In Her Final Reflections, Jane Goodall Issues a Warning: “Without Hope, We Fall Into Apathy”

For many of us, Jane Goodall was one of those cul­tur­al fig­ures who seemed always to have been around, and on some lev­el, made us feel like she always would be. But of course, no human being lives for­ev­er, no mat­ter how wide­ly admired. Goodall made her own depar­ture last fall, in the mid­dle of an Amer­i­can speak­ing tour, at the age of 91. Just two days there­after, she appeared as the guest on the pre­miere of Net­flix’s Famous Last Words, a pro­gram con­sist­ing of inter­views con­duct­ed express­ly to air only after the inter­vie­wee’s death. In the clip above, the show’s host, TV writer-direc­tor-pro­duc­er Brad Falchuk, asks her an out­ward­ly sim­ple ques­tion: “Who would you say you were?”

Goodall describes her­self as “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. How can we bring lit­tle chil­dren into this dark world we’ve cre­at­ed and let them be sur­round­ed by peo­ple who’ve giv­en up? So 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 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.’ ” These are fine words, though it may sur­prise some of us that they make no men­tion of chimps.

Though she became famous as a pri­ma­tol­o­gist, and specif­i­cal­ly as an expert on chim­panzees, Goodall devot­ed much ener­gy in her lat­er decades to tak­ing action on broad­er caus­es. These includ­ed envi­ron­men­tal con­ser­va­tion and the secu­ri­ty of life on Earth itself, which she saw as imper­iled by the actions of cer­tain gov­ern­ments and polit­i­cal actors. When Falchuk asks who she does­n’t like, she express­es her desire to send per­ma­nent­ly into space Elon Musk, Don­ald Trump and “some of his real sup­port­ers,” Vladimir Putin, Xi Jin­ping, Ben­jamin Netanyahu and “his far-right gov­ern­ment.” That answer may get us won­der­ing whether the result­ing pow­er vac­u­ums would be filled by more or less savory char­ac­ters. The entire inter­view will leave us with anoth­er, per­haps more trou­bling ques­tion: who, today, could be suit­ed to assume the place in pub­lic life left behind by Jane Goodall?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Remem­ber­ing Jane Goodall (RIP): Watch Jane, the Acclaimed Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Doc­u­men­tary

Ani­mat­ed: The Inspi­ra­tional Sto­ry of Jane Goodall, and Why She Believes in Big­foot

Google Street View Lets You Walk in Jane Goodall’s Foot­steps and Vis­it the Chim­panzees of Tan­za­nia

The Last Inter­view Book Series Fea­tures the Final Words of Cul­tur­al Icons: Borges to Bowie, Philip K. Dick to Fri­da Kahlo

The Celebri­ty Encoun­ters of Koko the Goril­la. For Her 43rd Birth­day Today

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.