On 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