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Let's partner for all of it. Learn more at edwardjones.com. Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley and this is Sunday Morning.

Welcome to spring. Sean Penn is an Oscar-winning actor twice over who's in the midst of turning a new page, as he'll be telling Tracy Smith. Sean Penn has always been good at making us cry, but now as a first-time novelist he wants to make us giggle. Do you worry that people won't get the joke? Some people I think will really enjoy it, others will loathe it, and that really is like what I'd say about me, you know. Are you prone to addictions?

No. Sean Penn, bad habits and all, later this Sunday morning. Last of his kind is a story from Jonathan Vigliati, all about a rhino named Sudan with a lasting legacy. He's become this kind of charismatic animal that is known across the planet. A one-of-a-kind rhino known now as both a symbol of mass extinction and of hope that it can be reversed.

We have a good chance that we can produce a lot of babies with this sperm. The last days of the last male standing, coming up on Sunday Morning. Former President Jimmy Carter tells us how his faith saw him through a health crisis.

Serena Altschul shows us some cutting-edge Japanese art now on display. Jim Gaffigan talks about not talking about that topic and more. All coming up when our Sunday Morning podcast continues. He was the last of his kind, or maybe not the last after all. From Africa, Jonathan Vigliati has a cautionary tale. So this is the king of the park? Yeah, this is the last male standing. Sudan, the last male northern white rhino on earth, looks as if he traveled here from prehistoric times. And in fact, these mighty creatures have been around for millennia.

With their super-sized horns and thick skin as protective armor, they seem indestructible. But when we met him earlier this month, Sudan was living out his final days at the Old Pejeda Conservancy in Kenya. I've worked with him for eight years now, so I know him very well.

Here, lions, giraffes, and elephants roam free. But Sudan, at the ripe old age of 45, remains under the watchful eye of keeper Zechariah Mufai. He's a great friend of mine. He's just more like my family. So that's why I take great care of him.

Sudan's treatment by his keepers and veterinarian Stephen Ngulu is a lot like hospice care for an aging patriarch. He's a coming rhino who is very gentle. He's a gentle giant. He's a very gentle giant.

If he were to speak, he would say a lot. Sudan spent most of his life at a zoo in the Czech Republic. His captivity turns out to have been a blessing. He was protected while northern white rhinos in the wild were poached to extinction. He's become this kind of charismatic animal that is known across the planet. Known far and wide because he and these two northern white females, Najin and Fatou, are the last of their kind.

Conservationist Richard Vine made a home for them at his wildlife sanctuary. There's no doubt that if northern white rhinos hadn't existed in zoos, then this species would now be completely extinct. The word rhinoceros comes from the Greek. It means no surprise, horned nose. And their distinctive nose not only gives rhinos their name, but also makes them a coveted target. The reason the rhinos are threatened by poaching is because of demand for their horn. Pure and simple.

Horn in the Far East is considered to have medicinal properties. In some places it's become like a status symbol, which is put into drinks in powdered form to cure hangovers if you're a rich person. Hangovers.

Hangovers. You know, okay, put yourself in the position of the rhino poacher. If he is successful, he'll be able to sell that for 60,000 US dollars. That for him is 20 years worth of wages.

So that's the incentive. It's huge. In 2009, with the northern white population in the single digits, Sudan and his female companions were flown to the Kenyan capital Nairobi, then carted to the old Pejedat Conservancy where the hope was nature would take its course. She's beautiful. They have the curiosity of a puppy except they're the size of a car. Yeah, you can't imagine how big it is, but they are so friendly.

And they did mate. But we were expecting to have babies in a natural way, but it just never worked. Now science must succeed where nature hasn't. We have about 300 milliliters of northern white rhino semen here. Invaluable sperm samples collected from the last of the species are stored in liquid nitrogen at the Leibniz Institute in Berlin.

The calculated storage time from these samples is about 3000 years. Using surrogates, Dr. Thomas Hildebrandt has been perfecting a procedure to harvest rhino eggs from Najin and Fatu, fertilize them with the semen, then transfer the embryo to a healthy surrogate. We now at the point that we can perform the procedure very safely, and we did that more than 16 times in southern white rhino females, and we are extremely confident that we will be successful. This dream almost sounds like Jurassic Park.

It is, it's very similar. So you could end up with a situation where the northern white rhinos all die, and then because we've got their embryos, we can reintroduce them as a species back onto the planet. On the brink of extinction because of human greed, Sudan has had to rely on his human keepers for protection from poachers. That includes an armed security detail. What are they going up against? The people coming here are wily, they're bush savvy, they understand how to operate at night amongst wild animals, and they are skillful with firearms. They are people who will think nothing of shooting back. How dangerous is this work?

Well it's not a work in the park. Simon Erugo is with the team. We are the voice of those animals. We are the arms.

So we're never exposed. It's like one of the family has gone down. It's like losing a family member. And for the past few days, Sudan's family has been in mourning. Just after our visit, his fragile body finally gave way. Caretakers made the gut-wrenching decision to euthanize him.

Keeper Zakaria Maffei was by his side. But even with Sudan now gone, Richard Vine hopes that in death, the last male standing will at last bring change. People around the world now know about Sudan, and that for me is his greatest role. We may still lose the northern white rhino as a species, but he will have created a message which hopefully can be perpetuated to a wide audience. It's about drawing a line in the sand and saying sooner or later, as humans, we're going to have to change the way we exist on this planet.

And if we don't, that's going to be to our considerable detriment. Even more than usual, the news out of Washington this past week seemed to be all about one topic, which leaves our Jim Gaffigan struggling for words. As a man, I don't feel comfortable talking about the other topic. As a guy, I feel like I should have a listening and learning role on the other topic. I'm talking about that topic, which kind of has to do with the other topic.

If you're still not following me, just think about what you mostly read about on the internet, talk to your friends about, and what the news is usually all about. Yes, that topic. It's actually probably why you're watching CBS Sunday Morning. Sure, Sunday Morning has been a great show for almost 40 years, but I'm guessing some of you are watching so you can take a break from thinking about that topic. I'm sure half the audience at my stand-up shows comes to see me because I don't talk about that topic. I've seen comedian friends talk about that topic at shows and witnessed audience members with pro and against views towards that topic begin to stare at the ceiling. It's confusing and exhausting talking about that topic, right? Heck, it's confusing and exhausting trying to not talk about that topic. Am I being complicit if I don't talk about that topic? Is talking about that topic helping or just normalizing that topic?

Anyway, we can talk about this later on. It's Sunday Morning on CBS, and here again is Jane Pauley. The young Sean Penn gave as good as he got with the late Ray Walston in the 1982 film Fast Times at Ridgemont High. These days, Penn is looking beyond the world of movies, as he tells Tracy Smith, who has our Sunday profile. Why did you choose of all the places in the world that you could live this spot? Well, I'm two blocks from my 90-year-old mother here. For Sean Penn, Malibu, California is more than just his current address.

It's home. 40-something years ago, he was just another beach blonde local kid who surfed when he could and studied when he had to at Malibu Park Junior High. He even got himself elected as the boy's vice president. Is there anything that you would tell this kid if you could go back and tell this kid something, the young Sean Penn? Yeah, there's a lot of things I would tell him.

Sure, you don't necessarily change so much, but you do collect a lot of information along the road. So what would you tell him? Here are the bad choices that you are going to make, and there's nothing that's going to stop you from making them.

But check out how funny it is. You'll get through them and everything will be all right. And he's done okay.

All I need are some tasty waves, cool buzz, and I'm fine. Young Sean Penn, of course, went on to create some of the most celebrated roles in cinematic history with five Oscar nominations and two wins. First as the anguished father of a murdered girl in Mystic River. And later as California's first openly gay elected official in 2008's Milk.

My name is Harvey Milk and I'm here to recruit you. But now, after nearly 40 years in the business, Sean Penn says the thrill is gone. Do you still enjoy acting?

No, no. That pains me to hear you say that. It shouldn't.

You know, I think that this has been true for some time. It can be great when you're working with good actors or good directors or good writing as an exercise. But do I have a belief that it has a lasting value?

Maybe I could make the argument intellectually, but I don't have a visceral. I'm not in love with that anymore. What he does seem to love is spending time here at home, cigarette in hand, putting thoughts on paper. And no more typewriter. I don't do that anymore. I used to when it was a typewriter, but I don't know how to use a computer, so I do a lot of pacing, smoking and dictating.

Come on, you don't know how to use a computer? No. Just lazy. Well, maybe not too lazy. Penn's just come out with his first novel, the dark comedy Bob Honey, Who Just Do Stuff, under an imprint of Simon & Schuster, a CBS company.

Stay there. Like his character in 2015's The Gunman, Penn's Bob Honey is an assassin. He just doesn't use a gun. This is a septic tank salesman turned assassin who kills people with a mallet. Yeah, I mean, everything is a metaphor for something. But Penn's satire can also get pretty grim, like when Bob Honey sends a threatening letter to a make-believe president. Do you worry that people won't get the joke? You know, some people are going to get this book and some people are not going to get this book.

Some people I think will really enjoy it, others will loathe it. And that really is like what I'd say about me, you know. How many people are here now, do you know? Loathe him or love him, Sean Penn is nearly as well known for his activism as his acting. There's the ongoing aid mission he founded in Haiti after the place was leveled in the 2010 earthquake. And before that there was New Orleans in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina turned the city into a sodden mess and anyone with a boat suddenly became a first responder, this reporter included. Penn also used a borrowed boat to rescue people trapped by the rising waters, not far from the New Orleans neighborhood where we met him last month. It's got to be cool to feel like you were a part of that. Well, or at least that I wasn't not a part of it. Do you have any idea how many people you rescued?

We had 40 people but we were able to get out of the water on our first day. Of course his humanitarian work is often drowned out by the tabloid babble, like the persistent story about Penn taking a baseball bat to his then wife Madonna back in the 1980s. So in 2015 when director Lee Daniels told the Hollywood Reporter that a star on his show accused of spousal abuse wasn't doing anything quote different than Marlon Brando or Sean Penn, Penn sued him for defamation and Daniels wound up apologizing. Why did you feel when there's so much stuff out there about you, a lot of which is untrue, why did you feel like you needed to take a stand when Lee Daniels said that about?

There was a story which involved violence against a woman in my life and yeah and which never not only did the this insane you know hitting someone in the head with a baseball bat story never happened but no violence had happened and uh which you know she was very quick to say also and for me it was an important thing because I'm not a guy quick to you know try to litigate things and I don't want to spend my life in depositions but in this case it was important. Sean Penn's latest role El Chapo's Hollywood connection. Then there was the uproar over his 2015 meeting with escaped drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman. Do you wish that you never did it that you never met with El Chapo?

No no I don't I don't I don't look I have regrets but I don't go back and say I wish I didn't do something. I would have liked a greater conversation about the demand side of this so-called war on drugs and I thought you know that there's another kind of conversation that got turned into a kind of sensationalized sideshow um you know was discouraging. But if Sean Penn is disillusioned with Hollywood it hasn't seemed to rub off. Hopper Jack and Dylan the son and daughter he had with his ex-wife Robin Wright are both actors themselves and dad still has projects in the works. He just says it might be time for him to exit the stage.

I mean I'm sorry to harp on this but people love your acting work. Is there a part of you that mourns the idea that that's gone? That you're just going to give that up? No things can kind of morph since I was probably 30 I've had intermittent offers to write a memoir. My magic number would be something like 77 you know maybe then if somebody's got a story to tell tell it then.

By the way you said memoir at 77 we just talked to Herman Wouk not too long ago he did his at a hundred so you could even wait that long really. I'm not sure. Do you feel the effects of those things? Sure they're terrible yeah. So come on you have incredible will I'm sure. Yeah I'm gonna stop them. When?

Don't know. How many times have you said that? It's it's quite it's a conversation I have with myself throughout most of every day. Do you really think you will quit eventually? I hope to and I hope to write another book.

I hope to live another day. March as you may know is women's history month which prompts this history lesson from Faith Salie. Why do we need a women's history month? There's no men's history month. Now to the first part of a series you'll see here every Wednesday in the month of March focusing on men in America.

Guys like him know what I'm talking about. What do women have to complain about anyway? I'll grant you that my children have never flown in or out of an airport named after a woman and that when I walk with my kids through Central Park past its nearly two dozen historical figures there's not a woman among them they can look up to but they've got me right? Until they get taller? Now sure a woman hasn't gotten to be president yet but one came super close.

It took more than two centuries but so close. She won the popular vote which is more important to us gals anyway because we care about being liked and speaking of presidents okay there hasn't been a woman on a U.S. bill since 1886. Harriet Tubman was slated to be on the new 20 but Treasury Secretary Mnuchin just isn't that into her. Still women have been on a few different coins that hardly anyone used which meant those coins stayed shiny and didn't get dirty.

Girls prefer being shiny and not dirty. This is America. We like to be number one and it turns out we are when it comes to having the highest maternal death rate in the developed world. Now I'm going to tell you about the highest maternal death rate in the developed world.

Only in the U.S. has the rate of women who die of pregnancy related complications been rising but maybe things will change since women now make up a whole third of physicians. Almost 80 percent of them say they face discrimination based on their gender but come on I think they could get over that pretty quickly because ladies are excellent at talking about their feelings. Just yesterday my five-year-old told me that in 2017 two women made history as the first African-American female pilots to fly a plane together.

I said that's cool and he said I don't think that's so great because it's not fair how many years it took to happen. Maybe today's kids will make women's history month redundant. May we surround them with women's history past and present. May they look up at statues of women, playground boulevards, cross bridges, attend universities, and enter towers named after women. May my kids' presidential placemats display the face of a woman. But for now we have our month. Let's get back to work ladies.

Earning about 80 cents on the dollar depending on what color you are. At age 93 former president Jimmy Carter has been out of office for more than 37 years. Plenty of time to reflect on his life, his mortality, and on his religious faith. Reflections he recently shared with us. You don't often see crowds lining up for Sunday school lessons but not many churches have a president doing the teaching. Former president Jimmy Carter came to Maranatha Baptist Church in 1981 on the very first Sunday after he left the White House.

Did we have any business this morning? He teaches whenever he can and when he does the crowd comes from far and wide. Indiana, Florida, okay. New Jersey.

Washington DC. Oh we used to live there. Back in 2015 when word came that melanoma had spread to his liver and then his brain it looked like the end. Oh hello. But when we met president Carter at his library in Atlanta this month he seemed fit as ever.

You know oh it is delightful. Thanks to a new immunotherapy treatment his cancer hasn't come back. It's an unexpected new chapter for a man who was ready to die and had already said his goodbyes. You started getting ready. Well I was I was ready because I thought I was going to be living for maybe two more weeks.

Weeks? I told all my staff here goodbye. I told all my children in Atlanta area goodbye and so I was prepared to go back so I was prepared for it. You looked astonishingly prepared for it. Well I was I was I was I was surprised at how easily I took it you know just acknowledge that I was had a few days to live.

And maybe that's because he's left so little undone. My name is Jimmy Carter and I'm running for president. In 1976 for a nation weary of Vietnam and Watergate. Jimmy Carter was a breath of fresh air a relative unknown who won the White House on a promise of honesty. I would not tell a lie. I would not mislead the American people.

So help me God. The highs were breathtaking improved relations with China and a landmark peace accord between Israel and Egypt. The increase in the inflation rate last year. But Carter also struggled with a hostile Congress a sputtering economy and a calamity overseas in 1979. When Iranian militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage only to release them after 444 days moments after Carter left office on inauguration day 1981. In Faith his 32nd book published by CBS's Simon and Schuster Carter writes that the hostage crisis stretched his own faith to the limit. During the Iran hostage crisis you have said that you prayed more that year and ultimately your prayers were answered the hostages were safely released and I think we did not under your watch.

Well that's not exactly right. That morning at 10 o'clock all the hostages were in a plane ready to take off from Tehran. But the Ayatollah Khomeini didn't let him take off until five minutes after I went out of office.

So you know it's a equivocal answer. What difference does it make your prayers were answered? That's the happiest moment I think of my life when I was still on the reviewing stand and the Secret Service came and told me the hostages were in the air on the way to freedom. And if history says his presidency fell short Jimmy Carter's second act has been all glory. Through the Carter Center he's helped wipe out debilitating tropical diseases like guinea worms and traveled the world as an advocate for human rights. You are the first one-term president since Hoover not to be re-elected re-elected which you know history has a way of of marking that as a failed presidency. Yes yes I realize that I realize that you know not getting re-elected is considered to be a failure but but I have found since leaving the White House that I've had a very gratifying and and I think productive life with the Carter Center. You know we've been able to monitor 107 different troubled elections. It may not have gone well had we not been there. For his efforts Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Well we are delighted to be with you. His statesmanship seems especially relevant now. Jimmy Carter is the only U.S. president past or present to travel to North Korea. Just this week I had a representative from the White House that came down and gave me an update on the latest developments with North Korea. So I have had some criticisms of some of the public statements that President Trump has made about fire and brimstone and that sort of thing being utilized but I think that he's reacted quite well to the latest potential innovations from North Korea that wants to have talks. I think if President Trump wanted to send you to North Korea you'd go?

I would yes. The constant in Carter's life is his wife of 72 years, Rosalind, who recently underwent intestinal surgery made all the more risky by her advanced age. He'd been serene in the face of his own mortality but he says the prospect of losing her terrified him. I was much more concerned then and I prayed all night and the doctor who was going to do the surgeon knew how old Rosalind was and said Mr. President if she was 60 years old I would tell you not to I would tell you not to worry but she's 90 and been acting like 60 but when she gets on the operating table she's going to be 90.

So we're concerned about it but we'll do the best we can. So she came in and told me at five o'clock that Rosalind was going to live. Happy day. That was a happy day.

All right everybody look this way. And now with Rosalind on the mend and his cancer scare behind him Jimmy Carter says he'll take things a bit easier for whatever time he has left. Now then at the at the end of your life as you're talking about you know phasing into finally right a final chapter perhaps how do you assess the life you've lived? First of all I would say fortunate, blessed. I've had an almost perfect wife. They've got a large and growing family perfectly at ease in just spending the final years of my life whatever they might be or the final months whatever in Plains Georgia more close to home. Jimmy Carter was a fill-in-the-blank man. Well I would say as far as public service is concerned I was a champion of peace and human rights. I've sought to carve out for myself a productive and I hope useful and certainly a gratifying life.

I've been very lucky. We want to take a moment now to note the death this past Monday of Julie Yip Williams. As you may remember Tracy Smith told Julie's story here on Sunday morning just two weeks ago.

A story that was all about living on borrowed time. Julie was born totally blind in Vietnam and narrowly escaped a plot hatched by her own grandmother to have her killed on the grounds that she had no future. But at age three Julie and her family made it to the United States where a surgeon was able to give her only partial sight leaving her still legally blind. Undaunted, Julie Yip Williams went on to graduate from Harvard Law School and pursue a corporate career only to be diagnosed with colon cancer five years ago. Still undaunted, Julie underwent every surgery and treatment and clinical trial she could find to no avail. Through it all she shared her experience in a candid blog while also preparing her daughters Isabelle age six and Mia eight for the day when her borrowed time would run out.

Julie Yip Williams was just 42 years old. I'm Jane Pauley. Thank you for listening and please join us again next Sunday morning. Each episode me and a weekly guest are going to cover all the quirky fun inspiring and informative stories that exist out in the world because well I need it and maybe you do too from the newest interior design trend Barbie Corps to the right and wrong way to wash your armpits. Also we're going to get into things that you just kind of won't believe and we're not able to do in daytime television so watch out. Listen to Drew's News wherever you get your podcasts. It's your good news on the go.