The Life Scientific: Jane Goodall

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 October 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The celebrated primatologist Jane Goodall died last week at the age of 91. In tribute, we’re re-sharing this interview from 2020, where she reflects on the years she spent living with the wild chimpanzees in Gombe in eastern Tanzania and why she believes the best way to bring about change is to ‘creep into people’s hearts’.

Jane shot to fame when she appeared on the cover of National Geographic magazine in 1963 and appeared in a documentary film directed by Orson Welles. Her ground breaking observations introduced us to the social and emotional lives of wild chimpanzees and changed our view of what it is to be human. Images of her younger self play-wrestling with baby chimps make Jane feel slightly apprehensive now but at the time she didn’t give it a second thought. However, she did take care to protect her young son. Seeing distressing footage of chimps who were living in captivity, she gave up fieldwork to become an activist, working to liberate chimpanzees that were being used for medical research or sold for meat or as pets, and setting up chimp sanctuaries for animals that were no longer able to live in the wild. For the last thirty years, she has campaigned gently but relentlessly to protect wild animals and wild places, touring the world and performing on stage in front of huge audiences. Her global youth programme, Roots and Shoots has inspired and empowered millions of people to understand and respect nature, leading some to call her ‘the mother Theresa of the environment’. A label she dislikes.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Transcript

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0:40.7	Today on the BBC World Service, we're bringing you a special episode of Discovery. Last week, we received the news that Jane Goodall had died. Jane was not
0:47.0	only a pioneering scientist who transformed our understanding of chimpanzees, but also an extraordinary
0:53.7	human being whose compassion and wisdom
0:56.6	touched millions around the world. So we wanted to revisit this conversation I had with her.
1:02.8	It's a chance to hear, in her own words, the story of her remarkable life and the passion that
1:08.4	drove her work. Jane Goodall shot to fame in December 1965 when she appeared
1:14.5	on the cover of National Geographic magazine. Through magazine and newspaper articles, scientific papers,
1:20.5	books, documentary films, she's introduced millions of people around the world to the social and
1:26.3	emotional lives of the wild chimpanzees
1:28.7	of Gombe in eastern Tanzania. When the alpha female Flo died back in 1972, she was so well
1:35.7	loved, she had an obituary in the times. Jane's observations made over many years change the way
1:41.7	we viewed our closest animal relatives and made us think about
1:45.1	what it is to be human. She's worked tirelessly to liberate chimpanzees that were being kept in
1:50.7	captivity for medical research or in zoos. And her global youth program, Roots and Shoots,
	...

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