4 Reasons for Hope in a Changing World - with Douglas Abrams | The Empowering Neurologist EP. 143

Really, the question is not whether nature will go on, because the natural world will continue in some form. 99.9% of all species have gone extinct. The question is whether humanity will go on, whether we will earn our place in that natural order and figure out how to stay, to earn our place in the long line of evolutionary life.

Well, hello everyone. Welcome to The Empowering Neurologist. I'm Dr. David Perlmutter. Today we're going to be talking with Douglas Abrams. Douglas Abrams is a New York Times bestselling author. You may recognize him from The Book of Joy, which was his first in what is called the Global Icon Series, a book in which he both the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. A very successful book, a very empowering book, and certainly an important book for the times in which we live. His second book in this series is called The Book of Hope, and this is his interview with Jane Goodall. And as the name would suggest, it's an interview dealing with Jane Goodall's view of what the world is like today, and ultimately what she's able to impart to all of us in terms of why we should have hope, what is hope, and what the future could look like from an individual who has certainly experienced some pretty dramatic changes in the world. So I, for one, am very much looking forward to this interview. Let's get started. Doug Abrams, welcome to the program.

Great to be with you, Dr. Perlmutter.

I want to just start kind of paving the way for what we are going to talk about today, your, your time with Jane Goodall. But let's go back to September 2001. I think it was 2016 when you wrote the book, or it was published, The Book of Joy, which was the time you spent with Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama. And the subtitle of that book is Lasting Happiness in a Changing World. I mean, if we could have predicted in 2016 how our world would change, I think that kind of sets the stage for the Jane Goodall time, doesn't it?

Yeah, well, that's for sure. We've gone through huge transformations and huge challenges that I think so many people are finding it hard to have hope and to have joy.

Well, early in the book, Jane says that the biggest threats are the fact that democracy is being threatened, that COVID-19 is still an issue globally, but it's fair to say that her concern about climate change was, I think, paramount. I mean, that was where the window was really closing, isn't it?

Yeah, I mean, we're in a decisive decade where the decisions that we make now, the policies we implement, the folks that we elect, and the strategies that we implement both on the industrial scale in business and in government and in our personal choices will have pretty profound and lasting impacts for human history. So it's hard. We also got to work with Christiana Figueres on her book, The Future We Choose. And she and Tom Carnack, who did that book, were responsible for the Paris Climate Treaty. So we have had the privilege of kind of having a ringside seat to the transformations that are necessary and the challenges that we face.

How did you pick Jane Goodall for the next book in the series? Then let's talk about what this series is all about.

Sure. Well, maybe we start there because the Global Icons series is a kind of a new genre of travelogue dialogues where we get to take the reader with us to meet with some of the most extraordinary iconic people on the planet. And the first one, The Book of Joy, was with the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. And then when we were thinking of the next project, we were thinking about Jane as someone who has spent her life devoted to helping spread hope around the world and somebody who has studied nature and human nature in incredible depth. And we knew that she would be a fascinating kind of window into the challenges we face and frankly whether there's hope for our species. And what in us is hopeful. And, you know, kind of what are the challenges that lie ahead. And she— I mean, one of the amazing things that I'd say about working with Jane is, you know, I knew she was going to be an incredible naturalist and scientist, but what I found was somebody who was willing to ask the— had a seeker's willingness to ask the big questions. and really in a kind of poet's desire to get it right, as well as a scientist's willingness to follow the facts wherever they led.

Well, interestingly, you said she's a naturalist and a scientist, but one part in the book there was a differentiation between the two, wasn't there, where she preferred, I think, her hat as a naturalist, defining naturalist as being, I think, more in touch with the environment and more empathetic as opposed to being just straightforward objective?

Yeah, it was very interesting. I mean, I think I just thought a naturalist was a scientist who went out into the field and studied nature, and she really made a distinction of a naturalist who's somebody who doesn't just stay within the kind of objective paradigm of the empirical method and kind of tries to just study things in the lab. but really to go out into the natural world and have a deep empathy and understanding of the natural world. I mean, my wife is a physician, as are you, and I think obviously I'm a big believer in the empirical method, but I think that that was an interesting distinction she was making about, you know, kind of when we differentiate and separate ourselves from the natural world to try to study it and understand it, we lose something. Yeah. And I think what she's saying in the natural— as defining herself as a naturalist was that there's a way to study and observe from a place of empathy and insight and not just from separation and objectivity.

I wanted to tell you that it wasn't an easy book to read for me, not because, you know, it was challenging in terms of the syntax, but just You know, it does bring up some very difficult realities of where we currently are politically and where we are in terms of— I mean, it's, you know, how interesting that you and I had this conversation during COP26 when things are really staring us in the face. And yet she really calls out an important distinction about ideologies that focus on living for today. with future generations be damned and sort of taking advantage of it. There is an interesting quote that I think I put down, yeah, that is in your book from Greta Thunberg. And I'm gonna read it, and I was gonna plan to get to this a little bit later, but this is in your book from her. Adults keep saying we owe it to young people to give them hope, but I don't want your help. I don't want your hope. I don't want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day, and then I want you to act. I want you to act as if we were in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire, because it is. To which Jane responds, our house is on fire, but if we don't have hope, we can't put the fire out. That action is required And then, interestingly, it really calls to the definition of hope early in the book as opposed to wishful thinking. And you and she seem to spend an awful lot of time on— the book is about hope, obviously, the title— but really early on defining what actually hope means. So maybe you can help us understand from Jane Goodall's perspective what that means.

Sure. Well, and first let me say I appreciate the Yeah. It is painful to face the realities of the world that exist. And it's so easy to go from denial to despair. And I think that one of the really important parts of hope and of the book is how do we really— denial and despair are these incredibly passive and ineffective responses to the challenges we face. So I think the purpose of the book and of Jane's message is to help us find that middle ground where we're not in denial, but we're not in despair, and we recognize the reality and the reality of our opportunity to intervene and change life. And this is an interesting point to the meaning of hope. So When we're, you know, I have to say that as a born and raised New Yorker, I was kind of skeptical about hope. I think I mentioned in the book that, you know, we New Yorkers don't really do hope. We do fear, anger, outrage, cynicism. We're not so, you know, kind of hope. I think going into the project, it felt a little bit passive or, you know, because we've are familiar with phrases like, let's hope for the best. And I was wondering whether, you know, really it was a kind of passive response and whether, as Greta is saying there, what we need more is anger, outrage. And what James said just in that dialogue right after that is we need all of it. We need the fear, we need the anger, we need the outrage, and we need the hope. And So hope, when we went to the field of hope studies and kind of looked at the research on hope, that was quite fascinating as well. And basically, hope is the belief that the future can be better in some way than it is now. And there are kind of 3 things that we do cognitively when we're focused on the future. We either are fantasizing, which is, you know, kind of, I'm going to be an NBA basketball player. Not going to happen. There's no connection between that fantasy and the reality. Or we're dwelling, which is another kind of way of saying we're ruminating and we're kind of dwelling on the negative possibilities of the future. That's something we're very comfortable with in New York. We do that a lot. And, or we're hoping. And what hope, according to the researchers who study hope, It involves looking toward the future, but anticipating that there are going to be challenges and struggles that we have to overcome. And that it's not just a kind of— so there's a practicality to it in an engagement. And they describe 4 components of maintaining hope or having hope. Hope fundamentally is formed from having realistic goals, Realistic pathways to get to those goals, a sense of agency or confidence that you can realize those goals, and social support. And because nobody gets there on their own. So that was really interesting to me to realize that kind of there's— to make hope something real and not just wishful thinking or not just fantasizing, you need those practical goals, pathways, Social support and agency. And I think whether we're talking about the big issues of our time, whether that's climate or pandemic or political divide, or we're talking about our own issues in our life around changing our diet or having our children's lives be good or having— getting a job, all of that requires those 4 components of goals, pathways, social support and a sense of agency.

There's a line in your book, hope enables us to keep going in the face of adversity. We can work hard. And, you know, as you were describing hope through Jane's eyes, I'm thinking of David Attenborough, kind of a similar message. I think, you know, a little bit more aggressive in terms of calling out. I mean, he, like Jane, has spent so much time interacting with the natural world and has seen in his lifetime such an— you mentioned in your book that 60% of mammals, reptiles, birds are gone, that this is the— You know, there is, dare I say, a glimmer. There is the idea based on the 4 principles that you outline in the book, and I want to unpack those in just a moment, that we can use intellect and intelligence certainly to turn things around. I mean, you know, we wrote a book once called Brainwash, and the thesis of Brainwash looked at the 2 parts of the brain, the more primitive reptilian part of the brain that says, I want this for me now— food, procreation, in terms of humans it would be acquisition of things, assets— versus the more sophisticated gift part of our brains, the prefrontal cortex, that allows us to plan for the future, recognize the consequences of today's actions, for ourselves, of course, but for others today and also for the future. And that the separation between these two, the fact that functionality seems to be so disparate in terms of leveraging one part versus the other, the amygdala versus the prefrontal cortex, that is inflamed based on the type of world we are living in now, and therefore it is disconnected. And I think in a subtle way that was called out multiple times in the book, that emphasis by wealthy nations as well as wealthy individuals is really on today, on acquisition. And she called out this critical strategy that we need to be supportive of nations and groups of people who are underserved. And, you know, we're seeing that play out right now in COP26. That is obviously happening as we speak, that there is this outcry that everybody needs the right— I hate to— this is a terrible analogy— the rising tide raises all boats. Not the right thing to say right now, of course. But that this— that the tide needs to involve everyone and that You know, we have the smarts, we have the ability, we have this incredible mind, which is our ace in the hole above all other animals. We're not fastest, we're not strongest, but we may be the most clever. But, you know, she calls out how we may not necessarily be the most intelligent because the fact that we're destroying our own homes may be an indication that, yes, we have intellect, which is one of the 4 cardinal escape valves, if you will, that we have, or cards in the deck, but that our intelligence may not be where it needs to be because we're threatening our own environment.

Right.

Gregory Bateson indicates that an animal that will befoul its own nest, that's a sure sign of madness. Right. So, let's walk through these, her 4 reasons of hope, if you will. I have them written down. If there's an order that you'd rather take, Take them in. I thought we would start with The Amazing Human Intellect. Sounds like another name for a great book.

What you're talking about now and your own work on brainwash, I think, you know, where we have these different, you know, kind of centers of our brain and different capacities of our neural net, obviously, which you know quite a lot about. And there's this kind of more primitive fear center kind of focused on our own self-preservation and our own immediate needs. And then there is this kind of prefrontal cortex, you know, our intellect, our ability to think about— And actually what was fascinating was to see from the neuroscientists who study hope and optimism that actually hope originates in that prefrontal cortex with Problem-solving, future planning, and language development.

Executive function.

Yeah. So it's really this place, like hope is kind of tied up into that human superpower of our intellect that allows us to think about the future, to plan for the future, to problem-solve, to work with others through language to problem-solve. So one of the researchers that we, in the field of hope studies, say we're kind of these fear-hope creatures. We're either responding to that fear or we're responding to that hope. And I'll say, obviously Jane has been incredibly responsible for showing us that we're on a continuum of intellect and intelligence, and that animals are much more intelligent and have personalities and emotions than they were given credit when she began her research. And I asked her, do animals have hope? And she said, well, think about your dog at the front door waiting for you to come home. that's a kind of an element of hope. But what we have is this capacity to hope for the distant future, to kind of say we want to create a sustainable world for our grandchildren and children. That's something that we alone seem to have the capacity for. And there's so many things to say about that intellect that you brought up in really interesting ways. So yes, absolutely, we have this cleverness, which is what the amazing human intellect, which is her first reason for hope. We can solve problems. We can send people to the moon and rovers and come up with carbon sequestration technologies and wind farms. And, you know, solar energy and wind energy are now cheaper than hydrocarbon in many places. I mean, you know, that innovation has happened with lightning speed. and far faster than anyone. That's our amazing human intellect. Whether that human intellect actually translates into intelligence, as you quoted Bateson as saying, is dependent on whether we use that intellect for truly intelligent purposes. And are truly wise is even another level, I would say, even beyond intelligence.

Wisdom.

And intelligence really means that we are Doing the right thing in that way. And like, no, as James says, no intelligent species would destroy its only home, right? So we're clearly not being intelligent. The way I like to say it is, you know, the intel— you know, the experiment in human consciousness has not yet been proven successful, you know. Um, we have to show that this form of neurology, this human consciousness, um, can earn its place in, you know, the long sweep of, uh, of evolutionary history. Um, I just say one other thing about wisdom— jump in and then I'll say it.

No, I— what the thought came to my mind because, uh, you know, I'm fresh off reading the book just now, that, uh, you'll know the quote, uh, as we're talking about intelligence, but you used it in the book in a different way, that, uh, I guess this is part of our curriculum,

right? Yes. Yeah. Well,

that was taken from another part of the book dealing obviously with the different topic that was challenging, obviously, for you. Yeah.

You know,

there's a lot— there's a significant amount of personal challenge described in the book, both from yourself and from Jane Goodall herself as well. And, you know, that's what life is like for all of us. It's, you know, no one promises us a rose garden. You had issues, challenges to work through, as did she. She describes the loss of her husband, growing up during Nazi occupation and having some of her workers threatened or kidnapped, various real challenging issues. But how do people like this? It's like, it must have been redux for you with your Desmond Tutu and Dalai Lama experiences. I mean, there's the quote that in your first book, from Desmond Tutu is, there are going to be frustrations in life. The question is not how we can escape it, it is how we use this, how we turn this into something positive. And coming from Desmond Tutu, one thinks that Jane Goodall is cut from the same cloth.

Yeah, I mean, these are all 3— Archbishop Tutu, the Dalai Lama, and Jane— are all these kind of extraordinary examples of resilience and grit and self-sacrifice in the face of enormous obstacles and challenges that they faced in their lives. You mentioned this quote of, it's all part of my curriculum, and just to share with your audience that While I was in Tanzania interviewing Jane, obviously my dad fell ill and I got the call that he had gone to the hospital and that it looked serious. And so I flew back to be with him and spent the 2 months doing what he called companioning him on his mighty journey to death. And was kind of flying back and forth between being with him and being with my son in California who had had a traumatic brain injury. So, you know, hope and despair and grief are not theoretical, and they certainly became very real for me in the writing of this book. And I think, you know, how we face those challenges, and you quote Arch, you know, like his He talked to me, one of my favorite things about Archbishop Tutu, which we call him Arch, says— Arch Jesus. You know, what he says is suffering can either ennoble us or it can embitter us. And it ennobles us when we use that suffering and that adversity to find meaning in it and use it to help others and learn from it and grow from it. My dad, on his deathbed, He had this wonderful expression. And actually, over the last 5 years of his life, after he had a traumatic brain injury, he would say, you know, when we had told him that it was so horrible that he had had this traumatic brain injury and he had been unconscious and delirious for a month in the ICU, and we didn't know if he was coming back. And after we said, wow, I'm so sorry this terrible thing has happened to you, he said, no, not at all. It's all part of my curriculum.

Well, I plagiarized that last night in a discussion with my wife dealing with an issue, a family member who's ill, and I said, you know, it's part of the curriculum. And I think I did use your attribution, so it's well said. And of course, I took it out of context. In your book, you were using it another way, but in a very real sense, You know, everything that's going on are pieces of the puzzle for us to either discard or use. And, you know, through the ideas of Archbishop Tutu, these can be positive experiences that we can leverage to move in a positive direction, even though, you know, as we look at them in the open, they seem to be so threatening and negative.

And, you know, one of the things you're sparking for me is that it's all part of our curriculum individually, and it's all part of our curriculum as a species. And this is, you know, Jane has this very strong conviction that we are on a process of moral evolution. And I think, you know, if you think back to, you know, women not getting to vote 100 years ago, or, you know, slavery being considered, you know, morally defensible Less than 200 years ago, you can see, and this is one of the things Archbishop Tutu talks a lot about, that kind of the march of human consciousness and evolution. Whether we get there in time and can evolve to a place where we can take care of our planet. But it is all part of our learning. And I think that that's a really wise thing you said. You also said another piece of this, which is fascinating, was You know, I asked Jane, did she think that we are 51% good or 51% evil? And she said she thought we were split down the middle and that what determines which way we go is our environment. Wow. And when she said that, I just, I had this wild explosion of, you know, like there's a time, a moment in your life, you know, many moments sometimes, but the moment when you're like, your whole world gets turned upside down. And it's this feeling of kind of a little bit of dizziness and, you know, kind of your stomach is flipping. And I had that experience at that moment because I realized that all the things we call evil, right, the selfishness, the greed, you know, the aggression, all of those are things that evolved in our species to help us in certain environments. And Really what will determine what wins the day, whether we, you know, it's kind of what you were saying about the different aspects of our brain, whether if we create an environment where we need to be kind of prioritizing those reptilian brain centers or those kind of more fear and aggression centers, that's what will prevail. And if we create an environment where we can have greater morality and greater collaboration and cooperation. Um, that— or that's what wins. That's, you know, in those environments, that's what we will prioritize, and that's what will win the day.

So interesting that, um, at the end of the day, then the default position is one that looks at the relationship of humankind to nature, and that the threat that we are imposing on nature is devaluing that— it's the taking dominion over nature kind of idea that we should rule the planet instead of recognizing, as Chief Seattle said, that man is merely— man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand of it. That we're just part of this and we're interrelated with it gets to one of the 4 points that we'll get to. Yeah. But that's the fallback, isn't it? From the naturalist. And again, her delineation between scientists and naturalists really came down to the empathy for the natural world. And, you know, for all of us, I think when we begin exploring this, we realize, you know, just how intricate beyond our wildest imagination are the relationships between species are the relationships between differentiated cells within a single body, for example. So it's breathtaking, but everything depends upon it. And that was her fallback. And I was very taken by that. And getting back to this business of— I sound like my dad. I took that from him. Anyway, this idea of aggression and Being able to overcome that or not with our intellect. And I recall that one of the things she talked about was because of our ability to utilize language, it makes the fact that we as humans experience aggression, as do other primates and other species, that's for sure, so much worse because we're able to convey between generations— we'll leave it at that— morality with communication skills and various, you know, writing, speaking, etc. And therefore, the aggression that we have towards our own species and obviously others as well is so much worse because we can communicate right and wrong, which other species cannot, seemingly.

Yeah, it's— I would just say that we Are more extreme. We can really be more altruistic, and we can also be truly cruel in a kind of systematic way. What you're referring to, though, is the whole role of language and culture and its ability to allow us to evolve. from generation to generation. And that's really like the human superpower, which is that ability to kind of have our children build on our understanding and our knowledge and to share that intellect from generation to generation in a way that's accretive and grows. I think wisdom, you were referencing the kind of natural world and the tapestry of life. And Jane talks also about that. When we take these threads out of the tapestry of life and unfold, this is— I mean, wisdom is really that kind of ability to see the benefit of the whole and to think of the long-term implications of our actions. Really, that in a nutshell, that's really what wisdom is. And so going from that intellect to the intelligence to that wisdom, and fundamentally that wisdom is about returning to a natural wisdom. Yeah. Where we are recognizing our part in the whole ecosystem. And that this wonderful researcher named Jeanine Benyus explained— this was not in the book— but she explained the difference to me between a welcome species and an invasive species. And a welcome species gives more to the ecosystem than it takes. An invasive species takes more than it gives. And so they're, you know, in a nutshell, what we're trying to figure out is how can humanity be a welcome species on planet Earth and not an invasive species that exploits and extracts to the point that we destroy the ecosystem. It's not a unique challenge to humanity. Other species can, you know, destroy the ecosystem in ways that then lead to their own demise. But nature itself and the balance of nature is what, you know, endures. And nature has a way of rectifying those imbalances. And one of the profound things that Jane's second reason for hope is the resilience of nature. And, you know, really the question is not whether nature will go on because the natural world will continue in some form. 99% 0.9% of all species have gone extinct. The question is whether humanity will go on, whether we will earn our place in that natural order and figure out how to stay, to earn our place in the long line of evolutionary life. I am deeply committed to that goal, as I know are you and most members of our species. So I think this is a decisive moment for us to— to really be working with nature and understanding the principles and laws of nature in a way that allow us to, to live within our planetary boundaries?

Well, risking blasphemy, I would say that I'm not so sure where I fall on the decision that it's that, you know, this anthropocentric viewpoint that we need to preserve our species at all costs. take the larger view of nature, that species come and go, then, you know, our evolution and ultimate extinction is consistent with the natural order of things. But, you know, as we think of future generations of our species who are going to be here, I think we should do our best to provide them, you know, an environment that's conducive for a healthy, enjoyable life, allowing them to participate. It can happen. You know, we know what the threats are. We're watching. You can listen to Greta Thunberg or Al Gore or, you know, any number of other individuals to call it out, but it's obvious without them. We can see the changes comparing, you know, even our short lifetimes. I know for me, you know, I've seen such dramatic changes. You described the equatorial forests. in Jane's lifetime, how she saw them virtually disappear, but then bringing hope with, you know, beginning this organization. We'll get to, I think, the natural resiliency in a second, but that— was it Shoots and Roots or Roots and Shoots organization that she pioneered that is now a global organization that is allowing young people to regain participation and make a change?

Right. Yeah, well, that— and that's her third reason for hope, which we can get to, is the power of young people, which she's been very involved in creating what's often called the Jane Generation. Something to just say about the resilience of nature. I mean, I think whether, you know, I am very committed to children and grandchildren and future generations. I do feel like that evolution of human consciousness is worth preserving, and that humans should be given a fighting chance. And I think that— and I agree with you that in the long haul, we'll either, you know, other life will go on whether we do or not. But I think that, you know, one of the fascinating things was discovering that ecosystems recover when— Yeah. You know, I think it's— we hear just about the despairing news of the destruction of those ecosystems. And I think It's really important to sound the alarm for the devastation that's happening. And as we see the climate disasters that are happening, whether it's fires or floods or hurricanes, all of that needs to be, you know, sound the alarm. But the recognition that nature is fundamentally incredibly resilient, that ecosystems in this one study of studying like 100 different ecosystems came back within 10 to 50 years, is really important for maintaining hope too, that this is not just a one-way ticket. to environmental destruction, and that if we make the right choices individually and collectively, we can steward the natural world not as dominion over it and for our own extraction and exploitation alone, but really as stewards and participants in the natural world.

I like steward as a verb. I don't know if I've ever heard that before, but I'll also take that from you. Like curriculum. Um, the, uh, the tree in at, uh, Ground Zero, 9/11, that was a great story, that, uh, how that pear tree, wasn't it, was rescued. And, and is, is it flourishing now?

Yeah, so the, uh, Jane told this amazing story about a tree that was at Ground Zero at 9/11 when the Twin Towers collapsed and The tree was shattered. It was like half the trunk was all that was left, and one living branch, and the roots were blackened and also shattered. And that tree was rescued by the New York Botanical Gardens and nursed back to health. And now it is a flourishing tree with birds nesting in it. Children go to visit it as an example of resilience. both of the natural world and of humanity as an expression of the natural world, our own resilience, our own incredible resilience. So yeah, it's a beautiful story. She told another story about—

Nagasaki.

In Nagasaki, you know, where this incredibly destructive nuclear explosion, atomic explosion, and, you know, where the temperatures reached that of the sun. And these, you know, people thought everything was just going to be dead for decades. And these 2 camphor trees, 500-year-old camphor trees, again blackened and, you know, practically brought down to their roots, survived and have grown back and are now considered these sacred sites of peace where people go and kind of put their prayers and their wishes into the trees as kind of a reminder of that incredible resilience and desire for a more peaceful world.

You know, as a writer and a reader, I really appreciated how you positioned both of those stories, uh, because, you know, I could just feel— I could see, you know, the people in Japan worship that— those camphor trees, and I could just feel this sense of regeneration and renewal And so you position them really wonderfully to give us a break because it was tough to get to that point. And now all of a sudden nature's coming back, you know, with allowing the wolves to come back to Yellowstone, how that brought balance. So the river was cleared up because the elk weren't eating the shrubbery that was causing the mud to fall into the rivers, making it cloudy. So the fish were dying. It was such a great explanation. of, you know, the incredible interrelationship that we see when we take the time and the deep breath to look at what is going on with nature in terms of the connectedness.

Thank you. Yeah, it was, it was funny. I, I wanted to put more science in the book and Jane said, you know, actually it's stories that change people's lives. It's stories that change their hearts. And so we ended up kind of compromising and having a further reading about the science in the back. But you're right, it's those stories that stay with us and remind us of and give us that vision of what's possible.

Yeah, the stories are key. I mean, I can see those trees there, the Methuselah tree. That was a cool description as well. If I get it right, 2,000-year-old seeds were found, planted, and a Methuselah— and this palm, date palm grew, the male, and then you needed the female or vice versa. And that happened and they pollinated it and then she got to eat a date from these trees that had grown from a 2,000-year-old seed.

Yeah.

Who will ever forget that story? That's really quite amazing. Let's move on then to the power of young people. She certainly in her later years has dedicated an awful lot to what future generations can do and are doing. especially under her tutelage. So let's unpack that a little bit.

Sure. Well, so Jane has started these Roots& Shoots programs for young people to get activated and involved in helping people, animals, and nature in 68 countries around the world. You know, some of those folks have gone on to be kind of head of the environment in Tanzania and other kinds of extraordinary roles of leadership. Jane feels that young people are an extraordinarily part of the solution and an extraordinarily important part of the solution. Young people are, do think differently about the environment than older generations. I think that's part of her hope. They recognize the challenge and are like Greta and the youth movement demonstrated, willing to defend the Earth and make those wiser, healthier choices in terms of— and we can't just leave it to young people. Obviously, we who are no longer so young need to do our part to help our children and grandchildren and future generations to solve the issues and the challenges and make the hard choices. I mean, we have, I mean, you know, from one lens, we have, it's incredibly discouraging and challenging to think, how are we going to get off hydrocarbon? And how are we going to change this infrastructure that is destroying our world? And from another lens, it's the most extraordinary opportunity since the Industrial Revolution. And we are going to go through a green revolution. And that is as consequential as the Industrial Revolution in the speed of the digital revolution. And that is what is required. It's, you know, having just returned from the Climate Countdown meeting hosted by Christiana Figueres and Tom Carnack, you know, the innovations that are happening, the things that people are devising and designing to address the climate catastrophe are extraordinary. And it's happening much faster. You know, both the impacts are happening much faster and the solutions are coming much faster. So we actually have the solutions that we need. We need the will, we need the trillions of dollars to implement them, we need the policy will to signal to business that this is where we're going. But even that decision at the Paris Climate Treaty to say we're going as a world to net zero by 2050 has made incredible progress. And not fast enough, not enough. You know, there's always more we can be doing, but it pointed the human imagination, that prefrontal part we were talking about, of the amazing human intellect, that human imagination on what's possible and where we're going and what is that hope for our future. And the oil and gas companies are not moving quick enough either, but they have all committed to— all the major ones have committed to being net zero by 2050 as well. You know, you can argue about how much of that is greenwashing, how much of that is real, but the reality is that, you know, there is no other option for— besides going through a green revolution that allows us to survive on this planet. How much suffering we humans create for other humans and other life on this planet in the process of getting there is really what's at stake now.

So We're talking about the reasons of hope, the 4 reasons of hope that Jane had delineated. She said she was very facile with them because they're always part of her speaking now. The last one is the indomitable human spirit. So let's spend a little time on that.

So this was really fascinating because, you know, again, here's a scientist, naturalist, who was talking about this kind of more ephemeral— it's not really ephemeral, but more harder to, let's say, concretize aspect of our human nature, which is this, what she calls the indomitable human spirit, the ability to persevere in the face of adversity, that grit and resilience that we have. And not just individually, but as that we have as a species. And I think why she calls it the indomitable human spirit and not just, you know, resilience or grit is that it's something that even when we're facing what seems impossible, we as a species are willing to sacrifice, make sacrifices, face those challenges. And then if we don't finish the work, like a Martin Luther King, Jr., or, you know, or others who are— Mahatma Gandhi— others will continue the struggle and continue the fight. And I think that that recognition that we're in this long lineage of activists and change agents who are working to improve our world, it's so easy to get despairing and depressed And depression being this kind of collapse in on ourselves and kind of this self-regard, as Archbishop Tutu called it, where we're not seeing the wider perspective and the wider frame. And part of that wider frame is this incredible lineage of love and longing that we are a part of from our ancestors and parents and grandparents. The improbability that we are here, that we were the result of that lineage and we were of the— people who struggled and survived and sought and hoped for a better life. And then that we're able to pass that along to our children and grandchildren. It's, you know, it's such a powerful reframe from going from our own kind of, you know, are we going to do paper or plastic? Are we going to reduce our meat consumption or not? And kind of what feels comfortable at the moment? Or are we going to recognize that there's this indomitable human spirit that we possess and that we are a part of, uh, and that is this, this enormous hopeful possibility for humanity.

Well, whether it's an evolutionary quirk or a divine gift, we have this incredible brain. We have this amazing prefrontal cortex that allows us to think about the future and plan for the future if we think there's value there. And that's, I think, the threat now. Is it valuable for us to be considering the future or just living our lives for today and really having no— empathy can be time-related. It can be for the future, not just you feel empathy for others around you today. You can be even empathetic towards your future self in terms of how you choose to eat, what your lifestyle choices are. But again, that is a connection. to that prefrontal cortex that we seem to have jeopardized, at least as we have our connection to our genome. We're sending to our DNA signals that are maladaptive. And as we have jeopardized our connection to the natural world as well. So it's really all about reconnecting. And it's breathtaking to read a book like this at a time like this and to be encouraged by someone in the later years of her life that we can be hopeful. But again, recognizing that through her definition of hope, there needs to be action. And, you know, even in the face of criticism for people who write the books, who are involved in public outreach, there's Seems to be so much criticism to preserve the status quo. And I know what it's like, believe me. Comments come my way because I now recognize the importance of a more plant-based diet. And boy, the criticism is pretty brutal, but that's okay. I want to tell you that you are certainly doing a heck of a lot to contribute by writing these books. Thank you. That's moving the needle a lot. And I'm grateful to have had time to spend with you. I'm grateful that there are people like yourself doing these really wonderful things because it's very— like yourself doing these really wonderful things because it's very—

Thank you, Dr. Perlmutter. Well, thank you for your great work. And thank you for this opportunity to speak with you. We're going to get there together with that social And with those realistic goals and pathways, and we're gonna do it. And so thank you so much for your time and for all you're doing.

My pleasure. Hope to see you soon. Bye for now.

Looking forward to it. Take care.

Hope. As we learned, hope is more than just thinking the future is going to be better, or, you know, just thinking that things might change. It really requires, as we've learned today, By definition, at least in the context of Jane Goodall and her ideas, it demands action. So hope without action, I think we determined today, was basically wishful thinking. So yeah, there are a lot of challenges, and Jane Goodall makes it clear that we've got the ability to solve these challenges if we can leverage those 4 important characteristics of human beings that we see, as well as one that was actually the resilience of nature. So not exactly human beings, but I think if we leverage the resilience of nature and don't threaten it, it can become our ally. What an interesting interview today. Thank you for joining me. I'm Dr. David Perlmutter, and I will be back soon. Bye-bye. Thank you.