The Brief

Jane Goodall, a scientist whose studies of wild chimpanzees made her a household name, has died at the age of 91, according to an announcement posted by the Jane Goodall Institute.

Chimpanzees seemed to accept Goodall as one of their own, and the public was fascinated by both her easy familiarity with the creatures as well as her groundbreaking discoveries that showed just how much chimps are like humans.

"They kiss, embrace, hold hands, pat one another on the back. They show love and compassion, and they also show violence and have a kind of primitive warfare," Goodall said. "It's because the chimpanzees are so like us that we can then say, 'What makes us different? What makes us unique?' "

As a child, Goodall dreamed of living with animals and writing about them.

"That was because I fell in love with Tarzan," she told WHYY's Fresh Air host Terry Gross in 1990. "I was terribly jealous of Tarzan's Jane. I thought she was a wimp and I'd have been much better as a mate for Tarzan myself — which is true. I would have been."

Goodall was born on April 3, 1934 in London. Her father was a race car driver who left for the army at the start of World War II, and her parents later divorced. She grew up in a rambling Victorian house in an English seaside town with her mother, sister, aunts, and grandmother. There was no money for college.

"My mother said, 'Well, if you are set on going to Africa or some other foreign place, if you learn secretarial work, then you can get a job anywhere in the world,' " Goodall explained. She went to secretarial school and in 1956, when a friend invited her to visit a family farm in Kenya, she worked as a waitress and saved up for a one-way ticket to get there.

Once in Africa, she quickly arranged to meet the paleontologist Louis Leakey.

Goodall interacts with a chimp at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, in the 1965 television special "Miss Goodall and the World of Chimpanzees."

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"He discovered immediately a very beautiful, a very vibrant, a very passionate young woman who was utterly focused on animals and who knew a surprising amount," says Dale Peterson, who wrote a biography of Goodall. Leakey hired her as his secretary on the spot.

Leakey was busy digging up the fossilized bones of ancient relatives to humans, but he thought someone should really study humanity's closest living relative: the chimpanzee. To him, Goodall seemed perfect.

It didn't matter to Leakey that Goodall had no college degree, was just 26 years old, and was female — not exactly the typical scientist back then. In 1960, he proposed sending her to what is now the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania.

"The officials there said, 'Well, it's fine, but we can't let a woman live in the forest alone, that would be unseemly,'" says Peterson.

She had to have a chaperone, so she brought along her mom. They both got malaria, and the chimps kept running away, but Goodall did not give up. She offered them bananas, and approached them quietly and respectfully.

"Jane was the first who actually went out and stayed with the chimpanzees and tamed them, and got them used to her," says Peterson.

In just a few months, Goodall a made a major discovery. Chimps could make and use tools — as she learned by watching a chimp she'd named David Greybeard. (Goodall has called him "my favorite chimpanzee of all time.") He stripped leaves off a twig, then used it to fish termites out of a mound. Goodall later told NPR that her mentor, Louis Leakey, was impressed.

"He said, 'Well, it's always been considered that man is the only toolmaking animal. So we now have to redefine tool, redefine man, or include chimpanzees with humans,' " she recalled.

The discovery astonished scientists, but so did the person who made it. Who was this untrained woman, who named her research animals things like David Greybeard, Fifi, Merlin, and Flo? She talked about the chimps like they had emotions and personalities.

"In the 1960s, when she started, there was still a very mechanical approach to thinking about animals," says Richard Wrangham, a biological anthropologist at Harvard University, who did his Ph.D. with Goodall. "They were regarded as unthinking machines," he says.

Wrangham says when he thinks of Goodall, he remembers her tremendous empathy for animals and one other thing: "Her rock-solid honesty in describing what she saw."

She wasn't afraid to say the chimps had minds. And she didn't hide their dark side, either. She witnessed brutal assaults, killings, even cannibalism.

As she explained on WHYY's Fresh Air, it sure looked like warfare. "I was shocked. I was saddened," Goodall said. "But I realized that, very sadly, this makes them even more like us than I thought before."

In 1965, she was on the cover of National Geographic, and she and the chimps were featured in numerous popular books and documentaries. To the public, she really had become like Tarzan's Jane.

But as the years passed, she spent less time in the field, instead relying on students and colleagues. She had a son with her first husband, a photographer, then later married a politician. In 1977, she founded The Jane Goodall Institute, to promote the protection of chimpanzees and the environment.

Goodall's life changed dramatically in 1986, when she attended a conference of chimp researchers in Chicago and learned how wild chimps were threatened by poaching and habitat destruction, and how chimps were being used in medical experiments.

"I realized I had to stop living selfishly in my own little paradise and use the knowledge I'd gained to do what I could to help," she later recalled.

Goodall became an activist, traveling almost nonstop to give talks, and returning to her childhood home between trips. It could have been a lonely life, except that she had so many friends around the world.

Sometimes people would ask her, which do you like better, chimps or people? She'd say well, it depends.

"Chimps are so like us," Goodall said, "that I like some people much more than some chimps and some chimps much more than some people."

Copyright 2025 NPR

Jane Goodall speaks on stage during the United Nations 2014 Equator Prize Gala at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center on September 22, 2014 in New York City.

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This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Since 1977, Richard Santillan has been to every Opening Day game at Dodger Stadium. 

“The tradition goes from my father, to me, to my children and grandchildren. Some of my best memories are with my father and children here at Dodger Stadium,” Santillan told The LA Local, smiling under the shade of palm trees near the entrance to the ballpark Wednesday morning. He was there to protest the team less than 24 hours before Opening Day.

Santillan, like countless other loyal Dodgers fans, is grappling with his fan identity over the team’s decision to accept an invitation to the White House and owner Mark Walter’s ties to ICE detention facilities.

More than 30 people joined Santillan on Wednesday morning for a press conference held near 1000 Vin Scully Drive to convey a message directly to the team. 

“We are demanding the Dodgers stop participating in funding of inhumane treatment of families and do not go to the White House to celebrate with the criminal in chief,” Evelyn Escatiola told the crowd. “Together, we have the power to make a change.”

Escatiola, a former dean of East Los Angeles College and longtime community organizer, urged fans to flex their economic power by “letting the Dodgers know that we do not support repression.”

Jorge “Coqui” Rodriguez, a lifelong Dodgers fan, spoke to the crowd and called on Dodgers ownership to divest from immigration detention centers owned and operated by GEO Group and CoreCivic.

Jorge Coqui H Rodriguez speaks at a press conference outside Dodger Stadium on March 25, 2026, to demand the Dodgers not to visit the White House following their 2025 World Series win.

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In a phone interview a day before the protest, Rodriguez told The LA Local he did not want the Dodgers using his “cheve” or beer money to fund detention centers. 

“They can’t take our parking money, our cacahuate money, our cheve money, our Dodger Dog money and invest those funds into corporations that are imprisoning people. It’s wrong,” Rodriguez said. 

Rodriguez considers the Dodgers one of the most racially diverse teams and said the players need to support fans at a time when heightened immigration enforcement has become more common across L.A.

The team’s 2025’s visit to the White House drew ire from the largely Latino fan base, citing the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on immigrants. 

In June, the team came under further scrutiny when rumors swirled online that federal immigration agents were using the stadium’s parking, which immigration authorities later denied in statements posted on social media accounts.

The team again came under fire after not releasing a statement on the impacts of ICE raids on its mostly Latino fan base at the height of immigration enforcement last summer. The team later agreed to invest $1 million to support families affected by immigration enforcement.

When he learned the Dodgers were pledging only $1 million to families in need, Rodriguez called the amount a  “slap in the face.” 

“These guys just bought the Lakers for billions of dollars and they give a million dollars to fight for legal services? That’s a joke,” Rodriguez said. “They need to have a moral backbone and not be investing in those companies.”

According to reporting from the Los Angeles Times, former Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershawsaid last week that he is looking forward to the trip.

“I went when President [Joe] Biden was in office. I’m going to go when President [Donald] Trump is in office,” Kershaw said. “To me, it’s just about getting to go to the White House. You don’t get that opportunity every day, so I’m excited to go.”

The Dodgers have yet to announce when their planned visit will take place. 

Santillan sometimes laments his decision to give up his season tickets in protest of the team. His connection to the stadium and the memories he has made there with family and friends will last a lifetime, he said. On Thursday, he will uphold his tradition and be there for the first pitch of the season, but with a heavy heart.

“It’s a family tradition, but the Dodgers have a lot of work to do,” he said.

A local favorite mom-and-pop bookshop in Eagle Rock is facing displacement due to a steep rent hike. The owners say theirs is just one of several small businesses along Eagle Rock Boulevard struggling to keep up with lease increases.

Over the past 19 years, many in the neighborhood have come to love READ Books for its eclectic collection of used titles and shop dog Florence.

Co-owner Jeremy Kaplan said it’s been a delight to grow with the community over the years.

“Like seeing kids come back in, who were in grade school and now they’re in college,” Kaplan said.

But the building where Kaplan and wife Debbie rent was recently sold, and the rent increased by more than 130% to $2,805 a month, Kaplan said. He told LAist it was an increase his small business simply could not absorb.

Kaplan said he originally was given 30 days notice of the rent increase. After some research, assistance from Councilmember Ysabel Jurado’s office and some pro-bono legal help, Kaplan said he pushed back and got the 90-day notice he’s afforded by state law.

California Senate Bill 1103 requires landlords to give businesses with five or less employees 90 days’ notice for rent increases exceeding 10%, among other protections.

Systems Real Estate, the property management company, did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment.

What can small businesses do? 

Nadia Segura, directing attorney of the Small Business Program at pro bono legal aid non-profit Bet Tzedek said California law does not currently allow for rent control for commercial tenancies.

Outside of the protections under SB 1103, Segura said small businesses like READ Books don’t have much other recourse. And even then, commercial landlords are not required to inform their tenants of their protections under the law.

“There’s still a lot of people that don’t know about SB 1103. And then it’s very sad that they tell them they have these rent increases and within a month they have to leave,” Segura said.

She said her group is seeing steep rent hikes like this for commercial tenants across the city.

“We are seeing this even more with the World Cup coming up, the Olympics coming up. And I will say it was very sad to see that also after the wildfires,” Segura said.

Part of Bet Tzedek’s ongoing work is to advocate for small businesses, working with landlords who are increasing rents to see if they are willing to give business owners longer leases that lock in rents.

What’s next 

After READ Books posted about their situation on social media, commenters chimed in to express their outrage and love for the little shop.

While he looks for a new spot, Kaplan says he’s forming a coalition of local businesses and activist groups to see what can be done to help other small businesses facing similar displacement. He wants to address the displacement issue for businesses like his, which have made Eagle Rock the distinctive neighborhood that it is today.

Owl Talk, a longtime Eagle Rock staple selling clothing and accessories in a unit in the same building as READ Books, is facing a “more than double” rent increase, according to a post on their Instagram account.

Kaplan said he’s been in touch with the office of state Assemblywoman Jessica Caloza and wants to explore the possibility of introducing legislation to set up protections for small businesses like his, including rent-control measures or a vacancy tax for landlords. Kaplan said he also reached out to the office of state Sen. Maria Durazo.

By his count, Kaplan said there are about a dozen businesses within surrounding blocks that are at risk of closing their doors or have shuttered due to rent increases or other struggles.

When READ Books was founded during the Great Recession, Kaplan said he knew it was a longshot to open a bookstore at the same time so many were struggling to stay in business.

“It was kind of interesting to be doing something that neighborhoods needed. That was important to me growing up, that was important to my children, that was important to my wife growing up,” Kaplan said.

“And then somebody comes in and says, ‘We’re gonna over double your rent.”

Topline:

Frozen budget: Most of the city’s Bureau of Street Lighting budget comes from an assessment that people who own property illuminated by lights pay on their county property tax bill. The amount people pay depends on the kind of property they own and how much they benefit from lighting. A typical single-family home currently pays $53 annually, and in total, the assessments bring in about $45 million annually for the city to repair and maintain streetlights. Changing the amount the Bureau of Street Lighting gets from the assessment requires a vote among property owners who benefit from the lights.

Ballots: L.A. City Council’s vote gives city staff the green light to prepare and send out those ballots. Miguel Sangalang, who oversees the bureau, said at a committee meeting earlier this month that he expects to send out ballots by April 17. Notices about the ballots will be sent out prior to the ballots themselves.

Near unanimous vote: L.A. City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez was the only “No” vote Tuesday, saying she wanted to see a more current strategic plan for the bureau. Sangalang said the bureau developed a plan in 2022 that lays out how money will be spent. Councilmember Imelda Padilla was absent for the vote.

Vote count: Votes will be weighted according to the assessment amount. Basically, the more you’re asked to pay yearly to maintain streetlights, the more your vote will count. Ballots received before June 2 will be tabulated by the L.A. City Clerk.

How much more money: According to a report, the amount needed in assessments from property owners to meet the repair and maintenance needs of the city’s streetlighting in the next fiscal year is nearly $112 million.

Use of the money: Sangalang said at a March 11 committee meeting that the extra funds would be used to double the number of staff to handle repairs and procure solar streetlights, which don’t face the threat of copper wire theft. That would all potentially reduce the time it takes to repair simple fixes down to a week. Currently, city residents wait for months to see broken streetlights repaired. The assessment would come with a three-year auditing mechanism.