Jane Goodall On Life Among Chimpanzees

In an interview from 2002, the primatologist gave Ira a lesson in how to speak with chimps.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Science Friday is supported by MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software for technical computing and model-based design. MathWorks, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com.

• 0:19Speaker 00

  Before she became a world famous primatologist and peace ambassador, a young Jane Goodall almost didn't find the money to keep studying chimpanzees.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  But fortunately, just before that time came, I saw the first observations of using and making tools. And that was the saving observation, the breakthrough.

• 0:43Speaker 00

  It's Tuesday, December 31st. It's the last day of 2024, and this is Science Friday. I'm John Dankoski. A very happy New Year's Eve to you, however you're celebrating. We're also celebrating our 33rd anniversary. And earlier this year, we asked you to vote on some of your favorite sci-fi segments from the past three decades. And many of you wanted to hear from primatologist and researcher Jane Goodall once again. She's been on the show a number of times over the years, but we wanted to feature this conversation from 2002. She had just been named a UN Messenger of Peace, and she was also part of a documentary called Jane Goodall's Wild Chimpanzees. She just finished a book called The Ten Trusts: What We Must Do for the Animals

• 1:26Speaker 00

  We Love. Dr. Jane Goodall joined Ira Flatow in our New York studios. Let's listen back.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  Thank you very much for coming and to join us today.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Well, thanks for inviting me.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  What is, what is a United Nations Messenger of Peace? You're very proud of that, I know.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Well, I feel it's a great responsibility. There are nine of us, appointed by Kofi Annan, the Secretary General himself. And I think he appointed me because I was explaining to him about our youth program, Roots and Shoots, which is involving young people in sixty countries in hands-on projects to make this world a better place for animals, people, and the environment that we share. And it's very much about breaking down barriers that we erect between people of different ethnic groups, cultures, religions, between young people of different countries. And so, in a way, I explained to him that I was going around the world anyway, sowing seeds of global peace in the minds of young people. And he loved that image.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  And I think this is why he asked me if I would take on the additional job of just talking about some of the UN initiatives for peace.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  So is this going to be the next part of your career, do you think? Have you moved away from research on the chimps now, heading in this new direction?

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Well, I haven't been involved in the actual research since 1986, when I suddenly realized that chimpanzees were vanishing in the wild and being horribly mistreated in captivity. That was during a conference in Chicago when we brought all the chimp people from around Africa together. The research at Gombe continues, there's a great team there. But my role, you know, other than occasionally visiting, just really for my own good, is to be sure that the money is there to ensure that the research continues, and continues in the right way.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Let's talk a little bit about your background. Gilbert Grobner, chairman of the National Geographic Society, once wrote about you in one of your books. "She was hardly the image one would project to become an old African hand. Her bush experiences were honed in the genteel English countryside." How did you get wind up with that background in Africa?

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Well, it wasn't exactly genteel. I wouldn't have described it like that. But, you know, animals were my passion from even before I could speak, apparently.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Is that right?

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Hmm. So I was watching earthworms in my bed when I was one and a half. And I hid for five hours in a hen house when we had the opportunity to go into the country, because we lived in the town. And I hid for for five hours because I was collecting the eggs. And, you know, there was the egg. Where was the hole big enough for the egg to come out? Nobody told me, so I hid.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  He wanted to watch it.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  And I watched it. And it was my first, you know, wonderful experiment. And then when I was about ten, eleven, I found the books about Tarzan of the Apes. No, no, no TV in those days, so I read the books. Fell in love with Tarzan. He's got that wife Jane, you know, so I was terribly jealous of her. And that was when my dream started. When I grew up, I would go to Africa, live with animals and write books about them. That's how it all began.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  And how did you fulfill that dream?

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Well, I got the opportunity when a school friend invited me to go and stay on their farm in Kenya, where her parents had just bought some land. And I was working at the time with Documentary Film Studio in London, which is a great job, didn't pay very much, so I quit that, went home and worked as a waitress and served people their breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner, till I'd saved up enough money to buy my return fare by boat, because it was cheapest in those days. So, you know, I was twenty-three and I sort of said bye-bye to family, friends and country, and off I went on this amazing adventure.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  And so who, somebody invited you to go, or did you just show up on the doorstep someplace?

• 5:27Speaker 01

  No, this was a school friend.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  School friend.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  And I went to stay there, but, you know, I was taught that you didn't sponge on people for too long, so I stayed there for a month. But we had arranged a job for me in Nairobi, a boring job, a secretarial job, but at least I would be independent. And that was when I heard about the late Louis Leakey. And somebody said, Jane, if you're interested in animals, you must meet Louis. So I picked up the telephone, cheeky me, and made an appointment to go and see Louis Leakey. He was then curator of the Natural History Museum in Nairobi.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  He was a wonderful gentleman, wasn't he?

• 6:02Speaker 01

  He was amazing.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  Tell us some Louis Leakey stories.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Well, you know, the first time when I called, to my amazement, he answered the phone. And he said, I'm leaky, what do you want? Which wasn't a very auspicious beginning. But then when I got there, he, he took me all around. He asked me so many questions about the, the animals there. And because I had done what my mother said I should do, which was, you know, if you really want something, you work hard, you take advantage of opportunity and you never give up. I'd been reading about Africa. I'd spent all my lunch hours in the Natural History Museum in London, learning about Africa and animals. So I think he was impressed and he gave me the opportunity to work for him.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  And he took me with his wife and one other young English girl to, at that time, they did three months in the summer at the now famous Alderweireld Gorge. But that was before any human remains were found.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  So it was absolutely wild untouched Africa. And typical Lewis, there was never any money. So everything was on a shoestring. And the equipment mostly didn't work. And it was a very ramshackle sort of place. And I remember when he first talked to me about going on that expedition, which was, you know, I had all my fingers crossed. And he said, well, it's going to depend on my wife. If she likes you, you can come. And can you imagine what it was like when I went to lunch at the house, thinking, oh dear, what can I do to make Mary like me?

• 7:33Speaker 02

  Obviously she did.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Fortunately, she did, yes.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  And were you around then when we made that famous discovery?

• 7:39Speaker 01

  No, I was the year before.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  The year before, oh, just missed.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Which was so lucky.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  It was lucky.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Yes, because it was absolutely unknown. We just spent all day chipping away in the, in the rock. There wasn't a road there. There wasn't a trail. There was nothing. And all the animals were there. The, the antelopes, the zebra, the giraffes. And then one evening there was a rhino, which was a little bit scary. And one evening, a, a young male lion, two years old, totally curious. And he followed us for at least, well, a couple of football pitches, I should say.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  Well, you sound like you, you were bitten by the bug right there.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Before I even got there. When I, when I got there, when I got out to Alderweireld, it was like being at home.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  And so then, how did you find your way toward working with the chimps?

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Well, it was during that Alderweireld time that Lewis realized that I was the sort of person he said he'd been looking for for about ten years. Who didn't care about hairdressing and clothes and parties and boyfriends. You know, I really wanted to be in the wild. Took him a year to get the money. I mean, who was going to give money to a young girl, a female, who didn't have a degree of any sort, straight out from England? I mean, what a ridiculous idea. So I was in England waiting, learning what I could about chimpanzees while he searched for money and eventually found a wealthy American businessman. Okay, Lewis, here you are, here's enough money for for six months, we'll see how she does.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  And you did pretty well.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Well, it was a very, very worrying time because I got to Gombe. Again, I felt I was at home, but the chimpanzees ran away as soon as they saw me. You know, they're very conservative. They'd not seen a white ape before. And I knew if that six months' money ran out before I'd seen something really exciting, everyone would, you know, I would have let Lewis down. Well, we told you so, this is ridiculous. But fortunately, just before that time came, I saw the first observations of using and making tools. And that was the saving observation, the breakthrough. And he was able to go to the National Geographic Society and persuade them

• 9:57Speaker 01

  to put some more money in when the first six months ran out. Because, of course, at that time, you know, we were defined as man the toolmaker. That was supposed to differentiate us more than anything else from the rest of the animal kingdom.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  And you discovered that even the chimps, the chimps could make tools?

• 10:14Speaker 01

  David Graybeard, bless his heart. I saw him crouched over a termite mound. Couldn't really see properly, they were still not very, you know, not very relaxed in my presence. I was hiding and, but I knew he was using a piece of grass. And a few days later, he and one of the other chimps, I could see them much better. The whole thing, putting in the grass, picking the termites off, picking a leafy twig and stripping off the leaves, which is the beginning of toolmaking. So that was it.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  Exciting.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  It was, I couldn't actually believe it. I had to see it about four times before I let Louis Leakey know. And then I sent a telegram, you know, we're pre-fax era back then. And he sent back his famous comment, "Ha ha, now we must redefine man, redefine tool, or accept chimpanzees as humans."

• 11:08Speaker 02

  Incredible. And interesting, you talked about the name of the chimp that you had. I guess no one else was doing any of this stuff at that time. You were, I mean, in terms of naming chimps, was that something that other scientists were doing, giving names to their chimps?

• 11:24Speaker 01

  No, they weren't. And the funny thing was, you know, after a bit, Louis said, he said, "Jane, you have to get a degree, because otherwise you can't get your own money. And I won't always be around to get money for you." But he said, "We don't have time to mess about with a BA, so you'll have to go straight for a PhD." So he managed to persuade Cambridge in England to accept me as a PhD student. And when I got there, it was actually a very unpleasant and hostile reception that I had. I shouldn't have named the chimps. It wasn't scientific. I didn't know. I knew nothing. I couldn't talk about their personalities, these vivid personalities that I by then was beginning to know. I certainly couldn't

• 12:06Speaker 01

  talk about them being capable of rational thought, which they clearly were. And finally, worst sin of all was that I was ascribing to them emotions like happiness, sadness, and so forth. But fortunately, one, by that time, I was 27. And, you know, I wasn't in it because I wanted a PhD. I was there for Louis. But more importantly, perhaps, all through my childhood, I had this wonderful teacher, and that was my dog Rusty. So I knew that animals had personalities, minds, and feelings. And of course, they needed names.

• 12:44Speaker 00

  Coming up, one of our all-time favorite moments on the show, when Jane Goodall impersonates a chimpanzee on live radio. You don't want to miss it.

• 12:57Ira Flatow?

  Hey there, folks. Ira here. I'm counting down the minutes of what has been another long year and reminding you that this is your last chance to make a tax deductible donation for 2024. We still have that dollar for dollar donation match in effect, so take advantage and make your gift now. Don't wait. Science Friday is depending on you. Go to sciencefriday.com/support. Each one of you can make a difference in our work. From everyone at Science Friday, wishing you a happy and science-filled new year, and thanks.

• 13:32Speaker 04

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• 15:58Speaker 02

  When you saw the chimp taking the ants out on the stem, how did you know that was an important thing? How did you know? You had no training, right?

• 16:07Speaker 01

  I knew because just about two weeks before that, I was visited by George Shalala, who'd just finished his mountain gorilla study. And as we sat up on the peak, which was my lookout place, from which gradually the chimps got used to me, he said, "If you see tool using and hunting, those two things will make your study worthwhile." And within two weeks, I saw them both. It was quite extraordinary. And both times, it was David Graybeard.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  The same one?

• 16:37Speaker 01

  The same one.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  How long did he live for?

• 16:40Speaker 01

  David Graybeard died in 68. There was an epidemic of some kind of pneumonia. And he wasn't very old. He must have been about, maybe 35 when he died, something like that.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  And how long should a chimp live till?

• 16:54Speaker 01

  They can live to be 60. Now, Fifi, who was a little baby when I arrived in 1960, she's about 43 now, and she looks absolutely fine. In fact, she's pregnant again and could have a baby this month.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Do you say muzzle-tup to a chimp? I'm not sure. Yeah, I get too sad, I guess. That's terrific.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  But, you know, they can live to be 60.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Wow. Now, I know you do wonderful chimp calls. I'm going to try to get my engineer ready for this because Jane tells me it's pretty loud. So tell us what call you're going to be giving.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Well, I'm going to do the greeting. And it's the kind of sound you'd hear if you went to Gombe and you climbed up onto the ridge in the morning and you listened. And if you're lucky, you hear the chimpanzee who's calling out, saying, here I am. It's a wonderful day. Where are you? And

• 17:47Speaker 02

  Wow. That's great. Then

• 17:50Speaker 01

  And each, each one has his or her own individual voice. You know exactly who's calling.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  So like we can tell on the phone who the chimp is, you can also tell?

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Yes, correct.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  Do chimps have dialects from different parts often?

• 18:02Speaker 01

  They actually do. Now, we, nobody's done very much work on that, but my ear isn't that good for chimp sounds, but even I can go like to Uganda or into Congo and hear the chimps calling. Although there's a lot that's the same, you do hear different kinds of sounds.

• 18:20Speaker 02

  You, I want to pick up on the, the thread you were talking about before the break about you having to get a PhD and went back and they were just aghast at you.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Whippersnapper, upstart.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was even accused of teaching the chimps how to fish for termites, which I mean, that would have been such a brilliant coup.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  But so continue.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Well, eventually, you know, so the geographic came in and provided money. And then my ex, late ex-husband was sent out by geographic and he got this amazing film, some of which has been blown up for the new IMAX. And it's just amazing that that film that he took in 1961 has blown up onto this huge screen. It's very, it actually, it's very moving for me to see that.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  You know, I

• 19:06Speaker 01

  I feel I'm back.

• 19:06Speaker 02

  I think that that's how I learned about you when I was young. I think that most people saw those geographic, National Geographic specials on television.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  Yes, they did. They did. And whole generations of people saw and were moved by those and got fascinated. And, you know, literally thousands of people have said, I'm doing what I do because I, you know, Grew up with you.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Besides your initial discovery, what has been most surprising?

• 19:32Speaker 01

  The most surprising and shocking really was when in nineteen seventy, that's after ten years of research, we realized that chimpanzees have a dark side, just like we. I thought they were so like us, but rather nicer. And then to find that they are capable of brutality, that they may even have a series of events not unlike primitive warfare, that they can attack members of another social group so severely that those individuals die as a result of their wounds, and that infants can be killed. And that was very, very shocking.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  And why it took ten years, about ten years, to discover that?

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Well, because the boundary patrols are right out at the far end of their range. And I suppose we just weren't following them far enough. But also, the warlike, you know, we called it the four-year war. That was a rather specific circumstance. And it was when our main study community divided, and the smaller half took up a portion of the range which they had previously all shared. And when those two groups had sort of completely separated, then the males of the larger group began to systematically annihilate the split-off individuals. It was almost like a civil war. And it was, it was very, very shocking.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  It almost sounds like it was a thought, it was a thought-out kind of tactic.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  They certainly, when they're moving out to the peripheral part of their range, it seems to be planned, like one or two males will set off and they'll look back. And very soon, the entire group knows exactly what's happening. At that point, the females and young ones usually stop, and they don't go on with the big males.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  You've been in the forefront in the last few years, as you say, you gave up real field research in the eighties, late eighties, of animal rights. Tell us about that.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  I was very shocked at this conference in Chicago to see secretly filmed footage of chimpanzees in a medical research lab in cages that were five foot by five foot and totally bleak and barren, isolated, these highly social beings who are so like us in so many ways. And that was really what, what took me out as an advocate, took me away from pure research, because I felt I owed it to the chimps. They taught me so much, they given me so much. They really helped to blur the line that people saw as so sharp, dividing us from the rest of the animal kingdom. And once that line is seen as blurred,

• 22:12Speaker 01

  once you're prepared to admit that, that we're not the only beings with personalities, minds and feelings, then you have a new respect, not only for the chimps, the other great apes, but other amazing sentient sapient beings with whom we share the planet.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  And so, do you blanketly believe that no research should be done on any animals?

• 22:35Speaker 01

  I think that it all started, it was very unfortunate that there was this feeling that it's fine to do anything to an animal as long as maybe it's for human good. And what I'm hope, what I hope for is that we have a new mindset. Instead of saying, as most scientists will, unfortunately, we'll always need some animals. But you know, you have to realize that, that so many, uh, protocols that used, that people used to say, we always have to have animals, we've already got alternatives to those. And so I want a mindset that says, it's not really ethical to do this to animals. So let's get together as soon as we can

• 23:17Speaker 01

  and find ways to do it without using animals. Because, you know, our brains are so amazing. We've, we, we can do so much.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Let's go to Sharif in Philadelphia. Hi.

• 23:28Speaker 05

  How are you doing? It's a pleasure to speak with you. I wanted to know if you believe there are any undiscovered large ape species?

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Are you talking about Yeti or Bigfoot or Sasquatch?

• 23:37Speaker 02

  Is that what he's talking about?

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, he is.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  Is that, is that the message I'm missing here?

• 23:41Speaker 01

  I think that's the message you're missing.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  Is that right, Sheri?

• 23:44Speaker 05

  Uh, pretty much.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  I'm out of the loop. Go ahead.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Well, now, you'll be amazed when I tell you that I'm, I'm sure that they exist.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  You, you are?

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've talked to so many Native Americans who've all described the same sounds, two who've seen them. I've probably got about, oh, thirty books that have come from different parts of the world, from China, from, from all over the place. And there was little tiny, uh, snippet in the newspaper just last week, which says that British scientists have found what they believe to be a Yeti hair, and that the, um, scientists in the Natural History Museum in London couldn't identify it as any known animal. Now, that was just a wee bit in the, in the newspaper, and obviously we have to hear a little bit more about that.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  Well, this age of DNA, if you find a hair, there might be some cells on it.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Well, there will be, and I'm sure that's what they've examined, and they don't match up. What this my little tiny snippet said, that don't match up with DNA cells from known animals, so, apes.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  Did you always have this belief that they're, that they, that they existed?

• 24:44Speaker 01

  Well, I'm a romantic, so I always wanted them to exist.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  All right, Sheri?

• 24:49Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  You're quoted in a news story saying that the fight against terrorism is threatening to overshadow environmental concerns.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Well, it has. It does. I mean, look at the drilling for oil in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge. Now, it was blocked, but now probably it's going to be going ahead this week, although in somewhat modified form. But directly after the eleventh of September, it was very clear to me as I traveled around the country that people were reluctant to admit that they cared about the environment, in case they would seem unpatriotic. And gradually, fortunately, gradually, people are coming out of that mindset, because, you know, if we let the planet continue to deteriorate, we really are in a very, very bad state. And if we continue to let that happen, then the terrorists finally will win.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Because for our great grandchildren, there'll be nothing left.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  So do you see yourself as as a an effective spokesperson for the environment now? There are so few people who are, you know.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Well, I I think the effectiveness, you know, I do spend a lot of time talking to young people, but also people from, you know, all walks of life and all ages. And one of the remarks that so often said to me after a lecture, people come up and they say, you have re-inspired me to do my bit. You have made me feel that my own life is more worthwhile. I feel that I've been just sitting, doing nothing. Now I want to do what I can. And, you know, that's if if we can get enough people thinking that way, if we can get enough people who care to elect into power the people who also care. But politicians want to be re-elected.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  So until there's a groundswell of people prepared to to to accept the tough decisions that may affect their purse to some extent, then we'll never get the right legislation.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  But do you think that people who who might be tougher to reach with that message might be more inclined to invite a Jane Goodall to speak or listen to you as someone who was, quote unquote, a political environmentalist from a mainstream organization, maybe like Greenpeace?

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Well, I do know that when talking to people who perhaps think very differently, the only only chance you have of getting them to think in a different way is to touch the heart. And if you're strident, if you start accusing people, if you point fingers, then you immediately see the eyes glaze over and you know that you're not getting across. And, you know, I have to go around and think that so much of what goes on, that in my view, anyway, is a mistake. It's due not to any kind of criminal intent, but simply because people honestly haven't understood. So I feel that that's my job.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  My job is to help people understand and to think about the future. I mean, if just imagine what this world would be like if we went back to the old tradition of the Native Americans who said every major decision has to be made. With the question, how will this affect our people seven generations on? Even if we could just say two generations on, even one generation on, it would be helpful.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  With corporate and political frameworks working to the next quarter.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, a quick buck now, and you know, to hell with the consequences.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. Do you miss, though, the forest? Do you miss going back to the forest?

• 28:35Speaker 01

  I try and keep the forest in me. That's, that's what I have to do to remain sane. But when I do go back to Gombe, you know, it's to be out in the forest, even without a chimpanzee, to be in that timeless world where it's soft and where life is entwined and you actually see the pattern of nature. And I always feel this great spiritual power, which I believe is, is around.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  It must rejuvenate you.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  It does, absolutely.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  You get to see what you're fighting for.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Yes. And, you know, just recently, I was with Mike Fay. I don't know if you remember, Mike Fay walked 2,000 miles across the Congo Basin to see what was there and raise awareness. And I went with him into the Gualogo Forest, which is a 25, 25 kilometer walk, which for somebody used to hotel corridors and airports, it's quite a walk. And, but it was magic. Nobody's ever lived there, not even the pygmies, because it's surrounded by swamps. And the chimpanzees and gorillas haven't learnt to be afraid. And it was just, it was such a magical experience. It was only five days. But, you know, that will keep me going for a very long time.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  What about this idea of ecotourism, which Costa Rica has been successful with?

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  Other places?

• 29:51Speaker 01

  I was just in Costa Rica, because the wonderful thing about Costa Rica is that they have money for the environment and social issues because they got rid of their army. They have no military budget. It's so magical. I was just there talking with President Pacheco and, you know, out in the forest. And we're now involved in the forest in Costa Rica. And I think ecotourism, if it's done right, is, is, is definitely something that has to be. It has to be. We have to let people see for themselves this magic world so that they feel in their heart the importance of preserving it. And that's one of the things that I hope the IMAX will do.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  What do you want to be remembered for? Would you rather be remembered for discovering the tool-making abilities of the chimps or?

• 30:38Ira Flatow?

  For your work in the environment today.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  I think I'd like to be remembered as someone who who really helped people to have a little humility and realize that we are part of the animal kingdom, not separated from it. And that has done a lot. The various results from chimpanzee research has done a lot to soften scientific attitude. So I think I'd like to be remembered for that. And then about my work for the environment, let's wait till I'm dead and see what sort of impact I've had, then I can tell you.

• 31:17Ira Flatow?

  We're not looking forward to finding out.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  But I do think the Roots and Shoots Program for Youth, that's something that I believe is tremendously important.

• 31:27Ira Flatow?

  Tell us a little bit more about that. What is that?

• 31:30Speaker 01

  It started in Tanzania, 91. It's a symbolic name. Roots make a firm foundation. Shoots seem tiny. Together, they can break a brick wall. The brick wall, all the problems we've inflicted on the planet, everything, environmental, social, war, terrorism. Hope, hundreds and thousands of young people around the world can break through. So our programs, which are hands-on actions to make the world better for animals, people, environment, locally.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  We're now in 60 countries. And we range from preschool through university. It's growing really fast. We've got about 4,000 active groups around the world. The span of what's done is as broad as the imagination of youth, which is huge. And the most important message is that every individual makes a difference every day, and we have this huge power. And if we show it collectively, we can change the world.

• 32:27Ira Flatow?

  That's Jane Goodall, recorded in 2002. It's one of the interviews you voted as one of the Best of Science Friday for our 33rd anniversary.

• 32:40Speaker 00

  That's all the time we have. We're taking a break tomorrow, but we'll be back next year with some more great science stories for you. Lots of folks help to make the show happen each year, including

• 32:50Speaker 06

  Emma Gomez. Annie Nero.

• 32:52Speaker 07

  George Harper. Willa Samars.

• 32:55Speaker 00

  I'm John Dankoski. We will see you in 2025.