Neil Vora: We have ways to prevent spillovers of viruses. Through protecting forests, through reforesting certain areas, through improving how we raise farmed animals. And so that, that’s an example of a way to prevent outbreaks of diseases, which is good for people, but it’s also good for the planet. And on top of that, it improves equity, right? Because all too often, when we wait for these outbreaks to happen and we have to respond with vaccines and medicines, the people who are in greatest need have least amount of access to those vaccines and medicines. Whereas when you prevent the outbreak from happening at all, everyone benefits everywhere, particularly the people who are most marginalized.

Mike DiGirolamo (narration): Welcome to the Mongabay Newscast. I’m your cohost Mike DiGirolamo bringing you weekly conversations with experts, authors, scientists, and activists, working on the front lines of conservation, shining a light on some of the most pressing issues facing our planet and holding people in power to account. This podcast is edited on Gadigal land. Today’s guest on the newscast is Neil Vora. Neil is an infectious disease expert, turned conservationist his long and storied medical career took him to the African continent where he helped combat the spread of deadly diseases like Ebola with the CDC. Eventually Neil became increasingly drawn to protecting the natural world as it became apparent to him how strong the connection is between environmental degradation and the increase in zoonotic outbreaks. Now, this is a topic we’ve covered on this podcast before. However, Neil has a different take on how the global scientific community can affect change. I expected Neil to provide expert insight into how deforestation leads to more pandemics. And he certainly did, but I did not expect him to highlight art and philosophy as the missing link to inspiring global change. And I have to say he makes the strongest case for the power of storytelling I think I’ve ever heard.

Neil, welcome to the Mongabay Newscast. It’s great to have you with us.

Neil: Thanks so much, Mike. It’s great to be here.

Mike: So, you have a really, really interesting background. So before we dive into talking about d disease prevalence and deforestation, can you just tell our listeners how it is that you came to do what you’re doing now? Like you spent a decade working with the CDC. So, tell us your story.

Neil: The story begins from my childhood. I’ve always loved animals and nature. At the same time, I learned about public health from a very young age. Growing up, I would look at my father and I understood the significance, the impact that infectious diseases can have on people’s lives because my dad had smallpox as a kid when he was in India. He survived, thankfully, but smallpox is a deadly disease. It kills sometimes 30 percent or more of the people that it infects. But my father survived, which is why I’m here today, but growing up, I would look at him and I would see the scars that it left on his face and other parts of his body, and it was a reminder of the impact that infectious diseases can have on people’s lives for a long, long time. And my dad was the one who told me about the CDC, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. And when I was around 14 years old, I watched the movie Outbreak, and I instantly fell in love with the idea of wearing a hazmat suit and fighting dangerous diseases around the world. And so, I ended up going to medical school and then did a residency and then joined the CDC. Where I helped fight outbreaks of viruses that originate in animals that then jump into people. That’s called spillover. So, I did that with the CDC. I fought Ebola, rabies, pox viruses. I led New York City’s COVID contact tracing program. But again, my other big passion has always been animals and nature, and I wanted to do more to protect nature while also promoting human health, which is why around three and a half years ago, I left CDC and joined Conservation International.

Mike: And that’s a really interesting switch. And we’re going to dig into that a little bit because you mentioned in a couple of talks that you gave that you were discouraged from caring about nature in your training. So, when did the link between deforestation and disease prevalence really hit home for you. When did that sort of click in?

Neil: You know, so when I went to my undergraduate degree, because to become a doctor in the United States, you have to do three or four years of undergraduate and get a baccalaureate degree, and then you go to medical school for another four years to get your MD degree. Now, when I was doing that first initial degree I focused on biology, but in particular, environmental science. I also did a second major in international relations with a minor in philosophy, and my idea was to go into medicine to jointly advocate for human health and also for the environment. I had that idea from a very early stage in my education because I knew deep down that I just understood that human health cannot be separated from the health of animals and the environment. So, I entered medical school in 2004 and through no fault of their own, when I would talk to my medical school faculty and tell them about my interest in nature and also human health and public health and ask them for advice on how to create such a career, I would get a lot of blank stares. People could not, these faculty members could not really advise me in a very clear direction to go. And so, I ended up taking a year off during my third to fourth year of medical school. And I spent most of that year in Uganda doing HIV and malaria research. Because I was already very interested in infectious diseases. And one day out of the blue, when I was in Uganda, I received an email from my old mentor from my undergraduate studies, who was a marine biologist. Cause I used to do marine biology research. And she sent me this paper that had just been published in the journal nature that looked at trends in emerging infectious diseases. And this paper showed that Infectious diseases are increasingly emerging around the world and that most of these new infectious diseases are the result of spillover, meaning that these new infectious diseases are caused by pathogens that start in animals that then jump over into people.

Mike (narration): The name of that study is global trends in emerging infectious diseases published in February. 2008.

Neil: And that was the light bulb moment for me. That was my epiphany because I finally saw how I could bring all of my interests from public health and clinical medicine and conservation altogether in a career through fighting emerging infectious diseases, which is what convinced me that I should join the CDC after I finished my training.

Mike: And so, I mean, you spent a decade with the CDC. So, what other things happened during your time with the CDC that, reaffirmed and really showed you the link between deforestation and the spillover effect with these increasing diseases?

Neil: You know, so now I’ve been in the medical field for 20 years. I’ve been doing public health for over a decade, fighting outbreaks around the world for over a decade. And I’m really glad to say that the needle is shifting. There has been this growing movement called One Health, which is an approach that recognizes that human health is inextricably linked to the health of animals and the environment. Now, this, this concept has been around for thousands of years. In ancient Greek times, there were certain natural philosophers and other people who were investigating human health or science in general that recognize that connection. And since then, through the history of Europe and in the United States, Canada, there have been certain investigators who have also recognized that. But since 2004, this concept has really taken off in western medicine, but I will also note that many Indigenous cultures around the world and many other local communities around the world have understood this connection for thousands of years as well that human health is inherently dependent upon our surroundings and the science is now showing this to be true and so when I joined CDC, I chose to join a group that would allow me to investigate animal-bourne viruses, things like rabies virus and pox viruses. And so, I had the opportunity to travel around the world, to fight outbreaks of rabies, for example, in Taiwan, or to lead a team that investigated a brand-new virus that we had discovered that was related to the smallpox virus in the country of Georgia. So, I got to do this incredible work, and I would work on the human side and do public health investigations of these outbreaks in people, but also at the same time investigate what was happening in the animals, such as by testing bats in Nigerian caves or by catching rodents in the hills of the country of Georgia. And that, that understanding of the science as I got deeper and deeper into the field just showed me that what is happening to nature because of human activities is actually increasing our risk of experiencing outbreaks, epidemics, and even pandemics.

Mike: And so how exactly is it, so what’s the link between like specifically, cause you point to tropical deforestation as being the key driver here. So how does that increase the disease prevalence

Neil: So, there’s two different buckets to look at when we think about why these epidemics and pandemics are increasingly occurring. It seems like every year we have a new virus that we’re worried about, whether it’s avian influenza or MPOX or COVID or Zika or Ebola, right? The list goes on and on. Now, again, decade by decade, since the 1940s. Infectious diseases have been increasingly emerging, and that’s because spillovers are becoming more and more common, right? So that movement of of pathogens from animals into people, and there’s a few different reasons for that. Number one is deforestation and other forms of land use change. Number two is Commercial wildlife trade. So, for example, trading live wild birds and mammals in urban settings. I’m not talking about in rural areas or uses by Indigenous communities. Reason number three is around unsafe practices when we raise farmed animals. And then in the backdrop of all of this is climate change, right? So, these are factors that are driving the increased occurrence of spill overs around the world. Now, once a pathogen is spilled over into people, the probability that that pathogen can then spread from person to person is increasing because of other factors like international travel, meaning that people can move pathogens around the world with more and more ease, but that’s slightly separate. But if you look at deforestation in particular, right? How does deforestation increase the risk of spill overs? Well, there’s a number of different mechanisms. First of all, when we engage in deforestation, it creates physical interfaces that allow people and domestic animals to come in contact with wildlife, and that physical interface is a necessary precondition for spillover. Reason number two is that deforestation leads to loss of biodiversity. Now the animals that first disappear are the specialist animals that are narrowly evolved just to live in the rainforest. But the animals that tend to survive are ones that can live alongside people. Now those same species of animals that can live alongside people are often ones that can carry pathogens that can go on to infect us. Right. So, loss of biodiversity can actually increase the risk of these spillovers. Reason number three is that when we deforest, we stress out the wildlife in those forests. And just like people, when we are, when we are stressed, we’re more likely to get sick. The same thing goes for these animals. When they are losing their home, the forest, they’re more likely to get sick. Then the final thing is that when we deforest, we are increasing the factors that lead to more climate change and climate change again is an independent driver of infectious disease emergence

Mike: I may be slightly repeating some subjects here for listeners. We did just talk about bird flu with Apoorva Mandavilli from the New York Times. But this spillover, this this obviously has some sort of impact on diseases like bird flu. H5N1 and also like Marburg virus, which we’re also seeing increase in prevalence. Can you talk about these two and what your thoughts are on them?

Neil: So, Marburg is a virus that can have very high fatality rates in outbreaks sometimes over even 50 percent Marburg virus is related to the Ebola virus. The reservoir for Marburg virus are a certain type of bat. And recently there has been an outbreak of Marburg in Rwanda. I want to be very clear, right? I don’t want to vilify bats. Bats are one of my favorite groups of animals and we rely on bats for many important services that they provide to us from pollination to controlling insect populations. But at the same time, for a variety of reasons, we are seeing more spillovers of some viruses from bats and you know, Marburg is an example where spillover can happen from bats into people leading to these devastating outbreaks and there’s other research that shows that the cousin of Marburg virus, which is Ebola virus and the natural reservoir for Ebola virus is still has not been discovered, but we think it’s bats, but there’s evidence to show that deforestation and other forest disturbances leads to more outbreaks of Ebola.

Mike (narration): Another paper published in nature from 2017 confirms what Neil is saying. And the paper is titled recent loss of closed forests is associated with Ebola virus disease outbreaks.

Neil: Right. So that’s just back to what we were talking about a moment ago. But you know, separately avian influenza, you know, there have been four influenza pandemics, meaning worldwide spread of influenza in people since 1918. In 1918 was the very famous 1918 sometimes referred to as the Spanish flu pandemic, which killed maybe 50 million people. And so sometimes these influenza pandemics can have devastating consequences on human populations. And these influenza pandemics are clearly the result of spillovers of viruses from across different species, from wild birds into domestic birds, sometimes involving pigs, and then onwards into people. And influenza viruses have this unique ability to mix and match when they, when two different influenza viruses infect the same single individual mammal or other type of animal as well. And so, again, the situation right now with avian influenza, where it’s spreading across dairy cattle in the United States, sometimes onwards into people is very concerning. Many experts have been worried about an influenza pandemic related to this new avian flu strain that has come on the scene. And it’s something that underscores why we need to do more to improve the safety of raising farmed animals and also at the same time improve our ability to address pandemics when they occur by developing better vaccines, by developing better pharmaceuticals, by improving our surveillance.

We need an all of the above approach for a threat this big.

Mike: There’s actually something I want to ask you about that, but I will come back to it in just a moment. First, I want to draw your attention to a report that was just released this month that said one third of all tree species face extinction. What does that say to you?

Neil: I mean, first of all, as a human, my heart just breaks. We get so much inspiration from nature and it’s awful that we are losing so much of nature around us. And I, I’m forgetting where I read this, but someone else has said this before. But if you think back to early human civilizations, we derive so much inspiration from looking at the night sky, and I’ve lived in New York City for many, many years. And, you know, when I look at a New York City skyscape in the evenings, I’ll be lucky if I see maybe three or four stars. Most people in the world since 2007, approximately most people in the world live in urban settings where we have a lot of light pollution and you can’t see the night sky, or we don’t have access to nature and trees. And so, you know, back to your point about so many trees being at risk of extinction, it’s heartbreaking because we get so much inspiration in our lives from nature. But as a doctor and epidemiologist, I’m also concerned for the reasons that I’ve already said that when we lose nature, we are actually increasing the probability for adverse health outcomes for many, many years, we have extracted resources around the world, which has led to huge gains in human lifespan or less childhood mortality. These are all fantastic outcomes, but we’re now at this tipping point where, because of things like climate change and loss of biodiversity, we are now seeing that our broken relationship with nature is having adverse impacts on human health. And those adverse impacts will exponentially in coming years and decades unless we do something. But I’m also convinced that we can do something. It is not too late to act.

Mike (narration): Hey listeners, last time on this show, I mentioned we have not one but two podcasts here at Mongabay and the other one is called Mongabay Explores. We are releasing episodes on this deep dive series right now. That’s right, the first two episodes of our latest season Mongabay Explores the Circular Economy are both out right now and more on the way, find Mongabay Explores on the podcast provider of your choice, and don’t miss the next episode. That’s it. Back to my conversation with Neil.

Mike: So. I want to ask you about the response to the recent outbreak of Marburg in Rwanda, because it appears that the response has been praised and authorities acted quite quickly from what I can see, which outlets like NPR are reporting led to a significant decrease in mortality rates. How much do you know about that response and, and what lessons do you think we can learn from it?

Neil: You’re right that there’s been a lot of praise for this response. I think that speaks to the swift measures that Rwandan public health authorities and others have taken. And that’s fantastic news. And that also underscores why we need to keep investing in public health systems. These outbreaks are going to keep happening. We’re never going to live in existence without outbreaks because all around us is biodiversity a variety of life. That’s a great thing. We rely on biodiversity for our very existence, but in that biodiversity are also a variety of microorganisms, some of which help us in great ways, some of which can actually harm us. So, you know, back to this Rwandan Marburg outbreak, it is fantastic that the outbreak was controlled and that we did not see a major spread of cases. And that’s the type of quick, swift response that we need to keep seeing, but I’ll also say that outbreak responses are not always that smooth. If you think about COVID, even in resource rich settings, spread of the virus was not able to be contained. Or if you think about MPOX in 2022, there was global spread of MPOX virus. Now MPOX virus, our monkeypox virus is a virus we’ve known about since the 1970s. And we’ve known that it’s caused outbreaks since the 1970s and onwards. But this was the first time that there was worldwide spread. Of this virus, but even in resource rich settings like the United States, we found spread of this virus, which underscores that we are not going to be able to contain outbreaks of every single disease, which is why we should also invest upstream in prevention, such as by stopping deforestation by regulating the commercial wildlife trade by improving the practices when raising farm animals. And I’ll just say one more thing on this topic of mpox. The first ever recognized outbreak of Mpox outside of the continent of Africa at the time it was known as monkey pox. But the first ever recognized outbreak of this disease outside of Africa was in 2003 in the United States. And that was related to the trade of African rodents and importation of those rodents into the United States for the pet industry, which led to this outbreak in the Midwest. Now this was shortly after the 9/11 attacks of 2001 and also the anthrax attacks and pox viruses of which monkey pox virus is one example were one of the major concerns for a bioterrorist agent, right? So, these are all interrelated issues and we do not invest enough in biological security. And we do not invest enough in natural security, meaning investing in nature to keep humans safe.

Mike: And when you say we, you’re referring to, globally speaking, not just countries like the United States.

Neil: Yes, exactly. Globally speaking, you know, now I’m, I’m very, I’m thrilled that out of the convention on biological diversity, we’ve seen major landmark agreements to protect 30 percent of lands and oceans by 2030. But the problem is that we’re not seeing the resource investment to follow through on those commitments. And without resources like money. We’re not going to be able to execute on those landmark decisions. Listeners interested in forest finance should read Justin Catanoso’s recent reporting for Mongabay on the tropical finance forever facility or T triple F. Which was announced at cop 16 in Cali, you can find information in the show notes.

Mike: This is a great segue into something else that I wanted to point out that you wrote. So, you wrote that science alone can’t solve the existential threats facing the world today. It will take a radical re imagination of our future inspired by art and philosophy. And I just wanted to dig into more of what you meant by that. What do you mean by when you say it’ll take a radical re imagination of our future inspired by art and philosophy?

Neil: So, I’m a doctor I’m a scientist. Facts are the currency of my work, right? I can’t do my work without facts. We will always need that investigation of the world through science. And social sciences, but if we want to see societal transformation, we’re going to need people feeling inspired and that’s where art and philosophy come in. And I put nature in that category as well, because nature inspires art and philosophy, but we need to see beauty in the world. We need to feel awe and wonder. And. You know, when I look at younger generations behind me, I see so much amazing creativity and people taking action. And I, there’s this sense of hope that I see in many people in, again, in generations behind me. And I think part of that is inspired by art and philosophy and, and storytelling. And so, I think we need to do a better job in supporting art and philosophy and storytelling around the world. Scientists also need to engage in this. Oftentimes scientists are encouraged just to stick to the facts and not to give value judgments. But there is a role for scientists and for scientists to engage in art and philosophy in helping to inspire people, inspire creativity. And I’ll just say one more thing on this is that. In the last few years, I read this amazing interview in the New York Times by Robin Wall Kimmerer. I’m not going to do justice to her articulate points, but she makes this point that in Western sciences, we have developed amazing ways to measure what is happening around us. But there are other ways of knowing the world, including Indigenous ways of knowing the world, and many forms of Indigenous knowledge systems incorporate measurement with values. And so Robin Wall Kimmerer makes the point, the point that through Western science, we have measured for many, many decades that the climate is changing, that we are having global warming, but that has not necessarily inspired action.

Mike (narration): In an interview with David Marchese in the New York times from January, 2023, Robin Wall Kimmerer says “in Indigenous science, knowledge and values are always coupled. It’s an ethically driven science.” She goes on to say, “That means that the questions that we can validate with Western scientific knowledge alone are true-false questions. But the questions today that we have about climate change, for example, are not true-false questions. We know what to do. We know what the problem is. We know its drivers; we know all these things. And yet we fail to act. We fail to act because we haven’t incorporated values and knowledge together.”

Neil: And, and that’s a failure, right? We need to also inspire action. And again, I think art and philosophy helps us move from what we know about the real world through facts to actually taking action.

Mike: Something else you mentioned is that you’ve gotten into watching or reading or consuming apocalyptic horror as a way to sort of explore worst case scenarios from the comforts of your home. But you also mentioned that while these fictionalized, catastrophes help you explore your worst fears. You have some critiques about them. So, what kind of critiques would you be applying to say one of your favorite films, 28 Days Later?

Neil: I love 28 Days Later. I think I saw it probably in 2004. I’m forgetting the exact year, but you know, this is when I was either still in college or early in my medical school, and I didn’t really understand spillover. But the movie does such a great job of showing the risk of moving animals around the world and the risk of spillovers and in 28 days later, which is just so terrifying because they use fast zombies instead of slow zombies. And it’s just such a vivid movie, but in that movie, this zombie pandemic, or at least epidemic happens because basically there’s animals in a lab and then there’s a spillover event in that lab of some novel virus that I think is called the rage virus. And then the sequel is just incredible. Again, I think in general there’s this proliferation of zombie apocalyptic fiction, which I, I consume voraciously. I enjoy it. And I think this type of fiction really helps us diagnose the problems that we face, right? With climate change as the series, The Last of Us, touches on, or with spillovers of viruses, like in 28 days later and then the risk of spread because of international travel. Right. And I think, again, these movies and films and shows, do a really good job about helping us understand the problem. My concern though, is that it can lead us to this level of despair, because if we keep on consuming this type of Apocalyptic fiction. We don’t necessarily realize that we have solutions all around us. Now I’ve been in the conservation field full time, basically for the last three and a half years. I still see patients on a regular basis, but most of my work again is for conservation international. And I’ve never felt more hopeful for the world before I joined conservation international. I felt so much anxiety, angst about what was happening. To our planet and the long-term impacts that it would have on humanity, right? I didn’t, I was not contributing for me in a robust enough way to the solutions for climate change and deforestation and the loss of biodiversity. And I didn’t realize all the solutions all around us. And then three and a half years ago, I made that switch from CDC to conservation international, and I’ve never felt more hopeful for the world. I see people who are dedicating their lives, working every day towards solutions. There are so many amazing solutions around us. Now, I don’t want to mislead the audience. The planet is in a very bad place right now because of human activities, but I fully believe that a better future is possible. I am hopeful for the world. I had for everything around us, regardless of current events. I do think that we have amazing opportunities ahead of us and people are waking up to this problem. But again, it gets back to what I was saying before about art and literature that I think that it can help us find a path forward and feel inspired about this amazing life that we, that we get to enjoy.

Mike: And perhaps that’s a great last topic for us to explore here. So, what are some of these solutions that you’ve think are unsung or not getting the limelight?

Neil: Well, when it comes to pandemics, like I talked about before, we have ways to prevent spillovers of viruses. Through protecting forests, through reforesting certain areas, through improving how we raise farmed animals. And so that, that’s an example of a way to prevent outbreaks of diseases, which is good for people, but it’s also good for the planet. And on top of that, it improves equity, right? Because all too often, when we wait for these outbreaks to happen and we have to respond with vaccines and medicines, the people who are in greatest need have least amount of access to those vaccines and medicines. Whereas when you prevent the outbreak from happening at all, everyone benefits everywhere, particularly the people who are most marginalized. Right? So that’s one set of examples. I see the incredible example of efforts to stop deforestation. So, if you look at around the, 2004 and for the following seven or eight years in Brazil there was an. Very concerted effort to implement strong policy measures to protect the Amazon, including returning territories to Indigenous peoples and cracking down on illegal deforestation. And those efforts led to a reduction in rates of deforestation of as much as 70%.

Mike (narration): Neil is correct that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell by over 60% between 2004 and 2007. It continued to decline further during the first two terms of the presidency of Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. It increased significantly over the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro from 2019 to 2022. Before again, decreasing when Lula was reelected to another term, starting in 2023.

Neil: So ongoing devastation of habitats around the world and our inability to control climate change. These are all examples of us not having the will to stop the problem. And when I say us, I’m really referring to elected officials, people in positions of disproportionate amount of power. We all have agency, I hope in our own lives, but there are some people who have the privilege of having this global level impact decisions are being made to not actually implement the solution. Then to me, that’s the tragedy, but we can change that, right? When people understand the solutions around us and that a better path forward as possible, I fully believe that we can actually implement those solutions that we have available.

Mike: You advocate for something called radical listening and you pointed to an organization in Indonesian Borneo that used this tactic. So what is radical listening and what’s the solution?

Neil: There is this nonprofit called health and harmony that started its work in Indonesian Borneo. Now they work in other places like Madagascar, Brazil, full disclosure, I used to be on their board. This organization is doing incredible work.

Mike (narration): Mongabay interviewed the founder of health and harmony Canary web back in 2019. I encourage you to check out that conversation.

Neil: So, in Indonesian Borneo this organization approached rainforest communities and asked them for their perspective on how deforestation could be addressed and the communities reported that many members of the community were engaging in deforestation so that they could generate income to secure healthcare or to get education for their children. So, this nonprofit, along with its local partners, built a clinic. They invested in youth education. They conducted jobs trainings, for example, for how to do organic farming. And a decade after those interventions, there was approximately a 90 percent reduction in the number of families engaging in logging. And at the same time, infant mortality dropped by two thirds. There was drops in rates of malaria, tuberculosis, diarrheal disease. And so, this shows that people in planet do not need to be in conflict. And this solution was possible because of that listening approach Health and Harmony, listened to what the communities were saying, and supported them in implementing those solutions. And oftentimes the experts. In some of the highest priority areas of the world for conservation are the local communities. More often than not, it is the local communities. Actually, it’s probably always the local communities. And there’s a number of factors that might impede these communities from being able to avoid deforesting or avoid extracting resources in ways that might be damaging to the environment. But we have to recognize that people have the right to thrive, to survive. We need to support those communities in doing what’s good for them. And oftentimes when we support those communities and doing what’s good for them, we will also have positive outcomes for nature.

Mike: My last question for you, Neil is, it first starts with a statement. I’m really drawn to your rejection of nihilism. I saw you write about this, and I was really pulled in by it. And you reject it because it’s not just intellectually lazy, but because it’s false. So, a lot of people are probably feeling a lot of despair right now and maybe perhaps feeling drawn to nihilism. So why is nihilism false?

Neil: I am at baseline, a very pessimistic person. I can easily get overwhelmed with the collapse of nature or pandemics, people suffering, at the same time, I’ve realized. In the last few years, that action is the best antidote to despair. If you are feeling that anxiety, like I was feeling, there are many things that we can each do individually and as communities. And one person that I follow named Clover Hogan has said this before. We do not need a hundred perfect activists. We need a million imperfect activists.

Mike (narration): Clover Hogan said the same thing to me when I interviewed her in April of this year, I encourage you to listen to conversation i n full.

Neil: We need to recognize that we are all imperfect. None of us are going to live a life completely according to our ideals. And that’s okay. We can, we just have to do the best that we can every day. We’re just trying to make it and life is often hard. But there is something that each of us can do. So, choose your area that you want to make your mark in to make the world a better place, whether it’s serving your community, whether it’s helping out in areas on another side of the planet, whatever it is, right? There’s so much, there’s so much that each of us can do individually. And that’s what gives me hope. When I see the power of people, when I see the power of listening, when I see the power of communities, I have a lot of hope that a better world is possible. And when I look at history, it confirms what I’m saying right now. We are living longer lifespans. We have children living to the age of five more frequently around the world than ever before. Higher literacy rates than ever before. More access to information, right? There is so much good in this world. Sometimes there’s some bad, but there is so much good all around us. And there’s been so much human progress over the last few thousands of years. And that gives me hope. And so I fully believe that we are moving towards a better world. Sometimes it’s one step forward, two steps back, but we’re moving in the right direction.

Mike: Neil, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much for your time and for joining us today.

Neil: Thank you so much for having me. And I really appreciate the opportunity.

Mike (narration): If you want to learn more about planetary health and the connection between infectious diseases and tropical forests, please see our related reading in the episode summary. Now, if you’re enjoying this podcast, please share it. I can’t emphasize enough. That word of mouth is one of the best ways you can support us and help grow our audience. But you can also support us by becoming a monthly sponsor at our Patreon page at patreon.com/Mongabay.  We are a nonprofit news outlet. So, when you pledge a dollar per month, it makes a big difference and it helps us cover production costs. So, if you’re a fan of our audio reports from nature’s frontline, go to patreon.com/Mongabay to learn more and support the Mongabay Newscast. You can also join the listeners who have downloaded the Mongabay Newscast well over half a million times by subscribing to this podcast, wherever you get your podcasts from, or you can also download our app for apple and Android devices search either app store for the Mongabay Newscast app to gain fingertip access to new shows and all of our previous episodes. And you absolutely can read our news and inspiration from nature’s frontline at Mongabay.com or you can follow us on social media. Find Mongabay on LinkedIn at Mongabay News in on Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, Facebook and TikTok. Where our handle is @Mongabay or on YouTube @MongabayTV. Thank you as always for listening.