I really appreciated her speaking to young people, even riding the NYC subway for the first time to record "Subway Takes" last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAkwo6JPV00
She was also on Spanish TV just five months ago, I was a bit surprised when she appeared there. Seems most of it is on YouTube as well (hoping it's not geo-restricted): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE7lnl4ah9s
The Life Scientific is a wonderful and engaging podcast. The episodes delve into a scientist's field of study, but really bring out their human side. Hobbies, interests; scientists are people too :)
i can still recall when she came to visit my high school to address its students many moons ago. it was quite an experience that still left a mark till this day.
she was quite an example of how anyone can impact the world while just doing what they love.
If you find Jane Goodall inspirational, you may be delighted to learn about Anne Innis Dagg [0], whose studies of wild giraffe predates Goodall's study of chimps. The documentary "The Woman Who Loves Giraffes" [1] is fantastic and has 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. The reason you might not know Dagg's name is essentially that she was denied tenure for being a woman.
That was an absolutely lovely read. I did not think I would get so invested. However... I didn't know she died as well so the final sentence on her wiki article caught my off-guard :(
Understanding what chimpanzees are like has made me realize that we humans are not so different from other animals as we used to think. What makes us most different is that we are far more clever than even the cleverest chimp, and we have words. We have a spoken language. We can tell stories about what happened a week or a year or a decade ago. We can plan for the future, and we can discuss things - one person's idea can grow and change as other people contribute their ideas. Great ideas become greater, problems are solved.
She last appeared in Detroit at the Fisher theatre just three weeks ago. Knew some folks who attended and they raved about her one person show. Thought I might catch her next time she's there. But I didn't realize how old she was or I might have made it more of a priority. She was pretty high energy for someone in their nineties.
I just saw her two weeks ago taping her interview for Overheard with Evan Smith. She was in top notch form and had the audience at the edge of our seats and in tears at moments. I am glad I got to go -- but I am sad the world lost Jane.
Thanks to Jane for her contributions. Some great quotes from her: "We have a choice to use the gift of our lives to make the world a better place." and “If we kill off the wild, then we are killing a part of our souls.”
“We cannot hide away from human population growth, because it underlies so many of the other problems. All these things we talk about wouldn’t be a problem if the world was the size of the population that there was 500 years ago.”
-- Goodall at 2002 WEF panel discussion on Amazon rainforest
The population 500 years ago was around 500 million. The only way we return to this level is de-industrialization.
Paul Ehrlich wrote "The Population Bomb" almost 60 years ago - all of his predictions turned out to be dead wrong.
If I’m not mistaken, she goes on to say “but we don’t live in that world, and so we must…” and goes on to argue for policy that doesn’t neglect the poorest and least fortunate members of society.
Yeah I've seen this before, we could all drive V12s and eat only beef but it's not a very meaningful insight. We're going to stabilize around 10 billion by 2080 according to projections and then decline, hopefully reaching some kind of Star Trek utopia at some point.
We came from the caves, we didn't know any better we just multiplied like a cancer. More population also brings more benefits, more geniuses more inventions etc.
The trick is doing it without wars and inequality, good luck with that.
> We're going to stabilize around 10 billion by 2080 according to projections and then decline, hopefully reaching some kind of Star Trek utopia at some point.
10 billion is gonna be the high end by the looks of things, and that decline is going to be hardly conducive to utopia. The math of dependency ratios is inescapably painful.
> hopefully reaching some kind of Star Trek utopia at some point
it is so dangerous and naive to think that utopia is possible, even if we all could agree that Star Trek is one, which we shall not, because I certainly do not think its depiction of watered down "luxury space communism with military ranks" is a desirable society.
>The only way we return to this level is de-industrialization.
Unfortunately, we will return to that level. Then 25 years later, we'll be only half that number (or worse).
>all of his predictions turned out to be dead wrong.
Hilariously wrong, you mean. I especially like the ones about how the UK would be filled with cannibal savages by the 1980s, because everyone would be starving.
to advocate for the death of 8 billion people is a hell of a stance. there's pro genocide and then there's... I guess this is just hating the whole species.
One of Gary Larson's Far Side cartoons shows two chimpanzees grooming. One finds a blonde human hair on the other and inquires, "Conducting a little more 'research' with that Jane Goodall tramp?"[114] Goodall herself was in Africa at the time. The Jane Goodall Institute thought the cartoon was in bad taste and had its lawyers draft a letter to Larson and his distribution syndicate in which they described the cartoon as an "atrocity". They were stymied by Goodall herself: when she returned and saw the cartoon, she stated that she found the cartoon amusing.[115]
Since then, all profits from sales of a shirt featuring this cartoon have gone to the Jane Goodall Institute. Goodall wrote a preface to The Far Side Gallery 5, detailing her version of the controversy, and the institute's letter was included next to the cartoon in the complete Far Side collection.[116] She praised Larson's creative ideas, which often compare and contrast the behaviour of humans and animals. In 1988, when Larson visited Goodall's research facility in Tanzania,[115] he was attacked by a chimpanzee named Frodo.
Always amusing when a bunch of lawyers over-react to something, supposedly on their client's behalf, and then when the client finds out about it, they have to talk the lawyers out of it and tell them to chill. I've always wondered if lawyers are born without a sense of humor or if they lose it during one of the semesters of law school.
> She praised Larson's creative ideas, which often compare and contrast the behaviour of humans and animals.
I like the strip that shows a scientist who has invented an animal translator learning that what dogs are really saying is "Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!"
And that, to all you aspiring entrepreneurs, is how you deal with shit. Please don't take your cues from our current industry and political "leaders".
Tech (and business, and politics) tends to attract a lot of people who are convinced they already know everything and who could probably benefit from a little more confidence and perspective.
That combination makes for a lot of thin-skinned bullshit. I could name names, but you all know the people I am talking about.
She also was speaking on a panel just a week ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df0GWlZm3gk
she was quite an example of how anyone can impact the world while just doing what they love.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Innis_Dagg
[1] https://thewomanwholovesgiraffes.com/
Dead Comment
Understanding what chimpanzees are like has made me realize that we humans are not so different from other animals as we used to think. What makes us most different is that we are far more clever than even the cleverest chimp, and we have words. We have a spoken language. We can tell stories about what happened a week or a year or a decade ago. We can plan for the future, and we can discuss things - one person's idea can grow and change as other people contribute their ideas. Great ideas become greater, problems are solved.
My Life with the Chimpanzees (1996), p. 140
https://video.austinpbs.org/video/jane-goodall-knw3gq/
-- Goodall at 2002 WEF panel discussion on Amazon rainforest
The population 500 years ago was around 500 million. The only way we return to this level is de-industrialization.
Paul Ehrlich wrote "The Population Bomb" almost 60 years ago - all of his predictions turned out to be dead wrong.
We came from the caves, we didn't know any better we just multiplied like a cancer. More population also brings more benefits, more geniuses more inventions etc.
The trick is doing it without wars and inequality, good luck with that.
At current trends, the global population will begin actively shrinking as soon as 2040, just 15 years away.
Inequality not so much but much progress has been made in eliminating abject poverty.
10 billion is gonna be the high end by the looks of things, and that decline is going to be hardly conducive to utopia. The math of dependency ratios is inescapably painful.
it is so dangerous and naive to think that utopia is possible, even if we all could agree that Star Trek is one, which we shall not, because I certainly do not think its depiction of watered down "luxury space communism with military ranks" is a desirable society.
Unfortunately, we will return to that level. Then 25 years later, we'll be only half that number (or worse).
>all of his predictions turned out to be dead wrong.
Hilariously wrong, you mean. I especially like the ones about how the UK would be filled with cannibal savages by the 1980s, because everyone would be starving.
What are your main reasons for thinking that?
Dead Comment
https://static0.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/...
Gary Larson cartoon incident
One of Gary Larson's Far Side cartoons shows two chimpanzees grooming. One finds a blonde human hair on the other and inquires, "Conducting a little more 'research' with that Jane Goodall tramp?"[114] Goodall herself was in Africa at the time. The Jane Goodall Institute thought the cartoon was in bad taste and had its lawyers draft a letter to Larson and his distribution syndicate in which they described the cartoon as an "atrocity". They were stymied by Goodall herself: when she returned and saw the cartoon, she stated that she found the cartoon amusing.[115]
Since then, all profits from sales of a shirt featuring this cartoon have gone to the Jane Goodall Institute. Goodall wrote a preface to The Far Side Gallery 5, detailing her version of the controversy, and the institute's letter was included next to the cartoon in the complete Far Side collection.[116] She praised Larson's creative ideas, which often compare and contrast the behaviour of humans and animals. In 1988, when Larson visited Goodall's research facility in Tanzania,[115] he was attacked by a chimpanzee named Frodo.
I like the strip that shows a scientist who has invented an animal translator learning that what dogs are really saying is "Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!"
That last sentence is missing from the Wikipedia page. What is the source on it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Far_Side#Jane_Goodall_cart...
This just made the whole story so much funnier. I'm really glad to have read it. Poor guy, but hilarious to read about.
Tech (and business, and politics) tends to attract a lot of people who are convinced they already know everything and who could probably benefit from a little more confidence and perspective.
That combination makes for a lot of thin-skinned bullshit. I could name names, but you all know the people I am talking about.