Who Are The Fab Five Of The Great Ape Family? with Dr. Laura Simone Lewis

Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness

Sony Music

Science, Self-improvement, Comedy, Education, Society & Culture

4.9 • 21.5K Ratings

🗓️ 22 February 2023

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Gorillas. Orangutans. Bonobos. Chimpanzees. Humans. Can you name a more iconic Fab Five? This week, Dr. Laura Simone Lewis joins Jonathan for an episode all about our beautiful primate family tree! Listen in to learn how we’re related, what makes each species unique, and why we need to step up conservation efforts for our closest living relatives on the planet. Dr. Laura Simone Lewis is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and earned her PhD from Harvard in the department of Human Evolutionary Biology. Laura studies how social cognition has evolved in chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans. Besides hanging out with great apes, she loves swimming in the ocean, making pottery, and going on solo travel adventures around the world. You can follow Dr. Lewis on Twitter @LauraSimoneLew. We have so much more ground to cover with Dr. Lewis, and we’re already planning a follow-up episode about social cognition in chimpanzees and bonobos. If you have a question for Dr. Lewis, leave us a voicemail or text message at (917) 960-2980, or share your message with us at jonathanvanness.com. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter @CuriousWithJVN to join the conversation. Jonathan is on Instagram and Twitter @JVN and @Jonathan.Vanness on Facebook. Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com. Our executive producer is Erica Getto. Our associate producer is Zahra Crim. Our editor is Andrew Carson. Our theme music is “Freak” by QUIÑ; for more, head to TheQuinCat.com.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Getting Curious. I'm Jonathan Van Ness and every week I sit down for a gorgeous conversation with a
0:05.1	Barrilean expert to learn all about something that makes me curious. On today's episode, I'm joined by Laura Simone Lewis, where I ask her,
0:12.1	how does it feel to be a great ape?
0:16.4	Welcome to Getting Curious. Last June we recorded our incredible, if we do say so ourselves Pride and Nature series.
0:22.8	It was so exciting to do and when we did it, we got to speak to Ellie Trafer about queer behavior in the Animal Kingdom.
0:29.5	And then we got to talk a little bit about great ape, some bonobos, but it really cracked open the Faberge egg that is my curiosity
0:36.7	about great apes and so in walks Dr. Laura Simone Lewis who
0:43.4	researchers how social cognition has evolved in chimpanzees, bonobos and humans. She earned her PhD from where?
0:51.2	Harvard last year and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.
0:57.4	Okay, first of all, like that resume, it just gave me chills on my queer triceps. How are you Dr. Laura Simone Lewis?
1:04.0	Hello, hello, hello. I'm so happy to be here. I'm really excited. Thank you so much for having me.
1:10.1	I'm honestly so excited to talk about great ape to fear. Oh my god, me to you and also just this smile.
1:15.3	You're earrings, you're fucking stunning, your hair. Like you were just like I didn't know you were a doctor and a model like someone
1:21.1	to get this doctor a modeling contract yesterday. Thank you so much. You're literally studying a kid on sand. Okay.
1:28.3	But what I wanted to know was what is it like to be a great ape and there's no one better to talk to about this.
1:34.0	Your literal expert encompasses like everything I need to know. It feels like they are like
1:38.9	our literal like favorite first cousin like in the animal kingdom or something.
1:43.5	You just can't wait to go see them or whatever, but then sidebar. We're also probably like fucking them up.
1:47.7	But anyway, we're all about it. We love and you don't understand more. Absolutely. I think the number one thing that I would say about great apes
1:55.1	is that they have a lot of feelings. We have a lot of emotions. They're really smart creatures. They're really intelligent.
2:02.0	And so I think historically we can tend to think about animals as kind of separate from ourselves as you know, we are these humans
2:08.9	amazing unique creatures that think in these really special ways and use tools and have culture and language and warfare.
	...

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