![]() JANE GOODALL: Well, the first time when I called, to my amazement, he answered the phone. IRA FLATOW: Tell us from Louis Leakey stories. IRA FLATOW: He was a wonderful gentleman, wasn’t he? He was then curator of the Natural History Museum in Nairobi. So I picked up the telephone, cheeky me, and made an appointment to go and see Louis Leakey. And that was when I heard about the late Louis Leakey.Īnd somebody said, Jane, if you’re interested in animals, you must meet Louis. But we had arranged a job for me in Nairobi– a boring job, a secretarial job, but at least I would be independent. But I was taught that you didn’t sponge on people for too long, so I stayed there for a month. JANE GOODALL: No, this was a school friend. ![]() IRA FLATOW: And so somebody invited you to go? Or did you just show up on the doorstep someplace? So I was 23, and I said bye-bye to family, friends, and country, and off I went on this amazing adventure. Didn’t pay very much, so I quit that, went home and worked as a waitress and served people their breakfast, lunch, tea, and dinner till I’d saved up enough money to buy my return fare by boat because it was cheapest in those days. And I was working at the time with documentary film studio in London, which was a great job. JANE GOODALL: Well, I got the opportunity when a school friend invited me to go and stay on their farm in Kenya where her parents had just bought some land. IRA FLATOW: And how did you fulfill that dream? When I grew up, I would go to Africa, live with animals and write books about them. He’s got that wife Jane, you know, so I was terribly jealous of her. And then when I was about 10 or 11, I found the books about Tarzan of the Apes– no TV in those days, so I read the books, fell in love with Tarzan. And it was my first wonderful experiment. Where was the hole big enough for the egg to come out? Nobody told me, so I hid. And I hid for five hours because I was collecting the eggs, and there was the egg. And I hid for five hours in a hen house when we had the opportunity to go into the country because we lived in the town. So I was watching earthworms in my bed when I was one and a half. But animals were my passion from even before I could speak, apparently. JANE GOODALL: Well, it wasn’t exactly genteel. Her bush experiences were honed in the genteel English countryside.” How did you wind up with that background in Africa? Gilbert Grosvenor, Chairman of the National Geographic Society, once wrote about you in one of your books, “She was hardly the image one would project to become an old African hand. IRA FLATOW: Let’s talk a little bit about your background. But my role, other than occasionally visiting just really for my own good, is to be sure that the money is there to ensure that the research continues and continues in the right way. That was during a conference in Chicago when we brought all the chimp people from around Africa together. JANE GOODALL: Well, I haven’t been involved in the actual research since 1986, when I suddenly realized that chimpanzees were vanishing in the wild and being horribly mistreated in captivity. ![]() IRA FLATOW: So is this going to be the next part of your career, do you think? Have you moved away from research on the chimps now and heading in this new direction? And it’s trying to explain to people that every one of us can do something about making this world a better place for each other, but also for the animals and for the environment. JANE GOODALL: It’s the 10 trusts that we should have made with the environment, with the wilderness that we have betrayed. The reason for– let’s start with your book first, The 10 Trusts. Goodall had just published her book, The 10 Trusts, What We Must Do to Care for the Animals, and an IMAX film about her work with chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park had just been released. Holidays are always a good time to remember special occasions.Īnd one of those special times on this show was a conversation I had with Jane Goodall back in 2002.
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