How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Jane Goodall on Optimism, Hope, and Conservation

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

We said goodbye to Jane Goodall, who passed away yesterday at 91 after a life that inspired millions. I feel so grateful to have had the chance to speak with her back in July 2022, a conversation I’ll never forget. Today, in honour of her incredible legacy, I want to re-share it with you. ___________________________________________________________________ The legendary Jane Goodall is a scientist, conservationist and humanitarian, whose 60-year study of wild chimpanzees in Tanzania challenged and overturned much of the conventional scientific thinking at the time. Her tireless work over the years - she is now 88 - has won her a legion of admirers, including David Attenborough, Leonardo di Caprio, Prince Harry and Greta Thunberg who calls Goodall ‘a true hero’. She joins me to talk about the resilience of hope, whether chimpanzees have a sense of failure, her own failures in language, correspondence and motherhood, and her belief in the next generation. This was one of the most enlightening podcast interviews I've ever had the privilege of doing. Please listen! ✨ IN THIS EPISODE: 00:00 Introduction and Tribute to Jane Goodall 01:47 Early Life and Career 04:14 The Concept of Hope and Optimism 08:55 Groundbreaking Work with Chimpanzees 15:16 Challenges and Triumphs  20:22 Reflections on Failure and Success 29:18 The Power of Imagination and Early Influences 30:22 Exploring Animal Friendships 32:43 Roots and Shoots: A Movement for Change 37:37 Spiritual Experiences and Beliefs 44:58 Challenges and Failures 49:48 Reflections on Parenting and Influential Figures 54:26 Messages of Hope and Resilience   🔗 LINKS: Jane Goodall Institute: https://janegoodall.org/ https://www.janegoodall.org.uk/ Elizabeth’s Substack: https://theelizabethday.substack.com/ Join the How To Fail community: https://howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories   👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod Podcast Instagram: @howtofailpod Website: www.elizabethday.org Substack: https://theelizabethday.substack.com/   Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, it's Elizabeth here, and apologies for the quality of this audio. I'm on book tour at the moment, and so this little introduction is brought to you by the medium of voice note. But it was important to me and to all of us to reshare this episode with. the legendary Jane Goodall, who very sadly passed away this week. We wanted to reshare this conversation because it was such a meaningful one for me and such a mind-expanding one for anyone who listens. Jane's message about the resilience of hope is needed today more than ever, and we must continue to spread her message and her work, even in the aftermath of her passing. So I really hope that you get a lot from listening or perhaps re-listening to this episode.

In it, we talk about what she learnt from chimpanzees about failure. We talk about the quality of hope and how necessary it is. We also delve into her own perceived failures in correspondence, that's right, letter writing, and in motherhood. She really was the most fantastic woman and taught me so much over the course of this chat. Thank you so, so much for listening. And thank you to Jane Goodall for all the work that she left us with. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online.

Squarespace is here to support entrepreneurship and help turn your passion into a business. It does so with cutting-edge design, seamless checkout for, customers with simple but powerful payment tools. It helps you turn leads into clients, allowing you to grow and communicate with your audience. Their customers include the dusty knuckle bakery and cafe in East London, and if you know, you know their bread is amazing. They're a Squarespace customer and a brilliant example of how to do it right. Their training program provides young people who've been excluded by society with the basic skills for work and life. Go check them out. Head to Squarespace.com slash fail 10 for a free trial.

And when you're ready to launch, use offer code fail 10, that's fail 1,0, to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. When you're with Annex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca slash yMex. Jane Goodall is a scientist, conservationist, and humanitarian, whose groundbreaking discoveries have shaped our understanding of what it is to be human.

Her 60-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees in Tanzania, which she undertook at first with no formal training, challenged and overturned much of the conventional scientific thinking at the time. Dr Goodall's work was pioneering in both our understanding of ourselves and in opening the doors for other women in science. In 1977, she founded the Jane Goodall Institute, a global community conservation organisation. Her tireless work over the years,

she is now 88, has won her a legion of admirers, including David Attenborough, Leonardo DiCaprio, Prince Harry and Greta Tunberg, who calls Goodall a true hero. But her starting life was far removed from the forests of Tanzania. She was born in Hampstead, North London,

to a businessman father and a novelist mother and grew up in Bournemouth. As a child, Goodall's father gave her a stuffed chimpanzee as an alternative to a teddy bear. Goodall credits her love of animals to her early affection for this soft toy, whom she called Jubilee. Now Goodall is a UN messenger of peace, a dame, the author of numerous books, including ones for children, and was named one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time magazine in 2019. Her latest publication is an investigation into the necessity of hope. Called simply The Book of Hope, it was an instant New York Times bestseller.

In it, Dr. Goodall draws on the wisdom of a lifetime dedicated to nature to teach us how to find strength in the face of the climate crisis and to explain why she still has hope for the natural world and for humanity. because, as she puts it, hope is a human survival trait without which we perish. Jane Goodall, welcome to How to Fail. Well, thank you. Thank you for having hope in our technology, because there have been some failures in the run-ups of this recording. And now here we are finally on Zoom, and it is such an honour for me to be talking to you.

I wanted to start by asking whether we are born with hope, or is it something that we can acquire? I think we can probably acquire it, but I think people are born, you know, there is an innate optimism or an innate pessimism, but I think the experiences we go through in life can change that, but we might have to work on it. I fortunately was born, I think, as an optimist, which is different from hope, by the way, but it's a help. And I had an amazing family. And I must say at this point. I was born loving animals long before Jubilee came from my life. Do you still have Jubilee? Jubilee right now is in Los Angeles. He's part of an exhibition put on by the National Geographic called Becoming Jane. And at first I said, you can't have

Jubilee. I mean, he's too precious. I've still got him. And they said, oh, Jane, please. He has a bulletproof glass case. And he is hand carried from one desk. destination to another. I love that. I had a child of teddy bear who I was given on the occasion of my fourth birthday called Thomas, who is still very much with me. And I, like you, have a lifelong love of animals. So tell me about the difference between hope and optimism. What is the difference? I think optimism can be, oh, I just hope it'll be okay. Yes. And hope is when it is tied in with action. So the way I see our human race at the moment is as though we're at the mouth of a very, very long and very dark tunnel. And right at the end of that tunnel is a little tiny

pinprick of light, a little star. That's hope. But there's no use sitting at one end of the tunnel and saying, I hope that star will come. We've got to, as the Bible says, gird our loins, whatever that means, I love it. We've got to gird our loins and crawl under, climb over, work our way around the tremendous obstacles that lie between us and that star, like climate change, loss of biodiversity, poverty, pandemics, war. It's tough. But as we go, we try and draw other people with us and so that we end up with a great mass of humanity working towards that star. You speak as lyrically as you write. It is a joy to listen to you.

So I'm getting the sense that hope there is an active intention behind it. It needs to be something that is a verb rather than just a noun. And in your wonderful book, you talk about four main reasons for hope, human intellect, the resilience of nature, the power of young people, and the indomitable human spirit. I'm very interested in the last one, the human spirit. Tell us a bit about why you believe from what you've witnessed. it is indomitable. I have met people who have tackled tasks that seem utterly impossible and people who've overcome really daunting physical disabilities.

And most people would just give up at that point. But these incredible people battle on. And I'll give you one example, and that's a young man called Chris Cock. I write about him in the book. I've met him several times. He was born without arms and legs. He's got little tiny stumps of arms. And he's got one, it looks like a flipper.

I suppose it's the remains of a foot or something coming out of his thigh. And with that flipper, he goes around the world on a skateboard with those little stumps, one of which has a tiny maybe remnant thumb on the smooth surface. He can get out a cell phone. He can send messages. He's driven one of these really. expensive tractors. And this man is so full of life. And when you look into his eyes, I've never seen such an alive, vibrant personality. So that's the indomitable human spirit, encouraged by

his family. That's so important. I have a wonderful mother. She encouraged my spirit of curiosity. She encouraged my love of animals and I'm not sure without her if I'd have done what I've done. Well, tell us a bit more about your mother because I know that she came with you, didn't she, on your first ever trip to observe chimpanzees. Tell us when that was and how it came about.

Okay, well, when I was 10 years old, my dream was, I'll grow up, go to Africa, live with wild animals and write books about them. everybody laughed. I mean, we're now going back nearly 80 years. And the only person who didn't laugh was mum, who 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 if you don't give up, maybe you find a way. So eventually, I got an invitation to Africa from a school friend. I saved up money working as a waitress. I hadn't been to university because we couldn't afford it. I'd done a secretarial court.

but I couldn't save up money in London. So I worked just this very hard work being a waitress back then and got out to Kenyan. That was in 1957. I was 23 and stayed with my friend. That's when I met Dr. Lewis Leakey, my mentor. And he amazingly saw something in me and offered me this amazing opportunity

to go and study chimps. Nobody had done it. It took him a year to get the money. And then the next stumbling block, the British authority said, we don't take responsibility for this ridiculous idea. In the end, they said, all right, but she can't come alone. So who volunteered? That same amazing mother.

So that's how it happened. And Dr. Lewis Leakey, he thought, if I'm right, that your lack of scientific formal training at that stage was, if anything, a boon to what he wanted you to do. He appreciated your qualities as someone who came with a fresh mindset. Is that right? It's absolutely right because the thinking, as I later discovered, that the scientific community was very reductionist.

I was actually told the difference between us and all the other animals is one of kind. In other words, there's a sharp line dividing us from them. We were separate. We were special. We were on a pinnacle. and I think probably religion had something to do with that and it was the chimpanzees who helped to break down that line and break down that barrier.

Do you think as well as religion, potentially that kind of thinking could also have been influenced by the fact that science was very male-dominated and dare I say it, there might be a trait of male arrogance that might have gone into that feeling of exceptionalism? I think he'll probably write. again, I was lucky being a woman, Lewis Leakey, thought that women might be more patient in the field, and that's probably true, because, you know, throughout evolution, the job of the human female was to be a mother and look after the children. And you've got to be patient to do that when you have a large family. So not having the scientific training, people say, well, suppose you've been to college, would you have thought differently about animals? Would you have declined to give them names and given them numbers, which was what I was told I should have

done. Would you not have dared to speak about personality, mind and emotion? Well, I don't think so because when I was a child growing up, I had an amazing teacher and he taught me absolutely that we're not the only beings on the planet with personality, mind, and emotion. And that was my dog, rusty. You can't share your life in a meaningful way with a dog, a cat, a horse, a rabbit, a guinea pig, a pig. I don't care what it is, a bird, and not know that, of course, we're not alone. We might get interrupted during this recording by my cat Huxley, and I cannot tell you how much I agree with that statement. So I hope he comes and meets you. I hope he does. Yes, he doesn't like to be left out. He always likes to know what's going on.

So if he hears my voice, he'll generally come. But you mentioned there that you named the chimps that you were studying. And just tell us why you made that decision. Did it just come naturally to you? Because you saw these chimps very much as an extension of your family unit in a way. You were there with your mother already. Yes. Mom stayed about four months. I didn't decide to name the chimps. I just automatically did it. I named all the animals in my life, my guinea pigs and hamsters and turtles and a grass snake. I named them all. Why wouldn't I name them all? Why wouldn't I name the chimps as I got to know them. It was just second nature. What's the first thing you remember when you started observing these chimpanzees?

The fact that every time they saw me, they disappeared into the forest. They're very shy. I only had money for six months. And after four months, I still hadn't managed to get close. I could watch them through my binoculars. But that wasn't what I needed to do to get to know them. I had to gain their trust. Some people have said, well, didn't you feel like giving up? I could never give up. I just couldn't do it. I wouldn't forgive myself if I gave up.

And I knew with time that I could gain their trust, but did I have the time? Luckily, one of them, the first one to begin to lose his fear, I named him David Greybeard, a Greybeard because he had a white hair on his chin. David, I don't know. Anyway, he was David Greybeard. and I saw him using and making tools to fish for termites. That changed everything. Sadly, Mom had just left.

She would have been so excited because at that time, science thought humans and only humans used and made tools. So Leakey was able to get further funding from National Geographic. They sent her filmmaker, Hugo Van Laowick, whom I eventually married, to film the behavior of the chimps

and actually my behavior, too. If you see the early footage, there's more footage of Jane than the is of the chimps. You're expressing that very modestly because it really did change everything about how we saw humans, how we saw chimpanzees, and it made you famous. And I wonder how you feel about that fame. We were talking before we started recording about the fact that you have done three or so interviews like this every day for a very, very long time. How does that feel and how do you cope with the amount of energy it must take? Well, that's about three questions in one. But when the fame first hit me, you know, people had read the geographic and they saw me. And I was horrified and I put dark glasses on.

I let my hair loose. They still recognised me. And I'll never forget when it began. And the journalist started coming and asking questions. And I was basically very shy. And then I'm not sure at what point, but at some point I thought, well, this has happened. I didn't want it to happen. It just happened.

So I better make use of it. So I started going around with little brochures and information about our programs and handing them to the people who wanted a signature or more recently a selfie. And it's helped us to grow our organizations. But then how do I feel about it? now. Well, before the pandemic, I was traveling about 300 days a year around the world. I mean, I was on the road for about 300 days. And I came back here, home, where I am now, in between. It's the house where I grew up. And, you know, at first, I was really frustrated. I couldn't take

my message out. And then with a wonderful group from the Jane Goodall Institute, we created virtual Jane. And I've never been as busy or exhausted in my whole life. So since virtual Jane was created, I've given interviews, I've given podcasts like this. Virtual lectures are the hardest because you don't get the audience feedback. You're giving a lecture to a little green camera spot. But if you don't put the same energy and enthusiasm into it, you may as well not do it. That's what my mother taught me also. If you're going to do something, give it your all.

And the right side of this, I've reached literally millions more people. I'm told, in many more countries. So I guess you could say it's been worth it, but it has been and is exhausting. We're very grateful for it. I hope you know that. I hope you know the importance of your work for many, many generations of people. I wanted to ask what will sound like a very ignorant question. What's the life expectancy of a chimpanzee? In captivity, they've lived to 70 years. In the wild, it's pretty old if you get to 60 and most of them 45 to 50 because, you know, their teeth get worn down by the grit in their foods. They get internal parasites. There are seasons when there isn't much food. So their life is tougher than when they're in captivity.

So David Greybeard is no longer with us. No. David died. He was quite young. It was an epidemic of something like flu. We know now that chimps can catch all known human diseases, and that's why they were used in medical research. When I first saw video footage of our closest relatives, highly social beings in five foot by five foot cages alone, I thought it was terrible, but I knew I had to go and see it with my own eyes to talk about it,

to explain how wrong this is, why they let me into the labs, I don't know, but they did. And that was the beginning of a long, long fight where other people joined. But eventually, all those chimpanzees in the US, over 400 of them, have been retired into sanctuaries. Did you grieve, David Greybeard's death? Not the same way as others, because we didn't know he died. We never found a body. So it was just a gradual coming to terms.

When old Flo died and there was her body lying in the river, when Melissa, we watched her slowly dying up in a nest. That was the real grief. And how do you process that grief? How do you live with it? Are there rituals that you follow? No, not really. I mean, I think my worst grief over an animal death was losing rusty.

That was terrible. You process it the same way as you do with a human. And some people can cope better than others. And I think I cope pretty well. I think one thing I have, which is a real boon, and again, it's a gift, like communication is a gift, is that I can live in the moment. I'm very good at pushing other things out so that I can focus on what I'm doing right now. So right now I'm focusing on talking to you, and there are problems around me at the moment,

they're out of my ken. This podcast is all about failure and what we mean by it. How do chimpanzees deal with failure? Do they categorize it as such, do you think? No, I don't think so. I mean, if something goes wrong, they just work to put it right. But there are two different ways that males cope with failure to rise in the hierarchy, which is very important to a young male.

and some of them will get attacked by their superiors, and that's it, one bad attack, and they stop trying. Others, they get one bad attack, another one, another one, and they never stop. And they win, they get up to the top. So it's a question like the setbacks I've had in my life. I think I'm like one of those dolls with weighted bottoms. You hit them over and they bounce up, you know, and that's because I'm obstinate, and I'm, not going to give up. I refuse. I'll spend the last of my days fighting corruption, fighting climate change, fighting loss of biodiversity, fighting poverty.

I ask guests on this podcast to come up with three instances of failure in their life. How easy or difficult did you find that task? Well, I spent a lot of time talking to my very close associate, Mary Lewis, who's known me for over 30 years. And we tried to think, you seem to be failing. But if you don't give in and you overcome that failure, you can't really call it a failure. Maybe my first real failure was leaving my primary school and all my classmates, except for one who I thought of as a very, very, very,

stupid girl, moved into a higher class in the next school, and I didn't. Well, it turns out that the headmistress of the primary school, for some reason, I don't know why she didn't like me. I really can't imagine, but, you know, mom went to talk to her. So I was left down. All my friends were up in the higher form, big failure. But into that class came a French girl whose parents had sent her to this school as a boarder. She became my best, best, best friend. And it was she who invited me to Kenya. Oh, my goodness.

That's incredible. Yeah, so another, what you might say, failure, I didn't go to university because we couldn't afford it. My friends mostly did. And we had just enough money for a secretarial training, you know, boring, short-hand typing, the old-fashioned manual typewriters, which most people listening won't even have even seen,

let alone used. And I got a job in London. It was actually a fun job with documentary films and not much to do with secretarial. But anyway, I had that training. Then when I heard about Louis Leakey out in Kenya, somebody said, if you're interested in animals, you should meet him. He was curator of the Natural History Museum.

I think he was impressed by how much I knew about African animals because I read every single thing I could. Well, guess what? Two days before I met him, his long-term secretary had suddenly had to leave. He needed a secretary. And there I was. So I was now in this world, for amazing people who could answer all my questions. So it was magic. Do you believe in fate? Well, I certainly believe that opportunities come and we're free to choose or reject. But sometimes the right choice, and wondering, you know, why, out of all the people on this flight, why am I sitting next to this person? Have a go, talk to them. And that has led some extraordinary events in my life.

Let's get onto the first failure that you've chosen to discuss, which is that you're very bad languages, which is interesting actually because you've forged so much of what you do through the power of connection. But I suppose the power of connection lies beyond language in many ways. But tell us why you were so lousy at languages. I don't know. I just couldn't do them.

I think maybe a tiny... I've got this thing. I forget its scientific name, but it's known as face blindness. So I might meet you in two days' time and walk past you. It's not as bad as some people who, after 10 years,

don't know their own secretary. But it's a disease. it's some funny thing in the brain. There's nothing much you can do about it except, you know, if I knew I was going to meet you in two days, I'd look for something on your face. I can't quite see what that would be. I need a greybeard.

Yes. And I think that that has had something to do with language. And I think it's somehow tied in with dyslexia. I don't know. I mean, there's so much we don't know about the brain. I mean, I really tried. I really tried with French and I just didn't work. And I got fairly good at Kiswahili in Tanzania, but never fluent.

And so it's just something I can't do. When you were talking about face blindness, does that extend to your own family? So your son or your husbands? Oh, no, no, no. No, it doesn't be. But my sister has it. Whereas mum, she could recognize somebody. She'd only seen him for 10 minutes.

It's very funny. Fascinating. So if you were to see me tomorrow, would you? you have any sense, you wouldn't know my name, but would you remember that we've done this podcast interview, you just couldn't connect it to me? Yes, I would remember your name. Right. I'm good at names. But, you know, if I study your face, I'm now studying your face, by the way. Oh, thank you. I honestly feel rather honored. I feel like one of those Tanzanian chimpanzees. Right.

Well, I'm very good at faces, but terrible at names. So together we could be the perfect human. That's right. Absolutely. I'm interested that we have started talking about school and failure at school because you are now in your late 80s, but I do think that failure at school stays with us in many ways throughout our lives. It feels very, very formative. Was school a happy place for you, or how did you feel about it? Well, I was actually really good. I mean, I always came either second or third in exams.

Number one, she was what we called a SWAT. Nobody liked her much, but she always came first. And then, Clow, my friend and I shared second and third together, you know, one second, one third. So actually, I did really well at school. That first failure was an advantage, it turned out, and I passed all my exams. I got what in those days was called matriculation exemption. We don't have that anymore. It was before A levels and things.

we had school certificate and higher certificate. And I did super well in all of them. So I certainly qualified for university, but you had to be good at languages to get a scholarship. That wasn't so. But, you know, it all worked out for the best, even that. At the time, though, did you feel resentful about that that you couldn't go to university because you were bad at languages?

No, not at all. I didn't want to go to university. I never wanted to be a scientist. I wanted to be a naturalist. I wanted to be out in the field with animals. What's the difference between a scientist and a naturalist? Well, I think a scientist goes to prove a theory and a naturalist has an open mind and is ready to learn

from the wonder of the natural world. You talked about your mother earlier and how influential she was and I hadn't realized until it came to do the research for this interview that she wrote, that she was a writer. How influential do you think she was in terms of teaching about the power of storytelling? Well, she wasn't. I mean, she's always described as an author. She did two books, one that Louis Leakey wanted her to do, and one which was a novel based on my life. She wasn't really an author. I mean, those were the two. But storytelling is, I think, for a Welsh blood, and, you know,

storytelling has just always been. And then before the days of television and before the days of social media, we sat around and we talked and we told the stories and we laughed and we had fun. Well, most of that's gone from most families now. It's really a tragedy. You know, that's a failure of society that we no longer have those close family bonds. We no longer have the power of imagination. I fell in love with Tarzan when I read Tarzan of the Apes.

And so just after the war, when films came back to England, mum saved up and took me to see one of the early Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films. And after 10 minutes or so, I burst into loud tears. She had to take me out. She said, what's the problem? I said, but that wasn't Tarzan. So before all this television came, you had your own picture, your imagination created it.

Now for children, it's all out there. Is imagination a uniquely human thing, or do other species have it? I think chimpanzees do, you know, there are certain stories, anecdotes. Scientists hate anecdotes. I think you learn more from anecdotes than almost anything else. Because you get an idea of what an animal is capable of. And why is it not scientific? Just because you only see it once.

It's still a fact. Yes, I love that. What about friendships? because I know that that's quite an undervalued area of study in science. But what evidence is there of friendships in chimpanzees and indeed other species that you've observed? I would say friendship is really, really important. It's a useful trait because if you're good friends, you help each other, and that's always important. So these smart male chimpanzees will actually choose, we call them an ally.

They spend a lot of time grooming each other, they travel together. But if you have an ally, then you're much more likely to climb the hierarchy because you don't tackle a higher ranking male unless your ally is there and then you attack him together. But it's friendship and we see it in so many other animals. I mean, dogs can be friends. You know, there was one dog and for two weeks the owners couldn't think why he kept taking his food and running off with it. And his friend, another dog, had fallen into a sort of pit.

And eventually they followed him and rescued this dog. He'd been feeding the dog, his friend. And dogs can grieve when their friend dies and stop eating. Because it sounds with the dog example, that's a friendship that has evolved into a friendship of choice. Whereas the chimpanzee example, it feels like an alliance of necessity. So do you think there are different gradations of friendship? Yeah, and there are chimpanzees who travel around together for no obvious reason. You could call them friends.

In fact, one of the most lovely friendships that I ever observed was between a young chimpanzee who had a rather sad life. Her mother was a loner. Her older brother was off with the male. So she was very lonely little infant. And she made this extraordinary friendship with a young baboon. So when her mother was anywhere near the baboon troop, she and this baboon would leave the, well, she, her mother and the baboon, the troop. And they'd play and they'd groom each other.

It was charming. And there's no other word for that except friendship. Do you have good friends? Oh, fantastic friends. That's what I've missed during the pandemic. I consume with them, and it's not the same. Let's get on to your second failure, which is your failure to convince your board. of the value of your Roots and Shoots program for many years.

Okay, so first of all, tell us what Roots and Shoots is. Back in the late 1980s, when I was traveling around giving lectures, I kept meeting young people who even back then had lost hope. And they were angry, they were depressed, or they were just apathetic. And I talked to them, and they more or less said the same. This is in all the different countries around the world. Well, our future's being compromised and there's nothing we can do about it. So we have compromised the future of our young people.

In fact, for years and years and years, we've been stealing it as we destroy their future as we destroy the natural world. But was it too late? Was there nothing they could do? That I didn't agree with. So Roots & Shoots began with 12 high school students who were in Tanzania and they were concerned about why wasn't the government doing something? something about illegal dynamite fishing that was destroying the coral reach. Why wasn't the

government prosecuting poachers in the national parks? Why was the nobody worrying about street children with no homes? Why was it allowed for people to throw stones at stray dogs? They had all these different worries, all 12 of them. So I told them to get their friends together and we had a meeting. And from this, Roots and Shoots was born with the main message. Every single one of us makes an impact every single day, and we get to choose. And because I'd learned about the interconnection of everything in the rainforest, we decided every group would choose between them, three projects. And they would choose.

They weren't told a project help people, a project help animals, a project help the environment. And that program is now in 65 countries and growing. It's got hundreds and thousands of young people from kindergarten, kindergarten, university, everything in between, more and more adults wanting to form groups like the staff of the big corporation. And it's my greatest hope for the future because they choose their projects, they're passionate about them, they roll up their sleeves and they take action. It's all about taking action to make the world a better place.

So why on earth didn't your boards get behind it from the off? Oh, because it's nothing to do. We're here to save chimpanzees. Right. It was just so narrow-minded. It was like if I had a meeting with someone who was trying to make life better for, one example was cows. She was passionate about cows and anti-dairy farming. And I wasn't meant to be at that meeting, but I was and I was sitting next to her.

And I said something that I'd just given a talk to compassion in world farming. And she said, oh, I thought you only cared about chimpanzees. And she wrote out a check for $15,000. So I said to my board, I said, will you see? Because I cared about cows, here's this money. Are you grateful? They were the same with Roots and Shoots. It wasn't about chimpanzees. How did you convince them? Gradually, we got the right people aboard. And, you know, right now, every single one of 24 Jane Goodall Institutes around the world, Roots and Shoots is a major program everywhere. And it's gained. so much support around the world. Everybody, you know, loves it. I have to say, I looked at the website for Roots and Shoots and it's very impressive and so easy to use and so quick and it has lots of free resources for anyone who wants to get involved and do something that

they are passionate about. For you, Jane, is it satisfying proving people wrong? Depends who the person is. I mean, there are something. people that I think it's wonderful to prove them wrong, even though they weren't always accept it. I'm thinking of a certain president of a certain country whose name I will not say. Good for you. But in terms of showing the boards who didn't think that Roots and Shoots was a goer, is it satisfying now the success of that initiative? I'm very, very happy about the success, but those board members have long since vanished. Got rid of them. Yeah, they bomb. And we now have a fabulous team. I mean, the biggest JGI is US. That's where so much money comes from. And it's where I spent an awful lot of time in the geographics there and so on. Disney. Roots and Cutes is so important to the whole organisation.

Do you feel that what you do is a mission that you have been given by some greater power? Yes, I have to feel that. Because when I look back over my life, life, you know, these opportunities that came, I could have gone a different way, but I didn't. And looking back, it almost seems as though one thing led to another, led to another, led to another in this pattern, where now through roots and shoots, we are changing the world. Will you tell us about your experience in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris? Yeah, that was amazing. It was going through a difficult time in my life. and I'd always wanted to go into Notre Dame.

I think reading Victor Hugo's hunchback of Notre Dame, and I went by myself, and it was quite early in the morning. And as I went in, the sun just choned through that beautiful rose window, which luckily didn't get hurt in the recent fire. And as I was marveling at this light coming through and illuminating this beautiful old cathedral, the organ suddenly burst into Bach, Takata and Fugue in G minor. There was actually a wedding I discovered later, but anyway, you couldn't see it.

It was just the music. And it just came over me, the amazing people and the skill that had gone into building this extraordinary cathedral with none of the modern technology that builders have. And the numbers of people who'd been involved in creating Bach, because it's somebody marrying, somebody, marrying, somebody, marrying, somebody. And if they hadn't, Bach wouldn't have existed. And at that same moment of the sound and the beauty coming together, there was me. So I felt at that point, this cannot be chance.

There has to be something behind all of this. There's so many scientists today, top scientists, who have all agreed there is intelligence, behind the creation of the universe. Well, I recently read an article on pan-psychism, which I hadn't come across before, which is the idea that you can understand matter through being rather than doing, because the issue with physics is that it only understands matter

through what it does, so you can only apply that retrospectively. But if you think that everything on this earth has some sort of consciousness or instinct, then its role here is, to be the best version of itself, the most uest you that you can be. And it really appealed to me, that idea that we all exist at levels of consciousness and then somewhere at the highest point there's a level of consciousness

and we can give it any name we want. We can call it God or we can call it a higher power. But I love this idea that science and spirituality are hopefully merging. Yeah, they are. I think they actually are because it's less likely now that if you talk about the spiritual connection in the forest, it's less likely that you'll immediately be branded as a tree hugger, which used to be the case. So things are changing, and this is a whole new realm. I think what's important to me is that science will never, never understand everything.

They never will. And there's that air of mystery. And we go on learning and we go on finding out new things. But, you know, there's another phrase in the Bible, now we see through a glass darkly, then face to face. So hopefully one day all will be explained, the wonder and the magic and the mystery. Has that belief in something greater given you a sense of peace with life and also with life ending? Oh yes. Absolutely. In fact, two answers to that. One, if I'm really, really tired, and I've just got to face a huge auditorium of people. I just stopped thinking about the lecture and open my mind, and those are the best lectures I've ever given.

Sometimes, and that's frightening. I've actually been out there and heard my voice speaking, that I have to quickly stop that. That's one. And then two is, you know, when we die, well, either there's nothing, which is fine, or there's something. I happen to believe there's something from various experiences I've had. and I can't think of a more exciting adventure than finding out what that something is.

May I ask you what those experiences are that you've had? Well, after my second husband, Derek, died and I was in Gombe by myself, sort of being out in the forest, coming to terms with grief, Derek came to me, in a dream perhaps, I don't know, but it was so vivid and he was happy and he was telling me, things. And I knew it was really important. I had to write this down. So I was reaching out for the light to write down what he'd been telling me. And everything went, it was like fainting, you know, that roaring in your ears. So I couldn't write anything down. And then finally it went

away. And I thought, I can still remember some of what he said. And again, when I tried to write it down, that roaring. And I spoke to a medium about it. My grandmother had been to her when her husband died. And she wasn't working anymore, but I told her what had happened. And she said, oh, Jane, if it happens again, don't try to move. She said, my husband came and I got out of bed to write it down. And I went into a coma. And luckily, somebody found me in the morning. And I said, what do you think it was? She said, well, I think that they're speaking from a different level of existence, a different plane. And if you try and do something about it, your spirit is I don't know she explained it probably a bit better than that

some connection that you don't make till you're dead yes some portal how astonishing and this was your second husband Derek who I'm so sorry who died of cancer less than five years after you married him it must have been awful it was I'm glad you had that connection with him that extraordinary experience I mean, I hope I'm not overstepping.

It just shows the magnitude of your love that it could cross these earthly boundaries. Yeah. There was another strange thing. Just after he died, I had this very strong feeling. His spirit is still around, but it doesn't see the world the way we do. But there were things he loved like the ocean. And so I would think, well, if I really concentrate and take this into myself, he will see it through my eyes. It was a strange feeling.

I've never heard anybody else talking. like that. How beautiful. Has Rusty ever come to you? No. Well, I hope he's waiting for you somewhere, Jane. Oh, I'm sure he is. I'm quite sure. And David Graveyard. Yes. Your final failure, it's quite a step change after what we've been talking about because your final failure is your failure to keep with correspondence, which I think will be so highly relatable to so many people. But you, Jane, must get thousands of emails and requests. And how do you manage that? Have you just made a decision now that you can't answer everything and you have to be okay with that? Well, some of the stuff is answered by my institutes. They used to write, so, you know, with love from Jane.

And I said, don't you dare do that. That is absolutely unacceptable. I will not have anybody writing something and putting my name to it. Oh, I thought you objected to the with love. No, no, no. I'm happy with the love with love. It's the name. Yes. It's got to be from me to be genuine. I don't like something that's not genuine. So that doesn't happen anymore. But they answer the normal stuff and they send me the sort of special letters. And I try to answer the special letters. I've got thousands of unanswered ancient emails, but it takes so long to Lily. them. There's a photograph, so you want to save the photograph. You know, I don't know. I do worry about it, but I know that that's silly because I cannot do it all. So I try to do the most

important ones. And then what happens is I put them aside because I really want to think about them and then they get lost in the deluge that comes afterwards. So it's a failure. I can't organize my correspondence. But hopefully people listening to this, if you have had an email or letter that has gone unreplied from Jane Goodall, you will know that it's actually very meaningful, is a very meaningful one that she's put aside to think about. But do you feel guilt over that? When I discover a email that I should have answered that was really important, yes, of course I feel guilt. Do you ever feel misplaced guilt that you feel like you've done something wrong even though you probably haven't? Expect so. I can't think of an example, but I must have.

It's one of those human emotions that, again, I wonder. if other animals experience, that sense of internalized shame that you haven't called your mother or you haven't made the most of your life opportunities. Do you think other animals have that? Well, dogs do, but whether that's because we've taught them, I don't know, but my sister had a dog called Crispin and he was a lurcher, so he was a thief, but he knew that stealing was wrong. So normally if he'd been left alone in the house for a while and Judy came back, he'd always. be bouncing out, wagging his tail and all the rest of it. If he didn't

appear, Judy knew that he'd done something wrong. And she went, and what he would do, the food he'd stolen, he would put on a chair and lie on it. He never ate it. What a character. I know.

He couldn't resist stealing it. Although, you know, none of our dogs of her being beaten, but just scolded. But they don't like that. We live in an age of 24-hour communication and a lot of social media and a lot of living our lives for external approbation. What do you think of all of that in terms of what it does to us? Well, I think it's terrible for children.

They're children who, you know, they're out in a beautiful place and they're not looking, they're not listening to the birds, they're not looking at the flowers and the trees there. texting with their friends. And I've seen a little child of three. And he was being pushed along in one of these little chairs. And he was in this beautiful place. And the light was glorious. And he was just looking at videos. That's a real tragedy and very dangerous because we need nature. And have you ever fallen into that trap yourself? I mean, you mentioned that we all have been forced to live much more online through the pandemic. But do you ever feel that, that you're being sort of sucked into some sort of addictive screen time that is not good for you? Or are you very bound read about it?

Yeah, I mean, I don't have a cell phone. I've refused because I won't be doing all this texting all the time and WhatsApping. And I don't do any of that. I do have a Facebook page and a blog, but I don't do them. They're done for me. So the only time I'm on the screen like this is when I'm doing an interview or dealing with my emails. You don't have a cell phone. No.

I've got one of the very old clamshell ones. I don't even know its number, but I take it when I'm travelling so that if I get stuck at an airport, I can call somebody. Honestly, I love hearing that. We've spoken about your career, and I'm also very aware that you're a mother and a grandmother.

Do you think you are a good mother and grandmother? Not really, although my grandchildren say, I'm a wonderful grandmother because I help them start projects and they're very grateful. And my granddaughter got her university fees. But I haven't been able to spend that much time with them. I think I was a jolly good mother to my son because for the first three years of his life, I was never away, even one single night. He was always with me and we did things together.

And do you think that's the secret to good parenting? I think the key thing is where the child is small, between up to two or three. What's really important is that there's a tiny circle could be just one person, better to be two or three, who are always there for them, who are supporting them, who they can rely on. Then the other thing is to support the child,

like my mother supported me. And I see so many mothers who, well, we don't want our child to do this, she wants to do that, but we think it's better. She'd support the child in what the child wants. And if it wants something really stupid, be pretty sure that that child will grow out of it and try and turn in a more sensible direction. But that's what gives a child confidence to be supported. And my mother and my grandmother and my mum's sister, they were all really supportive. I mentioned in the introduction that you have many, many admirers, some of whom are very, very famous.

Who is the most impressive famous person you've ever met? Oh, goodness. I wouldn't call him a friend, but somebody that I was on hugging terms with was President Gorbachev. Really? Yes. I only met him three times, but he knew who I was, and I just have such respect for the way that he changed the Soviet Union. He's very upset now, by the way. I've met lots and lots of famous people. Leonardo DiCaprio is passionate about the environment. He is really passionate about the environment. and he is a real friend. So you answer his emails?

So I answer his emails. He doesn't always answer mine immediately, but when he's not acting, when he's not on a set, I get them by return his answers. So, yeah. How lovely. And are you ever intimidated by anyone?

I was intimidated in the early days meeting scientists who were working in labs with chimps and treating them cruelly and that sort of thing. It was very intimidating, and that's where I was glad to get a PhD. So, as I never did an undergraduate, when I wrote the chimpanzees of Gombe, patterns of behavior, a great big book of the first 15 years of research, I had to teach myself all that I would have learned as an undergraduate.

So then I felt able to face these people in the labs. But there again, not attacking them, not telling them how cruel they are, but showing them pictures and talking about the way they behave in the wild, And you can see they haven't thought like that. You can see their eyes turning in. And I truly think people have to change from within. And it's no good attacking the brain because they're not going to listen. They don't want you to be seen to be challenging them.

But if you tell a story that reaches the heart, that's different. And I was talking to a CEO the other day of a big international corporation. And he said, Jane, in the last eight years, I've really been working to make my, my, Corporation Ethical, along the supply chain, where I get the products from, the communities there, treating everyone fairly, the way we treat our customers in the main office. For three reasons. One, I've seen the writing on the wall. I see that we're using up natural resources too fast, and they can't go on because they're finite.

Secondly, consumer pressure. People are beginning to understand the harm that certain products have inflicted on the environment. Food is cheap. Why? Because of unfair wages or because of cruelty to animals. So consumer pressure is making business change because they don't want to buy those products anymore. But he said the thing that really tipped me over was my little girl, eight years old, coming back from school one day and saying, Daddy, they tell me that what you're doing is harming the environment. That's not true, is it, Daddy? Because it's my planet. It's the power of young people to change the world. It's astonishing. If there is someone listening to this podcast right now who is feeling hopeless, what one thing would you like to say to them or would you like them to know? I would like them to know first of all that although they may feel helpless and hopeless in the face of the huge problems that the world is facing, well, what you do may not seem important. But do it and get some people to help you do it. Maybe it's clearing up litter. Maybe it's raising money for the blind.

Maybe whatever. Whatever is your passion. And when you work at that, you'll find you've made a difference and that'll make you feel good. And when you feel good, you want to feel better. So you do more. And we're told, think globally, act locally, but no. Because if you think globally, you get depressed.

But act locally, feel good about it. Know that other people all around the world are doing the same thing. And then you dare think globally. But to mention Ukraine, I grew up in World War II. And I would say it was almost a year that Britain was the only European country that had been neither defeated nor capitulated. And it was hopeless. I mean, England wasn't prepared for war. We didn't have a good army. We didn't have a good navy. We had brave young men flying those little planes, getting killed by the score, including my uncle. But we had a Churchill and Churchill may not have made always the right decisions but what he did was to rouse

the indomitable spirit of the humans in Britain so that the spirit was we will not give in we will not be defeated that's exactly the same in Ukraine now and in fact the current president and the previous president both quoted Churchill it's very impressive when you get those individuals who can rouse the rest of us and for me you are one of them Jane Good you really, really are. Can I end by asking you, you're going to turn 90 in two years. Are you going to have a big party? Well, I'm absolutely positive, COVID permitting, that I will be given a big party, whether I like it or not, and probably not just one. Well, there is so much to celebrate, and I know how busy you are, and I'm so grateful that you've made the time to talk to me today. it's an overuse word, but you are an inspiration.

And can I just ask, will you get Jubilee back after it's been on next week? Oh, good. Oh, yes. Eventually, I will. Good. That's made me relieved. Dr Jane Goodall, thank you so much for coming on How to Fail. Well, it was a pleasure.

Thank you, Elizabeth.