Remembering Jane Goodall
Outrage + Optimism: The Climate Podcast
Persephonica
4.7 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 3 October 2025
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Following the sad news this week of Jane Goodall’s passing, Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac remember her extraordinary work, personality and humility. They are joined by Mary Lewis, Vice President of the Jane Goodall Institute and Jane’s long-time friend, who shares her memories of her remarkable colleague and her reflections on the incredible legacy she leaves behind. Plus, we share an interview from one of our very earliest episodes with Jane herself, originally released in May 2019.
Learn more
🌳 Discover more about the work of the Jane Goodall Institute, and its impact across the world
🐝 Read the original 2019 report on nature and biodiversity loss from the UN's Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) referenced in the re-released episode with Jane
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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks
Video Producer: Caitlin Hanrahan
Producer: Caillin McDaid
Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford
Commissioning Editor: Sarah Thomas
This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to a special edition of Outrage and Optimism to discuss the passing of Jane Goodall and the legacy she leaves behind. |
| 0:07.4 | I'm Tom Rivikarnak. |
| 0:08.8 | I'm Christiana Figueres. |
| 0:10.5 | Thanks for joining us. |
| 0:12.0 | So friends, we are putting out this special edition of the podcast to mark the passing of the late great Jane Goodall who left the world last week, continuing to be on the road to the last. |
| 0:22.8 | She was in California. |
| 0:23.7 | I last saw her speak a week ago in New York. |
| 0:26.7 | She continued doing what she knew was needed for the world right up until the end of her |
| 0:31.1 | long and remarkable life. |
| 0:33.7 | Christiana. |
| 0:34.4 | Well, so many things to say about, as you say, the absolutely magnificent great Jane Goodall, so many things to say. I just wanted to pick up on two that have accompanied me for many years during the time that I knew and had anything to do with Jane. |
| 0:56.2 | One is her humility. |
| 1:07.3 | What a humble, humble person, humble vis-a-vis other human beings, humble vis-a-vis other living species. |
| 1:13.3 | Always with that beautiful tone of voice. Let's remember that she always started all of her talks with the language of her beloved chimpanzees. And she was always so humble, being so |
| 1:22.0 | firm in her call to us to understand other species better, but doing it from a place of deep humility |
| 1:32.6 | and sincerity without any posturing. I have always been so impressed with that humility |
| 1:40.9 | that I found so powerful. And the other thing that I wanted to pick up on from her |
| 1:48.8 | was her lesson to us that is part of her vast legacy of deep listening. If anyone really embodied |
| 1:59.9 | the quality of deep listening, in particular, deep listening |
| 2:05.3 | to other species and in so doing to begin to break down the boundaries between us humans who |
| 2:13.6 | think we're superior to our other species, And to really break that down, listen to other species, |
| 2:22.6 | listen to other people. |
... |
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