.
Speaker 2: I've seen it argue that he should be considered a murderer.
Speaker 2: He was just that bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, he killed people, he did.
Speaker 2: So he deposed his brother Freud back in nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 2: and he was one of the He was the one
Speaker 2: I was citing when I said some of them do
Speaker 2: it just through sheer force and intimidation. That was Frodo.
Speaker 2: He didn't have a lot of friends, he didn't have
Speaker 2: many alliances. He was just the biggest chimp and the
Speaker 2: meanest chimp. And he from a young age he started
Speaker 2: bullying Jane Goodall. I think I don't want to anthropomorphise here,
Speaker 2: but I'm quite certain, one hundred percent certain in fact,
Speaker 2: that he noted Jane Goodall was the person in charge
Speaker 2: of the humans, and he targeted her specifically. He attacked
Speaker 2: other humans over the years, but Jane Goodall. They said
Speaker 2: that he would have a certain look on his face
Speaker 2: that he reserved just for her, and he put her
Speaker 2: in for some of the worst treatment, almost broke her
Speaker 2: neck once, and she said kind of famously that she
Speaker 2: was alive because he wasn't trying to kill her, that
Speaker 2: he was just trying to show her who is boss,
Speaker 2: and that if he wanted her dead, she would be
Speaker 2: dead right now.
Speaker 1: Which you know, again not to use the A word,
Speaker 1: but it sounds like he had respect for her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, in a way, like a kind of a
Speaker 2: backhanded way.
Speaker 1: I would say he allowed her to live.
Speaker 2: Right, I guess so, or maybe he'd needed her.
Speaker 1: He let Gary Larson live in nineteen eighty eight when
Speaker 1: Carrie Larson got his arm yanked, giving him a legit injury.
Speaker 1: So that happened as well, but very sadly. Frodo was
Speaker 1: probably most well known for killing a toddler, a fourteen
Speaker 1: month old in two thousand and two. It was the
Speaker 1: daughter of a park attendant who was visiting with his wife,
Speaker 1: and he killed this fourteen month old and partially ate
Speaker 1: this fourteen month old, and people spoke up and were like, hey,
Speaker 1: you need to kill this chimp and take him out,
Speaker 1: and Jane Goodall went to bat for him, and it's like, basically,
Speaker 1: it's a chimp being a chimp, and we're the ones
Speaker 1: that are here, and you know there's cars killing kids
Speaker 1: all over the place. You know, go out and take
Speaker 1: all the cars away.
Speaker 2: That's called a straw man argument.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: There's a thing though, the remember I said, I saw,
Speaker 2: I'd argue that like he was a Frodo should be
Speaker 2: considered a murderer. Certainly could be yeah, I think the
Speaker 2: same person who made that argument was had been a
Speaker 2: researcher at Gambi and argued, like, yes, we need to
Speaker 2: kill Frodo. He's a murderer. Like he did that, he
Speaker 2: knew what he was doing. He's a murderer. We need
Speaker 2: to put him down. And she argued that they intervened
Speaker 2: when the chimps were starving, they intervened when they needed
Speaker 2: medical attention, but they're not going to intervene when the
Speaker 2: chimp murders a human baby. It just seemed like a
Speaker 2: pretty good argument, I think. At the same time, though,
Speaker 2: if you're Jane Goodall and you're like, well, chimps are
Speaker 2: kind of like humans, and humans are kind of like chimps.
Speaker 2: We don't kill Frodo when he eats chimp babies, which
Speaker 2: they do, so why would you do that for.
Speaker 1: A human baby.
Speaker 2: Seems a little out of touch to me with you know,
Speaker 2: human society in general. But I guess I get both
Speaker 2: sides in that case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's one of the things we should
Speaker 1: talk about. I guess is that later in her career,
Speaker 1: she you know, she basically said, hey, if I had
Speaker 1: it to do over again, I would do it differently.
Speaker 1: We probably should not have been feeding these things bananas.
Speaker 1: We probably shouldn't have been I shouldn't have been holding
Speaker 1: baby chimps like they were human babies and petting them
Speaker 1: and stuff. And I should have maybe been a little
Speaker 1: more dispassionate in my work because if you want, you know,
Speaker 1: really accurate data and results, like again, you shouldn't be
Speaker 1: handing them food and stuff. So, you know, she came
Speaker 1: clean about the things that she felt like she had
Speaker 1: her missteps over the years as a researcher. So I
Speaker 1: take my hat off to her for that, and very sadly,
Speaker 1: it looks like, you know, it's possible at least that
Speaker 1: they're stay there, their interactions, they're just merely being there.
Speaker 1: Could have been one of the factors in what was
Speaker 1: known as the Gombi chimpanzee War, when in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: one there was kind of a full on war between
Speaker 1: two groups of chimpanzees that played out right in front
Speaker 1: of her eyes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the dominant male of the Caskela group died
Speaker 2: and I guess he was holding the glue together. This
Speaker 2: guy was like Tito or something, and the group splintered.
Speaker 2: I think nine adults and their kids said, we're going
Speaker 2: to form our own group, and they took over the
Speaker 2: southern half of the range, and the original Caskela. The
Speaker 2: remaining Caskela they stuck to the northern part of the
Speaker 2: range at first. I think over the years, the male
Speaker 2: started making aggressive sounds and gestures to one another, and
Speaker 2: it became clear that they were no longer treating them
Speaker 2: as a kin group. You know, these were no longer friends,
Speaker 2: even though they had been super tight friends when they
Speaker 2: lived together. These were now enemies and trespassers and encroachers,
Speaker 2: and the whole thing came to a head starting in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four when Godie, one of the members of
Speaker 2: the tribe that had broken away and took up in
Speaker 2: the south, was just sitting there eating fruit and six
Speaker 2: Caskela males ambushed him and I had to get away,
Speaker 2: and they got him and they beat him to death
Speaker 2: over a period I think about ten minutes, and that
Speaker 2: kicked off the what are known as, like you said,
Speaker 2: the Gombi Chimpanzee War.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then other wars had been documented since then
Speaker 1: in different areas between different groups, and like I said,
Speaker 1: you know, part of the reason was they were being
Speaker 1: sort of choked out by human development. Part of it
Speaker 1: was because there was a more stressful atmosphere though, with
Speaker 1: people there watching and observing and doing what she was doing.
Speaker 1: So I don't I'm not going to say that really
Speaker 1: charnished her work. If anything, it did show that they
Speaker 1: observed something else that they didn't know had previously happened,
Speaker 1: which is they could be very territorial and go to
Speaker 1: war like this. But since that time she has just
Speaker 1: been a tireless advocate for animals over the ensuing decades,
Speaker 1: like you said, into her early nineties now with the
Speaker 1: Jane Goodall Institute that is based in Virginia, has twenty
Speaker 1: offices around the world, and she continues to write books
Speaker 1: and speak and do ted talks, and she's just still
Speaker 1: kicking it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. She had a podcast called the jing Goodall Hope
Speaker 2: Cast that she launched during the pandemic, and then as
Speaker 2: soon as she could stop, she stopped. The last episode
Speaker 2: came out in twenty twenty two. She's very famously her
Speaker 2: quote was that sucked.
Speaker 1: Yeah. By the way, when I said she's still kicking it,
Speaker 1: I meant kicking, but like not just kicking it on
Speaker 1: the couch. That's what kicking it really kicking. Yeah. Now
Speaker 1: she's just still very active, and I just have a
Speaker 1: lot of respect for the lady. She's awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she is an awesome person, and yeah she gets
Speaker 2: criticized by people in academia still, But like I said
Speaker 2: at the outset, she's just the world loves her, like
Speaker 2: she's done so much good that whatever missteps she has
Speaker 2: or whatever weird side she takes in moral quandaries, like
Speaker 2: the world just forgives her. It's like it's Jane Goodall.
Speaker 2: She does good for the planet and has the whole
Speaker 2: time essentially agreed. If you want to know more about
Speaker 2: Jane Goodall, there's a lot to read about her and
Speaker 2: by her, and you can listen to her hope casts.
Speaker 2: I presume they didn't erase all of the episodes. And
Speaker 2: in the meantime, while you're looking all that stuff up,
Speaker 2: let's go ahead and kick it old school with listener mail.
Speaker 1: Let me call this the Ballad of grit, because that
Speaker 1: is what Ed calls it, Okay in the subject line,
Speaker 1: Hey guys, I'm a self described band of great I
Speaker 1: should say I've never considered myself a conscientious person to
Speaker 1: the full meaning of the word. However, I do consider
Speaker 1: one of my strengths is being responsible. My opinion is
Speaker 1: that it's an insult for a gritty person to be
Speaker 1: confused with being conscientious. Conscientiousness is a luxury for the
Speaker 1: already bright minded person. In my opinion, I believe most
Speaker 1: intelligent people who are successful are equally gifted with conscientiousness. Grit,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, is the ugly twin of conscientiousness.
Speaker 1: It's the path less travel to success. It's how I
Speaker 1: got through college during an engineering degree, even though I
Speaker 1: graduated with a low GPA, barely scraping by in many
Speaker 1: classes and had to retake some because I didn't pass
Speaker 1: to begin with. My road was less traveled than it
Speaker 1: was a tough one. I worked forty hours a week
Speaker 1: for five years while I supported myself in college, and
Speaker 1: I was compared to my peer graduates with whom I
Speaker 1: lived at home with her parents, who had the funds
Speaker 1: to build proper projects for courses. Grit is invisible, guys.
Speaker 1: It can't be measured. Comes from within. Grit is what
Speaker 1: you have when you succeed without conscientiousness. I love the
Speaker 1: show that is from ED.
Speaker 2: I think ED is a pseudonym for Angela Duckworth. I
Speaker 2: think this is Angela Duckworths writing in it. Good email, Yeah,
Speaker 2: this is a good email. Good for you for persevering.
Speaker 2: Hats off to you, man, for sure, I admire anybody
Speaker 2: who worked and put themselves through college. That's really something
Speaker 2: I like me. Yes, I admire you for that.
Speaker 1: Oh, the first part was paid for and then I
Speaker 1: was on my own.
Speaker 2: Hey man, even a little bit still counts like that.
Speaker 2: That's hard to do.
Speaker 1: You know that was fine? Waited tables whatever.
Speaker 2: Shate it, all right, just forget it. I'll direct my
Speaker 2: comments toward Ed only then.
Speaker 1: All right, No, I appreciate it. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: If you want to be like ED and give us
Speaker 2: an email to argue over, we love that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: You can get in touch with us via stuff podcast
Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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