Jane Goodall Talks with Andy Borowitz

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 26 October 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jane Goodall is as revered a figure as modern science has to offer, though she prefers to call herself a naturalist rather than a scientist. Goodall learned a great deal about being human by studying our close relatives among the primates. When she began working, some of her research habits, such as naming her subjects and describing their personalities, caused consternation among other primatologists, who insisted that intelligence and emotion were the exclusive province of human intellect; Goodall persevered, and shifted how we conceive of the relationship between humans and other creatures. She’s the author of more than thirty books for adults and children, including a new volume called “The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times.” In her work as a conservationist and a United Nations “Messenger of Peace,” the eighty-seven-year-old Goodall used to travel as many as three hundred days per year. Since the pandemic began, she’s been at her home in England, in the house where she grew up. In a conversation for the New Yorker Festival, The New Yorker’s Andy Borowitz (known primarily as a humorist) asked Goodall about the secrets to her success as both a researcher and an advocate. “I’m very passionate,” she told him. “Secondly, I’m probably obstinate and I’m pretty resilient. So knock me over and I’m going to bounce back up. Because I will not be defeated.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:13.2	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Andy Borowitz is one of our great humorists.
0:18.9	He writes the Borowitz report for The New Yorker,
0:21.1	which is a satirical news column. But Andy wasn't kidding at all when he said he wanted to interview
0:27.5	Jane Goodall at the New Yorker Festival. He calls Goodall one of his real childhood heroes,
0:33.3	and she's certainly a revered figure in modern science. Goodall began her study of chimpanzees in
0:40.0	1960, working with the scientist Louis Leakey, and what she observed in the field completely
0:46.6	changed our understanding of how primates behave, including humans. Goodall has just published
0:52.5	The Book of Hope, a survival guide for trying times. Goodall used
0:57.1	to travel as much as 300 days of the year, but since the pandemic, she's been at her home in
1:01.8	England, in the house where she grew up, and her conversation with Andy Borowitz was recorded
1:06.7	for this year's edition of the New Yorker Festival. Welcome, Dr. Jane Goodall to the New Yorker Festival. It is my honor.
1:14.8	Well, thanks very much. And I think it's going to be great talking with you. I can tell.
1:21.0	Even though we're as cooperated and zooming, I can still feel people's personalities.
1:27.7	Well, I know that you have pretty good instincts when it comes to primates, which I am, so I'm going to have to go with that.
1:33.6	I have to believe that.
1:35.0	So, so much to cover, we're just going to jump right in.
1:38.2	Tell us a little bit about the stuffed animal that you received when you were around one year old.
1:43.4	Well, that was Jubilee.
1:45.8	It was to commemorate the first chimpanzee born in London Zoo, named Jubilee because it was the
1:53.0	Jubilee of the king and queen at that time.
1:57.5	And Jubilee's been with me ever since, but unfortunately, he's now in this exhibition called Becoming Jane.
	...

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