The World and Everything in It: October 6, 2025

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

The US Supreme Court’s back in session. The cases touch on big issues: free speech, presidential power, intrusive subpoenas, and even haircuts! Close calls, all of them.

ROBERTS: Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules; they apply them.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Legal Docket.

Also, the Monday Moneybeat. Today, the economics of government shutdowns. Economist David Bahnsen standing by.

And the WORLD History Book. Today, the life of a famous primatologist:

JANE GOODALL: When I looked at the mountains where the chimpanzees lived, I knew my task was not going to be easy.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, October 6th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Israel and Hamas prepare for negotiations » Israel and Hamas are set to begin indirect peace talks in Egypt today with hopes rising for a possible ceasefire in Gaza.

Today marks one week since President Trump introduced a Gaza peace proposal widely backed by other nations in the Middle East and beyond.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio says an end to the war may be closer than ever.

RUBIO:  You have all these countries, the European countries, all lined up behind a plan and putting a tremendous amount of pressure to make it happen.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said a hostage release could be announced this week. The terms of the deal call for the release of all hostages within 72 hours, with Israeli forces beginning a withdrawal from Gaza while maintaining a security perimeter.

Hamas says it has accepted some elements of the U.S. plan, but the terror group has not fully agreed to disarm or cede control, as the White House proposal demands.

Government shut down persists » In Washington, it is day-6 of the government shutdown, and lawmakers are no closer to agreement.

Democrats say Republicans need to come to the table and consider their demands for a new funding bill. Congressman Seth Magaziner:

MAGAZINER:  The only way this ends is with a bipartisan deal, but the deal makers need to get in the room.

But GOP lawmakers in the House say they’ve already done their job, passing a bill that would extend the funding that was already in place … with no additions and subtractions. And Republicans say Democrats must agree to reopen the government, and then they can talk about new policy add-ons.

Majority Leader Steve Scalise said the blame lies chiefly with the Senate Minority Leader:

SCALISE:  Chuck Schumer decided he wanted to shut the government down, and in doing so, he didn't just vote no on that bill. He filed an alternative bill, and the bill includes a trillion and a half dollars in new spending.

A Senate vote to extend a clean funding continuation garnered a majority of 55 votes … but that fell short of the 60-vote threshold needed.

Chicago National Guard / Portland » President Trump has ordered National Guard deployments in several states amid sometimes-violent protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

He has ordered 300 Illinois National Guard troops to help protect federal officers and facilities in Chicago. 

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker blasted the order, saying the Trump administration is overstepping its authority, and that the move is unnecessary.

But President Trump responded Sunday:

TRUMP:  I believe the politicians are under threat because there's no way somebody can say that things are wonderful in Chicago.

The White House also confirmed that more than 100 California troops were sent to Oregon over the weekend.

That move came after a federal judge blocked Trump from deploying Oregon’s own Guard to Portland.

California Governor Gavin Newsom vowed to sue, calling it an abuse of power.

Five killed in Russian airstrike in Ukraine » In western Ukraine firefighters wielding water cannons doused burning homes and apartment buildings in the Lviv region Sunday.

SOUND: [Firefighters]

That, after Russia rained missiles and drones on Ukraine in a massive overnight attack. The assault killed at least five people and damaged civilian infrastructure including energy facilities in numerous areas.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russia is “blatantly trying to destroy civilian infrastructure ahead of winter.”

ZELENSKYY: [Speaking Ukrainian]

He added that—his words—Sadly, there’s no strong adequate response from the international community to what’s happening.” He said Moscow “is mocking the West” with its brazenness.

Attorneys for Sean Combs plan to appeal » Attorneys for hip-hop music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs are planning to appeal after a court sentenced the Grammy-winning artist and executive Friday to more than 4 years in prison.

Combs’ attorney Marc Agnifio:

AGNIFILO:  We're going to try and, uh, find the right facility for Mr. Combs. We're gonna ask the judge to recommend that, uh, we are very serious about pursuing an appeal. Uh, so we have a number of things all going at the same time.

The 55-year-old was sentenced for transporting people across state lines for sexual encounters.

He made a plea for leniency and wept as his lawyers played a video portraying his family life, career and philanthropy.

The judge also fined Combs a half-million dollars.

I'm Kent Covington.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Monday the 6th of October.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

This is not just any old Monday. This is the first Monday in October, when the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court return to the bench for a new term.

EICHER: Here on Legal Docket, that’s a little like opening day in baseball, except it’s the playoffs, so it’s more like the opening faceoff for a new hockey season, but I digress.

What the First Monday brings is a fresh slate of cases and controversies, many that will bring rulings that will affect our daily lives.

REICHARD: Starting next week, we’ll have coverage of oral arguments so you can hear directly from the lawyers and justices. But today we’re looking ahead at some of the bigger disputes already on the docket.

EICHER: And for that, we’ve brought in all the senior partners in the firm Reichard, Rough, and West—WORLD’s legal reporters Jenny Rough and Steve West join us. Good morning to you both.

All three of the lawyers have prepared three cases each, matters they’ll be following closely this term.

REICHARD: So let’s get started. Jenny has the first case for us.

EICHER: She does. First up, Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections. This one involves the dreadlocks an inmate wears, or rather the dreadlocks he used to wear. Dreadlocks that were cut off against his will. The question is whether he can sue prison officials for damages under federal religious-liberty law. Jenny, what happened here, and why is this before the U.S. Supreme Court?

JENNY ROUGH: Damon Landor is a practicing Rastafari, so he took the Nazirite vow to not cut his hair. But as you mentioned, the prison officials cut it anyway. And the statute at play is known as RLUIPA, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. 

Now there’s no circuit split in this case. Circuit courts have consistently said an inmate cannot sue individual prison officials for money damages under the federal law. But there is a Supreme Court case about a sister statute that has identical wording in its relief provision that says such lawsuits are allowed. So the court is going to have to thread that needle.

EICHER: If the Court were to side with Landor here, Jenny—if it opens the door to damages—how big could that be for other inmates?

ROUGH: Well, it could expand an inmate’s ability to sue under this federal law, but the law does fall within a certain context. But it would certainly be a strong deterrent to prison officials.

EICHER: Alright, number two Trump v. Slaughter. President Trump fired the head of the Federal Trade Commission, the commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, and he fired her without giving a reason. Federal law says commissioners can only be removed for inefficiency, neglect, or malfeasance. So could you lay the facts out in this one..

ROUGH: Well, the president, as the head of the executive branch, has very broad powers to remove members of the executive branch. But as you mentioned, there’s a federal law, the Federal Trade Commission Act, that says a commissioner can only be removed for specific reasons. And Slaughter argues her removal was unlawful because none of those reasons existed.

EICHER: So I understand a lot of the case law here goes way back to the 1930s when the size of government really exploded.

ROUGH: Yeah, ninety years ago, the Supreme Court decided Humphrey’s Executor versus the United States. In a very similar set of facts, President Franklin D. Roosevelt fired Federal Trade Commissioner William Humphrey because Humphrey didn’t agree with the president’s policies. But the Court held that the president couldn’t do that because of the statute.

And the rationale at the time was that the commission’s job wasn’t purely executive. It included quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial tasks. 

So jumping forward to the current case, the court wants answers to two questions: Does the federal statute’s removal protections violate the separation of powers? And if so, does Humphrey’s Executor need to be overturned?

But either way, it seems like the court will look at the role of the FTC and how it has changed over the years.

EICHER: Alright, Jenny, well the third one is Case v. Montana. In this one, police entered a man’s home without a warrant after a welfare call. So it’s a little bit different. He says that violated his Fourth Amendment rights. So could you walk us through how this case unfolded.

ROUGH: Yeah, and just a real quick reminder, the Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. And it says search warrants must be based on probable cause. But there are exceptions. 

So, it was actually William Cases’ ex-girlfriend called the police. She was on the phone with Case when she heard a pop and then silence, and he had been threatening suicide. So the police went to his house. Nobody answered. They entered. Case stepped out of a closet holding a dark object in his outstretched arm. And an officer shot him in the abdomen. And the dark object was a gun. So Case was arrested for assaulting a peace officer, but he now wants the gun and other evidence suppressed, saying police violated his Fourth Amendment rights by entering his house without a warrant.

So the question here is what standard applies for this emergency aid exception to getting a warrant. The traditional standard is probable cause that an emergency was unfolding, or is it a lesser standard like reasonable suspicion?

EICHER: So I guess, too, whether it makes a difference that this wasn’t a criminal investigation, but rather just a welfare check? That’s pretty key I would imagine.

ROUGH: That is such an interesting question, and it flags a tension that makes this case so hard. If police had been investigating Case for a crime, they would have needed probable cause. But because they were supposedly helping, they’re arguing the standard is lower. The Court has long said the home is entitled to the highest level of protection. So it kind of begs the question: Why would a criminal be entitled to greater protection than a person who needs help? 

So the justices are going to have to wrestle with protecting the sanctity of the home, but at the same time, wanting police to be able to enter a house when a life is in danger.

EICHER: All right, Jenny, thanks so much time now to turn to Steve West. He's been watching several cases with First Amendment and executive power themes. Steve first up for you, Chiles v. Salazar. Colorado bars licensed counselors from engaging minors in what the state calls “conversion therapy.”

Colorado bars licensed counselors from engaging minors in what the state calls conversion therapy. So in this one, we see a Christian counselor saying that the state ban violates her free-speech rights because it allows therapists to affirm same-sex attraction or affirm a gender transition, but not to question any of those things. So talk a bit about that for us, Steve.

STEVE WEST: Well, Nick, the law actually says that it prohibits mental-health professionals from engaging in any practice or treatment, and that includes simply talking to a person that attempts or purports to change their minds about their sexual orientation or gender identity. So it’s like a lot of other laws that have proliferated around the country, whether they’re passed by states or local municipalities or counties.

It’s a speech ban. You can help an individual explore and even affirm their same-sex attraction or a gender not matching their sex, but you can’t help them become comfortable in their own sex or cope with their same-sex attraction.

So Kaleigh Chiles—she’s the counselor here—says this is a free-speech issue, that this is a ban of certain speech not approved by the state, whereas other speech is approved by the state. So it’s focused on the content of speech and therefore violates her free-speech rights.

EICHER: Well, there’s a pretty direct tie from this one to the next case, Steve—going from free speech and counseling to free speech and association in a different context, pro-life ministry.

This one is First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Platkin. New Jersey’s attorney general had subpoenaed a pro-life pregnancy center, demanding donor lists and demanding internal records. The center says this is a clear violation of its First Amendment rights. So what is the state after here?

WEST: Yeah, first of all, just to clarify, the subpoena issued by the attorney general is an investigatory subpoena. It’s not a court subpoena. So it doesn’t have any power, in and of itself, to force the pro-life ministry here to disclose the identities of its donors or their other information—their names and addresses and that kind of thing.

So he has to go to court—state court—in order to get an order enforcing it, which is what the attorney general has done. And also, the pro-life ministry here has gone to federal court at the same time and asked for an order barring the state from getting this information.

And the federal court has deferred to the state and said the issue is not yet ripe for consideration, that you can certainly litigate your claims in state court. So what the case is about is which court can we be in, rather than the constitutional issue at this point at least.

EICHER: Well, Steve, Jenny had a case on presidential power, and you do too. This last one for you is Learning Resources v. Trump.

Two family-owned toy companies in this one are challenging tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. They argue that Congress gave too much trade authority over to the President. So, Steve, go through the facts here for us

WEST: Yeah, these are two companies that import educational toys that are made in China and a few other countries that are affected by tariffs. The Constitution says Congress can assess tariffs, but Congress has also delegated some of that authority to the executive branch through this International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

And so it authorizes the President to take action to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States if he declares a national emergency—which is what President Trump has done in this case.

EICHER: And so on top of everything, it’s on an expedited schedule.

WEST: It is. It'll be heard In November—pretty quickly.

EICHER: Yeah, all right. Well, questions of free speech, donor privacy, and executive power. Steve, thank you very much.

WEST: You’re welcome.

EICHER: Well, Mary, you’ve been looking at three more cases, starting with a pair of them on women’s sports.

First up, West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox.

So what are these about? I thought we’d settled these women’s-sports questions.

These two could answer some of the questions left open by the recent Skrmetti decision, right? (And while you’re at it, remind us what Skrmetti was about.)

REICHARD: Well, we haven’t. These two cases come out of West Virginia—obviously for one of them—the other one comes out of Idaho, which was the first state to pass laws protecting women’s sports and reserving female sports for females. There is a court split about whether those laws are constitutional. But this really is a big deal because twenty-seven states have something similar to the laws in these two states also protecting women’s sports.

EICHER: All right, so these two could answer some of the questions, I guess, left open by the recent Skrmetti decision. And maybe while you’re at it, tell us what Skrmetti was all about.

REICHARD: Yeah, be glad to. That was a six-to-three ruling that upheld Tennessee’s law banning medical intervention on minors suffering from gender dysphoria. So this is a really big deal affecting all those other states, and there is a court split whether these laws protecting women’s sports are constitutional, which is one reason SCOTUS took the case in the first place. And then one issue that remains is whether the “T” in the LGBT is a protected class, and that is hugely important.

EICHER: All right, so the justices here are going to have to decide what standard applies—what legal standard—whether it’s strict scrutiny or something else.

REICHARD: Yeah, bingo. You can recall we have three levels of scrutiny. We have rational-basis, which is really easy to meet; intermediate, a little bit harder; and then, as you say, strict scrutiny, which is the most difficult to overcome. And what classification we’re talking about determines which level of scrutiny we use. So here the justices will have to decide which level applies.

EICHER: Okay, so we have sports, we have equal protection, we’ve got money in elections—another perennial topic for the Court.

This one is National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC, the Federal Election Commission. It’s a campaign-finance case about how much coordination is permitted between political parties and their candidates.

So how are the Republicans framing up the argument here?

REICHARD: Well, like a lot of cases, it’s money, money, money. That’s what this is about. And the Republicans are arguing that this is a First Amendment-violation case. They say, “Hey, why limit parties like that when we have super PACs without any spending limits at all?” Political parties and candidates can coordinate their spending. There are limits in the law about how much you can donate to a campaign individually. So that’s what the Republicans say—that makes no sense at all.

EICHER:All right, your final case, Mary. It has to do with immigration and asylum.

This one is Urias-Orellana v. Bondi. That’s Pam Bondi, the attorney general. A man from El Salvador here fled after gang violence killed two of his brothers and threatened the rest of his family. He entered the U.S. He asked for asylum.

So walk us through this case. What is the Court being asked to decide

REICHARD: Yeah, it’s a technical legal question, and that is whether appellate judges have to defer to immigration courts on what persecution means under the law, or can appellate judges decide for themselves if the facts are indeed persecution. So it has a very particular meaning. We just don’t know what it is yet.

EICHER: So ultimately this dispute is over who makes the final call here, whether it’s an immigration judge or an appellate court.

REICHARD: That’s right, and we get a lot of cases like that. The facts are pretty dazzling, but the technical legal question—not so much. And this is one of them.

EICHER: All right, and that is this week’s Legal Docket. Jenny Rough, thank you.

ROUGH: Thank you. That was fun.

EICHER: And Steve West, thank you too.

WEST: Thanks Nick.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: The Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s time now to talk business, markets and the economy with financial analyst and advisor David Bahnsen. David heads up the wealth management firm the Bahnsen Group, and he is here now. Good morning to you.

DAVID BAHNSEN: Good morning, Nick, good to be with you.

EICHER: Well, David, the government shutdown is already making itself known in the labor market. The Wall Street Journal reporting about 100,000 federal workers have come off the payroll this week under a deferred resignation program—that comes on top of the roughly 750,000 furloughed. The White House is warning the economy could lose about $15 billion in GDP for each week that the standoff continues, and it strikes me as a bit of an odd message from the White House, inasmuch as it highlights the administration’s own shutdown costs. But I guess the political subtext there is to try to place the blame—to quantify that blame—and to lay it at the feet of congressional Democrats. So I wonder how significant the shutdown is, David, and whether the government job loss matters to the overall employment picture.

BAHNSEN: Well, the biggest issue that is impacting the payroll numbers in the weeks ahead and months ahead is the furloughs from earlier in the year that are now going to show up in the removal from payrolls. They were, I think, eight-month programs, and a lot of people that elected them early throughout October, November, December—it’s kind of staggered as to when those things will roll off.

The shutdowns are either a very small amount of that data or a temporary amount and not part of it whatsoever. In other words, they’re going to be coming back on when the shutdown inevitably ends. So the issue with the payrolls is that we’re not going to get a BLS number until the shutdown ends.

There are other data points. We look to the ADP number this week for the month of September—it was negative. The Challenger Gray report is showing the most amount of firings we’ve had in quite a while, but it’s still pretty low—but the least amount of hirings we’ve had since 2009, and those are both private-sector. ADP and Challenger Gray are both private-sector reports.

So there’s a lot of different data points on labor. None of them are particularly great. But the issue that I would push back on is the estimates that there’s going to be $15 billion of lost GDP from the shutdowns. I don’t think there’s any precedent for it being that high. And if the shutdown lasts two weeks, that’s $30 billion in a $30 trillion economy. So I don’t know that I believe the GDP loss is that significant. Primarily, I think what the shutdown does is reallocate resources.

But why is the stock market up so much in the last few days as the shutdown started? Why does the private sector shrug it off? Why has David Bahnsen shrugged it off as a matter of the economy—as a matter of markets, investable markets? Because we’ve been through this a million times. It always ends the same way. It’s a political story, not an economic one. And markets fundamentally trade off of corporate profits, not government activity.

EICHER: But what about this idea—and we heard President Trump talk about this—relying on his budget director, OMB Director Russell Vought, talking about how the shutdown really gives us an opportunity to make some cuts the Democrats would never stand for in the regular congressional process. You think he’s on to something? Is there something good that can come of this?

BAHNSEN: Well, they’re not cuts. They can reallocate. So they can cut things and then they’ll fill it up somewhere else. And Russell is very thoughtful about this, and I think there could be modest efficiencies that come from it. I do think some of it could end up being more political, but no—I think that that is exactly right, which is one of the reasons why many are surprised that Schumer is following the far left of his party here, because they really are giving a hall pass to Russ Vought—who is not someone that they like—and who does have the ability to go do things now because of this extraordinary circumstance he would not otherwise be able to do.

Now, some are saying to me, “Well, now we’re going to be able to really trim the deficit out of this.” And I’m afraid that’s not really the way it works. We can more optimally appropriate funds than we would if things were functioning the way that they normally do congressionally. And this now gives Russ a lot of discretion, and therefore I do think he can get rid of, let’s say, certain wasteful situations. But that doesn’t mean that that money doesn’t get spent, because it absolutely will. It just moves from one bucket to another in the end.

EICHER: Okay, well, I’d like to turn now to Bahnsen Group Week in Review. You came away from your annual money-manager week there in New York saying that they were the most heated conversations you’ve ever been a part of. Now, before we went on the air, you just said it was a doozy. So let’s start with—why don’t you just say overall, why was it such a doozy?

BAHNSEN: Well, I think the doozy could be applied to the sheer volume—it’s very different opinions about where we sit in the economy and where things are going and what to make of some of the major trends that are right in front of us.

Everybody, whether they like it or not, is talking about AI. Everybody is talking about some sort of revolutionary shift as a result of this new advanced technology. But there are absolutely some of the brightest people I’ve ever met that believe we are walking into a really unhealthy setup in how much speculation there is and how much just unprecedented money is being thrown at something that nobody anyone talks to has an idea of exactly how that money is going to come back.

And yet the side who just says, “Close your eyes and with both hands, get all in on the AI story,” what they’re saying is, “Yeah, you’re right, we don’t know exactly. We just know that it will, and this is so big we just want to indiscriminately participate.” Some say it a little more intelligently than that; some say it less intelligently than that, candidly.

But I do believe that that debate is a really substantive one, and it isn’t anyone saying AI isn’t real. Everybody is saying AI is real. The question is, does the capital-expenditure outlays of these hyperscalers lead to an investable return? And does it lead to a societal return? I would argue that the answer to the societal return is what will generate the investable return.

And so greater efficiency is greater productivity. Those types of things are investable. But how that plays out—and what that means to this sort of circular thing we have going now, where the people who make the chips for AI are investing in the AI—let’s call it language-learning models as the major application—and then the main customers are going up because they’re buying it, and then the main providers are going up because they’re selling it—I just think at some point that circularity has to break.

And so I have a lot of things I’m considering around it, but they’re very nuanced. They’re not “buy AI bubble forever,” and they’re not “this whole thing is going to blow up, it’s a joke,” because it isn’t a joke. It’s just that I don’t think things generally end well when people cannot answer what the investable theme is.

EICHER: Yeah, it’s so interesting to me, David. We’ve been talking about whether AI is the next tech bubble, and I think back to the tech bubble in the 2000s. For what it’s worth, I wonder whether there isn’t a meaningful difference here versus then, when it seemed the internet bubble was around things like—do you remember that, DrKoop.com?—all these crazy websites, versus AI, which seems very hardware-driven. I mean, we’re talking electricity, real estate, lots of stuff behind it, not just reputation. Does that make a difference?

BAHNSEN: Yeah, but the parallel, though, is that in what you’re referring to with the hardware—the bones of it—those things blew up out of dot-com, not just DrKoop.com, not just Pets.com. All of those Super Bowl-commercial dot-coms that blew up are an example of the bubble bursting and a lot of capital being set on fire.

But remember Juno and Juniper Networks and Cisco and these companies—they all are still around, but some of their stocks are down 90 percent. See, the internet became bigger than people thought, not smaller. It’s just that what people thought before they had a revenue model was really, really bad, and the valuations of things that had no revenue model.

But, you know, a lot of people keep saying how much a ChatGPT or a Grok or an xAI—some of the different LLMs—can do, and yet I’m not hearing anyone talk about how it gets monetized. Now, I know how the internet ended up getting monetized: a bazillion companies, including yours and including mine, use it day to day. But a particular website—besides Amazon, eBay, and, you know, very few—really learned how to monetize it for a long, long time.

And with AI, I think that there are a lot of great parallels to that dot-com tech story, but there are differences too. And one of the big differences is you’re already starting off in this thing with big revenues. It isn’t like Nvidia—as insanely high as its stock price has gone, and as insanely high as its valuation is—it isn’t like it isn’t generating more revenue than we’ve ever seen in history. It is. And all those dot-coms that we could make fun of from 1998—they had no revenue.

So there are various differences, but I don’t think the hardware-software thing is all that different, because I think right now that’s the only place anyone in AI has made money—by selling the bones of it. And all the people that sold the bones of the internet, the servers and the networks and the routers—those were the stocks that proved to be the most overvalued.

EICHER: David Bahnsen, founder, managing partner and Chief Investment Officer at The Bahnsen Group. He writes regularly for WORLD Opinions, and at dividend-cafe.com. David, thanks, have a great week.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, good to be with you.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, October 6th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book. Today, we remember the pioneering scientist whose decades of work with chimpanzees transformed our understanding of nature.

WORLD’s Emma Eicher has the report.

NARRATOR: In 1960, Miss Jane Goodall arrives in Tanzania. Her discoveries here will startle the scientific world, and lead to the possible redefinition of the word: man.

EMMA EICHER: That’s from National Geographic’s 1965 documentary on Jane Goodall. It’s called: Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees.

JANE GOODALL: When I arrived at the Gombe Stream reserve, I felt that at long last, my childhood ambition was being realized. Always I had wanted to go out into the field and study animals.

At 26 years old, Goodall makes camp in western Tanzania to study chimpanzee behavior. But first, she has to find them. She spends the first two months hiking in temperatures reaching 115 degrees without success.

But Goodall is persistent—she searches 12 hours a day, through tall grass and dense forest.

GOODALL: As I am not a defeatist, it only made my determination to succeed stronger … There was never any thought of quitting. I should forever have lost all self-respect if I had given up.

At last, Goodall finds a group of chimps, but they run from her. She has to make her observations from afar, peering through binoculars and scribbling notes.

SOUND: [Chimp noises]

It takes more than a year for the chimps to get used to Goodall’s presence. But one day, they decide to let her come close.

GOODALL: I was allowed to approach a small group without attempting to hide. I think it was one of the proudest and most exciting moments of my life.

Finally, the real work can begin. And the research will become Goodall’s life for the next 26 years.

GOODALL: I simply wanted to be amongst animals in the wild. And to discover as much as possible about the lives of the chimps.

Her love of animals began when she was a young girl, after reading The Story of Dr. Dolittle. Here’s 86 year-old Goodall in the 2020 National Geographic documentary, Jane Goodall: The Hope.

GOODALL: Christmas, 1942. There. That’s the picture: the monkeys making a bridge and Dr. Dolittle walking across. [Laughing]. But for you, I might never have gone to Africa.

In 1957, Goodall met Louis Leakey, an archaeologist in Kenya. She didn’t have a college degree, but Leakey recognized her passion for animals. He sent her first to the University of Cambridge, and then to Oxford to study for a PhD in ethology.

By 1960, she went to live on the Gombe Stream to study chimpanzees. Primatology was a little-known field at the time.

Goodall grew to love the chimpanzees that she studied, giving each one a name and documenting their lives. She saw how relational they were, with their own personalities. And she is often touted as the only person ever accepted into chimpanzee society.

GOODALL: I often used to think, sitting out there on my own, that maybe there’s a spark of that great spiritual power in each one of us. And if it’s so, then maybe it’s in every animal too. So if we have soul, maybe so do the chimpanzees.

Goodall discovered that chimpanzees used tools, much like humans. And she refuted the longheld belief that chimps were vegetarian.

Her work did more than increase understanding, it significantly fueled evolutionary explanations. As she documented similarities between humans and apes, many used her research as evidence for the idea that humans evolved from apes.

Casey Luskin is a geologist at the Discovery Institute.

CASEY LUSKIN: People did not accept or anticipate or expect even that chimpanzees had emotions or that they could form sort of relational bonds. And I think that she was really groundbreaking in showing that that was true.

Luskin says Goodall’s evolutionary commitments bolstered her research. Her discoveries could just as easily—if not more accurately point to an Intelligent Designer.

LUSKIN: We could be designed by the same designer, to be able to have similar relation building abilities, or to form relations across species with one another. I think that's a beautiful thing, and maybe that's the way God intended to be so.

Goodall was a spiritual person. She was raised in a Congregationalist church, and said she was open to the reality of God.

LUSKIN: She certainly had some kind of a view of there being something greater than us in the universe, maybe some kind of divine force, or spiritual force. But she definitely tried to synthesize it with evolution.

Goodall was more than a scientist. She became a strong conservationist after leaving Tanzania. She founded the Jane Goodall Institute to advocate for and fund environmental initiatives.

LUSKIN: Part of her legacy is raising environmentalism to the level of it being like a religion where it's all that matters … the environment is important, but humans are also part of this world.

Goodall’s work contradicts scriptural teachings on the nature of humans and God’s creation, but her respect for animals has served as an inspiration for millions.

LUSKIN: I really admire the fact that she was willing to put her life on the line to go and work with these very wild and sometimes dangerous animals. That still was very remarkable.

Goodall was a frequent speaker. She was on tour when she passed away peacefully at the age of 91 on October 1st.

GOODALL: My job is to go around and inspire people and get them to take action. The message is, we are part of the natural world. Once you take action, once you’re doing something, once you feel “Well it’s my little bit, but I’m going to do my little bit. And I’ll die easier if I’ve done my little bit,” … even if it’s no use, I’m going to die trying.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Emma Eicher.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: marking the 2nd anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel. And, the Trump administration’s war on drug lords, by sea and by air. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is Biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says, “Give ear, and hear my voice; give attention, and hear my speech. Does he who plows for sowing, plow continually? Does he continually open and harrow his ground? When he has leveled its surface, does he not scatter dill, sow cumin, and put in wheat in rows and barley in its proper place, and emmer as the border? For he is rightly instructed; his God teaches him.” —Isaiah 28:23-26

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