Jane Goodall on Optimism, Hope and Conservation

28:59And I think it's somehow tied in with dyslexia. I don't know. I mean, there's so much we don't know about the brain. I mean, I really tried. I really tried with French and I just didn't work. And I got fairly good at Kiswahili and Tanzania, but never fluent. And so it's just something I can't do. When you're talking about face blindness, does that extend to your own family? So your son or your husband's? Oh, no, no, no, no, it doesn't. But my sister has it. Whereas mum, she could recognise somebody and she'd only seen them for 10 minutes. It's very funny. Fascinating. So if you were to see me tomorrow, would you have any sense?

29:41You wouldn't know my name, but would you remember that we'd done this podcast interview? You just couldn't connect it to me? Yes, I would remember your name. I'm quite good at names. But if I study your face, I'm now studying your face, by the way. Oh, thank you. I honestly feel rather honored. I feel like one of those Tanzanian chimpanzees. Right. Well, I'm very good at faces, but terrible at names. So together we could be the perfect human. That's right. Absolutely. I'm interested that we have started talking about school and failure at school because you are now in your late 80s, but I do think that failure at school stays with us in many ways throughout our lives.

30:24It feels very, very formative. Was school a happy place for you, or how did you feel about it? Well, I was actually really good. I mean, I always came either second or third in exams. Number one, she was what we called a SWOT. Nobody liked her much, but she always came first. And then Chloe, my friend, and I shared second and third together, you know, one second, one third. So actually, I did really well at school. That first failure was an advantage, it turned out. And I passed all my exams. I got what in those days was called matriculation exemption. We don't have that anymore. It was before A-levels and things.

31:05We had school certificate and higher certificate. And I did super well in all of them. So I certainly qualified for university, but you had to be good at languages to get a scholarship. That wasn't so. But, you know, it all worked out for the best, even that. At the time, though, did you feel resentful about that, that you couldn't go to university because you were bad at languages? No, not at all. I didn't want to go to university. I never wanted to be a scientist. I wanted to be a naturalist. I wanted to be out in the field with animals. What's the difference between a scientist and a naturalist?

31:42Well, I think a scientist goes to prove a theory and a naturalist has an open mind and is ready to learn from the wonder of the natural world. You talked about your mother earlier and how influential she was. And I hadn't realised until it came to the research for this interview that she wrote that she was a writer. How influential do you think she was in terms of teaching about the power of storytelling? Well, she wasn't. I mean, she's always described as an author. She did two books, one that Lewis Leakey wanted her to do, and one which was a novel based on my life. She wasn't really an author.

32:23I mean, those were the two. But storytelling is, I think, our Welsh blood. And, you know, storytelling has just always been, and then before the days of television and before the days of social media, we sat around and we talked and we told the stories and we laughed and we had fun. All, most of that's gone from most families now. It's really a tragedy. No, that's a failure of society, that we no longer have those close family bonds. We no longer have the power of imagination. I fell in love with Tarzan when I read Tarzan of the Apes. And so just after the war, when films came back to England, mom saved up and took me to see one of the early Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films.

33:11And after 10 minutes or so, I burst into loud tears. She had to take me out. She said, what's the problem? I said, but that wasn't Tarzan. So before all this television came, you had your own picture. Your imagination created it. Now for children, it's all out there. Is imagination a uniquely human thing or do other species have it? I think chimpanzees do. You know, there are certain stories, anecdotes. Scientists hate anecdotes. I think you learn more from anecdotes than almost anything else because you get an idea of what an animal is capable of. And why is it not scientific? Just because you only see it once.

33:53It's still a fact. Yes, I love that. What about friendships? Because I know that that's quite an undervalued area of study in science. But what evidence is there of friendships in chimpanzees and indeed other species that you've observed? Oh, I would say friendship is really, really important. It's a useful trait because if you're good friends, you help each other. And that's always important. So these smart male chimpanzees will actually choose. We call them an ally. They spend a lot of time grooming each other. They travel together. But if you have an ally, then you're much more likely to climb the hierarchy because you don't tackle a higher ranking male unless your ally is there and then you attack him together.

34:40But it's friendship. And we see it in so many other animals. I mean, dogs can be friends. There was one dog and for two weeks, the owners couldn't think why he kept taking his food and running off with it. And his friend, another dog, had fallen into a sort of pit. And eventually they followed him and rescued this dog. He'd been feeding the dog, his friend. And dogs can grieve when their friend dies and stop eating. Because it sounds with the dog example, that's a friendship that has evolved into a friendship of choice whereas the chimpanzee example it feels like an alliance of necessity so do you think there are different gradations of friendship yeah and there are chimpanzees who travel around together for no obvious reason you could call them friends in fact one of the most lovely friendships that I ever observed was between a young chimpanzee who had a rather sad life.

35:44Her mother was a loner. Her older brother was off with the mail. So she was a very lonely little infant. And she made this extraordinary friendship with a young baboon. So when her mother was anywhere near the baboon troop, she and this baboon would lead the, well, she, her mother, and the baboon, the troop, and they'd play and they'd groom each other. It was charming. And there's no other word for that except friendship. Do you have good friends? Oh, fantastic friends. That's what I've missed during the pandemic. I consume with them and it's not the same. Let's get on to your second failure, which is your failure to convince your boards of the value of your Roots and Shoots programme for many years.

36:30Okay. So first of all, tell us what Roots and Shoots is. Back in the late 1980s when I was traveling around giving lectures I kept meeting young people who even back then had lost hope and they were angry they were depressed or they were just apathetic and I talked to them and they more or less said the same this is in all the different countries around the world well our future's been compromised and there's nothing we can do about it. So we have compromised the future of our young people. In fact, for years and years and years, we've been stealing it as we destroy their future, as we destroy the natural world.

37:09But was it too late? Was there nothing they could do? That I didn't agree with. So Roots & Toots began with 12 high school students who were in Tanzania, and they were concerned about why wasn't the government doing something about illegal dynamite fishing that was destroying the coral reefs? Why wasn't the government prosecuting poachers in the national parks? Why was the nobody worrying about street children with no homes? Why was it allowed for people to throw stones at stray dogs? They had all these different worries, all 12 of them. So I told them to get their friends together and we had a meeting.

37:46And from this, Roots and Shoots was born with the main message, every single one of us makes an impact every single day and we get to choose. And because I'd learned about the interconnection of everything in the rainforest, we decided every group would choose between them three projects. And they would choose. They weren't told. A project helped people. A project helped animals. A project helped the environment. And that program is now in 65 countries and growing. It's got hundreds and thousands of young people from kindergarten, university, everything in between. more and more adults wanting to form groups like the staff of a big corporation.

38:30And it's my greatest hope for the future because they choose their projects, they're passionate about them, they roll up their sleeves and they take action. It's all about taking action to make the world a better place. So why on earth didn't your boards get behind it from the off? Oh, because it's nothing to do where he had to save chimpanzees. It was just so narrow-minded. It was like if I had a meeting with someone who was trying to make life better for, one example was cows. She was passionate about cows and anti-dairy farming. And I wasn't meant to be at that meeting, but I was, and I was sitting next to her.

39:10And I said something that I'd just given a talk to Compassion in World Farming. And she said, oh, I thought you only cared about chimpanzees. And she wrote out a check for$15 ,000. So I said to my board, I said, well, you see, because I cared about cows, here's this money. Are you grateful? It was the same with Roots & Shoots. It wasn't about chimpanzees. How did you convince them? Oh, gradually we got the right people aboard. And, you know, right now, every single one of 24 Jane Goodall institutes around the world, Roots and Shoots, is a major programme everywhere. And it's gained so much support around the world.

39:54Everybody, you know, loves it. I have to say, I looked at the website for Roots and Shoots and it's very impressive and so easy to use and so quick. And it has lots of free resources for anyone who wants to get involved and do something that they are passionate about. For you, Jane, is it satisfying proving people wrong? Depends who the person is. I mean, there are some people that I think it's wonderful to prove them wrong, even though they won't always accept it. I'm thinking of a certain president of a certain country whose name I will not say. Good for you. But in terms of showing the boards who didn't think that Roots and Shoots was a goer, is it satisfying now the success of that initiative?

40:45I'm very, very happy about the success, but those board members have long since vanished. Got rid of them. Yeah, they've gone. And we now have a fabulous team. I mean, the biggest JGI is US. That's where so much money comes from. And it's where I spent an awful lot of time in the geographics there and so on. Disney. Roots and Shoots is so important to the whole organisation. Do you feel that what you do is a mission that you have been given by some greater power. So I have to feel that because when I look back over my life, you know, these opportunities that came, I could have gone a different way, but I didn't.

41:27And looking back, it almost seems as though one thing led to another, led to another, led to another. In this pattern where now through Roots & Shoots, we are changing the world. Will you tell us about your experience in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Yeah, that was amazing. It was going through a difficult time in my life. And I'd always wanted to go into Notre Dame. I think reading Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And I went by myself and it was quite early in the morning. And as I went in, the sun just shone through that beautiful rose window, which luckily didn't get hurt in the recent fire.

42:10And as I was marveling at this light coming through and illuminating this beautiful old cathedral, the organ suddenly burst into Bach, Toccata and Fugue in G minor. There was actually a wedding I discovered later, but anyway, you couldn't see it. It was just the music. And it just came over me, the amazing people and the skill that had gone into building this extraordinary cathedral with none of the modern technology that builders have. And the numbers of people who'd been involved in creating Bach, because it's somebody marrying somebody, marrying somebody, marrying somebody. And if they hadn't, Bach wouldn't have existed.

42:53And at that same moment of the sound and the beauty coming together, there was me. So I felt at that point, this cannot be chance. There has to be something behind all of this. There's so many scientists today, top scientists, who have all agreed there is intelligence behind the creation of the universe. Well, I recently read an article on panpsychism, which I hadn't come across before, which is the idea that you can understand matter through being rather than doing. because the issue with physics is that it only understands matter through what it does. So you can only apply that retrospectively.

43:37But if you think that everything on this earth has some sort of consciousness or instinct, then its role here is to be the best version of itself, the most you-est you that you can be. And it really appealed to me, that idea that we all exist at levels of consciousness and then somewhere at the highest point, there's a level of consciousness and we can give it any name we want. We can call it God or we can call it a higher power. But I love this idea that science and spirituality are hopefully merging. Yeah, they are. I think they actually are because it's less likely now that if you talk about the spiritual connection in the forest, it's less likely that you'll immediately be branded as a tree hugger, which used to be the case.

44:23So things are changing and this is a whole new realm. I think what's important to me is that science will never, never understand everything. They never will. And there's that air of mystery and we go on learning and we go on finding out new things. But, you know, there's another phrase in the Bible, now we see through a glass darkly, then face to face. So hopefully one day all will be explained, the wonder and the magic and the mystery. Has that belief in something greater given you a sense of peace with life and also with life ending? Oh yes, absolutely. In fact, two answers to that. One, if I'm really, really tired and I've just got to face a huge auditorium of people, I just stop thinking about the lecture and open my mind.

45:17And those are the best lectures I've ever given. Sometimes that's frightening. I've actually been out there and heard my voice speaking. I have to quickly stop that. That's one. And then two is, you know, when we die, well, either there's nothing, which is fine, or there's something. I happen to believe there's something from various experiences I've had. And I can't think of a more exciting adventure than finding out what that something is. May I ask you what those experiences are that you've had? Well, after my second husband, Derek, died, and I was in Gombe by myself, sort of being out in the forest, coming to terms with grief.

46:00Derek came to me in a dream, perhaps. I don't know. But it was so vivid. And he was happy. And he was telling me things. And I knew it was really important. I had to write this down. So I was reaching out for the light to write down what he'd been telling me. And everything went, it was like fainting, you know, that roaring in your ears. So I couldn't write anything down. And then finally it went away. And I thought, I can still remember some of what he said. And again, when I tried to write it down, that roaring. And I spoke to a medium about it. My grandmother had been to her when her husband died.

46:41And she wasn't working anymore, but I told her what had happened. And she said, oh, Jane, if it happens again, don't try to move. She said, my husband came and I got out of bed to write it down. And I went into a coma and luckily somebody found me in the morning. And I said, what do you think it was? She said, well, I think that they're speaking from a different level of existence, a different plane. And if you try and do something about it, your spirit is, I don't know, she explained it probably a bit better than that. some connection that you don't make till you're dead. Yes, some portal. How astonishing.

47:21And this was your second husband, Derek, who, I'm so sorry, who died of cancer less than five years after you married him. It must have been awful. It was. I'm glad you had that connection with him, that extraordinary experience. I mean, I hope I'm not overstepping. It shows the magnitude of your love that it could cross these earthly boundaries. Yeah. There was another strange thing. Just after he died, I had this very strong feeling. His spirit is still around, but it doesn't see the world the way we do. But there were things he loved, like the ocean. And so I would think, well, if I really concentrate and take this into myself, he will see it through my eyes.

48:04It was a strange feeling. I've never heard anybody else talking like that. How beautiful. Has Rusty ever come to you? No. Well, I hope he's waiting for you somewhere, Jane. Oh, I'm sure he is. I'm quite sure. And David Graveyard. Yes.

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49:53Your final failure, it's quite a step change after what we've been talking about because your final failure is your failure to keep up with correspondence, which I think will be so highly relatable to so many people. But you, Jane, must get thousands of emails and requests. And how do you manage that? Have you just made a decision now that you can't answer everything and you have to be OK with that? Well, some of the stuff is answered by my institutes. They used to write, you know, with love from Jane. I said, don't you dare do that. that is absolutely unacceptable. I will not have anybody writing something and putting my name to it.

50:33Oh, I thought you objected to the with love. No, no, no. I'm happy with the love. With love, it's the name. Yes. It's got to be from me to be genuine. I don't like something that's not genuine. So that doesn't happen anymore. But they answer the normal stuff and they send me the sort of special letters and I try to answer the special letters. I've got thousands of unanswered ancient emails, but it takes so long to delete them. There's a photograph, so you want to save the photograph. I don't know. I do worry about it, but I know that that's silly because I cannot do it all. So I try to do the most important ones.

51:13And then what happens is I put them aside because I really want to think about them and then they get lost in the deluge that comes afterwards. So it's a failure. I can't organise my correspondence. But hopefully people listening to this, if you have had an email or letter that has gone unreplied from Jane Goodall, you will know that it's actually very meaningful. It's a very meaningful one that she's put aside to think about. But do you feel guilt over that? When I discover an email that I should have answered that was really important, Yes, of course I feel guilt. Do you ever feel misplaced guilt, that you feel like you've done something wrong even though you probably haven't?

51:52I expect so. I can't think of an example, but I must have. It's one of those human emotions that, again, I wonder if other animals experience. That sense of internalised shame that you haven't called your mother or you haven't made the most of your life opportunities. Do you think other animals have that? Well, dogs do, but whether that's because we've taught them, I don't know. But my sister had a dog called Crispin and he was a lurcher. So he was a thief, but he knew that stealing was wrong. So normally if he'd been left alone in the house for a while and Judy came back, he'd all be bouncing out, wagging his tail and all the rest of it.

52:32If he didn't appear, Judy knew that he'd done something wrong. And she went and what he would do, the food he'd stolen, them, he would put on a chair and lie on it. He never ate it. What a character. I know. He couldn't resist stealing it. Though, you know, none of our dogs have been beaten, but just scolded. But they don't like that. We live in an age of 24 hour communication and a lot of social media and a lot of living our lives for external approbation. What do you think of all of that in terms of what it does to us? Well, I think it's terrible for children. They're children who, you know, they're out in a beautiful place and they're not looking, they're not listening to the birds, they're not looking at the flowers and the trees, they're texting with their friends.

53:30And I've seen a little child of three and he was being pushed along in, you know, one of these little chairs and he was in this beautiful place and the light was glorious and he was just looking at videos. That's a real tragedy and very dangerous because we need nature. And have you ever fallen into that trap yourself? I mean, you mentioned that we all have been forced to live much more online through the pandemic, but do you ever feel that you're being sort of sucked into some sort of addictive screen time that is not good for you? Or are you very boundaried about it? Yeah, I mean, I don't have a cell phone.

54:09I've refused because I won't be doing all this texting all the time and WhatsAppping and I don't do any of that. I do have a Facebook page and a blog, but I don't do them. They're done for me. So the only time I'm on the screen like this is when I'm doing an interview or dealing with my emails. You don't have a cell phone? No. I've got one of the very old clamshell ones. I don't even know its number, but I take it when I'm traveling so that if I get stuck at an airport, I can call somebody. Honestly, I love hearing that. We've spoken about your career and I'm also very aware that you're a mother and a grandmother.

54:52Do you think you are a good mother and grandmother? Not really, although my grandchildren say I'm a wonderful grandmother because I help them start projects and they're very grateful. And my granddaughter got her university fees, but I haven't been able to spend that much time with them. I think I was a jolly good mother to my son because for the first three years of his life, I was never away even one single night. He was always with me and we did things together. And do you think that's the secret to good parenting? I think the key thing is when a child is small, between up to two or three, what's really important is that there's a tiny circle, could be just one person, better to be two or three, who are always there for them, who are supporting them, who they can rely on.

55:40Then the other thing is to support the child like my mother supported me. And I see so many mothers who, well, we don't want our child to do this. She wants to do that, but we think it's better. She support the child in what the child wants. And if it wants something really stupid, be pretty sure that that child will grow out of it and try and turn in a more sensible direction. But that's what gives the child confidence to be supported. And my mother and my grandmother and my mum's sister, they were all really supportive. I mentioned in the introduction that you have many, many admirers, some of whom are very, very famous.

56:20Who is the most impressive, famous person you've ever met? Oh, goodness. I wouldn't call him a friend, but somebody that I was on hugging terms with was President Gorbachev. Really? Yes. I only met him three times, but he knew who I was. And I just have such respect for the way that he changed the Soviet Union. He's very upset now, by the way. I've met lots and lots of famous people. Leonardo DiCaprio is passionate about the environment. He is really passionate about the environment. And he is a real friend. So you answer his emails? As I answer his emails, he doesn't always answer mine immediately.

57:03But when he's not acting, when he's not on a set, I get them by return, his answers. So, yeah. How lovely. And are you ever intimidated by anyone? I was intimidated in the early days meeting scientists who were working in labs with chimps and treating them cruelly and that sort of thing. It was very intimidating. And that's where I was glad to get a PhD. So as I never did an undergraduate, when I wrote The Chimpanzees of Gombe, Patterns of Behavior, a great big book of the first 15 years of research, I had to teach myself all that I would have learned as an undergraduate. it. So then I felt able to face these people in the labs.

57:45But there again, not attacking them, not telling them how cruel they are, but showing them pictures and talking about the way they behave in the wild. And you can see they haven't thought like that. You can see their eyes turning in. And I truly think people have to change from within. And it's no good attacking the brain, because they're not going to listen. They don't want you to be seen to be challenging them. But if you tell a story that reaches the heart, that's different. And I was talking to a CEO the other day of a big international corporation. And he said, Jane, over the last eight years, I've really been working to make my corporation ethical along the supply chain, where I get the products from, the communities there, treating everyone fairly, the way we treat our customers in the main office.

58:35For three reasons. One, I've seen the writing on the wall. I see that we're using up natural resources too fast and they can't go on because they're finite. Secondly, consumer pressure. People are beginning to understand the harm that certain products have inflicted on the environment. Food is cheap. Why? Because of unfair wages or because of cruelty to animals. So consumer pressure is making business change because they don't want to buy those products anymore. But he said the thing that really tipped me over was my little girl, eight years old, coming back from school one day and saying, Daddy, they tell me that what you're doing is harming the environment.

59:14That's not true, is it, Daddy? Because it's my planet. The power of young people to change the world, it's astonishing. If there is someone listening to this podcast right now who is feeling hopeless, what one thing would you like to say to them or would you like them to know? I would like them to know, first of all, that although they may feel helpless and hopeless in the face of the huge problems that the world is facing, well, what you do may not seem important, but do it and get some people to help you do it. Maybe it's clearing up litter. Maybe it's raising money for the blind. Maybe whatever, whatever is your passion.

59:57And when you work at that, you'll find you've made a difference and that'll make you feel good. And when you feel good, you want to feel better. So you do more. And we're told think globally, act locally, but no, because if you think globally, you get depressed, but act locally, Feel good about it. Know that other people all around the world are doing the same thing. And then you dare think globally. But to mention Ukraine, I grew up in World War II. And I would say it was almost a year that Britain was the only European country that had been neither defeated nor capitulated. And it was hopeless.

1:00:32I mean, England wasn't prepared for war. We didn't have a good army. We didn't have a good navy. We had brave young men flying those little planes, getting killed by the score, including my uncle. But we had Churchill. And Churchill may not have made always the right decisions. But what he did was to rouse the indomitable spirit of the humans in Britain so that the spirit was, we will not give in, we will not be defeated. That's exactly the same in Ukraine now. And in fact, the current president and the previous president both quoted Churchill. It's very impressive when you get those individuals who can rouse the rest of us.

1:01:13And for me, you are one of them, Jane Goodall. You really, really are. Can I end by asking you, you're going to turn 90 in two years. Are you going to have a big party? Well, I'm absolutely positive, COVID permitting, that I will be given a big party, whether I like it or not. And probably not just one. well there is so much to celebrate and i know how busy you are and i'm so grateful that you've made the time to talk to me today it's an overused word but you are an inspiration and can i just ask will you get jubilee back oh yes oh good oh yes eventually i will good that's made me relieved dr jane goodall thank you so much for coming on how to fail well it was a pleasure thank you Elizabeth.

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