Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren vocal Bomb here. Some people just don't quit. It's
Speaker 1: okay to quit occasionally it's best to. But let Dr
Speaker 1: Jane Goodall be an example to us all. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: have a far fetched dream, and instead of dismissing it,
Speaker 1: you do it anyway. And when you've achieved what you
Speaker 1: set out to do, just when you're at the top
Speaker 1: of your game, your dream might change based on what
Speaker 1: you've learned along the way. Your new dream is bigger
Speaker 1: and more difficult to realize, but you do it anyway,
Speaker 1: repeat into old age and never slowing down, and you
Speaker 1: might even get nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. The
Speaker 1: key to doctor Goodall's persistence seems to have a lot
Speaker 1: to do with knowing what she liked from a very
Speaker 1: young age and then just insisting on doing it. Her
Speaker 1: father gave her a stuffed chimpanzee when she was a baby,
Speaker 1: and she took it with her everywhere, even though it
Speaker 1: was by all accounts terrifying. She grew up loving to
Speaker 1: observe in catalog animals and dreamed of one day living
Speaker 1: with African animals and dating books about them. For a living.
Speaker 1: Her mother, who was a novelist herself, told Goodall that
Speaker 1: that seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea, even though it
Speaker 1: was the nineteen forties and not at all but middle
Speaker 1: class English girls were expected to do. After she finished school,
Speaker 1: Goodall couldn't afford to go to college, so she worked
Speaker 1: odd jobs in London for a few years until a
Speaker 1: friend invited her to visit her family's farm in Kenya,
Speaker 1: at which point Goodall immediately quit her job and waited
Speaker 1: tables until she made enough money to pay for the
Speaker 1: price of boat fair to Africa. While in Kenya, her
Speaker 1: friends suggested she contacted the paleontologist Louis Leakey, curator of
Speaker 1: the Corindin Museum in Nairobi, to discuss primates. A Leaky
Speaker 1: was interested in studying primate behavior in order to better
Speaker 1: understand early human species. Leaky hired Goodall as his field
Speaker 1: assistant on a paleontological dig and later asked her to
Speaker 1: return to England to research primates and raise money for
Speaker 1: a long term observational study on wild chimpanzees at the
Speaker 1: gum Bay Stream at National Park in Tanzania. In July
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty six, year old Jane good All began
Speaker 1: setting up her field station at Gombe, which would become
Speaker 1: the site of the longest running wildlife research project in history.
Speaker 1: British authorities initially balked at the idea of a young
Speaker 1: woman doing this kind of work on chaperone, so Goodall's
Speaker 1: mother Van accompanied her for the first few months. Goodall
Speaker 1: observed the chimpanzees daily for two years before she earned
Speaker 1: their trust. Her method was just to watch the animals
Speaker 1: and imitate their actions, recording everything that happened in a
Speaker 1: field journal. Two of Goodall's most important discoveries during this
Speaker 1: period had to do with what chimps ate and how
Speaker 1: they went about getting food. Goodall was the first to
Speaker 1: observe chimpanzees killing and eating the meat of small mammals.
Speaker 1: Prior to this, they were thought to be vegetarian, and
Speaker 1: perhaps her biggest contribution to our understanding of primates was
Speaker 1: the revelation that chimps used collected and modified grass stems
Speaker 1: and sticks as tools to fish termites out of their nests.
Speaker 1: Goodall's discoveries were so significant Leaky said, now we must
Speaker 1: redefine tool, redefine man, and he arranged for her to
Speaker 1: write a dissertation at Cambridge University on the behaviors of
Speaker 1: wild chimpanzees. It was accepted, and she became one of
Speaker 1: only eight people ever to graduate from Cambridge with her
Speaker 1: PhD without first earning her undergraduate degree. In nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: Goodall married hu Van Lawick, a Dutch wildlife photographer who
Speaker 1: Leaky sent to record her activity in the field. They
Speaker 1: had a son in nineteen sixty seven, who spent his
Speaker 1: early life with his parents at Gombay. After Goodall in
Speaker 1: Lawick divorced in nineteen seventy four, Goodall married Derek Bryson
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy five, who was the director of Tanzania's
Speaker 1: National Parks. During this time, Goodall published books about her
Speaker 1: experiences in research at Goombay, including In the Shadow of Man,
Speaker 1: which was criticized by scientists because of Goodall's habit of
Speaker 1: naming the subjects of her research. She called her most
Speaker 1: famous studies subject David Graybeard, but the book was wildly
Speaker 1: popular and has since been translated into forty eight languages.
Speaker 1: As she lived and worked in Gombay, she began to
Speaker 1: notice changes to the chimpanzees habitat deforestation and mining practices
Speaker 1: forced the animals out of their homes and into smaller
Speaker 1: and smaller areas. More than one million wild chimpanzees lived
Speaker 1: in Africa a hundred years ago, but today only a
Speaker 1: fifth of that population exists. Goodall saw the writing on
Speaker 1: the wall, which is why in the nineteen eighties, good
Speaker 1: All changed her focus from observing chimps to working to
Speaker 1: protect their habitat. She founded the Jane Goodall Institute in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven, which works to keep human communities and
Speaker 1: wild chimpanzee populations in Africa healthy and coexisting peacefully. Roots
Speaker 1: and shoots as a program to empower young people worldwide
Speaker 1: to make a difference in their local communities. Now, at
Speaker 1: the age of eighty five, Goodall spends about three hundred
Speaker 1: days a year traveling and speaking about Africa, chimpanzees, the environment,
Speaker 1: and her other passions. Although good All sees the hideous
Speaker 1: parts of what humans are doing to our planet, she
Speaker 1: continues to be hopeful about our future. She wrote in
Speaker 1: a New York Times op ed in quote, the lust
Speaker 1: for greed and power has destroyed the beauty we inherited,
Speaker 1: but altruism, compassion, and love have not been destroyed. All
Speaker 1: that is beautiful in humanity has not been destroyed. The
Speaker 1: beauty of our planet is not dead, but lying dormant,
Speaker 1: like the seeds of a dead tree. We shall have
Speaker 1: another chance. In twenty nineteen, Goodall was nominated for the
Speaker 1: Nobel Peace Prize. She was also included on the twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen Time one hundred list of the one hundred most
Speaker 1: influential people in the world. We spoke via email with
Speaker 1: the author of the petition to nominate Goodall for the prize,
Speaker 1: one Myron Shekel, a research associate at Western Washington University's
Speaker 1: Department of Anthropology. They said, I believe there's no better
Speaker 1: choice to receive the next Nobel Peace Prize. Civilization is
Speaker 1: today facing perhaps its grace challenge ever, the twin apocalyptic
Speaker 1: threats of global climate change and biodiversity loss. Both are
Speaker 1: caused by humans, and both are linked in that both
Speaker 1: stem from human misuse of the environment. No one has
Speaker 1: ever done more or better work than Jane Goodall to
Speaker 1: bring peace between humans and their environment and thereby create
Speaker 1: the conditions under which humans can be at peace with
Speaker 1: each other. Jane Goodall is the global face for Global Peace.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Jesselyn Shields and produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio's How Stuff Works. For more on this and lots
Speaker 1: of other topics that aren't monkeying around get it because
Speaker 1: chimp serve apes, not monkeys, visit our home planet, how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. And for more podcasts for my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.