Dr Jane Goodall - From the archives, in her memory

0:05Hello and welcome back to the Travel Diaries podcast. I'm your host, Holly Rubenstein, and here each week I'll be speaking to a very special guest about the seven chapters in their life's travel diaries. From the first place that they fell in love with to their all-time favourite destination, their worst travel experience to what's at the top of their travel bucket list, we'll be uncovering their adventures around the world and the travel experiences and destinations that have shaped their lives. Well, I was so sad to hear of the passing of Dame Dr. Jane Goodall last week. A true legend to have joined me on the podcast.

0:46Jane was the world's most famous primatologist and conservationist whose groundbreaking work in Gombe in Africa redefined our understanding of chimpanzees and our connection to the natural world. At just 26, with no formal scientific training, she moved from England to Tanzania and began observing chimpanzees in the wild. Her discovery that they used tools to feed themselves changed science forever and propelled her to international fame. That study, still running today, remains the world's longest continuous wildlife research project. From there, Jane built a global movement, dedicating her life to protecting animals, ecosystems and inspiring future generations.

1:33She was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace and made a Dame of the British Empire. But beyond the accolades, she was a tireless advocate, travelling and teaching right up until the end. It was an ultimate honour to speak with her and in her memory, I'm re-releasing that conversation today. I hope her voice, full of humility and wisdom and hope, resonates with you as deeply as it did with me. Here are the travel diaries of Dame Dr. Jane Goodall.

2:06Dr. Jane Goodall, welcome to the travel diaries. Thank you so much for joining me today. How are you? Slightly weary because I have so many of these Zooms and Skypes and video messages. It doesn't stop. So I'm way busier than I used to be when I was travelling 300 days a year around the world lecturing. Really? So you'd be very in demand during this lockdown period, I'm sure. From all over the world. And the only good thing about it is I've reached hundreds of thousands of people in many different countries. That's fantastic. And as you say, you were travelling pre-COVID 300 days of every year.

2:45So travel must be immensely important to you. Well, it's only important as a method of getting from A to B and people say, you must love travelling. I do not love travelling because, you know, who could love waiting in lines at airports, being frisked, you know, getting up early, arriving late. No, I don't like the travelling part, but it's the only way I could do my lectures. Yes, yes, exactly. If it's just work, work, work, work work it's just not something you could possibly enjoy yeah you're working so hard still aren't you I mean this is an activism that started back in the mid 80s and really you've not really stopped since then have you no I haven't stopped at all just two weeks here and three weeks there twice um well I had one two week gap each year um one three week gap each year and then a few of 10 days, but mostly it was just two days, three days.

3:47In between, I would be back here where I am now in Bournemouth, which is the house I grew up in, where luckily I was when lockdown was imposed. Well, speaking of your childhood home then, that sounds like a good time to start your travel diaries because chapter one is your earliest childhood travel memory. Well, if you mean actual traveling, it was a car journey. and and I remember we went from Bournemouth to Cornwall in my uncle's car and all I remember about it is that we went through I can remember the country I can remember stopping for a picnic and I can remember seeing I was so excited to see a haystack you know in those days we had proper the haystacks.

4:33And it was quite far away. And every time we passed one, I wanted to go and collect one. I didn't realise how big they were. So finally, my uncle stopped the car. And he said to mum, he said, Oh, take her. And so we trudged across the fields. And I got to the haystack. And I pulled out one straw and burst into tears. And it was from such a young age, you've said, that you dreamed of living in the African bush among animals. So how did that dream come about? Because when I was growing up, it was wartime. There was no television, hadn't been invented. None of the modern gadgets that people communicate with today.

5:17So it was just, first of all, I loved animals from the time I was born. so I wanted to spend an awful lot of time out in the garden and on the cliffs above the sea but then we learned through books books books books and I loved books I loved reading and I read Dr. Doolittle the voyages of Dr. Doolittle the story of Dr. Doolittle I wanted to learn animal language then I read Tarzan Tarzan of the Apes when I was 10 and I think it was those two books that made me dream and I announced when I grow up I'm going to go to Africa and live with wild animals and write books about them and everybody laughed except my mother.

6:03She said well if you really want to do this you're going to have to work awfully hard, take advantage of every opportunity and then maybe if you don't give up you'll find a way. And that you did despite many obstacles not having any scientific qualifications at the time and your gender in what was obviously a male-dominated field. By your mid-twenties, you were living in Africa, living in the Tanzanian jungle. So for any of our listeners who don't know, can you tell us a bit about your assignment that led you there, how you ended up living and working there? Okay, well, first of all, I never lost my side of my dream.

6:40I left school, did super well, but no money for university, did a boring old secretarial course. opportunity came when a school friend invited me to Kenya for a holiday on her parents farm and I had to save up money working as a waitress because my secretarial job in London you couldn't save money and at home of course I didn't have to pay rent and finally got enough money I think it took five months or something and arrived in Kenya stayed with my friend and And somebody said, if you're interested in animals, you should meet Dr. Lewis Leakey, famous paleontologist. And so I went to see him. He was curator of the Natural History Museum.

7:24And I think he was impressed by how much I knew about African animals because I read every single book I could find. And he gave me this amazing opportunity to go and live with and learn from not just any animal, but the one most like us, the chimpanzee. I would have studied any animal, but he chose chimpanzees. And I wonder if I then might be able to guess what might be the first place that you fell in love with. Chapter two, is that Gombe? Gombe of then. Well, there were two, you know. Leakey took me on one of his expeditions onto the Serengeti plain searching for fossils. Place now very famous called Alderweigh Gorge.

8:07and as I hadn't been long out from England and on the Serengeti there were no people no tourists back then but all the animals and one evening I met a young male lion one evening it was a rhino and you know that was the Africa of my dreams so probably if I'm honest I would say that was the first place I really fell in love with but then of course Gombe when I got there I mean it's the rainforest and I've always loved woods and forests and very soon Gombe had found a very deep place in my heart because it was just me and the forest and the chimpanzees and it was a magical time in my life magical.

8:55Was it everything that you dreamed of as a child when you were sitting up in the trees in your garden in Bournemouth and picturing what you are reading about in these books well you know that what was more like my childhood dream was actually was Alderby and the lions and the rhinos and things and when I got to Gombe you know for for five months the chimpanzees ran away from me they'd never seen a white ape before and as I only had money for six months And I knew if I didn't, you know, gain their trust, it would be the end. So the early days were pretty frustrating. It was later, during the second or third year, when all the chimpanzees accepted me and I got to know them intimately as individuals.

9:44Then it was truly, truly magical. And it was even better than anything I dreamt of as a child. the thrill of those early physical interactions that we've seen footage of when they're touching you on the nose and you were tickling them those times when you were able to interact with them physically how do you reflect on those memories well when I watched the geographic documentary that's called Jane and I saw that early footage that moved me more more than any other documentary there being many but that one was so you know it showed material that doesn't go into most most films and took me right right back into my 26 year old skin and it was so nostalgic because those chimpanzees you know I I knew them so well and they were so familiar and I I loved them.

10:44David Greybeard and Melissa and Old Flo and Mike and Mr. McGregor. I mean, they were such amazing characters and it was so wonderful to be able to get to know them in that way. And, you know, of course, now we know we mustn't touch them. They can catch our diseases. We can catch theirs. But back then, there were basically, I think there were two other field studies in Africa. One was gorillas and one was baboons. And nobody had studied chimpanzees. And putting out bananas was accepted by everybody. It was very, very different. It was, you know, the very beginning of these kind of studies in the field.

11:31And it was magic. And of course, at that time, it was you who discovered the extent of their similarities to us as humans. I mean, that was you who found this out. Yes. I mean, David Greybeard showing me that they could use and make tools thought to be a uniquely human characteristics and then learning how their nonverbal communication, kissing, embracing, holding hands, patting one another, swaggering, you know, throwing rocks. And you can tell what that means without knowing anything about gyms because we do it too. It's the same. and then the horror of the fact that they have a dark brutal side and are capable of a kind of war and killing each other but also love compassion and altruism so did the similarities between us and them come as a shock or was that something that you'd anticipated no i anticipated you know there were a few people had watched chimps in zoos and quite clearly you can see even in a chimpanzee in a zoo you can see the resemblances to humans and there being one study of a group a captive group in actually in the Canary Islands by an Austrian I think he was Austrian psychologist and the other scientists back then poo-pooed what he said they said oh well those chimpanzees only behave like humans and they only use tools because they're in captivity and And human behavior has rubbed off on them.

13:07But I loved his books and I didn't believe that, his book rather. I didn't believe that. And so it didn't absolutely surprise me. But I knew that it would surprise the scientific world. So it was very exciting. I can absolutely imagine. You mentioned zoos. Having spent so much time with animals who are so free, how do you feel about zoos? Because they're still pretty commonplace. Well, there are some zoos. All zoos have got better. Well, I wouldn't say all, but in the UK and most of Europe and America, Canada, zoos have got, I mean, so, so much better. So a really good zoo, which has enough money to make proper enclosures, big ones, right social group, keepers who understand and care about the animals and understand their behavior.

14:01Zoos that put a lot of money into conservation of the animals in the wild and actually send their keepers out to take part in conservation work. and I know so many people who told me that their love of animals and their desire to protect them came because they went to a zoo and looked into a chimpanzee or a gorilla or an elephant's eyes. So zoos play a very important role but the bad zoos of which there are still too many need to be closed. But you know way back when I first got back from Gombe and the London Zoo was appalling and most zoos were pretty bad. That's when I started a program which is now accepted everywhere of enrichment because one of the biggest problems the animals face is boredom.

14:51They've got nothing to do and in those days with the little square cement cages it was dreadful so I invented tasks for them to perform to get their food so that they didn't just sit and it worked so well so very well now it's everywhere all zoos and was that work part of your institute in the roots and shoots programs it wasn't any such thing back then it was just me the institute didn't start till 1977 and roots and shoots didn't start till 1991 and tell me a bit about how the momentum then built from it being just you to then growing so exponentially into your institutes and the amazing work that they're doing around the world?

15:39Well, I was initially, I had to get grants every year for me to carry on with my work. And after I finally got my PhD, I was able to build up a little research station. And that, of course, needed more money, more grants and that was what that was very hard work and some friends in California said that they would create an institution that would help to raise money and not for profit so that people in America could put money in and get tax write-offs that was that was how it started that That was in 1977. And, you know, gradually that grew and we could reach more people and get more money. And then, I don't know, other countries wanted their own Jane Goodall Institute.

16:33First of all, of course, we wanted one in the UK, which is my country. And then we needed one in Tanzania, not for profit in Tanzania, where the chimps are. And it just, it grew. And then Roots and Shoots began when I was meeting so many young people who'd lost hope in the future because of what we've done to the planet. And they told me that we'd compromised their future and there was nothing they could do. Well, we have compromised their future. We've actually been stealing it. But I didn't believe there was nothing that could be done about it. I still believe we have a window of time. So Roots & Shoots began to help young people understand, and this is the main sort of motto of Roots & Shoots, every individual has a role to play, every individual matters, every individual makes an impact on the planet every single day and unless we're living in dire poverty we have the luxury of choosing what sort of impact we make.

17:42Even the very poor can choose to some extent so Roots and Shoots is a program where young people can choose themselves what they do but between them they must choose one project to help people one to help animals one to help the environment because everything's interrelated. Amazing so let's pause there and move on to chapter three of your travel diaries and that is a place where you learned the most about yourself. I think probably, you know, as I say, I grew up during World War II. And my mother, A, she'd been very extraordinary in supporting my desire to go to Africa when everybody else laughed.

18:25But I think it was pretty amazing that when my aunt and uncle moved out to Germany after the war, just after the war, he was in the section, the British section, because Germany was divided up into four sections overseen by, let's see, America did one, the US, we did one, Belgium did one, and I think the other was French. And they wrote to mom and said, we found a family who really want somebody to teach the children English. Most mothers wouldn't have let me go. I mean, in the war, I don't know if you can imagine it but just to hear the sound of a German voice and Hitler and all the newsreels that we saw and the Holocaust victims that we saw after the war I mean it was a place of horror but mum wanted me to understand that Nazi Germany and Hitler wasn't the German people and I think it was amazing that she let me go so while I was there I think I I think I learned a lot about myself and thinking about you know how the ordinary people in Germany were the same as I was and learning to think a different way than I had during the war so I think that you know that taught me that taught me an awful lot we're all similar yeah yeah and you know when I first went to Africa it was by boat because there weren't planes going back and forth then know just a few that you couldn't possibly afford and the boat went all the way around Cape Town the Suez Canal was closed during a war so the first African continent and country on which I set foot was South Africa in Cape Town right and it was so exciting there I was in Africa at last my dream coming true but then the boat was there for two days while it restocked and some friends of my of my grandmother said that they'd look after me for two days and take me around and show me sites and I kept seeing this writing on the backs of benches in the parks and the doors to the restaurants and everywhere and I said well in Afrikaans I said what does that mean white people only and I was so shocked my grandfather was a congregational minister I hadn't grown up to judge people by the color of their skin and I couldn't wait to leave Cape Town and so I think I learned a lot about myself there but you know that this was kind of ingrained in me without anybody teaching me the horror of apartheid.

21:18Yeah and that's just such a different experience to your time in Gombe isn't it I mean I recall the footage of your son learning Swahili fluently from a young age, from the locals and just being so immersed in the life there. Yes, well, you know, I don't think I learned so much about myself there because that was my dreams. I'd always known that, Jane. How about aloneness? Because being on your own seemed to have been a part of your life there at the start. It was. And I'd always loved being alone. You know, when I was a child living here in this house, there was my favorite tree in the garden.

21:59I loved beach so much. I wrote out a will for my grandmother to sign, leaving it to me. And I used to spend hours up in the top of beach and then another tall fir tree. I mean, literally hours. I would take books up there and I'd be alone with the birds and the rustling wind. And so, and I used to spend ages with my dog out on the cliffs alone. So I'd always loved being alone. And being alone is very different from being lonely. Yes. So you're more likely to be lonely in a city surrounded by people you don't know than out in the natural world where you've got the birds and the monkeys and the insects and the trees.

22:46I mean, to me, trees are like people. Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. I have to say that during this time, during lockdown, being among the trees has been very soothing. Yeah. I'm sure you've been asked this many times, but do you prefer spending time with animals over humans? It depends. It depends on the animal and the human. I mean, there's some animals I much prefer over some humans and some humans I much prefer over some animals. So it just depends. How about when you were out there, did the chimps offer you the same feeling of relationships, of relating that could in any way compare?

23:29No, it didn't compare. I've spent a lot of time trying to think, you know, what the relationship actually was. And I don't have a word for it. I mean, they were, I don't think of them as animals. I think of them as other beings. They're not like family, although I knew them like family. They're not like friends, human friends. But there isn't, I've never found a way of describing really my relationship with them in terms that people could understand. It was just something intangibly magical. Intangibly magical. But I mean, when you come to real closeness with animals, then every time I'm going for a dog, dogs can be your best friend.

24:18Dogs offer you unconditional love and loyalty. And they're just, I mean, I just find dogs absolutely love. I love them. Yeah, yeah. The chimpanzees, I don't love in the same way at all. I respect them. I admire them. I like some of them I dislike others you know it's such personalities and there have just been a few dogs I don't like but by and large I love dogs. You were there to understand the relationship between chimp behavior and human behavior so what was the most important thing that they taught you? Well, I found that in chimp society, like human society, you get good mothers and bad mothers.

25:08I learned from the years of watching the chimpanzee families that the best mothers are those just like my mother who support their offspring. and even if they're a subordinate female and their child gets into a squabble with the child of a more dominant female the good mother will run in to defend her child and rescue her child even though it's pretty obvious she's going to get beaten up by the mother of the other child so it looking back over our 60 years of records it's pretty clear that the offspring of the supportive mothers do better as they grow up. And the males tend to reach a higher rank and probably sow more offspring.

25:59And that's now about to be proved. And the females make better and more successful mothers. And I think that the first couple of years of life in the human family are incredibly important for a human child. It doesn't have to be the biological mother. But the child needs to be surrounded by two or three adults who are consistently there to support that child. And that gives the child a feeling of security. So people said to me when I was raising my son, oh, he's going to be so dependent on you, you know, because I wasn't away from him for a single night until he was three. and I breastfed him till he was one and he slept in the bed and I was with him well I was with the chimps half the day and half the day with him but of course he hasn't grown up to be clinging and dependent he's very independent as I had known he would be because the chimps were.

27:05How does he when you speak about it reflect on his time growing up there? Well he just loved the lake and fishing and He didn't like the chimps at all. No, not surprised. Really? He didn't like the chimps? No, because chimps have been known to kill and eat human babies, just like humans kill and eat chimpanzees. No difference, really, is there? Yeah, we're much more dangerous than they are. Yeah, of course. Think what we do to each other. Think of what we do to the animal world. Think of our intensive farms. And once, you know, when I went to Cambridge, the professors, or not all of them, but most of them, told me that I shouldn't have given the chimpanzees names, they should have had numbers, and I couldn't talk about their personalities, their minds, or their emotions, because they said those are unique to us.

27:54Well, my dog, as a child, Rusty, had taught me that wasn't true. And chimpanzees, luckily, are so like us biologically that we share 98.6 % of our DNA with them. So along with that information, plus my writing about their behavior, my observations, and Hugo van Laugue, my photographer, filmmaker, husband, his film, science had to move away from that reductionist way of thinking. And now, you know, we know about the intelligence of pigs, We know about the intelligence of the octopus. We know how intelligent birds can be. And it's a whole new field for students. It's very exciting. And I credit the chimpanzees with helping me to change scientific attitude.

28:49And gradually this is spilling over, especially through roots and shoots, into the population at large. So when you think if you eat meat and you buy meat from one of these factory farms, A, the cruelty, B, the terrible conditions, C, the unbelievably bad impact on the environment, and D, every single one of those tortured animals is an individual with its own life and its own personality and emotions. Then you start thinking differently. Oh, goodness. Yeah. So at what age did you come to that conclusion? Were you a vegetarian from a young age? Oh, no. Well, we sort of grew up eating meat, but not much.

29:36I mean, in the war, we had one tiny joint a week and that had to last, you know. Yeah, different times. Gluttony for meat that's growing up around the world. So I never ate much meat, but I never knew about factory farms because we didn't have them in the UK when I went to Gombe. When I got back from Gombe, I think it was the late 60s, something like that, mid, I can't remember. And I read Peter Singer's book called Animal Liberation, which talked about factory farms. I was utterly shocked. I couldn't believe it. I had pictures of the pigs and the cows and how they were treated as objects without any feelings.

30:21And so the next time I saw meat on my plate, I thought this symbolizes fear, pain, death. The last time I ever ate meat. Yeah, something for all of us to reflect on. So over the last few years, there's been a really rapid growth in luxury wildlife travel. countries like Rwanda come to mind with the gorillas prime example where has really impressed you well you you just need to check out the safari company that you decide to go with and their record because more and more of the companies are making sure that some of the proceeds go to local people and help their clients to actually see how local people live and there's a big difference in the different safari companies so you know anywhere you go with a good company is going to help is first of all it brings foreign exchange in which makes the central government happy then it can provide employment for local people, you know, those who are in their hotels or the safari camps.

31:41And it also gives people an opportunity to see wildlife and once they've seen it, experienced it in the right way, they're going to want to help. So that's one of the downsides of the pandemic. Tourism has virtually stopped and that's meant that national parks, for example, can't pale their rangers and so poaching has gone way up in many places partly local people who've lost their jobs and are starving they want to go and shoot something to eat it and partly because there's less fewer rangers and so the international cartels who are trafficking animals who are the real villains in the piece they're coming in with greater freedom for elephant tusks rhino horns and so on it's devastating isn't it yes what can be done i mean we just have to hope that we can begin to travel again and choose wisely as to where we go and how we can support with our tourist yes that's right and there's just been a big conference of the different rangers and people wanting to support the rangers and you know some wealthy people can help to keep the ranger force employed even during the the time when there's fewer tourists and so that's one of the things that's happening let's move on now to chapter four which is your all-time favorite destination well you know it's almost impossible I mean my favorite memories are Gombe in the old days not no question so when you say Gombe in the old days what's it like now how's it changed Well, right now there aren't any tourists, but tourists were coming in.

33:26There's new rules and regulations. You're not supposed to go too near the chimps. You're supposed to wear a mask. I mean, it's a totally different relationship. I still love going to Gombe but what I love most when I'm in Gombe is to be off on my own in the forest with or without the chimps and being now 86 I mean I consider myself pretty jolly fit but I'm not going to climb up to the tops of the hills anymore like I used to and so if the chimps are down low where I can go there's usually tourists there and that for me is it's not the same no so how about now what are your other favorite places to visit well i love going to nebraska at the time of the sandhill cranes migration because you get millions of birds coming in to roost on the platte river and as they fly in against the glorious sunsets there in um in nebraska and it's like it's very a feeling of old i mean the the cranes are very ancient birds and my friend photographer Tom Mangelson has a cabin and every year some of us go to the cabin for about a week and just enjoy this ancient spectacle of these sandhill cranes and the snow geese and other water birds coming in in their thousands and thousands onto the Great Platte River.

34:58That's a wonderful place to go. But then any rainforest, I was just in an amazingly beautiful rainforest in Malaysia. And, you know, I've been lucky enough to spend time, not much, but time in many, many beautiful places around the world. So it's difficult for me to pick on one special place now, really. Of course, it's such a tough decision for all my guests, actually. So let's move on to chapter five. That is your hidden gem, a place that you love that my listeners might not know that much about. Yes, a place where your listeners wouldn't know and which may not be there much longer, sadly. But it's a hidden spot in Tanzania, kind of in the middle of nowhere, and a long trip in a Land Rover.

35:50And there's a secret, we call it the hippo pool. There's a little trickle of water coming down a rocky face. And somehow it gathers up in this series of pools. There are three of them. and they're surrounded by old trees, and it moves down into a wetland. And so here in the middle of, I don't know, sort of nothing, is a little ecosystem with wildlife. When I was there, there were elephants, there were rainers, there were lions, and the hippos. The hippos are very special because there's who we call a hippo whisperer. And in this little village nearby, one person is appointed as a guardian of the hippos.

36:41It dates way back. And it's usually from father to son, father to son. And I went, I was by the pool and this Yahya came and he started talking to the hippos. The hippos had just been doing hippo things. And when he came and started talking, they all put their heads out. And they all slept still and they all listened to him. Wow. It was complete. And it's very beautiful when the evening light comes through the trees. The water gleams green and it's very quiet and hushed. And I've been there twice and once was with two of my grandchildren. And it's just an incredibly special place and we have tried to save it.

37:26But, you know, it's off the beaten track. It would cost a lot to get the road repaired. And also with climate change, I just fear desperately that that little trickle will dry up. There's a small group of people. My eldest grandson was supposed to be going there to see what was going on. Got some money to work with the local people. But, you know, with the government, the Tanzanian government, they control everything. and they want some of the land to develop to grow to grow crops and things like that so the situation is it's very very difficult and again I think it's one of those places that I'll have to keep in my memory it's called Tendaguru and it's got one of the best sites for fossil dinosaurs in the whole of Africa really right there near it yes and there was a lot of interest in it and we did a film if people watch a film called Jane's Journey which I think is I think it's on Netflix I'm not sure there's a beautiful sequence of the hippo pool really beautiful oh I have to check that out definitely so in contrast then chapter six is your worst travel experience where would that be well I remember two or three places in the U.S.

38:53that were by its stockyards and hog farms. And certainly in one of them, the wind was in the wrong direction. And the stench was, it was just so utterly, utterly shocking. And you had to keep all the windows closed. And I would never, ever, ever want to go back there. Lubbock, Texas. Poor people living there. I couldn't bear to go back there. But also I don't think I could bear to go back to Auschwitz and see the place where so many millions of Jews were tortured and put to death, the death camp. It was a very, very moving experience. I knew I had to do it because the photographs of the survivors of the Holocaust at the end of the war, these living skeletons, haunted me and really helped me understand human evil.

39:54I was only 10. And so I always have known I needed to go there and see for myself. And I'm very glad I did. But I wouldn't want to go back. No. And also, you know, I've been in Burundi and Rwanda and Cambodia where all these, you know, we said at the end of World War II, never again. But unfortunately, genocide has been happening almost nonstop in different parts of the world ever since. And seeing some of those places is pretty shocking. Is that something that's been a feature in your activist work? I think it's underlying a lot of things and certainly, you know, one reason why I am so pushing for this, the values of Roots & Shoots about, you know, being one human family and that that's more important than the color of skin or religion or, you know, because it's so desperate now that we learn to live with each other.

41:02other as well as living with with nature and we're just destroying nature and we're destroying each other and it just seems that we go on and on doing it and never learning and so yes that is part of what keeps me going and I will fight it as long as I live. Yeah there's no retirement in the offing from the sounds of it. No and I mean you know my body will I mean right now I'm not traveling because I can't but once I can I will but the time will come when I can't for different reasons than a lockdown for physical reasons as long as my brain continues active I will go on writing and doing things like talking to you and podcasts and zooms and skypes and all the rest of it that's wonderful so when you reflect back on your life's work so many incredible achievements and changes that you've helped to make what do you consider to be your greatest legacy well I think there are two I think one is definitely roots and shoots because nothing will stop that now I mean it's growing all the time and it's changing lives I've the number of people have written to me or said to me you know joining Roots and Shoots changed my entire life.

42:22That's amazing. And so Roots and Shoots is definitely going to be a part of my legacy forever. And the other one which is just as important is helping people think differently about animals that they're not just unfeeling things that they're sentient beings capable of feeling pain and fear and despair, joy and sorrow grief anger and and um all the rest of it and that i i could only have done with the help of the chimpanzees so those two things i think yeah are probably the most important so we're on to the final chapter of your travel diaries and that is what is left at the top of your travel bucket list?

43:09Well, if you'd asked me this 15 years ago, I could have given you probably one or two names, like going to, I wanted, I don't know why, but I wanted to go to East Timor. I wanted to go to various places, which I know I couldn't go to now because it's train is too difficult. So I've crossed them off, you know, I'll never get there. But one place I would really not want to, but need to go to is Haiti because of the bad rap it's had and how it's been abandoned and how the people have been starving and hopeless. And on the other side of that mountain range on this little island is the Dominican Republic, which is green and lush and the people are wealthy.

43:58It's just horrible. So I need to go there. So that's the place I need to go and I keep trying to get there. but you know the next journey that will be I don't know it might be it could be I hope it will be the most meaningful of my entire life is dying when you die it's either nothingness in which case well it's nothingness but if there is something beyond this life, which I honestly believe for various reasons, then can you think of a more exciting journey than finding out what that is, that something, and where you will go, and what will happen? I mean, to me, it's really exciting thought. And I think what we fear isn't death, so much as dying, is the act of dying.

44:56Will we die in terrible pain? Will we have a dreadful cancer, where we become, you know, bedridden and a burden on everybody. And that's, that's a horrible thing to think about. But actually, death itself, I don't know, I find it completely fascinating to think about. How incredible. So it doesn't frighten you? Not a bit. You know, I've had experiences which make me feel pretty sure that there is something beyond this life. really talk about life after death and I say well it's life after life well Dr Jane those were your travel diaries thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us today it's been such an honor I think my travel diaries are probably very different from anybody else's they are they are but they couldn't have been any more wonderful so thank you so much

45:56wow hearing that the final chapter now is incredibly poignant it feels obviously even more profound what an extraordinary and beautiful perspective on death and what an extraordinary woman that was dame dr jane goodall and it was the greatest honor to share that conversation with her. And thank you so much for tuning in today. Next week, I'll be joined by Eugene Levy of Schitt's Creek and Reluctant Traveller fame. Come and follow me on Instagram and TikTok to find out more. I'm at Holly Rubenstein. I'd love to hear from you. If you can't wait until then, remember there's the first 15 seasons to catch up on.

46:37That's over 160 episodes to keep you busy. If you enjoyed today's episode, leaving a rating and review makes all the difference. It helps other people to discover the podcast. Remember that all the destinations mentioned by my guests are included here on the episode show notes and on my website, thetraveldiariespodcast.com. Until next week, everyone, take care, safe travels. I'll see you on Tuesday.

47:10Thank you.