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Length: ~5hrs, 29 lessons
My rating: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
My one-liner takeaway: Every single one of us can make a difference to the planet, for good and for bad.
Dr. Goodall starts off by explaining what inspired her passion for studying animals and the natural world. She credits her mother for nurturing her dreams from a young age, despite how impossible it seemed for a girl in the 1930s to become a scientist out in the field. Through luck and perseverance, she find herself studying chimpanzees in Gombe National Park, Tanzania where she makes a breakthrough observation about the social nature of the animals. She describes the dismissiveness of the scientific community at her findings and the uphill struggle to embrace her research. While superficially I understood the connection humans have to these primates, I never fully appreciated it until hearing about their patterns of aggression, conflict resolution, grieving process, and more.
Much of the course is devoted to conservation and the damage inflicted by humans on the planet, and ultimately ourselves. Dr. Goodall doesn’t mince her words and is quite direct that much of the problems (e.g., feeding ourselves junk, living beyond our means, and overpopulation) are within our means to solve. Rather than ask us to think globally, she asks that we think locally lest we fall into despair at the enormous burden of turning the tide around the globe. She asks us to think about making smarter choices in what we eat, what we buy instead of repair, and even asks us if we really need to shower for that long. Dr. Goodall has reason for hope, mostly in seeing how younger people are calling for change and shifting their behaviors.
If you’d like to hear it directly from Dr. Goodall, check out her course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!
This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.