- With more than 40 episodes published, 2024 was another busy year for Mongabay’s podcast team, featuring many fresh interviews, a new season of the Mongabay Explores series, an award, and its first year featuring a two-person co-host team at the microphone.
- Here are a few of the team’s favorites worth listening to–and revisiting–as we move into 2025.
It was another busy year for Mongabay’s podcast team, featuring many fresh interviews, a new season of the Mongabay Explores series, an award, and its first year featuring a two-person co-host team at the microphone.
With more than 40 episodes published, there are many favorites to choose from, but the following is a list of conversations that particularly sparked discussion, inspiration, and impact. From heartfelt testimonies of activists to detailed dissection of the cutting-edge research of top scientists, the following list of episodes, our editors believe, are worth listening to (and revisiting) as we move into 2025.
Rewilding Ireland: Healing from a history of deforestation, one tree at a time
Eoghan Daltun, a rewilding advocate, shares how he painstakingly restored 30 hectares (73 acres) of land on the Beara Peninsula in County Cork, Ireland, in just 14 years. Daltun’s inspiring testimony highlights what’s possible with rewilding, even in one of the planet’s most ecologically denuded nations. Listen here:
Can ecotourism protect Raja Ampat, the ‘crown jewel’ of New Guinea?
The Mongabay Newscast team traveled to one of the most biodiverse marine ecosystems on the planet, Raja Ampat, to document the experiences of local communities who run ecotourism ventures. In a region with few options for people to sustainably make a living, these conversations highlight how some have changed from exploiting the land for money to protecting it:
‘Not the End of the World’ book assumptions & omissions spark debate
It may not be the literal end of the world, but the political roadblocks facing potential solutions to ecological problems go largely unacknowledged in a new book receiving much buzz in 2024, Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet. Co-host Rachel Donald discusses these omissions with its author, Hannah Ritchie of Our World in Data, in an engaging discussion:
Harnessing ‘invisible forests in plain view’ to reforest the world
Interested in another rewilding and reforesting story? We sure are, and it’s why we’ve included it on this list: agronomist Tony Rinaudo shares his story of working with communities in Niger to successfully reforest 6 million hectares (15 million acres) of degraded land. The technique called farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR) has become popular with smallholder farmers, boosting their livelihoods and food security. Listen here:
Goldman Prize winner Murrawah Maroochy Johnson details her organization’s court victory over billionaire Clive Palmer’s Waratah Coal Ltd. project in Queensland, Australia. This historic victory was the first court case to successfully link climate change impacts and cultural and human rights in her nation. Johnson shares how it was accomplished, and we highly recommend this conversation:
Jane Goodall at 90: On fame, hope, and empathy
This year, iconic primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall turned 90 years old. In a conversation with Mongabay CEO Rhett Butler, she reflects on her long and continuing career, sharing her insights and wisdom from years in the field, and discusses how clear-eyed empathy for animals is key to tackling the world’s problems:
Grounded: A pilot who quit flying to help tackle climate change works to change aviation, for good
Ex-commercial pilot Todd Smith didn’t intend to quit his dream career of flying, but an epiphany about his industry’s effect on climate change prompted radical action. In this heartfelt discussion, Smith grapples with the moral conflict one faces when their passions are incompatible with a livable future. His personal sacrifice, he hopes, will pave the way for a sustainable future in aviation. Don’t miss this episode:
Resource wars and the geopolitics behind climate-fueled conflicts
Dahr Jamail was working in Alaska’s Denali National Park in the early 2000s when he decided to embark on a career in journalism, starting with the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. That war and the ensuing conflicts since, Jamail says, are part of an unabated trend of resource-fueled conflicts that are influenced — and exacerbated — by the planet’s stressed ecological limits. Here, Jamail discusses the environmental context behind the hot wars in 2024:
How effective are giant funding pledges by major conservation donors?
Billionaire pledges to conservation initiatives often capture the media spotlight, but how effective are these seemingly positive moves? During this episode, two experts outline what often goes missed by media reports about conservation philanthropy, and discuss perennial questions regarding the efficacy and equity of imposing Western conservation models on tropical forest nations. This critical discussion urges donors, supporters and reporters to dig into the details and “follow the money”:
As nations develop circular economy plans, Finland’s top expert shares how they lead the way
Mongabay Explores, our episodic podcast series, returns for its fifth season with a deep dive into the circular economy. In this episode (part two in the 3-part series), Tim Forslund from Finland, the nation at the leading edge of this transition, shares insights and lessons learned in the effort to move their economy from a linear one to a circular one, that reduces resource use all along the chain of production, use and disposal:
If forests truly drive wind and water cycles, what does it mean for the climate?
Forests may be responsible for not just water but also wind cycles, researcher Anastassia Makarieva says. Her much-debated research with Victor Gorshkov proposed the biotic pump theory, which posits that forests drive wind and water cycles for entire nations on vast continents, explaining phenomena like the “cold Amazon paradox.” Co-host Rachel Donald unpacks the science and implications for climate modeling with Makarieva in this fascinating episode:
Mongabay took home an award for “Best coverage of Indigenous communities” at the 2024 Indigenous Media Awards for the episode featuring National Geographic photographer Kiliii Yüyan, who shared insights on traditional ecological knowledge. This episode, originally published in 2023, was remastered and rebroadcast, so if you haven’t yet, we encourage you to give it a listen:
‘Don’t call it the high seas treaty’: Ocean biodiversity risks being sidelined in new deal
Ocean policy expert Elizabeth Mendenhall discusses how a new global agreement to establish marine protected areas in international waters, known as the biodiversity beyond natural jurisdiction agreement (BBNJ), has been rebranded as the “high seas” treaty, which Mendenhall says risks biasing its interpretation in the interests of extractive industries:
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Mongabay Explores is a podcast series investigating some of the biggest environmental issues of our time, and the people working to solve them. To listen to them all, simply subscribe to or follow Mongabay Explores wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.
Banner image: A humpback whale. Image by ArtTower via Pixabay (public domain).
Mike DiGirolamo is a host & associate producer for Mongabay based in Sydney. He co-hosts and edits the Mongabay Newscast. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky.
