WEBVTT - How Did Jane Goodall Get Her Start(s)? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:07.160 Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:11.080 Lauren vocal Bomb here. Some people just don't quit. It's 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:14.560 okay to quit occasionally it's best to. But let Dr 0:00:14.680 --> 0:00:17.639 Jane Goodall be an example to us all. Sometimes you 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:20.320 have a far fetched dream, and instead of dismissing it, 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:23.000 you do it anyway. And when you've achieved what you 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:24.640 set out to do, just when you're at the top 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:27.120 of your game, your dream might change based on what 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:29.720 you've learned along the way. Your new dream is bigger 0:00:29.760 --> 0:00:33.040 and more difficult to realize, but you do it anyway, 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:35.680 repeat into old age and never slowing down, and you 0:00:35.760 --> 0:00:39.199 might even get nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. The 0:00:39.280 --> 0:00:41.760 key to doctor Goodall's persistence seems to have a lot 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:43.680 to do with knowing what she liked from a very 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:47.319 young age and then just insisting on doing it. Her 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:49.920 father gave her a stuffed chimpanzee when she was a baby, 0:00:50.159 --> 0:00:52.320 and she took it with her everywhere, even though it 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:55.680 was by all accounts terrifying. She grew up loving to 0:00:55.680 --> 0:00:58.720 observe in catalog animals and dreamed of one day living 0:00:58.760 --> 0:01:01.280 with African animals and dating books about them. For a living. 0:01:02.120 --> 0:01:04.800 Her mother, who was a novelist herself, told Goodall that 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:07.600 that seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea, even though it 0:01:07.680 --> 0:01:09.720 was the nineteen forties and not at all but middle 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:14.160 class English girls were expected to do. After she finished school, 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:16.680 Goodall couldn't afford to go to college, so she worked 0:01:16.680 --> 0:01:18.920 odd jobs in London for a few years until a 0:01:18.959 --> 0:01:21.880 friend invited her to visit her family's farm in Kenya, 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:24.680 at which point Goodall immediately quit her job and waited 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:26.640 tables until she made enough money to pay for the 0:01:26.680 --> 0:01:30.280 price of boat fair to Africa. While in Kenya, her 0:01:30.280 --> 0:01:34.120 friends suggested she contacted the paleontologist Louis Leakey, curator of 0:01:34.160 --> 0:01:37.960 the Corindin Museum in Nairobi, to discuss primates. A Leaky 0:01:38.120 --> 0:01:40.640 was interested in studying primate behavior in order to better 0:01:40.720 --> 0:01:45.160 understand early human species. Leaky hired Goodall as his field 0:01:45.160 --> 0:01:48.320 assistant on a paleontological dig and later asked her to 0:01:48.320 --> 0:01:50.920 return to England to research primates and raise money for 0:01:50.960 --> 0:01:54.040 a long term observational study on wild chimpanzees at the 0:01:54.040 --> 0:01:57.640 gum Bay Stream at National Park in Tanzania. In July 0:01:57.680 --> 0:02:00.360 of nineteen sixty six, year old Jane good All began 0:02:00.400 --> 0:02:03.200 setting up her field station at Gombe, which would become 0:02:03.200 --> 0:02:07.000 the site of the longest running wildlife research project in history. 0:02:07.200 --> 0:02:09.639 British authorities initially balked at the idea of a young 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:12.519 woman doing this kind of work on chaperone, so Goodall's 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:15.840 mother Van accompanied her for the first few months. Goodall 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:18.840 observed the chimpanzees daily for two years before she earned 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:21.760 their trust. Her method was just to watch the animals 0:02:21.760 --> 0:02:24.600 and imitate their actions, recording everything that happened in a 0:02:24.639 --> 0:02:29.080 field journal. Two of Goodall's most important discoveries during this 0:02:29.120 --> 0:02:31.480 period had to do with what chimps ate and how 0:02:31.520 --> 0:02:34.160 they went about getting food. Goodall was the first to 0:02:34.280 --> 0:02:37.760 observe chimpanzees killing and eating the meat of small mammals. 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:40.239 Prior to this, they were thought to be vegetarian, and 0:02:40.320 --> 0:02:43.240 perhaps her biggest contribution to our understanding of primates was 0:02:43.280 --> 0:02:46.480 the revelation that chimps used collected and modified grass stems 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:49.880 and sticks as tools to fish termites out of their nests. 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:54.560 Goodall's discoveries were so significant Leaky said, now we must 0:02:54.639 --> 0:02:58.600 redefine tool, redefine man, and he arranged for her to 0:02:58.600 --> 0:03:01.240 write a dissertation at Cambridge University on the behaviors of 0:03:01.240 --> 0:03:04.480 wild chimpanzees. It was accepted, and she became one of 0:03:04.560 --> 0:03:07.160 only eight people ever to graduate from Cambridge with her 0:03:07.200 --> 0:03:11.919 PhD without first earning her undergraduate degree. In nineteen sixty four, 0:03:12.080 --> 0:03:15.440 Goodall married hu Van Lawick, a Dutch wildlife photographer who 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:18.240 Leaky sent to record her activity in the field. They 0:03:18.240 --> 0:03:20.440 had a son in nineteen sixty seven, who spent his 0:03:20.520 --> 0:03:23.720 early life with his parents at Gombay. After Goodall in 0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:27.079 Lawick divorced in nineteen seventy four, Goodall married Derek Bryson 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:30.239 in nineteen seventy five, who was the director of Tanzania's 0:03:30.280 --> 0:03:33.840 National Parks. During this time, Goodall published books about her 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:37.320 experiences in research at Goombay, including In the Shadow of Man, 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:40.360 which was criticized by scientists because of Goodall's habit of 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:42.960 naming the subjects of her research. She called her most 0:03:42.960 --> 0:03:46.200 famous studies subject David Graybeard, but the book was wildly 0:03:46.240 --> 0:03:49.240 popular and has since been translated into forty eight languages. 0:03:49.800 --> 0:03:51.920 As she lived and worked in Gombay, she began to 0:03:51.960 --> 0:03:56.400 notice changes to the chimpanzees habitat deforestation and mining practices 0:03:56.560 --> 0:03:59.120 forced the animals out of their homes and into smaller 0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:03.960 and smaller areas. More than one million wild chimpanzees lived 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:06.560 in Africa a hundred years ago, but today only a 0:04:06.560 --> 0:04:09.880 fifth of that population exists. Goodall saw the writing on 0:04:09.920 --> 0:04:12.560 the wall, which is why in the nineteen eighties, good 0:04:12.560 --> 0:04:15.280 All changed her focus from observing chimps to working to 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:18.640 protect their habitat. She founded the Jane Goodall Institute in 0:04:18.720 --> 0:04:21.880 nineteen seventy seven, which works to keep human communities and 0:04:21.960 --> 0:04:27.040 wild chimpanzee populations in Africa healthy and coexisting peacefully. Roots 0:04:27.040 --> 0:04:30.200 and shoots as a program to empower young people worldwide 0:04:30.400 --> 0:04:33.400 to make a difference in their local communities. Now, at 0:04:33.440 --> 0:04:36.200 the age of eighty five, Goodall spends about three hundred 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:40.440 days a year traveling and speaking about Africa, chimpanzees, the environment, 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:45.080 and her other passions. Although good All sees the hideous 0:04:45.080 --> 0:04:47.240 parts of what humans are doing to our planet, she 0:04:47.279 --> 0:04:50.039 continues to be hopeful about our future. She wrote in 0:04:50.040 --> 0:04:53.839 a New York Times op ed in quote, the lust 0:04:53.880 --> 0:04:56.839 for greed and power has destroyed the beauty we inherited, 0:04:57.080 --> 0:05:01.159 but altruism, compassion, and love have not been destroyed. All 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:04.080 that is beautiful in humanity has not been destroyed. The 0:05:04.120 --> 0:05:06.880 beauty of our planet is not dead, but lying dormant, 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:09.400 like the seeds of a dead tree. We shall have 0:05:09.440 --> 0:05:13.440 another chance. In twenty nineteen, Goodall was nominated for the 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:16.360 Nobel Peace Prize. She was also included on the twenty 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:18.920 nineteen Time one hundred list of the one hundred most 0:05:18.920 --> 0:05:22.480 influential people in the world. We spoke via email with 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:25.120 the author of the petition to nominate Goodall for the prize, 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:29.159 one Myron Shekel, a research associate at Western Washington University's 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:33.080 Department of Anthropology. They said, I believe there's no better 0:05:33.160 --> 0:05:36.680 choice to receive the next Nobel Peace Prize. Civilization is 0:05:36.720 --> 0:05:40.520 today facing perhaps its grace challenge ever, the twin apocalyptic 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:44.840 threats of global climate change and biodiversity loss. Both are 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:47.559 caused by humans, and both are linked in that both 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:50.920 stem from human misuse of the environment. No one has 0:05:50.960 --> 0:05:53.320 ever done more or better work than Jane Goodall to 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:56.960 bring peace between humans and their environment and thereby create 0:05:57.000 --> 0:05:59.279 the conditions under which humans can be at peace with 0:05:59.279 --> 0:06:03.000 each other. Jane Goodall is the global face for Global Peace. 0:06:08.320 --> 0:06:10.919 Today's episode was written by Jesselyn Shields and produced by 0:06:10.960 --> 0:06:13.560 Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:15.960 Radio's How Stuff Works. For more on this and lots 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:18.800 of other topics that aren't monkeying around get it because 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:21.920 chimp serve apes, not monkeys, visit our home planet, how 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:24.640 stuff works dot com. 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