If you have Netflix and you haven’t watched this yet, you should. It’s 55 minutes very well spent. The interview was recorded with the specific intention to offer it for streaming after Jane Goodall’s death.
There are few surprises – she was a genuinely good person, and a wise one – but she’s magnetic in her serenity and honesty and insight. In particular, her true last words, after the interviewer gets up and leaves the room at the end and she’s left alone with the remotely-operated cameras, are important for everyone to hear. I don’t care what political axe you may have to grind, if any. If you aren’t touched by her humanity, I am sorry for you.
I’ve refrained from saying anything about her death, because it’s outside the arts and not really in my wheelhouse – but it is, really, since her mission was always a holistic one and what happens to any of us affects all of us, human or animal.
Don’t react to anything you may have read in the press or on social media about what she says in the interview. There’s too much tendency in the modern world to have kneejerk reactions to soundbites. Real life isn’t tabloid news, and Jane encourages us to really listen to one another. I hope you will watch and listen and really take it all in.
There’s no questioning that hers was a life well-lived. I hope her vision of what the Hereafter may hold for her spirit has come to pass. If anyone has earned it, she has.
Just a clip from “Famous Last Words: Dr. Jane Goodall”:
On Netflix here: