And it's my very great pleasure to be talking today

to the one and only, Jane Goodall.

Hello, Jane.

- Well, hello, Margaret. I'm Jane.

And you are the one and only Margaret as well.

So we're both talking to one and only.

(Both laughs)

(orchestral music)

- So when I'm writing a novel,

I always decide what year the person is born.

And then I know what was happening to them

when they were 10 and what was happening in the world,

and when they were 20, and when they were 30.

So you were born in 1934.

And that means in The Depression.

And then, when you were six or five-

- Five.

- along came World War II.

Where were you living then?

- Just before the war, like six months before,

my father took a house in Le Touquet in France

'cause he wanted and my sister to grow up speaking French.

For some odd reason, he didn't speak French.

I was there with my sister, mom, and her friend,

and two kids.

And then learning French, haha, we'd been there three months

and war broke out and we had to leave.

So we went to my father's mother's farm for three months

and then came where I'm speaking from now,

my grandmother's house, which is now a family house.

Well, I was born apparently,

loving to watch anything that crept, crawled, flew, ran.

We had a dog, we had a cat.

And then as soon as we got here to Barmouth,

I spent all my time watching animals in the garden

on the cliffs above the sea.

Before we go on with me, it's your turn now.

You were born in what-

- Yes. I was born in '39.

So two months after war broke out.

So in fact my whole early childhood was spent

in that period.

And my childhood was similar to yours

in the animal watching department.

Although possibly more so

because we are in the Quebec, North Woods.

And did a lot of frog watching

and turning over of logs in case there might be a neut

or a snake.

And my dad was a forest entomologist.

So in an early conservation,

it's like very early,

the period when people thought you were kind of lunatic

if you were interested in those things.

So I sort of grew up that way.

But I don't imagine that your family was saying,

"Jane we want you to grow up and go off

and study temperatures.

- No, no, no. Not (indistinct).

My childhood, you know,

the other thing apart from being outside with nature,

books, books, books, no television.

Must have been the same for you, really?

It was. Yes.

- So books, books, books.

And I was only about 10 when my grandmother...

And I was only about 10 when my grandmother...

You know, in those days, if you saved up coupons,

I think this was from packets of cereal.

- You will get something free.

Now you save it up and you get half price off,

but you still have to pay.

But in those days you didn't have to pay.

And she got me this book, The Miracle of Life,

which is just being reprinted.

It's not for children at all.

It goes right through evolution and Darwin

and ends up with the human anatomy and medicine.

But I spent...

I mean, it was one of my most favorite, favorite books

along, of course, with a fiction,

which was Tarzan Dr. Dolittle spec.

(Margaret laughs)

- So I was 10 when I fell in love with Tarzan.

Was very jealous 'cause he married the wrong Jane.

Well, he did.

I'm quite sure he did.

Anyway, I knew there wasn't a Tarzan,

but that was when my dream began.

Go to Africa, live with wild of animals

and write books about them

- Which brings us to the next thing

that people always ask about about.

I bet they ask you too.

And that's the hope word.

- The hope word.

- The hope word. Where do you get hope?

- I think you should start that one off.

- Well, okay.

So my answer usually is why not.

(both laughs)

So if you're not hopeful,

things are going to get less hopeful.

And if you are hopeful, that may generate more hope,

and actually inspire people to take action.

Because if you don't have any hope,

then there's no use doing anything.

- I quite agree.

- So people who say we're doomed,

I'm just not interested in that.

It doesn't generate any sort of positive activity.

- I see.

Hope is something tied into action.

And so I see like we're in a very dark tunnel right now.

There's no question.

We've got climate change, we've got loss of biodiversity,

we've got the pandemic, we've got racial discrimination,

you know, we've got all these problems.

And so that's the dark tunnel.

And right at the end is a little spec of light.

And we don't just sit at the end of the tunnel

and hope that light will come.

- I think this is gonna be not possible to answer

but I'm gonna give it a crack.

Where have you found the most meaning in your life?

- Well, the most rewarding has been to see the effect

that I can have as a gift given of communication

on audiences.

It's very rewarding when 5,000 or 10,000 people

jump to their feet and applaud. And you know,

I miss that a lot being grounded in the pandemic.

And so I'm having to give virtual lectures.

So I'm looking at this little green spec

on top of the laptop and you know,

you don't get any feedback.

You say something funny, nobody laughs,

you say something sad, nobody has hands up to their eyes.

And yet if I don't put the same energy and emotion

and enthusiasm into those talks,

there's no point doing them.

It was incredibly rewarding

when the chimpanzees lost their fear of me

after four months.

A lot of things with animals, you know

when you overcome the fear of an animal.

I mean, I have lunch every day under my favorite beach tree

and a little robin comes along and he'll now sit on my hand.

- My turn. Well, I can't...

I find it a very difficult question to answer

because a lot of things have been rewarding,

but I don't think that's why you do them.

I don't think you do them necessarily,

so you will get rewarded.

I think you do them

because you think that that's what you should do.

And I'm sure it's the same for you.

(indistinct)

And some of the things that we have done

have been not rewarding

because people did not at first receive them well,

but we did them anyway.

The conversations around feminism,

if we accept it as the basic premise

that women are human beings and not to have equal rights,

that is an ongoing effort, but it has changed a lot.

- Oh, so much.

'40s actually, women were very active,

but it's the usual thing with revolutions and wars,

you know.

Women are very instrumental, very helpful,

and then they're told, that's enough of you.

We're finished with that, you know.

Back to the bungalow

and there's a washing machine to make you feel happier.

Were you told you couldn't do things

because you were female?

- Yeah, I was, of course.

When I wanted to go and live with wild animals,

everybody laughed at me.

But you see, I had this amazing mother.

- Oh yeah. So did I have one.

- Yeah. She said, "If you really want to do this,

you're going to have to work very hard

and take advantage of every opportunity.

And if you don't give up, maybe you find a way."

'Cause for me, it wasn't just being a girl,

it was 'cause we didn't have money.

- Right.

- The war was raging when I thought,

Africa was still the dark continent.

We didn't know much about it.

It was full of danger.

But you know, having this supportive mother

and a wonderful family.

And you know, so I wasn't in the midst of it,

I was stuck away in Gambia and not thinking about feminism.

I just missed it all together.

And it didn't impinge on me.

The scientists were kind of scornful at first

of the findings of this young girl.

And though I only got credit because the geographic came in

and they only came in with money because I had nice legs.

And if that was said now, you know, it would be shocking.

- Very shocking.

But back then, I thought,

well, if geographic came in because of my legs,

then thank you legs.

I mean, you know, I don't care.

I just want to study the tombs.

And I didn't really care what people said.

I mean, it's true.

- Yes. Well, the main thing about your legs

is that they made it able for you to walk around a lot.

- Yeah. Up and down the hills. Yep.

And you know, I've watched...

Did you see that film, Jane, that the geographic just made?

- No, I haven't seen that, but I will.

- If you see it, you'll see my legs and they're not bad.

(both laughs)

- So you've been very interested in how great a Tombaugh

and that movement.

Extinction, rebellion, but also your roots and shoots.

And that has been a huge success.

- We have 65 countries and growing.

- Yeah. It's wonderful.

- Even during the pandemic,

we've had new Jane Goodall institutes,

but, of course, Roots and Shoots is part of all of them,

all 24.

One new one in India,

with Roots and Shoots rushing across India,

and the other one in Turkey.

- Wow. Turkey? - Turkey.

- And how is that going?

- Super well.

- Wow.

- And we're all over China.

We've got about 2,000 groups in China still.

- And the government hasn't shut it down.

- No. They love it.

And they keep asking me for stories to go on.

It's their equivalent of Facebook.

- Yes.

And they're very keen on environment within China now.

Really.

- Well, that would be huge if they could turn around

and cut their emissions.

- Yep.

So you probably know

about an online thing called Project Drawdown.

Which tells you...

It has these statistics, it's got the cost,

it's got the benefits for all of the things

that we are doing now.