[This talk is delivered in Spanish with consecutive English translation] (Rayma Suprani: Speaks Spanish) Cloe Shasha: When I was a little girl, I used to draw on all the walls of my house.
(RS: Speaks Spanish) CS: Until one day, my mother got angry and told me, "You can only draw on one wall.
Don't draw on any others."
(Laughter) (Speaks Spanish) That was the first time I experienced an act of totalitarian censorship.
(Laughter) (Speaks Spanish) But a lack of freedom stimulates creativity and empowers it.
(Speaks Spanish) Many years have passed since my childhood, but throughout my formal studies, I found myself drawing in the margins of my notebooks instead of paying attention to my professors.
I studied journalism in college with the intention of expanding my communication and writing skills, but the only thing that I felt connected to in life was drawing.
(Speaks Spanish) I was born in a democracy, in a country called Venezuela, which is now a dictatorship.
(Speaks Spanish) For 19 years, I was the daily cartoonist for "El Universal," one of the biggest newspapers in Venezuela.
I really enjoyed translating political and cultural current events into drawings.
(Speaks Spanish) In the year 2014, I got fired from my job at the newspaper over a cartoon that I drew alluding to the health care system in Venezuela.
I drew a flat line of a heartbeat monitor, but I intentionally drew the heartbeat line in a way that resembled the signature of Hugo Chavez, the former president of Venezuela.
(Laughter) (Speaks Spanish) All of this happened after the newspaper was bought by an unknown company, and some of us suspect that it was the Venezuelan government who was behind that deal.
(Speaks Spanish) My work as a cartoonist became more and more of a nuisance for the dictatorship.
They have no tolerance for any freedom of expression or free thinking.
(Speaks Spanish) After I got fired, I started to feel unsafe in my own country.
I received anonymous calls and death threats.
I was mocked publicly on national television.
I was eventually forced out of Venezuela, and I now live in Miami, Florida, where I am free to be my own editor for my work.
(Speaks Spanish) A political cartoon is a barometer of freedom in a country.
That's why dictators hate cartoonists and try to eradicate everything that involves humor as a mirror for social and political issues.
(Speaks Spanish) A cartoon involves a delicate balance of ideas and drawings that reveal a hidden truth.
(Speaks Spanish) And a good cartoon is one that conveys a plot of a full-length movie in a single frame.
(Speaks Spanish) A cartoon needs to communicate the core of a story with its precision.
And when it succeeds, its message can have the effect of inoculating people with a dose of skepticism.
(Speaks Spanish) Cartoons are drawn from observation and analysis.
They are inspired by muses of mythology, as well as classical, modern and paleolithic tales.
(Laughter) When we are told that a modern-day emperor is wearing new clothes, cartoons reveal that the emperor just might still be naked.
(Speaks Spanish) At one point in my career, I drew pigs and compared them with politicians and national guards who were responsible for stopping peaceful student demonstrations.
One day, when I got back to my office, I had a letter on my desk.
(Speaks Spanish) The letter was from the Venezuelan Swine Federation.
(Laughter) (Speaks Spanish) The letter said, "Please do not compare an animal as wonderful as a pig with politicians.
(Laughter) Pigs are very friendly and noble, they can be a great mascot, they make good pets and they provide sustenance to us in the form of pork."
(Speaks Spanish) I think they were absolutely right.
I didn't draw any more pigs, but I did keep drawing politicians.
(Laughter) (Speaks Spanish) A cartoon travels on an information highway, which seems like it has multiple lanes, but in reality, all of these lanes lead to a binary response of either positivity or rage.
"I like it" or "I don't like it."
Those are the only responses that govern democratic thinking on the internet.
(Speaks Spanish) We have lost the space for nuanced debate, we have no time, so we simply respond with approval or disdain, and we let algorithms take over.
(Speaks Spanish) But a cartoon is born from a space of deep, nuanced thinking.
Creating a good cartoon involves repeated failures, draft after draft.
And a cartoonist must shed their own taboos to spark a conversation, rather than a confrontation, through their work.
(Speaks Spanish) In the year 2013, President Chavez died, and I had to think about what to draw as the cartoon of the day at "El Universal."
I was personally happy that he had passed away, because I thought that the end of his power would potentially bring our country closer to freedom and better times.
(Speaks Spanish) But there were many other people who were mourning the death of Chavez, so there was a divided sentiment in Venezuela.
Some were celebrating, and others were crying at the loss of their leader.
(Speaks Spanish) I felt stuck, I really didn't know what to draw in this historic moment.
And I knew that I couldn't allow my happiness to seep into my work, that I should take the higher road and respect people's grief.
So what could I draw?
(Speaks Spanish) I spent many hours drafting and throwing out papers.
My editor called me and said everything was late for that day's newspaper and asked me when I'd be done.
It was in the middle of the night that the idea came to me.
And we then published a cartoon that represented a historical moment in time.
(Speaks Spanish) A fallen king chess piece in red.
(Speaks Spanish) A good cartoon has a lot of power.
It can generate action and reaction.
That's why a cartoonist must exercise their power responsibly, showcasing the truth and drawing without the fear of consequences.
(Speaks Spanish) Having an opinion has a cost, and in some countries, that cost is high.
(Speaks Spanish) In Venezuela, many young people have been killed for protesting peacefully.
There are men and women who are stuck behind bars as political prisoners.
So over the years, I've drawn the faces of imprisoned women, because I don't want them to be forgotten by the community.
(Speaks Spanish) This year at an event called El Foro Penal, which is a criminal forum where a group of lawyers do pro bono work for Venezuelan political prisoners, a young woman approached me and she said, "I was imprisoned, and then you drew my face and my story.
It's because of that drawing that people knew who I was.
Your cartoon helped me survive my days in prison.
Thank you."
(Speaks Spanish) This was a moment that meant a lot to me, because I had found a way to collaborate with the memories of my country and its people.
(Speaks Spanish) Last year, I started making drawings about immigration.
I drew my own world, my fears, my suitcase, my roots and everything that I had to leave behind in Venezuela.
I also drew my joy in the face of this new opportunity as an immigrant in the United States.
(Speaks Spanish) From there, I worked on a series of drawings that represented the experience and psychology of immigration.
(Speaks Spanish) Being an immigrant is like moving to another planet.
At first, you don't understand anything about your new world.
There are new codes, a new language and unfamiliar tools you need to learn how to use in order to adapt to your new life.
(Speaks Spanish) Being an immigrant is the closest thing to being an astronaut who landed on the moon.
(Speaks Spanish) Over time, that series of drawings became a traveling exhibition, called "I, Immigrant."
And the exhibition traveled to multiple cities, including Miami, Houston, Madrid, Barcelona, and we're hoping for more places.
(Speaks Spanish) The show has become a meeting space for the diaspora, for people to gather and recognize their shared experiences of suffering that come with immigration.
(Speaks Spanish) What I want these drawings to convey is that an immigrant is not a criminal.
An immigrant is a person whose life has been broken.
A person who has very likely been separated from their family under inhumane conditions.
Who has been forced to leave their country in search of a better life.
(Speaks Spanish) A drawing can be a synthesis of a place, a universe, a country or a society.
It can also represent the inner workings of someone's mind.
For me, drawing cartoons is a form of resistance.
(Speaks Spanish) A cartoon is like a Rosetta stone.
If we throw it into outer space, a future alien would be able to know with certainty that in the past, we once had a civilized world with free thinking.
(Speaks Spanish) That one wall that my mother gave me the freedom to draw on feels infinite.
And it's for that reason that I am still drawing.
Thank you very much.
(Cheers and applause)
Chris Anderson: Christiane, great to have you here.
So you've had this amazing viewpoint, and perhaps it's fair to say that in the last few years, there have been some alarming developments that you're seeing.
What's alarmed you most?
Christiane Amanpour: Well, just listening to the earlier speakers, I can frame it in what they've been saying: climate change, for instance -- cities, the threat to our environment and our lives.
It basically also boils down to understanding the truth and to be able to get to the truth of what we're talking about in order to really be able to solve it.
So if 99.9 percent of the science on climate is empirical, scientific evidence, but it's competing almost equally with a handful of deniers, that is not the truth; that is the epitome of fake news.
And so for me, the last few years -- certainly this last year -- has crystallized the notion of fake news in a way that's truly alarming and not just some slogan to be thrown around.
Because when you can't distinguish between the truth and fake news, you have a very much more difficult time trying to solve some of the great issues that we face.
CA: Well, you've been involved in this question of, what is balance, what is truth, what is impartiality, for a long time.
You were on the front lines reporting the Balkan Wars 25 years ago.
And back then, you famously said, by calling out human right abuses, you said, "Look, there are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you're neutral, you are an accomplice."
So, do you feel that today's journalists aren't heeding that advice about balance?
CA: Well, look, I think for journalists, objectivity is the golden rule.
But I think sometimes we don't understand what objectivity means.
And I actually learned this very, very young in my career, which was during the Balkan Wars.
I was young then.
It was about 25 years ago.
And what we faced was the wholesale violation, not just of human rights, but all the way to ethnic cleansing and genocide, and that has been adjudicated in the highest war crimes court in the world.
So, we know what we were seeing.
Trying to tell the world what we were seeing brought us accusations of bias, of siding with one side, of not seeing the whole side, and just, you know, trying to tell one story.
I particularly and personally was accused of siding with, for instance, the citizens of Sarajevo -- "siding with the Muslims," because they were the minority who were being attacked by Christians on the Serb side in this area.
And it worried me.
It worried me that I was being accused of this.
I thought maybe I was wrong, maybe I'd forgotten what objectivity was.
But then I started to understand that what people wanted was actually not to do anything -- not to step in, not to change the situation, not to find a solution.
And so, their fake news at that time, their lie at that time -- including our government's, our democratically elected government's, with values and principles of human rights -- their lie was to say that all sides are equally guilty, that this has been centuries of ethnic hatred, whereas we knew that wasn't true, that one side had decided to kill, slaughter and ethnically cleanse another side.
So that is where, for me, I understood that objectivity means giving all sides an equal hearing and talking to all sides, but not treating all sides equally, not creating a forced moral equivalence or a factual equivalence.
And when you come up against that crisis point in situations of grave violations of international and humanitarian law, if you don't understand what you're seeing, if you don't understand the truth and if you get trapped in the fake news paradigm, then you are an accomplice.
And I refuse to be an accomplice to genocide.
(Applause) CH: So there have always been these propaganda battles, and you were courageous in taking the stand you took back then.
Today, there's a whole new way, though, in which news seems to be becoming fake.
How would you characterize that?
CA: Well, look -- I am really alarmed.
And everywhere I look, you know, we're buffeted by it.
Obviously, when the leader of the free world, when the most powerful person in the entire world, which is the president of the United States -- this is the most important, most powerful country in the whole world, economically, militarily, politically in every which way -- and it seeks to, obviously, promote its values and power around the world.
So we journalists, who only seek the truth -- I mean, that is our mission -- we go around the world looking for the truth in order to be everybody's eyes and ears, people who can't go out in various parts of the world to figure out what's going on about things that are vitally important to everybody's health and security.
So when you have a major world leader accusing you of fake news, it has an exponential ripple effect.
And what it does is, it starts to chip away at not just our credibility, but at people's minds -- people who look at us, and maybe they're thinking, "Well, if the president of the United States says that, maybe somewhere there's a truth in there."
CH: Presidents have always been critical of the media -- CA: Not in this way.
CH: So, to what extent -- (Laughter) (Applause) CH: I mean, someone a couple years ago looking at the avalanche of information pouring through Twitter and Facebook and so forth, might have said, "Look, our democracies are healthier than they've ever been.
There's more news than ever.
Of course presidents will say what they'll say, but everyone else can say what they will say.
What's not to like?
How is there an extra danger?"
CA: So, I wish that was true.
I wish that the proliferation of platforms upon which we get our information meant that there was a proliferation of truth and transparency and depth and accuracy.
But I think the opposite has happened.
You know, I'm a little bit of a Luddite, I will confess.
Even when we started to talk about the information superhighway, which was a long time ago, before social media, Twitter and all the rest of it, I was actually really afraid that that would put people into certain lanes and tunnels and have them just focusing on areas of their own interest instead of seeing the broad picture.
And I'm afraid to say that with algorithms, with logarithms, with whatever the "-ithms" are that direct us into all these particular channels of information, that seems to be happening right now.
I mean, people have written about this phenomenon.
People have said that yes, the internet came, its promise was to exponentially explode our access to more democracy, more information, less bias, more varied information.
And, in fact, the opposite has happened.
And so that, for me, is incredibly dangerous.
And again, when you are the president of this country and you say things, it also gives leaders in other undemocratic countries the cover to affront us even worse, and to really whack us -- and their own journalists -- with this bludgeon of fake news.
CH: To what extent is what happened, though, in part, just an unintended consequence, that the traditional media that you worked in had this curation-mediation role, where certain norms were observed, certain stories would be rejected because they weren't credible, but now that the standard for publication and for amplification is just interest, attention, excitement, click, "Did it get clicked on?"
"Send it out there!"
and that's what's -- is that part of what's caused the problem?
CA: I think it's a big problem, and we saw this in the election of 2016, where the idea of "clickbait" was very sexy and very attractive, and so all these fake news sites and fake news items were not just haphazardly and by happenstance being put out there, there's been a whole industry in the creation of fake news in parts of Eastern Europe, wherever, and you know, it's planted in real space and in cyberspace.
So I think that, also, the ability of our technology to proliferate this stuff at the speed of sound or light, just about -- we've never faced that before.
And we've never faced such a massive amount of information which is not curated by those whose profession leads them to abide by the truth, to fact-check and to maintain a code of conduct and a code of professional ethics.
CH: Many people here may know people who work at Facebook or Twitter and Google and so on.
They all seem like great people with good intention -- let's assume that.
If you could speak with the leaders of those companies, what would you say to them?
CA: Well, you know what -- I'm sure they are incredibly well-intentioned, and they certainly developed an unbelievable, game-changing system, where everybody's connected on this thing called Facebook.
And they've created a massive economy for themselves and an amazing amount of income.
I would just say, "Guys, you know, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee and look at what's happening to us right now."
Mark Zuckerberg wants to create a global community.
I want to know: What is that global community going to look like?
I want to know where the codes of conduct actually are.
Mark Zuckerberg said -- and I don't blame him, he probably believed this -- that it was crazy to think that the Russians or anybody else could be tinkering and messing around with this avenue.
And what have we just learned in the last few weeks?
That, actually, there has been a major problem in that regard, and now they're having to investigate it and figure it out.
Yes, they're trying to do what they can now to prevent the rise of fake news, but, you know, it went pretty unrestricted for a long, long time.
So I guess I would say, you know, you guys are brilliant at technology; let's figure out another algorithm.
Can we not?
CH: An algorithm that includes journalistic investigation -- CA: I don't really know how they do it, but somehow, you know -- filter out the crap!
(Laughter) And not just the unintentional -- (Applause) but the deliberate lies that are planted by people who've been doing this as a matter of warfare for decades.
The Soviets, the Russians -- they are the masters of war by other means, of hybrid warfare.
And this is a -- this is what they've decided to do.
It worked in the United States, it didn't work in France, it hasn't worked in Germany.
During the elections there, where they've tried to interfere, the president of France right now, Emmanuel Macron, took a very tough stand and confronted it head on, as did Angela Merkel.
CH: There's some hope to be had from some of this, isn't there?
That the world learns.
We get fooled once, maybe we get fooled again, but maybe not the third time.
Is that true?
CA: I mean, let's hope.
But I think in this regard that so much of it is also about technology, that the technology has to also be given some kind of moral compass.
I know I'm talking nonsense, but you know what I mean.
CH: We need a filter-the-crap algorithm with a moral compass -- CA: There you go.
CH: I think that's good.
CA: No -- "moral technology."
We all have moral compasses -- moral technology.
CH: I think that's a great challenge.
CA: You know what I mean.
CH: Talk just a minute about leadership.
You've had a chance to speak with so many people across the world.
I think for some of us -- I speak for myself, I don't know if others feel this -- there's kind of been a disappointment of: Where are the leaders?
So many of us have been disappointed -- Aung San Suu Kyi, what's happened recently, it's like, "No!
Another one bites the dust."
You know, it's heartbreaking.
(Laughter) Who have you met who you have been impressed by, inspired by?
CA: Well, you talk about the world in crisis, which is absolutely true, and those of us who spend our whole lives immersed in this crisis -- I mean, we're all on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
So it's pretty stressful right now.
And you're right -- there is this perceived and actual vacuum of leadership, and it's not me saying it, I ask all these -- whoever I'm talking to, I ask about leadership.
I was speaking to the outgoing president of Liberia today, [Ellen Johnson Sirleaf,] who -- (Applause) in three weeks' time, will be one of the very rare heads of an African country who actually abides by the constitution and gives up power after her prescribed term.
She has said she wants to do that as a lesson.
But when I asked her about leadership, and I gave a quick-fire round of certain names, I presented her with the name of the new French president, Emmanuel Macron.
And she said -- I said, "So what do you think when I say his name?"
And she said, "Shaping up potentially to be a leader to fill our current leadership vacuum."
I thought that was really interesting.
Yesterday, I happened to have an interview with him.
I'm very proud to say, I got his first international interview.
It was great.
It was yesterday.
And I was really impressed.
I don't know whether I should be saying that in an open forum, but I was really impressed.
(Laughter) And it could be just because it was his first interview, but -- I asked questions, and you know what?
He answered them!
(Laughter) (Applause) There was no spin, there was no wiggle and waggle, there was no spend-five-minutes- to-come-back-to-the-point.
I didn't have to keep interrupting, which I've become rather renowned for doing, because I want people to answer the question.
And he answered me, and it was pretty interesting.
And he said -- CH: Tell me what he said.
CA: No, no, you go ahead.
CH: You're the interrupter, I'm the listener.
CA: No, no, go ahead.
CH: What'd he say?
CA: OK.
You've talked about nationalism and tribalism here today.
I asked him, "How did you have the guts to confront the prevailing winds of anti-globalization, nationalism, populism when you can see what happened in Brexit, when you could see what happened in the United States and what might have happened in many European elections at the beginning of 2017?"
And he said, "For me, nationalism means war.
We have seen it before, we have lived through it before on my continent, and I am very clear about that."
So he was not going to, just for political expediency, embrace the, kind of, lowest common denominator that had been embraced in other political elections.
And he stood against Marine Le Pen, who is a very dangerous woman.
CH: Last question for you, Christiane.
TED is about ideas worth spreading.
If you could plant one idea into the minds of everyone here, what would that be?
CA: I would say really be careful where you get your information from; really take responsibility for what you read, listen to and watch; make sure that you go to the trusted brands to get your main information, no matter whether you have a wide, eclectic intake, really stick with the brand names that you know, because in this world right now, at this moment right now, our crises, our challenges, our problems are so severe, that unless we are all engaged as global citizens who appreciate the truth, who understand science, empirical evidence and facts, then we are just simply going to be wandering along to a potential catastrophe.
So I would say, the truth, and then I would come back to Emmanuel Macron and talk about love.
I would say that there's not enough love going around.
And I asked him to tell me about love.
I said, "You know, your marriage is the subject of global obsession."
(Laughter) "Can you tell me about love?
What does it mean to you?"
I've never asked a president or an elected leader about love.
I thought I'd try it.
And he said -- you know, he actually answered it.
And he said, "I love my wife, she is part of me, we've been together for decades."
But here's where it really counted, what really stuck with me.
He said, "It is so important for me to have somebody at home who tells me the truth."
So you see, I brought it home.
It's all about the truth.
(Laughter) CH: So there you go.
Truth and love.
Ideas worth spreading.
Christiane Amanpour, thank you so much.
That was great.
(Applause) CA: Thank you.
CH: That was really lovely.
(Applause) CA: Thank you.
Beverly Joubert: We are truly passionate about the African wilderness and protecting the African wilderness, and so what we've done is we've focused on iconic cats.
And I know, in the light of human suffering and poverty and even climate change, one would wonder, why worry about a few cats?
Well today we're here to share with you a message that we have learned from a very important and special character -- this leopard.
Dereck Joubert: Well, our lives have basically been like a super long episode of "CSI" -- something like 28 years.
In essence, what we've done is we've studied the science, we've looked at the behavior, we've seen over 2,000 kills by these amazing animals.
But one of the things that science really lets us down on is that personality, that individual personality that these animals have.
And here's a prime example.
We found this leopard in a 2,000-year-old baobab tree in Africa, the same tree that we found her mother in and her grandmother.
And she took us on a journey and revealed something very special to us -- her own daughter, eight days old.
And the minute we found this leopard, we realized that we needed to move in, and so we basically stayed with this leopard for the next four-and-a-half years -- following her every day, getting to know her, that individual personality of hers, and really coming to know her.
Now I'm destined to spend a lot of time with some unique, very, very special, individualistic and often seductive female characters.
(Laughter) Beverly's clearly one of them, and this little leopard, Legadema, is another, and she changed our lives.
BJ: Well we certainly did spend a lot of time with her -- in fact, more time than even her mother did.
When her mother would go off hunting, we would stay and film.
And early on, a lightning bolt hit a tree 20 paces away from us.
It was frightening, and it showered us with leaves and a pungent smell.
And of course, we were stunned for a while, but when we managed to get our wits about us, we looked at it and said, "My gosh, what's going to happen with that little cub?
She's probably going to forever associate that deafening crash with us."
Well, we needn't have worried.
She came charging out of the thicket straight towards us, sat next to us, shivering, with her back towards Dereck, and looking out.
And actually from that day on, she's been comfortable with us.
So we felt that that day was the day that she really earned her name.
We called her Legadema, which means, "light from the sky."
DJ: Now we've found these individualisms in all sorts of animals, in particular in the cats.
This particular one is called Eetwidomayloh, "he who greets with fire," and you can just see that about him, you know -- that's his character.
But only by getting up close to these animals and spending time with them can we actually even reach out and dig out these personal characters that they have.
BJ: But through our investigation, we have to seek the wildest places in Africa.
And right now this is in the Okavango Delta in Botswana.
Yes, it is swamp.
We live in the swamp in a tent, but I must tell you, every day is exhilarating.
But also, our hearts are in our throats a huge amount of the time, because we're driving through water, and it's an unknown territory.
But we're really there seeking and searching and filming the iconic cats.
DJ: Now one of the big things, of course, everybody knows that cats hate water, and so this was a real revelation for us.
And we could only find this by pushing ourselves, by going where no sane person should go -- not without some prompting, by the way, from Beverly -- and just pushing the envelope, going out there, pushing our vehicle, pushing ourselves.
But we've managed to find that these lions are 15 percent bigger than any others, and they specialize in hunting buffalo in the water.
BJ: And then of course, the challenge is knowing when to turn around.
We don't always get that right, and on this particular day, we seriously underestimated the depth.
We got deeper and deeper, until it was at Dereck's chest-height.
Well then we hit a deep depression, and we seriously submerged the vehicle.
We actually managed to drown two million dollars' worth of camera gear.
We drowned our pride, I must tell you, which was really serious, and we seized the engine.
DJ: And of course, one of the rules that we have in the vehicle is that he who drowns the vehicle gets to swim with the crocodiles.
(Laughter) You will notice also that all of these images here are taken from the top angle by Beverly -- the dry top angle, by the way.
(Laughter) But all the places we get stuck in really have great views.
And it wasn't a moment, and these lions came back towards us, and Beverly was able to get a great photograph.
BJ: But we truly do spend day and night trying to capture unique footage.
And 20 years ago, we did a film called "Eternal Enemies" where we managed to capture this unusual disturbing behavior across two species -- lions and hyenas.
And surprisingly, it became a cult film.
And we can only work that out as people were seeing parallels between the thuggish side of nature and gang warfare.
DJ: It was amazing, because you can see that this lion is doing exactly what his name, Eetwidomayloh, represents.
He's focused on this hyena, and he is going to get it.
(Animal sounds) But that's, I think, what this is all about, is that these individuals have these personalities and characters.
But for us to get them, not only do we push ourselves, but we live by certain rules of engagement, which mean we can't interfere.
This sort of behavior has been going on for three, four, five million years, and we can't step in and say, "That's wrong, and that's right."
But that's not always easy for us.
BJ: So, as Dereck says, we have to work through extremes -- extreme temperatures, push bmcmillan@example.com.
Sleep deprivation is extreme.
We're on the edge through a large part of the time.
But, for 10 years, we tried to capture lions and elephants together -- and never ever managed until this particular night.
And I have to tell you that it was a disturbing night for me.
I had tears rolling down my cheeks.
I was shaking with anxiety, but I knew that [I had] to capture something that had never been seen before, had never been documented.
And I do believe you should stay with us.
DJ: The amazing thing about these moments -- and this is probably a highlight of our career -- is that you never know how it's going to end.
Many people believe, in fact, that death begins in the eyes, not in the heart, not in the lungs, and that's when people give up hope, or when any life form gives up hope.
And you can see the start of it here.
This elephant, against overwhelming odds, simply gives up hope.
But by the same token, you can get your hope back again.
So just when you think it's all over, something else happens, some spark gets into you, some sort of will to fight -- that iron will that we all have, that this elephant has, that conservation has, that big cats have.
Everything has that will to survive, to fight, to push through that mental barrier and to keep going.
And for us, in many ways, this elephant has become a symbol of inspiration for us, a symbol of that hope as we go forward in our work.
(Applause) Now back to the leopard.
We were spending so much time with this leopard and getting to understand her individualism, her personal character, that maybe we were taking it a little bit far.
We were perhaps taking her for granted, and maybe she didn't like that that much.
This is about couples working together, and so I do need to say that within the vehicle we have quite strict territories, Beverly and I.
Beverly sits on the one side where all her camera gear is, and I'm on the other side where my space is.
These are precious to us, these divides.
BJ: But when this little cub saw that I had vacated my seat and climbed to the back to get some camera gear, she came in like a curious cat to come and investigate.
It was phenomenal, and we felt grateful that she trusted us to that extent.
But at the same time, we were concerned that if she created this as a habit and jumped into somebody else's car, it might not turn out the same way -- she might get shot for that.
So we knew we had to react quickly.
And the only way we thought we could without scaring her is to try and simulate a growl like her mother would make -- a hiss and a sound.
So Dereck turned on the heater fan in the car -- very innovative.
DJ: It was the only way for me to save the marriage, because Beverly felt she was being replaced, you see.
(Laughter) But really and truly, this was how this little leopard was displaying her individual personality.
But nothing prepared us for what happened next in our relationship with her, when she started hunting.
BJ: And on this first hunt, we truly were excited.
It was like watching a graduation ceremony.
We felt like we were surrogate parents.
And of course, we knew now that she was going to survive.
But only when we saw the tiny baby baboon clinging to the mother's fur did we realize that something very unique was taking place here with Legadema.
And of course, the baby baboon was so innocent, it didn't turn and run.
So what we watched over the next couple of hours was very unique.
It was absolutely amazing when she picked it up to safety, protecting it from the hyena.
And over the next five hours, she took care of it.
We realized that we actually don't know everything, and that nature is so unpredictable, we have to be open at all times.
DJ: Okay, so she was a little bit rough.
(Laughter) But in fact, what we were seeing here was interesting.
Because she is a cub wanting to play, but she was also a predator needing to kill, and yet conflicted in some way, because she was also an emerging mother.
She had this maternal instinct, much like a young girl on her way to womanhood, and so this really took us to this new level of understanding that personality.
BJ: And of course, through the night, they lay together.
They ended up sleeping for hours.
But I have to tell you -- everybody always asks, "What happened to the baby baboon?"
It did die, and we suspect it was from the freezing winter nights.
DJ: So at this stage, I guess, we had very, very firm ideas on what conservation meant.
We had to deal with these individual personalities.
We had to deal with them with respect and celebrate them.
And so we, with the National Geographic, formed the Big Cats Initiative to march forward into conservation, taking care of the big cats that we loved -- and then had an opportunity to look back over the last 50 years to see how well we had all collectively been doing.
So when Beverly and I were born, there were 450,000 lions, and today there are 20,000.
Tigers haven't fared any better -- 45,000 down to maybe 3,000.
BJ: And then cheetahs have crashed all the way down to 12,000.
Leopards have plummeted from 700,000 down to a mere 50,000.
Now in the extraordinary time that we have worked with Legadema -- which is really over a five-year period -- 10,000 leopards were legally shot by safari hunters.
And that's not the only leopards that were being killed through that period.
There's an immense amount of poaching as well, and so possibly the same amount.
It's simply not sustainable.
We admire them, and we fear them, and yet, as man, we want to steal their power.
It used to be the time where only kings wore a leopard skin, but now throughout rituals and ceremonies, traditional healers and ministers.
And of course, looking at this lion paw that has been skinned, it eerily reminds me of a human hand, and that's ironic, because their fate is in our hands.
DJ: There's a burgeoning bone trade.
South Africa just released some lion bones onto the market.
Lion bones and tiger bones look exactly the same, and so in a stroke, the lion bone industry is going to wipe out all the tigers.
So we have a real problem here, no more so than the lions do, the male lions.
So the 20,000 lion figure that you just saw is actually a red herring, because there may be 3,000 or 4,000 male lions, and they all are actually infected with the same disease.
I call it complacency -- our complacency.
Because there's a sport, there's an activity going on that we're all aware of, that we condone.
And that's probably because we haven't seen it like we are today.
BJ: And you have to know that, when a male lion is killed, it completely disrupts the whole pride.
A new male comes into the area and takes over the pride, and, of course, first of all kills all the cubs and possibly some of the females that are defending their cubs.
So we've estimated that between 20 [and] 30 lions are killed when one lion is hanging on a wall somewhere in a far-off place.
DJ: So what our investigations have shown is that these lions are essential.
They're essential to the habitat.
If they disappear, whole ecosystems in Africa disappear.
There's an 80-billion-dollar-a-year ecotourism revenue stream into Africa.
So this is not just a concern about lions; it's a concern about communities in Africa as well.
If they disappear, all of that goes away.
But what I'm more concerned about in many ways is that, as we de-link ourselves from nature, as we de-link ourselves spiritually from these animals, we lose hope, we lose that spiritual connection, our dignity, that thing within us that keeps us connected to the planet.
BJ: So you have to know, looking into the eyes of lions and leopards right now, it is all about critical awareness.
And so what we are doing, in February, we're bringing out a film called "The Last Lion," and "The Last Lion" is exactly what is happening right now.
That is the situation we're in -- the last lions.
That is, if we don't take action and do something, these plains will be completely devoid of big cats, and then, in turn, everything else will disappear.
And simply, if we can't protect them, we're going to have a job protecting ourselves as well.
DJ: And in fact, that original thing that we spoke about and designed our lives by -- that conservation was all about respect and celebration -- is probably true.
That's really what it needs.
We need it.
We respect and celebrate each other as a man and a woman, as a community and as part of this planet, and we need to continue that.
And Legadema?
Well we can report, in fact, that we're grandparents.
(Laughter) BJ/DJ: Thank you very much.
(Applause)