Ep204 - Dr. Jane Goodall | Reasons for Hope

01/04/22 • 62 min

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In celebration of #IamRemarkable Week, Dr. Jane Goodall discusses her podcast "Hopecast", and the moral and spiritual convictions that have driven her during her career journey as a researcher.

For the past 30 years, Dr. Goodall has been speaking about the threats facing chimpanzees, other environmental crises, and her reasons for hope that humankind will solve the problems it has imposed on the earth.

In July 1960, Dr. Jane Goodall began her landmark study of chimpanzee behavior in what is now Tanzania. Her work at Gombe Stream would become the foundation of future primatological research and redefine the relationship between humans and animals. In 1977, Dr. Goodall established the Jane Goodall Institute, which continues the Gombe research and is a global leader in the effort to protect chimpanzees and their habitats. The Institute is widely recognized for innovative, community-centered conservation and development programs in Africa, and Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots, a global environmental and humanitarian youth program, founded in 1991 and currently active in more than 60 countries.

Moderated by Kate Brandt.

Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

In celebration of #IamRemarkable Week, Dr. Jane Goodall discusses her podcast "Hopecast", and the moral and spiritual convictions that have driven her during her career journey as a researcher.

Moderated by Kate Brandt.

Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

Previous Episode

Ep203 - Steven Pinker | Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters

Can reading a book make you more rational? Can it help you understand why there is so much irrationality in the world? These are the goals of Rationality, Steven Pinker’s follow-up to to his book Enlightenment Now. In the 21st century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding—and at the same time, appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that developed vaccines for Covid-19 in less than a year also produce so much fake news, medical quackery, and conspiracy theorizing? Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are an irrational species — cavemen out of time saddled with biases, fallacies, and illusions. After all, we discovered the laws of nature, lengthened and enriched our lives, and discovered the benchmarks for rationality itself. Instead, he explains that we think in ways that are sensible in the low-tech contexts in which we spend most of our lives, but fail to take advantage of the powerful tools of reasoning our best thinkers have discovered over the millennia. Brimming with insight and humor, Rationality will enlighten, inspire, and empower. Moderated by Googler Brian Welle.

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Next Episode

Ep205 - Ravi Agrawal | India's Smartphone Revolution

Foreign Policy managing editor and former CNN South Asia bureau chief Ravi Agrawal takes us on a journey across India, through remote rural villages and massive metropolises, to highlight how one tiny device - the smartphone - is effecting staggering changes across all facets of Indian life. The rise of smartphones, and with them access to the internet, has caused nothing short of a revolution in India. In the West, technological advances have progressed step-by-step - from dial-up Internet connections, to broadband access, to wireless, and now 4G data on phones. But the vast majority of Indians, particularly low-income and rural citizens, have leapfrogged straight to the smartphone era, disrupting centuries of tradition and barriers of wealth, language, caste, and gender. As always with India, the numbers are staggering: in 2000, 20 million Indians had access to the internet; by 2017, 465 million were online, with three Indians discovering the internet every second - mostly on smartphones. Agrawal shows how widespread internet use is poised to transform everyday life in India: the status of women, education, jobs, dating, marriage, family life, commerce, and governance. Just as the car shaped 20th century America - with the creation of the Interstate Highway System, suburbia, and malls - the smartphone is set to shape 21st century India. Nothing is untouched, from arranged marriages to social status to business start-ups, as smartphones move the entire economy from cash-based to credit-based. Access to the internet is affecting the progress of progress itself. As Agrawal shows, while they offer immediate and sometimes mind-altering access to so much for so many, smartphones create no immediate utopia in a culture still driven by poverty, a caste system, gender inequality, illiteracy, and income disparity. Internet access has provided greater opportunities to women and changed the way in which India's many illiterate poor can interact with the world, but it has also meant that pornography and fake news have become much more widespread. Under a government keen to control content, it has created tensions. And in a climate of nationalism, it has fomented violence and even terrorism. What effect is this staggering technological revolution having on India's ancient political, cultural, and economic institutions? Keep listening to find out. Originally published in January of 2019.

Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.