Jane Goodall

0:28Every business starts with an idea. One of the most admired people in the world is Dr. Jane Goodall. About 60 years ago, she moved to Africa to study chimpanzees, and what she learned revolutionized our understanding of what non-humans can do. Today, she's devoting herself to inspiring young people around the world to do much more to protect the climate and the environment for animals in Africa and all over the world. I had a chance to sit down with Dr. Jane Goodall recently and learned firsthand why this woman, 89 years old, is still so admired and dedicated to helping make the planet a better place.

1:05So thank you very much for coming here. And we're going to go through a lot of what you've done and the things that make you so popular. But on your last name, that kind of describes everything, Good All. So you ever thought of changing the good for all because you're doing so many other things or great all? or? We do have on our website good for all news, which is because I truly believe that the media, we need to know the doom and the gloom. We do. But why don't they give more time to the amazing people, wonderful projects around the world that you read and people will say, wow, they did that.

1:46Well, we could do it too. Okay. Well, you're inspired a lot of people. No doubt a lot of people here have read about what you've done. Let's go through how this came about the outset. So you grew up in London or in England. England. England. And when you're one year old, you read a, you were given a book or something about chimpanzees. Is that true? It was my father, who I really didn't know because it was just before World War II. And he joined up as soon as war was declared. But he gave me a stuffed chimpanzee jubilee. He was named for the first chimpanzee born in the London Zoo in the jubilee of Queen George and Mary I suppose and I took him everywhere with me but people had the misapprehension that because of that I studied chimpanzees.

2:37It wasn't true. The chimpanzee interest began, you know, I finally saved up money. I had to be a waitress. We had no money in my family and we couldn't even afford university. So I did this boring old secretarial course. Then I got invited to Kenya by a school friend, and so I worked as a waitress to save up the fare. And so I would have studied any animal. I was 10 years old when my dream was, I'll go to Africa, live with wild animals, and write books about them. Why? Because I was in love with Tarzan. But... But you did that at 10 years old. So you told your mother you'd like to go to Africa and see the chimpanzees.

3:26And what did she say? Not the chimpanzees. I would have studied anything. Well, what did your mother say to anything? My mother, I attribute a great deal of who I am and what I've done to the wise way that she brought me up. She was supportive. So when I said I wanted to go to Africa, everybody laughed at me. How will you do that? Africa's far away, you don't have money, it's dangerous, and you're just a girl. Remember, this is going back 70 years now. My mother said, if you really want to do this, you're going to have to work really hard, take advantage of every opportunity, and if you don't give up, hopefully you find a way.

4:06So you saved your money, and you told your parents you're really going to Africa. They didn't say, well, that was nice to talk about it, but you really can't do it. They really didn't care if you went. Is that right? Well, my father was out of it. He was still, you know, away. They divorced. Right. And that was my mother. And, you know, she just said, well, stick with it if you want to do it. And do you know how many people have written to me and said, Jane, I want to thank you. Because you did it, I can do it too. Okay. So you did this at the age of 23. You go to, how did you pick which part of Africa?

4:40How did you get to Tanzania, for example? Well, because my friends' parents had bought a farm in Kenya. And while I was there, I met the famous paleontologist Louis Leakey. And he gave me this opportunity to go and study not just any animal, but the one most like us, chimpanzee. I would have studied a mouse if I could be out in the African booth. So Louis Leakey was the famous paleontologist who more or less came up with a theory that humans pretty much evolved out of southern Africa. Yeah. And he was famous for that. And did you get to know him? Very well, because, you know, I told you I had to do that boring secretarial course.

5:21When I heard about Louis Leakey and went to see him, his secretary had just left and he needed a secretary. There I was. So I'm right now surrounded by people who can answer all my questions about the animals and the birds and everything. So at one point, you said, I really want to go live with the chimpanzees. No, I didn't. Okay. As I said, you didn't say that, right? What did you say? I told him I really wanted to study animals. Okay. And for some reason, although I hadn't been to college, he believed that I could do what he'd been looking for someone for 10 years, he told me, to go and study not just any animal, but our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees.

6:07Okay. So he said, okay, eventually, how long had you worked for him before he said you could do this? A year. A year. So he said, okay, you're going to do this. But did he just give you guidance or tell you where to go? No, he didn't have money. So it took him a year to get the money. Tanzania, where the chimps were and are, was still part of the British protectorate. And the authorities, the British authorities said, we won't take responsibility for this young girl. But Leakey never gave up. So in the end, they said, yes, but she can't come alone. So who volunteered? That same amazing, supportive mother.

6:48Your mother came with you to Africa to study the chimpanzees. Well, she didn't do the study. She looked after the camp. Okay. All right. So when you eventually, you do get there to live with the chimpanzees, you're supposed to live with them. Is that right? Live with them and learn from them. But do you get a tent or something? A tent. You had a tent. So were they dangerous? I mean, weren't you worried they might attack you? Well, you know, for me, we had an old ex-army tent, mom and I, between us. no nice sewn-in groundsheet and mosquito windows, nothing like that. And I would go happily up into the mountains every morning following my dream.

7:29Mum would be left in the camp, and if you wanted air in that tent, you rolled up the side flaps and tied them with tape, and in came air, but also scorpions, spiders, snakes, which I didn't mind about, but poor mum. I mean... So you set up a tent, and how did you engage the chimpanzees? How did you kind of get close to them? How did you not worry about their attacking you? How did you befriend them? With great difficulty. For four months. I remember I had money for six months. For four of those months, they ran away as soon as they saw me. And, you know, I knew given time that I could win their trust.

8:14but did I have the time? The days turned to weeks turned to months. And it was wonderful because what mom did, she boosted my morale. She said, Jane, you found that peak. And with your binoculars, you're seeing how chimps wander around by themselves in small groups, big groups, when there's a new food available. You're learning about the calls they make, the foods they eat, how they make nests at night. And so she really helped to boost my morale. Right. So you weren't trained as a scientist. No. So you used your powers of observation to see what they were doing? Yes. And my inborn love of animals, my curiosity, my fascination.

8:57Leakey told me nothing. He never even visited Gombe. So when you go to see the chimpanzees, you first engage them. Do you give them some food or something to kind of befriend them? No. No, I just tried to get them used to me. and eventually, and it was very sad, it was just two weeks after mom left that I saw this one famous chimpanzee, very handsome. I called him David Graybeard. He was the first one to lose his fear. And on this special day, I saw him using grass stems to fish termites from their nest. Hey, does it get lonely out there? Just you and the chimpanzees? There's no cell phones, there's no anything.

9:38Did it get lonely? We didn't have lab computers at that time. Lonely. All day, what did you do? All day, just look at the chimpanzees, try to get close to them? Tried to get close. When possible, I watched them with my binoculars. Sometimes I stayed out. If they nested, I would go back to have supper with Mom. Then I would go back up so that I could be near them in the morning. And I was scared of leopards. Back then, we had leopards at Gombe. and I would hear them at night when I was up there alone with my little blanket. And I would hear the leopard's hunting sound and I'd think, pull that blanket over my head.

10:21So did you ever say to yourself, how did I get myself into this? Or do you always say, I'm glad I'm doing this? No, I was following my dream. They were the best days of my life.

10:38This 2025 event series will examine how companies are investing in their businesses to create efficiencies, innovating their products and services, and improving the customer experience. This series is presented by Invesco QQQ. Register at BloombergLive.com slash Future Investor Houston. That's BloombergLive.com slash Future Investor Houston. So eventually you go back to Dr. Leakey and you give him a report on what you've learned. And in that report, you kind of changed the perception around the world of chimpanzees because people thought at that time, as I understand it, that chimpanzees are not capable of making tools.

11:18Only humans could do that. Right. And you discovered that they make tools for what purpose? Fishing for termites, crumpling leaves to get water from a hollow in a tree that they can't reach with their lips. Did you ever eat the termites yourself? Were they tasty? Well, I had to eat one just to say I'd done so. No. So after you gave your report to Dr. Leakey, he, I guess, sent it to somebody, and people said, how can this woman, not trained as a scientist, come up with a discovery that we famous scientists didn't know about? Is that the essence of the problem? They were extremely arrogant, most of them.

11:56And, you know, they were saying things like, well, she's just a girl. She's straight out from England. Why should we believe her? One of them even said maybe she taught the chimps to use tools, which as they were running away at the time was... So eventually National Geographic decides to get a photographer to come over? Yeah, the National Geographic came after Leakey approached them and they said, we will fund Jane's research after the six months money. Now, National Geographic came over and was able to get people to interested in this because of what reason? This is what the scientists said.

12:35The scientists said, oh, well, you know, the Geographic's giving her money because they can put her on the cover because she's got nice legs. So if that would happen today, there'd be a lawsuit. And that's right. Back then, I just thought, well, I mean, it was a different world back then. And I thought, well, if my legs have got me the money to do what I want to do, which is bloody, thank you legs.

13:08So, well, NASA Geographic sent the photographer over. they took the pictures, it became a famous article, and then you became pretty well known. Did you decide to go back to England and do something else then, get your PhD? No, Leakey wrote to me and said, I picked you because you had not been to university and your brain wasn't, you know, cluttered up with the very arrogant way scientists treated animals back then as mere things. But he said, now I want you to be respected by other scientists, so you must get a degree. But we don't have time for an undergraduate degree. I've got you a place in Cambridge University in England to do a PhD in ethology.

13:58Well, I didn't know what ethology meant, the study in behavior. So you skipped the undergraduate part and you got a PhD. And I was very, very nervous. You can imagine, I'd never been to college. And just imagine what I felt like when I was told by the scientists, well, first of all, you shouldn't have given the chimpanzees names. If you're a proper scientist, you give them numbers. Then they said, you can't talk about their personalities, their minds, or their emotions. Those are unique to us. They also said, you must not have empathy with your subjects, because a good scientist is objective, and if you have empathy, you can't be objective, which is rubbish.

14:46So, you got your PhD. Did you say, now I'm going to teach at Cambridge, or did you decide to go back to Africa? Oh, I was going back in between because I was still learning. We're still learning after 63 years. Now, chimpanzees, you discovered, actually are not quite as nice as you wanted them to be. They kill each other from time to time. Is that right? They have the males are territorial. And if they see an individual from a neighboring community, communities at Gombe are about 50. And that individual will probably die. And when you, let's say, go away, go back to England, come back, they recognize you?

15:23Oh, yeah. And how do they befriend you? When you come back and they like you, do they bring you a gift or they bring you something? I never wanted that kind of relationship. Diane Fossey with the gorillas, she did. But I wanted to, like looking through a window, I wanted to watch the behavior as it is without me being in the picture. Hey, so for many years you're living in Africa, no electricity, no cell phones, no television, none of the important things you need in life to get by, right? No, they're not important at all. Okay. So, like, obviously they can talk to each other, but is it possible that humans can convey some type of language to chimpanzees or teach them how to add?

16:11wasn't that whatever you were working on at one point, teaching them how to addition or words? And how did that work? Well, I never have, but chimpanzees have been taught sign language, and they can learn up to about 700 words that deaf people use. And from that, you can learn fascinating things. Like, for example, some chimpanzees love to paint or draw. Not all of them, and these are captive ones, of course. but one young chimpanzee, she was four years old, and she used to film her page with lovely lines of different colors, and on this occasion she made a drawing like that, and so her teacher handed the paper back and signed, finish.

16:56So the chimpanzee looked at it and handed it back and said, finished. And so this went on about two times. And then the teacher had the brains to say, what is it? And the chimpanzee signed back a ball. Well, a human, if doing a ball would do a ball, right? What's the chimp done? The bouts. And that gives you a whole new feeling of looking at the world through the eyes of a chimp. She's drawing the movement. Wow. So why do you think people are so fascinated by what you have achieved in your life? I mean, when you were doing this, you didn't do this for world acclaim. You were doing it because you were interested in it.

17:43But it turns out the world is fascinated by what you've done with your life. Why do you think that is? Is that people love chimpanzees or like the dedication you've shown, or they just admire your courage to do this? Why do you think you're so beloved? I think you should ask somebody else. I don't think that's okay. All right, well, here's for... You know, I mean, yeah, yeah. I mean, some people are fascinated by the chimps, basically children. Some people love it that I was a woman. I think of myself as a human. I don't care about the male-female bit. Oh, really? Okay, so you think a man could have done this better than you did this?

18:19No. Well, there are amazing male people studying apes, but it just happened. that was me. What would you like young girls to learn about what they can do and how would you suggest they follow what you've done? Well, I would say that they all should be told what my mother told me. If there's something you really want to do, then you have to work really hard, take advantage of every opportunity. And if you don't give up, hopefully you find a way. But for all of us, it's the main message of Roots and Shoemers, which by the way, I didn't tell you. It's now in 68 countries around the world. We have members.

19:04We have members in kindergarten, even a few in preschool, but kindergarten, university, and more and more adults, like the staff of a big corporation, like senior citizens. And the main message is every single one of us makes some impact on the planet every single day, and we get to choose what impact do we make. So have you ever been to Washington, D.C.? Do you go there much? Oh, I've done so much lobbying there. Okay. Right now I haven't been doing any lobbying. So do you find meeting with members of Congress uplifting or not so much? Depends who I meet. Most of your life, you devoted to the study of chimpanzees to make sure that they're better understood and better appreciated.

19:55But in recent years, you created an institute, the Jane Goodall Institute. And what is that designed to do? Well, that started in 1977. By then, I had a little research station and four of my students were kidnapped and everything shut down. And so some friends of mine said, well, let's start an institute so that this research can carry on. Bless them. So that was 1977. And it was set up to study, conserve chimpanzees and other animals and educate. And it's developed since then. So it's, you know, we've got 27 Jane Goodall institutes around the world. world. And then I realized at some point that people living, the African people living in and around chimpanzee habitats right across Africa were struggling to survive.

20:58There was crippling poverty, lack of health and education, moving deeper into the forest, being exposed to diseases like Ebola and HIV from the chimpanzees and vice versa. And I suddenly, it hit me. If we don't help these people to find ways of making a living without destroying their environment, we can't, conservation won't work. So you've devoted a large part of the Goodall Institute to climate change and conservation. Is that right? Yes, absolutely. Well, right now, I mean, you know, we face these two existential threats, don't we? Climate change, which has changed weather patterns all around the world.

21:43We had the flooding yesterday, you know, day before yesterday. and then loss of biodiversity. And what people don't realize, we are not only part of the natural world, even though with our cell phones and virtual reality, we feel divorced from nature, but we depend on it for food, water, clothing, everything. But what we depend on is healthy ecosystems. And an ecosystem is this magical mix of plants and animals, each one with a role to play. So if you think of it as a beautiful tapestry, every time a species goes from that tapestry, it's like pulling a thread until the tapestry hangs in tatters.

22:28And then the ecosystem will collapse. And it's happening. You have a fairly exhausting schedule. You're going from event to event. But how frequently do you get back to Africa? Every couple of weeks you're back there now? Twice a year because my family is there partly and because I need to go to Gombe. but we also have a big sanctuary for orphan chimps in Congo. We have another one in South Africa. There's one that we basically are involved with in Uganda. And I need to go back there. I need to, you know, give support to the staff there. Gombe, I go back and luckily my family, my grandchildren can come with me, so it's time.

23:08But if you go back to Gombe now and you want to look for some chimpanzees, would you find some that already knew you? And would they recognize you still? There is just one mother and her daughter that I knew. And, you know, since I only go back like three or four days at Gombe at a time, I don't know the new ones. I don't know the children and the young ones. But the Gremlin, I knew intimately. You are, public information, 89 years old. Is that right? 89, yeah. 89, okay. There's a lot of people when they turn 89, they want to kind of chill out a little bit. and relax, maybe spend time with the grandkids or something, great grandkids.

23:50You're not slowing down any at all. You're not sitting on the beach anywhere, going to Palm Beach or something. Well, how can I? Because, you know, this may sound weird to you, but I truly feel that I was put on this planet with a mission. And right now the mission is to give people hope because if you don't have hope, you give up. You become apathetic and do nothing. and then we're doomed. If our young people give up, we're doomed. So, you know, okay, so I don't know how many years I have left, but when I was young, I had this time, and now I'm coming up towards whenever the end is. Could be one year, could be five years, could be 10, could be 20.

24:33I don't know, but I'm getting closer. And so I have to speed up because there is so much I still have to do. Thanks for listening. To hear more of my interviews, you can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen.