Welcome back to The Deep Dive. This is where
we take that huge stack of sources you send our
way and, well, we try to make sense of it all
for you, the learner. And today we are talking
about an absolute icon, a giant, Dame Valerie
Jane Morris Goodall. It's hard to even know where
to start. We're talking about the English primatologist
and anthropologist who was, I mean, there's no
other way to say it, she was the world's expert
on chimpanzees. For over six decades. Six decades
of pioneering field research that just changed
everything. So our mission for you today is it's
a bit complicated because her life wasn't just
one thing. It was a series of transformations.
It really was. We have to unpack the science,
of course, these revolutionary discoveries that
really just shattered our definition of what
it means to be human. But we also have to get
into the controversies, right, the challenges
to her methods. And then there's that huge shift.
Yeah. The monumental move she makes from being
this quiet, isolated. observer in the forest
to a global activist, a founder of institutions.
It's a huge arc. And the big picture really is
that Jane Goodall fundamentally redrew the line
between us and the rest of the animal kingdom.
Absolutely. Before her, we were pretty comfortable
with the idea that things like tool use, complex
emotions, you know, lasting social bonds. Even
the dark stuff, like organized warfare. That
was all ours, uniquely human. And her work showed,
step by step, that chimpanzees share all of it.
which forces you to ask some pretty profound
questions about our own place in the world. And
for this, we are drawing from an incredible wealth
of material. I mean, it covers her entire life,
from this really unconventional start to her
career, all the way through to the Kyoto Prize,
the Templeton Prize, the Presidential Medal of
Freedom. And her cultural impact, which is just
massive. So it's a lot to get through. It is.
So let's jump in. Let's start this journey right
where it began, with a childhood gift. So Jane
Goodall was born in London, April 1934. And the
sources point to this one really pivotal moment
in her childhood that feels like perfect foreshadowing.
It really does. It's all about a gift from her
father. When she was just a little girl, he didn't
give her a teddy bear, which would have been
the normal thing to do. Right. He gave her a
lifelike stuffed toy chimpanzee. She named it
Jubilee. And this wasn't exactly a hit with everyone,
was it? Oh, not at all. She said her mother's
friends were, and I think this is her word, They
thought it was this monstrous thing that would
give a child nightmares. A fear of the wild right
there in the nursery. Exactly. But for her, it
was the opposite. She credits that specific toy,
Jubilee, with sparking her deep early love for
animals. It was the beginning of everything.
I love that detail. And as a little side note,
the sources say that even as late as the year
2000, that same toy, Jubilee, was still sitting
on her dresser in her London home. Wow. It just
shows that connection was real and it was lifelong.
So this early passion starts to focus. It becomes
this magnetic pull towards one place in particular,
Africa. She was absolutely determined to get
there. She worked as a waitress, saved every
penny she could for the fair. And finally, in
1957, she makes it to Kenya. And she's working
as a secretary there, just sort of finding her
feet, when a friend gives her a piece of advice
that changes her entire life. It's this incredible
moment of serendipity meets sheer nerve. She
just picks up the phone. She calls the famous
archaeologist and paleontologist Louis Leakey.
Just to make an appointment, not for a job, but
just to talk. Just to talk about animals. She
was curious, she was passionate, and she just
reached out. But Leakey, as it turns out, he
had his own agenda. He saw something in her.
He did. Leakey had this theory, which was pretty
controversial at the time. He believed that if
we studied the behavior of living great apes,
it could give us clues, real insights into how
our own early human ancestors might have lived.
So he was looking for someone to study chimps.
He was actively looking. But he needed someone
with a very specific set of skills. Canacity,
patience, an open mind, and maybe most importantly,
someone who wasn't already indoctrinated by the
rigid scientific thinking of the time. Someone
without a formal degree, maybe? Precisely. So
he doesn't offer her the research gig right away.
First. He hires her as his secretary. As a test,
really. A test of her commitment. And she passes.
And after getting the okay from his wife and
research partner, the legendary Mary Leakey,
he starts bringing her into the fold. He sends
her to Olduvai Gorge. And that's where he finally
lays out the grand plan. He wants her to go into
the forest and study chimpanzees. To live with
them. But first, he sends her to London for a
bit of a crash course. A very brief one, yes.
In 1958, she studied primate behavior with Osmond
Hill and primate anatomy with John Napier, just
to give her a bit of a scientific framework before
throwing her into the deep end. Which brings
us to this, I mean, this just incredible academic
hurdle she had to clear. It really shows what
a trailblazer she was. It's astonishing. She's
out there doing this groundbreaking research,
but on paper, she has no qualifications, no degree
at all. So Leakey pulls some strings. He secures
funding. And in 1962, he sends her to one of
the most prestigious universities in the world.
Cambridge. And get this. She was only the eighth
person in the entire history of the university
allowed to study for a PhD without having a bachelor's
degree first. The eighth person. Ever. It just
tells you how powerful Leakey's recommendation
was and how much potential he must have seen
in her. And she's studying ethology. For our
listeners, what exactly is that? Ethology is
the scientific study of animal behavior, but
specifically in their natural environment. And
it was a very strict, very objective field back
then. Which, as we'll see, put her on a direct
collision course with her professors. Absolutely.
But she succeeded. She got her Ph .D. in 1966.
Her thesis was called Behavior of Free -Living
Cumpanses, and it was based on her first five
years of groundbreaking work at Gombe. And that
work, the work that would define her legacy,
started on July 14th, 1960. That's when she first
arrived at what is now Gombe Stream National
Park in Tanzania. And her arrival marks the beginning
of the Trimates, as they became known. The three
pioneering women Leakey, sponsored to study great
apes, Jane with the chimps, Dian Fossey with
gorillas, and Brute Galdikas with orangutans.
But there's a crucial detail about her arrival
in Gombe. A condition that was placed on her
by the chief warden. Yes, David Anstey. He was.
Well, he was deeply concerned for the safety
of a young woman going out into this remote,
potentially dangerous wilderness all by herself.
So he insisted she couldn't go alone. He did.
The condition was that she had to have a chaperone.
Yeah. And so she was accompanied by her mother,
Margaret. Her mom went with her to the jungle
to study chimps. And Jane always said how crucial
that was. She said that in the late 50s and early
60s, women... just were not accepted in that
male dominated field. Her mother's presence gave
her a kind of a social legitimacy that allowed
the whole project to even get off the ground.
It's an amazing start to the story. And it's
so incredible to think that this field, primatology,
which was so biased against women when she started,
is now, thanks in large part to her example,
almost evenly split between men and women. That's
a legacy in itself, even before you get to the
science. Okay, so if that was the start, this
next part is the revolution. This is the research
at Gumby that, and this isn't an exaggeration,
it forced humanity to rethink itself. It truly
did. And the first shot in that revolution was
a seemingly small decision she made, but it was
a massive breach of scientific protocol in the
1960s. She refused to give the chimpanzees numbers.
Exactly. The standard practice, the rule, was
to assign numbers to your subjects. Subject A,
subject B. It was all about maintaining objectivity,
this clinical emotional distance. But she looked
at them and saw individuals. She saw personalities,
so she named them. And this was just not done.
It was seen as the first step towards anthropomorphism.
towards bias. And it wasn't just the naming,
was it? Her supervisors at Cambridge were also
highly critical of her language. Oh, deeply critical.
She would use words like childhood, adolescence,
motivation, excitement, mood, everyday words
we use to describe our own inner lives. To the
scientific community, that was heresy. She said
herself that even suggesting chimpanzees had
personalities was considered... The worst of
ethological sins. It was. Science demanded cold,
hard, observable facts. She was writing a story,
a rich, emotional narrative about the lives of
these individuals. Why did she stick to her guns
on this? Why was this personal narrative approach
so important? Because it was the key. It was
what worked. By breaking down that wall of clinical
distance, she was able to build a level of trust
that no one had ever achieved before. The sources
say she was eventually accepted into chimpanzee
society. And that intimacy, that acceptance,
was what allowed her to see what no one else
had seen. Precisely. It was the necessary first
step for everything that came next. And this
is where the story really comes alive, with these
incredible characters, these chimpanzee personalities
who became famous around the world. You have
to talk about them. It all started with David
Greybeard. He was the male with the distinctive
grey hair on his chin, and he was the first one,
the first chimp, to lose his fear of her and
let her get close. He was the bridge. And then
there was the alpha, Goliath. Named for his dominance,
a classic, powerful alpha male. But then he was
overthrown. Not by brute force, though. This
is where it gets interesting. He was displaced
by Mike. And Mike's rise to power was a masterclass
in strategy. He figured out that if he took empty
kerosene cans from her camp and charged the other
males while banging them together, it made a
terrifying noise. It was psychological warfare.
It was. It was pure cunning. He used a tool,
an artificial object, to intimidate his rivals
and become the Alpha, an early sign of just how
intelligent they were. And of course, you can't
talk about Gombe without talking about Flo. Flo
is arguably the most important individual in
the whole study. A high -ranking, incredibly
successful mother. You can always recognize her
by her bulbous nose and ragged ears. Then her
importance was really her family, right? Yes,
her lineage. Figen, Faben, Freud, Fifi, and Flint.
By following Flo and her children, and then their
children, Goodall was able to map these complex
family trees over decades. She could see how
social status was passed on, how behaviors were
learned. It was the first long -term look at
a non -human family dynasty. And it was these
individuals, these personalities, who provided
the stage for what is maybe the single most important
discovery she ever made. The one that changed
the textbooks. The toolmaker revelation. You
have to remember, the definition of humanity
back then, especially in Leakey's field of paleoanthropology,
was man the toolmaker. That was the line in the
sand. That was what separated us from every other
animal. The ability to make and use tools. So
walk us through the moment that definition just
crumbled. She's watching David Greybeard. Yeah.
He's at a termite mound. And she sees him take
a long stalk of grass and poke it down into one
of the holes. Right. He pulls it out and it's
covered in termites, which he then eats. He's
fishing for termites. That on its own was a huge
discovery. But then came the really critical
part. It wasn't just that he was using the grass.
It's that he was making the tool. She saw chimps
take a twig from a tree, a leafy twig, and they
would systematically strip off the leaves. They
were modifying it, making it a more effective
tool to fit into the small holes. They were engineering
a solution. They were manufacturing a tool for
a specific purpose. Yeah. And that was the moment
everything changed. She sent a telegram to Leakey,
right, to tell him what she'd seen. She did.
And his response has become one of the most famous
quotes in the history of science. He cabled back.
We must now redefine man, redefine tool, or accept
chimpanzees as human. That's the paradigm shift
right there. That is it. That one observation,
made possible by her patient personal methods,
forced the entire scientific world to redraw
the boundaries of what it means to be human.
So the early years at Gombe painted this picture
of incredible intelligence and a lot of affection.
It was a very positive, almost romantic view
of our closest relatives. It was. And she continued
to document those positive sides, the deep affectionate
bonds. She saw them hugging, kissing, patting
each other on the back, tickling. Things we would
consider very human gestures. Exactly. And she
insisted these weren't just random actions. They
were proof of what she called close, supportive,
affectionate bonds within families and the community.
And these bonds could last a lifetime, you know,
over 50 years. That's the image most of us have
of chimps. But as her study went on for decades,
the story she was documenting got, well, it got
a lot darker. It really did. She herself said
that for the first 10 years, she honestly believed
that chimpanzees were, for the most part, rather
nicer than human beings. But then she saw what
she called their darker side. And it was a shock
even to her. She began to observe systematic
internal violence. For instance, dominant females
would sometimes deliberately kill the babies
of other lower -ranking females. Why? To what
end? To maintain their own dominance. To ensure
their own offspring had a better chance of survival.
It was ruthless social strategy, and in some
cases, it even escalated to cannibalism. That's
horrifying. But the violence went even beyond
that, didn't it? It led to this incredible, disturbing
discovery of organized warfare. This is one of
the most challenging findings from Gombe, the
Gombe Chimpanzee War. It was a documented, systematic
conflict that lasted for four years, from 1974
to 1978. How did it start? It started when the
main community, the Kasakela community she was
studying, split apart. A smaller group broke
off and formed their own community to the south
called the Kahama community. So it was like a
civil war. In a way, yes. The larger Kasakela
group, led by males like Mike, didn't just let
them go. They began a campaign to systematically
eliminate them. How did they? do it? Was it just
random fighting? No, that's the crucial point.
It was organized. It was tactical. The Kasakila
males would form these small raiding parties,
maybe four or five of them, and move silently
into the other group's territory. Like a patrol.
Exactly like a patrol. And they would use ambush
tactics. They'd find a lone Kahama male, isolate
him, and then the whole group would attack him.
They'd hold him down, beating and biting him
until he was dead or dying. It was brutal and
coordinated. That's chilling. It sounds so much
like human conflict. It is. Over those four years,
the Kasakila males hunted down and killed every
single adult male from the rival group. And once
they were all gone, the Kasakila community expanded
their territory into the area the Kahama group
used to occupy. So this was the first time this
kind of long -term lethal intergroup violence
had ever been seen in non -human primates. It
was unprecedented. And it completely destroyed
that romantic notion of the peaceful primate.
It showed that the capacity for this kind of
organized violence for war is not uniquely human
either. And their diet also turned out to be
more aggressive than anyone thought. Yes, they
weren't just peaceful vegetarians. She discovered
they are very effective hunters, especially of
smaller primates like colobus monkeys. And these
hunts were also cooperative, right? Highly cooperative.
A hunting party would work together to trap a
monkey up in a tree. Some chimps would climb
up, while others would stay on the ground, blocking
all the escape roads. It was a coordinated strategy,
and they're incredibly successful predators.
The sources say the Gombe chimps kill and eat
as much as a third of the Colobus monkey population
in the park every year. Wow. So this complex
picture of both affection and brutality brings
us right to the big scientific debate about her
methods. The feeding stations. Right. To get
the chimps comfortable with her presence early
on, she used artificial feeding stations, basically
leaving out bananas to draw them in. It was a
way to habituate them, to get close enough for
observation. Very common practice in fieldwork
at the time. But it came under heavy fire later
on. What was the core of that criticism? The
main argument. which was really laid out by Margaret
Power in the early 90s, was that the feeding
stations fundamentally changed the chimps' behavior.
How so? Well, by providing a concentrated, high
-value food source, you create an unnatural situation.
You get large numbers of chimps crowding into
one small area, which they wouldn't do normally.
This, the critics argued, artificially increased
competition and stress levels. So the fear was
that the aggression, the infanticide, even the
Gombe War, that maybe it wasn't natural behavior
at all. Exactly. The worry was that she wasn't
observing natural chimpanzee society. She was
observing a society that had been distorted by
her own intervention, that the violence was a
product of the feeding stations. That's a huge
challenge to the validity of her entire life's
work. How does she respond to that? She always
maintained that the feeding only affected the
intensity of the conflict, not the fundamental
nature of it. She argued that the capacity for
that kind of aggression was always there, inherent
in their nature, and that the feeding stations
might have just brought it to the surface more
frequently. Has other research backed that up?
Have we seen this kind of warfare in other chimp
groups without feeding stations? Yes, and that's
the key point. Other long -term studies in different
parts of Africa, with completely wild, unprovisioned
groups, have since documented similar instances
of lethal intergroup violence. That suggests
she was right. Provisioning may have exacerbated
the conflict at Gombe, but it didn't create it
from scratch. But her own thinking on the feeding
stations evolved over time, didn't it? It did,
which is a testament to her as a scientist. Much
later, in 2017, she said she would never use
them today. But her reasoning had changed. It
wasn't about the aggression anymore. No, it was
about disease. She said there was absolutely
no knowledge back then that chimpanzees could
catch human infectious diseases. She realized
that by bringing them in so close, they were
putting the chimps at incredible risk of catching
something from the human researchers. That ethical
realization, more than anything else, is why
provisioning was ultimately stopped at Gombe.
So for decades, Jane Goodall is this field researcher.
She's in Gombe. She's observing. She's publishing.
But then we get to 1986, and there's this huge
pivot, a moment that completely changes her life's
work. It really is a clear dividing line in her
career. The Catalyst was a big science conference
in Chicago called Understanding Chimpanzees.
And she goes there just expecting to present
her latest research on chimp behavior. That was
the plan. But as she's sitting there listening
to researchers from all over Africa present their
findings, she has this dawning, horrifying realization.
What was it? She realized that all across the
continent, chimpanzee populations were just vanishing.
They were facing extinction from habitat loss,
from... poaching from the illegal bushmeat trade.
And she saw that all these different research
sites were becoming tiny, isolated islands of
forest in a sea of human development. So she
understood that just studying them wasn't enough
anymore. Not nearly enough. She knew that if
someone didn't start advocating for them and
advocating loudly, there would be no chimpanzees
left to study. And that realization sparks this
radical change in her life. A total transformation.
She essentially leaves the forest behind. She
goes from a quiet life in a remote research camp
to becoming a full -time, globe -trotting activist.
By the early 2000s, she was traveling nearly
300 days a year. Wow, 300 days a year on the
road. For decades. Swapping the quiet of Gombe.
for conference halls, boardrooms, and political
meetings. And she starts building institutions
to carry this work forward. It starts with the
Jane Goodall Institute, or JGI. She founded it
back in 1977, initially just to provide stable,
long -term funding for the Gombe research. But
after that 1986 conference, its mission just
exploded. It became this global conservation
organization. And today it has offices in 19
countries. And her focus wasn't just on the top
-down political level. built something from the
ground up with young people. Roots & Shoots.
This is one of her most enduring legacies. It
started so small in 1991. Just a group of 12
local teenagers who met with her on her porch
in Tanzania to talk about the environmental problems
they saw in their own community. And she empowered
them to do something about it. She did. She helped
them design local projects to tackle those problems.
And that simple model, identify a problem, make
a plan, take action, it just caught fire. How
big did it get? It became a global movement.
By 2010, that little group of 12 had grown into
more than 10 ,000 Roots and Shoots groups in
over 100 countries. It's this incredible youth
-driven network focused on helping people, animals,
and the environment. Her work also created these
very real physical projects in Africa, like the
Chimpunga Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Center. Yes,
in the Republic of Congo. This was a direct response
to the horrors of the bushmeat trade. The center
was created to care for the orphans, the baby
chimps left behind after their mothers were killed
for meat. So it's a sanctuary. A huge sanctuary,
caring for over 100 orphan chimps across three
protected islands, giving them a second chance
at life. And then there's the Taker Project in
Tanzania, which is a really fascinating model
for conservation. Their care is brilliant because
it's holistic. It's based on this very simple
but profound idea. You can't save the chimpanzees
if you don't help the people who live alongside
them. So it's not just about protecting the park.
It's about supporting the surrounding communities.
Its main goal is to reduce the pressure on the
forest. So they do reforestation projects. They
teach sustainable farming methods. But they also
do something else. This is the really interesting
part. They invest in people. Specifically...
Take Care provides reproductive health education
and college scholarships for young girls in the
local villages. And I want to be clear on the
connection here. How does sending a girl to college
help save chimpanzees? It's a powerful long -term
strategy. When you educate girls and empower
women, you see a number of positive outcomes.
Family sizes tend to get smaller. Poverty rates
go down. And when you have smaller, more prosperous
communities, there's less pressure to cut down
the forest for firewood or to clear more land
for unsustainable farming. So by improving human
well -being, you directly reduce the threat to
the chimps' habitat. It's a perfect example of
integrated conservation. A win -win. And her
foundation even teamed up with NASA, which sounds
like something out of a movie. It does, but it's
very practical. They used Landsat satellite imagery
to get this high -resolution, bird's -eye view
of deforestation in Western Africa. And they
gave that data to the local communities. Yes.
They could show villagers exactly where the forest
was disappearing and help them develop strategies
to protect their own local resources. It was
putting high -tech tools in the hands of the
people on the ground. As she became more of an
activist, her focus expanded beyond just primates.
She became a really powerful voice for all animals,
eventually becoming a vegan. Right. She was a
vegetarian for a long time and then went fully
vegan in 2021. She even wrote a book called Eat
Meat Less. And for her, this was a direct extension
of her scientific work. How so? She argued that
farm animals are, in her words, far more aware
and intelligent than we ever imagined. and that
they deserve our respect. She really challenged
people on this, questioning how someone could
say they love animals and then eat meat from
creatures that were treated so cruelly. And she
took that fight to the political level, campaigning
for systemic change. Oh, absolutely. She lobbied
the European Union to ban the caging of farm
animals. She was a vocal critic of using animals
in medical research. She co -founded groups like
ethologists for the ethical treatment of animals.
And she had a huge victory for change. Right
here in the United States. A massive one. For
a long time, wild chimpanzees were listed as
endangered, but captive chimps were not. She
petitioned the U .S. Fish and Wildlife Service
to list all chimpanzees, including captive ones,
as endangered. Why was that distinction so important?
Because it offered them much greater legal protection.
It made it much harder to use them in research
or trade them. And in 2015, she won. The government
classified all chimpanzees as endangered. A huge
win for animal welfare. And her focus just kept
getting bigger. Most recently, she was advocating
for something called ecocide to be recognized
as an international crime. Ecocide. It's a radical
idea. The argument is that mass damage and destruction
of the environment should be treated as a crime
on the same level as genocide or war crimes.
And she said the idea was long overdue. She did.
It shows how her thinking evolved. From studying
one group of chimps in one forest to advocating
for a legal framework to protect the entire planet.
You know, for all the serious science and the
global activism, Jane Goodall also had this really
unique public persona. She was a rigorous scientist
who was also surprisingly open to things that
were a little bit out there. You're talking about
Bigfoot. I am talking about Bigfoot. It's fascinating.
She was openly receptive to the idea that there
could be undiscovered large primates out there.
things like Sasquatch or the Yarin in China.
What did she actually say about it? She said
she was fascinated by the idea and would actually
love them to exist. She did admit it was strange
that no one had ever found a body or even a single
authentic hair. But she kept an open mind. Which
I guess makes sense for someone who spent her
early career being told by experts that what
she was seeing was impossible. I think that's
exactly it. She knew what it was like to challenge
the established dogma. And she also had a very
deep and personal spiritual side that she wasn't
afraid to talk about. No, she wasn't. She was
raised in a Christian home. And even as a young
woman, she was exploring other ideas, taking
classes in theosophy. She said that when she
got to Cambridge, she found that atheism was
very common among her scientific colleagues.
But it didn't sway her. She said her own beliefs
were already pretty well formed by then. But
the real turning point for her spiritually came
later. in 1977 when she had what she described
as a mystical experience in the Notre Dame Cathedral
in Paris. What came out of that experience? She
wrote that after that, she knew she had to believe
in a guiding power in the universe. In other
words, I must believe in God. Did she ever define
what that meant for her? She was always clear
that it wasn't a rigid dogmatic belief. She described
it as a great spiritual power that she felt most
strongly when she was out in nature. And for
her, there was never a conflict between that
and science. Right. She saw no contradiction
between believing in God and understanding evolution.
Not at all. For her, they were two complementary
ways of appreciating the wonder of the natural
world. Now, we also have to touch on a difficult
moment in her career, a real academic stumble
that happened in 2013 with her book, Seeds of
Hope. Yes, this was a serious controversy. The
book was all about the importance of plants.
But just before it was released, a reviewer for
the Washington Post discovered a major problem.
Plagiarism. Yes. Multiple passages were found
to have been listed, without attribution, directly
from various websites. And the sources were just...
Kind of random, weren't they? Incredibly random.
There was text from a website about organic tea,
another one on tobacco, an astrology website
of all things, and several passages taken straight
from Wikipedia. That's not a good look. How did
she explain it? She apologized immediately and
took full responsibility. Her explanation was
that it was an unintentional result of her chaotic
note -taking while traveling constantly. And
the publisher had to pull the book. They did.
They delayed the release, and she and her team
went through a massive review process, adding
all the proper citations and credits. The book
was eventually re -released in 2014, but with
57 pages of endnotes added to fix the errors.
It's a real mark on an otherwise stellar record.
Before we wrap up, there are a couple of fun
humanizing details I think we should mention.
For all her work with chimps, her favorite animal,
she always said, was the dog. I love that. And
she also had prosopagnosia, which is face blindness.
She had real difficulty recognizing people's
faces, which must have made a life of constant
public appearances incredibly challenging. That's
amazing. And we cannot end this section without
talking about the Farsight cartoon. The ultimate
pop culture moment. It's from 1987 by Gary Larson.
It shows two chimps. One is grooming the other,
finds a long blonde hair and says the line. Conducting
a little more research with that Jane Goodall
tramp. It's an iconic cartoon, but the initial
reaction from her institute was not great. Not
great is an understatement. The lawyers for the
Jane Goodall Institute were furious. They called
it an atrocity and were apparently ready to sue.
But then Jane herself, who was out in the field
at Gombe, finally saw it. And she loved it. She
thought it was hilarious. She later said it was
her favorite thing ever done about her in pop
culture. The whole thing was smoothed over. And
Larson ended up being a big supporter of her
work. And there's a perfect ending to that story,
isn't there? There is. A year later, Gary Larson
actually went to visit her at Gombe. And while
he was there, he was attacked by a chimp named
Frodo. Frodo was one of Flo's sons, right? And
known for being aggressive. Notoriously aggressive.
Yeah. He attacked humans all the time, including
Jane herself. It was a pretty stark reminder
for Larson that these were not cute cartoon characters.
They were powerful, wild animals. A life lived
right to the end. She died on October 1st, 2025
at the age of 91, peacefully in her sleep while
she was in California on yet another speaking
tour. Still working. And the tributes that poured
in from all over the world from Prince Harry
L. Gore, the U .N. Secretary General, it just
showed the sheer scale of her impact. She wasn't
just a scientist anymore. She was a global conscience.
So as we wrap up this very deep dive into the
life and legacy of Jane Goodall, let's just quickly
crystallize the three big transformations that
defined her career. Okay. First, you have the
pioneering field researcher, the one who changed
the methods of science itself by insisting on
using names, on seeing personality, on getting
close. Second, she was the revolutionary scientist,
the one whose discoveries, especially about tool
use and social complexity, completely redefined
the line between human and animal. And third,
she became the global activist and institution
builder. After that 1986 conference, she dedicated
her life to advocacy, creating massive, lasting
organizations like the Jane Goodall Institute
and Roots & Shoots that will carry her work forward.
We started this discussion talking about how
her early work forced us to see our similarities
with chimpanzees, the tool use, the affection.
It challenged our idea of being special. But
then her later discoveries about the Gumby War,
the infanticide, the darker side, that forced
her and us to confront a different kind of similarity,
a shared capacity for violence. Which leaves
us with a really challenging final thought. If
this complex social structure that allows for
love and cooperation and learning in chimpanzees
also enables savage, organized brutality, what
does that say about us? About the inevitability
of our own conflicts? It's a profound question.
If we share both the light and the dark with
our closest living relatives, if both are part
of our deep evolutionary inheritance, where do
we find the hope and the will to choose one over
the other? A powerful question to leave you with.
Thank you for joining us for this deep dive into
the incredible legacy of Jane Goodall. We hope
you feel a little more informed and maybe a lot
more inspired.