Tara Stoinski Returns (primatologist)
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Umbrella
4.6 • 69.9K Ratings
🗓️ 29 April 2026
⏱️ 96 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tara Stoinski (A Gorilla Story) is a primatologist, conservationist, and CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. Tara returns to the Armchair Expert to discuss growing up outside Philadelphia, her academic path from Tufts to Oxford to Georgia Tech, and balancing motherhood with a career studying gorillas in Rwanda. Tara and Dax talk about documenting rare gorilla dominance battles, the challenges of filming endangered animals in the wild, and how gorilla social structures differ from chimpanzees. Tara explains the importance of long-term behavioral research, how early life trauma can impact animal behavior, and why strong social bonds are key to survival in both gorillas and humans.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert, experts on expert. |
| 0:04.0 | I'm Dax Shepherd and I'm joined by Monica Padman. |
| 0:06.0 | Hi. |
| 0:07.0 | And today we have returning primontologist Tara Stozynski. |
| 0:12.0 | She is the CEO and chief scientific officer of the Diane Fosse Guerrilla Fund. |
| 0:18.0 | And she worked closely on this incredible documentary that I saw, really |
| 0:23.0 | importantly by the director of my octopus teacher and Chimp Empire. |
| 0:28.9 | Yes. |
| 0:29.5 | Maybe my favorite animal doc I've ever seen. |
| 0:32.9 | And this new documentary is called A Gorilla Story, and there's the most insane footage in it what |
| 0:39.1 | they captured over these couple years they were filming is incredible it's so good she's so knowledgeable |
| 0:45.4 | and um you know these are highly endangered beautiful treasures on planet earth so if you're |
| 0:52.2 | inclined please go to the Diane Fosse |
| 0:55.2 | Gorilla Fund and support that. Please enjoy Tara Stoinski. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace, |
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| 1:17.5 | When we first got the Armchair expert website up and running, Wabiwob used Squarespace. |
| 1:22.4 | And honestly, it made sense right away. It looked polished. It was easy to navigate, |
| 1:26.5 | and it didn't feel like we had to |
| 1:27.8 | become web designers just to make something good. What I like about Squarespace is that it gives |
| 1:32.4 | you a lot of flexibility without making things complicated. You can start with one of their beautiful |
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