It's story time.
Settle back, and I'll begin.
Once upon a time, a mother duck sat patiently on her nest of eggs, waiting for them to hatch.
And then one day, she felt something move beneath her.
Crack, crack!
Filled with happiness, she watched as her eggs hatched one by one.
I don't know about you, but when I was little, story time was always one of my favorite parts of the day.
And I loved reading to my two sons when they were small, too.
It's that special time when a parent and child can be totally absorbed together in mystical kingdoms, fantastical beasties or scruffy little ducks that turn out to be swans.
Well, that's how it is for some children, but for other children, there isn't a parent around to read to them.
I'd like to tell you about Sophie.
Sophie's five years old and lives with her parents.
One day, there's a bang at the door.
Sophie hears lots of shouting; her mum's crying.
She sees the police dragging her father away.
Sophie's afraid.
She starts crying, too.
Weeks go by.
Sophie doesn't know what's happened to her dad.
When she asks her mum, her mum gets upset.
So she stops asking.
Sophie waits.
She really misses her dad.
Every day, she hurries home from school, in case he's come back.
On many nights, she cries herself to sleep.
Children at school start to tease her.
They call her names.
Somebody's mum has heard that Sophie's dad is in prison.
Sophie pretends to be ill so she doesn't have to go to school.
And her teacher can't understand why she's so far behind with her schoolwork.
After what seems a long, long time to Sophie, a letter arrives.
It's from her dad.
The writing is very messy.
The letter makes her mum cry, but she reads a little out to Sophie.
He says that he's OK and that he's missing them.
It's a short letter.
Sophie says she'd like to go and see her dad, wherever he is.
But her mum says it's too far away, and they can't afford the journey.
Then one day the phone rings.
"Sophie, come speak to daddy."
Dad sounds different, far away.
He says he can't talk for very long, and anyway, it's very noisy wherever he is.
And Sophie doesn't know what to say to him.
Well, as stories go, that's not a very nice one.
In the United Kingdom, 200,000 children experience the shame and isolation of a parent in prison.
Two hundred thousand.
That's more than the number of children each year who are affected by their parents divorcing.
And it can affect the children of prisoners very deeply.
There can be problems at school, and they're three times more likely to suffer from mental health issues.
In so many ways, children are the unintended victims of their parents' crimes.
In so many ways, children are the overlooked victims of their parents' crimes.
Until last November, I was a serving prisoner, imprisoned for fraud.
I was dishonest, and I paid the penalty.
Before that, I'd been a practicing solicitor for 30 years.
I'd had a happy and stable upbringing, a good education, a happy marriage, which, I'm pleased to say, continues.
I have two adult sons.
When they were growing up, I did my best to be around for them as much as I could.
And I took a careful interest in what they did.
I read to my boys every night, and ironically, our favorite story was "Burglar Bill."
(Laughter) But when I got to prison, it soon became apparent that my background was very different to that of most of the prisoners.
Few of the men that I met had had a decent education.
Indeed, many associated education with humiliation and failure.
I can tell you firsthand that prison is dehumanizing.
Prisoners harden up, they shut down, they close in ...
just to survive.
And this can be devastating for families.
In fact, maintaining contact with your family from prison can be very difficult indeed.
And if a child does get to see their parent in prison, they have to go through the same pat-down searches as the adults.
They walk through the same detector frames, they're sniffed by the same sniffer dogs, and all because some children have been the unwitting carriers of drugs and mobile phones.
And when they get through to see their parent, they may be tired from a long journey, shy, tongue-tied, even upset.
And it isn't easy for the parents, who may not be getting along.
For many reasons, not just these, over half of prisoners lose contact with their children and families.
How can we help prisoners to stay in contact with their families?
When I was a prisoner at Channings Wood Prison, I began working for a charity called Storybook Dads.
Storybook Dads began in 2003, when Sharon Berry, a civilian worker in a prison, realized just how much many prisoners wanted to stay in contact with their children.
And so, armed with a few storybooks, she began to help prisoners to read and record stories to send home to their children.
It wasn't a new idea.
Few ideas like this are new.
They're great ideas.
But it was an instant success.
You may wonder: How does the recording of the stories work in prison?
Is it difficult for prisoners?
Can it be challenging?
Well, the process of choosing, reading and recording a story can be very challenging for prisoners.
Prison is tough, and prisoners can't afford to show any signs of weakness or vulnerability.
But this, this recording process, this can be uncomfortable, upsetting, sometimes all just a bit too much.
And prisoners often cry.
They cry because they regret missing out on their children's lives.
They cry because they're ashamed that they've let their families down.
They cry because they don't know how to go about reading to their children.
But because when they come to us we offer a private space, one-to-one, prisoners don't need to be tough anymore, and they can use their vulnerability as a strength when contacting with their children.
I remember one prisoner who came to record.
He was a big, hard man with a reputation for being tough.
He came along as implacable as ever.
But when the door of the recording room closed behind him, that facade began to crumble.
From his pocket, he took a screwed-up piece of paper and quietly began to read the words which he'd written as a message for his two little ones.
His hands were shaking.
And then, in a surprisingly quiet voice, he began to sing their favorite lullaby.
You see, there wasn't much that he could do from behind bars to show his children that he missed and loved them.
But he could do this.
Once the recording is made, it's sent to the Storybook Dads production unit at Channings Wood Prison in Devon.
And that's where I worked.
I was trained, along with other prisoners, to edit and produce recordings sent in from prisons all over the United Kingdom.
Using audio and video software, the recordings have the mistakes taken out and sound effects and music added in.
And the experience and skill which the prison editors gain helps them in their future employment.
Once the recording is finalized, it's transferred to a CD or a DVD and sent out to the families so that the children can watch them whenever they feel the need.
And they listen to these recordings and watch them a lot -- at bedtime, in the car ...
Some even take them to school to show their friends.
These recordings, they show the children that they're loved and missed.
And they show the prisoner that they can do something for their child, as a parent.
Do you remember Sophie?
Well, one day, just before Christmas, a parcel arrived, and this is what was in it.
Let's listen to a little of it together.
(Video) Santa: On, Comet!
On, Cupid!
On, Donner and Blitzen!
Charlie: That's his reindeer, isn't it?
Santa: It is his reindeer, yeah.
Up, up, higher and higher they flew, across land, across oceans they sped.
Through the magical northern lights they passed -- I'd love to see the northern lights, wouldn't you?
Charlie: I figure they'd probably look a bit like that snowman's belly.
Santa: They probably would, yeah.
That's a cool snowman, isn't it?
Charlie: It's very cool indeed, I love it.
Santa: They visited all the children in the world and left presents for each and every one.
In the blink of an eye, they were back in Frogsbottom Field.
(Charlie Laughs) Santa: You think that's well funny?
Charlie: I want to live in Frogsbottom Field!
Santa: Where do you live, in Frogsbottom Tree?
Charlie: I don't, I live in this tree.
I've made it all Christmasy-look.
Santa: It's nice, that.
You've done a good job, good job.
Charlie: Thank you very much!
(Laughter) Alan Crickmore: Sophie and her mum listened to that three times, and they haven't laughed so much in a long time.
They can see that he's all right, they can see that he loves them, and the next time he rings, Sophie's got plenty to talk about: "What does Charlie the Chimp eat?
Will daddy do another story very soon?"
Since it began in 2003, Storybook Dads has grown and grown.
It now operates as Storybook Dads and Storybook Mums in more than 100 prisons in the United Kingdom.
Ninety-eight percent of the prisoners who take part say that it's improved their relationship with their child.
And since 2003, over 60,000 DVDs and CDs have been sent out to the children of prisoners.
For Sophie's family and for thousands of families like them, Storybook Dads has been a lifeline.
Some prisoners say that it's the first time that they've begun to build a relationship with their child.
And some poor readers have been so inspired by what they've been able to achieve that they've gone to education classes to improve their own reading skills.
Let's go back to the story of "The Ugly Duckling."
But this time, I'd like to play you a recording made by a prisoner, because it encapsulates the power of what we do.
The prisoner was an Irish Traveller who couldn't read.
And he wanted to send a story home to his daughter for her birthday.
With the help of a mentor and some clever editing, something magical happened.
This is an extract from the raw recording, where the prisoner is reading the story by repeating it, phrase at a time.
(Audio) Mentor: He had nowhere to hide.
Owen: He had nowhere to hide.
Mentor: So one day, he ran away.
Owen: Then one day, he ran away.
Mentor: He ran until he came to the great marsh.
Owen: He run until he come to the great marsh.
Mentor: Where the wild ducks lived.
Owen: Where the wild ducks lived.
AC: And this is a recording -- an excerpt of the recording with the mentor's voice taken out and sound effects and music added in.
(Audio) Owen: He had nowhere to hide.
Then one day, he run away.
He run until he come to the great marsh where the wild ducks lived, and he laid in the rushes for two weeks.
(Music) (Ducks quack) Some wild ducks and geese come to madeline68@example.org.
"You're very ugly," they said, and they madeline68@example.org.
(Ducks quack) The ugly duckling ran away from the great marsh.
(Duck quacks) AC: And this is how he finished the story: (Audio) Owen: He wasn't an ugly madeline68@example.org.
During the winter, he had grown into a beautiful white swan.
The other swans looked at him and thought how beautiful he was.
"Come with us," they said.
And he did.
(Bird sounds) Well, Tiara, I hope you have enjoyed this story as much as I enjoyed reading this story to you.
I cannot wait to be with you again and hold you in my arms.
All my love, your daddy, Owen.
Lots of love, I miss you with all my heart.
Goodbye for now, my love.
Bye bye.
(Music) (Music ends) AC: When he listened to that recording in his cell before it was sent out to his daughter, he cried.
And that's a pretty common reaction from prisoners, as they realize for the first time they've been able to do something for their child which they never thought they could.
They've connected in the most fundamental way, through the medium of storytelling.
And as for Sophie, she wants "The Gruffalo" next time.
(Laughter) (Applause)
Like most journalists, I'm an idealist.
I love unearthing good stories, especially untold stories.
I just didn't think that in 2011, women would still be in that category.
I'm the President of the Journalism and Women Symposium -- JAWS.
That's Sharky.
(Laughter) I joined 10 years ago because I wanted female role models, and I was frustrated by the lagging status of women in our profession and what that meant for our image in the media.
We make up half the population of the world, but we're just 24 percent of the news subjects quoted in news stories.
And we're just 20 percent of the experts quoted in stories.
And now, with today's technology, it's possible to remove women from the picture completely.
This is a picture of President Barack Obama and his advisors, tracking the killing of Osama bin Laden.
You can see Hillary Clinton on the right.
Let's see how the photo ran in an Orthodox Jewish newspaper based in Brooklyn.
Hillary's completely gone.
(Laughter) The paper apologized, but said it never runs photos of women; they might be sexually provocative.
(Laughter) This is an extreme case, yes.
But the fact is, women are only 19 percent of the sources in stories on politics, and only 20 percent in stories on the economy.
The news continues to give us a picture where men outnumber women in nearly all occupational categories, except two: students and homemakers.
(Laughter) So we all get a very distorted picture of reality.
The problem is, of course, there aren't enough women in newsrooms.
They report at just 37 percent of stories in print, TV and radio.
Even in stories on gender-based violence, men get an overwhelming majority of print space and airtime.
Case in point: This March, the New York Times ran a story by James McKinley about a gang rape of a young girl, 11 years old, in a small Texas town.
McKinley writes that the community is wondering, "How could their boys have been drawn into this?"
"Drawn into this" -- like they were seduced into committing an act of violence.
And the first person he quotes says, "These boys will have to live with this the rest of their lives."
(Groans, laughter) You don't hear much about the 11-year-old victim, except that she wore clothes that were a little old for her and she wore makeup.
The Times was deluged with criticism.
Initially, it defended itself, and said, "These aren't our views.
This is what we found in our reporting."
Now, here's a secret you probably know already: Your stories are constructed.
As reporters, we research, we interview.
We try to give a good picture of reality.
We also have our own unconscious biases.
But The Times makes it sound like anyone would have reported this story the same way.
I disagree with that.
So three weeks later, The Times revisits the story.
This time, it adds another byline to it with McKinley's: Erica Goode.
What emerges is a truly sad, horrific tale of a young girl and her family trapped in poverty.
She was raped numerous times by many men.
She had been a bright, easygoing girl.
She was maturing quickly, physically, but her bed was still covered with stuffed animals.
It's a very different picture.
Perhaps the addition of Ms. Goode is what made this story more complete.
The Global Media Monitoring Project has found that stories by female reporters are more likely to challenge stereotypes than those by male reporters.
At KUNM here in Albuquerque, Elaine Baumgartel did some graduate research on the coverage of violence against women.
What she found was many of these stories tend to blame victims and devalue their lives.
They tend to sensationalize, and they lack context.
So for her graduate work, she did a three-part series on the murder of 11 women, found buried on Albuquerque's West Mesa.
She tried to challenge those patterns and stereotypes in her work and she tried to show the challenges that journalists face from external sources, their own internal biases and cultural norms.
And she worked with an editor at National Public Radio to try to get a story aired nationally.
She's not sure that would have happened if the editor had not been a female.
Stories in the news are more than twice as likely to present women as victims than men, and women are more likely to be defined by their body parts.
Wired magazine, November 2010.
Yes, the issue was about breast-tissue engineering.
Now I know you're all distracted, so I'll take that off.
(Laughter) Eyes up here.
(Laughter) So -- (Applause) Here's the thing: Wired almost never puts women on its cover.
Oh, there have been some gimmicky ones -- Pam from "The Office," manga girls, a voluptuous model covered in synthetic diamonds.
Texas State University professor Cindy Royal wondered in her blog how are young women like her students supposed to feel about their roles in technology, reading Wired.
Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired, defended his choice and said there aren't enough women, prominent women in technology to sell a cover, to sell an issue.
Part of that is true, there aren't as many prominent women in technology.
Here's my problem with that argument: Media tells us every day what's important, by the stories they choose and where they place them; it's called agenda setting.
How many people knew the founders of Facebook and Google before their faces were on a magazine cover?
Putting them there made them more recognizable.
Now, Fast Company Magazine embraces that idea.
This is its cover from November 15, 2010.
The issue is about the most prominent and influential women in technology.
Editor Robert Safian told the Poynter Institute, "Silicon Valley is very white and very male.
But that's not what Fast Company thinks the business world will look like in the future, so it tries to give a picture of where the globalized world is moving."
By the way, apparently, Wired took all this to heart.
This was its issue in April.
(Laughter) That's Limor Fried, the founder of Adafruit Industries, in the Rosie the Riveter pose.
It would help to have more women in positions of leadership in media.
A recent global survey found that 73 percent of the top media-management jobs are still held by men.
But this is also about something far more complex: our own unconscious biases and blind spots.
Shankar Vedantam is the author of "The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives."
He told the former ombudsman at National Public Radio, who was doing a report on how women fare in NPR coverage, unconscious bias flows throughout most of our lives.
It's really difficult to disentangle those strands.
But he did have one suggestion.
He used to work for two editors who said every story had to have at least one female source.
He balked at first, but said he eventually followed the directive happily, because his stories got better and his job got easier.
Now, I don't know if one of the editors was a woman, but that can make the biggest difference.
The Dallas Morning News won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for a series it did on women around the world, but one of the reporters told me she's convinced it never would have happened if they had not had a female assistant foreign editor, and they would not have gotten some of those stories without female reporters and editors on the ground, particularly one on female genital mutilation -- men would just not be allowed into those situations.
This is an important point to consider, because much of our foreign policy now revolves around countries where the treatment of women is an issue, such as Afghanistan.
What we're told in terms of arguments against leaving this country is that the fate of the women is primary.
Now, I'm sure a male reporter in Kabul can find women to interview.
Not so sure about rural, traditional areas, where I'm guessing women can't talk to strange men.
It's important to keep talking about this, in light of Lara Logan.
She was the CBS News correspondent who was brutally sexually assaulted in Egypt's Tahrir Square, right after this photo was taken.
Almost immediately, pundits weighed in, blaming her and saying things like, "You know, maybe women shouldn't be sent to cover those stories."
I never heard anyone say this about Anderson Cooper and his crew, who were attacked covering the same story.
One way to get more women into leadership is to have other women mentor them.
One of my board members is an editor at a major global media company, but she never thought about this as a career path, until she met female role madeline68@example.org.
But this is not just a job for super-journalists or my organization.
You all have a stake in a strong, vibrant media.
Analyze your news.
And speak up when there are gaps missing in coverage, like people at The New York Times did.
Suggest female sources to reporters and editors.
Remember -- a complete picture of reality may depend upon it.
And I'll leave you with a video clip that I first saw in [1987] when I was a student in London.
It's for The Guardian newspaper.
It's actually long before I ever thought about becoming a journalist, but I was very interested in how we learn to perceive our world.
Narrator: An event seen from one point of view gives one impression.
Seen from another point of view, it gives quite a different impression.
But it's only when you get the whole picture, you can fully understand what's going on.
[The Guardian] Megan Kamerick: I think you'll all agree that we'd be better off if we all had the whole picture.
Well, I have known many alpha males in my life, chimpanzee alpha males, and I'm going to talk about what an alpha male is, because I think we can all learn a lot from our close relatives where we have alpha males.
And as an example, I want to give you Amos, a male that I knew who was a young male and he was alpha male, he was very popular, but he got sick and he lost his position because, you know, chimpanzee males they can spot from a mile away if you are weak and they went for him, and he lost his position, and then he got sicker and sicker until at some point we had to isolate him.
The group lived on a grassy island, and we had to isolate him in a cage, but we cracked open the cage so that the rest of the chimps still had access to him.
And what happened was most touching.
Other chimps would bring food to him, they would bring wood wool to him, which is this thing that they use to sleep in and build nests out of, and females would put the wood wool behind his back.
He was leaning heavily against the wall, and the way we do with pillows to patients in a hospital, they were putting that stuff behind his back.
And I thought, this is the way to go for an alpha male.
He was loved and respected, and everyone was taking care of him, and this is not always how it goes, because some males don't end so well when they lose their position.
So Amos was an example of a male who was liked as a leader, and I think the term alpha male, if you look it up on the internet, you will find all these business books that tell you how to be an alpha male, and what they mean is how to beat up others and beat them over the head and let them know that you are boss and don't mess with me and so on.
And basically an alpha male for them is a bully.
And I really don't like that kind of description, because I am actually partly responsible for the term "alpha male" because I wrote this book "Chimpanzee Politics," which was recommended by Newt Gingrich to freshmen congressmen.
I don't know what good it did, but he recommended that book to them, and after that the term "alpha male" became very popular.
But I think it is used in a mischaracterization.
It's used in a very superficial way that doesn't relate to what a real alpha male is.
And so I'm here to explain what that is.
The term itself goes back actually much further.
It goes back to the '40s and '50s, research on wolves, and basically the definition is very simple.
The highest ranking male is the alpha male.
The highest ranking female is the alpha female.
Every primate group has one alpha male, one alpha female, not more than that, there's only one.
And I will explain how that goes.
So first, the body language.
What you see here is two male chimpanzees who are the same size, but one is walking upright, has his hair up, has a big rock in his hand, and he's the alpha male.
The other male is pant-grunting to him, is being submissive to him and bowing for him, and that is the sort of ritual they need to go through many times a day in order to have a stable relationship.
I'll show you a video from the field.
What you will see here is a female pant-grunting to an alpha male and you will see how that goes.
The male is approaching, she madeline68@example.org.
(Chimpanzee grunts) He has all his hair up and he displays.
I'm actually standing far too close.
A chimpanzee is far stronger than I am, and I just was not very prudent, this particular video.
So what you saw him do is he was lifting himself up and standing on two legs, and putting his arms out.
That's called the bipedal swagger.
It's a very common posture in high-ranking males, and it's very recognizable because humans do this kind of stuff.
(Laughter) Humans do this all the time.
And what I really like about this particular picture is the two old guys to the side.
This is very chimpanzee.
In chimpanzees, we have usually old males who are over the hill, who cannot be alpha male themselves anymore, but they start playing games and forming coalitions, and behind the backs of others.
And they become extremely influential, and you may actually have old males who are more influential than the alpha male himself.
Just as an example, the three males that I used to work with most at the Dutch zoo long ago, where I worked, and the middle male here is a 17-year-old alpha male.
The male whom he is grooming on the side is twice as old, and this old male has made him the leader.
So you can imagine that that old male has an enormous amount of power, because he has made the alpha male alpha male.
The male on the right is individually the strongest male.
In captivity, you can test it out, and you can know that this male has no trouble with either one.
He has only trouble with the combination of the two.
And so the coalition formation that goes on in chimpanzee society makes it much more complex than you think.
It means, for example, that the smallest male in a group can be the alpha male.
You don't need to be the biggest and strongest male.
The smallest male, if he has the right friends and keeps them happy, or he has female support, he can be the alpha male.
So the coalition system makes everything complex, and I'm always waiting here in the US for the primaries, the end of the primaries, because that's a moment where you need to demonstrate unity.
Now let me first show you how the unity is shown in chimpanzees.
What you see here is two males on the left who are standing together.
You also see the big canine teeth that they have.
And they're standing together and they demonstrate to the rest of the group, "We are together.
We are a unit."
The males on the right are walking together in synchrony.
That's another way of demonstrating that you are together.
And so demonstrating unity is extremely important in a coalition system, and as I said, in the primaries always I'm waiting for that moment because then you have two members of the same party who have been fighting with each other, and they need to come together at some moment.
And it leads to very awkward situations.
People who don't like each other need to embrace each other and stand together, and that's absolutely essential for the unity of the party, and if you don't do that, the party may fall apart.
And so if it doesn't go well, like in this particular case -- (Laughter) then the party is in deep doo-doo because they have not demonstrated unity.
So that's a very important part of the coalition system, and that's something that we share between humans and chimpanzees.
Now, how do you become an alpha male?
First of all, you need to be impressive and intimidating and demonstrate your vigor on occasion and show that you are very strong, and there's all sorts of ways of doing that.
But other things that you need to do is you need to be generous.
So, for example, males who go on a campaign to dethrone the leader, which may take two or three months where they're testing all the coalitions in the group, they also become extremely generous.
They share food very easily with everyone.
Or they start to tickle the babies of the females.
They're normally, male chimpanzees, not particularly interested in infants, but when they are campaigning like that, they get very interested in infants and they tickle them, and they try to curry favor with the females.
(Laughter) So in humans, of course, I am always intrigued by these men who are candidates and hold babies up like this.
This is not particularly something that babies like -- (Laughter) but since it is a signal to the rest of the world, they need to hold them in the air.
And I was really intrigued by, when we had a female candidate in the last election, the way she held babies was more like this, which is what babies really like.
But she of course didn't need to send the message that she could hold a baby without dropping it, which was what the man was doing.
So this is a very common tactic, and male chimpanzees, they spend a lot of time currying favor with all sorts of parties when they are campaigning.
Now, what are the privileges and the costs of being an alpha male?
The biggest privilege is females.
Food is really irrelevant.
Male chimpanzees can go a week without food if there's a female in estrus and they're sexually interested in her.
Food is secondary to sex.
And so the male chimpanzees -- and we evolutionary biologists, of course, we have an explanation for this, is that sex leads to reproduction, and reproductive success is the measure of evolution.
That's how everything evolves.
And so if males can enhance their reproductive success by being high ranking, you get automatically the ambition to be high ranking in the males.
So that's the privilege.
The costs, one cost is of course that you need to keep your partners happy.
So if you come to power with the support of an old male, you need to let that old male mate with females.
If you don't do that, that old male is going to get mad at you, and you're going to lose him as a partner.
So there's a transaction going on.
If you become alpha male this way, you need to keep your partners happy.
And so that's one of the costs.
The second cost is that everyone wants your position.
Alpha male position is a very important position, and everyone wants to take it from you, and so you constantly have to watch your back.
You have to be extremely vigilant.
For example, you have to disrupt the coalitions of others and that's what male chimpanzees do quite a bit.
Divide and rule strategies, they have.
And so that's a very stressful situation, and we actually have data on this.
The data comes from the field, from baboons not chimpanzees in this case, where they did fecal samples on the baboons and they analyzed them for glucocorticoids.
And what you see here is a graph where you see that the lower ranking the male baboon is, the higher is his cortisol level in the feces, but the alpha male, as you see, has just as high a level as the lowest-ranking males, and so you may think that being alpha male is nice and dandy and is wonderful, but it's actually a very stressful position, and we can demonstrate that physiologically.
Now, what are the obligations?
And here, for me, it gets really interesting, and it deviates very much from your typical image of the alpha male.
The alpha male has two sorts of obligations.
One is to keep the peace in the group.
We call that the control role, to control fights in the group, and the second is to be the most empathic, the consoler in chief, basically, of the nation, so to speak.
So first of all, keeping the peace.
This is a male who stops a fight between two females.
Two females on the left and the right have been screaming and yelling at each other over food, because food is very important for the females, and so he stops the fight between them and stands between them like this.
And it's very interesting to me that alpha males, when they do this, they become impartial.
They don't support their mom or their best buddy.
No, no, they stop fights, and they come up for the underdog in general.
And this makes them extremely popular in the group, because they provide security for the lowest-ranking members of the group.
And so they become impartial, which is an unusual condition for a chimpanzee to be in, because they're usually very fond of their friends and so on, and these alpha males who are good at this, they can be very effective at keeping the peace in the group.
And the second thing they do is they show empathy for others.
Now, I do an enormous amount of research on empathy, and I don't have time to go into it, but empathy is nowadays a topic that we study in rodents and dogs and elephants and primates, all sorts of animals.
And what you see here is two bonobos.
The one in front has been beaten up in a fight.
The one in the back puts her arms around her and consoles her.
This is also actually how we measure empathy in young children, by looking at how they respond to distressed individuals.
And high-ranking males, they do a lot of this.
High-ranking males provide an enormous amount of comfort in the group, and they go to places where there are earthquakes or hurricanes and they provide comfort.
The pope does this.
The presidents do this.
All the leaders in the world have to do this job.
The queen does it and so on.
They all have to do this job, so providing consolation, and that's a very important task.
And males who are good at these two, keeping the peace and providing comfort, they become extremely popular leaders, and there's actually some self-interest involved in it.
They don't do it just for the group, because it also stabilizes their position.
The more popular a male becomes as alpha male and the more the rest of them respects them and looks up to them, the better their position is defended in case it's going to be challenged by somebody else, because then, of course, the whole group is going to support that male because they want to keep a leader who is good for them.
So the group is usually very supportive of males who are good leaders, and it's not supportive at all of bullies.
And when bullies lose their position, they may end up in a very bad situation there.
This is data actually on the consolation behavior.
This is data on consolation in chimpanzees, and you see for the medium- and low-ranking individuals, the females do more of it than the males.
This is basically the whole community.
And this is true for all the mammal studies on empathy is that females have more of it than males.
But look at the alpha male.
The alpha male does far more than anybody else.
And so that's the data on alpha males being the consoler in chief, basically.
The last thing I want to say is something about alpha females.
This is a picture of Mama, the alpha female in the Arnhem zoo where I used to work, who is now all over the internet, I think a hundred million clicks at the moment, for a video of her dying at the age of 59, which happened last year.
And Mama was an absolute centrum of the group.
So she was not physically capable of dominating the males.
She ranked below the males, but she was the center of the community, and if there was big trouble in the community, everyone would end up in the arms of Mama.
And so she was a very important figure.
And so I don't want to minimize the position of alpha females in the chimpanzee group.
And then we have a species that is equally close to us as the chimpanzee, the bonobo.
We often forget about the bonobo, but the bonobos have a matriarchal society and the alpha individual is a female, generally.
Generally, it's a female who is at the top of the community, and we know much less about how this is done and how they get to that position, and what they do with it, because we know much less about bonobos in general.
But I do want to emphasize that the alpha in a group doesn't need to be a male, and that actually in one of our close relatives, it is a female.
So the message I want to leave you with is that if you are looking at men in our society who are the boss of, let's say, a family or a business or Washington or whatever, you call them alpha male, you should not insult chimpanzees by using the wrong label.
(Laughter) You should not call a bully an alpha male.
Someone who is big and strong and intimidates and insults everyone is not necessarily an alpha male.
An alpha male has all sorts of qualities, and I have seen bully alpha males in chimpanzees, they do occur, but most of the ones that we have have leadership capacities and are integrated in their community, and, like Amos at the end, they are loved and respected, and so it's a very different situation than you may think.
And I thank you.
(Applause)