Hope Is A Verb - Big News: Hope Is A Verb Is Now Fix The News Podcast

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

Big News: Hope Is A Verb is becoming Fix The News Podcast.This is our final episode as Hope Is A Verb  - but it's not the end of these conversations. Over 52 episodes, we’ve met the people who are changing the world through conservation, education, healthcare, social reform and grassroots action. Each one has expanded our sense of what’s possible. Now, it’s time to evolve.From our next episode, this show will be called Fix The News - Same hosts. Same mission. Just a wider lens on the hidden stories of progress that are shaping the world. Subscribe now so you don’t miss what’s next. Learn more: fixthenews.com🎧 New episodes every second Wednesday - starting April 15, 2026.

I see humanity at the mouth of a long, dark tunnel, and there's a little star at the end that's hope. But it's no good sitting at the mouth of the tunnel and waiting for the star to come. You've got to crawl under, climb over, work around all the obstacles between us and that star. Welcome back to the podcast. If that voice up the top of the episode sounded familiar, it's because it's the one and only the incredible Dr. Jane Good. who we were lucky enough to chat to on this very podcast back in 2024. Now, she's a pretty hard act to follow, but we are going to do our best today. If we haven't met before, hi, I'm Amy.

I'm Gus. And today's conversation is a big one, because this is our final episode as Hope is a verb. No. Oh my gosh. It's not because these conversations are ending, but. it's because it's time for us to evolve. You know, Gus, I was thinking over 52 episodes, this show has taken us into the most extraordinary

places. Like we've spoken to grassroots, health workers, tree planters, educators, big thinkers. We've been there for big global conferences. You know, this whole ride has been the perfect master class in rewriting what's possible in the world. That's right. And from our next episode, this show is going to appear in your feed as the Fix the News podcast. Exactly the same mission, same balance hopefully of heart and evidence. But we're going to be casting a wider lens on what's changing in the world. Every conversation I think that we've had here has shown us the progress isn't loud and it doesn't really appear in the headlines very much.

but it is happening everywhere, and it's driven by ordinary people who simply choose to make something better and then they show up day after day. And so that's exactly why we're changing the name. The stories we've been telling here don't kind of stand alone. They're part of a bigger project. They sit alongside the work that we do every week as an organization,

as Fix the News, tracking hidden progress around the world. So instead of kind of keeping the conversations in a separate lane, what we are now going to be doing is bringing it all together. And if you are listening to this, don't worry, you don't have to do anything. You're going to automatically just come on the journey with us. Essentially, this is an announcement. This is not a requirement to change or do anything. And if you're new here and someone has told you to sign up, I would say this is actually

the perfect place to start. Because despite the name change, hope isn't going anywhere. It is part of our DNA. It is a huge part of our work in the world. We're just giving it a bigger platform and we'll be delivering it to you more regularly. So today, there's no guest. It's just the two of us

because I really think it's important to honour these transitions. And I don't think it's something that we do enough, especially in the rush of modern life. Gus, we started this back in May 2020. with some very dodgy recording equipment and really no idea about what we were doing. Thank goodness we had Anthony from the beginning.

How has this podcast, these 50-plus episodes, how has it changed the way you see the world? Where do you start? I don't know where to start. Now we know how I guess, Phil. Well, the best place to start is that very first episode. You know, our first episode with Shabana, straight away kind of going to one of the places

where some of the darkest stuff was happening, which was in Afghanistan, and amidst unimaginable hardship and suffering, you've just got this extraordinary woman who decides to do something and gets all of these girls out of Afghanistan to a school in Rwanda and plants a seed there that eventually speaks. into the only place in the world where Afghani women can actually now receive full education.

Sola today serves as a beacon of hope, the only physically and legally operating boarding school for Afghan girls anywhere in the world. I say that not just with pride, but with a lot of anger and sadness. My goal is to make sure that Sola is a permanent institution, and I intended on making that reality. Three years down the track, we know that that school is going from strength to strength. I think that that spirit,

that willingness to do something when everything else is collapsing around you is a spirit that has infused the conversations with so many of our guests. And I know that we've come away from every single one of them going, you know, these people, are just incredible. You know, Amy, I was reflecting,

because I knew we were going to be doing a bit of reflection on this. And I think it's recently we just had the Oscars, which is great. I love the Oscars. You know, he doesn't love the Oscars. Lots of beautiful people, lots of talented people. You know, and everyone gets a good pat on the back.

But, you know, something like 20 or 30 golden statuettes were handed out. And I was actually thinking, looking at all the social media clips, and the aftermath of the Oscars, I was thinking, all of the people that we've interviewed on this podcast deserve those golden statutes a thousand times more than those celebrities. They are such superheroes, they are so uncelebrated,

but the work they are doing changes millions, tens of millions, sometimes hundreds of millions of lives, and touches so many different people in so many different ways. These conversations have been opportunities to speak to the people that I consider to be Oscar winners of humanity. I was thinking I worked in commercial television. So as a producer in that space, you know, I came across my fair share of high-profile people

and celebrities and that whole world. And yet I have never been as nervous as I was before we interviewed Shibana Bash Rashashik. Every single interview, I come in with that. I feel this huge responsibility because these people are so amazing. And we have 45 to 60 minutes with them. And you really want to make sure that we're telling their story and asking the right questions and digging in and all the right places.

I think you said it to me once. Like we deal with a disproportionate amount of extraordinary human beings. And when you start to do that, it changes you. Like it changes you on a cellular level. And I think that the magic in that first Shabana episode was that we've been following her for a while. And then we'd picked up and they became one of our giving partners. And it was like the first time that person left the page,

they were no longer a bunch of words and photos. They were like a real human being in front of us. And I don't think I've ever lost that sense of awe. like 52 interviews in. Yeah. I think something that became increasingly obvious as we kind of got deeper in, kind of got to season three or four,

was that I started noticing that something that all of these people have in common is such a deep humility. Yeah. They are the opposite of celebrities. They don't really need acknowledgement. They don't need recognition. They don't need anyone to blow smoke up their ass.

Excuse my language. they're just doing the thing. And there is a quiet confidence there, which when I first started really noticing this and thinking about it, I thought it was confidence. But what I realize it is now is congruence. Explain? And what I mean by that is that the person they are on the inside matches the person they are on the outside.

And what they are doing in the world matches the view they have of themselves. And so there is congruence all the way down. and it is such a compelling quality. Two examples that kind of come to mind. I loved the two doctors, Sonia and David, these two people that had set off on an impossible path to try and solve disease, which is a level of ambition

I can't even get my head around. I don't think I appreciated nearly enough until I was in this is just how hard this is. I think it is miraculous that we have any drugs that work at all. I remember my doctor explaining that we were out of options and I was sort of like how do we know that there's not another drug made for another disease that could also help me

we can't say that they don't exist if we haven't tried them yet both of them when we spoke to them had that congruence in terms of what they were doing they were just going to do the thing and it didn't matter what anyone thought boy in slap is another person that really has that

well we were in jury from Food for Education in Kenya. She had that same kind of congruence all the way down. And I think that is a common quality that has belonged to almost all of our guests. I've really loved the age span as well. You know, I love that we spoke to someone like Aidan Riley who was in college through COVID and then kick-started. You know, this whole incredible organisation that was taking, you know,

food that was left over and then giving it to food banks. And then we also got the chance to chat with Yasmin. Yasmina Laurie, yeah. Yeah. You know, who has had over 80 years on the planet. And you just got this sense that she was just getting started. It doesn't really bother me if people feel that I've gone a bit mad. I think we have to change the whole humanitarian system

if we want to get to people who really need it. I mean, what are we doing? I think we just need to put a lot of faith in people. I call it the humanistic humanitarianism. I still think about so many of the conversations we've had. There were just these beautiful connection points between so many of our guests. Tarek, who, you know, the 3D printing

and the amount of work that him and his team have been doing in Gaza lately. It's like my brain now has, these drop pins in parts of the world that obviously I knew about, like somewhere like Gaza, but suddenly you have a real personal connection there. When we spoke to the incredible women, Peter and Mayer, from Women Wage Peace, you know, one in Palestine, one in Israel, and how they were working together. It's just, it's like conversation after conversation, there's this, sense. And I guess it is hope that no matter how dire things get, there is always somebody out there

that is starting to help. You know, it's really fine-tune my radar for finding the helpers and for looking for them. So why are we changing the podcast? Why would we do that? It's been such a wonderful journey. We've met so many amazing people. The word hope is kind of baked in there. We've ask people about hope. Hope is a verb. It's a great title. If it ain't broke, why are we trying to fix it? I think over the last, let's say six months, there started to become this tension. Because as you said at the start, none of these stories ever felt isolated. You know, you'd speak to somebody working on one problem in one place and then you'd find something somewhere else, all of a sudden the work these people were doing

to started to show up in the newsletter. And so I think a big part of the shift was just realizing that these individual stories were actually a huge part of our bigger work and that we didn't need to compartmentalize them anymore. I also, I just love the word fix. I think I think I used to love the word hope a lot more. But interestingly enough,

these conversations with all of our guests has made me kind of revise my idea of what hope is. So many of them have said that hope is action. And so that has made me think a lot more about action itself. And I like the action of fixing something rather than hoping for something. It feels more concrete. It feels more tangible.

I like people that fix things in general. You know, whether it's people that can fix the broken tile on my bathroom or someone who can fix the electrical wiring in my garage through to someone that can fix nutrition for, you know, tens of millions of people like Felix Brooks Church. I just, I like people that can fix things. And so the name, putting the name, fix, you know, which is obviously part of our organization as well,

into the podcast title feels like a good move for me. Yeah. I think we were also starting to get a little impatient. Like we started with a seasonal show because both you and I wanted to make sure that we could manage it. Podcast were actually a lot of work. We also have a lot of other work. We didn't want to burn out.

But it started to feel like we were constantly waiting for the season to happen to talk to these people. Having a podcast like this is a vehicle. to be able to speak to these people and to have these conversations. And I don't really want to wait around three or four months to launch a season. I mean, I was never cool enough when I went to nightclubs to be in that fast track lane. But I feel like we're in the fast track lane now. And now I just want to keep doing it, like as often as I can.

Oh, congratulations, Amy. You've made it. I've made it. Only like five decades on the planet and I'm finally there. But it is. It's just like the world is, world is different to when we started in 2020. It is. It is.

And I, I want to have these conversations more regularly. Selfishly, because that, as you said, the feeling that we walk away from every single one of these conversations, that is going to get me through the next year. Absolutely.

And hopefully we'll get our listeners. through and inspire our listeners as well. Can we talk very briefly, we don't want to belabor this point. Can we talk about how much hard work a podcast is? Everyone wants to start a podcast, everyone's got an idea for a podcast. It's easy, right?

You just stick up a couple of microphones and have a chat to someone. Right. It's a lot of work. It is a labor, it is a commitment to have these ongoing conversations. And we couldn't do it, you know,

unless we had a great team. And I really want to acknowledge Anthony Badalata, you know, is our audio engineer, our sound technician, our general sounding board for all things, and is an absolute core member of the team. You know, this is a three-way project in many senses. And if you don't have someone like that helping you out with a project like this, it just doesn't happen.

It's impossible. No. I really think people would be genuinely surprised by how many hours go into just one episode. If you have 40 minutes with Enric Sala, you know, the amazing marine biologist, you want to make sure you are going in there knowing exactly which parts of the story to dive into. Because I think what we've also learned is all of these people have a novel. each one is a hero's journey. Yeah. You could do these interviews a million ways,

and it just takes sometimes a while in conversations between the three of us, both before the conversation, but also after the conversation when we're putting it all together. So should we chat a little about what's happening next? Yeah, yeah, let's talk about it. Yeah, this is also part of a, like a bigger shift for us at Fixer News, because behind the scenes, we're in the, process of bringing all our storytelling outside the newsletter into one place.

And hopefully this is going to start to bring in different voices and different formats that all lean into this idea of possibility and what's going right. But just in terms of like the nuts and bolts for people. Yeah. So first of all, we have a new, what's called an audio mark, I guess, which is sounds like a watermark or a brown mark, but it's just in audio form. So you will always hear this sound now at the beginning of any Fix the News-related podcast. That's a symbol that you're about to hear some story of hidden progress,

either in conversation with an amazing individual or in a review, maybe through a deep dive kind of historically, or just a quick roundup of what's been happening in the world over the last week or two. we will be explaining more about that over future episodes. But for this podcast in particular, the Fix the News podcast, which will remain as our flagship podcast, and the main focus of this podcast will be to continue finding extraordinary individuals who you probably haven't heard it before and speaking to them about how they are fixing things,

mending things, repairing stuff, putting stuff back together, restoring, conserving, changing, evolving, progressing. life on planet Earth and raising hopefully the overall level of consciousness to something that is worth preserving and worth keeping. I guess it's also worth pointing out that from our next episode, which will drop into Wednesday's time, it will look different. So the tile that you see in your podcast feed, it will look quite different to this one. So keep an eye out for that.

it will be called Fix the News Podcast. And very excitingly, you will now be able to access this on YouTube. Yeah, this is one of our very first YouTube videos, because that's where everyone is going. So please, you know, share that and consume it on YouTube if that's your jam. Which I'm slightly concerned about during our like 5.30am and 6 a.m. Do we need to put on makeup now or something? I don't know.

Definitely some better lighting. I know. There was definitely a lot we could hide behind with audio only. And that curtain is off now. So, yeah. It's a great opportunity. I'm excited to do this on YouTube. Excited to introduce people to some of these amazing individuals.

What else do we need to say about the future direction of this podcast? What are we hoping for? What do you think it's going to be like? What are you hoping to get out of this new direction, Amy? I am hoping to fall in love a million more times. Because I am the worst journalist in the world in a lot of ways. I fall in love with everybody that we speak to. I really hope that this can become a safe place for people to land once a fortnight. I think there is, there's, so much information being thrown at us. There's a lot of hard things in the world right now. And sometimes you need some podcasts to just have a laugh and you need some podcasts as a safe place to land. So as much as we can, that that is really what I'd like this to be for people. How about you? I'm looking forward to deepening those conversations.

Yeah. And really, you know, getting away from. from the standard formulas of, you know, who are you? How did this happen? What did you do? What was it like? You know, there is a sort of a roteness to that. I would really like to see as much as you can, who knows, but to really explore what is possible through the art of conversation or conservation in the space of 40 minutes to an hour. I think we can go there. So I'm really excited about that. And the other thing I'm really excited about it is really kind of tying this into a bigger project. This idea that there is another story playing out in the world right now. There is a meta-narrative at work. And the meta-narrative

right now is that everything is collapsing and we are doomed. But a decade or two ago, the meta-narrative was everything's fantastic and we're doing this, you know, and we're winning and the world's going great. And I think it's important to try and get away from those meta-narratives or certainly to recognise them for what they are, which is just stories, and get into what is actually happening on the ground. And so many of our guests on this podcast bring us the stories of what is happening on the ground, away from the cameras, away from the headlines. And I'm excited to explore those stories with them.

Any particular topics you really want us to dig into? I love the conservation stories. Obviously, all the stories are incredible. but there's something about the conservation stories that really get to me. I don't know, maybe it's growing up in South Africa and having the bush accessible and amazing wildlife kind of on our doorstep when I grew up in Johannesburg. But there is something deeply poignant about people and organizations

who often spend decades kind of bringing back a species or restoring a piece of land or preventing some, or bringing some new legislation that stops the environmental destruction from happening. So those are the ones I can't wait for. What about you? For me, it's rebuilding. I'm really, really interested in the stories of rebuilding after. After there's been a conflict, after there's been a disaster, after something has happened that is really, really horrible. There is this resilience in people that I'm really starting to tune into, and I'd like to dig more into that so that we know when we're in a story of

conflict, mainstream media stay on the conflict, and then once the conflict is over, they move on. So I'm really interested if we can pick up on that story a little bit more. Great. Well, I can't wait. I'm so excited. This is an amazing new direction. Rock and roll. Yeah. Yeah, I guess just to say if you're already subscribed, you actually don't need to do anything. And if you've got commitment issues with podcasts, which we completely get, there are a lot of them out there to choose from. We promise to deliver your fortnightly reminder that there's still a lot to be genuinely hopeful about. So you can hit subscribe wherever you listen and now including YouTube.

Thanks for being a part of hope is a verb. we just wouldn't be here without you, all of our listeners, and we can't wait to see you on the other side. At the end of every episode, we would ask our guests what hope means to them. And over these years, we have collected more than 50 answers from people all around the world

fixing different kinds of things. So to close this chapter, here are a few that have stayed with us. I think hope is a finite resource, and we need to love more of it. The biggest change that I see is this restoration of hope. People who felt defeated, initiating change. Hope is the only choice in these moments that are so difficult politically, environmentally, socially. If I did not see a light in the tunnel, I wouldn't be where I am now.

The good news, there are people working on every single one of the problems. You realize that around the globe, there are other people doing their little bit. and millions of little bits add up to big change. Hope is a reminder. It's the fuel of your soul. It's so much more infused with action. Ability to see a much better future. You really have to earn it to have it.

Hope is happiness.