Episode Summary
Dr. Jane Goodall sits down for an exciting and inspiring conversation with her longtime friend, British foreign correspondent and world affairs editor of BBC News, John Simpson. They reminisce upon their most memorable and intrepid adventures and share their experiences traveling to some extraordinary places, often via single engine planes. John shares how fate landed him in a recently bombed hospital in war torn Sarajevo and how a local surgeon saved him. They both remark upon how they were often guided by intuition and courage in moments of their careers that might have seemed “jolly stupid” to some of their colleagues but have yielded great success for both. Dr. Goodall also discusses what it was like to demonstrate her research on Gombe chimpanzees after publishing papers on the “Four Year War” among a divided chimpanzee group – one of the first observations of great ape “warfare.” The result was controversial concepts on innate aggression in great apes during “nature vs. nurture” scientific debates of the 1970s. John and Jane have an enlightening and open-minded discussion on spirituality, including where they find their deepest connection to life’s greater meaning.
At the End of the Rainbow
Stay to the end of the episode to hear a rare archival clip of Dr. Goodall seeing for the first time how chimpanzees use and create tools – an insight that forever redefined what it means to be “human” as part of the rest of the animal kingdom.
Read the full Episode Transcript
Stay tuned…Episode 10 is coming soon!