#jane-goodall

#jane-goodall

The primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall died at ninety-one; the CEO of Spotify stepped down; and the French prime minister, Sebastien Lecornu, resigned from office fourteen hours after announcing his cabinet lineup, making it the shortest-lived administration in modern French history.

"Absolutely, there are people I don't like," she told interviewer and TV writer Brad Falchuk, "and I would like to put them on one of Musk's spaceships and send them all off to the planet he's sure he's going to discover."

There are people I don't like, and I would like to put them on one of Musk's spaceships and send them all off to the planet he's sure he's going to discover, Goodall tells interviewer Brad Falchuk during the revelatory 55-minute special discussing her life, work and legacy. Would Musk, the SpaceX founder and Trump ally with a penchant for apparent Nazi-style salutes and firing thousands of federal workers, be among them, Falchuk wanted to know.

Now more than ever, we must recognize that animals do matter. They are more than symbols of geographic and political divides. They deserve more out of life than to be casualties in our own failed efforts to coexist with one another, much less the natural world. Their worth is not a function of how "human" they look or act. And just as we appreciate individuality in people, so too must we value it in other animals.

When I was a child growing up in the '60s and '70s, watching National Geographic specials on TV, I wanted to be Jane Goodall. Not like her. Her. I could imagine no better life than observing and learning about chimpanzees. But only Jane Goodall could be Jane Goodall, and I eventually fell into a more traditional path, even going to law school.