Jane Goodall on leadership lessons from primates
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And that skill is not uniquely human. This is the distance greeting. And that simply means this is me, this is Jane. Yep, this is Jane Goodall, legendary ethologist, an expert on primate behavior. Jane greeted us from her home in the UK over Zoom. It's an unnatural habitat for a person who usually spends most of her time outdoors.

More than 60 years ago, Jane started her career studying chimpanzees in Tanzania, along with anthropologist Louis Leakey. She famously immersed herself with wild chimps and made groundbreaking discoveries about how primates behave and communicate. It turns out that we have a lot more in common with apes than we realize. And by observing their actions and interactions, I think we can learn a lot about leadership, status, and culture among humans.

So I guess the place to start is, can you tell me a little bit about where you are right now and what it's like to be working from home instead of in the wild? Well, first of all, I was very lucky to be caught and grounded in my home. This is the house where I grew up, although this is the longest I have been here in one place since the age of, well, 18, I think. Wow. Yeah.

You know, here I have all my work, all my books behind me. If you could see, there's the books I read as a child outside the window of the trees that I climbed when I was a child. And you asked about how I was coping and what it was like working from home. Well, to be honest,

I've never worked so hard in my life as in the last four months. I mean, it's just been nonstop video messaging. Do you do virtual calls with chimps as well? I don't speak to the chimps, no. I wasn't sure. So it's really interesting that you've never worked this hard before. Does that mean you're adapting well to remote work and being sort of in one place in an office? Yes.

Well, it's not an office. It's up in my room. It's a little eerie and it's very small. And so my little studio is sitting on a very hard stool. But, you know, I'm happy.

What I miss, I mean, I was traveling 300 days a year around the world, and you would think that was harder work, and it surely was sometimes. I got exhausted. But in between, there was, you know, meeting really, really good friends and relaxing with them and laughing and telling stories, and then giving lectures to rooms filled with up to 15,000 people

you get a buzz from it. So even if you start off feeling totally exhausted, there's some energy that comes. And whereas now I'm having to give talks, gazing at a little tiny green light on the top of my laptop. It's a big effort to do it well, but I won't do it unless I do do it well. So...

Well, you do it beautifully. And Jane, I can very much relate to that experience. I've done more virtual talks in the last four months than I think in the rest of my life combined. I want to ask you more questions about your remote work life, but I also want to make sure we get a bunch of commentary and insight on primates. So I've been interested in what primates can teach us about leadership and how we all work together.

And so I guess the place I'd love to start on that is if you could just describe some of your key insights and observations around when you see primates collaborate, what does that teach you about how humans work? Well, you know, the reason Dr. Leakey sent me off to study chimpanzees in the first place is because he spent his life searching for the fossilized remains of Stone Age humans.

And you can tell an awful lot from a fossil, but behavior doesn't fossilize. So Leakey was actually ahead of his time in thinking that way back when there was a common ancestor, ape-like, human-like, and maybe that behavior has been brought with us through our separate evolutionary pathways. So it gave him a better feeling for how early humans might have behaved. That's why he sent me.

Anyhow, eventually I began to realize how like us they are in so many ways. Their nonverbal communication, kissing, embracing, holding hands, patting one another on the back.

We find that the males, and this was obvious pretty early on to me, they have this very rigid dominance hierarchy. But it's always changing as young ones start moving up the hierarchy, starting at the bottom when they're in late adolescence. And the interesting thing is they have different methods of climbing the ladder.

And when you consider those who've made it to the top, the alpha males, you know, there are some who just use physical strength and they're aggressive and slightly brutal and do a lot of attacking.

They don't last as long as those that use their intelligence. And they use their intelligence in different ways. So one was Mike, and he was very low ranking in a group of 11 adult males. He was right down near the bottom. But he just had this motivation to climb the ladder. And some males do and some males don't. There's a big difference there.

Anyhow, at that time, you know, it was feeding the bananas. It was the very early days, 1964. And we lit the camp at night with little paraffin lamps, kerosene lamps, you'd call them, I think. Well, Mike took this chance experience with a can and he developed it. So in the end, he learned to keep three cans ahead of him.

and would charge towards males who were his superiors at the time. And it was a scary thing to have three cans hurtling towards you, making this awful noise. So they got out of the way. And then, you know, he would sit exhausted and still with his hair bristling, and they'd come and groom him.

And as far as we know, there wasn't one single serious fight because when they fight, they tend to pull each other's hair out and there are wounds. But Mike had neither patches of hair nor wounds. And he reigned six years. And then you ask about leadership. Well, Mike became alpha male. But being an alpha doesn't make you a leader. It makes you the boss.

And others will be submissive to you and greet you with submissive gestures. But then other males are leaders. They're leaders because they're much more gentle. And other chimps like to follow them and choose to follow them. Oh, this is so fascinating. I have so many questions for you. I'm not even sure where to start. I guess I'll...

I'll start at the question of who becomes a leader versus who's an effective leader. So one of the things we find over and over again in my world of organizational psychology is that the individuals that we elevate to leadership roles are often the most narcissistic, selfish takers because they show dominance and strength.

But that ultimately, when we look at who leads well and both inspires people and guides a group toward achieving a common goal most productively, it tends much more to be the humble, other-oriented, generous givers who are willing to put the team or the organization above themselves. And it seems like you see a similar dynamic with chimps.

Yes, and of course chimps don't have leadership in quite the way of what you're studying in humans because I guess that you're studying leaders in politics or business or both. Exactly. Yes, and for chimpanzees, you know, it's the strive for some of the males. It's the alpha position. They want to dominate the others.

And of course, that's what we see in some politicians, right? We, in fact, when I see two chimpanzee males bristling, swaggering upright, furious scowl on their face, using intimidation tactics because it's a waste of time to fight, you might get hurt. So mostly it's intimidation. And it reminds me just exactly of some human male politicians. They do the same. It's so true. Why do you say human male politicians?

Well, I don't think human female politicians use the same tactics. At least I haven't seen them. I mean, I'm thinking of the last election and I'm thinking of when Hillary Clinton was talking and Donald Trump was kind of looming. Do you remember how he used to loom behind her? Yes. Threatening, swaggering way. That was so chimpanzee-like.

It's so interesting to think about this. I guess, you know, one of the things that I've long been curious about are when we see those kinds of differences, how much are they driven by social roles versus, you know, more evolutionary and biologically rooted forces? Where do you come down on that?

Well, I think it's mostly, I don't know. I mean, we do know now there's chimpanzee culture. Different chimpanzee communities have slightly different ways of doing things, but that's mostly, we see it in things like tool using and sometimes using a gesture that's common to both, but in a slightly different context. How it compares precisely to,

with what you're talking about, it doesn't really, it doesn't quite gel somehow.

What do you think? I mean, okay, you have a male and he's motivated to climb the social ladder. Why? He wants to get to the top. Sometimes you feel, honestly, it's because he really enjoys the submissive behavior of others. And that I think we can compare with some human leadership behavior.

Would you agree with that? Oh, it's hard to disagree with that one. Yes, I would agree, especially when we start to see those differences vary from one culture to another. I start to believe that there's a lot to be learned from studying the way that cultures are created, which I'd be very curious to hear your take on because you mentioned that chimpanzees have cultures.

They lack a lot of the tools we normally use to build cultures, right? They can't tell stories the same way that humans do. Certainly language capabilities are more limited. How do chimpanzees build cultures? True.

are observation, imitation and practice. And that is one definition of human culture. Behaviour passed from one generation to the next through observation. And that it's demonstrated so clearly. You watch the development of an infant. For example, you see the young ones watching

And at first they don't even try. Then they use an inappropriate tool. Then they use, I mean, one little infant quite determined that she was going to really try and do what her mom was doing, having watched her mom.

And she got this thick little stick, which was much too thick. But she pushed and pushed and it went down into the hole, all right, but she couldn't get it out. And it was just, you know, so funny. But gradually, by the time they're about four, especially the females, they've got it down to a fine art. The males...

they have a different role in that society. They're the ones who patrol the territory, they're the ones who got to be alert for individuals from another community invading their territory. So there's quite a big difference in male and female characteristics. And that's the same with humans, and this is what bothers me as we move into the era of feminism.

is that the females who first succeeded in breaking into male business and politics, for example, did so by trying to become more male than the males. They used the same tactics. Whereas what we need in our society is the two different, the male and the female, who do have different ways of doing things. We need both.

Yeah, I think so too. And, you know, some of the research on queen bees has suggested that that's much more of a response to inequality than a cause of inequality. So that, you know, it's not that women leaders necessarily want to operate this way, but they feel like they have to do it in order to get and then maintain their position. I wondered if there's a parallel in chimp society there as well. I don't think so. I mean, they...

You know, they don't sort of, as far as I can understand, they don't think things through like that. They just do what their nature tells them to do. And a female behaves like a female. We had one female who was sterile. She never produced an infant. And she behaved much more like a male. And yet, at the same time, she had female characteristics. And she adopted a whole lot of motherless orphans.

So they seem to behave more in tune with, like you say, they can't talk, they don't speak, they don't discuss. So they just behave the way they feel, which is why I always say, you know, only humans can be really evil. Chimps can be brutal and aggressive and kill and have a kind of war.

But they are not capable of sitting down in cold blood and planning to torture an individual who's not even present. Wow. That's what I consider evil. That's such a powerful statement. This touches on a theme that you mentioned earlier, and it's another thread that I wanted to pull, which is about this distinction between dominance and respect or prestige. Right.

So you mentioned that a lot of chimps are able to gain alpha status and essentially elicit submissiveness, but they're not necessarily admired or willingly followed. Does that mean that the dominant alpha males actually lose their status faster, whereas the ones that either use their intelligence or other strategies are more likely to sustain the respect of a group? Yeah.

They are aggressive ones last less long, usually. I won't say always, but I mean, the most aggressive one we've ever had, Humphrey, he only lasted one and a half years. I'm really interested in hearing your take on the mechanisms behind this pattern. So if the really aggressive chimps don't last as long, how do you explain that? What do you think is driving it? I don't know. I mean, it's just, you know, they all have different personalities. Yeah.

And I suppose the aggressive ones don't necessarily use their brains. And maybe if you use your intelligence to get to the top, you can use your intelligence to stay up there. That tracks with one of the mechanisms that I was thinking about, which is that when studying humans, I've seen pretty consistently that the dominance path to the top is often the shortest, but also the shortest lived.

Because if that's the strategy that's going to get people there, then you only last until there's another more dominant individual who's going to overpower you. Yes. Clever, clever, clever coalition. I mean, coalitions play a very major part in chimp society, really important part.

Well, I think that's another piece of the puzzle that I was wondering about is it seems that if dominance is the strategy to gain power or status...

then you're essentially creating a culture in which everybody's position is determined by strength. And so the moment that a few individuals would get together and outsmart the strongest one, they have a coalition that's able to overpower. How does that happen? How do chimps coordinate that kind of coalition building? Well, there's two kinds of coalition. There's one that might be between...

Interestingly, either between brothers, and they can be supporting each other for a very long time, or between a male who was dominant and the one who's taken over his dominance. And that's what I found absolutely fascinating. So, okay, one male takes over the dominant role through aggression. He fights.

And having taken over, and it's very clear he's now the top, and the previous alpha is very submissive. Every time he sees him, he gives a submissive panic run and reaches out to touch. But the new alpha continues to beat him up, and he beats him up really savagely, even though the other one is giving all the right submissive responses. And when he's behaved that way for about...

let's say a month or so, then suddenly this, of course, the previous alpha is now very, very, very nervous and submissive. And then the alpha changes completely. He's always grooming him. He's really nice to him. He never attacks him. He rushes in to protect him if another male challenges him.

And because of that, these two then become so strong an alliance that nothing breaks it. And I find this absolutely fascinating. Wow. Yeah. And then the other kind of alliance is a temporary one.

So two males are wanting perhaps, I don't know, to take bananas from a higher ranking one. And neither of them on their own could do it. And so they gang up. And that's a temporary alliance. And I guess I'm trying to visualize how this happens. You know, when chimps get together and form an alliance, whether it's temporary or more lasting, is there a... This is going to be a strange question, but it'll give you a sense of how I think...

Is there a workplace analog? So, you know, do chimps coordinate like they're working on an assembly line? Does it look more like a farm? Do you see them in an office with cubicles or am I stretching this parallel too far? Stretching it way too far. It's a thing of the moment. You want to attack that guy over there. You can't defeat him on your own. You look around, you see another male who normally you don't,

have much time with. And you run over to him and you touch him and you look at the higher ranking one and the other male thinks, oh, this is an opportunity to get the better of him. And so the two of them charge or attack together. So I think that speaks to some really interesting questions about communication and coordination. Certainly since Darwin wrote about facial expressions, we've been curious about the universality versus specificity of different kinds of facial signals of emotion.

This has been an incredibly heated debate in psychology over the last few years. Which facial expressions of emotion do you think are most universal from your studies of chimps, and which ones seem to be idiosyncratic to either individuals or to groups or cultures? Well...

You know, the facial expression that goes with begging, pouting the lips, the facial expression that goes with fear, drawing the lips right back and having the mouth wide open, the facial expression that shows laughter and play. I think we find them in chimps of all different groups that have been studied and in captive chimps as well, for the most part.

And then what about body language? What do we learn about the way that chimps communicate through the gestures they make? I'm curious about other human analogs and parallels there.

Well, it's basically, I mean, if you watch chimpanzees communicating non-verbally, you more or less know exactly what they're doing because we do the same. I mean, we really do. We shake fists. If you don't like something, you make that flapping movement. You reach out and beg. You threaten with your fist raise. You swagger from foot to foot if you want to impress.

One thing that I was really interested in is when you talk about how the alpha males often lose their position or they don't live as long in some cases, I've seen versions of that in business and in political life.

And I feel like the myth of the alpha male is very pervasive and persistent in societies around the world. There are a lot of people who don't necessarily want to operate that way. Intimidation or dominance is not their default. It's not perfectly aligned with their value system, but they look up the hierarchy and they see very influential, very visible role models doing it. And they think they have to follow suit.

And I guess you've spent so many years interacting with world leaders. I'm interested in what you think it's going to take to break the myth of the alpha. Probably more women coming in and more women using their feminine qualities rather than trying to ape the male qualities of the existing system. And which quote-unquote feminine qualities do you think are most important in leadership? It's very important to be...

understanding, to be intuitive, to be patient, and to be compassionate. And is your hope that we continue seeing those as feminine qualities or that we dismantle these stereotypes at the ground level and say, actually, these are leadership qualities? I don't know.

I've never thought about that, so I couldn't possibly answer it. But what I love is he was one of the chiefs of a Latin American indigenous tribe, and I forget which country. But he said to me, he said, you know, Jane, we consider our tribe as like an eagle.

And on this eagle, one wing is male and the other wing is female. And only when the two wings are equal will our tribe fly true. That's beautiful. Yeah. It does make me wonder about something you just mentioned, which is patience. You mentioned that's something we need more in leadership. You also mentioned that it's something that your work has required over the years. And there are these legendary stories about you being five years old, just waiting around for chickens to lay eggs.

And then, is that real? - Stuffy hen house for four and a half hours. - And you just sat there? - Yeah, first I followed a hen 'cause I wanted to know where the hole was, where the egg came out. And nobody told me. So I remember seeing this brown hen going into one of these hen houses and crawling after her, which was a big mistake and squawks, I presume, fear. She flew out past me. I can still feel her wing on my face. It was a bit scary.

And I must have thought in that little four-and-a-half-year-old mind, well, no hen will lay an egg here. This is a scary place. So I went into an empty hen house and waited and saw the egg come out. And, you see, I had this enormous benefit when I was a child of my mother. She was so supportive. So instead of getting angry at me, how dare you go off without telling us, don't you do it again, they called the police by then.

She sat down to hear the wonderful story of how a hen laid an egg. And when I announced age 10 that I was going to go to Africa and live with wild animals and write books about them, everybody laughed at me because I was a girl and war was raging and Africa was far away and we had basically no money. But mom said, if you really want to do something like this, you're going to have to work awfully hard. Take advantage of every opportunity. And then maybe if you don't give up, you'll find a way.

That's what I've told young people all around the world. And so many have come up to me or written to me and said, Jane, I want to thank you because you taught me that because you did it, I can do it too. That's so moving to hear. And it's clear you not only found a way, right? You cleared the path for so many others to follow in your footsteps. Do you have techniques or strategies to maintain your patience and delay gratifications?

No, I never thought of it. I mean, I was just born that way. You know, I was obviously born patient, wasn't I? And I could sit for hours until a bird got used to me, and then I could watch her laying her eggs and watch the parents feed the babies and watch the babies fly away, and that took hours of just sitting. I think that to be a good mother, which is a woman's role throughout evolution, really,

going way back. You have to be patient. You can't be a good mother if you're not patient, I don't think. This quality we've been talking about, being patient and obstinate and resilient, I imagine that came in handy early in your career when people were telling you, you can't do this work without a doctorate, and a woman can't do this work anyway. Could you talk to me a little bit about how you dealt with the criticism from closed-minded men? Yeah.

Well, you know, honestly, people always say that, but I didn't have that kind of criticism anymore, I think, than if I'd been a male. I was criticized for giving the chimpanzees names. But I guess that criticism would have come even if I'd been a male student, I guess.

And Leakey wanted me because I was a female and because I had an unbiased mind. And when I got to Tanzania, it was just becoming independent. So there was resentment towards the white males who dominated the country for so long. But a white female, oh, they wanted to help me. So I didn't have this...

And, you know, when there were these male scientists, when I discovered tool using, saying, well, why should we believe her? She's just a girl. She doesn't have a degree. She's only got money from the geographic because she's got nice legs. All I cared about was getting back and learning about the chimps. I didn't even want to be a scientist. It was Leakey who made me do the degree. And I'm really glad he did, by the way. I loved learning how to think differently.

in a scientific, logical way. I've enjoyed that so much. It's helped me in everything actually.

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There's a Max Planck saying that it gets paraphrased as saying that science progresses one funeral at a time. And I think you've known many more scientists than I have who just were unwilling to let go of their pet theories. And this is clearly not a problem for you. It almost seems like you're immune to confirmation bias. And, you know, to go and discover not only that chimps use tools, but even make their own.

I'm interested in how you, I guess, kept such an open mind to discover things that flew in the face of what everyone thought was true. Because I hadn't been to college. Nobody taught me. I mean, Leakey told me later, he said, I wanted somebody with an unbiased mind. He said, I don't like the way the reductionist is thinking of scientists today. And he also felt that a woman might be more patient and

So I was really lucky in those ways. I think so too, although it poses challenges then over time as you get a PhD and you become more steeped in the assumptions of the field. There's a term in my world called cognitive entrenchment, where experts start to take for granted assumptions that need to be questioned. Yeah.

How have you prevented yourself from getting entrenched over the years? I suppose it's my personality. I don't know. Also, remember, I never got into the academic, you know, I never had an academic position in the university. I just got that PhD as quickly as I could and went back and learned from the chimps. And when you're out there learning from the chimps, you can't get entrenched because you're continually getting surprises. And...

you know, and the other animals too that I've watched. You can't get entrenched when you're really absolutely keen on understanding another species.

So I guess going out into the wild then forces you to juxtapose what you think you know against what is. Yes, and in a way, traveling around the world in all these different countries and meeting all these different cultures, it's kind of the same. You can't get entrenched in one culture when you meet people behaving in a completely different way, maybe from the same motives. But, you know, your mind is continually changing.

force to expand and grow and I've been really lucky in that way. And then you know you're also going back to this chimp human thing and you touched upon it already but what because we're so like them more like them than any other living creature it helps you understand how we're different.

And I think the main difference is the fact that at some point in our evolution, we develop this way of speaking with words so that we can teach children about things that aren't present. We can gather together and discuss something, people from different views. And that is what I believe led to this explosive development of our intellect, which is what really does change.

make us different. So animals are way, way, way more intelligent than many people used to think. And some people still won't believe it. But, you know, if you think of a species that designs a rocket that goes to Mars from which a little robot creeps to take photographs,

People who think about and discover stars that are billions of light miles away. I mean, my goodness. And think Galileo back then in those days. And think of Linnaeus. I mean, the human intellect has been extraordinary. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to disagree with those observations.

So a few things that I want to make sure we cover. I wanted to do a slightly shorter lightning round where we build a little color around maybe sides of you that most people don't get to see. So the first question I had for you on that is, if you weren't a primatologist, what other jobs might you have wanted?

Well, anything to be out in nature. Before that really crystallized, I wanted to be poet laureate. I used to read so much poetry and write books. What is the worst career advice you've ever received? Well, I suppose it was what the professors told me when I went to Cambridge, that I'd done everything wrong. And it turns out they were the ones who'd done everything wrong, didn't it? Yeah.

Oh, that's poetic justice to your poetry. Yeah, right. Your poetry passion. And then I was talking with my sister the other day, and she said that if she could have dinner with anyone on earth, you'd be at her table, which of course made me wonder who would be at your table. Are there people you would most like to sit down with and learn from that you've never met or that you've only had limited interaction with? People who are alive today, yes, definitely.

I would really like to sit down privately and have dinner with the Pope. What would you talk about? Well, it would depend. I mean, I don't really talk to people about anything until I've sussed them out, as it were, and found a piece of common ground and something that you can share and then let the conversation run. But he's been so outspoken and amazing about the environment that

And you know, he actually said, just because we can breed like rabbits doesn't mean we should, which for a Pope is quite extraordinary to say something like that. And I think he's done a lot to persuade Catholics to take more concern for the environment. It's funny to hear you say that, because I think you paved the way for the kind of entrepreneurial activism that he's done in his work. That goes to something else I wanted to ask you about, which is,

As you moved into activism, both, you know, to protect animals and now the environment and our planet, I think you've seen, as I have, a lot of ineffective strategies for trying to get people to care about non-humans. And I'm curious about what you've learned from all this activism. What is it that gets people to care about animals? What is it that gets them to step up and take care of the planet?

When I first realized that chimpanzees were disappearing and the forests were being destroyed in 1986, I felt that I had to learn more about it. So I went out, got a bit of money and got to

I think it was six different range states to learn about what was happening to the chimps. And at the same time, I was learning about the plight faced by so many African people living in and around chimp habitat. You know, the crippling poverty, the lack of health and education, the degradation of land, growing human populations, etc.

and flying over Gombe that had been part of this equatorial forest belt when I began. By 1990, it was just a tiny island forest surrounded by completely bare hills. And that's when it hit me. If we don't help the people to find ways of making a living without destroying the environment, we can't even try to save the chimps. And so because we began this program, Take Care or Takari, which is very holistic,

The people trust us now. They've come to understand that protecting the environment is for their own future. They need the forest for clean air and clean water, to prevent soil erosion and control rainfall and the climate.

And so they've become our partners and they help us conserve the environment. And we teach about the animals in our youth program. And they're all helping to protect the animals and tell people about the animals. And again, it's not a blanket answer I could give you about how do you persuade people to step up and care about animals. But I do it by telling stories.

And different stories depending on who you're talking to. Yeah, it reminds me of a campaign the Environmental Defense Fund ran years ago, which I think was their most successful campaign ever, which was just a picture of a polar bear on a melting ice cap. Yeah, that's right. We've got a whole audience of listeners who are trying to figure out how to get through the next year or so of the pandemic together.

And given all the difficult conditions you've endured throughout your life and your career, I'm wondering what advice you have for anybody who's just trying to figure out how to stay on track, how to avoid burning out, how to deal with all the uncertainty we're facing. What guidance do you have? Well, you know, there again, how can you give a blanket of guidance? Because the people are so different. I mean, some of them are ones who've lost their jobs, right?

Some of them, like in Africa and India, you know, they live by selling things. And what they get selling their little bits and pieces is how they eat in the evening and provide food for their children.

So advice that you were giving to them would be totally different from somebody sitting in Silicon Valley, you know, with his pots of money and ability to communicate with people around the world and think of new ways of making more money or making more inventions, depending on the person. What do you say? I mean, you have to hope that people have hope.

I mean, without hope, you give up, don't you? If you hope for a better future. So maybe for whatever job's been lost, you can sort of talk to that person and say, well, you know, like if we can create a new green economy, there'll be hundreds and thousands of jobs to do with, you know, solar and wind and all these other technologies that could be developed, provide jobs for people. Yes.

Jane, have there ever been times when you've lost hope? And if so, where have you turned to rediscover it? I've never totally lost it. You can't look around the world today, really look around and see what's happening and really read about what's happening to the environment and to society and not feel depressed. I defy anybody with any kind of intelligence not to feel depressed.

But then when I get those feelings, something pops up in me. They will, and I'm not going to be browbeaten by this. I just won't. I suppose I was a born fighter. Maybe it's my genes. I had an amazing grandmother, an incredible mother.

I think that's such a heartening message to say, I will not be browbeaten by this. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't let the Trumps and Bolsonaros browbeat me into saying, well, they've done so much damage, there's nothing I can do, so I'm not going to do anything. That's the danger. People do nothing because they feel powerless and helpless and hopeless. And that's why I started the youth program Roots & Shoots, because

so many young people telling me that they felt depressed or angry or mostly apathetic because we've compromised their future and there's nothing they can do about it. And so, yes, we have compromised their future. We've been stealing it. We're still stealing it today, actually. But I believe firmly that we have a window of time and if we get together and put our brains together, that we can...

at least heal some of the harm that we've inflicted and slow down climate change. But we've got to do it now. And that's why I was traveling all over the place. And that's why I'm trying to create this virtual Jane who actually reaches far more people. Well, I love virtual Jane. It certainly seems more efficient and convenient for you.

Although I do hope you can get back out in nature in the near future. Jane, it's been such an honor to speak with you. You've done so much for humanity, for animals, for the planet. I'm just really grateful that you're willing to take the time to do this. So thank you so much. Well, thank you too. And I think everybody listening should remember that every single day we live, each one of us,

makes an impact on the planet, and we have a choice as to what kind of impact we make. That's a really important thing to remember. Scientists, conservationists, activists, Jane Goodall now has a new title to add to her collection, Podcaster. Her new show is called The Jane Goodall Hopecast. It's currently available in English, but I'm hoping for a chimpanzee version soon. ♪

Rethinking is part of the TED Audio Collective. The show is hosted by me, Adam Grant, and produced by TED with Transmitter Media. Our team includes Colin Helms, Greta Cohn, Dan O'Donnell, Joanne DeLuna, Grace Rubinstein, Michelle Quint, Banban Cheng, and Anna Phelan. This episode was produced by Constanza Gallardo and Jessica Glazer. Our show is mixed by Rick Kwan. Original music by Hans Dale Sue and Alison Leighton Brown. Additional production by Cosmic Standard.