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Chris Anderson: Dr. Jane Goodall, welcome.
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Jane Goodall: Thank you,
-
and I think, you know,
we couldn't have a complete interview
-
unless people know Mr. H is with me,
-
because everybody knows Mr. H.
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CA: Hello, Mr. H.
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In your TED Talk 17 years ago,
-
you warned us about the dangers
of humans crowding out the natural world.
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Is there any sense in which you feel
-
that the current pandemic
is kind of, nature striking back?
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JG: It's very, very clear
that these zoonotic diseases,
-
like the corona and HIV/AIDS
-
and all sorts of other diseases
that we catch from animals,
-
that's partly to do
with destruction of the environment,
-
which, as animals lose habitat,
they get crowded together
-
and sometimes that means
that a virus from a reservoir species,
-
where it's lived harmoniously
for maybe hundreds of years,
-
jumps into a new species,
-
then you also get animals being pushed
into closer contact with humans.
-
And sometimes one of these animals
that has caught a virus can --
-
you know, provides the opportunity
for that virus to jump into people
-
and create a new disease, like COVID-19.
-
And in addition to that,
-
we are so disrespecting animals.
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We hunt them,
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we kill them, we eat them,
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we traffic them,
-
we send them off
to the wild-animal markets
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in Asia,
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where they're in terrible,
cramped conditions, in tiny cages,
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with people being contaminated
with blood and urine and feces,
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ideal conditions for a virus
to spill from an animal to an animal,
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or an animal to a person.
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CA: I'd love to just dip
backwards in time for a bit,
-
because your story is so extraordinary.
-
I mean, despite the arguably
even more sexist attitudes of the 1960s,
-
somehow you were able to break through
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and become one of the world's
leading scientists,
-
discovering this astonishing
series of facts about chimpanzees,
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such as their tool use and so much more.
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What was it about you, do you think,
-
that allowed you to make
such a breakthrough?
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JG: Well, the thing is,
I was born loving animals,
-
and the most important thing was,
I had a very supportive mother.
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She didn't get mad when she found
earthworms in my bed,
-
she just said they better be
in the garden.
-
And she didn't get mad
when I disappeared for four hours
-
and she called the police,
and I was sitting in a hen house,
-
because nobody would tell me
where the hole was where the egg came out.
-
I had no dream of being a scientist,
-
because women didn't do
that sort of thing.
-
In fact, there weren't any man
doing it back then, either.
-
And everybody laughed at me except Mom,
-
who said, "If you really want this,
you're going to have to work awfully hard,
-
take advantage of every opportunity,
-
if you don't give up,
maybe you'll find a way."
-
CA: And somehow, you were able to kind of,
earn the trust of chimpanzees
-
in the way that no one else had.
-
Looking back, what were the most
exciting moments that you discovered
-
or what is it that people
still don't get about chimpanzees?
-
JG: Well, the thing is,
you say, "See things nobody else had,
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get their trust."
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Nobody else had tried.
-
Quite honestly.
-
So, basically, I used the same techniques
-
that I had to study the animals
around my home when I was a child.
-
Just sitting, patiently,
-
not trying to get too close too quickly,
-
but it was awful, because the money
was only for six months.
-
I mean, you can imagine
how difficult to get money
-
for a young girl with no degree,
-
to go and do something as bizarre
as sitting in a forest.
-
And you know, finally,
-
we got money for six months
from an American philanthropist,
-
and I knew with time
I'd get the chimps' trust,
-
but did I have time?
-
And weeks became months
and then finally, after about four months,
-
one chimpanzee began to lose his fear,
-
and it was he that
on one occasion I saw --
-
I still wasn't really close,
but I had my binoculars --
-
and I saw him using and making tools
to fish for termites.
-
And although I wasn't terribly surprised,
-
because I've read about things
captive chimps could do --
-
but I knew that science believed
-
that humans, and only humans,
used and made tools.
-
And I knew how excited
[Dr. Louis] Leakey would be.
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And it was that observation
-
that enabled him to go
to the National Geographic,
-
and they said, "OK, we'll continue
to support the research,"
-
and they sent Hugo van Lawick,
the photographer-filmmaker,
-
to record what I was seeing.
-
So a lot of scientists
didn't want to believe the tool-using.
-
In fact, one of them said
I must have taught the chimps.
-
(Laughter)
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Since I couldn't get near them,
it would have been a miracle.
-
But anyway, once they saw Hugo's film
-
and that with all my descriptions
of their behavior,
-
the scientists had to start
changing their minds.
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CA: And since then,
numerous other discoveries
-
that placed chimpanzees much closer
to humans than people cared to believe.
-
I think I saw you say at one point
that they have a sense of humor.
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How have you seen that expressed?
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JG: Well, you see it
when they're playing games,
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and there's a bigger one
playing with a little one,
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and he's trailing a vine around a tree.
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And every time the little one
is about to catch it,
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the bigger one pulls it away,
-
and the little one starts crying
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and the big one starts laughing.
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So, you know.
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CA: And then, Jane, you observed
something much more troubling,
-
which was these instances
of chimpanzee gangs,
-
tribes, groups, being brutally
violent to each other.
-
I'm curious how you process that.
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And whether it made you, kind of,
-
I don't know, depressed about us,
we're close to them,
-
did it make you feel
that violence is irredeemably
-
part of all the great apes, somehow?
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JG: Well, it obviously is.
-
And my first encounter
with human, what I call evil,
-
was the end of the war
-
and the pictures from the Holocaust.
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And you know, that really shocked me.
-
That changed who I was.
-
I was 10, I think, at the time.
-
And when the chimpanzees,
-
when I realized they have this
dark, brutal side,
-
I thought they were like us but nicer.
-
And then I realized
they're even more like us
-
than I had thought.
-
And at that time, in the early '70s,
-
it was very strange,
-
aggression, there was a big thing
-
about, is aggression innate or learned.
-
And it became political.
-
And it was, I don't know,
it was a very strange time,
-
and I was coming out, saying,
-
"No, I think aggression is definitely
-
part of our inherited
repertoire of behaviors."
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And I asked a very respected scientist
what he really thought,
-
because he was coming out
on the clean slate,
-
aggression is learned,
-
and he said, "Jane, I'd rather not talk
about what I really think."
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That was a big shock
as far as science was concerned for me.
-
CA: I was brought up to believe a world
of all things bright and beautiful.
-
You know, numerous beautiful films
of butterflies and bees and flowers,
-
and you know, nature
as this gorgeous landscape.
-
And many environmentalists
often seem to take the stance,
-
"Yes, nature is pure,
nature is beautiful, humans are bad,"
-
but then you have the kind of
observations that you see,
-
when you actually look
at any part of nature in more detail,
-
you see things to be
terrified by, honestly.
-
What do you make of nature,
how do you think of it,
-
how should we think of it?
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JG: Nature is, you know,
-
I mean, you think of the whole
spectrum of evolution,
-
and there's something about going
to a pristine place,
-
and Africa was very pristine
when I was young.
-
And there were animals everywhere.
-
And I never liked the fact
that lions killed,
-
they have to, I mean, that's what they do,
-
if they didn't kill animals,
they would die.
-
And the big difference
between them and us, I think,
-
is that they do what they do
because that's what they have to do.
-
And we can plan to do things.
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Our plans are very different.
-
We can plan to cut down a whole forest,
-
because we want to sell the timber,
-
or because we want to build
another shopping mall,
-
something like that.
-
So our destruction of nature
and our warfare,
-
we're capable of evil
because we can sit comfortably
-
and plan the torture of somebody far away.
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That's evil.
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Chimpanzees have a sort of primitive war,
-
and they can be very aggressive,
-
but it's of the moment.
-
It's how they feel.
-
It's response to an emotion.
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CA: So your observation
of the sophistication of chimpanzees
-
doesn't go as far as what
some people would want to say
-
is the sort of the human superpower,
-
of being able to really simulate
the future in our minds in great detail
-
and make long-term plans.
-
And act to encourage each other
to achieve those long-term plans.
-
That that feels, even to someone
who spent so much time with chimpanzees,
-
that feels like a fundamentally
different skill set
-
that we just have to take
responsibility for
-
and use much more wisely than we do.
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JG: Yes, and I personally think,
-
I mean, there's a lot
of discussion about this,
-
but I think it's a fact that we developed
the way of communication
-
that you and I are using.
-
And because we have words,
-
I mean, animal communication
is way more sophisticated
-
than we used to think.
-
And chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans
-
can learn human sign language of the Deaf.
-
But we sort of grow up speaking
whatever language it is.
-
So I can tell you about things
that you've never heard of.
-
And a chimpanzee couldn't do that.
-
And we can teach our children
about abstract things.
-
And chimpanzees couldn't do that.
-
So yes, chimpanzees can do
all sorts of clever things,
-
and so can elephants and so can crows
and so can octopuses,
-
but we design rockets
that go off to another planet
-
and little robots taking photographs,
-
and we've designed this extraordinary way
of you and me talking
-
in our different parts of the world.
-
When I was young, when I grew up,
-
there was no TV,
there were no cell phones,
-
there was no computers.
-
It was such a different world,
-
I had a pencil, pen
and notebook, that was it.
-
CA: So just going back
to this question about nature,
-
because I think about this a lot,
-
and I struggle with this, honestly.
-
So much of your work,
so much of so many people who I respect,
-
is about this passion for trying
not to screw up the natural world.
-
So is it possible, is it healthy,
is it essential, perhaps,
-
to simultaneously accept
that many aspects of nature
-
are terrifying,
-
but also, I don't know, that it's awesome,
-
and that some of the awesomeness
comes from its potential to be terrifying
-
and that it is also just
breathtakingly beautiful,
-
and that we cannot be ourselves,
because we are part of nature,
-
we cannot be whole
-
unless we somehow embrace it
and are part of it?
-
Help me with the language, Jane,
on how that relationship should be.
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JG: Well, I think one of the problems is,
you know, as we developed our intellect,
-
and we became better and better
-
at modifying the environment
for our own use,
-
and creating fields and growing crops
-
where it used to be forest or woodland,
-
and you know, we won't go into that now,
-
but we have this ability to change nature.
-
And as we've moved more
into towns and cities,
-
and relied more on technology,
-
many people feel so divorced
from the natural world.
-
And there's hundreds,
thousands of children
-
growing up in inner cities,
-
where there basically isn't any nature,
-
which is why this movement now
to green our cities is so important.
-
And you know, they've done experiments,
-
I think it was in Chicago,
I'm not quite sure,
-
and there were various empty lots
-
in a very violent part of town.
-
So in some of those areas
they made it green,
-
they put trees and flowers and things,
shrubs in these vacant lots.
-
And the crime rate went right down.
-
So then of course,
they put trees in the other half.
-
So it just shows, and also,
-
there have been studies done
showing that children
-
really need green nature
for good psychological development.
-
But we are, as you say, part of nature
-
and we disrespect it, as we are,
-
and that is so terrible for our children
-
and our children's children,
-
because we rely on nature
for clean air, clean water,
-
for regulating climate and rainfall.
-
Look what we've done,
look at the climate crisis.
-
That's us. We did that.
-
CA: So a little over 30 years ago,
-
you made this shift from scientist mainly
to activist mainly, I guess.
-
Why?
-
JG: Conference in 1986,
scientific one, I'd got my PhD by then
-
and it was to find out
how chimp behavior differed, if it did,
-
from one environment to another.
-
There were six study sites across Africa.
-
So we thought, let’s bring
these scientists together
-
and explore this,
-
which was fascinating.
-
But we also had a session on conservation
-
and a session on conditions
in some captive situations
-
like medical research.
-
And those two sessions
were so shocking to me.
-
I went to the conference a a scientist,
-
and I left as an activist.
-
I didn't make the decision,
something happened inside me.
-
CA: So you spent the last 34 years
-
sort of tirelessly campaigning
for a better relationship
-
between people and nature.
-
What should that relationship look like?
-
JG: Well, you know, again you come up
with all these problems.
-
People have to have space to live.
-
But I think the problem is
-
that we've become,
in the affluent societies,
-
too greedy.
-
I mean, honestly, who needs
four houses with huge grounds?
-
And why do we need
yet another shopping mall?
-
And so on and so on.
-
So we are looking
at short-term economic benefit,
-
money has become a sort of god to worship,
-
as we lose all spiritual connection
with the natural world.
-
And so we're looking for short-term
monetary gain, or power,
-
rather than the health of the planet
-
and the future of our children.
-
We don't seem to care about that anymore.
-
That's why I'll never stop fighting.
-
CA: I mean, in your work
specifically on chimpanzee conservation,
-
you've made it practice
to put people at the center of that,
-
local people, to engage them.
-
How has that worked
-
and do you think that's an essential idea
-
if we're to succeed
in protecting the planet?
-
JG: You know, after that
famous conference,
-
I thought, well, I must learn more
about why chimps are vanishing in Africa
-
and what's happening to the forest.
-
So I got a bit of money together
and went out to visit six range countries.
-
And learned a lot about the problems
faced by chimps, you know,
-
hunting for bushmeat
and the live animal trade
-
and caught in snares
-
and human populations growing
and needing more land
-
for their crops and their cattle
and their villages.
-
But I was also learning about the plight
faced by so many people.
-
The absolute poverty,
the lack of health and education,
-
the degradation of the land.
-
And it came to a head when I flew over
the tiny Gombe National Park.
-
It had been part of this equatorial
forest belt right across Africa
-
to the west coast,
-
and in 1990,
-
it was just this little island of forest,
just tiny national park.
-
All around, the hills were bare.
-
And that's when it hit me.
-
If we don't do something
-
to help the people find ways of living
-
without destroying their environment,
-
we can't even try to save the chimps.
-
So the Jane Goodall Institute
began this program "Take Care,"
-
we call it "TACARE."
-
And it's our method
of community-based conservation,
-
totally holistic.
-
And we've now put the tools
of conservation
-
into the hand of the villagers,
-
because most Tanzanian wild chimps
are not in protected areas,
-
they're just in the village
forest reserves.
-
And so, they now go and measure
the health of their forest.
-
They've understood now
-
that protecting the forest
isn't just for wildlife,
-
it's their own future.
-
That they need the forest.
-
And they're very proud.
-
The volunteers go to workshops,
-
they learn how to use smartphones,
-
they learn how to upload
into platform and the cloud.
-
And so it's all transparent.
-
And the trees have come back,
-
there's no bare hills anymore.
-
They agreed to make
a buffer zone around Gombe,
-
so the chimps have more forest
than they did in 1990.
-
They're opening up corridors of forest
-
to link the scattered chimp groups
so that you don't get too much inbreeding.
-
So yes, it's worked,
and it's in six other countries now.
-
Same thing.
-
CA: I mean, you've been this extraordinary
tireless voice, all around the world,
-
just traveling so much,
-
speaking everywhere,
inspiring people everywhere.
-
How on earth do you find the energy,
-
you know, the fire to do that,
-
because that is exhausting to do,
-
every meeting with lots of people,
-
it is just physically exhausting,
-
and yet, here you are, still doing it.
-
How are you doing this, Jane?
-
JG: Well, I suppose, you know,
I'm obstinate, I don't like giving up,
-
but I'm not going to let
these CEOs of big companies
-
who are destroying the forests,
-
or the politicians who are unraveling
all the protections that were put in place
-
by previous presidents,
-
and you know who I'm talking about.
-
And you know, I'll go on fighting,
-
I care about, I'm passionate
about the wildlife.
-
I'm passionate about the natural world.
-
I love forests, it hurts me
to see them damaged.
-
And I care passionately about children.
-
And we're stealing their future.
-
And I'm not going to give up.
-
So I guess I'm blessed
with good genes, that's a gift,
-
and the other gift,
which I discovered I had,
-
was communication,
-
whether it's writing or speaking.
-
And so, you know,
-
if going around like this wasn't working,
-
but every time I do a lecture,
-
people come up and say,
-
"Well, I had given up,
but you've inspired me,
-
I promise to do my bit."
-
And we have our youth program
"Roots and Shoots" now in 65 countries
-
and growing fast,
-
all ages,
-
all choosing projects to help
people, animals, the environment,
-
rolling up their sleeves
and taking action.
-
And you know, they look at you
with shining eyes,
-
wanting to tell Dr. Jane
what they've been doing
-
to make the world a better place.
-
How can I let them down?
-
CA: I mean, as you look
at the planet's future,
-
what worries you most, actually,
-
what scares you most about where we're at?
-
JG: Well, the fact that we have
a small window of time, I believe,
-
when we can at least start
healing some of the harm
-
and slowing down climate change.
-
But it is closing,
-
and we've seen what happens
with the lockdown around the world
-
because of COVID-19:
-
clear skies over cities,
-
some people breathing clean air
that they've never breathed before
-
and looking up
at the shining skies at night,
-
which they've never seen properly before.
-
And you know,
-
so what worries me most
-
is how to get enough people,
-
people understand,
but they're not taking action,
-
how to get enough people to take action?
-
CA: National Geographic just launched
this extraordinary film about you,
-
highlighting your work over six decades.
-
It's titled "Jane Goodall: The Hope."
-
So what is the hope, Jane?
-
JG: Well, the hope,
-
my greatest hope
is all these young people.
-
I mean, in China,
people will come up and say,
-
"Well, of course I care
about the environment,
-
I was in 'Roots and Shoots'
in primary school."
-
And you know, we have "Roots and Shoots"
just hanging on to the values
-
and they're so enthusiastic
once they know the problems
-
and they're empowered to take action,
-
they are clearing the streams,
removing invasive species humanely.
-
And they have so many ideas.
-
And then there's, you know,
this extraordinary intellect of ours.
-
We're beginning to use it
to come up with technology
-
that really will help us
to live in greater harmony,
-
and in our individual lives,
-
let's think about the consequences
of what we do each day.
-
What do we buy, where did it come from,
-
how was it made?
-
Did it harm the environment,
was it cruel to animals?
-
Is it cheap because of child slave labor?
-
Make ethical choices.
-
Which you can't do if you're living
in poverty, by the way.
-
And then finally, this indomitable spirit
-
of people who tackle what seems impossible
-
and won't give up.
-
You can't give up when you have those ...
-
But you know, there are things
that I can't fight.
-
I can't fight corruption.
-
I can't fight military
regimes and dictators.
-
So I can only do what I can do,
-
and if we all do the bits that we can do,
-
surely that makes a whole
that eventually will win out.
-
CA: So, last question, Jane.
-
If there was one idea, one thought,
-
one seed you could plant
in the minds of everyone watching this,
-
what would that be?
-
JG: You know, just remember
that every day you live,
-
you make an impact on the planet.
-
You can't help making an impact.
-
And at least, unless
you're living in extreme poverty,
-
you have a choice as to what sort
of impact you make.
-
Even in poverty you have a choice,
-
but when we are more affluent,
we have a greater choice.
-
And if we all make ethical choices,
-
then we start moving towards a world
-
that will be not quite so desperate
to leave to our great-grandchildren.
-
That's, I think, something for everybody.
-
Because a lot of people
understand what's happening,
-
but they feel helpless and hopeless,
and what can they do,
-
so they do nothing
and they become apathetic.
-
And that is a huge danger, apathy.
-
CA: Dr. Jane Goodall, wow.
-
I really want to thank you
for your extraordinary life,
-
for all that you've done
-
and for spending this time with us now.
-
Thank you.
-
JG: Thank you.