Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum Here. But despite how it may feel, sometimes
Speaker 1: there are a lot of kind, curious and scientifically savvy
Speaker 1: people out there in the world working for good Today,
Speaker 1: we wanted to profile one of them, a doctor Jane Goodall,
Speaker 1: whose persistence pushed her through red tape, discrimination, baseless critics,
Speaker 1: and even the results of her own research, causing her
Speaker 1: to totally reshape her goals. A key to Jane Goodall's
Speaker 1: persistence seems to have a lot to do with knowing
Speaker 1: what she liked from a very young age and then
Speaker 1: just insisting on doing it. She was born in London
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty four. Her father gave her a stuffed
Speaker 1: chimpanzee when she was a baby, and she took it
Speaker 1: with her everywhere, even though it was by all accounts
Speaker 1: terrifying looking. She grew up love to observe in catalog
Speaker 1: animals and dreamed of one day living with African animals
Speaker 1: and writing books about them for a living. Her mother,
Speaker 1: who was a novelist herself, told Goodall that seemed like
Speaker 1: a perfectly reasonable idea, even though it was the nineteen
Speaker 1: forties and not at all what middle class English girls
Speaker 1: were expected to do. After she finished school, Goodall couldn't
Speaker 1: afford to go to college, so she worked odd jobs
Speaker 1: in London for a few years until a friend invited
Speaker 1: her to visit her family's farm in Kenya, at which
Speaker 1: point Goodall put everything else on hold and waited tables
Speaker 1: until she made enough money to pay for the price
Speaker 1: of the boat fare to Africa. A while in Kenya,
Speaker 1: her friend suggested that she contact the paleontologist Lewis Leaky,
Speaker 1: the curator of what's now the National Museum of Kenya,
Speaker 1: in order to discuss primates. Leaki was interested in studying
Speaker 1: primate behavior in order to better understand early human species.
Speaker 1: He wound up hiring Goodall as his field assistant on
Speaker 1: a dig, and later asked her to return to England
Speaker 1: to research primates and raise money for a long term
Speaker 1: observational study on wild chimpanzees at the Gombe Stream National
Speaker 1: Park in Tanzania. So in July nineteen sixty, twenty six
Speaker 1: year old Jane began setting up her field station at Gambay,
Speaker 1: which would become the site of the longest running wildlife
Speaker 1: research project in history. British authorities initially bulked at the
Speaker 1: idea of a young woman doing this kind of work
Speaker 1: on chaperone, so Goodall's mother accompanied her for the first
Speaker 1: few months. Goodall observed the chimpanzees daily for two years
Speaker 1: before she earned their trust. Her method was to just
Speaker 1: watch the animals and imitate their actions, recording everything that
Speaker 1: happened in a field journal. Two of Goodall's most important
Speaker 1: discoveries during this period had to do with what chimps
Speaker 1: eight and how they went about getting food. The Goodall
Speaker 1: was the first to observe chimpanzees killing and eating's small mammals.
Speaker 1: Prior to this, they were thought to be vegetarian. She
Speaker 1: also made the revolutionary observation that chimps collected and then
Speaker 1: modified grass stems and sticks as tools to fish termites
Speaker 1: out of their nests. It was the first time a
Speaker 1: non human animal had been observed making and using tools,
Speaker 1: and it prompted science to reconsider what it means to
Speaker 1: be human in the first place. Goodall's discoveries were so
Speaker 1: significant that Leaky arranged for her to write a dissertation
Speaker 1: at Cambridge University on the behaviors of wild chimpanzees. It
Speaker 1: was accepted and she became one of only eight people
Speaker 1: ever to graduate from Cambridge with her PhD without first
Speaker 1: earning an undergraduate degree. In nineteen sixty four, Goodall married
Speaker 1: a Dutch wildlife photographer by the name of Hugo Van Lavic.
Speaker 1: Their son, Hugo Eric Lewis, affectionately nicknamed Grubb, was born
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty seven and spent his early life with
Speaker 1: his parents at Gombay. After Goodall and Lavik divorced in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, she married a member of Tanzania's parliament,
Speaker 1: Derek Bryson, in nineteen seventy five. During this time, Goodall
Speaker 1: published books about her experiences and research at Gambay, including
Speaker 1: In the Shadow of Man, which was criticized by scientists
Speaker 1: because of Goodell's practice of naming the subjects of her
Speaker 1: research instead of referring to them by number, which was
Speaker 1: and mostly still is the scientific norm. In an effort
Speaker 1: to avoid anthropomorphizing one's animal subjects, she called her most
Speaker 1: famous study subject David Graybeard, but the book was wildly
Speaker 1: popular and has since been translated into at least forty
Speaker 1: eight languages. As she lived and worked in Gombay, she
Speaker 1: began to notice changes to the chimpanzee's habitat. Deforestation and
Speaker 1: mining practices forced the animals out of their homes and
Speaker 1: into smaller and smaller areas. More than a million wild
Speaker 1: chimpanzees lived in Africa one hundred years ago, but today
Speaker 1: only a fifth of that population exists. Goodall saw the
Speaker 1: riding on the wall, which is why in the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties she changed her focus from observing chimps to working
Speaker 1: to protect their habitat. She founded the Jane Goodall Institute
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy seven, which works to keep human communities
Speaker 1: and wild chimpanzee populations in Africa both healthy and coexisting peacefully.
Speaker 1: Another program of Hers Roots and Shoots helps empower young
Speaker 1: people worldwide to make a difference in their local communities.
Speaker 1: Having just turned ninety years old in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: Goodall still spends about three hundred days a year traveling
Speaker 1: and speaking about Africa, chimpanzees, the environment, reducing poverty, and
Speaker 1: her other passions. In twenty nineteen, she was nominated for
Speaker 1: the Nobel Peace Prize. Although Goodall sees with open eyes
Speaker 1: the harm that we humans are doing to our planet,
Speaker 1: she continues to be hopeful about our future, she told
Speaker 1: The New York Times in seventeen quote, the lust for
Speaker 1: greed and power has destroyed the beauty we inherited. But altruism, compassion,
Speaker 1: and love have not been destroyed. All that is beautiful
Speaker 1: in humanity has not been destroyed. The beauty of our
Speaker 1: planet is not dead, but lying dormant, like the seeds
Speaker 1: of a dead tree. We shall have another chance. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is based on the article Jane Goodall, a Global
Speaker 1: Face for Globalpeace on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Jesslynshields.
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is production by Heart Radio in partnership with
Speaker 1: how Stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
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