Famous Last Words (2025) s01e01 Episode Script
Dr. Jane Goodall
1
[poignant music playing]
[host] Imagine if we had the opportunity
to hear from a cultural icon
after they've passed away.
A chance for them
to shape their own legacy,
to be heard one last time
in their own words.
Dr. Jane Goodall connected humanity
to Mother Nature
in ways we had previously only imagined.
She was a scientist,
a conservationist,
and an educator.
[Jane] We're all interconnected,
and we depend on the natural resources
of this planet,
and they're not infinite.
[host] Her bond with nature
was instinctive
from the time she was a child.
Animals seemed to trust her,
and she credited them as her teachers.
At 26, she traveled to East Africa
to study wild chimpanzees
and made a groundbreaking discovery
that chimps could use and make tools,
something people thought
only humans were capable of.
But Jane didn't just study chimps.
She befriended them,
assigning them names rather than numbers
and following their families
for generations.
The work led her to become
a UN Messenger of Peace
and a battle-tested leader
in the war to save Mother Nature.
Whether she was speaking
before CEOs or world leaders,
Jane's charm and calm demeanor
reached hearts and changed minds,
including in the US,
where she helped end
government testing on chimpanzees.
[chimpanzees chattering]
[host] In more than 70 countries,
Jane empowered generations of young people
through her Roots & Shoots program
to carry on the fight
for a sustainable future.
With her passing,
the world has lost a moral compass
and a relentless force for good.
Before she died, Jane Goodall sat down
for a deeply meaningful conversation,
knowing that what you're about to see
would not air until after she passed away,
even if that meant
locking away the footage for years.
These are Jane Goodall's
Famous Last Words.
-Here, you wanna take my hand?
-[Jane] How do we walk?
[host] We're just gonna walk straight.
We'll hold hands.
[Jane] Whoopsie whoops.
And then we walk around here.
-[host] You're very spry.
-Oh, yes.
You're gonna sit in this chair right here.
-Yes.
-Got some whiskey set up for you already.
-For my throat, for my voice.
-Yes.
-They already poured some in there.
-It got very overused during COVID.
You know,
I was doing up to four Zooms a day.
[host] Wow. Do you like to have
a drink of whiskey
before you start talking?
Would you wanna have that now,
or you wanna wait?
[Jane] Um, yes.
Having a little sip of whiskey
at the beginning of a talk
is sometimes really, really good.
[host] Please do.
-I am not an alcoholic.
-[chuckles]
But I have said to my people,
if you give me more things to do per day,
and my voice gets tighter and tighter,
you may turn me into an alcoholic,
and then the world will blame you
for stopping Jane
from giving out her message.
-Cheers.
-Cheers to you.
I did wanna talk about him.
-[chuckles] Mr. H.
-Mr. H.
Is he always with you?
Yes. He's 34 years old.
He was given to me
by a man called Gary Haun,
which is why he's Mr. H.
Gary Haun thought he was giving me
a stuffed chimpanzee
for my birthday 34 years ago.
It's not a chimpanzee.
And I took his hand,
and I made him hold the tail.
I said, "Gary, chimps don't have tails."
So Gary went blind at 21
when he was in the US Marines.
But, you know,
34 years old is pretty jolly good.
He looks great.
And, of course,
Mr. H. is far more than a toy.
He's a he's a symbol
of the indomitable spirit
because of who gave him to me.
-[host] Mm.
-And he's very famous.
-[host] Very.
-Yes.
Well, welcome, Jane,
welcome, Mr. H., to our set here,
which you can see is different
than most other interview sets
in that there are no cameramen in here.
We have five cameras operated remotely.
[Jane] We seem to have
a little train going around.
Yes, they can move, they
but they can't hear anything we say.
So we are gonna have
a very personal, private conversation
without any worries about the consequences
of what you have to say.
You can speak very honestly
about yourself and the people in your life
and anybody who you have some things
to say about, which could be, uh
[chuckles] 'Cause I'm dead,
so I won't have repercussions.
Exactly. This will not air
until after you have died.
So anyone watching this
is grieving you at the moment
and very excited to hear
a little bit more from you, so
There may be one or two people who say,
"Hey, she's gone!"
I I honestly think
it's o it's only one or two
because I I think you are you are
one of the most beloved people
in the world.
[Jane] And how that happened
is a true mystery to me.
[host] Well, I think other humans
seeing what what's possible,
seeing what a person can be,
what we can be,
that we have someone
committed to a mission of good
and relentlessly working towards that good
is, uh, inspiring to us.
Well, I mean, I only do what I do
because because people get inspired
to do better themselves.
[host] Mm.
All right, so I wanna read, um, your bio,
and it it's quite extensive for you,
so if you'll just allow me.
Dr. Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall.
You were born on April 3rd, 1934
in London, England.
Your mother, Margaret "Mavenwy"
Myfanwe.
-[host] Myfanwe.
-Welsh. Welsh.
[host] Welsh.
Your mother, Margaret Myfanwe
-[chuckles]
-Got it.
was a writer who wrote under the name
Vanne Morris-Goodall.
Your father,
Mortimer Herbert Morris-Goodall,
was an engineer who became
a race car driver for Aston Martin.
You have a younger sister, Judy,
who you share a birthday with
four years apart.
You were married twice.
First to Baron Hugo van Lawick,
a photographer and filmmaker
who captured your research in the wild
for ten years.
You share a son, Hugo, but named Grub,
a master boat and home builder,
who lives in Tanzania with your grandkids,
Angel, Merlin, and Nick.
Tanzania is also where you met
your late husband, Derek Bryceson.
Together, you established
the Gombe National Park,
the birthplace
of your scientific discoveries.
You were married for five years
before he passed away.
Your study of chimps in Tanzania
is the longest-running wildlife study
in history
and the world's
largest scientific database
on humans' closest DNA relative.
You are the woman who redefined man
by showing that chimpanzees
can make and use tools
and have distinct personalities,
minds, and emotions.
And when this is broadcast,
all of your work will be finished.
How does it feel to hear all that?
It just reinforces my belief
that I was put on this planet
to make this journey,
because things happened which took me
Like, for example,
I wanted to go to Africa.
It started when I was ten years old
and I read Tarzan of the Apes.
Before that,
it was animals, animals, animals,
but Tarzan of the Apes,
I fell in love with Tarzan,
was mad when he married the wrong Jane.
-His Jane was a real wimp.
-[chuckles]
And, uh, everybody laughed at me.
"How will you get to Africa?
You don't have money."
My family had little money.
"Africa's far away. It's dangerous."
Back then, we knew
It was called the Dark Continent.
We didn't know much about it.
"It's full of fierce wild animals,"
which, of course, was what I wanted.
"And anyway, you're just a girl."
Girls back then
didn't dream of anything like that.
But Mum said, "If you really want to do
something like this,
you're going to have to work very hard,
take advantage of every opportunity,
and if you don't give up,
I'm sure you'll find a way."
So that was my mother's wisdom.
My supportive, amazing mother,
whom I give credit
a lot of credit as to who I am.
She supported this love of animals,
so that when I was 18 months,
I don't remember, but she told me
that I'd taken a whole lot of earthworms
into my bed,
along with the earth, of course,
and instead of getting angry, she said,
"Jane, you were looking so intently."
"I think you must have been wondering
how they walk without legs."
And when I was four, I was given a job
to help collect hen's eggs.
And the hen would go in, go into the box,
lay her egg in the straw,
and I would open the lid,
get out the egg, and put it in my basket.
So I apparently began asking everybody,
"But where is the hole?
Where does the egg come out of the hen?"
I couldn't see a hole like that,
and nobody answered me.
So what I remember vividly was a hen
who was she was brown,
and she went into one of these hen houses.
I crawled after her, went, and waited.
And my mother
was about to call the police.
Nobody knew where I was,
and I'd been gone four whole hours.
[host chuckles]
And yet when she sees this little girl,
all excited,
instead of, "How dare you go
and do something like that
without telling us?
Don't you dare do it again,"
would have killed the excitement,
she sat to listen to my story.
So I love that story, because isn't that
the making of a little scientist?
Asking questions,
not getting the right answer,
deciding to find out for yourself,
making a mistake,
not giving up, and learning patience.
[host] Hm.
And a different kind of mother might have
crushed that early scientific curiosity,
and I might not be talking to you now.
I was lucky.
I read you told your friends
that you could speak with animals.
[chuckles] Yes, I knew I couldn't, though,
but they believed me.
[host] In watching
and reading about your time
when you first got to the jungle,
you were out alone in the jungle.
This is before you even found the chimps.
-All day.
-Yep.
For days and days, for weeks and weeks,
for months and months.
And yet there was
no experience of boredom for you.
No, because in nature,
there's always something to watch.
You know, there are insects,
and, you know, you can see
such fun things with insects.
I remember once the dung beetles,
you know,
they get into a pile of somebody's shit,
and they make a little ball,
and they roll that ball,
and they they dig a hole.
They drop the ball down,
and they lay their eggs in it.
That's for the young ones to eat.
And so I was watching,
and two came like this.
And this ball was being rolled by two,
one going backwards,
and the other pushing forwards.
This was a lone one,
and the male from the male-female pair
started to fight.
So the female just very quietly moved dung
from the
the lone male's ball onto her ball,
and went off with it. [chuckles]
And, you know,
things like that, people don't notice.
And I'm shocked,
because nature is always
filled with things to look at.
Another example,
I was in the Denver airport,
sparrows can come in,
and there was a little drama going on.
There were two sparrows,
and the female was, you know,
it was courtship,
so she was doing this fluttering,
mouth open,
and down on the ground was a crumb
that somebody dropped.
And clearly the male wanted to feed
his lady love with the crumb.
And so he flew down, and three times,
just as he was about to pick it up,
somebody comes by,
looking at their cell phone,
they just walk by this drama,
and finally he was able to get it
and feed the lady. [chuckles]
I mean, this was
I mean, it took ten minutes,
and it was entertaining.
-There's no need to be bored.
-Right.
When people are watching this,
the world will really be
in collective mourning for you.
I suppose so.
You only suppose so? You don't think so?
I mean, people love you.
I know they come up
and they say they love me.
The the the strange thing is,
they don't actually know me.
There are two Janes.
There's this one,
just talking, and then there's the icon.
The people who don't know me
love the icon.
But it does seem that most people
who do know me also love me.
So why? I don't know.
People say, you know,
"What is it about you?"
What do you think?
Well, I think people trust me.
Uh
I think they like the values
I've always shown that I have.
I don't know. I mean,
this other Jane is a mystery to me.
-[host] The icon is a mystery to you?
-Yeah.
Because, you know,
I know who I am. I'm just me.
And yet people in airports come up
and start to cry.
"Oh my God!"
And I always say,
"I'm not your God. I'm just Jane."
Do you do you remember when
you first realized that icon Jane existed?
I remember, with shock and horror,
the first time something happened.
I was in Santa Fe,
and this elderly couple came up.
And the woman
I mean, this is really weird.
This only happened to me ever once again.
She looked at me,
and she said, "Can I touch you?"
I said, "Oh my What is this?
And [chuckles]
so I said, "Well, we could shake hands."
That happened to me again two years ago.
But normally people,
you know, want to take a selfie
or, uh, want me to sign something.
What do you think she wanted
or needed by touching you?
-What do you think she was trying to?
-I had no idea. I was shocked.
And after that, I suddenly realized,
"Well, somehow this has happened."
"And I think I have
a mission in this life,
so I'll make use of that."
You're always on mission.
-You're always
-I'm always on mission, yeah.
Even even when I'm really tired. I mean,
that's what I'm on this planet for.
I truly believe that.
And I think it's important,
as people turn to you, to say,
"What's the fight? Where's the battle?
Where should we look? What should we do?"
Identifying who the people
who who the battle is against,
I think I think it's important.
Do you have people that you don't like?
Absolutely, there are people I don't like.
And I would like to put them
on one of Musk's spaceships
and send them all off to the planet
he's sure he's going to discover.
Would he be would he be one of them?
-Oh, absolutely. He'd be the host.
-[host chuckles]
And you can imagine
who I'd put on that spaceship.
-Who?
-Along with Musk would be Trump.
And some of Trump's real supporters.
And then I would put Putin in there.
And I would put President Xi.
I'd certainly put Netanyahu in there
and his far-right government.
Put them all on that spaceship
and send them off.
These men seem like not the alpha chimp.
They think they are, but it seems
that their behavior is not, uh
Well, we get,
interestingly, two types of alpha.
One does it all by aggression.
And because they're strong and they fight,
they don't last very long.
Others do it by using their brains,
like a young male will only challenge
a higher-ranking one
if his friend,
often his brother, is with him.
And you know,
they last much, much longer.
-Interesting.
-Mm.
As a scientist who studies behaviors,
wh how do you explain
the behavior like that?
If people behave that way,
how do you make sense of that?
Well [clears throat]
in the '70s,
science of behavior became politicized.
And there was a huge debate
about whether aggression in humans
was innate or learned.
Well, from my study of chimpanzees,
our closest relative,
you know,
we share 98.7% of our DNA with them,
and the behavior is almost identical.
And so I saw them
behaving in dark,
aggressive, brutal ways,
even a kind of primitive war.
Therefore, I believe
that aggression is innate.
-[host] Innate?
-Innate.
And we're born with a tendency
to become aggressive,
just as chimps are.
Chimps see a stranger
from a neighboring community,
and they get all excited,
and their hair stands out,
and they reach out and touch another,
and they've got
these faces of anger and fear,
and it catches,
and the others catch that feeling
that this one male has had,
and they all become aggressive.
So it's contagious.
And humans are susceptible
to that as well?
Yeah, I think so. Some of these, um,
demonstrations that turn aggressive,
it sweeps through them.
They all want to join in
and become aggressive.
I'm not a political analyst
or anything like that.
But in behavioral, for for the chimps,
why do they get caught up in it?
Well, they're protecting their territory
or fighting for dominance.
And is that the same for humans?
Probably sometimes, yes.
But I truly believe
that most people are decent.
-You do?
-Yes.
Ignorance you can reach.
You say evil you can't reach.
-But you believe that you're out there.
-Yes.
Part of your mission is to cure ignorance.
And, you know, as I say, my biggest hope
is raising this new generation
of compassionate citizens,
Roots & Shoots.
But do we have time? I don't know.
It's a really grim time.
Is this is this, in all the years
you have been fighting this fight,
do you feel like
it's the most dangerous time
or the darkest time?
Well, I suppose
if I had been older than five years old
when World War II began,
I would say it's about like that.
But because all of Europe
was defeated or capitulated,
and it looked as though Nazi Germany
would take the world over.
But since then, yes,
this is much the worst time.
When you look back now
on all these moments
when you were relentless
and, uh, shameless
about winning the fight,
is it the mission?
Is it something in you
that just doesn't ever wanna give up?
Never want to give up,
and I'm obstinate, and I won't give up.
That doesn't mean
you don't have moments of depression,
'cause you do.
But then you come out of it and say,
"Okay, I'm not going to let them win."
[host] Mm.
-It's like Churchill in the war.
-Mm.
When Britain was the last nation
standing up to Nazi Germany.
Britain was not prepared for war
because of Chamberlain,
who wanted to capitulate like France,
but we had Churchill
and, you know, his famous speech,
"We'll fight them on the beaches
and we'll fight them in the streets
and the cities."
And then he turned aside to a friend
and was heard to say,
"We'll fight them
with the ends of broken bottles
'cause that's all we've bloody well got."
And he roused the spirit
of the British people.
I guess he was
as obstinate as me. [chuckles]
Do you feel like Churchill
in a war for your mission,
for for for the planet?
Does it feel like a war to you?
Well, it is a sort of war, isn't it?
I haven't thought of it as a war,
but in a way it is.
We talk about a fight.
So I suppose it's a kind of a war.
It's saving Mother Nature.
[host] Right.
And you need you need you need
a Churchill in that fight who says,
"We're never we're never quitting,
even when it's the darkest."
Yes, and give people hope.
One thing people say to me
from all over, they
It's been said to me
again and again and again,
you know,
"Whatever situation you're in," they say,
"you're calm."
"How can you stay so calm?"
And
So I think it's because of all the months
and months I spent in the rainforest,
and I keep that.
Right. We talked a little about the idea
of boredom, but also the idea of luck.
Yes, luck.
I think a lot of people
could look and say,
"Well, a friend happened to tell you
about Dr. Leakey."
He was probably the world's
most famous paleontologist at the time,
and he happened to have needed
a secretary.
Yes, somebody said, as you said,
uh, "If you're interested in animals,
you should meet Louis Leakey."
But when I met him,
he was head of the Natural History Museum
in Nairobi.
He took me all around,
asked me lots of questions.
I could answer most of them
'cause I'd read about every book
on animals in Africa
that I could lay my hands on.
There weren't many back then.
And guess what?
Just before I arrived,
his secretary had left.
And he wanted a secretary,
and there I was.
It was not a normal secretarial job.
I was in his office, which was huge
and filled with skulls and bones,
and, you know,
sometimes people had brought in
animals and so on.
And I rescued a little pygmy bush baby,
about this big, with big ears.
And for some odd reason,
I called him Levi,
I don't know why,
and he came with me to work.
And he liked They sleep in the day,
so he would sleep in a gourd,
which was right over Leakey's desk.
But if a visitor came in,
little Levi's head
would peep out of the gourd.
He'd look down at the visitor.
And then he would
And Leakey knew this was gonna happen.
He'd jump onto the unsuspecting visitor.
But when a bush baby jumps,
they want their hands to be able to grip.
So they'd pee on them.
[chuckles]
So, you know, imagine the fun.
And then the key thing was
that Leakey let me go with him,
his wife, and another young, uh, girl
on a trip to Olduvai Gorge,
now a very famous site of early man.
But back then,
no fossil human fossils had been found.
Three months in the middle of nowhere.
Serengeti as nobody
will ever see it again.
Animals everywhere.
And Gillian and I would work hard all day
digging for fossils.
And then we were allowed out,
uh, to have a walk.
And the animals were there.
So one evening,
there was a young male lion,
fully grown,
mane just starting on his shoulders.
He was standing looking,
tail waving gently.
I think he was curious.
Gillian panicked.
She wanted us to hide in the vegetation.
I said, "Gillian,
the lion will know where we are."
"We won't have a clue where the lion is."
"We must climb up onto the plains
from the gorge," not very far,
"so he sees that we're not a threat,"
which is what we did.
And I think it was that evening
around the campfire
that Leakey decided that I was the person
he'd been looking for to study chimps.
So it was a a way
that was part destiny, part luck,
part determination.
Do you believe in destiny?
I believe that we have
a path that we should take,
but that we have free will.
We don't have to make the choice.
And I believe, looking back in my life,
I've taken the right
the right turn.
I mean, if if I'm right
that I was born with a mission,
then it was the voice
of that, mm spiritual entity
that put me on the planet.
[host] Do you believe in God?
I believe in a great spiritual power.
I have to believe in it
because it's helped me so often.
And do you think that spiritual power
has also protected you out in the wild?
[Jane] I'm sure it has.
I just feel it it has to be.
You have a magic when it comes to nature.
Obviously, you have a magic
that others don't have
that Leakey saw.
It wasn't just that you were a woman
and he thought a woman would be better.
It wasn't just that you were good
at being nonthreatening.
There's some other magic you have
that the
It is a magic.
And strange things I do have strange
Like, I was just talking
to a group of people.
We were having a party, just with friends.
And one person said,
"I was somewhere
where Jane stopped the rain,"
and they laughed.
And I said, "No, it's true."
What ha How did you do it?
Well, I just
asked the rain to stop.
And it Most times, it doesn't listen
when we ask the rain
No, I know,
but it happened again in Malaysia,
and I was with this small, tiny group.
She was a sheikha, you know,
the wife of a sheik, powerful lady.
And it was the monsoon season,
which starts like clockwork.
And, uh, somehow, I don't know,
we got it a bit wrong.
And just before the end,
when two little boys were going to make
a wee presentation of Roots & Shoots,
the first big drops fell.
And she said, "We better go inside."
And I said,
"No, let's hold hands around the table
and ask the rain
just to give us half an hour."
And it stopped.
You always had that kind of connection
where you actually talk and it talks back?
Well, you know, it's only recently
I've begun putting it all together
and saying that I don't know.
It doesn't happen that often.
Besides speaking chimp,
actually speaking the language of chimp,
with animals, there is a connection
that's very real and pure
and nonverbal with them.
-I think so.
-And with nature in general.
It's what
You know, it's what kept you safe,
I imagine, out in the jungle
all that time, for the most part.
Well, maybe,
but I learned something interesting.
You know, when I first went,
it was Tanganyika,
was a British protectorate.
And so the British authorities
told Leakey,
"We're not taking responsibility
for something as stupid
as sending a girl into the forest,"
but he never gave up.
So in the end, they said,
"All right, but she can't come alone."
That's why Mum volunteered to come.
So we stepped onto the shore,
and we'd been told there was a headman,
and we'd been told to bring him a gift,
so we gave it to him.
Very soon after that,
Mum had this little clinic,
and the fishermen began queuing up.
She only had aspirins and Epsom salts
and saline drips and things like that.
But she spent time with people,
and she made some amazing cures,
so that word spread.
And so I learned much, much, much later,
two of our field staff,
I was talking to them,
and they said,
"That guy, Idi Matata, the headman,
he was the most infamous witch doctor
the area's ever known."
And so Idi told all the fishermen
they were to help me,
and they told
he told the animals not to hurt me.
-He told the animals?
-Yes. That's what I learned years later.
So how do we know?
How do we know?
There's so much we have still to discover,
you know, and I know when I'm gone,
there'll be more and more discovered
if we can save the planet in time.
[host] Mm-hmm.
Where where are you now
as people are watching this?
What's what's next?
Well, you know, when you die,
there's either nothing,
in which case nothing,
or there's something.
And from all the experiences I've read,
you know, the near-death experiences,
the books I've read,
and my own personal experience
after my second husband, Derek, died,
I believe there is something.
What was that experience?
After he died, it was one night,
and Derek appeared,
and he was smiling, and he was telling me,
you know, everything was going to be fine,
and he was fine,
and then he kind of disappeared
after that.
All I was left with was he was okay.
Wow.
And reincarnation kind of makes sense.
I mean, a lot of religions
talk about an old soul.
An old soul has been back
in different forms,
and, you know, they gradually, gradually
acquire knowledge and wisdom.
I've Many people have told me
I'm an old soul.
Yeah, if if if if we keep coming back,
reincarnating in order to to evolve,
I feel like you're done.
-I feel like this is it for you.
-Well, I hope so.
[chuckling] I don't want to come back.
Do you think
people come back as the dung beetle,
or they come back always as humans
with other opportunities?
I I personally think
that we come back as humans.
[host] Mm.
Because, you know, we've evolved
to a different kind of level.
And I don't know
Well, maybe some humans
should go back down there.
You've mentioned a couple
on that rocket ship, I think.
[Jane] Maybe they come back.
Though those dung beetles seem
very happy and productive.
Yes, I wouldn't want them
to be dung beetles.
I think [chuckling]
I don't know what I'd want them to be.
Oh, yes, they could be
the poor, wretched animals
who are used in laboratories
to test medicines on.
Let them be those.
-[host] And learn.
-And learn.
One thing I was very moved by
was that in Gombe,
there were certain chimps
that you clearly had
a closer relationship with.
You had David Greybeard,
who, you know, famously showed you
that they can use tools.
-Yeah.
-[host] You had Flo and her son Flint.
And when Flo died,
that Flint, her her son
-Yeah.
-died of grief, of a broken heart.
Yes. He stopped eating.
And, um, out in the tropics
when an animal dies,
very, very quickly, flies lay their eggs.
-[host] Mm-hmm.
-And they're white.
And so chimps are
very used to dead animals
who don't move and with these white eggs.
And Flint, when Flo died,
he came down about five or six times,
took his mother's hand.
He wanted her to groom him.
So he took her dead hand.
And then I think
it was the fifth time he came down,
a fly had laid eggs in her ear,
and there were these white eggs
in her ear.
And he poked them,
looked at his finger, ran away,
rubbed his finger on the ground like that,
and never went near her again.
It was as though some something clicked.
"She's not going to move again."
And after that, he climbed a tree
where I had watched them nest
before she died,
just a few days before she died.
and he walked very slowly along the branch
to where their joint nest was.
And he just stood there,
and he looked at it for about a minute.
And then he turned slowly,
walked away, climbed down,
curled up on the ground, and that was it.
Yeah, it was very sad.
[host] So when you die,
who are the people that you love the most
who will be there to welcome you?
I have no idea.
I just don't know,
but I just hope and pray
that some of the chimps,
that my special chimps,
David Greybeard, um, Rusty,
my childhood dog, Rusty,
and some of the others,
I I hope they'll be there.
And, of course, I hope Mum.
And, um Yeah.
What about, uh, Derek or Hugo?
-Or your husbands?
-Well
Wouldn't matter so much.
-[host] How come?
-I don't know.
[host] Did you feel that kind of closeness
you felt with the chimps or
with Hugo or Derek,
the men you were married to,
or your mom, that you felt, uh?
Uh, Mum was different,
and obviously it was
a different kind of, you know, love.
These things are different.
There's lots of kinds of love.
And the love that I had for Derek
and for Hugo and for Mum
were all different from the love I had
with with David Greybeard and Rusty.
I I think it's interesting that, um,
like, when it comes
when it came to romance in your life,
was it something that you felt deeply?
I find it interesting that you're saying
that you don't have the same the same
thoughts of them greeting you, that
that the ones who you love the most.
[sighs]
Because
Let me talk about how I was,
and I think about how I was,
that
It's difficult to explain,
but in some ways,
the two marriages I made were made
Like, Hugo helped the course I'm on
by his film.
Derek helped the course I'm on
because four of my students
were kidnapped in 1974.
Gombe was closed,
and, but for Derek, it would have ended.
And had it been otherwise,
I know I shouldn't have married
either of them,
because both of them
were insanely jealous.
Even if I had a girlfriend,
insanely jealous.
Hugo was
more interested in his career
than his son,
in some ways, although he loved him.
Um,
Derek was
Neither of them could bear the fact
that I was, you know,
successful in my career,
even though Derek was a minister
and everything.
And so you got you got married
because it was practical?
No, I was in love at the time.
-[host] You were in love?
-Yes.
But looking back on it,
I wasn't enough in love.
Right. [chuckles]
[Jane] And looking back on it,
it looks as though I married them
for a practical reason.
I didn't at the time.
But but I'm looking back on how I was,
not as I am.
Right. Was there ever a man
who you didn't end up marrying
who you did feel that kind of love,
that somebody that that got away?
There was one married man, yes.
-[host] Who was that?
-No.
No. I mean, you're
now's the time if you're going to.
Now's the time I'm dead,
but probably this man has relatives, no.
If we don't talk about him specifically,
but talk about
what it was you felt for him
Well, we both have the same interests,
the same passion for animals.
Uh
He had a wife that, you know,
he wasn't that passionate about anymore.
Uh, I was between marriages at that time.
And there was no chance of him leaving her
and you guys being together?
No.
[host] Was that a heartbreak?
It was sad at the time.
Yeah.
Do you, um,
Do you have any regrets about
looking back at your life?
Uh, well, I would for my son's sake,
I would like
the first marriage to have worked.
But there were so many ways
in which it it really didn't.
[host] Hm. Did he take the divorce hard?
Did Grub take the divorce hard?
I think he did. Yeah.
But, um
How did that how did that show up?
How did he How did you know?
Well, because he became rather silent.
And But it wasn't a real bad upset.
'Cause he didn't have that good a time
with his father.
[host] Right.
He just wasn't maybe somebody
who was made to be
a very involved father.
[Jane] I think something like that.
I mean, there was one
It was Grub's first known Christmas.
He was two.
And we were on the Serengeti,
uh, or Ngorongoro.
And, uh, the wildebeest, you know,
they they migrate, and a certain time,
they swim across a river.
-And it's very dramatic to film.
-Mm.
And so a film team,
I think it was Japanese,
came and asked Hugo to show them
where this would happen.
Hugo had filmed it already.
And so he told them.
And it was Christmas Day.
We found a little
It wasn't a proper Christmas tree,
but Grub was going,
"Daddy's coming, and we're going to have
presents at lunchtime."
And the team, afterwards they said,
"We kept telling your husband,
'We don't need you now.'"
"'You've shown us
where this will happen.'"
"'It's Christmas.
You need to go back to your family.'"
He never He stayed out all day.
That I think that was
the thing that cinched it for me.
-You were done.
-It was horrible.
It was like, you know,
this little boy was so excited.
[inhales sharply]
Yeah. Maybe he was three, even,
I can't remember.
Of course, I've never told Grub that,
so maybe he's listening now.
So sorry, Grub.
Do you have any guilt
about how you raised him?
No, because I wasn't away from him one day
until he was after three, one night.
So as he is now,
the Flint in the situation,
sitting, watching this, grieving you,
what would you say to him?
Oh, what would I say to to him?
We have a relationship that's closer now
than it has been for some time.
And I think he resented the fact that
I mean, he's he's remembering
that I left him for the chimps,
which isn't true.
-[host] Hm.
-He now knows that.
That's why we've got closer again.
So,
I think all I say to him is,
Grub, I did my best for you,
and, I think,
somehow made a pretty good job of it
because I'm proud of you.
I think that's something
that a son would wanna hear
from their mother more than anything,
that that I mean, he knows you love him,
but that you're proud of him.
Yeah, I've told him.
I'm proud of my grandchildren too.
Do you have any messages for them
from from the beyond?
I know you'll be sorry I'm not here,
but, uh, you'll be carrying on
the same kind of effort
that I made
to make the world a better place.
-And you know my spirit's with you.
-[host] Mm.
And I'll know what you're doing.
[host] This is a moment right now,
as people are watching this,
where maybe the biggest story in the world
is that you've passed away.
I think it'll be a global story.
I think there'll be global mourning.
I think a lot of people
will be talking about who you were.
So who would you say you were?
I would say
I was somebody sent to this world
to try to give people hope in dark times,
because without hope,
we fall into apathy and do nothing.
And in the dark times
that we are living in now,
if people don't have hope, we're doomed.
And how can we bring little children
into this dark world we've created
and let them be surrounded
by people who've given up?
[host] Mm.
So even even if this is
the end of humanity as we know it,
let's fight to the very end.
Let's let the children know, you know,
that there is hope if they get together.
And even if it becomes
impossible for anybody,
it's better to go on fighting to the end
than just to give up and say, "Okay."
[host] And if I asked ten-year-old Jane,
"Who are you?"
What would she say?
I would say
I'm just an ordinary little girl,
rather shy, um, but also quite obstinate,
and that I want to go to Africa,
and I want to live with animals.
I feel like there's a difference between
the Jane answer and the icon Jane answer.
The first one was the icon Jane answer,
and the second was the Jane answer.
That's right.
It seems like your understanding
of yourself was pretty clear at ten.
Yeah, I knew what I wanted to do.
-[host] And you knew who you were.
-I knew who I was.
Is it hard
to think about leaving the fight?
Well, I've fought for so long.
I think I've probably been accomplishing
the reason I was put on this planet.
And there comes a time
when I'm really ready
to hand over to others
that have picked up the same spirit.
Is there a certain feeling of relief
that you'll be able to put that down?
Sometimes, I think, "Oh goodness."
[chuckles] "I really don't want to go on."
And it's getting harder,
because the world is getting darker.
And it's, um
You know, it's not just in the US,
but this swing to the far right,
which is harming the environment
so terribly.
We're in the midst
of the sixth great extinction.
-[host] Mm-hmm.
-We've got climate change.
And, you know,
everywhere I go, things are different.
Yeah, and I think if anybody reads about
those other five extinction events,
you don't wanna be part of those.
You don't wanna be around
for when those happen.
It's not it's not pleasant for anyone.
It would be horrible,
and that's why action must be now.
I have no doubt that we have the tools
to make the change,
but do we have the will
to make the change?
And it seems
with some of the top politicians
and corrupt corporations,
there is no such will.
The reason why you claim
that you were able
to connect with the chimps
was that you were not threatening to them.
[Jane] Mm.
And then what I've read is
you used that same technique
to to be an activist.
-Yeah.
-[host] Is that you would use that.
Yes, because because, um,
I I just don't think being aggressive
ever ever works.
You know,
if you meet somebody who disagrees,
first of all, listen to them,
because maybe they've got something that
well, got an idea
that you hadn't thought about.
And then, if you still think
you're on a better track than they are,
how you've got to reach the heart.
It's no good fighting with the head,
'cause they're not going to listen,
especially a big, powerful man, with me.
And So then, fortunately,
as I've lived longer,
I've got more stories,
'cause to reach the heart,
you can usually do it with a story.
Mm-hmm.
I do quite a lot of talks
to CEOs of big corporations.
And this was our CEO in Singapore.
He came up to me afterwards, and he said,
"What tipped the balance for me
was my little girl, eight years old."
"She came home from school one day,
and she said, 'Daddy,
they tell me that what you're doing
is hurting the planet.'"
"'That's not true, is it, Daddy?
'Cause it's my planet.'"
That reached the heart.
And so when I tell that story,
that reaches other hearts.
[host] Mm-hmm. Right.
And, you know,
living through World War II,
when everything was rationed, you learned
not to take things for granted.
[host] Mm-hmm.
So our kids today take things for granted,
but you can't blame them.
-[host] Yes.
-They expect water to come from a tap.
They expect a light to come on
when you turn a switch.
They expect to have food.
It's not their fault
that they take it for granted.
I saw that you you you reuse
your coffee grinds twice, yeah?
[Jane] Yes. Not always.
If I go to a hotel,
uh, you know, every bin,
every paper waste paper thing,
it's got a plastic in.
Well, that means for one day,
maybe four plastic bags are wasted.
So I take it.
There's usually
some paper carton of something
or a used something,
and I put all the waste in that.
I don't use those bags.
And is that It is Is it
is it big mission, little actions?
-Is that kind of the idea?
-Yes. Yes.
Like, if millions of people
do things like that,
it makes big change.
That's the main message of Roots & Shoots.
[host] Yeah.
All right, so, we've sort of come
to the end of the interview.
You are magic,
and this conversation
has been magic for me.
-I want to thank you.
-Ah, it's been interesting for me too.
-I'm really glad.
-Yeah.
I wanna just read a little something here,
uh, as a thank you to you.
"There's no question
you are the 'mother' in Mother Nature."
"You've redefined how we view
our relationship with animals,
the environment, and each other."
"In terms of your impact
in the scientific world,
you stand among the greatest of all time."
"The only hope for our planet's survival
lies in the countless individuals
you've inspired to make a difference."
"You spent almost a half century
traveling the world,
imparting wisdom and hope and guidance
to millions of people."
And now I'm gonna step out,
so you can use this opportunity
to do it one last time.
Yes.
[host] Everybody's gonna wanna know
what you wanna leave us with.
So the death, okay.
Don't be like Macbeth.
"Now is a very witching time of night
when churchyards yawn and hell itself
breathes forth contagion to the night."
"Now I could drink hot blood
and do such bitter deeds
as day would quake to look on."
[host chuckling] I think
if Jane Goodall were to have those
be her final words to the world,
that would be iconic.
[chuckles] I think
people wouldn't believe it.
Hopefully, some people
still read Shakespeare.
Yes, I think so.
If they haven't, they'll be inspired to
after hearing that.
[both chuckle]
And before you step out,
shall we have a toast?
I would never turn down the opportunity
to have a drink with Jane Goodall,
because I feel like that would be a sin
that would follow me the rest of my life.
So, yes, even though everyone forgive me
for the face I'm about to make
as I drink this.
-But
-You don't need to drink it.
-I want to with you so much.
-You can pretend.
No, I can't pretend.
You know, after my mother died,
and six six months, uh,
after her sister died,
and my sister and me were sitting talking,
and I started imagining.
I said, "Oh, can't you see
this beautiful white cloud up there?"
"And Mum's up there."
"And, uh, if there's any heavenly spirit,
she's got it."
"So let's drink a toast."
My sister said,
"Oh, and if our father is up there,
you know, he'll be zooming around
in his Aston Martin
and trying to get Mum for a ride,"
because when he was 80,
he used to sneak away from his second wife
and call Mum every Sunday.
[chuckling] Oh wow.
-So, anyway
-I didn't know that. Wow.
-We can drink to the cloud contingent.
-We'll drink to the cloud contingent.
Anybody dead that you've loved
is up there too.
-I hope they're enjoying it.
-Drink to the cloud contingent.
-And the health of the planet.
-Yes.
And our children and grandchildren.
Drink to the future.
[Jane chuckling]
Mm, I grin.
[host chuckles]
What a delight.
So thank you. I leave you to it.
Thank you, Jane.
[footsteps fading]
In the place where I am now,
I look back over my life.
I look back at the world I've left behind.
What message do I want to leave?
I want to make sure
that you all understand
that each and every one of you
has a role to play.
You may not know it.
You may not find it.
But your life matters,
and you are here for a reason.
And I just hope
that that reason will become apparent
as you live through your life.
I want you to know
that whether or not you find that role
that you're supposed to play,
your life does matter.
And that every single day you live,
you make a difference in the world,
and you get to choose
the difference that you make.
I want you to understand
that we are part of the natural world.
And even today, where the planet is dark,
there still is hope.
Don't lose hope.
If you lose hope,
you become apathetic and do nothing.
And if you want to save
what is still beautiful in this world,
if you want to save the planet
for the future generations,
your grandchildren, their grandchildren,
then think about the actions
you take each day.
Because multiplied a million,
a billion times,
even small actions
will make for great change.
I want to
I I just hope that you understand
that this life on planet Earth
isn't the end.
I believe,
and now I know,
that there is life beyond death,
that consciousness survives.
I can't tell you from where I am
secrets that are not mine to share.
I can't tell you what you will find
when you leave planet Earth.
But I want you to know
that your life on planet Earth
will make some difference
in the kind of life
that you find after you die.
Above all,
I want you to think about the fact
that we are part
when we're on planet Earth,
we are part
of Mother Nature.
We depend on Mother Nature for clean air,
for water, for food,
for clothing, for everything.
And as we destroy
one ecosystem after another,
as we create worse climate change,
worse loss of diversity,
we have to do everything in our power
to make the world a better place
for the children alive today
and for those that will follow.
You have it in your power
to make a difference.
Don't give up.
There is a future for you.
Do your best while you're still on
this beautiful planet Earth
that I look down upon from where I am now.
God bless you all.
[solemn instrumental music playing]
[solemn instrumental music continues]
[music fades out]
[poignant music playing]
[host] Imagine if we had the opportunity
to hear from a cultural icon
after they've passed away.
A chance for them
to shape their own legacy,
to be heard one last time
in their own words.
Dr. Jane Goodall connected humanity
to Mother Nature
in ways we had previously only imagined.
She was a scientist,
a conservationist,
and an educator.
[Jane] We're all interconnected,
and we depend on the natural resources
of this planet,
and they're not infinite.
[host] Her bond with nature
was instinctive
from the time she was a child.
Animals seemed to trust her,
and she credited them as her teachers.
At 26, she traveled to East Africa
to study wild chimpanzees
and made a groundbreaking discovery
that chimps could use and make tools,
something people thought
only humans were capable of.
But Jane didn't just study chimps.
She befriended them,
assigning them names rather than numbers
and following their families
for generations.
The work led her to become
a UN Messenger of Peace
and a battle-tested leader
in the war to save Mother Nature.
Whether she was speaking
before CEOs or world leaders,
Jane's charm and calm demeanor
reached hearts and changed minds,
including in the US,
where she helped end
government testing on chimpanzees.
[chimpanzees chattering]
[host] In more than 70 countries,
Jane empowered generations of young people
through her Roots & Shoots program
to carry on the fight
for a sustainable future.
With her passing,
the world has lost a moral compass
and a relentless force for good.
Before she died, Jane Goodall sat down
for a deeply meaningful conversation,
knowing that what you're about to see
would not air until after she passed away,
even if that meant
locking away the footage for years.
These are Jane Goodall's
Famous Last Words.
-Here, you wanna take my hand?
-[Jane] How do we walk?
[host] We're just gonna walk straight.
We'll hold hands.
[Jane] Whoopsie whoops.
And then we walk around here.
-[host] You're very spry.
-Oh, yes.
You're gonna sit in this chair right here.
-Yes.
-Got some whiskey set up for you already.
-For my throat, for my voice.
-Yes.
-They already poured some in there.
-It got very overused during COVID.
You know,
I was doing up to four Zooms a day.
[host] Wow. Do you like to have
a drink of whiskey
before you start talking?
Would you wanna have that now,
or you wanna wait?
[Jane] Um, yes.
Having a little sip of whiskey
at the beginning of a talk
is sometimes really, really good.
[host] Please do.
-I am not an alcoholic.
-[chuckles]
But I have said to my people,
if you give me more things to do per day,
and my voice gets tighter and tighter,
you may turn me into an alcoholic,
and then the world will blame you
for stopping Jane
from giving out her message.
-Cheers.
-Cheers to you.
I did wanna talk about him.
-[chuckles] Mr. H.
-Mr. H.
Is he always with you?
Yes. He's 34 years old.
He was given to me
by a man called Gary Haun,
which is why he's Mr. H.
Gary Haun thought he was giving me
a stuffed chimpanzee
for my birthday 34 years ago.
It's not a chimpanzee.
And I took his hand,
and I made him hold the tail.
I said, "Gary, chimps don't have tails."
So Gary went blind at 21
when he was in the US Marines.
But, you know,
34 years old is pretty jolly good.
He looks great.
And, of course,
Mr. H. is far more than a toy.
He's a he's a symbol
of the indomitable spirit
because of who gave him to me.
-[host] Mm.
-And he's very famous.
-[host] Very.
-Yes.
Well, welcome, Jane,
welcome, Mr. H., to our set here,
which you can see is different
than most other interview sets
in that there are no cameramen in here.
We have five cameras operated remotely.
[Jane] We seem to have
a little train going around.
Yes, they can move, they
but they can't hear anything we say.
So we are gonna have
a very personal, private conversation
without any worries about the consequences
of what you have to say.
You can speak very honestly
about yourself and the people in your life
and anybody who you have some things
to say about, which could be, uh
[chuckles] 'Cause I'm dead,
so I won't have repercussions.
Exactly. This will not air
until after you have died.
So anyone watching this
is grieving you at the moment
and very excited to hear
a little bit more from you, so
There may be one or two people who say,
"Hey, she's gone!"
I I honestly think
it's o it's only one or two
because I I think you are you are
one of the most beloved people
in the world.
[Jane] And how that happened
is a true mystery to me.
[host] Well, I think other humans
seeing what what's possible,
seeing what a person can be,
what we can be,
that we have someone
committed to a mission of good
and relentlessly working towards that good
is, uh, inspiring to us.
Well, I mean, I only do what I do
because because people get inspired
to do better themselves.
[host] Mm.
All right, so I wanna read, um, your bio,
and it it's quite extensive for you,
so if you'll just allow me.
Dr. Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall.
You were born on April 3rd, 1934
in London, England.
Your mother, Margaret "Mavenwy"
Myfanwe.
-[host] Myfanwe.
-Welsh. Welsh.
[host] Welsh.
Your mother, Margaret Myfanwe
-[chuckles]
-Got it.
was a writer who wrote under the name
Vanne Morris-Goodall.
Your father,
Mortimer Herbert Morris-Goodall,
was an engineer who became
a race car driver for Aston Martin.
You have a younger sister, Judy,
who you share a birthday with
four years apart.
You were married twice.
First to Baron Hugo van Lawick,
a photographer and filmmaker
who captured your research in the wild
for ten years.
You share a son, Hugo, but named Grub,
a master boat and home builder,
who lives in Tanzania with your grandkids,
Angel, Merlin, and Nick.
Tanzania is also where you met
your late husband, Derek Bryceson.
Together, you established
the Gombe National Park,
the birthplace
of your scientific discoveries.
You were married for five years
before he passed away.
Your study of chimps in Tanzania
is the longest-running wildlife study
in history
and the world's
largest scientific database
on humans' closest DNA relative.
You are the woman who redefined man
by showing that chimpanzees
can make and use tools
and have distinct personalities,
minds, and emotions.
And when this is broadcast,
all of your work will be finished.
How does it feel to hear all that?
It just reinforces my belief
that I was put on this planet
to make this journey,
because things happened which took me
Like, for example,
I wanted to go to Africa.
It started when I was ten years old
and I read Tarzan of the Apes.
Before that,
it was animals, animals, animals,
but Tarzan of the Apes,
I fell in love with Tarzan,
was mad when he married the wrong Jane.
-His Jane was a real wimp.
-[chuckles]
And, uh, everybody laughed at me.
"How will you get to Africa?
You don't have money."
My family had little money.
"Africa's far away. It's dangerous."
Back then, we knew
It was called the Dark Continent.
We didn't know much about it.
"It's full of fierce wild animals,"
which, of course, was what I wanted.
"And anyway, you're just a girl."
Girls back then
didn't dream of anything like that.
But Mum said, "If you really want to do
something like this,
you're going to have to work very hard,
take advantage of every opportunity,
and if you don't give up,
I'm sure you'll find a way."
So that was my mother's wisdom.
My supportive, amazing mother,
whom I give credit
a lot of credit as to who I am.
She supported this love of animals,
so that when I was 18 months,
I don't remember, but she told me
that I'd taken a whole lot of earthworms
into my bed,
along with the earth, of course,
and instead of getting angry, she said,
"Jane, you were looking so intently."
"I think you must have been wondering
how they walk without legs."
And when I was four, I was given a job
to help collect hen's eggs.
And the hen would go in, go into the box,
lay her egg in the straw,
and I would open the lid,
get out the egg, and put it in my basket.
So I apparently began asking everybody,
"But where is the hole?
Where does the egg come out of the hen?"
I couldn't see a hole like that,
and nobody answered me.
So what I remember vividly was a hen
who was she was brown,
and she went into one of these hen houses.
I crawled after her, went, and waited.
And my mother
was about to call the police.
Nobody knew where I was,
and I'd been gone four whole hours.
[host chuckles]
And yet when she sees this little girl,
all excited,
instead of, "How dare you go
and do something like that
without telling us?
Don't you dare do it again,"
would have killed the excitement,
she sat to listen to my story.
So I love that story, because isn't that
the making of a little scientist?
Asking questions,
not getting the right answer,
deciding to find out for yourself,
making a mistake,
not giving up, and learning patience.
[host] Hm.
And a different kind of mother might have
crushed that early scientific curiosity,
and I might not be talking to you now.
I was lucky.
I read you told your friends
that you could speak with animals.
[chuckles] Yes, I knew I couldn't, though,
but they believed me.
[host] In watching
and reading about your time
when you first got to the jungle,
you were out alone in the jungle.
This is before you even found the chimps.
-All day.
-Yep.
For days and days, for weeks and weeks,
for months and months.
And yet there was
no experience of boredom for you.
No, because in nature,
there's always something to watch.
You know, there are insects,
and, you know, you can see
such fun things with insects.
I remember once the dung beetles,
you know,
they get into a pile of somebody's shit,
and they make a little ball,
and they roll that ball,
and they they dig a hole.
They drop the ball down,
and they lay their eggs in it.
That's for the young ones to eat.
And so I was watching,
and two came like this.
And this ball was being rolled by two,
one going backwards,
and the other pushing forwards.
This was a lone one,
and the male from the male-female pair
started to fight.
So the female just very quietly moved dung
from the
the lone male's ball onto her ball,
and went off with it. [chuckles]
And, you know,
things like that, people don't notice.
And I'm shocked,
because nature is always
filled with things to look at.
Another example,
I was in the Denver airport,
sparrows can come in,
and there was a little drama going on.
There were two sparrows,
and the female was, you know,
it was courtship,
so she was doing this fluttering,
mouth open,
and down on the ground was a crumb
that somebody dropped.
And clearly the male wanted to feed
his lady love with the crumb.
And so he flew down, and three times,
just as he was about to pick it up,
somebody comes by,
looking at their cell phone,
they just walk by this drama,
and finally he was able to get it
and feed the lady. [chuckles]
I mean, this was
I mean, it took ten minutes,
and it was entertaining.
-There's no need to be bored.
-Right.
When people are watching this,
the world will really be
in collective mourning for you.
I suppose so.
You only suppose so? You don't think so?
I mean, people love you.
I know they come up
and they say they love me.
The the the strange thing is,
they don't actually know me.
There are two Janes.
There's this one,
just talking, and then there's the icon.
The people who don't know me
love the icon.
But it does seem that most people
who do know me also love me.
So why? I don't know.
People say, you know,
"What is it about you?"
What do you think?
Well, I think people trust me.
Uh
I think they like the values
I've always shown that I have.
I don't know. I mean,
this other Jane is a mystery to me.
-[host] The icon is a mystery to you?
-Yeah.
Because, you know,
I know who I am. I'm just me.
And yet people in airports come up
and start to cry.
"Oh my God!"
And I always say,
"I'm not your God. I'm just Jane."
Do you do you remember when
you first realized that icon Jane existed?
I remember, with shock and horror,
the first time something happened.
I was in Santa Fe,
and this elderly couple came up.
And the woman
I mean, this is really weird.
This only happened to me ever once again.
She looked at me,
and she said, "Can I touch you?"
I said, "Oh my What is this?
And [chuckles]
so I said, "Well, we could shake hands."
That happened to me again two years ago.
But normally people,
you know, want to take a selfie
or, uh, want me to sign something.
What do you think she wanted
or needed by touching you?
-What do you think she was trying to?
-I had no idea. I was shocked.
And after that, I suddenly realized,
"Well, somehow this has happened."
"And I think I have
a mission in this life,
so I'll make use of that."
You're always on mission.
-You're always
-I'm always on mission, yeah.
Even even when I'm really tired. I mean,
that's what I'm on this planet for.
I truly believe that.
And I think it's important,
as people turn to you, to say,
"What's the fight? Where's the battle?
Where should we look? What should we do?"
Identifying who the people
who who the battle is against,
I think I think it's important.
Do you have people that you don't like?
Absolutely, there are people I don't like.
And I would like to put them
on one of Musk's spaceships
and send them all off to the planet
he's sure he's going to discover.
Would he be would he be one of them?
-Oh, absolutely. He'd be the host.
-[host chuckles]
And you can imagine
who I'd put on that spaceship.
-Who?
-Along with Musk would be Trump.
And some of Trump's real supporters.
And then I would put Putin in there.
And I would put President Xi.
I'd certainly put Netanyahu in there
and his far-right government.
Put them all on that spaceship
and send them off.
These men seem like not the alpha chimp.
They think they are, but it seems
that their behavior is not, uh
Well, we get,
interestingly, two types of alpha.
One does it all by aggression.
And because they're strong and they fight,
they don't last very long.
Others do it by using their brains,
like a young male will only challenge
a higher-ranking one
if his friend,
often his brother, is with him.
And you know,
they last much, much longer.
-Interesting.
-Mm.
As a scientist who studies behaviors,
wh how do you explain
the behavior like that?
If people behave that way,
how do you make sense of that?
Well [clears throat]
in the '70s,
science of behavior became politicized.
And there was a huge debate
about whether aggression in humans
was innate or learned.
Well, from my study of chimpanzees,
our closest relative,
you know,
we share 98.7% of our DNA with them,
and the behavior is almost identical.
And so I saw them
behaving in dark,
aggressive, brutal ways,
even a kind of primitive war.
Therefore, I believe
that aggression is innate.
-[host] Innate?
-Innate.
And we're born with a tendency
to become aggressive,
just as chimps are.
Chimps see a stranger
from a neighboring community,
and they get all excited,
and their hair stands out,
and they reach out and touch another,
and they've got
these faces of anger and fear,
and it catches,
and the others catch that feeling
that this one male has had,
and they all become aggressive.
So it's contagious.
And humans are susceptible
to that as well?
Yeah, I think so. Some of these, um,
demonstrations that turn aggressive,
it sweeps through them.
They all want to join in
and become aggressive.
I'm not a political analyst
or anything like that.
But in behavioral, for for the chimps,
why do they get caught up in it?
Well, they're protecting their territory
or fighting for dominance.
And is that the same for humans?
Probably sometimes, yes.
But I truly believe
that most people are decent.
-You do?
-Yes.
Ignorance you can reach.
You say evil you can't reach.
-But you believe that you're out there.
-Yes.
Part of your mission is to cure ignorance.
And, you know, as I say, my biggest hope
is raising this new generation
of compassionate citizens,
Roots & Shoots.
But do we have time? I don't know.
It's a really grim time.
Is this is this, in all the years
you have been fighting this fight,
do you feel like
it's the most dangerous time
or the darkest time?
Well, I suppose
if I had been older than five years old
when World War II began,
I would say it's about like that.
But because all of Europe
was defeated or capitulated,
and it looked as though Nazi Germany
would take the world over.
But since then, yes,
this is much the worst time.
When you look back now
on all these moments
when you were relentless
and, uh, shameless
about winning the fight,
is it the mission?
Is it something in you
that just doesn't ever wanna give up?
Never want to give up,
and I'm obstinate, and I won't give up.
That doesn't mean
you don't have moments of depression,
'cause you do.
But then you come out of it and say,
"Okay, I'm not going to let them win."
[host] Mm.
-It's like Churchill in the war.
-Mm.
When Britain was the last nation
standing up to Nazi Germany.
Britain was not prepared for war
because of Chamberlain,
who wanted to capitulate like France,
but we had Churchill
and, you know, his famous speech,
"We'll fight them on the beaches
and we'll fight them in the streets
and the cities."
And then he turned aside to a friend
and was heard to say,
"We'll fight them
with the ends of broken bottles
'cause that's all we've bloody well got."
And he roused the spirit
of the British people.
I guess he was
as obstinate as me. [chuckles]
Do you feel like Churchill
in a war for your mission,
for for for the planet?
Does it feel like a war to you?
Well, it is a sort of war, isn't it?
I haven't thought of it as a war,
but in a way it is.
We talk about a fight.
So I suppose it's a kind of a war.
It's saving Mother Nature.
[host] Right.
And you need you need you need
a Churchill in that fight who says,
"We're never we're never quitting,
even when it's the darkest."
Yes, and give people hope.
One thing people say to me
from all over, they
It's been said to me
again and again and again,
you know,
"Whatever situation you're in," they say,
"you're calm."
"How can you stay so calm?"
And
So I think it's because of all the months
and months I spent in the rainforest,
and I keep that.
Right. We talked a little about the idea
of boredom, but also the idea of luck.
Yes, luck.
I think a lot of people
could look and say,
"Well, a friend happened to tell you
about Dr. Leakey."
He was probably the world's
most famous paleontologist at the time,
and he happened to have needed
a secretary.
Yes, somebody said, as you said,
uh, "If you're interested in animals,
you should meet Louis Leakey."
But when I met him,
he was head of the Natural History Museum
in Nairobi.
He took me all around,
asked me lots of questions.
I could answer most of them
'cause I'd read about every book
on animals in Africa
that I could lay my hands on.
There weren't many back then.
And guess what?
Just before I arrived,
his secretary had left.
And he wanted a secretary,
and there I was.
It was not a normal secretarial job.
I was in his office, which was huge
and filled with skulls and bones,
and, you know,
sometimes people had brought in
animals and so on.
And I rescued a little pygmy bush baby,
about this big, with big ears.
And for some odd reason,
I called him Levi,
I don't know why,
and he came with me to work.
And he liked They sleep in the day,
so he would sleep in a gourd,
which was right over Leakey's desk.
But if a visitor came in,
little Levi's head
would peep out of the gourd.
He'd look down at the visitor.
And then he would
And Leakey knew this was gonna happen.
He'd jump onto the unsuspecting visitor.
But when a bush baby jumps,
they want their hands to be able to grip.
So they'd pee on them.
[chuckles]
So, you know, imagine the fun.
And then the key thing was
that Leakey let me go with him,
his wife, and another young, uh, girl
on a trip to Olduvai Gorge,
now a very famous site of early man.
But back then,
no fossil human fossils had been found.
Three months in the middle of nowhere.
Serengeti as nobody
will ever see it again.
Animals everywhere.
And Gillian and I would work hard all day
digging for fossils.
And then we were allowed out,
uh, to have a walk.
And the animals were there.
So one evening,
there was a young male lion,
fully grown,
mane just starting on his shoulders.
He was standing looking,
tail waving gently.
I think he was curious.
Gillian panicked.
She wanted us to hide in the vegetation.
I said, "Gillian,
the lion will know where we are."
"We won't have a clue where the lion is."
"We must climb up onto the plains
from the gorge," not very far,
"so he sees that we're not a threat,"
which is what we did.
And I think it was that evening
around the campfire
that Leakey decided that I was the person
he'd been looking for to study chimps.
So it was a a way
that was part destiny, part luck,
part determination.
Do you believe in destiny?
I believe that we have
a path that we should take,
but that we have free will.
We don't have to make the choice.
And I believe, looking back in my life,
I've taken the right
the right turn.
I mean, if if I'm right
that I was born with a mission,
then it was the voice
of that, mm spiritual entity
that put me on the planet.
[host] Do you believe in God?
I believe in a great spiritual power.
I have to believe in it
because it's helped me so often.
And do you think that spiritual power
has also protected you out in the wild?
[Jane] I'm sure it has.
I just feel it it has to be.
You have a magic when it comes to nature.
Obviously, you have a magic
that others don't have
that Leakey saw.
It wasn't just that you were a woman
and he thought a woman would be better.
It wasn't just that you were good
at being nonthreatening.
There's some other magic you have
that the
It is a magic.
And strange things I do have strange
Like, I was just talking
to a group of people.
We were having a party, just with friends.
And one person said,
"I was somewhere
where Jane stopped the rain,"
and they laughed.
And I said, "No, it's true."
What ha How did you do it?
Well, I just
asked the rain to stop.
And it Most times, it doesn't listen
when we ask the rain
No, I know,
but it happened again in Malaysia,
and I was with this small, tiny group.
She was a sheikha, you know,
the wife of a sheik, powerful lady.
And it was the monsoon season,
which starts like clockwork.
And, uh, somehow, I don't know,
we got it a bit wrong.
And just before the end,
when two little boys were going to make
a wee presentation of Roots & Shoots,
the first big drops fell.
And she said, "We better go inside."
And I said,
"No, let's hold hands around the table
and ask the rain
just to give us half an hour."
And it stopped.
You always had that kind of connection
where you actually talk and it talks back?
Well, you know, it's only recently
I've begun putting it all together
and saying that I don't know.
It doesn't happen that often.
Besides speaking chimp,
actually speaking the language of chimp,
with animals, there is a connection
that's very real and pure
and nonverbal with them.
-I think so.
-And with nature in general.
It's what
You know, it's what kept you safe,
I imagine, out in the jungle
all that time, for the most part.
Well, maybe,
but I learned something interesting.
You know, when I first went,
it was Tanganyika,
was a British protectorate.
And so the British authorities
told Leakey,
"We're not taking responsibility
for something as stupid
as sending a girl into the forest,"
but he never gave up.
So in the end, they said,
"All right, but she can't come alone."
That's why Mum volunteered to come.
So we stepped onto the shore,
and we'd been told there was a headman,
and we'd been told to bring him a gift,
so we gave it to him.
Very soon after that,
Mum had this little clinic,
and the fishermen began queuing up.
She only had aspirins and Epsom salts
and saline drips and things like that.
But she spent time with people,
and she made some amazing cures,
so that word spread.
And so I learned much, much, much later,
two of our field staff,
I was talking to them,
and they said,
"That guy, Idi Matata, the headman,
he was the most infamous witch doctor
the area's ever known."
And so Idi told all the fishermen
they were to help me,
and they told
he told the animals not to hurt me.
-He told the animals?
-Yes. That's what I learned years later.
So how do we know?
How do we know?
There's so much we have still to discover,
you know, and I know when I'm gone,
there'll be more and more discovered
if we can save the planet in time.
[host] Mm-hmm.
Where where are you now
as people are watching this?
What's what's next?
Well, you know, when you die,
there's either nothing,
in which case nothing,
or there's something.
And from all the experiences I've read,
you know, the near-death experiences,
the books I've read,
and my own personal experience
after my second husband, Derek, died,
I believe there is something.
What was that experience?
After he died, it was one night,
and Derek appeared,
and he was smiling, and he was telling me,
you know, everything was going to be fine,
and he was fine,
and then he kind of disappeared
after that.
All I was left with was he was okay.
Wow.
And reincarnation kind of makes sense.
I mean, a lot of religions
talk about an old soul.
An old soul has been back
in different forms,
and, you know, they gradually, gradually
acquire knowledge and wisdom.
I've Many people have told me
I'm an old soul.
Yeah, if if if if we keep coming back,
reincarnating in order to to evolve,
I feel like you're done.
-I feel like this is it for you.
-Well, I hope so.
[chuckling] I don't want to come back.
Do you think
people come back as the dung beetle,
or they come back always as humans
with other opportunities?
I I personally think
that we come back as humans.
[host] Mm.
Because, you know, we've evolved
to a different kind of level.
And I don't know
Well, maybe some humans
should go back down there.
You've mentioned a couple
on that rocket ship, I think.
[Jane] Maybe they come back.
Though those dung beetles seem
very happy and productive.
Yes, I wouldn't want them
to be dung beetles.
I think [chuckling]
I don't know what I'd want them to be.
Oh, yes, they could be
the poor, wretched animals
who are used in laboratories
to test medicines on.
Let them be those.
-[host] And learn.
-And learn.
One thing I was very moved by
was that in Gombe,
there were certain chimps
that you clearly had
a closer relationship with.
You had David Greybeard,
who, you know, famously showed you
that they can use tools.
-Yeah.
-[host] You had Flo and her son Flint.
And when Flo died,
that Flint, her her son
-Yeah.
-died of grief, of a broken heart.
Yes. He stopped eating.
And, um, out in the tropics
when an animal dies,
very, very quickly, flies lay their eggs.
-[host] Mm-hmm.
-And they're white.
And so chimps are
very used to dead animals
who don't move and with these white eggs.
And Flint, when Flo died,
he came down about five or six times,
took his mother's hand.
He wanted her to groom him.
So he took her dead hand.
And then I think
it was the fifth time he came down,
a fly had laid eggs in her ear,
and there were these white eggs
in her ear.
And he poked them,
looked at his finger, ran away,
rubbed his finger on the ground like that,
and never went near her again.
It was as though some something clicked.
"She's not going to move again."
And after that, he climbed a tree
where I had watched them nest
before she died,
just a few days before she died.
and he walked very slowly along the branch
to where their joint nest was.
And he just stood there,
and he looked at it for about a minute.
And then he turned slowly,
walked away, climbed down,
curled up on the ground, and that was it.
Yeah, it was very sad.
[host] So when you die,
who are the people that you love the most
who will be there to welcome you?
I have no idea.
I just don't know,
but I just hope and pray
that some of the chimps,
that my special chimps,
David Greybeard, um, Rusty,
my childhood dog, Rusty,
and some of the others,
I I hope they'll be there.
And, of course, I hope Mum.
And, um Yeah.
What about, uh, Derek or Hugo?
-Or your husbands?
-Well
Wouldn't matter so much.
-[host] How come?
-I don't know.
[host] Did you feel that kind of closeness
you felt with the chimps or
with Hugo or Derek,
the men you were married to,
or your mom, that you felt, uh?
Uh, Mum was different,
and obviously it was
a different kind of, you know, love.
These things are different.
There's lots of kinds of love.
And the love that I had for Derek
and for Hugo and for Mum
were all different from the love I had
with with David Greybeard and Rusty.
I I think it's interesting that, um,
like, when it comes
when it came to romance in your life,
was it something that you felt deeply?
I find it interesting that you're saying
that you don't have the same the same
thoughts of them greeting you, that
that the ones who you love the most.
[sighs]
Because
Let me talk about how I was,
and I think about how I was,
that
It's difficult to explain,
but in some ways,
the two marriages I made were made
Like, Hugo helped the course I'm on
by his film.
Derek helped the course I'm on
because four of my students
were kidnapped in 1974.
Gombe was closed,
and, but for Derek, it would have ended.
And had it been otherwise,
I know I shouldn't have married
either of them,
because both of them
were insanely jealous.
Even if I had a girlfriend,
insanely jealous.
Hugo was
more interested in his career
than his son,
in some ways, although he loved him.
Um,
Derek was
Neither of them could bear the fact
that I was, you know,
successful in my career,
even though Derek was a minister
and everything.
And so you got you got married
because it was practical?
No, I was in love at the time.
-[host] You were in love?
-Yes.
But looking back on it,
I wasn't enough in love.
Right. [chuckles]
[Jane] And looking back on it,
it looks as though I married them
for a practical reason.
I didn't at the time.
But but I'm looking back on how I was,
not as I am.
Right. Was there ever a man
who you didn't end up marrying
who you did feel that kind of love,
that somebody that that got away?
There was one married man, yes.
-[host] Who was that?
-No.
No. I mean, you're
now's the time if you're going to.
Now's the time I'm dead,
but probably this man has relatives, no.
If we don't talk about him specifically,
but talk about
what it was you felt for him
Well, we both have the same interests,
the same passion for animals.
Uh
He had a wife that, you know,
he wasn't that passionate about anymore.
Uh, I was between marriages at that time.
And there was no chance of him leaving her
and you guys being together?
No.
[host] Was that a heartbreak?
It was sad at the time.
Yeah.
Do you, um,
Do you have any regrets about
looking back at your life?
Uh, well, I would for my son's sake,
I would like
the first marriage to have worked.
But there were so many ways
in which it it really didn't.
[host] Hm. Did he take the divorce hard?
Did Grub take the divorce hard?
I think he did. Yeah.
But, um
How did that how did that show up?
How did he How did you know?
Well, because he became rather silent.
And But it wasn't a real bad upset.
'Cause he didn't have that good a time
with his father.
[host] Right.
He just wasn't maybe somebody
who was made to be
a very involved father.
[Jane] I think something like that.
I mean, there was one
It was Grub's first known Christmas.
He was two.
And we were on the Serengeti,
uh, or Ngorongoro.
And, uh, the wildebeest, you know,
they they migrate, and a certain time,
they swim across a river.
-And it's very dramatic to film.
-Mm.
And so a film team,
I think it was Japanese,
came and asked Hugo to show them
where this would happen.
Hugo had filmed it already.
And so he told them.
And it was Christmas Day.
We found a little
It wasn't a proper Christmas tree,
but Grub was going,
"Daddy's coming, and we're going to have
presents at lunchtime."
And the team, afterwards they said,
"We kept telling your husband,
'We don't need you now.'"
"'You've shown us
where this will happen.'"
"'It's Christmas.
You need to go back to your family.'"
He never He stayed out all day.
That I think that was
the thing that cinched it for me.
-You were done.
-It was horrible.
It was like, you know,
this little boy was so excited.
[inhales sharply]
Yeah. Maybe he was three, even,
I can't remember.
Of course, I've never told Grub that,
so maybe he's listening now.
So sorry, Grub.
Do you have any guilt
about how you raised him?
No, because I wasn't away from him one day
until he was after three, one night.
So as he is now,
the Flint in the situation,
sitting, watching this, grieving you,
what would you say to him?
Oh, what would I say to to him?
We have a relationship that's closer now
than it has been for some time.
And I think he resented the fact that
I mean, he's he's remembering
that I left him for the chimps,
which isn't true.
-[host] Hm.
-He now knows that.
That's why we've got closer again.
So,
I think all I say to him is,
Grub, I did my best for you,
and, I think,
somehow made a pretty good job of it
because I'm proud of you.
I think that's something
that a son would wanna hear
from their mother more than anything,
that that I mean, he knows you love him,
but that you're proud of him.
Yeah, I've told him.
I'm proud of my grandchildren too.
Do you have any messages for them
from from the beyond?
I know you'll be sorry I'm not here,
but, uh, you'll be carrying on
the same kind of effort
that I made
to make the world a better place.
-And you know my spirit's with you.
-[host] Mm.
And I'll know what you're doing.
[host] This is a moment right now,
as people are watching this,
where maybe the biggest story in the world
is that you've passed away.
I think it'll be a global story.
I think there'll be global mourning.
I think a lot of people
will be talking about who you were.
So who would you say you were?
I would say
I was somebody sent to this world
to try to give people hope in dark times,
because without hope,
we fall into apathy and do nothing.
And in the dark times
that we are living in now,
if people don't have hope, we're doomed.
And how can we bring little children
into this dark world we've created
and let them be surrounded
by people who've given up?
[host] Mm.
So even even if this is
the end of humanity as we know it,
let's fight to the very end.
Let's let the children know, you know,
that there is hope if they get together.
And even if it becomes
impossible for anybody,
it's better to go on fighting to the end
than just to give up and say, "Okay."
[host] And if I asked ten-year-old Jane,
"Who are you?"
What would she say?
I would say
I'm just an ordinary little girl,
rather shy, um, but also quite obstinate,
and that I want to go to Africa,
and I want to live with animals.
I feel like there's a difference between
the Jane answer and the icon Jane answer.
The first one was the icon Jane answer,
and the second was the Jane answer.
That's right.
It seems like your understanding
of yourself was pretty clear at ten.
Yeah, I knew what I wanted to do.
-[host] And you knew who you were.
-I knew who I was.
Is it hard
to think about leaving the fight?
Well, I've fought for so long.
I think I've probably been accomplishing
the reason I was put on this planet.
And there comes a time
when I'm really ready
to hand over to others
that have picked up the same spirit.
Is there a certain feeling of relief
that you'll be able to put that down?
Sometimes, I think, "Oh goodness."
[chuckles] "I really don't want to go on."
And it's getting harder,
because the world is getting darker.
And it's, um
You know, it's not just in the US,
but this swing to the far right,
which is harming the environment
so terribly.
We're in the midst
of the sixth great extinction.
-[host] Mm-hmm.
-We've got climate change.
And, you know,
everywhere I go, things are different.
Yeah, and I think if anybody reads about
those other five extinction events,
you don't wanna be part of those.
You don't wanna be around
for when those happen.
It's not it's not pleasant for anyone.
It would be horrible,
and that's why action must be now.
I have no doubt that we have the tools
to make the change,
but do we have the will
to make the change?
And it seems
with some of the top politicians
and corrupt corporations,
there is no such will.
The reason why you claim
that you were able
to connect with the chimps
was that you were not threatening to them.
[Jane] Mm.
And then what I've read is
you used that same technique
to to be an activist.
-Yeah.
-[host] Is that you would use that.
Yes, because because, um,
I I just don't think being aggressive
ever ever works.
You know,
if you meet somebody who disagrees,
first of all, listen to them,
because maybe they've got something that
well, got an idea
that you hadn't thought about.
And then, if you still think
you're on a better track than they are,
how you've got to reach the heart.
It's no good fighting with the head,
'cause they're not going to listen,
especially a big, powerful man, with me.
And So then, fortunately,
as I've lived longer,
I've got more stories,
'cause to reach the heart,
you can usually do it with a story.
Mm-hmm.
I do quite a lot of talks
to CEOs of big corporations.
And this was our CEO in Singapore.
He came up to me afterwards, and he said,
"What tipped the balance for me
was my little girl, eight years old."
"She came home from school one day,
and she said, 'Daddy,
they tell me that what you're doing
is hurting the planet.'"
"'That's not true, is it, Daddy?
'Cause it's my planet.'"
That reached the heart.
And so when I tell that story,
that reaches other hearts.
[host] Mm-hmm. Right.
And, you know,
living through World War II,
when everything was rationed, you learned
not to take things for granted.
[host] Mm-hmm.
So our kids today take things for granted,
but you can't blame them.
-[host] Yes.
-They expect water to come from a tap.
They expect a light to come on
when you turn a switch.
They expect to have food.
It's not their fault
that they take it for granted.
I saw that you you you reuse
your coffee grinds twice, yeah?
[Jane] Yes. Not always.
If I go to a hotel,
uh, you know, every bin,
every paper waste paper thing,
it's got a plastic in.
Well, that means for one day,
maybe four plastic bags are wasted.
So I take it.
There's usually
some paper carton of something
or a used something,
and I put all the waste in that.
I don't use those bags.
And is that It is Is it
is it big mission, little actions?
-Is that kind of the idea?
-Yes. Yes.
Like, if millions of people
do things like that,
it makes big change.
That's the main message of Roots & Shoots.
[host] Yeah.
All right, so, we've sort of come
to the end of the interview.
You are magic,
and this conversation
has been magic for me.
-I want to thank you.
-Ah, it's been interesting for me too.
-I'm really glad.
-Yeah.
I wanna just read a little something here,
uh, as a thank you to you.
"There's no question
you are the 'mother' in Mother Nature."
"You've redefined how we view
our relationship with animals,
the environment, and each other."
"In terms of your impact
in the scientific world,
you stand among the greatest of all time."
"The only hope for our planet's survival
lies in the countless individuals
you've inspired to make a difference."
"You spent almost a half century
traveling the world,
imparting wisdom and hope and guidance
to millions of people."
And now I'm gonna step out,
so you can use this opportunity
to do it one last time.
Yes.
[host] Everybody's gonna wanna know
what you wanna leave us with.
So the death, okay.
Don't be like Macbeth.
"Now is a very witching time of night
when churchyards yawn and hell itself
breathes forth contagion to the night."
"Now I could drink hot blood
and do such bitter deeds
as day would quake to look on."
[host chuckling] I think
if Jane Goodall were to have those
be her final words to the world,
that would be iconic.
[chuckles] I think
people wouldn't believe it.
Hopefully, some people
still read Shakespeare.
Yes, I think so.
If they haven't, they'll be inspired to
after hearing that.
[both chuckle]
And before you step out,
shall we have a toast?
I would never turn down the opportunity
to have a drink with Jane Goodall,
because I feel like that would be a sin
that would follow me the rest of my life.
So, yes, even though everyone forgive me
for the face I'm about to make
as I drink this.
-But
-You don't need to drink it.
-I want to with you so much.
-You can pretend.
No, I can't pretend.
You know, after my mother died,
and six six months, uh,
after her sister died,
and my sister and me were sitting talking,
and I started imagining.
I said, "Oh, can't you see
this beautiful white cloud up there?"
"And Mum's up there."
"And, uh, if there's any heavenly spirit,
she's got it."
"So let's drink a toast."
My sister said,
"Oh, and if our father is up there,
you know, he'll be zooming around
in his Aston Martin
and trying to get Mum for a ride,"
because when he was 80,
he used to sneak away from his second wife
and call Mum every Sunday.
[chuckling] Oh wow.
-So, anyway
-I didn't know that. Wow.
-We can drink to the cloud contingent.
-We'll drink to the cloud contingent.
Anybody dead that you've loved
is up there too.
-I hope they're enjoying it.
-Drink to the cloud contingent.
-And the health of the planet.
-Yes.
And our children and grandchildren.
Drink to the future.
[Jane chuckling]
Mm, I grin.
[host chuckles]
What a delight.
So thank you. I leave you to it.
Thank you, Jane.
[footsteps fading]
In the place where I am now,
I look back over my life.
I look back at the world I've left behind.
What message do I want to leave?
I want to make sure
that you all understand
that each and every one of you
has a role to play.
You may not know it.
You may not find it.
But your life matters,
and you are here for a reason.
And I just hope
that that reason will become apparent
as you live through your life.
I want you to know
that whether or not you find that role
that you're supposed to play,
your life does matter.
And that every single day you live,
you make a difference in the world,
and you get to choose
the difference that you make.
I want you to understand
that we are part of the natural world.
And even today, where the planet is dark,
there still is hope.
Don't lose hope.
If you lose hope,
you become apathetic and do nothing.
And if you want to save
what is still beautiful in this world,
if you want to save the planet
for the future generations,
your grandchildren, their grandchildren,
then think about the actions
you take each day.
Because multiplied a million,
a billion times,
even small actions
will make for great change.
I want to
I I just hope that you understand
that this life on planet Earth
isn't the end.
I believe,
and now I know,
that there is life beyond death,
that consciousness survives.
I can't tell you from where I am
secrets that are not mine to share.
I can't tell you what you will find
when you leave planet Earth.
But I want you to know
that your life on planet Earth
will make some difference
in the kind of life
that you find after you die.
Above all,
I want you to think about the fact
that we are part
when we're on planet Earth,
we are part
of Mother Nature.
We depend on Mother Nature for clean air,
for water, for food,
for clothing, for everything.
And as we destroy
one ecosystem after another,
as we create worse climate change,
worse loss of diversity,
we have to do everything in our power
to make the world a better place
for the children alive today
and for those that will follow.
You have it in your power
to make a difference.
Don't give up.
There is a future for you.
Do your best while you're still on
this beautiful planet Earth
that I look down upon from where I am now.
God bless you all.
[solemn instrumental music playing]
[solemn instrumental music continues]
[music fades out]