April 23, 2025 • 39 mins
Topics covered include: Jane Goodall as Isaiah’s lifelong Patron Saint, a very cheap edition of Tarzan of the Apes that changed a young Jane’s entire world, supportive mothers,The Legend of Ochi as a critique of anthropocentrism, Jane’s first experience watching one of the famed Gombe chimps David Greybeard use a tool for the first time, stewardship versus dominion, controversy around Jane’s first National Geographic cover, using empathy in the scientific method, the importance of anecdotes, inventing a fictional primate for the Ochi, filmmaking’s parallels to science, the possibilities of nonverbal communication between man and animal, a quest to understand if adult male chimps like rock and roll music, the size of a dog’s heart knowing no bounds, Jane experiencing the effects of USAID defunding, a shared determination to heal the world by reaching hearts and enacting change, and the aquatic ape hypothesis.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
Hey, and welcome back to the A 24 podcast.
For today's episode, The Legend of Ochi filmmaker Isaiah Saxon
joins his hero Jane Goodall for a truly enlightening
conversation spanning aquatic ape theories, the deep
connections between humans and animals, the primates that
inspired Isaiah's very own Ochi,and Jane's lifelong mission to
save the Earth. We hope you enjoy and don't miss
(00:27):
The Legend of Ochi in theaters nationwide this Friday.
Hello, this is Jane Goodall. And this is Isaiah Saxon, and
today we're talking on the A 24 podcast.
Hi, Jane. Hello finally.
Yeah, it's so nice to meet you. Good to meet you too.
You know, Jane, I grew up in California in the 80s and 90s
and in my household there were sort of three agreed upon patron
(00:51):
Saints that we all held up as examples of our values.
And it was the Dalai Lama, The Beatles, and you.
You've just been this kind of guiding light in my world and
you've certainly been a massive inspiration on the legend of
Ochi. I'm just really excited to talk
to you and it's such a privilege.
So thanks, Jane. So I just I first wanted to talk
about the connections between the film and your story.
(01:15):
So in the film, we see this young girl named Yuri and she
forms this deep relationship with a fictional primate.
And before she meets the animal,you know, she feels stuck and
disconnected and she's in a man's world with no place for
her. So this this encounter she has
with this animal, it becomes an invitation to like a different
way of relating. And it's a direct and emotional
(01:37):
and intuitive way of relating that she's not getting from the
people around her. And it gives her confidence to
like act on instinct and like move in the world.
And I was thinking how in a lot of ways, this kind of mirrors
some of the relationships you'veexperienced with animals.
So I'm just really curious, whatwas the feeling that you had
when you were a young woman in England and you were compelled
(02:00):
to take this leap of faith on a journey that is still
continuing? Well, I mean, you know, I, I was
born loving animals, all animalsright from the beginning.
People say what triggered it? I don't know.
When I was growing up, there wasno TV.
Most of my young years were in the war, World War 2.
So I was out in the garden watching the squirrels and the
(02:21):
birds and and the insects, 2 little jumping spiders and so
on. And then books became very, very
important. Doctor Dolittle was the first
one and you know he took animalsfrom the circus back to Africa
and then Tarzan. I used to save up my pennies of
pocket money and spend Saturday afternoons in this funny little
(02:44):
old second hand bookshop. And then I found this little,
very cheap edition of Tarzan of the Apes, and I've never heard
of Tarzan. So I took it home, climbed up my
favorite tree, which is still out there in the garden, and
read it from cover to cover, andfell passionately in love with
this glorious Lord of the jungle.
(03:05):
And then he goes and marries thewrong Jane.
I thought I would be much, much better mate than that.
Wouldn't be Jane that he married.
Anyway, that was my dream. I will grow up, go to Africa,
live with wild animals and writebooks about them.
And everybody laughed because, you know, girls didn't do that
sort of thing. In fact, nobody was doing that
(03:26):
except mum. And I had this amazing
supportive mother right from thebeginning.
She didn't get mad when she found out, taking worms to bed
with me and quite amazing. And so when I was talking about
this Africa thing, she said, well, if going to have to work
awfully hard, you'll have to take advantage of every and any
(03:47):
opportunity. If you don't give up, I'm sure
you'll find a way of, you know, very, very important to have a
supportive mother. Wow.
Film your film. This young girl doesn't have a
supportive mother. Yeah, part of her journey is
reconnecting to her mother and figuring out how to turn her
into a supportive mother throughher own will.
(04:10):
But yeah, certainly nothing likethe mother that you had that
made it all possible, it sounds like.
It was amazing. Wow.
We want very, very little money,you know?
So when I left school, all my friends went off to university.
Yeah, afford it. So I had to do a secretarial
course, which I didn't want to do.
But again, Mom said you're goingto do something, you must do it
(04:32):
properly. So I did.
Is that how you met Louis Leakey?
Was to apply to a secretarial course or.
No, I, I, I did the secretary, of course.
I got a job first in Oxford, then in London, and then a
letter from a school friend inviting me to Kenya.
So I went by boat, took about 5 weeks because the Suez Canal was
(04:55):
closed. Well, anyway, I got there and
stayed with my friend and then somebody said, Jane, if you're
interested in animals, you should meet Louis Leakey.
That's How I Met him. Was he already the Louis Leakey?
Well, he hadn't, you know, hadn't made that all divided
discovery. OK.
He was pretty well known, yes. Gotcha.
So, you know, my movie really does present a kind of critique
(05:20):
of anthropocentrism, and it presents all these different
attitudes around how to relate to nature.
I think there's this kind of core flaw in the history of
Western science that has always put us at the center.
You know, we started with the idea of like, we're at the
center of the universe. We thought that the stars all
rotated around us. And then we realized that no,
(05:41):
we're just one little planet orbiting 1 little star and one
little Galaxy among billions of galaxies.
And the same pattern can be seenwith how we've thought about our
place among the animal Kingdom as separate and superior.
But you contributed this pivotalmilestone in the evolution of
this thinking, proving that chimpanzees used tools which
(06:03):
then caused Western science to redefine humans from man, the
only tool maker, to something else.
And I just would love to hear the story of how you made that
discovery. Well, you know, when I first got
to Gombe, Khushims ran away for four months.
I couldn't get close. And that was, you know, the
authorities insist that I didn'tgo alone.
(06:25):
So Mum volunteered to come for four months.
I mean, he had money for six months.
You know, I knew what time I could get the chimps to trust
me. But did I have time?
And Mum was there to say, you know, Jane, well, from this peak
you're seeing learning more through your binoculars than you
realise. So it was very sad.
(06:46):
She left just before. And that was the one chimp who'd
begun to lose his fear of me. I named him David Greybeard
because he had white hair on hischin and I saw him sitting on a
termite mound, breaking off grass stems and ishing the
termites. I also saw him picking leafy
(07:06):
twigs and to make them into tools he had to strip the
leaves. So he was using and making
tools. And as you say, we were defined
as man, the toolmaker. And so it was.
I only had two weeks left, but this brought in the National
Geographic and they said we'll fund Jane's research.
(07:28):
Good old David Greybeard, you know it was just magic.
The moment you saw this, did thesignificance of this discovery
and the weight of it hit you, orwere you just vibing with David
Greybeard? Well, The thing is that there
was a book written called The Mentality of Apes.
It's written by an Austrian. Was a psychologist.
(07:50):
Right, this is Wolfgang Kohler is.
That right, and he describes their characters, finds that
they can use different tools to different objects, and some are
smarter than others. Well, science discounted all of
that. It wasn't true because the
chimps had picked it all up fromus.
Right, right. Now I see they had an
explanation that could dismiss it all.
(08:11):
Yeah. Yeah.
So to answer your question, whenI saw David using tools, it
didn't really surprise me because of cola, but I knew that
this was going to be a shock forWestern science and of.
Course you you certainly hadn't shown David had a.
Some I have since it was runningaway.
(08:34):
It was quite hilarious. I've heard you say before that
this kind of anthropocentric thinking in Western science was
like a inherited misinterpretation of the Old
Testament. Could you explain this
misunderstanding idea? Well, you know, the Bible says
that man was given dominion overthe the birds and the beasts and
everything, but it's a mistranslation of the Hebrew
(08:57):
word, which I don't remember. It's not dominion, it's
stewardship. That makes a very big
difference. That makes all the difference.
So, you know, Nicky sent me to Cambridge after I'd been with
the chimps about 1 1/2 years, and he said there was no time
for a bachelor's degree. I had to go straight for a PhD.
(09:18):
And I was really scared. I mean, I'd never been to
college. Imagine how I felt when all the
professors told me I'd done everything wrong.
Chimps should be numbered, not named.
They're your subjects. And you can't talk about
personality, mind or emotion because those are unique to
humans. You can't have empathy with your
subjects because science must becold and objective.
(09:39):
And you can't be objective if you have empathy, which is
rubbish, but still. And luckily I'd had a great
teacher when I was a child and that was my dog.
He taught me that what the professors were saying was
rubbish. Amen.
Thank you, Jane's dog, for worldhistory.
Rusty. Wow, what kind of breed was
(09:59):
Rusty? He was a mutt.
The best I actually want to ask a little bit more about that
feeling you had presenting the your evidence in in the movie,
there's this character played byEmily Watson, and she's
dedicated her life to understanding this elusive
primate Theochi. And she studies, you know,
everything about them, their their behavior, migratory
(10:20):
patterns, diet, social structure, and especially their
way of communicating. And this research is all going
against the grain of how our society understands these
primates. I'm just curious what it was
like. You're this young researcher,
you're a woman and you've just upended the field and, or are
proposing to and you're sharing these discoveries in the face of
(10:41):
the scientific establishment. What was?
How did that feel? And and and how did you navigate
it? Well, you know, funnily enough,
it didn't actually bother me. All I wanted to do was be with
the chimps and study them. This man, he said the only
reason that Geographic gave me money was because they wanted me
on the cover because I had nice legs.
(11:01):
You, you couldn't say that today, But I thought, well, I
want to get back to the chimps. Geographic are giving me money.
Thank you, Legs. Nice legs too.
I look at them on the Geographiccover.
They were great legs. I don't think it's true.
For one moment the Geographic was really fascinated in the
research. Legs was just the male
(11:23):
scientists. They were pissed off, to be
honest. Why should we believe this young
girl? She doesn't have a degree, you
know, It was just they wanted towrite me off.
And then the Graphic Centre filmmaker that was sealed in the
bag. Absolutely.
You mentioned another thing which was about using empathy in
the scientific method. And I've heard you criticize
(11:45):
this approach to science that starts with like a theory or a
strong hypothesis and then it just leads people to be biased
to kind of bend reality to fit their theory.
And your work in Gombe, it was kind of the exact opposite.
You used like patience and curiosity to observe what you
were seeing with an open mind. And then it led to all these big
(12:07):
discoveries. And I can relate because in
filmmaking, there's the same issue where everyone thinks you
should have a really strong vision and a waterproof plan.
So you storyboard and figure outthe whole movie on paper before
you go shoot it, and then you'rejust going out to execute it.
But both in movies and in science, it's like if you have a
bold vision, sometimes it can just reduce what's possible
(12:30):
because reality is presenting things to you and you might not
be nimble enough to catch them. You know, in my case, when I
reflect back on why do I plan myfilms so tightly, it's it's just
fear of failure. It's just, you know, time
pressure. So I don't want to fail.
So I'm going to do as much as I can beforehand.
But is it kind of the same thingin science?
Like is does it work this way that you have to have a strong
(12:52):
theory to go out and gather research?
And that's what some people seemto think, but it never occurred
to me. I mean, I'm that not just to
learn about the chance to learn from them.
So I'm open. What are they going to teach me
today? And the other thing, which
really, you know, you're, you'renot supposed as a scientist to
(13:13):
pay any attention to anecdotes. So you see something happen.
Maybe you just see it once or maybe twice.
So you're not supposed to use it.
It's an anecdote. You can't prove anything.
You can't, you know, make it into numbers.
But the observation like that can show you what is the chimp
capable of. This is not normal behaviour.
(13:35):
But given this particular situation, this is what the
brain can do, right? So I think the anecdotes are
really, really, really important.
Because then they can shape for the research that you can try to
get data for. But you got to start somewhere.
Yeah. OK, so when I was inventing this
fictional primate, the Ochi, I was referring a lot to existing
(13:57):
patterns of behavior that we canobserve in other primates.
So I was really inspired by bonobos and they're kind of
matriarchal social structure, which I'm not a primatologist.
I hope I'm getting this right. But as I understand it, they are
led by older females and they have a kind of more cooperative
and less aggressive culture thanother apes, and they're the only
(14:18):
non male dominated social hierarchy in the ape world.
Have you spent time with Bona bows?
No, I haven't. What do you think about Bona
bows? Well all I I can say is I'm
really glad Leakey didn't send me to study them because the
females have this constant genital swelling and the
geographic would never ever shown any photographs of them.
(14:41):
They're the X-rated primate. So they're, they're not, they're
not ready for Nat Geo, OK. We got this lovely photo, all
male Aussies, all facing the camera.
They're all excited, so they gotthese big penile erections.
Look at the final photo. There's a Mr. Groin level right
across the photograph. Wow, OK, so basically bonobos
(15:05):
too hot to research a little bit.
OK. I think a male can dominate a
female, but basically it's the fact that there isn't this
amount of aggression that you find.
I mean, chimps can be very, veryaggressive.
I mean, they can kill, have a kind of primitive war that's not
being recorded in bonobos. Right.
(15:28):
The females use sex as a kind ofrelaxing force across the whole
social group. Yeah.
OK, so my film in a lot of ways is about the possibilities of
non verbal communication. And in it I explore this idea of
a fictional primate language andit doesn't rely just on words.
And I've seen you in your field work with chimps able to
(15:51):
communicate through nonverbal gestures and posture, basically
body language. And I'm just curious, like, what
kind of information can you transmit between a human and an
ape through body language? Well, The thing is that they're
they're nonverbal communication.It's basically the same as ours,
increasing, embracing, holding hands, patting, begging,
(16:13):
swaggering. So it's probably a language that
we use Before week. We somehow got into using words,
which I think is the biggest difference because once you get
words, you can have discussions,you can bring people from
different backgrounds to solve the problem, You can talk about
(16:34):
things that aren't present. Right, you have a deeper
knowledge repository that you can keep growing.
Yeah, but we don't communicate with them in the wild.
It's what we're looking after them in sanctuaries.
Those others have been shot so you could just reassure them as
if you were a chimp and they understand.
(16:54):
That's incredible. So I had this line in the movie
and I had to sadly cut it, but it goes.
There is no hierarchy of animal intelligence.
There are only different skills adapted for different
situations. So to me, it's clear that like,
pigeons are better and more intelligent at certain things
than we are. In fact, like every single
(17:15):
animal has just found a sort of evolutionary niche that has
shaped a specialized intelligence.
So I'm really fascinated by kinds of intelligence that
animals possess that we don't like magnetic navigation and
birds and echolocation and dolphins and bats.
Are there any animal abilities that you find like particularly
mysterious or fascinating? Well, there's lots that chimps
(17:37):
do that we don't understand. We don't understand really why
some females migrate to a neighboring community and
adolescents and stay there. Others migrate but come back and
have their babies in their own community.
We don't know why. There's various theories.
No, there are things like that. The longer we're on 65th year
(18:01):
now, so we can look back throughthe records and say he's
behaving like this because when he was a child we had that
traumatic experience. So he always hates whatever it
is. Wow, that's an incredible corpus
to be able to go back to. It makes me think about there's
this idea of cultural evolution and for many years another bit
(18:24):
of anthropocentrism. We've all thought it was only in
humans that there was any cultural evolution.
Animals were just set. You know, there's been a bunch
of different studies that have challenged this.
There's the Robert Sapolsky study about baboons who, you
know, all the aggressive males had this kind of generational
die off because of the tuberculosis outbreak.
And then it was observed for several generations that these
(18:47):
kinder, gentler males that inherited the top of the social
hierarchy like changed the culture entirely.
There's also, you know, evidencethat, like, birdsong and whale
song are their artworks that evolve culturally, that the song
is passed down, it changes a little bit, it has regional
variation. Each generation modifies it a
(19:08):
little bit. Have you seen other examples of
cultural evolution in the Gombe data set?
Or I almost don't want to call it that, The vast span of
awareness that you have about these chumps in Gombe.
Well, we certainly see culture fact.
You know, I mentioned it way back in the late 60s and of
course I was blackboard. I mean, only humans have
(19:30):
culture. But if one relation is behaviour
passed from one generation to the next through observational
learning, we find chimps across Africa.
They have different tool using behaviours, They sometimes use
inborn gestures, but in different contexts.
So we've observed the spread of a behaviour, a new behaviour
(19:52):
till it becomes part of the normal cultural repertoire of
the chimps. Then sometimes you know the
infants are the ones usually that make the new discoveries.
So this occasion one of the infants, you know when females
won't reassure and so they want to be mated or something, they
(20:14):
present their bottoms and the typical thing, a chimp male will
poke the females genitals and sniff like is she ready for
mating. So on this occasion.
This young chimp, the female came and presented to him and
she had diarrhea. So he looked and then he picked
up a twig and poked her. With that the other infants
(20:35):
began to copy him. So there were all these infants
going around poking females bottoms with twig.
You know, it wasn't adaptive, soit dropped out, but I see.
Right, so when a new behaviour is introduced, it can be a fad
as well, because unless it has some sort of benefit.
Absolutely. OK, I want to talk a little bit
(21:00):
about animals and music. So in the movie, I'm exploring
the way the animals might communicate complex feelings
through a musical language rather than one that, you know,
works like ours. And any human that's ever heard
music understands that there's emotional information being
transmitted and pitch and rhythm.
(21:20):
But the idea that animals might use this as a form of community
communication and might be actually trying to express
themselves emotionally or communicate emotions is under
explored. And the exploration we do have
is kind of into a black box because we don't know what
they're feeling. What do you think about this
idea? Well, I mean, we know that
(21:41):
whales sing, they have songs andbirds communicate through music
all the time. I don't know.
It's been something that's fascinated me.
I wanted, I've tried and tried to get somebody to test.
Do adolescent males like rock? Do like, you know what, what do
they prefer? Do they like music based own
(22:04):
calls? Do they like something, you
know, classical or do they have rock and does it change with age
and sex? And you know, but nobody's done
it yet. Oh, well, we got to get on this.
I've even done that with plants.I've seen the the studies of
plants growing at different rates depending on the style of
music you play. Yeah.
(22:24):
I mean, I just noticed with my own dog that pitch is just
everything. You know, the tone of my voice
is a form of music. It's not so much the the
content, although she can slowlylearn what some of these things
mean. It's the pitch that matters.
Yeah, they can learn words as well.
They're very some of the dogs are very smart at learning
(22:46):
words. Oh yes, absolutely.
I've read that you're partial todogs.
Favorite animal? Absolutely.
Amen. Too human.
Oh, chimps are too human, I see.I didn't.
All of them as animals, you know.
Right, they're your cousins. They're just beings with beings,
and don't the beings too, but you know what I mean?
(23:06):
Yeah, I mean, the size of a dog's heart knows no bounds.
That's the special thing. Yeah.
So Speaking of heart, you've said the primary reason we're
destroying the planet is that wehave a disconnect between our
exceedingly clever brains and our hearts, and that the key to
solving the situation we're in is integrating these two.
(23:27):
And when I hear the word heart, I just think, OK, that's
empathy, curiosity, compassion, vulnerability, courage,
selflessness, fearlessness, all things that you embody.
And, you know, you've become a kind of ambassador of the heart.
So how do we make more genes? How do we how do we encourage
this capacity in other people? Well, that's through our Roots
(23:51):
and Judes program, you know, which is young people from
kindergarten through university all doing 3 projects to help
people, animals, environment nowin 75 countries.
I began it in 91. So we know now that people
who've been through it at school, I'm into decision making
positions and they hang on to respect and compassion.
(24:15):
So that's the rest of my life. However long I have, you know, I
want to grow it and grow it and grow it because it is head and
heart. It does bring head and heart
together. How does this decision affect
people in the future, You know, instead of this commercial,
money driven, power driven society we live in now.
(24:36):
And you know, the other thing ishow do you reach people who
don't have a heart? I can't think of some people
right now who don't seem to havea heart.
I'm sure you can too. There's a lot of them, or I
would say their heart has been buried, buried under layers of
pain and humiliation. Yeah.
(24:56):
So roots and shoots, what does it constitute?
It's a curriculum. It's a.
Can you explain it a bit? Yeah.
So you form a group, let's say we're now at high school level,
which is how it began. So they come together.
Some of them, when I first met this first group, they were
worried about poaching in the National Park.
Some were worried about St. children with no homes.
(25:18):
Some were worried about throwingstones at dogs.
They had different concerns. So I said, well, get your
friends together and you decide what problem do you care about
with picking up trash or not wasting water or being kind to
cats or, you know, whatever. So they choose their project.
(25:41):
It's not top down, it's bottom up because they choose and then
decide what they can do. They work with passion because
they care about it. It's their problem.
And I've also found that with adults too, when they start
working on something they care about makes them feel good and
they want to do more. And so they lose this feeling of
(26:04):
helplessness that so many peoplehave today.
Wow, that's an amazing approach.So it's it's about empowering
communities to identify their own problems and then experience
what it's like to try to fix them.
That's right. And so Roots and Shoots is super
flexible because you know, it'lldepend on their age, it'll
(26:26):
depend on their culture, it'll depend on are they rich or poor,
their religion. It fits into what wherever you
are, you can start Roots and Shoots.
Amazing. OK.
So I think it was in 1986 you really decided to become an
activist, is that right? Yeah, that conference didn't, I
(26:47):
didn't decide, I mean a tough decision to leave Gombe.
So I went to this conference as a scientist, had my PHDI was the
best days of my life, learning about the rainforest, getting
this spiritual connection with it.
And then this session which showed cross apricot chimp
numbers were dropping, forests were disappearing in captivity
(27:11):
the chimps are closest relativesin five foot by 5 foot cages and
medical research labs taken fromtheir mothers and as pets and so
on. So I left.
Now I had to do something. I didn't know what to do, but I
didn't decide, it just happened.So you've dedicated your life
sense to creating meaningful, practical, on the ground change
(27:35):
in the world. And many artists, including
myself, sometimes we just think nothing we do really matters.
And coming from you, someone whohas said there's a place for
stories, a really important place for stories, could you
help us? Like what is the role of fiction
and stories in making a better world?
Well, I think it depends on the fiction and the story.
(27:56):
Of course. You know, the story is something
that reaches the heart and it can be fiction or it can be
real. It doesn't matter as long as it
just touches inside. And so you think, oh, I never
thought of that. Yes, yes.
And then you you fit it into your pattern of life and it can
change you. Yep.
(28:16):
I want to talk a little bit moreabout some of your on the ground
activism. So in my movie, the Ochi are
considered a threat to the way of life of the rural people and
the rural people, they depend ontimber and livestock for their
survival. And you've been doing this
really incredible work with local communities all around the
world to collaboratively supportthem to protect their habitat,
(28:39):
habitat that they need to share with endangered species.
So can you talk about that process and that mission?
How does it work? Well, and the great thing there
was the man I was working with at the time was so wise.
He'd been working with local people for 14 years in Tanzania.
I hadn't worked with them at allexcept field staff helping to
(29:02):
follow the chimps. I had learned from that that
once the local people understoodthe chimps, they loved them as
much as I did and were fascinated by them by going into
a very poor village. George, this guy, he said, Jane,
don't talk about saving the environment for wildlife, talk
about helping them find a way ofliving without destroying the
(29:24):
environment. And this was brilliant because
eventually the people understandthat protecting the environment
isn't just for wildlife, it's their own future and they become
our partners. So it's community LED
conservation, listening them andasking them what we can do to
help and helping them find ways of operating without destroying
(29:48):
the environment. Then gradually they come to
realize they need the environment.
This sounds like the same approach that you take with
kids. Much the same, yes.
There's a pattern, yeah. It seems to be about listening
and respect and letting people solve their own problems and
providing light facilitation. Yeah, helping hand.
(30:10):
Right. Sometimes a big helping hand,
but the Trump and Musk, we've lost all our USAID support for
our big program in Tanzania. Fuck.
No, it's all come to a standstill.
The clinic for mothers and babies, these scholarships for
girls, all of those things frozen.
(30:31):
Well, fuck. Yeah.
You've talked a lot about you have this approach to change
where you, you know, you can't just argue with someone and
confront them when they have more power than you.
You need to tell them stories and connect to their heart.
But as you've alluded, we might be dealing with people whose
hearts are so buried that this process is challenging.
(30:51):
Like now in your 90s, you have more wisdom than anyone I've
ever spoken to. What are you thinking right now?
How do you approach them? Or how do you approach change in
this time? Well, you know, they're
honestly, I hate to say it, but there's some people I don't
think I could change. I think they're beyond it.
You know, I, I would say you couldn't have changed Hitler and
(31:13):
you couldn't change Stalin. And there are people today I put
in category. So that's why I'm concentrating
so much on young people, the university, when they're about
to come out into the big wide world.
Whether we have time for them toreach those decision making
positions, I don't know. I mean, basically we're trying
(31:34):
to create caring, compassionate citizens because the citizen,
they have a role to play. They can do peaceful
demonstrations. Like I gather right across the
US, there were peaceful demonstrations in every National
Park to get the people back who've been fired.
You know, we all have some role to play if you can reach the
(31:57):
heart. And I've seen it happen.
And there are stories. You have to 1st listen to the
person because maybe, maybe there's something you never
thought of. So listen to get a feel of who
they are. You know, I'm lucky I've lived
all these years, so I've got many stories, all kinds of
people. So you know, as someone with
(32:20):
direct experience in presenting scientific theory that is
considered heretical in its time, your observation of Chimp
Thulius, I'm curious to get yourtake on a few other modern day
heresies that I just think are very interesting in the ape
world. And the first is the aquatic ape
hypothesis, which is this idea that during a critical period in
(32:42):
human evolution, as we were these quadrupedal arboreal tree
dwelling, fruit eating ancestors, we descended from the
trees eventually becoming bipedal hunters in the plains.
But in that in between we lived in a swamp like habitat and this
explains our physical distinction from other apes,
(33:03):
like our hairlessness and our fat layers.
Both are traits that we only seein other aquatic mammals like
dolphins and hippos. That's the theory.
I'm not a scientist, I'm curiouswhat you think.
Well, I've obviously read about it, I've thought about that, and
somehow I don't believe it. You don't believe it?
(33:25):
OK, we got it on the Aquatic ApeHypothesis.
No, I don't. It doesn't gel properly.
Yeah, OK. And you've spoken before about
keeping an open mind regarding the possibility of unknown
primates. Obviously, I'm really into this
because I just wrote a movie andmade a movie about undiscovered
primates. You know, we're still finding
(33:46):
new species. We found a monkey and a lemur in
2020 that we'd never seen before.
We found a tarsier in 2008. And the mountain gorilla wasn't
really discovered by westerners until 19 O2.
If there were an undiscovered ape species, let's say they did
exist and they were in remote regions of the world and they
(34:07):
were like a descendant of Australopithecus or
Gigantopithecus or something, what kind of behaviors or traits
would you expect these beings toexhibit to be able to stay so
hidden? Like, you know, would they be
burying their dead, living in caves?
Like how could we explain their elusiveness?
That is the secret. That is the one question.
(34:30):
I mean, I do believe in that these things exist.
My strangest, I mean, I've got lots of stories with no time for
them. But I was in the wild, wild part
of Ecuador and we'd flown over forest for miles.
And the people live in little communities of about 30, like
the chimps, and there's nothing between no roads.
(34:53):
And they communicate with, with a hunter.
We'll go from 11 little community and take messages.
And it's totally wild, nowhere near civilization.
So I obviously had an interpreter.
And all I said was when you see one of these messing, well,
these hunter messengers, have you seen a monkey without a
(35:15):
tail? No more than that.
And about two months later, I got a reply, three of them,
three of these hunter people said, oh, yes, we've seen a
monkey without a tail. It stands about 6 foot high and
walks upright. I love that I got a.
(35:38):
That was good, yeah. If I'd only had money, I would
have got to people out there to investigate, but I didn't have
any money so. I'm I'm myself and I'm an
agnostic but a deep enthusiast and I get really, really excited
about analyzing hardcore evidence for Sasquatch.
But I do it almost all as a a joyful hobby.
(36:01):
I think we're still trying to figure it out when there's
nothing more mysterious. My last real question is it's
about one of your other superpowers, which seems to be
persistence and this mission that you're on to understand and
protect and honor nature. It's been going for 65 years,
and you must have found some kind of secret energy reservoir
(36:27):
of physical strength and motivation that just keeps you
traveling around the world 300 days a year.
And now you're into your 90s andyou're still going.
So what renews the motivation? Like when you're tired and
discouraged? What strengthens your resolve?
Well, it may sound weird to you,but I feel that all of us put on
(36:51):
this planet with a role to play.Many people never know what it
is or they don't even think it'spossible.
But I think I was given a mission.
When I look back over my life, Isee, you know, here and here and
here, there were places where I had to make a decision.
And you know, I believe in free will.
Hopefully I made the right decision.
(37:12):
And that took me to here, and then another decision and that
took me. And so now because I've got this
mission, then when I get really tired, I mean, the other day,
there's somebody coming around following me from time to time,
making a film, either called TheReal Jane or Chasing Jane, that
same question. And he said, Jane, I saw you,
(37:34):
you were in the green roll getting ready for a lecture.
You were absolutely exhausted. You were saying, just tell the
people out there, I've had to gointo emergency, but I'm sick.
I can't give a lecture. And then of course, I have to go
onto the stage. And he said, something happened
and you totally changed and you gave the best lecture I've ever
(37:55):
heard you give. So mentally I'm saying you put
me to do this, you jolly well help me.
That's that's how you speak to the universe.
That's how I speak to the great spiritual power that I feel,
especially in the rainforest. But I do feel, you know, like
what happens after you die? Is it the end or is there
(38:18):
something? I believe there's something.
And so when somebody said what'syour next great adventure?
I said dying. And there was definitely hush.
There were 5000 people and therewas definitely hush.
And then a few titters that I said what I just said to you.
You know, if there's something Ican't think of a great adventure
(38:39):
than finding out what that something is.
Yeah, to me the biggest mystery is why is there anything and not
nothing which is. Well, that's.
Part of the same question. I've read just about every book
on near death experiences, people who've had them, some of
them are really strange ones. A book written neuroscientist
(39:03):
and you know the things that youcan't explain, and I'm
fascinated. Me too Jane, thank you so much
for giving us this hour and for being you and inspiring me my
whole life. Thank mom for me being me.
(39:23):
Thanks for listening. The A 24 podcast is produced by
us A 24. Special thanks to our editor Tom
Wyatt and Robot Repair, who composed our theme.
Hey, and welcome back to the A 24 podcast.
For today's episode, The Legend of Ochi filmmaker Isaiah Saxon
joins his hero Jane Goodall for a truly enlightening
conversation spanning aquatic ape theories, the deep
connections between humans and animals, the primates that
inspired Isaiah's very own Ochi,and Jane's lifelong mission to
save the Earth. We hope you enjoy and don't miss
(00:27):
The Legend of Ochi in theaters nationwide this Friday.
Hello, this is Jane Goodall. And this is Isaiah Saxon, and
today we're talking on the A 24 podcast.
Hi, Jane. Hello finally.
Yeah, it's so nice to meet you. Good to meet you too.
You know, Jane, I grew up in California in the 80s and 90s
and in my household there were sort of three agreed upon patron
(00:51):
Saints that we all held up as examples of our values.
And it was the Dalai Lama, The Beatles, and you.
You've just been this kind of guiding light in my world and
you've certainly been a massive inspiration on the legend of
Ochi. I'm just really excited to talk
to you and it's such a privilege.
So thanks, Jane. So I just I first wanted to talk
about the connections between the film and your story.
(01:15):
So in the film, we see this young girl named Yuri and she
forms this deep relationship with a fictional primate.
And before she meets the animal,you know, she feels stuck and
disconnected and she's in a man's world with no place for
her. So this this encounter she has
with this animal, it becomes an invitation to like a different
way of relating. And it's a direct and emotional
(01:37):
and intuitive way of relating that she's not getting from the
people around her. And it gives her confidence to
like act on instinct and like move in the world.
And I was thinking how in a lot of ways, this kind of mirrors
some of the relationships you'veexperienced with animals.
So I'm just really curious, whatwas the feeling that you had
when you were a young woman in England and you were compelled
(02:00):
to take this leap of faith on a journey that is still
continuing? Well, I mean, you know, I, I was
born loving animals, all animalsright from the beginning.
People say what triggered it? I don't know.
When I was growing up, there wasno TV.
Most of my young years were in the war, World War 2.
So I was out in the garden watching the squirrels and the
(02:21):
birds and and the insects, 2 little jumping spiders and so
on. And then books became very, very
important. Doctor Dolittle was the first
one and you know he took animalsfrom the circus back to Africa
and then Tarzan. I used to save up my pennies of
pocket money and spend Saturday afternoons in this funny little
(02:44):
old second hand bookshop. And then I found this little,
very cheap edition of Tarzan of the Apes, and I've never heard
of Tarzan. So I took it home, climbed up my
favorite tree, which is still out there in the garden, and
read it from cover to cover, andfell passionately in love with
this glorious Lord of the jungle.
(03:05):
And then he goes and marries thewrong Jane.
I thought I would be much, much better mate than that.
Wouldn't be Jane that he married.
Anyway, that was my dream. I will grow up, go to Africa,
live with wild animals and writebooks about them.
And everybody laughed because, you know, girls didn't do that
sort of thing. In fact, nobody was doing that
(03:26):
except mum. And I had this amazing
supportive mother right from thebeginning.
She didn't get mad when she found out, taking worms to bed
with me and quite amazing. And so when I was talking about
this Africa thing, she said, well, if going to have to work
awfully hard, you'll have to take advantage of every and any
(03:47):
opportunity. If you don't give up, I'm sure
you'll find a way of, you know, very, very important to have a
supportive mother. Wow.
Film your film. This young girl doesn't have a
supportive mother. Yeah, part of her journey is
reconnecting to her mother and figuring out how to turn her
into a supportive mother throughher own will.
(04:10):
But yeah, certainly nothing likethe mother that you had that
made it all possible, it sounds like.
It was amazing. Wow.
We want very, very little money,you know?
So when I left school, all my friends went off to university.
Yeah, afford it. So I had to do a secretarial
course, which I didn't want to do.
But again, Mom said you're goingto do something, you must do it
(04:32):
properly. So I did.
Is that how you met Louis Leakey?
Was to apply to a secretarial course or.
No, I, I, I did the secretary, of course.
I got a job first in Oxford, then in London, and then a
letter from a school friend inviting me to Kenya.
So I went by boat, took about 5 weeks because the Suez Canal was
(04:55):
closed. Well, anyway, I got there and
stayed with my friend and then somebody said, Jane, if you're
interested in animals, you should meet Louis Leakey.
That's How I Met him. Was he already the Louis Leakey?
Well, he hadn't, you know, hadn't made that all divided
discovery. OK.
He was pretty well known, yes. Gotcha.
So, you know, my movie really does present a kind of critique
(05:20):
of anthropocentrism, and it presents all these different
attitudes around how to relate to nature.
I think there's this kind of core flaw in the history of
Western science that has always put us at the center.
You know, we started with the idea of like, we're at the
center of the universe. We thought that the stars all
rotated around us. And then we realized that no,
(05:41):
we're just one little planet orbiting 1 little star and one
little Galaxy among billions of galaxies.
And the same pattern can be seenwith how we've thought about our
place among the animal Kingdom as separate and superior.
But you contributed this pivotalmilestone in the evolution of
this thinking, proving that chimpanzees used tools which
(06:03):
then caused Western science to redefine humans from man, the
only tool maker, to something else.
And I just would love to hear the story of how you made that
discovery. Well, you know, when I first got
to Gombe, Khushims ran away for four months.
I couldn't get close. And that was, you know, the
authorities insist that I didn'tgo alone.
(06:25):
So Mum volunteered to come for four months.
I mean, he had money for six months.
You know, I knew what time I could get the chimps to trust
me. But did I have time?
And Mum was there to say, you know, Jane, well, from this peak
you're seeing learning more through your binoculars than you
realise. So it was very sad.
(06:46):
She left just before. And that was the one chimp who'd
begun to lose his fear of me. I named him David Greybeard
because he had white hair on hischin and I saw him sitting on a
termite mound, breaking off grass stems and ishing the
termites. I also saw him picking leafy
(07:06):
twigs and to make them into tools he had to strip the
leaves. So he was using and making
tools. And as you say, we were defined
as man, the toolmaker. And so it was.
I only had two weeks left, but this brought in the National
Geographic and they said we'll fund Jane's research.
(07:28):
Good old David Greybeard, you know it was just magic.
The moment you saw this, did thesignificance of this discovery
and the weight of it hit you, orwere you just vibing with David
Greybeard? Well, The thing is that there
was a book written called The Mentality of Apes.
It's written by an Austrian. Was a psychologist.
(07:50):
Right, this is Wolfgang Kohler is.
That right, and he describes their characters, finds that
they can use different tools to different objects, and some are
smarter than others. Well, science discounted all of
that. It wasn't true because the
chimps had picked it all up fromus.
Right, right. Now I see they had an
explanation that could dismiss it all.
(08:11):
Yeah. Yeah.
So to answer your question, whenI saw David using tools, it
didn't really surprise me because of cola, but I knew that
this was going to be a shock forWestern science and of.
Course you you certainly hadn't shown David had a.
Some I have since it was runningaway.
(08:34):
It was quite hilarious. I've heard you say before that
this kind of anthropocentric thinking in Western science was
like a inherited misinterpretation of the Old
Testament. Could you explain this
misunderstanding idea? Well, you know, the Bible says
that man was given dominion overthe the birds and the beasts and
everything, but it's a mistranslation of the Hebrew
(08:57):
word, which I don't remember. It's not dominion, it's
stewardship. That makes a very big
difference. That makes all the difference.
So, you know, Nicky sent me to Cambridge after I'd been with
the chimps about 1 1/2 years, and he said there was no time
for a bachelor's degree. I had to go straight for a PhD.
(09:18):
And I was really scared. I mean, I'd never been to
college. Imagine how I felt when all the
professors told me I'd done everything wrong.
Chimps should be numbered, not named.
They're your subjects. And you can't talk about
personality, mind or emotion because those are unique to
humans. You can't have empathy with your
subjects because science must becold and objective.
(09:39):
And you can't be objective if you have empathy, which is
rubbish, but still. And luckily I'd had a great
teacher when I was a child and that was my dog.
He taught me that what the professors were saying was
rubbish. Amen.
Thank you, Jane's dog, for worldhistory.
Rusty. Wow, what kind of breed was
(09:59):
Rusty? He was a mutt.
The best I actually want to ask a little bit more about that
feeling you had presenting the your evidence in in the movie,
there's this character played byEmily Watson, and she's
dedicated her life to understanding this elusive
primate Theochi. And she studies, you know,
everything about them, their their behavior, migratory
(10:20):
patterns, diet, social structure, and especially their
way of communicating. And this research is all going
against the grain of how our society understands these
primates. I'm just curious what it was
like. You're this young researcher,
you're a woman and you've just upended the field and, or are
proposing to and you're sharing these discoveries in the face of
(10:41):
the scientific establishment. What was?
How did that feel? And and and how did you navigate
it? Well, you know, funnily enough,
it didn't actually bother me. All I wanted to do was be with
the chimps and study them. This man, he said the only
reason that Geographic gave me money was because they wanted me
on the cover because I had nice legs.
(11:01):
You, you couldn't say that today, But I thought, well, I
want to get back to the chimps. Geographic are giving me money.
Thank you, Legs. Nice legs too.
I look at them on the Geographiccover.
They were great legs. I don't think it's true.
For one moment the Geographic was really fascinated in the
research. Legs was just the male
(11:23):
scientists. They were pissed off, to be
honest. Why should we believe this young
girl? She doesn't have a degree, you
know, It was just they wanted towrite me off.
And then the Graphic Centre filmmaker that was sealed in the
bag. Absolutely.
You mentioned another thing which was about using empathy in
the scientific method. And I've heard you criticize
(11:45):
this approach to science that starts with like a theory or a
strong hypothesis and then it just leads people to be biased
to kind of bend reality to fit their theory.
And your work in Gombe, it was kind of the exact opposite.
You used like patience and curiosity to observe what you
were seeing with an open mind. And then it led to all these big
(12:07):
discoveries. And I can relate because in
filmmaking, there's the same issue where everyone thinks you
should have a really strong vision and a waterproof plan.
So you storyboard and figure outthe whole movie on paper before
you go shoot it, and then you'rejust going out to execute it.
But both in movies and in science, it's like if you have a
bold vision, sometimes it can just reduce what's possible
(12:30):
because reality is presenting things to you and you might not
be nimble enough to catch them. You know, in my case, when I
reflect back on why do I plan myfilms so tightly, it's it's just
fear of failure. It's just, you know, time
pressure. So I don't want to fail.
So I'm going to do as much as I can beforehand.
But is it kind of the same thingin science?
Like is does it work this way that you have to have a strong
(12:52):
theory to go out and gather research?
And that's what some people seemto think, but it never occurred
to me. I mean, I'm that not just to
learn about the chance to learn from them.
So I'm open. What are they going to teach me
today? And the other thing, which
really, you know, you're, you'renot supposed as a scientist to
(13:13):
pay any attention to anecdotes. So you see something happen.
Maybe you just see it once or maybe twice.
So you're not supposed to use it.
It's an anecdote. You can't prove anything.
You can't, you know, make it into numbers.
But the observation like that can show you what is the chimp
capable of. This is not normal behaviour.
(13:35):
But given this particular situation, this is what the
brain can do, right? So I think the anecdotes are
really, really, really important.
Because then they can shape for the research that you can try to
get data for. But you got to start somewhere.
Yeah. OK, so when I was inventing this
fictional primate, the Ochi, I was referring a lot to existing
(13:57):
patterns of behavior that we canobserve in other primates.
So I was really inspired by bonobos and they're kind of
matriarchal social structure, which I'm not a primatologist.
I hope I'm getting this right. But as I understand it, they are
led by older females and they have a kind of more cooperative
and less aggressive culture thanother apes, and they're the only
(14:18):
non male dominated social hierarchy in the ape world.
Have you spent time with Bona bows?
No, I haven't. What do you think about Bona
bows? Well all I I can say is I'm
really glad Leakey didn't send me to study them because the
females have this constant genital swelling and the
geographic would never ever shown any photographs of them.
(14:41):
They're the X-rated primate. So they're, they're not, they're
not ready for Nat Geo, OK. We got this lovely photo, all
male Aussies, all facing the camera.
They're all excited, so they gotthese big penile erections.
Look at the final photo. There's a Mr. Groin level right
across the photograph. Wow, OK, so basically bonobos
(15:05):
too hot to research a little bit.
OK. I think a male can dominate a
female, but basically it's the fact that there isn't this
amount of aggression that you find.
I mean, chimps can be very, veryaggressive.
I mean, they can kill, have a kind of primitive war that's not
being recorded in bonobos. Right.
(15:28):
The females use sex as a kind ofrelaxing force across the whole
social group. Yeah.
OK, so my film in a lot of ways is about the possibilities of
non verbal communication. And in it I explore this idea of
a fictional primate language andit doesn't rely just on words.
And I've seen you in your field work with chimps able to
(15:51):
communicate through nonverbal gestures and posture, basically
body language. And I'm just curious, like, what
kind of information can you transmit between a human and an
ape through body language? Well, The thing is that they're
they're nonverbal communication.It's basically the same as ours,
increasing, embracing, holding hands, patting, begging,
(16:13):
swaggering. So it's probably a language that
we use Before week. We somehow got into using words,
which I think is the biggest difference because once you get
words, you can have discussions,you can bring people from
different backgrounds to solve the problem, You can talk about
(16:34):
things that aren't present. Right, you have a deeper
knowledge repository that you can keep growing.
Yeah, but we don't communicate with them in the wild.
It's what we're looking after them in sanctuaries.
Those others have been shot so you could just reassure them as
if you were a chimp and they understand.
(16:54):
That's incredible. So I had this line in the movie
and I had to sadly cut it, but it goes.
There is no hierarchy of animal intelligence.
There are only different skills adapted for different
situations. So to me, it's clear that like,
pigeons are better and more intelligent at certain things
than we are. In fact, like every single
(17:15):
animal has just found a sort of evolutionary niche that has
shaped a specialized intelligence.
So I'm really fascinated by kinds of intelligence that
animals possess that we don't like magnetic navigation and
birds and echolocation and dolphins and bats.
Are there any animal abilities that you find like particularly
mysterious or fascinating? Well, there's lots that chimps
(17:37):
do that we don't understand. We don't understand really why
some females migrate to a neighboring community and
adolescents and stay there. Others migrate but come back and
have their babies in their own community.
We don't know why. There's various theories.
No, there are things like that. The longer we're on 65th year
(18:01):
now, so we can look back throughthe records and say he's
behaving like this because when he was a child we had that
traumatic experience. So he always hates whatever it
is. Wow, that's an incredible corpus
to be able to go back to. It makes me think about there's
this idea of cultural evolution and for many years another bit
(18:24):
of anthropocentrism. We've all thought it was only in
humans that there was any cultural evolution.
Animals were just set. You know, there's been a bunch
of different studies that have challenged this.
There's the Robert Sapolsky study about baboons who, you
know, all the aggressive males had this kind of generational
die off because of the tuberculosis outbreak.
And then it was observed for several generations that these
(18:47):
kinder, gentler males that inherited the top of the social
hierarchy like changed the culture entirely.
There's also, you know, evidencethat, like, birdsong and whale
song are their artworks that evolve culturally, that the song
is passed down, it changes a little bit, it has regional
variation. Each generation modifies it a
(19:08):
little bit. Have you seen other examples of
cultural evolution in the Gombe data set?
Or I almost don't want to call it that, The vast span of
awareness that you have about these chumps in Gombe.
Well, we certainly see culture fact.
You know, I mentioned it way back in the late 60s and of
course I was blackboard. I mean, only humans have
(19:30):
culture. But if one relation is behaviour
passed from one generation to the next through observational
learning, we find chimps across Africa.
They have different tool using behaviours, They sometimes use
inborn gestures, but in different contexts.
So we've observed the spread of a behaviour, a new behaviour
(19:52):
till it becomes part of the normal cultural repertoire of
the chimps. Then sometimes you know the
infants are the ones usually that make the new discoveries.
So this occasion one of the infants, you know when females
won't reassure and so they want to be mated or something, they
(20:14):
present their bottoms and the typical thing, a chimp male will
poke the females genitals and sniff like is she ready for
mating. So on this occasion.
This young chimp, the female came and presented to him and
she had diarrhea. So he looked and then he picked
up a twig and poked her. With that the other infants
(20:35):
began to copy him. So there were all these infants
going around poking females bottoms with twig.
You know, it wasn't adaptive, soit dropped out, but I see.
Right, so when a new behaviour is introduced, it can be a fad
as well, because unless it has some sort of benefit.
Absolutely. OK, I want to talk a little bit
(21:00):
about animals and music. So in the movie, I'm exploring
the way the animals might communicate complex feelings
through a musical language rather than one that, you know,
works like ours. And any human that's ever heard
music understands that there's emotional information being
transmitted and pitch and rhythm.
(21:20):
But the idea that animals might use this as a form of community
communication and might be actually trying to express
themselves emotionally or communicate emotions is under
explored. And the exploration we do have
is kind of into a black box because we don't know what
they're feeling. What do you think about this
idea? Well, I mean, we know that
(21:41):
whales sing, they have songs andbirds communicate through music
all the time. I don't know.
It's been something that's fascinated me.
I wanted, I've tried and tried to get somebody to test.
Do adolescent males like rock? Do like, you know what, what do
they prefer? Do they like music based own
(22:04):
calls? Do they like something, you
know, classical or do they have rock and does it change with age
and sex? And you know, but nobody's done
it yet. Oh, well, we got to get on this.
I've even done that with plants.I've seen the the studies of
plants growing at different rates depending on the style of
music you play. Yeah.
(22:24):
I mean, I just noticed with my own dog that pitch is just
everything. You know, the tone of my voice
is a form of music. It's not so much the the
content, although she can slowlylearn what some of these things
mean. It's the pitch that matters.
Yeah, they can learn words as well.
They're very some of the dogs are very smart at learning
(22:46):
words. Oh yes, absolutely.
I've read that you're partial todogs.
Favorite animal? Absolutely.
Amen. Too human.
Oh, chimps are too human, I see.I didn't.
All of them as animals, you know.
Right, they're your cousins. They're just beings with beings,
and don't the beings too, but you know what I mean?
(23:06):
Yeah, I mean, the size of a dog's heart knows no bounds.
That's the special thing. Yeah.
So Speaking of heart, you've said the primary reason we're
destroying the planet is that wehave a disconnect between our
exceedingly clever brains and our hearts, and that the key to
solving the situation we're in is integrating these two.
(23:27):
And when I hear the word heart, I just think, OK, that's
empathy, curiosity, compassion, vulnerability, courage,
selflessness, fearlessness, all things that you embody.
And, you know, you've become a kind of ambassador of the heart.
So how do we make more genes? How do we how do we encourage
this capacity in other people? Well, that's through our Roots
(23:51):
and Judes program, you know, which is young people from
kindergarten through university all doing 3 projects to help
people, animals, environment nowin 75 countries.
I began it in 91. So we know now that people
who've been through it at school, I'm into decision making
positions and they hang on to respect and compassion.
(24:15):
So that's the rest of my life. However long I have, you know, I
want to grow it and grow it and grow it because it is head and
heart. It does bring head and heart
together. How does this decision affect
people in the future, You know, instead of this commercial,
money driven, power driven society we live in now.
(24:36):
And you know, the other thing ishow do you reach people who
don't have a heart? I can't think of some people
right now who don't seem to havea heart.
I'm sure you can too. There's a lot of them, or I
would say their heart has been buried, buried under layers of
pain and humiliation. Yeah.
(24:56):
So roots and shoots, what does it constitute?
It's a curriculum. It's a.
Can you explain it a bit? Yeah.
So you form a group, let's say we're now at high school level,
which is how it began. So they come together.
Some of them, when I first met this first group, they were
worried about poaching in the National Park.
Some were worried about St. children with no homes.
(25:18):
Some were worried about throwingstones at dogs.
They had different concerns. So I said, well, get your
friends together and you decide what problem do you care about
with picking up trash or not wasting water or being kind to
cats or, you know, whatever. So they choose their project.
(25:41):
It's not top down, it's bottom up because they choose and then
decide what they can do. They work with passion because
they care about it. It's their problem.
And I've also found that with adults too, when they start
working on something they care about makes them feel good and
they want to do more. And so they lose this feeling of
(26:04):
helplessness that so many peoplehave today.
Wow, that's an amazing approach.So it's it's about empowering
communities to identify their own problems and then experience
what it's like to try to fix them.
That's right. And so Roots and Shoots is super
flexible because you know, it'lldepend on their age, it'll
(26:26):
depend on their culture, it'll depend on are they rich or poor,
their religion. It fits into what wherever you
are, you can start Roots and Shoots.
Amazing. OK.
So I think it was in 1986 you really decided to become an
activist, is that right? Yeah, that conference didn't, I
(26:47):
didn't decide, I mean a tough decision to leave Gombe.
So I went to this conference as a scientist, had my PHDI was the
best days of my life, learning about the rainforest, getting
this spiritual connection with it.
And then this session which showed cross apricot chimp
numbers were dropping, forests were disappearing in captivity
(27:11):
the chimps are closest relativesin five foot by 5 foot cages and
medical research labs taken fromtheir mothers and as pets and so
on. So I left.
Now I had to do something. I didn't know what to do, but I
didn't decide, it just happened.So you've dedicated your life
sense to creating meaningful, practical, on the ground change
(27:35):
in the world. And many artists, including
myself, sometimes we just think nothing we do really matters.
And coming from you, someone whohas said there's a place for
stories, a really important place for stories, could you
help us? Like what is the role of fiction
and stories in making a better world?
Well, I think it depends on the fiction and the story.
(27:56):
Of course. You know, the story is something
that reaches the heart and it can be fiction or it can be
real. It doesn't matter as long as it
just touches inside. And so you think, oh, I never
thought of that. Yes, yes.
And then you you fit it into your pattern of life and it can
change you. Yep.
(28:16):
I want to talk a little bit moreabout some of your on the ground
activism. So in my movie, the Ochi are
considered a threat to the way of life of the rural people and
the rural people, they depend ontimber and livestock for their
survival. And you've been doing this
really incredible work with local communities all around the
world to collaboratively supportthem to protect their habitat,
(28:39):
habitat that they need to share with endangered species.
So can you talk about that process and that mission?
How does it work? Well, and the great thing there
was the man I was working with at the time was so wise.
He'd been working with local people for 14 years in Tanzania.
I hadn't worked with them at allexcept field staff helping to
(29:02):
follow the chimps. I had learned from that that
once the local people understoodthe chimps, they loved them as
much as I did and were fascinated by them by going into
a very poor village. George, this guy, he said, Jane,
don't talk about saving the environment for wildlife, talk
about helping them find a way ofliving without destroying the
(29:24):
environment. And this was brilliant because
eventually the people understandthat protecting the environment
isn't just for wildlife, it's their own future and they become
our partners. So it's community LED
conservation, listening them andasking them what we can do to
help and helping them find ways of operating without destroying
(29:48):
the environment. Then gradually they come to
realize they need the environment.
This sounds like the same approach that you take with
kids. Much the same, yes.
There's a pattern, yeah. It seems to be about listening
and respect and letting people solve their own problems and
providing light facilitation. Yeah, helping hand.
(30:10):
Right. Sometimes a big helping hand,
but the Trump and Musk, we've lost all our USAID support for
our big program in Tanzania. Fuck.
No, it's all come to a standstill.
The clinic for mothers and babies, these scholarships for
girls, all of those things frozen.
(30:31):
Well, fuck. Yeah.
You've talked a lot about you have this approach to change
where you, you know, you can't just argue with someone and
confront them when they have more power than you.
You need to tell them stories and connect to their heart.
But as you've alluded, we might be dealing with people whose
hearts are so buried that this process is challenging.
(30:51):
Like now in your 90s, you have more wisdom than anyone I've
ever spoken to. What are you thinking right now?
How do you approach them? Or how do you approach change in
this time? Well, you know, they're
honestly, I hate to say it, but there's some people I don't
think I could change. I think they're beyond it.
You know, I, I would say you couldn't have changed Hitler and
(31:13):
you couldn't change Stalin. And there are people today I put
in category. So that's why I'm concentrating
so much on young people, the university, when they're about
to come out into the big wide world.
Whether we have time for them toreach those decision making
positions, I don't know. I mean, basically we're trying
(31:34):
to create caring, compassionate citizens because the citizen,
they have a role to play. They can do peaceful
demonstrations. Like I gather right across the
US, there were peaceful demonstrations in every National
Park to get the people back who've been fired.
You know, we all have some role to play if you can reach the
(31:57):
heart. And I've seen it happen.
And there are stories. You have to 1st listen to the
person because maybe, maybe there's something you never
thought of. So listen to get a feel of who
they are. You know, I'm lucky I've lived
all these years, so I've got many stories, all kinds of
people. So you know, as someone with
(32:20):
direct experience in presenting scientific theory that is
considered heretical in its time, your observation of Chimp
Thulius, I'm curious to get yourtake on a few other modern day
heresies that I just think are very interesting in the ape
world. And the first is the aquatic ape
hypothesis, which is this idea that during a critical period in
(32:42):
human evolution, as we were these quadrupedal arboreal tree
dwelling, fruit eating ancestors, we descended from the
trees eventually becoming bipedal hunters in the plains.
But in that in between we lived in a swamp like habitat and this
explains our physical distinction from other apes,
(33:03):
like our hairlessness and our fat layers.
Both are traits that we only seein other aquatic mammals like
dolphins and hippos. That's the theory.
I'm not a scientist, I'm curiouswhat you think.
Well, I've obviously read about it, I've thought about that, and
somehow I don't believe it. You don't believe it?
(33:25):
OK, we got it on the Aquatic ApeHypothesis.
No, I don't. It doesn't gel properly.
Yeah, OK. And you've spoken before about
keeping an open mind regarding the possibility of unknown
primates. Obviously, I'm really into this
because I just wrote a movie andmade a movie about undiscovered
primates. You know, we're still finding
(33:46):
new species. We found a monkey and a lemur in
2020 that we'd never seen before.
We found a tarsier in 2008. And the mountain gorilla wasn't
really discovered by westerners until 19 O2.
If there were an undiscovered ape species, let's say they did
exist and they were in remote regions of the world and they
(34:07):
were like a descendant of Australopithecus or
Gigantopithecus or something, what kind of behaviors or traits
would you expect these beings toexhibit to be able to stay so
hidden? Like, you know, would they be
burying their dead, living in caves?
Like how could we explain their elusiveness?
That is the secret. That is the one question.
(34:30):
I mean, I do believe in that these things exist.
My strangest, I mean, I've got lots of stories with no time for
them. But I was in the wild, wild part
of Ecuador and we'd flown over forest for miles.
And the people live in little communities of about 30, like
the chimps, and there's nothing between no roads.
(34:53):
And they communicate with, with a hunter.
We'll go from 11 little community and take messages.
And it's totally wild, nowhere near civilization.
So I obviously had an interpreter.
And all I said was when you see one of these messing, well,
these hunter messengers, have you seen a monkey without a
(35:15):
tail? No more than that.
And about two months later, I got a reply, three of them,
three of these hunter people said, oh, yes, we've seen a
monkey without a tail. It stands about 6 foot high and
walks upright. I love that I got a.
(35:38):
That was good, yeah. If I'd only had money, I would
have got to people out there to investigate, but I didn't have
any money so. I'm I'm myself and I'm an
agnostic but a deep enthusiast and I get really, really excited
about analyzing hardcore evidence for Sasquatch.
But I do it almost all as a a joyful hobby.
(36:01):
I think we're still trying to figure it out when there's
nothing more mysterious. My last real question is it's
about one of your other superpowers, which seems to be
persistence and this mission that you're on to understand and
protect and honor nature. It's been going for 65 years,
and you must have found some kind of secret energy reservoir
(36:27):
of physical strength and motivation that just keeps you
traveling around the world 300 days a year.
And now you're into your 90s andyou're still going.
So what renews the motivation? Like when you're tired and
discouraged? What strengthens your resolve?
Well, it may sound weird to you,but I feel that all of us put on
(36:51):
this planet with a role to play.Many people never know what it
is or they don't even think it'spossible.
But I think I was given a mission.
When I look back over my life, Isee, you know, here and here and
here, there were places where I had to make a decision.
And you know, I believe in free will.
Hopefully I made the right decision.
(37:12):
And that took me to here, and then another decision and that
took me. And so now because I've got this
mission, then when I get really tired, I mean, the other day,
there's somebody coming around following me from time to time,
making a film, either called TheReal Jane or Chasing Jane, that
same question. And he said, Jane, I saw you,
(37:34):
you were in the green roll getting ready for a lecture.
You were absolutely exhausted. You were saying, just tell the
people out there, I've had to gointo emergency, but I'm sick.
I can't give a lecture. And then of course, I have to go
onto the stage. And he said, something happened
and you totally changed and you gave the best lecture I've ever
(37:55):
heard you give. So mentally I'm saying you put
me to do this, you jolly well help me.
That's that's how you speak to the universe.
That's how I speak to the great spiritual power that I feel,
especially in the rainforest. But I do feel, you know, like
what happens after you die? Is it the end or is there
(38:18):
something? I believe there's something.
And so when somebody said what'syour next great adventure?
I said dying. And there was definitely hush.
There were 5000 people and therewas definitely hush.
And then a few titters that I said what I just said to you.
You know, if there's something Ican't think of a great adventure
(38:39):
than finding out what that something is.
Yeah, to me the biggest mystery is why is there anything and not
nothing which is. Well, that's.
Part of the same question. I've read just about every book
on near death experiences, people who've had them, some of
them are really strange ones. A book written neuroscientist
(39:03):
and you know the things that youcan't explain, and I'm
fascinated. Me too Jane, thank you so much
for giving us this hour and for being you and inspiring me my
whole life. Thank mom for me being me.
(39:23):
Thanks for listening. The A 24 podcast is produced by
us A 24. Special thanks to our editor Tom
Wyatt and Robot Repair, who composed our theme.
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