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Chimpanzee “Retirement” on This American Life

March 5, 2008 by Diana

If you have eleven minutes right now, listen to the last segment of Ira Glass’ This American Life episode #350 here. This segment, called Almost Human Resources, is with Charles Siebert, a reporter who is a contributing writer for the New York Times. The subject of the interview is “retirement homes” for chimpanzees! Siebert does a really good job of articulating some of the problems of using chimpanzees for human purposes, including their use in the entertainment industry. It is so great to hear this issue within a fairly mainstream setting (hopefully that’s not an insult to the program) with a remarkable amount of depth considering the rather light-hearted beginning to the topic. Siebert is apparently finishing up a book he has written about chimpanzees in retirement called “Humanzee.”

Towards the end of the interview, Ira asks Siebert what he thinks about this so-called “retirement” for chimpanzees once used in research and entertainment and Siebert replies, “I’ve come to feel that it’s the best we can do for them given the circumstances, but, in the best of worlds, it shouldn’t have happened. They shouldn’t have been kidnapped from their lives for these purposes…”

I couldn’t have said it better.

 Diana

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Comments

  1. Shelly Knapp says

    March 10, 2008 at 12:14 pm

    Hi Diana!

    Will listen to the transcript as soon as I can ~ am on a quick break at work right now ~ do you think there’s a way to get a copy of the transcript?

    Have a great day,
    Shelly

  2. Sara Lissabet says

    March 6, 2009 at 11:05 am

    I don’t think the link is working til Monday, when they offer the mp3 free for a week. At least, I couldn’t get to it. I’ll try again though, because it sounds like this is an interesting perspective. Thank you Diana, for continuting to educate us (and we, in turn, will educate others…)

  3. Diana says

    March 6, 2009 at 1:01 pm

    Sara – that first link no longer works, but if you go here: http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=350

    There is a link on the left to listen to the whole episode. Charles Siebert’s interview was at the end of the broadcast.

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