In this episode, Jill reflects on the life and legacy of Dr. Jane Goodall, exploring what it means to “do your little bit” in a world where not everyone starts from the same place. From Jane’s courage in defying gender norms to the continuing conversation around affirmative action, equity, and opportunity, this episode weaves together stories of perseverance, purpose, and the quiet power of small, determined acts. Jill connects Jane’s story to her own lessons from running cross-country, a mother’s unwavering support, and what it means to lift the next generation when we can’t always lift ourselves.
Key Takeaways
Starting Lines Aren’t Equal. Just like in a race, life’s starting points differ. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in Why We Can’t Wait, centuries of inequity can’t be erased by pretending the race is fair.
Affirmative Action as Fairness, Not Favoritism. President Kennedy’s 1961 executive order introduced “affirmative action” to open doors long kept closed, not to advantage one group, but to create opportunity where opportunity was denied.
The Double Tax. Economist Anna Gifty describes the “double tax” faced by women of color, the compounding burden of racism and sexism that leaves them underpaid, overcharged, and underestimated.
Jane Goodall’s Courage and Conviction. When the British government told Jane she couldn’t travel alone, her mother didn’t argue — she packed a bag. Together they faced malaria and isolation so Jane’s dream could take root. It’s the truest example of lifting someone by standing right beside them.
Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say. A lesson from Jill’s high school English teacher and one Jane Goodall embodied throughout her life — integrity, honesty, and consistency of purpose matter more than comfort.
Doing Your Little Bit. Jane reminded us that every person makes an impact every single day. Even small, imperfect actions move the world forward.
Death Readiness as Peace. Jane’s view of death as her “next great adventure” reframes readiness; it’s about living with purpose and peace, not fear.
Connect with Jill:
The Death Readiness Podcast
Episode: 39
Title: Why Jane Goodall’s Lessons Matter More Than Ever
Host: Jill Mastroianni (Solo)
Published: October 17, 2025
Jill Mastroianni (00:00):
“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 have done my little bit. Even if it’s no use, I’m going to die trying.”
That’s a quote from Jane Goodall — and today, I want to talk about what it means to do your little bit in a world where we don’t all start from the same starting line.
Welcome to the Death Readiness Podcast. This is not your dad’s estate planning podcast. I’m Jill Mastroianni, former estate attorney, current realist, and your guide to wills, trusts, probate and the conversations no one wants to have. If your Google search history includes, “Do I need a trust?” “What exactly is probate?” and “Am I supposed to do something with mom’s Will?” you’re in the right place.
Not too long ago, my husband asked if I wanted to go on a date night — to see Jane Goodall speak at the Fisher Theatre in Detroit.
I told him I wanted to go, but not as a date night. I wanted it to be a family night.
My daughter April is 14. Jane Goodall was 91. Jane Goodall was the woman who taught the world that chimpanzees use tools, feel emotions, and deserve empathy. In the process, she reminded us what it means to be human.
And I loved Jane, as much as you can love someone you’ve never met. I wanted April to have that chance too, to feel Jane’s magic in person.
So, we went. A Tuesday night in early September. And she was every bit as wonderful as I’d imagined. We left the theater inspired, ready to do good with our lives, the way she had.
Jane was just twenty-six years old in 1960 when she began her field study of chimpanzees in what was then Tanganyika, a colonial territory administered by the United Kingdom, now Tanzania. But unlike a man her age, she wasn’t allowed to go alone.
(02:15) As she later recalled, “The British government said it was absolutely almost amoral for a young girl to go out in the bush.”
Keep that detail in mind. I’ll come back to it.
Because today, I want to share a few thoughts Jane Goodall inspired in me.
And I hope she inspires not just thoughts, but actions, in you too.
I was a really competitive distance runner in high school. And one of the most important skills I learned wasn’t about speed; it was about how to start the race.
Because if you don’t start in a good position, the rest of the race can be almost impossible to recover.
Races begin on a wide open field before funneling into a narrow trail. If you don’t get out fast enough, you get stuck, boxed in behind hundreds of runners with no way to move forward, no matter how strong or fast you are.
(03:11) So, for the first hundred meters, I always sprinted. Not to win the race in that moment, but to earn space, to settle in, to breathe, and to run smart.
Life works the same way. But not everyone starts from the same position. And once the path narrows, it’s nearly impossible to catch up.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it best in his 1964 book Why We Can’t Wait:
“For it is obvious that if a man is entered at the starting line in a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in order to catch up with his fellow runner.”
That difference at the starting line doesn’t just happen on a cross-country course — it happens in classrooms, in workplaces, in communities, and across generations.
(04:06) In 1961, President John F. Kennedy became the first president to use the term affirmative action. He signed an executive order requiring federal contractors to “take affirmative action,” meaning they had to make sure people were hired and treated fairly, regardless of race, color, or national origin.
Affirmative action wasn’t about favoritism. It was about fairness, about creating opportunity where opportunity had been denied for generations.
After Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, elite schools like Harvard began to look inward.
In the year following Dr. King’s assassination, Harvard increased its number of Black students, from fifty-one to ninety. It was a small step forward.
When I was a kid, I asked my mom what affirmative action meant. She said, “If a white man and a Black man are equally qualified for a job, the Black man should get it because he has not had the same privileges of the white man in arriving at the same place.” She wasn’t talking about politics. She was talking about what she believed was fair.
(05:23) And what about a Black woman? That’s what economist Anna Gifty calls the double tax. She’s not talking about money you send to the IRS. She’s talking about the hidden costs of being a woman of color, the way racism and sexism stack on top of each other. It means being underpaid, overcharged, and underestimated, all at once.
And it’s sobering to remember that women couldn’t even get a credit card or take out a loan without a male co-signer until 1975. So, how has America handled this uneven starting line? How have our laws tried, or failed, to make the race more fair? Let’s look at how affirmative action has played out in the United States Supreme Court.
(06:11) In 1978, the Supreme Court decided a case against the University of California. The Court said racial quotas in college admissions were unconstitutional but that race could still be one of many factors a school considered. In other words, diversity mattered, but it couldn’t be the only reason someone was admitted.
Fast forward to the 2023 Supreme Court case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. This time, the Court went further. It ruled that Harvard’s admissions policies that included race as one of many factors in determining admission violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that a student could still talk about how race had shaped their life but that “the benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination.”
(07:13) On the surface, that might sound fair if we lived in a society that was truly colorblind. But Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her dissent, reminded us that we don’t. She wrote that America, quote, “has never been colorblind,” and accused the majority of, quote, “cementing a superficial rule of colorblindness in a society where race has always mattered, and continues to matter.”
And the same could be said about gender. If we assume color-blindness in a society that isn’t colorblind, do we assume gender-blindness in a society that isn’t gender-blind?
For Jane Goodall, that imbalance wasn’t theoretical, it was personal. The world told her “girls don’t do that sort of thing.” But her mother told her something very different.
(08:12) Jane said, “When I was ten years old, I dreamed I would go to Africa. I would live with wild animals and write books about them. Everyone laughed. You’re just a girl, they told me. Girls don’t do that sort of thing. But my mother said, If you really want to do this, you’ll have to work awfully hard — but don’t give up.”
That dream carried her all the way to Africa sixteen years later. She was twenty-six, ready to study chimpanzees in the wild but the British government refused to let her travel alone. They said it was “almost amoral for a young girl to go out in the bush.”
So her mother volunteered to go with her. For the first three months, they shared a tent. They slept side by side, and both came down with malaria. Jane said, “My mother’s fever hit one-hundred-and-five for three days. We just lay there, passing the thermometer back and forth.”
(09:11) Without her mother’s courage, Jane’s story might never have begun.
Jane’s story of her mother’s support reminded me of one of my lowest moments, leaving Stanford University midway through my freshman year. My mom flew from New York to California, packed up my dorm room, shipped everything home, and brought me back with her.
I still clearly remember telling her, “I could have never done that for myself.” She said, “I couldn’t have done it for myself either.”
I remember that brief exchange with my mother 25 years ago. Maybe some things are just too hard to do for ourselves. But maybe, like Jane Goodall, we can do them for someone else. For our children, our nieces and nephews, the next generation.
Jane loved studying the chimps. That’s where she felt most alive, in the forest, observing, learning, connecting.
(10:13) But since 1986, she’s spent at least 300 days a year on the road, traveling, speaking, advocating for conservation and for us to do better.
Jane never wanted to be in the public eye. She once said, “Do I enjoy the life I’m leading? Actually, the answer is really no. Because I’m traveling 300 days a year or more, every year, since 1986. But it’s the only way I can get to speak to groups of people like you.”
She couldn’t have done it for herself. She did it for the chimps, for the planet, for all of us.
And maybe that’s the point. Maybe we don’t have to love the hard things we do. Maybe we just have to believe they matter.
My high school English teacher, Mrs. Tabor, used to say: “Say what you mean, mean what you say.” She wasn’t training future lawyers, but that phrase followed me throughout law school, into practice, and even now, as I create this podcast. I try to do the same for you: to say what I mean, and mean what I say.
(11:25) Jane Goodall lived that way. She once said, “Every person matters. And every animal does, too. But every person makes some impact on the planet every single day. And we get to choose what sort of difference we make.”
As I record this episode from my bedroom in Ferndale, Michigan, I’m thinking about those words, about purpose, honesty, and the starting line we each begin from.
We may not agree on everything, especially on big issues like affirmative action. But the evidence is clear: in this race called life, many of us were given a head start.
So I come back to Jane’s words: “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.”
(12:26) Lift people up, the way Jane’s mother lifted her, the way her mentor Dr. Louis Leakey lifted her. That’s how we change the race we run, one small, determined step at a time.
For every person who lifted Jane Goodall up, there were plenty who tried to pull her down.
When she first went to Africa, she was twenty-six. She hadn’t been to college. She simply couldn’t afford it. After her fieldwork with the chimpanzees, she was invited to pursue a PhD at Cambridge University, without an undergraduate degree.
But once she got there, the professors told her she was doing it all wrong. They said she couldn’t talk about chimps having personalities, or minds, or emotions — those were things reserved for humans.
Jane thought that was nonsense. Or as she put it, they were “talking rubbish.”
(13:21) Her real teacher, she said, had been her childhood dog, Rusty. Rusty had taught her what every dog owner knows intuitively, that animals think, feel, and connect. So when she sat in those Cambridge classrooms and heard people say otherwise, she knew they were wrong.
Then came her first scientific article. She wrote about the chimps she’d observed, using he and she instead of it, and who instead of that. The editors crossed out every one of them. She wrote them right back in.
And she won.
It wasn’t just a personal victory; it was a collective one. Jane Goodall gave science permission to see animals as sentient beings, not objects of study. She gave humanity permission to care.
That’s why Jane Goodall’s voice, a voice for all that is good, still carries.
(14:19) When my husband, my daughter, and I saw her speak at the Fisher Theatre in Detroit a little over a month ago, I realized I wasn’t just listening to a scientist. I was listening to a movement.
She asked questions that sounded simple but cut deep: “What do we buy? Where did it come from? Did it harm the environment?”
And then she said, “When millions of people start making the right ethical choices, we start moving to a different sort of world.”
But those millions of people? They start with just one. One person making one better choice. One person deciding to do their little bit.
When I think about Jane Goodall’s life, her courage, her perseverance, her devotion, I keep coming back to Jane’s answer a few years ago to this question “What is your next great adventure?”
(15:15) She recounted her answer on Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Wiser Than Me podcast:
“If it were ten years ago, when I was fitter, I’d have said Papua New Guinea — the mountains, the undiscovered species. But I can’t do that now. So I think my next great adventure will be dying.”
There was silence. A few nervous laughs. And then she went on:
“When you die, there’s either nothing — in which case, okay, nothing. Or there’s something. And I happen to think there is something. Because of experiences I’ve had. And if that’s true, what greater adventure can there be than discovering what that something is?”
She said people came up to her afterward and told her, “I used to be afraid of dying, but now I’m not afraid anymore.”
(16:10) That, to me, is the heart of death readiness. It’s about living with enough peace, enough integrity, enough purpose that when the next adventure comes, we’re ready to meet it.
Jane Goodall spent her life saying what she meant and meaning what she said. She did her little bit and changed the world one choice, one lecture, one conversation at a time.
Jane Goodall died on October 1st of this year, at the age of 91, while on a speaking tour in the United States.
Thanks for listening today.
(16:51) This is Death Readiness, real, messy and yours to own. I’m Jill Mastroianni and I’m here to help you sort through it, especially when you don’t know where to start.
Hi, I'm April, Jill's daughter. Thanks for listening to The Death Readiness Podcast. While my mom is an attorney, she’s not your attorney. The Death Readiness Podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. It does not provide legal advice. For legal guidance tailored to your unique situation, consult with a licensed attorney in your state. To learn more about the services my mom offers, visit DeathReadiness.com.