Fresh Air - Jane Goodall

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

Today we’re remembering renowned primatologist Jane Goodall, known for her work researching the behavior of chimpanzees and protecting their habitats. She died last week at the age of 91. "Every time somebody discovers an animal doing something that we used to think was unique to us, there is this scientific uproar, because we [humans] have to keep our uniqueness. And of course the chimps have challenged this belief again and again and again," Goodall told Terry Gross in 1999. John Powers reviews the Netflix thriller film A House of Dynamite, directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life. Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, Sources and Methods. NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people, helping you understand why distant events matter here at home. Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air. Jane Goodall, the internationally renowned conservationist and research. of chimpanzees in their natural habitat died last week. She was 91. Goodall had no scientific training when she made her way to East Africa at age 23. She went to work as a secretary for

paleontologist Louis Leakey, who'd been hoping to find someone to study a group of chimpanzees on Lake Tanganyika. Goodall took the challenge and groundbreaking observations followed about the Chimps' ability to make and use tools, their diet, their mating patterns, and their social interactions. Goodall shared her work in many books, articles, and documentaries with herself as a character in the stories. The University of Cambridge recognized her contributions by accepting her into its doctoral program, which she completed in 1965. As her career developed, she saw the need for protecting Chimp's habitat and established the Jane Goodall Institute to advance her conservation work. She wrote 32 books, 15 for children, and was recognized with

a host of awards, receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and being named a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Today we'll listen to parts of two interviews Terry Gross recorded with Goodall. The first was in 1993, when Goodall had co-authored a book with Dale Peterson about the relationship between chimps and humans. Jane Goodall told Terry that when she first began studying the chimps, she was discouraged from projecting human qualities on the animals. But she disregarded that advice. For one thing, I gave them names instead of numbers. Terrible thing to do. For another thing, the first scientific paper I wrote, I talked about chimpanzees as he and she, and I said, this individual who, and the article came back, and it was substituted

for he and she and which were substituted for who. And then in those days you couldn't talk about something like adolescence and childhood. You couldn't talk about motivation, you couldn't talk about excitement. There was very, very little you could do in terms

of describing chimpanzee behavior in terms that ordinary people would understand. Do you think that that's changed? Do you think that your more personal style has become accepted scientifically? I think that in most scientific circles today,

these things that I've mentioned are accepted. I think people have come to realize that when we're talking about creatures who share over 98% of their genetic material with us, creatures whom we know to have very, very similar central nervous systems and brains, you know, it's completely crazy to imagine that they wouldn't have similar feelings,

similar ways of tackling problems in life. Mostly people accept today that that is so. In writing about chimp behavior, you say that male chimps are more respectful of men, especially men with deep voices, and they take liberties with women. How did you find that out, and what kind of liberties did the chimps take with you?

Really, until quite recently, there hasn't been that obvious a difference in the way they treat, or they treated male and female, researchers. But we now have one chimpanzee who's a rogue, and he's actually very dangerous to female researchers, and most particularly to me. And it's very sad after 32 years in the field that one chimpanzee has, in a way, made Gombe feel a little unsafe to me today. What does he do that's a threat to you? He's probably 10 times stronger than I am. I mean,

a big male chimp is said to be four to five times stronger than an adult human, male. And Frodo is the largest heaviest chimp we've ever known at Gombe. He's 115 pounds. He's about 20 years old. He's absolutely magnificent. He's one of Fifi's offspring. And what he'll do is display that's charging with his hair bristling, dragging branches and things, straight towards me, pull me over, stamp on me, perhaps display away, come back and do the same thing again. He's actually done it three times. I'm sure you've asked yourself why you've become a target of his. Do you have any idea why?

I can only think that it's because of all the people working at Gombe. He has the least fear of me. I've always been able to get very close to even nervous individuals. And that's because I'm calm and quiet and I don't try to get too close and I don't push.

And so he has absolutely no fear, no respect, no you know, nothing that will block his aggressive behavior towards humans, particularly me. I'm sure you've asked yourself what the chimps think of you and what they think of what you're doing there and who you are. I doubt they think very much now. I think we're just part of the environment as, you know, there are baboons and there are bush pigs.

And we're just part of that natural environment, almost all of them. They grew up with us. Did you learn to make the sounds that chimps used to communicate? I can make most of them. Most of the people studying chimps can make those sounds, but we don't actually make them in the wild. I sometimes make them to chimps in captive groups, and they usually reply.

Certainly that the little greeting sound, when you want to approach a nervous young chimp, which I have to do all the time, because one of the things that we're doing with the Institute is to rescue orphan chimps whose mothers have been shot by hunters. They're confiscated by the government and we care for them.

And to see some of those pathetic little orphans in the markets being sold at the street side, they're dehydrated, their eyes are dull, they're losing hope, they're losing health. And you go up and you make this soft little which is a gentle greeting and they'll sometimes put their arm around your neck. How come you wouldn't use that language in the wild?

Because we've always tried to be as unobtrusive as possible, to keep in the background, to let the chimpanzees get on with their lives, not to try and communicate with them, but to be part of the environment that they will ignore, and they can get on with their lives. What else would you say to a chimp in captivity? Well, I sometimes make the distance call,

which chimpanzees at Gombe make when they're calling out from one side of a valley to the other and they're basically identifying themselves or perhaps questioning who's over there, I'm here. Does that a sound you could demonstrate for us? Well, I can demonstrate it, but I just lean away from the microphone because it's rather loud,

but... In all your years in the field, studying chimpanzees. Were there particular aspects of chimp behavior that you felt you understood and were particularly like your own, particularly like the way humans behave? Oh, I think a lot. One of the most striking, really, is the non-verbal communication patterns so that chimpanzees will kiss, embrace, hold hands, pet one another on the back, swagger, threatened by shaking their fists, tickle. The striking thing here is that not only do the patterns look like so many of ours,

but they're used in the same context, so they obviously mean the same kind of thing. When you first went to the bush, you were given the opportunity to do that by the anthropologist Louis Leakey. And this was to be the first really long-term study of chimpanzees. Other people, I believe, had studied them for months at a time. You were supposed to go there for a few years. So you got there and you went with your mother because you weren't allowed to go by yourself. What was that story? Young English women didn't do that sort of thing.

In fact, as I grew up, I was told I couldn't. That's what I'd always wanted to do. But I had this great mother who always used to say, Jane, if you want to do something enough and you work hard enough and you take advantage of opportunities, you'll get there in the end. And so when I was told, by the British authorities that it wouldn't be appropriate

for me to go out completely on my own without some kind of female companion. My mother was the one who offered to come. What did she do to help you when you were getting started? Oh, she was fabulous. She had a clinic. Her brother was a surgeon.

And he supplied her with all kinds of simple medications like aspirins and band-aids and absent salts, you know, that kind of thing, something that anybody can administer. And she set up a little clinic on the shore of the lake for the local fishermen who were living around the park. And she had so much patience and so much concern and care that with these simple remedies, she sometimes worked wonderful, amazing cures. In fact, we found out later

that she was known as the White Witch Doctor. And of course, this was tremendously helpful in establishing friendly, good relationships with the local people, and those have remained ever since. How long did she stay with you? She was with me about, it was between three and four months, and by that time, the local authorities realized that, you know, it was okay, and I was going to be all right, and I had a staff by then. I had a cook and a boat driver, and I'd made friends with the local people, and they said, all right, you can stay. When you got to Tanzania, and you knew you were there to watch and watch and

research the chimps, were they easy to find? No, they used to run away. The first moment they saw me, they would depart into the undergrowth. And it was very frustrating, but gradually from an open, rocky peak overlooking two valleys, one on the north, one on the south, using my binoculars, wearing the same colored clothes every day, they got used to this queer, white-skinned ape who appeared so surprisingly in their midst. And so gradually I was able to get closer and closer and learn ever more about their fascinating behavior. One chimp was particularly helpful to you because he was the first chimp that befriended you, shall we say? What did he do to help introduce you to the others?

He was fantastic. That was David Greybeard. And I probably owe more to him than any other chimp throughout these long 33 years. For some reason, he had a particularly calm and trusting disposition. Of course, every chimpanzee has his or her own totally individual personality, just like we do. And David, instead of running off, would just sit and calmly continue what he was doing. It was David who one day arrived in my camp to feed on the ripe fruits of the oil nut palm growing there, and while he was there, he saw some bananas lying on the table, and he took those. My cook told me about this male chimp who'd arrived and eventually I stayed down and waited to see who it was and that's how I found out it was David Graby. I'd already named him from my encounters

in the forest. And from that time on, he would sometimes wander up to me in the forest to see if I had a banana somewhere hidden about my person or in my haversack. And the other chimps would start to run and then they'd stop and their eyes were big and wide. And they think, what is this what is going on and so they realized that I wasn't so frightening after all it was as though David had opened a door into what was then a really magic unknown world what were the signs that you were being accepted by the other chimps they didn't run away they stayed when I could approach and they would they would look up and then they'd continue their grooming or they're playing or their feeding or whatever it was they were doing before I came

would they approach you and make friendly gestures toward you? Oh, no. Absolutely not. They just continued with what they were doing. Did it ever get to that point as time went on where chimps would come up to you and be friendly in a conscious way? Well, you see, we tried to discourage all that kind of thing. They would sometimes come up to peer if there was a banana anywhere, but as we discouraged any kind of contact, we didn't really have that much. There was one short period. It was before I realized we could make this a really long-term study. And it was so exciting to be able to go up to and groom a completely wild adult male chimp, David Greybeard. It was so exciting when a mother allowed her infant to come up and

touch me. It was so incredibly moving when a juvenile allowed me to play with him. And I wouldn't have foregone those experiences, but in a way they were wrong because it was dangerous to try and establish communication with them. It was dangerous to the objective collection of information. You become too much of the story and start to change the chimp behavior by your presence and involvement. Yeah, I mean, it would be very easy to become part of the group. And then, for one, that would disturb the natural behavior more than we do by being there anyway. And for another, it could be very dangerous because they do attack each other quite often for no very obvious reason sometimes.

and they are very strong. And if we were perceived by them to be part of the group, they'd probably all treat all of us the way Frodo treats me. That's interesting. Jane Goodall, I thank you very much for talking with us. Thank you. Jane Goodall, speaking with Terry Gross, recorded in 1993. We'll hear some of a second conversation the two had in 1999 after this short break.

This is fresh air. Today we're remembering Jane Goodall, known for her work. researching the behavior of chimpanzees and protecting their habitats. Goodall died last week at the age of 91. Cherry spoke with Goodall in 1999 upon publication of her book, Reason for Hope, about her years in the wild. You went first to secretarial school, which isn't the perfect training for a primatologist. What were you expecting to happen by, you know, what was your plan going to say?

secretarial school. Well, from the age of eight or nine, I wanted to go to Africa, live with animals and write books about them. And that was because I fell in love with Tarzan and was terribly jealous of Tarzan's Jane. And I thought she was a wimp and I'd have been much better as a mate for Tarzan myself, which is true. I would have been. And, you know, everybody laughed at me. How could I go to Africa? We didn't have any money. It was during the Second World War. There were no jets going over with tourists, and we just heard rumors about, you know, poisoned arrows and sinister drumbeat messages and things like that. But my mother never laughed.

So I left school and didn't go to university because at that time in England, unless you were good in a foreign language, you couldn't get a scholarship. And I was always hopeless in foreign languages. And so my mother said, well, if you are set on going to. Africa or some other foreign place, if you learn secretarial work, then you can get a job anywhere in the world, which of course was brilliant idea, because that's exactly what I did. I had my first job with Louis Leakey as his secretary. How did you get a job as a secretary? How did you even meet him? Well, I was in London. I had this wonderful job with documentary films, and it was

as a secretary? Well, secretary, not really. I'd sort of was choosing music and things like that for these documentary films. And it was a fascinating job, and I met lots of people, but didn't pay very well. Lots of jobs didn't just after the war. So when I had a letter from a school friend inviting me to Kenya, where her parents had just bought a farm, I instantly handed in my resignation and went home and worked as a waitress and saved up my wages and my tips until I had enough for a return fare by boat. So once I got out to Kenya in Nairobi,

I heard about Lewis Leakey, and somebody said, Jane, if you really are interested in animals, you should meet Lewis. So I made an appointment, went to see him in his office at the Natural History Museum, and I think he was impressed because although I didn't have a degree, I'd gone on reading about Africa and animals,

and I could answer so many of his questions. So he gave me a job working for him that same day, the day I met him. And what was your job when you were his personal secretary? I was just writing his letters and speaking to people on the phone and, you know, that kind of thing. But I had the amazing opportunity of going with him, his wife, and one other young English girl, onto the Serengeti to the now famous Aldivai Gorge where so many early human fossils have been found but at that time only the remains of prehistoric non-humans

had been found so instead of being a road bleeding there as there is today this was wild untouched Africa no tracks no trails just occasionally the odd Maasai walking by and all the animals were there so that after the hard work of searching for bones, fossilized bones during the day in the hot sun. Gillian and I were allowed to go onto the plains and, you know, there were giraffe and zebra and antelopes and one evening a rhino and one evening a young male lion who followed us quite a long way. And I think that's when Lewis realized I was the person he'd been looking

for. You know, I didn't care about clothes and hairdressers and parties and boyfriends. I just wanted to be out there with the animals. And so he gave you the Chimp Project to do, researching chimpanzees in the wild? Right. He had two major problems to overcome. One was how was he going to get the money for this crazy scheme?

I mean, in those days, young people didn't go tramping off, living with animals in the bush, especially girls. And finally, he got some money from a wealthy American businessman, Leighton Wilkie. And secondly, Tanzania,

chimps are was Tanganyika then it was under british colonial rule it was actually a protectorate and um so the authorities the british authority said a young girl on her own in the bush preposterous impossible but lewis never gave up so in the end they said oh well all right but she must bring someone with her and who volunteered to come for the first four months but that same amazing mother did you think of aliki as early feminist in a way because he thought it was fine to have you a young woman heading this project and working alone in the wild? Quite honestly, it never occurred to me.

I mean, I grew up in a family of very strong women that was, you know, when the war started, my father joined up. Mom, my sister and I went to live with her mother and my mother had two other sisters living in the house and then every weekend, or most weekends, my uncle would come. He was the one male presence. And it just never occurred to me to question

that I would be able to do what I wanted. It just didn't enter my thinking that I couldn't do some things because I was a woman. So when Leakey suggested I went out, we didn't actually talk about it much as being strange that I was a female. And it wasn't until the British authorities started saying they were horrified that I realized it was perhaps a little strange at the time.

But he just felt that women would be more patient and therefore make better observers. Jane Goodall, speaking with Terry Gross in 1999. Goodall died last week at the age of 91. We'll hear more of their conversation after this break. Later, our critic at large John Powers reviews the new film A House of Dynamite by Catherine Bigelow, who made The Hurt Locker. I'm Dave Davies, and this is Fresh Air.

Now, you write that when you first started doing work in the wild, You weren't afraid of being harmed by wild animals. You believe that the animals would sense that you intended no harm, that you were there as a friend, and that Leakey encouraged you to believe this. Do you think he should have discouraged you to believe this and given you a little more cause for concern? Well, no, because at the same time,

he taught me that I had to be very careful and that animals were dangerous or could be, and that, for example, if you got between a mother and her young, you'd be in big, big trouble. If you startled an animal, you'd be in big trouble, and that you might come across some creature who'd been wounded and who hated people. So I was perfectly aware of possible danger and tried to be as careful as I could, and he spent quite a lot of time teaching me, so that he didn't tell me not to be afraid,

and I think there are moments when fear is terribly important. And, you know, if you suddenly hear stamping or snorting close by in the undergrowth, it's better to have some kind of mechanism to deal with it, like climbing a tree, which I once did just in time not to be charged by two buffaloes. Well, you just described a close call. Were you ever harmed? No, I never was actually harmed until quite recently we have one chimp who's a bully, Fifi's son, Frodo. and he just loves, he's not trying to actually really hurt or kill anyone, but because the ground is so rugged and rocky, if he knocks you over and drags you and stamps on you,

you can get a little bit hurt, and I did. What did he do to you? Well, he knocked me over, and then he stamped on me, and then he charged away, and then, which he does to lots of people, but for some reason he charged back twice more and stamped and dragged. and sort of cracked open, well, not cracked over my head, but I had a bleeding cut where he'd hit my head on a rock and a damaged ankle.

So I try to avoid Frodo. You know, he is potentially dangerous. He's 130 pounds, the biggest chimp we've had there. He's the top-ranking male now, and he is huge. Well, you know, if it's a person, you could try to work things out verbally, even after, to reach some kind of verbal apology or a great. which you can't do with the chimpanzee? Are you, you know, angry with him the way you would be with a person?

Or do you feel like, well, it's chimp behavior and you're there to observe it and you just accept this? Well, theoretically, I think it's just chimp behavior. I must accept it. But actually, you know, chimps are so like people. I actually get pretty mad at him. I think it's just you can't help it. You feel you're dealing with a whole lot of people, actually. So, yeah, I get mad at him and I try to avoid him.

Has this incident changed your behavior around the chimps or how close you'll go to them? Or is it just changing your behavior around this one chimp? Yeah, it's just the one. I mean, the others are just the same wonderful chimps. They always have been. And I think if I was there all the time, this problem would go away. I think it's because I disappear for so long. And there is something in the chimp's makeup that even if it's another chimp,

A long separation is likely to lead to aggression when the two chimps meet again. A lot of scientists have seen humans as the only animal that uses tools. And you basically saw a chimp working with a tool. What was the tool? Yeah, that's right. And not only using it as a tool, but actually making tools, which is the real breakthrough. It was a piece of grass. And it was being used by a chimpanzee whom I'd named David Gray.

beard, who was the first to lose his fear of me. And when I saw him squatting on this termite mound and using this piece of grass as a tool and then picking a leafy twig and stripping the leaves off, thus making the object suitable to fish for termites, I mean, I actually was so excited I couldn't believe it. And I wouldn't let myself get too worked up until I'd actually seen it again on another day, because it seemed so unlikely. And I didn't have a very clear view. I was sort of hidden in the vegetation. But anyway, it was real. Describe a little bit more how he was using this grass as a tool?

Well, the termites make a mound. There are a lot of different kinds of termites, and these make large, very, very hard earth compacted by their own saliva, and they're reddish-colored. And at a certain time of year, the winged termites fly out, and the worker termites make passages up to the surface of these nests. these very hard nests. And so David would pick a piece of grass,

carefully push it into one of these tunnels, wait for a moment, pull it out very, very carefully, and there would usually be termites biting on, and he would then pick them off with his lips and crunch them up. So when you described this to Lewis Leakey, what was his reaction? Now we must redefine man, redefine tool, or accept chimpanzees as humans. And so which did you end up doing,

redefining two, man or accept chimps as human? I think, you know, I didn't really pay any attention to that. I didn't do anything. I think what's fascinating is every time somebody discovers an animal doing something that we used to think was unique to us, there is this scientific uproar because we have to keep our uniqueness.

And, of course, the chimps have challenged this belief again and again and again. There are all kinds of intellectual performances we used to think unique to us, abstraction, generalization, understanding and using abstract symbols, things like this that they've been shown to do, especially some of the careful work in captive situations. And because of this and because of all the similarities in emotions, happiness, sadness, fear, because of the fact they have such very vivid personalities. They've really helped so much to blur the line that used to be perceived as sharp,

dividing humans on the one hand from the rest of the animal kingdom on the other. And it sort of gives you a new humility. We're different, yes, we're unique, yes, but not as different as we used to think. Jane Goodall speaking with Terry Gross in 1999. We'll hear more of their conversation in just a moment. This is Fresh Air. You raised a child during your research in the forest in Tanzania. Was your approach to mothering affected by watching chimps' mother their babies?

Well, I think it was. I mean, I consciously thought that what I'd learned from watching the chimpanzee mothers was very appropriate. for raising a human child. I think one of the things that I've learned that's really significant in relation to raising human children is that there are very different kinds of mothering in the wild.

We find good mothers and bad mothers, and the good mother will be attentive, protective, tolerant, playful, affectionate, and above all supportive. And the mother who is on the poorer end of the scale tends to be rather harsh or cold in her treatment of the baby to be less supportive, less affectionate, less tolerant, and much less playful. And it does seem that these maternal characteristics,

along with a kind of family into which the infant is born, in other words, the whole early experience, has a tremendous influence on the type of chimpanzee that infant will become. And we find that those with the good, supportive mothers tend to be assertive, successful, they have relaxed relationships with other adults, whereas those that have the colder, less supportive mothers tend to grow up being rather nervous, finding it difficult to relate well to other adults, and usually being rather

low ranking on the dominant scale. So if this early experience is so important for chimps, is it perhaps also for humans? And I believe that it is, and I think there's a growing body of scientific data to suggest that that's so. So did you try to be extra supportive, tolerant, and playful with your child? Yeah, and I also spent, you know, for the first three years, I basically was with him all the time,

and people have said, oh, well, you were so lucky you could do your research and stay with your child. But in fact, because I made this conscious decision, decision to spend time with him because I felt it was important. That meant that I actually stopped following the chimps. I just occasionally walked up to look at them, but then I'd go back and spend time with my son. And the funny thing is that even if I hadn't observed the chimps, I probably would have brought my son up in much the same way because my mother treated us very much like the old female flow treated her young. So I don't know. So did you have

have researchers who were observing the chimps during those years when you were spending most every time with your child? Oh yeah, by that time we'd built up the research station, which of course is still very dynamic and alive today. So we're actually approaching our 40th year of research. It's the longest unbroken study of any group of wild animals in the world. And the wonderful thing is we have one chimpanzee, Feefei, Flo's daughter, who was a small infant when I began in 1960, and she's the only one still alive today from those early years. But, you know, I can go back to Gombe, look into her eyes, and I know that there are certain memories that she and I share from those early years. I want to get back to being a mother in the wild. Did you have to protect

your baby from the chimps? Oh, absolutely. Chips are meat eaters, and they have been known to take human infants for food, including at Gombie, well, at least in that part of, it was before it became a park, actually. And so it was very, very important to keep grub, as we called him, away from the chimps and to always have someone with him. And that was why, while he was sort of two and three, I actually spent much, much less time at Gombie and more time with Hugo, my ex-husband, on the Serengeti, which was a sort of healthier and safe. environment for a small toddling child. It must have changed your feelings about the chimps too,

knowing that they were a potential enemy. It was very disturbing to think that these wonderful chimpanzees might harm my baby, my precious baby. Because up until that time, I had thought that although chimps were very like us in so many ways, that they were rather nicer. and it was even more shocking to find, and this was when my son was already about five years old,

to find that they were capable of extreme brutality, of cannibalism, and of a behavior it's very similar to primitive human warfare. Some of your most important findings from your research of chimps in the wild has to do with chimpanzee violence and how some chimpanzees may attack chimps of neighboring communities.

Could you talk a little bit about what you found were possible motivations for these attacks? We believe that the really serious attacks on members of a neighboring community are due to a sort of territorial dispute. We find that they're very aggressively territorial and that groups of males will patrol the boundaries of their territories. and they appear to be searching for sight or sound of neighbours and that the males of a community's any number from 4 to 10 depending on the size of the community at the time will actually enlarge their territory at the expense of a weaker neighbour so it's not only protecting their territory for their females and young

but an active acts of warfare almost to increase increase their own territory. Yeah, you compare some of this hostile chimp behavior to primitive warfare. In what way are they similar? We had one period at Gombe, which was, I think, the darkest period in Gombe's history, which we refer to as the four-year war. And it happened after the main study group had divided. And there was a period when there was a sort of no-man's land

between the two communities, newly established rangers. And then the males of the larger community, the Casacela community, began going on raids into the heart of the land that are being taken over by the splinter group that moved off to the south. And if they encountered an individual on his or her own, they would give chase. It was almost like a hunt. and once they captured such an individual

they would subject him or her to a really, really brutal and sustained attack. Nothing like that happens within a community. This is very special to intercommunity interactions. And the chimps, particularly the young males, appear to enjoy this kind of conflict. And a young male will actually go back into a danger zone and peer at the enemies.

So they also show patterns when they attack strangers that they never show during intra-community fighting that's fighting within their community, such as bending, twisting a limb round and round, drinking blood, tearing the skin, the sort of thing you see when they're trying to kill an adult prey animal. Has your research led you to make any connections between chimp and human violence?

Yes. It suggests if we believe in Darwinian evolution, if we believe, as Lewis did, and I do, that at one time we shared a common ancestor, then it seems fairly clear that we have inherited certain violent tendencies from our ancient primate ancestors. but I've been criticized for publishing some of these violent episodes because there are scientists who have argued that if I publish them, then there will be those who try to make use of those observations to imply that we are a violent species and war is inevitable. And I believe that we have quite a strong free will and that we are able to choose the direction we go. We don't have to go around being violent.

And in fact, most people don't. Most people are quite disciplined. And we have to also remember that equally deeply rooted in our primate heritage are compassion, love, and altruism, because we find wonderful examples of these qualities in the chimps that we've studied. Just one more thing. We only have a few seconds. You say that, you know, you really do love people.

Do a lot of people assume that since you've spent so much time in the wild, often alone, studying chimps, that maybe you're antisocial? Some people do feel that, and they say, which do I like best chimps or people? And I say, well, chimps are so like us that I like some people much more than some chimps, and some chimps much more than some people. That's a great answer. Jane Goodall, thank you so much for talking with us. Thank you.

Jane Goodall speaking with Terry Gross in 1999. Goodall died last week at the age of 91. Coming up, our critic at large John Powers reviews the new film A House of Dynamite by Catherine Bigelow, who made The Hurt Locker. This is fresh air. In the new hot-buttoned film, A House of Dynamite, the U.S. is threatened by a nuclear missile. The movie, which opens in theaters this week, was directed by Catherine Bigelow, who won an Oscar for the Hurt Locker. It stars, among others, Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, and Jared Harris. Our critic at large John Powers has this review.

If you were born after Hiroshima, you've spent your whole life seeing, or at least knowing of, movies about the atomic bomb. From the ruthless 60s satire Dr. Strangelove, to the 80s TV sensation the day after, to 21st century thrillers like the sum of all fears, filmmakers keep imagining the ways that nuclear weapons can lead to cataclysm. The latest to do so is a house. of Dynamite, a white-knuckle Netflix movie that opens first in cinemas and hits the streamer itself on October 24th. I encourage you to see it in a theater because it's directed by Catherine Bigelow, who's not merely the first woman to win the best director Oscar. She's unsurpassed at action and suspense. Although I normally try to avoid cliches, a house of dynamite literally

did have me on the edge of my seat. The action begins, when a military tracking station spots a single nuclear warhead, origin unknown, heading toward the U.S. mainland. If not shot down, it will hit in 20 minutes. For the rest of the movie, we leapfrog among the characters who are trying to stop that missile,

figure out who launched it, Putin, Iran, North Korea, China pretending to be North Korea, and to come up with a response that won't lead to Armageddon. If the premise is straightforward, forward, the telling is not. The film loops back and repeats the same 20-minute period three times over, as we watch different people confront the threat. In the first, which is about

trying to stop the ICBM, we flip between a major and an Alaska missile outpost, that's Anthony Ramos, and the military officer running the White House Situation Room. She's played by Rebecca Ferguson, who you'll know from Mission Impossible. The second part centers on two tactics. Acticians, a Deputy National Security Advisor, played by Gabriel Basso, who's urging a cautious response, and the general, played by Tracy Lentz, who fears that caution could lead to America's destruction. Finally, the third part centers on the Secretary of Defense, played by Jared Harris, and President Idris Elba. He's presented with a menu featuring different levels of retaliatory slaughter, and has the agonizing task of deciding who, if anyone, to.

nuke. Here on a conference call with Basso and others, Lett's his general lays out the situation. These are the circumstances. In little more than seven minutes, we will lose the city of Chicago. I can't tell you why. Or why we're seeing North Korea, Russia, China, Pakistan, and even Iran, raising their alerts and mobilizing their forces across air, land, and sea. Perhaps, as Mr. Barrington suggested earlier, they are simply and innocently responding to our posture. It is also possible that they've seen our homeland is about to absorb a catastrophic blow, and they are ready to take advantage of that.

Or this is all part of a phased, coordinated assault with far worse to come. I simply don't know. What I do know is this. If we do not take steps to neutralize our enemies, now we will lose our window to do so. While all the characters are defined by their jobs, Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim give each a hint of their human dimension, be it the complacent charisma of Elba's president, Ferguson fighting back tears then soldiering on, or Harris, an actor of great vulnerability, falling into despair when he grasped that the bomb will hit the city where his daughter lives.

All are honorable and good at their jobs. Let's his general is not one of those hair-triggered Strangel psychopaths familiar from most thrillers. He's a rational man and baseball fan, trying to do the right thing. Like that 60s warhorse fail-safe, a house of dynamite reminds us that America's nuclear defense is based on elaborate protocols that offer. for an illusion of control. Yet once that unexplained missile shows up on the radar, the system instantly starts dissolving.

The missile defenses don't work. It's like trying to hit a bullet with a bullet, as they say here. You can't get Putin's guy on the phone, and our North Korea specialist has the day off. The encrypted video conference starts breaking up. Endless planning can't tell you what to do when the choice is between surrender and suicide. While all of this is unnerving, it's also thrilling to watch.

Bigelow directs with a maestro's lucid precision, perfectly orchestrating the complicated shifts from person to person, time frame to time frame. We can follow exactly where we are and what's going on. Every moment pops from Barry Ackroyd's alert cinematography, to Kirk Baxter's jittery but controlled editing, to Volker Bertelsmann's score, whose shifts keep ratcheting up the tension. While the script's ending is a tad too oblique for my taste, the movie still packs a wallop.

And rightly, Bigelow is tackling something important, especially now when the world's nuclear arsenals are increasingly controlled by aggressive nationalists. Yet it's unlikely that her warning about all the world's nukes will have any greater effect on the real world than the scads of cautionary movies that came before. Sad to say, a House of Dynamite is likely to be remembered not for making us any safer, but for being so darn exciting. John Powers reviewed the new movie A House of Dynamite, now in theaters and streaming on Netflix October 24th. On Monday show, Mitch Album, whose book Tuesdays with Morrie became a best-selling memoir and an Emmy-winning film, discusses his new novel twice. The story is about a man who discovers he can relive any moment.

but must accept the consequences of reliving it. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. San Brigger is our managing producer. Our senior producer today is Roberto Shorak. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham

with additional engineering support from Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld, and Deanna Martinez. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers and Marie Baldinado, Lauren Crenzeld, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thaya Challoner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nestor. Hope Wilson is our consulting visual producer.

For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies. Thank you.