- [Narrator] Support for "Overheard with Evan Smith" comes from HillCo Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy, Claire and Carl Stuart, Christine and Philip Dial, Eller Group, specializing in crisis management, litigation, and public affairs communication.

www.ellergroup.com.

Diane Land and Steve Adler, and Karey and Chris Oddo - I'm Evan Smith.

She's a trailblazing ethologist and legendary conservationist who began studying wild chimpanzees in Africa 65 years ago.

Her work isn't done yet.

She's Dr.

Jane Goodall.

This is "Overheard."

(uplifting music) A platform and a voice is a powerful thing.

You really turn the conversation around about what leadership should be about.

Are we blowing this?

Are we doing the thing we shouldn't be doing by giving in to the attention junkie?

As an industry, we have an obligation to hold ourselves to the same standards that we hold everybody else.

This is "Overheard."

(audience applauding) Dr.

Goodall, what an honor to have you here.

- Well, thank you for inviting me.

- Well, I mean, it's amazing.

I have to say, you know, there aren't many people we've had the opportunity to talk to who have accomplished as much as you have.

You turned 91 1/2 years old.

(audience clapping) I want to say that your schedule is so vigorous.

It would be vigorous for anybody, but you have maintained an extraordinary amount of activity.

- Well, it has to get more because, being 91 1/2, I've got less time ahead of me.

I've got a message I think is important, so I have to speed up.

- Yeah.

But you're obviously motivated by the world around you to keep working.

And I just wonder if you would say a few words about what it is exactly that keeps you on the road.

You're on the road right now.

You do a lot of lectures and public appearances, and you visit with audiences of folks, like this one.

You're continuing to do it.

What is it that is motivating you to keep at it?

- Well, you, you have to admit, we're going through pretty dark times, politically, socially, environmentally.

And, you know, I care very passionately about the environment, the animals in it.

I care passionately about children.

We have one here, down here in the front.

I've got grandchildren, and probably soon I'll have great-grandchildren.

And if we don't change the way that we're treating the environment together now, then the outlook for the future generations is grim.

So I just have to keep going.

And the more it seems that there's a pressure pushing you back, the more I put on my fighting spirit and say I won't give up.

I won't give into them.

I won't bow down.

I'll fight harder.

(audience clapping) - I will observe that, logically, fighting for the environment should not be controversial.

- It shouldn't be, but unfortunately- - But in certain quarters these days, it is actually controversial to speak out on behalf of the environment, to speak up for addressing climate change, to even acknowledging that climate change is real.

What a moment we're in.

- It's unbelievable.

And the more that that happens, the more I will speak out for it.

And particularly for young people, we have a program for youth, the Jane Goodall Institute.

It's now in 76 countries and growing.

For all ages, preschool, university.

And they're all understanding that every single day we live, every single one of us makes some impact on the planet, and we can choose what sort of impact we make.

- Right.

- And they choose projects to help people, to help animals, to help the environment.

Then they roll up their sleeves and take action.

- Yeah.

This program is called Roots.

- Roots & Shoots.

- & Shoots.

And I want to talk about that in a little bit.

And I wanna understand a little bit more about your motivation for that.

Because what these kids are doing, again, whatever age they are, is they're protecting the future from the present, which is something that we all need to be doing, not just in this area.

- Absolutely.

- But in a lot of other areas.

Stay with this idea of the moment we're in.

Science used to not be controversial.

Science is now controversial.

You've spent your life in science, you've spent your life inspiring others to get into this work.

We're at a point now where we can't even count on the fact that people have faith and confidence in science.

It's not just climate change, but it's science of all kinds.

How did we get to this point?

- I don't know.

But you know, there's also the danger that in some areas, science has been misused and it's the false data being proclaimed in order to protect somebody's views, which are not real scientific views after all.

- Well, that's not science, that's politics.

- That's right.

- Yeah.

- But I mean, you know, there's so much fake news around today, what are people to believe?

- Right.

And social media hasn't helped.

- No, it hasn't.

- Right?

- It can.

Social media can be incredibly helpful.

So I can get a message that normally, if say could give to a room like this, now that message can just go everywhere, thanks to social media.

- Right, but in terms of the misinformation you're talking about.

- Yeah.

- That people are willing to believe, gullible enough to believe.

- Well, some people haven't been educated to understand what's fake and what isn't.

It's not their fault.

If you are kind of brainwashed in school to believe this is true, when, in fact, it's not, how are you supposed to react?

- Yeah.

And you consider yourself part of the group that is educating us, all of us, about what is real and what is not real?

- Yeah, well, I can assure you that every single thing I say is as true to the facts as I can make it.

And I have never said anything that I don't believe is 100% true.

- Yeah.

You put yourself out front last year before the election in November here, but it was really at a time when there were a number of elections about to happen around the world.

- [Jane] Oh, yeah.

- And you said, "I am going to be part of a Vote for Nature campaign."

You talked about this all year last year, and you said it's really important, regardless of where you are or who you are, that you as a voter support candidates who are committed to protecting the environment.

- Yes, that's right.

And, you know, it didn't work, but... - Yeah, I was gonna ask you, how'd that work out for you?

- It didn't.

- Right.

Didn't actually work out.

And so what are the consequences of that?

I mean, just said straight away, if you put people in office who have the ability to affect the lives of all of us through the policies that they promote, and those policies don't align with a view that nature matters and that this stuff is important to all of us, what do we do about that?

- Well, what's happened is, in many countries where certain people are elected into power, they have introduced bills that underwrite bills that were put in to protect the environment.

Like in this country, I know many of the nature reserves have been opened up to mining and logging.

- Right.

And there've been significant cuts at the federal level that went to research, right?

- Yes.

- That supported programs that support the environment or that gave groups that were working on many of these issues we're talking about the ability to do the work that they were doing.

That money is now gone.

In fact, the Jane Goodall Institute, as I understand it, as a consequence of the cuts to USAID, you lost a little bit more than $5 million, that was- - We lost more than that.

We lost 5 1/2 million dollars for the next four years.

- Per year?

- Per year.

- Annually, you lost 5 1/2 million dollars.

- Yeah.

- And that money was paying for what?

- That money was paying to improve the livelihoods of very poor people living around chimpanzee habitat in three different countries, was being used for part of this Roots & Shoots program to give young people a chance to understand how they could help the environment and why it was important to help the environment.

It was helping the health of young children, babies, mothers, giving girls a chance of secondary and sometimes university education.

- Yeah.

And you can presumably go find people who are willing to support this and replace that money, but it makes the work that you do that much more difficult.

- Much more.

And, you know, we had to lay some really, really good people off.

Luckily, we've managed to find funding to bring many of them back again.

- Back.

Yeah.

But it's not without consequence.

That's the point.

- Exactly.

- Right.

Let's do your origin story.

I think the story of how you got interested in the work that you've come to be known for is fascinating.

You were born in England, right?

Father was a businessman, mother was a writer.

And when you were one, at age one, your father gave you a stuffed animal.

But instead of giving you a teddy bear, gave you a stuffed chimpanzee.

- Yeah.

The chimpanzee Jubilee.

Baby Jubilee was the first chimp to be born in captivity in England.

So these toys were made to honor his birth.

And he was this tall and, you know, nice hair.

I mean, he was very, very chimp like.

- Right.

- And all my mother's friends said, "How can you let your child?

It'll give her nightmares!"

Because he was my favorite toy of all.

- I mean, literally, and the rest is history, right?

Like, this was a very consequential thing, and you became- - Well, you see, it wasn't.

Everybody thinks because I had chimp Jubilee, that's why I studied chimps.

That's not true.

- When I, at 10 years old, had a dream of going to Africa, it was to live with wild animals, any wild animals, any, out in the bush and write books about them.

Because when you were 10 80 years ago, there was no thought of being a scientist.

- Of course.

- For girls.

- Right.

- Absolutely not Moreover, there was nobody out in the field doing anything.

- Right.

And around this time, as I've heard you tell the story, you read "Tarzan and the Apes."

Right?

- Yeah.

That was what gave me the dream.

- Right.

- I fell passionately in love with this glorious lord of the jungle.

And what did he do?

He flipping married the wrong Jane.

- He married the wrong Jane.

(audience laughing) (audience clapping) It's a very good line.

I like that.

So you're that kid.

You're that kid who's interested in this life.

But, as you say, there were many reasons to think it would never actually come to pass.

- Yeah.

Everybody laughed at me.

- Right.

- Jane, dream about something you can achieve.

And Africa's far away.

You don't have money.

We had very little money.

World War II was raging.

And you're just a girl.

But my mother, you see, this is the importance of having supportive mother.

My father was off fighting in the war, so I never really knew him at all.

And she said to me, "Jane, if you really want to do something like this, you're going to have to work really hard, take advantage of every opportunity.

And if you don't give up, hopefully you'll find a way."

And I take that message all around the world, particularly to young people in disadvantaged communities.

And I wish Mum was alive to know how many people have come up to me or written to me and said, "Jane, thank you.

You taught me because you did it, I can do it too."

- I can do it.

Right.

But of course, as you correctly say, the circumstances at the time, for you, it was obstacle after obstacle, right?

You got to Africa in your early 20s for the first time, right?

- 23.

- 23 years old.

At some point in those first couple of years, you met Louis Leakey.

- That's right.

Yes.

- Right?

Yeah.

Who turns out to be an enormously consequential figure, not just in your life, the development of your work, but actually in the work of Dian Fossey, right?

- Birute Galdikas.

- Birute Galdikas.

I mean, and you three who had all been essentially proteges of Leakey's came to be known as the Trimates, right?

For your work with him.

How did you come to him and how did you get to him?

Because ultimately he was the enabler of your work, the work that led you to Gombe National Park and all that.

- So I got to Africa, to Kenya, because I was invited there by a school friend.

- Right.

And this in 1957?

- This was 1957.

- Right.

- And so when I left school, all my friends went to university.

We couldn't afford it.

I had enough money for secretarial training, and when I got this invitation to have a holiday in Kenya, I couldn't save money in London where my job was.

So I went home, I worked as a waitress about six months.

Finally saved enough money, went out by boat because there weren't many planes back then.

And they were super expensive.

Stayed with my friend, had a great time.

And somebody said to me, "If you are interested in animals, you should meet Louis Leakey."

So he was head of the Natural History Museum.

So I went to see him.

He was head of the Natural History Museum at the time in Nairobi.

And he took me all around and asked me lots of questions, and I'd read everything I could about animals in East Africa.

And that boring secretarial course, just before I met him, his long-term secretary had suddenly left.

He needed a secretary.

And there I was.

- And there you were.

- Yes.

- Right.

- So then I'm surrounded by all his staff who could answer all my questions about the animals and the birds and, you know, everything.

And it wasn't like a normal secretarial job.

- Right.

Well, in fact, he had designs on giving you more opportunity and responsibility over time, didn't he?

He wanted you to be a researcher.

- But that was when he let me go to one of his digs looking for fossils on the Serengeti.

And one evening, I met a lion.

Another evening, I met a rhino.

And, you know, just there.

No guns, no nothing, just... And he said I reacted perfectly and that's when he began talking about chimps.

- Yeah.

So it was 1960, three years later, that you go to Gombe National Park.

Then it was Gombe Stream National Park, right?

In Tanzania.

- 1960.

- '60.

And you see wild chimpanzees up close.

You're with them for the first time.

You begin studying wild chimpanzees and everything changes.

- And nobody else had studied them in the wild.

- Right.

Is it true your mother accompanied you on this trip?

- Yeah, because the authorities, at that time, it was British.

It was a British protectorate.

It was Tanganyika.

And then it became Tanzania after independence.

But the British authorities said, no, we are not going to take responsibility.

It's a stupid idea.

A young girl in the forest?

But in the end they said, okay, but you can't come alone.

- Gotta bring your mom.

- So no, they didn't say that.

They just said... (audience laughing) She volunteered to come.

- Yeah.

- And she was amazing because I had money only for six months.

Remember, hadn't been to college.

And so, money for six months.

And for four of those six months, the chimps took one look at me and vanished in the forest.

And I was getting desperate.

Only two months left.

So she was there to boost my morale and say, "Jane, with your binoculars, you're learning much more than you think.

How they make nests at night, bending in the branches.

You're learning about the calls they make, the kind of food they eat, how sometimes they travel alone, sometimes in small groups, sometimes all the members of what we now know as a community come together when there's a new food."

So she boosted my morale in that way.

- She saw that.

She saw.

- Yeah.

- That it was a success.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

You learned on that trip, and subsequently, so much about chimpanzees.

We know about chimpanzees, I always feel like is because of what you learned, what you knew.

That they have personalities similar to humans, they have emotions similar to humans, that they engage in behaviors that we would recognize as very human-like.

We share 98.7% of our DNA with chimpanzees.

- Yep.

- Right.

Why does this matter from a science perspective?

From a non-science perspective!

Living out here in the world, why is it important to know that, to understand that?

- Okay, so when I'd been with the chimps for about two years, and I really got to know them as individuals with personalities, as you say.

- And names.

- Of course I named them, - Of course.

- And I saw David Greybeard using tools which brought the Geographic in.

Because at that time, it was thought only humans used and made tools.

So I get a letter from Louis Leakey saying, now I want you to get a degree.

We don't have time for an undergraduate degree.

I've got you a place in Cambridge University in the UK to do a PhD in ethology.

- And this is- - That word that you like.

- I like that word.

And this is actually, without clear, without a bachelor's degree.

- Yeah.

- You're given permission to skip over - Yeah.

- And get a PhD.

- So you can imagine, I was nervous.

- Right.

- And when I was told by the professors, I'd done everything wrong.

Yes, I shouldn't have named them.

I couldn't talk about personality, mind, emotion.

Those were unique to us.

But I had a great teacher when I was a child.

That teacher told me, had told me that what the professors were saying was rubbish.

(audience laughing) That teacher was my dog.

(audience laughing) - Your dog?

- Yes.

You can't have a dog or a cat, a rabbit, a guinea pig, a horse, a parrot, I don't care what, and know that we are not the only beings with personalities, minds, and emotions.

And so science was forced to admit that.

The Geographic sent out a filmmaker.

A film began going around, corroborating everything I'd said.

And so once they admitted that we were not the only beings with personality et cetera, that opened the door for other animals.

And now today, students can study emotions right down to the octopus.

- Yeah.

It's been a while since you've done field work, right?

- Yes, I visit Gombe twice a year, but just to encourage and, you know, be there.

- As I understand it, the last time you did field work, what we think of is field work, it's probably 50 years ago, is that right?

- It was 1985.

- So actually 40 years ago.

- Yeah.

- So 40 years ago.

Mostly what you've done in the years since is be an advocate, be somebody who is, again, back to the early part of our conversation, out front talking about the importance of nature, the importance of getting involved in your community to protect these things that matter so much to us.

The Jane Goodall Institute has been in existence since 1977.

It is going on 50 years in operation, and it is really the locus of your work right now.

It is where this work is being done and is being continued by others who follow in your footsteps.

- Yes.

We've got 26 Jane Goodall Institutes around the world.

And they all share the same mission, but they're sort of independent in raising funds.

And so our mission is to make the world a better place for people, animals, and the environment.

But it all began quite, well, not too far away in Chicago, 1986, at a conference, bringing for the first time the people studying chimps.

And by then, there were six other field sites.

And we wanted to know, is there culture in chimps?

Yes, there is.

But we also had a session on conservation.

And it was shocking, because everywhere where chimps were being studied, numbers were decreasing and forests were being cut down.

I went to that conference as a scientist.

I left as a advocate.

I knew I had to do something to help.

I was also learning about the plight of so many of the Africans living in and around chimpanzee habitat.

And why were they cutting down their trees to make some money?

They were desperate.

Struggling to survive.

Money from charcoal or timber or clearing land to grow more food.

And if we don't help these people to find ways of making a living without destroying the environment, we can't save chimps, forests, or anything else.

- Or anything.

- So we began the Jane Goodall Institute, we began our Take Care of Tacare program.

Very holistic, going into a village with local people asking, what can JJI do to make your lives better?

And starting there.

So they trust us.

We could expand, giving scholarships to girls and microfinance based on Muhammad Yunus's Grameen Bank.

And it's been so successful.

People understand protecting the environment isn't just for wildlife, it's for their own future.

- Yeah.

And so you've become an advocate for people?

- Yes.

- As well as for chimpanzees, and as well as for the environment.

- Yeah.

And we're all primates.

- Right?

- Yeah.

- We're all primates.

I promised you in the last couple of minutes that we would come back to Roots & Shoots.

Again, I've seen you interviewed a couple of different times, and a version of the same question has been asked, what gives you hope here at 91 1/2?

After all the work you've done, what continues to give you hope?

And you say, every time, young people.

- Yeah.

Well, it's also the resilience of nature coming back.

And it's this intellects beginning to come up with, like, alternative energy and so on.

But the young people, it started when I met young people who were losing hope back in the mid 80s.

Already back then.

And they said that we'd compromised their future and there was nothing they could do about it.

Well, we've actually been stealing the future of young people ever since the Industrial Revolution.

We're still stealing it today.

All the big corporations, governments, and so on.

But was it true there was nothing they could do?

No.

So that's why the main message, every one of us makes an impact every day.

And it's now young people from preschool through university, adults forming groups, your staff here could form a group.

- Yeah.

And what I appreciate is you don't seem to be concerned about how the governments, you talk about this way or the corporations you talk about this way, you don't seem concerned about how they react.

At this point, you're bulletproof.

You can say whatever you want.

You have no fear.

Right?

- No.

- You just speak your truth.

- Yeah, well, I try to be sensitive to, you know, ongoing concerns.

I have an institute to be responsible for.

- Right.

But nobody tells you what to think or to say, - Well, they might tell me, but I might pay no attention.

(audience laughing) (audience clapping) - Good.

We need more like you.

How many nights are you spending out on the road these days?

How many, if you go on tour, as you're on tour.

- Well, it's about 300 a year.

- 300 a year?

- Yeah.

So in between tours, which are all over the world.

I mean, I was just in China and Japan and Taiwan, and I'm going to the Middle East, and it's everywhere.

And in between, I go home to the house I grew up in in Bournemouth in England, where my sister lives permanently with her daughter.

And so that's where, you know, I'm surrounded by the books I read as a child, the cars and books.

"Dr.

Doolittle."

The trees I climbed as a child.

That's the little respite.

But it's filled with Zooms and emails.

- It takes a toll though, all that work, all that travel, it takes a toll, but it's worth it.

- Yep.

And by the way, I became vegetarian in the late 1960s when I learned about factory farms.

And then when I learned about the conditions of dairy cows and chickens, laying chickens, I'm now a vegan.

- You're now a vegan.

- And people say, well, vegans don't get the right supplementing.

Look at me.

- Yes.

(audience laughing) (audience clapping) I have just spent the last 26 minutes looking at you, and I have to tell you, I'm amazed at what I see.

This was as interesting as I hoped it would be.

And you are as much of a legend, as the young people say, a baller, as I knew you would be.

You inspire all of us.

You inspire me.

Thank you so much for your work.

Dr.

Jane Goodall.

Give her a big hand.

(audience clapping) - Thank you.

- Thank you.

- [Announcer] We'd love to have you join us in the studio.

Visit our website at www.austinpbs.org/overheard to find invitations to interviews, Q&As with our audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes.

(bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) - [Narrator] Support for "Overheard with Evan Smith" comes from HillCo Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy, Claire and Carl Stuart, Christine and Philip Dial, and the Eller Group, specializing in crisis management, litigation, and public affairs communication.

www.ellergroup.com.

Diane Land & Steve Adler, and Karey and Chris Oddo