Alan Weisman’s ‘Hope Dies Last’ weaves stories of environmental hope
Release Date: 08/05/2025
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Mongabay founder reflects on success, Jane Goodall, and more
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Australia’s inspiring ‘humpback comeback’ and why krill need protection
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Understanding the psychology of environmental crime
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Innovative initiatives for nature recognized with World Future Policy Awards
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Policies enacted by seven nations and one international agreement have been by the World Future Council for “top policy solutions for [humans], nature and generations to come.” On this edition of Mongabay’s podcast, the council’s CEO, Neshan Gunasekera, shares key highlights of the eight World Future Policy Award laureates. Under the theme of “Living in Harmony with Nature and Future Generations,” the winners for 2025 “bring to light the future orientation of the way we take decisions at [a] time that there are multiple crises facing ourselves as a species, but also the...
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Stewarding nature & Indigenous culture with shared knowledge & radio
Mongabay Newscast
Aimee Roberson, executive director of , joins Mongabay’s podcast to discuss how her organization helps Indigenous communities maintain their traditions, languages and knowledge while living among increasingly Westernized societies. As a biologist and geologist with Indigenous heritage, Roberson is uniquely suited to lead the organization in bridging these worlds, including via “,” which blends traditional ecological knowledge and Western science to increase humanity’s ways of knowing, toward a view of people as active participants in shaping the natural world. Cultural Survival also...
info_outlineOn this week’s episode of Mongabay’s podcast, best-selling author Alan Weisman details the people and places he visited in reporting his new book, Hope Dies Last, a chronicle of miraculous accomplishments and resilience of the book’s protagonists, many of whom are working to solve humanity’s most intractable ecological problems.
The book’s impetus was an accumulation of despair at the state of the world and how humanity treats it. “I started this book because I was really, really, really depressed about how I saw systems breaking down,” Weisman says.
But as he uncovered each story, Weisman’s tune changed. He explains the ingenuity and bravery of the people and projects he visited that altered his perspective on what is possible.
“By the end of this book, I was so uplifted by all these people — and by the variety of people — that I found, in the most extraordinarily different circumstances, each of them daring to hope and oftentimes succeeding, that I'm there with them. This ain't over.”
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Image Credit: Kicker Rock in the Galápagos, Ecuador. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
Timecodes
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(00:00) The Mesopotamian Revitalization Project
(07:56) Why does Hope struggle against itself?
(13:27) Creating food from thin air
(24:06) Suing the government to protect species
(31:03) The most dangerous country Alan visited, the U.S.
(35:54) New forms of energy
(45:39) Power is the most addictive drug
(51:53) This ain’t over