A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
As the New Year kicks off, some may be busy checking off a list of goals and dreams they hope to accomplish in 2026. Now, our next guest has traveled the world, learning about people who have spent their lives chasing a reward that may never come - at least not in their lifetime. There's the chase for a Pink-headed duck largely known to have gone extinct in South Asia.
There's a team in the United States working to defend the planet from objects in space. And let's not forget the photographer in the jungles of Indonesia chasing a mystery ape. Mark Medley is a journalist and the author of "Live To See The Day" and he joins us now to talk more about this. So, Mark, first off, the idea behind this book - how did it even come about?
MARK MEDLEY: This book really wouldn't exist if not for a woman named Liz White. She's the leader of what is now called the Animal Protection Party of Canada. And there was a federal election and I pitched my editor on the idea of profiling a no-hope candidate...
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter).
MEDLEY: ...One of those names on the ballot, who, you know, are lucky to muster a dozen votes, if that.
MARTÍNEZ: The underdog story. Yeah.
MEDLEY: Exactly. Exactly. And she would run in every single election. And it wasn't, like, over the years she was getting better results. After watching this continue for, like, a decade, it struck me this had the makings of a book. You know, people who are striving for a goal they know they're never going to achieve, or, as you said, it's not going to happen in their lifetime. And so I went out into the world to find more people like Liz.
MARTÍNEZ: So let's get into that because you just said, striving for a goal they are never going to achieve. That doesn't seem like a good way to start anything.
MEDLEY: You would think so, and I wouldn't think so, either. You know, I found in the years I was working on this book - and I kind of got a glimpse of what they go through myself - I found it's a really admirable way to live.
MARTÍNEZ: All right, Mark, let's get into some of these dreamers. Tell us first about the photographer who has spent pretty much his entire life pursuing a mystery ape.
MEDLEY: So that is Jeremy Holden. He's a British man and he's spent over 30 years - much of that living in Sumatra - looking for a creature called Orang Pendek. So this is basically the Sumatran version of Big Foot and has been in, you know, legend on the island for ages. What is it? It's a bipedal ape and Jeremy claims to have seen one in 1994, soon after his arrival in Sumatra. And he has devoted his life since then to proving to the world that it's real.
MARTÍNEZ: But he's a photographer. Why didn't he have a camera then? I mean - what (laughter)...
MEDLEY: It's a very, very good question. And one I asked him and one many, many people have asked him. The way he put it to me, during his encounter he didn't have a camera and even if he did, he was so dumbstruck by what was in front of him that he was just in a state of paralysis. So that's Jeremy.
MARTÍNEZ: So tell me, then, Mark, with the people that you have spoken to on this, what is the difference, or where is the line between patience and determination and just plain delusion?
MEDLEY: I mean, I don't think necessarily delusion is a negative thing, you know? I think delusion, even though it has these connotations, delusion can actually help you start something, because if you willingly knew from the outset that you were not going to achieve this goal, a lot of us wouldn't start in the first place. So one of the things I've really, really tried not to do is label them in this way because, you know, I might be delusional.
The fact - writing a book, you know, knowing that the odds are this is not going to wind up on the New York Times bestseller list - right? - and yet I did it anyway. There were many, many times my wife probably thought I was delusional.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. Now, you mentioned your wife. The one thing with some of these people is that there are people around them, one way or the other, either positive influences or negative influences. And I want to play a scene from a movie, one of my favorite movies of all time, Mark, it's "Contact,"...
MEDLEY: Love that.
MARTÍNEZ: ...A 1997 film. Jodie Foster plays Ellie Arroway, a brilliant scientist, child prodigy, who's obsessed with contacting extraterrestrial life, but her research gets shut down because it's just deemed as a waste of resources. Let's play that clip.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "CONTACT")
JODIE FOSTER: (As Ellie Arroway) Is it true? They let you pull the plug? Did you pull the plug?
TOM SKERRITT: (As David Drumlin) I know you can't see it now, but I'm doing you a favor.
FOSTER: (As Ellie Arroway) Ah, that's great.
SKERRITT: (As David Drumlin) You're far too promising a scientist...
FOSTER: (As Ellie Arroway) That's great.
SKERRITT: (As David Drumlin) ...To be wasting your gifts on this nonsense.
FOSTER: (As Ellie Arroway) But I don't consider what could potentially be the most important discovery of the human race nonsense, OK? There's 400 billion stars out there and we have not even started.
SKERRITT: (As David Drumlin) And only two probabilities. One, there is intelligent life out there, but it's so far away you'll never contact it in your lifetime. And two...
FOSTER: (As Ellie Arroway) You're making a decision...
SKERRITT: (As David Drumlin) ...Two, there's nothing out there but noble gases and carbon compounds and you're wasting your time.
MARTÍNEZ: Tom Skerritt is the other voice playing the president's science adviser, David Drumlin. I mean, Mark, Jodie Foster's character there, that could be a character in your book.
MEDLEY: She is a character in my book. Jill Tarter, she was one of the co-founders of the SETI Institute, which is in Mountain View, California, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, which I visited a couple of years back. And Jill was the inspiration for Ellie Arroway's character in the novel. And so, you know, yeah, listening to that, I mean, "Contact" is one of my favorite movies. It's one of the reasons I became interested in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
MARTÍNEZ: Before I let you go, I need to find out about the chase for the Pink-headed duck that I mentioned earlier. I mean, just to think of a duck with a pink head has got - I mean, I'm rooting for this (laughter) for this Pink-headed duck to be discovered.
MEDLEY: Yeah. So, Richard Thorns is a gentleman who lives in the U.K. and he has no science background whatsoever. He was working in a menswear shop in a small town, when in the late '90s, he went to the library and he found a book called "Vanishing Birds" and he read it over his lunch break. And he decided that the story of this duck, which was last seen in the wild in 1935, last one died in captivity in India in 1948, and even though it hasn't been seen in, you know, 80 years, it has still not been declared fully extinct.
And so what this guy has done is basically, you know, for the last 15-odd years, is he has been, like, a one-man search party for the Pink-headed duck.
MARTÍNEZ: I mean, what do you think we can kind of learn from these people that are pursuing these passions and keep doing it, regardless of the people around them, or maybe forces that work against them?
MEDLEY: Well, I think in, like, my own life, like, it has led me to be more patient. You know, I'm trying to embrace failure more than I ever have in my life. That's if something doesn't go my way or if I realize, you know, there's something I want that I'm never going to get, then that's OK. That's part of life. That's part of the journey, and that actually might lead me somewhere better, somewhere more interesting.
MARTÍNEZ: Mark Medley is the author of "Live To See The Day: Impossible Goals, Unimaginable Futures, And The Pursuit Of Things That May Never Be." Mark, thank you very much.
MEDLEY: Thank you so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF YO LA TENGO'S "THE FIRESIDE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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