The Decibel - The people pursuing impossible goals

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

The new year is a time of goal setting. Culturally, there’s pressure to set resolutions that you are meant to achieve in due course. Think: weight loss, healthy eating, a new hobby. But what if you commit to something you know you can’t achieve? And what if you make that your life’s work?Mark Medley, the Deputy Editor of The Globe’s Opinion section, and author of ‘Live to See the Day: Impossible Goals, Unimaginable Futures and the Pursuit of Things That May Never Be’, profiled people who’ve done just that. He’s on the show to explain what drives them and why you, too, might want to consider an impossible goal.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This new year has already started off with a flood of news. But today, we wanted to talk about something a little different. It is a season of New Year's resolutions. But what if you set a goal you know you can't achieve? It's worth setting an impossible goal because it makes you think about the long term. It makes you think about the months and the years and the decades and in some cases the centuries ahead. Mark Medley is a deputy editor of the Globe's opinion section. And he recently wrote a book that tells the stories of people who've dedicated their lives to pursuits that don't have a defined ending.

It's called Live to See the Day, Impossible Goals, Unimaginable Futures, and the pursuit of things that may never be. I write about people who are looking for legendary lost fortunes, even though they know they're never going to find it, trying to end poverty and homelessness around the world, interstellar travel, people who are planning the defense of the earth, from civilization destroying asteroids, a man who is looking for a pink-headed duck, which was rendered extinct 100 years ago, but he thinks it's still out there. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence elsewhere in the universe,

the man's searching for a mystery ape. And I'm writing about a man who's trying to bring about the extinction of the human race. Mark is my guest today to share the extraordinary stories of three of these impossible goals, what you can learn from them, and maybe get you inspired to set one of your own. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Mark. Welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on. Hi, Cheryl. Thank you so much for having me.

It's a pleasure. I mean, I don't think many people know this, but we used to work in opinion together. So now we are crossing paths again. Worlds collide. You're much missed in the department, but you're doing great work here. Thanks, Mark. And you're doing great work with this book, and I'm really excited to talk about it. So let's get into it. Okay. So let's get a sense of why you want to talk about it. to look at goals through the lens of being impossible. What interested you in this topic? Well, I probably have a two-part answer for that.

Partly it's personal, partly it's professional. The personal answer is that in my own life, I have a real problem with even simple, achievable goals, let alone impossible goals. I'm a world-class procrastinator. I'm a quitter. I like to see the results of what I set out to do immediately. And if I know there's no hope in that, I pretend. and I never had the goal in the first place.

Professionally, I wrote a story about 20 years ago about a politician here in Canada named Liz White, who was running for office. She ran for a very small fringe party, Animal Protection Party of Canada, and she knew she had no hope in being elected, yet she did it anyway. And in the years that followed, I never forgot about her story. And I would watch her every election as she ran for office again and again, getting 80 votes, 100 votes, 120 votes. And it struck me that, you know, she had this impossible goal.

She wanted to be elected to Parliament in Ottawa. And she knew she was never going to do it. And she did it anyway. So, you know, after about a decade of this, it struck me there was a book there. So I decided to kind of go out into the world and look for other people like Liz White. Yeah. So what intrigues you, it's really interesting, is that like you see yourself as someone that probably wouldn't do what Liz White would do. And that's something that you kind of thought, wow, what is it with these people that are able to pursue things that maybe don't have an end or maybe don't.

have a finish line. Exactly. I mean, I think one of the reasons I became a journalist is because of the deadlines. I was going to say, yeah. When I was a reporter, I would come into the newsroom, I would write a story, and it would appear in the next day's paper or a couple of days later. In my own life, I don't have that kind of structure, right? And so that allows me to set a goal and then just forget about it. Like, I'm a dreamer. The problem with me is I'm constantly setting goals. There's so many things that I want to do in my life. And if I know it's not going to happen that day or that week or even sometimes that year, I get really demotivated. And so I obviously kind of wanted to find out partly for my own benefit, what was I missing? Like, was there this

key part of my personality, somewhere deep in my brain, a trait that I didn't possess that other people did? This book isn't scientific. I wasn't specifically talking to neuroscientists and others about, you know, psychologists about this. But I did want to talk to other humans about, you know, why can they do this one thing that I can't? And I think a lot of people out there can relate to this, right? I think that a lot of us will set goals and then kind of just let them kind of go into the wind. So I think that there is something there. And I think as well, just like in everybody's day-to-day life, we like to see the results.

When we work, we like to see the fruits of our labor, right? Like would you be host in the decibel if you knew none of these interviews you conduct were ever going to see the light of day? Probably not. Maybe because you're talking to interesting people. present company accepted, but for the most part, you know, we like to get up in the morning. We have a checklist in our minds that we want to kind of tick off as the hours pass and then the next day we do it again. I mean, I got a taste of this while I was working on this book because I sold the proposal to my publisher right before the pandemic. And I thought this was

going to take me two years and then I would be done and dusted by, you know, 22. But the world shut down. And I couldn't travel anywhere for a couple of years. And so I would, you know, forced myself to go to answer my basement office, conduct interviews on Zoom, all the while doubting whether the work I was putting in was ever going to pay off. So that was, in a way, it gave me a taste of what these people are going through because it's not like I stopped. I kept running despite the fact that it didn't seem like the finish line was ever going to come any closer. Okay, so let's talk about these people. So you wrote about many people and sometimes groups of people who dedicate their lives to what we're talking about, these impossible

goals. So we're going to talk about a few of them today. Let's start with who you think best represents this concept of impossible goals. Well, I think the person who's kind of become one of the guiding spirits is a man named Jeremy Holden. He's a British photographer in his late 50s. He might be 60 now. And he has spent the last 40 years searching for a mythical ape called the Oran Pendeck. The Oran Pendeck is believed to exist on the island of Sumatra. The indigenous Kubu people who call the island home have told stories about it for centuries. Okay. Can you describe what this Oring Pendek looks like or what people believe it looks like? Well, it depends on the account, right? Oran Pendek is the Indonesian word for a short

person. Sometimes it's as big as a human or an adult. Sometimes it's half the size. Sometimes it's described as very stocky. Sometimes it's pot-bellied. That's very varied. It comes in a a rainbows worth of colors. You know, it can be brown. It can be black, silver, gold, gray. It's described often as having very human eyes. The one commonality is it always walks on two legs. It's a bipedal ape.

Okay, that's very interesting that there are so many different versions of how people describe this creature. And Jeremy actually says that he saw it as well. Can you tell me about what he says he saw? Yeah. So Jeremy came to Sumatra in the early 1990s, just as a backpacker. to kind of make his way around Indonesia. And very soon, after his arrival,

he met a British journalist named Debbie Martyr, who was also searching for the Oren Pendek. And when he found out about her mission, he decided he was going to stay and try to help out. And about six months after his arrival on the island, she saw it. And then a few days later, he saw it as well. So he only had one physical sighting.

He was in the rainforest with his guide, Buya. They saw evidence some footprint. leading into the jungle, some broken stalks of plants that the creature is known or alleged to eat. And he ran into the rainforest. He got ahead of where he believed the creature was coming from. He was crouched down behind a plant. And he says it, you know, it walked by him about a few footsteps away. The one he saw was about five feet tall, very sturdily built. Again, he didn't see its face. But, you know, this is somebody who spent a lot of time in the rainforest. And he is very, very adamant that it doesn't look like anything known to science.

Like it wasn't like a given. It wasn't a rangatang. It wasn't anything that you would find in, you know, an animal biology textbook. This was something that was unknown to science. He didn't have a camera with him, which is very convenient. That's really interesting because he is a famous wildlife photographer. He wasn't, he wasn't a renowned photographer back then. Okay.

So in fairness to him, you know, he was a different person at the time. But no, he didn't get it on camera. And trust me, he beats up. on himself for that fact. And after seeing it, he decided what his goal in life was is to get this creature on film and prove to the rest of the world that it exists. And you spend some time with Jeremy, right? Tell me about that a little bit. Yeah, I spent a couple of weeks in Sumatra, well, about a week and a half in Samatra a couple of years ago. Jeremy was nice enough to invite me to his camp. But yeah, I know Jeremy basically showed me how he conducts his searches. And, you know,

never saw it myself. We didn't have any kind of sighting. But, you know, I left that place feeling that it was possible that, you know, I believe he did see something, whether or not it's an Oren Pendek, I'm not going to say. But, you know, you leave that part of the world. And it's very possible that there's an ape hiding somewhere in the rainforest. I'm curious to know about why Jeremy is obsessed with this particular thing. Because he is now, at least a renowned wildlife photographer. And there are plenty of difficult to spy species or even creatures that people debate whether they exist. You know, we hear about Bigfoot, even Loch Ness Monster.

So I'm just wondering with Jeremy, like, is it the impossibility? Is it the challenge, the difficulty, the prestige of trying to find something no one else has yet to prove to exist? Like, what is it? Well, I think with Jeremy, it works on multiple levels. On one hand, he has photographed other animals that no one else has photographed before or very few people have photographed before. So he's accomplished these goals that are just as rare in some respects. I think with Jeremy, it's he believes fundamentally that he saw something in the rainforest and he has this primal urge to convince the rest of the world that what he saw, this story

that he's told for four decades now, is real, right? Like nobody wants to not be believed, right? So like I understand where he's coming from. On the other hand, I think what really, really motivates him is he has a deep and abiding love for Sumatra. And it is a part of the world that is under intense pressure when it comes to illegal logging, when it comes to development, you know, on our way to and from the National Park where he conducts his research, you know, he was pointing out all the changes that have happened

in the 40 years that he's been searching there. And most of the changes are not for the better. And so he believes that if he can get the Oren Pendenten on film, it will work as what he calls a conservation hammer to ensure that this rainforest that this part of the world that he loves so deeply endures. And so he's doing it partly for that reason as well.

So Jeremy's one guy pursuing this goal more or less on his own. But let's talk about groups of people. Can you tell me about a group working on a project they likely wouldn't finish? Yeah. One of my favorite chapters in the book revolves around the subject of planetary defense,

which as its name suggests, is ensuring the survival and the defense of Earth. There's a very, very small tight-knit group of folks who are thinking about how to ensure the world survives specifically a catastrophic asteroid strike, which, not to be a downer, has happened multiple times in our history and is a sure thing to happen again.

Like the dinosaurs, right? Like the dinosaurs. I mean, it's only been, you know, in our lifetime that we learned without a shadow of the death that dinosaurs were destroyed by an asteroid. The people who are working in this field are very confident it's not going to happen in the next century. It's probably not going to happen in the next thousand years.

It could be millions of years from now. But they still feel compelled to ensure that our species has the tools to withstand this kind of unnatural. It's a natural disaster, a cosmic disaster. And so it just so happened that while I was working on this book, NASA's first ever planetary defense mission, the dark. mission was launched. And so Dart stands for a double asteroid redirection test. And to be brief, because, you know, I'm not a science or tech writer, what they wanted to do was crash a spacecraft

into an asteroid to see if they could alter its orbit. The thinking is when the next planet killer comes our way, we'll have started building the technology to allow us to knock it off course so it doesn't strike the earth. Since then, it has collided with the asteroid. It was a very successful mission. And yet, you know, all these people, these physicists and engineers and some of the smartest people, you can imagine, know all the work they're doing. It's never going to benefit them. It's not going to benefit their children. But they feel that it is such an important task that they don't care if, you know, they're never going to see the day when they need it. The world will at some point. And so that is what motivates them.

Yeah, I'm glad you talked about why they're doing this, even though it's not an immediate threat. But can we dig into it a bit more? Like, what keeps them motivated? To them, I mean, they feel it's such monumental importance. And if, you know, they don't do it, nobody else is necessarily going to do it. The way it was put to me is that it's like they're writing a book. And they know the book they're writing is not going to be read by anybody alive today, but it's going to go on the shelf.

And at some point, you know, decades, centuries, millennia from now, you know, our descendants are going to be able to take it off the shelf and read and learn from us. And it will have payoff even if it's, you know, well, well beyond their lifetime. We'll be right back. So, Mark, I want to talk about the broader questions here about what you learn from these people who pursue the impossible. So let's talk about who is inclined to do this. Do you think people are born with this wanting to pursuing such difficult things? Is it learned?

I think we all have goals that might be considered impossible that we want to pursue. It's a question of whether or not you go ahead and pursue them, right? And so I do think it's innate in all of us, this desire to explore the unknown, to kind of grasp something that's always just out of reach. I think the difference is they don't listen to the voices in the back of their head who are telling them, why are you wasting your time? You're never going to do this. They can drown those out and do it anyway.

and that is what I kind of find fascinating about, you know, about their personalities. That's a really important thing to talk about because I know for myself that, you know, there is sometimes things I want to pursue or something that's kind of extraordinary that I'll have that voice in the back of my head, like that doubt, right? You know, I'm being like, why would you even think about putting that out into the world? So did anyone you talk to, did they doubt themselves or question their commitment to their goals? Going back to Jeremy, I mean, what's interesting about him, there's this tension that exists in his life.

So you have on one hand this unwaverable certainty that what he saw, what he claims to have seen, exists, and that he is going to get it on camera. And he has to weigh that against the fact that most people don't believe him. And, you know, why bother? And he's basically, you know, he's always having that conversation with himself. So on that point, like, are there specific traits that all of the people you profile shared? I mean, they have way more patience than I'm ever going to possess. idea that if you know what you're working towards is not going to pay off for, you know, years or decades or centuries, I just don't possess that kind of patience. Obviously, perseverance,

they have resilience. And I think one thing is, like, they really enjoy the work they're doing, right? I don't think they would be spending their lifetimes in pursuit of these goals if it didn't bring them meaning, if it didn't bring them joy, if it didn't bring them some level of satisfaction. So those are the kind of commonalities that I found they shared. So something I found myself thinking about while reading your bookmark, is this idea around faith and religion. And I'm just wondering, do these impossible goals end up providing a deeper meaning in life for the people you profiled? I think there's something to that.

I mean, I don't really pull on that thread that much in the book, but I do touch on it, that they feel a profound level of faith in what they're doing, right? And a couple of people do compare it to religion, that, you know, in the absence of, you know, they're not necessarily thinking about God or getting into heaven, they are thinking about the day that this particular goal finally comes to pass. And, you know, there's no guarantee. They know that, just like there's no guarantee there's going to be an afterlife. And yet they do it anyway.

And I think they find the same kind of solace in their pursuits that, you know, people do Sunday morning in church. And so there is definitely a connection between the two. What about passions? Like, what did you learn about when passion turns into obsession and becomes maybe problematic? I think it's fair to say, Jeremy, he knows he's obsessed. with his goal. It has cost him a lot in his life. You know, he lives on the other side of the world from his family. He's foregone relationships. He's foregone professional opportunities. He's foregone

the kind of things that most people build their lives around because he wants to get this creature on film. And so that sounds like maybe a bad thing. But to him, you know, if he wasn't a little bit obsessed, if he wasn't a little bit delusional about it, he would have never done it in the first place. And so I do think obsession and delusion can be kind of that spark that gets you going. It just can't be the only thing that sustains you. So we've been focusing on impossible pursuits with grandiose ideas of maybe saving humanity, discovering a new species. But you talk to someone else with a very different impossible goal. Tell me about Les Night. So Les Night is a man who has spent most of my lifetime. He started in the early 80s pursuing the existence of the human

race. He is the founder of what's now called the voluntary human extinction movement. It's based in Oregon. We're unsure how many members there actually are. He's unsure about how many adherence he has, but basically he believes that humanity is a blight on the planet, and he's doing everything in his power to convince others, specifically not to procreate. So when it comes to men, you know, if you want to join, he very much appreciates if you get a vasectomy. But for the most part, he just wants us to die off gradually. It's not like he wants us all to, you know, drink poison and drop dead. He is an advocate of what he calls like a slow die-off. And the reason he feels that way is he thinks we're destroying the planet and the planet would be better off

if we weren't around. He's very, very aware that this isn't going to happen. You know, he goes to conventions and he pamphlets on the streets of Portland where he lives. People dismiss him as a kook, as a loon. And yet he feels so strongly about this that this is how he's going to spend the rest of his life, even though, as he said to me many, many times, he won't live to see the day this happens. I'm curious, Mark, why would you include him, given that his goal is, I mean, bleak? I think it's just because it was kind of like an out-of-the-box goal, right? Like, I had never considered the extinction of humanity to be a goal anybody on the planet is pursuing. And, you know, over the course of my research, I came across him and his story. And it was just too perfect not to not to

include. Yeah. I found that chapter so fascinating. I actually, like, I was really both kind of feeling angry, but at the same time couldn't stop reading about him and like learning more about who he was. What did you learn from, from him and how he pursued his goal? Like, is there something specific about less that, like, you take away? Well, he's somebody who has, you know, he wears kind of permanent body armor just because so many people think the goal he's pursuing is, uh, distasteful, right? Like, he is like the one person in the book where I was with him and he was getting yelled at and mocked and, you know, people thought I was part of the group. And so people are, by default, we're yelling at me as well. Don't yell at me. I'm just here. Exactly. No. And so like I do find actually something really, really admirable about what he's doing, not the goal. I mean, I disagree. I have two kids. So I have, I have a real, you know, desire to see our species survive. And, you know, he is doing it for what he considers to be very, very good reasons, even if I disagree with them. I think what I learned from him is sometimes goals are worth pursuing even if you're

getting criticized by everyone else. You know, you need to be willing to deal with the criticism. You need to be willing to dismiss the criticism sometimes and, you know, go forward no matter what. And that's what he does. So, Mark, we've explored three very different stuff. today, what should we take away from this? Like, what does an impossible goal ultimately teach us? I mean, I think an impulsable goal can remind us that there's going to be a lifetime beyond our own, that, you know, even if what you're pursuing isn't going to be realized in your lifetime, somebody's going to kind of take the baton from you some point down the road and continue running the race. It's really, really trendy right now to kind of talk about being in the moment. And, you know,

I try to be in the moment as much as I can, but the problem with being in the moment is that the moment ends. And so I think what we want to do more in our life is, you know, yes, being the moment, but think about the long term, that there's going to be a lifetime somewhere out there that somebody does see these things through. And so there's something very, you know, comforting in that to me. Yeah. It's thinking about, you know, us after us exists, which is, it is very comforting. What about you, Mark? Have you set an impossible goal for yourself after all this? I mean, going back to what we were talking about at the start, I am somebody who I have already broken my New Year's resolution for the year. It's been six, seven days. I broke it on

January 3rd. And this was just a very small manageable role. I'm not going to say because it's so embarrassing. But no, I broke it with gusto and who knows if I go back to it. The goals that I've set beyond that are goals that kind of, I think the way I put them, I'm thinking a lot more about my kids and their kids. I have started writing weekly letters to my kids and my grandkids that are only going to be delivered if Gmail exists, you know, 100 years from now that are only going to be delivered on certain days to them and just basically kind of tell them about, you know, what my life is like at the time, what they were like, you know, when they were, they were, 10 and 5. And for the grandkids, it's a little bit more conceptual, just kind of imagining

the lives they're going to have. So I only started this recently. There's only been a few of these postcards to the future, but I have found it to be quite fulfilling. Wow, I love that. Yeah. Mark, thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been such a wonderful conversation. Hey, thanks, Cheryl. That was Mark Medley, deputy editor of the Globe's Opinion Section. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl's Our producers are Madeline White, Michal Stein, and Ali Graham. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor.

Thanks so much for listening.