Apes

It is a celebration of all youth projects that have something to do with the environment.

Gone Ape is the theme this year.

Let's get more on that right now.

Let's go to you, First, Carmen Pang, Executive Director of the Jane Goodall Institute of Singapore.

Taylor has left Earth behind because, as he tells his crewmate, somewhere in the universe there has to be something better than man.

He finds instead a planet where apes enjoy all the trappings of civilization, along with its superstition, bigotry, caste hierarchy, and appetite for violence, and where he himself is taken for a missing link between the unevolved primate and the ape.

Are these humanoid apes so uncanny because they mirror back origins we would rather forget? Or because they suggest that what ails us is our effort to escape them? Today we discuss the 1968 film Planet of the Apes and whose stinking paws exactly are the problem.

This is Wes Alwan.

And this is Erin Olanek.

I think I saw it when I was a kid and then I had some kind of dream related to it.

And it's always been this kind of film that's just lodged in my deep within my psyche and seems to have some deep meaning for me.

And I feel like as an adult, I figured out why maybe a little bit, but I might just be rationalizing it i guess when the new planet of the apes movies came out i went and re-watched this 1968 original and then that became the basis ultimately for a talk that i gave at the brattle in cambridge the person uh who ran that program was a fan of the partially examined life And they were having a screening of Planet of the Apes.

luke you know how your father kind of disappeared and he was a jedi but people don't talk about him much and uh how leia you like feel kinship with her but uh not a sexual attraction and uh you know all that so anyway all of that i want to remind you of to to bring you to this thought uh i am your father right

The very famous ending of Plan to the Apes.

You know what this is? This is the head of the Statue of Liberty.

Meaning? The only way that could be is if this is actually Earth, then we're just in the future, you see.

And I just have a predilection for movies about monkeys.

I love the Planet of the Apes series.

made my girlfriend watch the first three of the sort of reboot era ones recently, show her kingdom of soon.

And we'd watched primates in recent things.

Yeah.

That

one runs the gamut, doesn't it? Because early on, it really tries to evoke Planet of the Apes as well with some of its choices.

It's a Jerry Goldsmith score by any other name is effectively what it is.

I think this is actually a great topic to talk about.

And when I was at our colloquium at Cambridge over the summer, there was actually a lecture about this called Apes, Angels, aliens and AI.

Okay, great.

Wow.

Astronomers and geologists and those who study physics have been able to tell us something of the origin and history of the Earth.

Thirty: Monkeys, Apes, and Sub-Men.

The past history of the primates is one very difficult to decipher in the geological record.

Thirty-one: Secession.

Well, there's

Roddy McDowall, isn't it? And that's Plants with the Apes.

Oh, of course.

That'd be wonderful.

...

in the middle of the Apes

... which is like-

Oh, that thing

What are you?

Jo-Jo, Meezy, Gemini apes.

Apes from space.

[laughing] Human.

Yes?

They promised to behave themselves this time.

You guys! [outro music]

You have been listening to The Gemini Apes, starring Christopher Lee as Drake, Alan Marriott as Ricky, Garrick Hagon as Rusty, Liza Ross as Molly, Catherine Shannon as Nadia, Rupert Degas as Molson, Simon Treves as Mike, Nick Kolykos as Walker.