Once a raunchy dating podcast on Barstool Sports, Alex Cooper’s wildly successful “Call Her Daddy” has pivoted quite a bit since moving to Spotify.
The show now features guests like Vice President Kamala Harris, Simone Biles, Monica Lewinsky, and most recently, 91-year-old Dr. Jane Goodall.
The acclaimed environmentalist and primatologist sat down with Cooper for a nearly hour-long interview, where topics ran the gamut.
“This episode might be a little different than what you're used to on ‘Call Her Daddy’ every week,” Cooper started the podcast. “I know a lot of you come here to get to know some of the biggest celebrities on a more intimate level, and it obviously doesn't hurt when they spill some tea, but sometimes I think it's good to switch it up and step away from the conversations that we're having on social media constantly.”
“I wanted to sit down with someone who has spent their life truly connected to the real world,” Cooper continued. “And that is why this conversation with Jane is genuinely so special.”
Recorded a day before Goodall’s 91st birthday, Cooper gifted Goodall a bottle of whiskey, to which the environmentalist said, “I don’t much like water.”
After the birthday libations, Goodall told Cooper this conversation was part of a tour across the United States dedicated to “helping people understand that we’re going through very dark times” and bringing them together to “make the world a better place.”
Goodall has long been a force for positive change. Best known for her groundbreaking research on chimpanzees in Tanzania in 1960, Goodall spent decades protecting chimpanzees and their habitats.
In 2002, she founded the Jane Goodall Institute to help conserve chimpanzees and help young people take action for the natural environment and their own communities through her Roots & Shoots program.
Now in her later years, Goodall is reflecting on all the work she’s done, while imparting vital wisdom to the next generation to take good care of the planet and all who inhabit it. In fact, she told Cooper that she travels about 300 days a year to get her message out to the world.
“I do it because I have to,” Goodall said. “It probably sounds strange to you, but now being 90, I feel that I was put on this planet with a mission. Right now, we’re going through dark times, and the big problem is people are losing hope.”
Goodall went on to add that people will approach her and say they feel helpless with all of the problems going on in the world.
“I say, ‘Well you can’t solve the problems of the world, but what about where you live? Your community is there,” Goodall said. “You don’t like litter on the pavement, or you don’t like that they’re planning to dig up a little forest to put yet another super mall — go and do something about it.”
Cooper asked if she ever feels like it’s too much of a burden to carry.
“This mission keeps me going,” Goodall responded. ‘There's so much to do, and if we lose hope we're doomed. If you lose hope you become apathetic and do nothing.”
She emphasized, however, that she’s not alone, with the Jane Goodall Institute operational in 25 countries, and Roots & Shoots chapters in 75 countries, all inspiring young people to take on humanitarian and environmental work.
Goodall also spoke of her humble beginnings and how she has always felt a connection to nature. She told a story about how when she was just one and a half years old, her mother found her in her room, surrounded by a “whole handful of wriggly earthworms.”
Instead of getting angry, her mother told her, “Jane, you were looking so intently, I think maybe you were wondering how they walk without legs.”
Because her mother did not crush her curiosity, Goodall said, she was able to flourish into the scientist she is today.
“That was the making of a little scientist, asking questions, not getting the answer, deciding to find out for yourself, making a mistake, and not giving up,” she said.
And her early years required tenacity. Goodall said that she was just 5 years old when World War II began, and she pinched pennies to buy a secondhand book — “Tarzan of the Apes” — from a used bookstore when she was a little girl.
It was this experience that planted a seed: “I will grow up, go to Africa, live with wild animals, and write books,” she said.
Goodall’s mom continued to foster her curiosity and told her to take advantage of every opportunity to find her way.
“That’s the message I take around the world, particularly in disadvantaged communities,” Goodall said. “I wish mom was alive, and maybe she's listening, to the number of people who said ‘Jane, I want to thank you; you've taught me because you did it, I can do it too.”
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Goodall also spoke a bit more about her legacy and what it meant to be a woman at the helm of science back in the day. She said she was lucky because her field wasn’t “male-dominated,” because she essentially created the field. Very few people were out in the wild with her and the chimpanzees.
She did experience her own share of objectification, however, once she was printed on the cover of National Geographic, telling Cooper that she received many comments about her legs being the only reason she was being celebrated by the magazine.
But she took it in stride.
“Back then, all I wanted was to get back to the chimps so if my legs were getting me the money, thank you legs!” she laughed.
“And if you look at those covers, they were jolly nice legs.”
National Geographic did indeed help bankroll much of Goodall’s research, which is all she wanted to be doing.
“I could spend hours and hours alone in the rainforest learning more about the chimpanzees but also about this complex ecosystem where every plant and animal has a role to play, and they're all interdependent,” Goodall said.
“What I discovered was that if you're out in a beautiful place with someone you love … then it's human beings in a beautiful environment. But when I was alone there, I was just part of that world, not separated from it by being a human in that world.”
Cooper pointed out that many young people these days might not have that kind of spiritual connection with nature because of the ways technology has infiltrated the modern world.
Goodall agreed but added that she finds the most hope when working with young people and how they can creatively build the future.
“They choose a project to help people, a project to help animals, or a project to help the environment, and they share this with each other,” Goodall said of her Roots & Shoots program.
“Once they do, they roll up their sleeves, they work very hard because they chose the project, and they're making a difference. “They’re planting trees, they're picking up trash, they're raising money to help refugees, they're volunteering in soup kitchens or animal shelters.
“The main message of Roots & Shoots is for everybody, every day you live, you make an impact on the planet, and you have to choose what sort of impact you make.”
As she rounded out the interview, she kept coming back to the idea of forging one’s own path and empowering young people to have the confidence and resources they need to follow their dreams — just like she did.
“Young people are changing the world, and once they know the problems … then you empower them to take action in ways that they choose,” Goodall said.
“I go around visiting them and they're so full of enthusiasm. So we've got to create a world where their hope is viable.”
Goodall’s full “Call Her Daddy” interview can be seen below:
Header image courtesy of Call Her Daddy/YouTube
