{"podcast":{"title":"The Documentary Podcast","slug":"the-documentary-podcast-487670","podcast_index_feed_id":487670,"rss_url":"https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p02nq0lx.rss","website_url":"http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nq0lx","image_url":"http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/3000x3000/p0kxnkls.jpg","author":"BBC","episode_count":2000,"summary":"Hear the voices at the heart of global stories. Where curious minds can uncover hidden truths and make sense of the world. The best of documentary storytelling from the BBC World Service. From conflict in the Middle East to the advance of AI, to the front line of the climate emergency, we go beyond the headlines. Each week we dive into the minds of the world’s most creative people, take personal journeys into spirituality and connect people from across the globe to share how news stories are shaping their lives.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-24T10:20:39.856026+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-documentary-podcast-487670"},"episode":{"title":"Sheba: Just Like Us?","slug":"sheba-just-like-us","published_at":"2026-06-17T00:30:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-documentary-podcast-487670/sheba-just-like-us","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-documentary-podcast-487670","url":"http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ns7zlw","audio_url":"http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/6/redir/version/2.0/mediaset/audio-nondrm-download-rss-low/proto/http/vpid/p0ntt1bf.mp3","summary":"The documentary tells the story of scientific hubris through the extraordinary life of one chimp, Sheba. Now 44, she lives in sanctuary at Chimp Haven in Louisiana. Born in a cage, raised in a zoo, she spent twenty-four years in a research laboratory. Her life mirrors our evolving relationship with the animal world. Sheba is the daughter of Nim, a famous chimp who learned sign language. Like her father, she demonstrated remarkable intelligence, learning to add, subtract, and paint. Her story traces back to a bold 1970s idea: if chimps are so genetically and behaviourally close to humans, could they help us learn about ourselves? Many scientists, like Bob Ingersoll, pursued that question through a series of behavioural and social experiments. Others pursued it through invasive biomedical research. But the deeper they went, the shakier the premise became. As Bob reflects, much of the research proved not only scientifically flawed, but ethically troubling, often meaningless and cruel. That realisation sparked a shift. By 2016, biomedical research on chimpanzees in the U.S. had come to an end. In the UK and European Union, biomedical research ended a few years earlier. Through Sheba’s journey, we hear about that turning point. Featuring interviews with those who knew and worked with her, the documentary also includes zoologist Charlotte Uhlenbroek, who, drawing on years of studying chimps in the wild, guides us inside the world of primate research. The documentary confronts a question that is still unresolved: we have the need to experiment, but do we have the right? *This episode was edited on 24 June 2026. We originally stated that Chimp Haven was established in 1973; in fact, it was established in 1995*","meta_description":"The documentary tells the story of scientific hubris through the extraordinary life of one chimp, Sheba. Now 44, she lives in sanctuary at Chimp Haven in…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":2969,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-documentary-podcast-487670/episodes/sheba-just-like-us/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-documentary-podcast-487670/sheba-just-like-us.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}