Sustainababble
Episodes
276 episodes
#249: David Attenborough
We live in a desperately cynical world - christ, the Babble should know - but a few public figures remain untarnished, standing tall as beacons of trustworthiness while our shared consensus collapses around us. The O.G. Big Dave is perhaps the mos...
#248: Being Dead
You might think being dead is when you can finally stop worrying about your impact on the planet. You'd be wrong.Be it burrying, burning, or buggering off to space, there are myriad options for dealing with one's remains, and not all of them parti...
#247: Mary Colwell meets Sustainababble
In a rare bit of good news for the nation's youth, a new natural history GCSE means 16 year olds might one day appreciate fauna as much as they do Fortnite.Author & conservation goddess Mary Colwell is the driving force behind the 10 yr + campaign...
#246: Seaweed
Kelp. That's what's gonna save the world. Not trees, kelp. Or seagrass. Or some other form of wibbly algae that lives in the sea and isn't a plant.Bingeing carbon; hoovering up chemical nasties in the water; being home for the ickle fishies; being...
#245: Trespass
Keep Out. Two little words that carry such unquestioned authority. But why are we so well behaved when what we're kept out of is often the thing we're all lacking - green space, the beguiling attraction of the natural world, things that aren't man...
#244: Q & A
Babble listeners are definitionally a wise and discerning bunch, so just occasionally we permit the besplurgification of our inbox with probing questions that we absolutely promise to answer on air - unless they're shit.This week, then, it's Dave ...
#243: Insulation
"No please, tell me MORE about your cavity walls!" said absolutely no-one, ever.And that's kinda the problem for poor ol' insulation: it's dull. Yawningly, achingly, Michael-Owen-in-that-weird-Dubai-helicopter-video dull. And as such, few people s...
#242: Tessa Khan meets Sustainababble
Suing national Governments for gross Inhofery, whilst simultaneously laying the smackdown on oil and gas companies, sounds daunting and, frankly, a lot of work. Thank bejeezus then that international environmental & human rights lawyer Tessa Khan ...
#241: Ladybirds
They're not birds, and approximately half aren't ladies. But ladybirds very much ARE beetles, and that alone is reason to celebrate them. Even if they do puke from their knee-joints.However, not everyone coos over these perfect shiny wonders. SOME...
#240: Culture Wars
What is a culture war? Are greenies like us now fighting one? Are we... the baddies?All questions we must, regrettably, now grapple with, because a phalanx of Tory MPs - ably assisted by their outriders in the shite-wing media - are labelling 'net...
#239: NFTs
If you thought Bitcoin was confusing, wait 'til you hear about 'non-fungible tokens'.In fact you've probably already heard about them, after a major conservation charity decided to flog NFTs of pictures of tigers and the like, only to be met with ...
#238: Katharine Hayhoe meets Sustainababble
Very, VERY excitingly, this week we natter with one of the best climate communicators around, who also happens to be one of the planet's foremost climate scientists.Professor Katharine Hayhoe is a United Nations 'Champion of the Earth', chief scie...
#237: Food Waste
It is bonkers that so much effort, land, water & energy is used to make so much food that never goes in anyone's gob. Bonkers and, as babble listener Alysia points out, VERY planety-imperilly.Alysia also notes that we've gone 236 episodes without ...
#236: Don’t Look Up
SPOILER ALERT! This week we natter about the Netflix film 'Don't Look Up', so EFFIN' WELL WATCH IT it before listening.The second most viewed Netflix film ever, Don't Look Up tells the story of two astronomers attempting to warn humanity about an ...
#235: Sustainabauble 2021
A statement from Dave and Ol: "All Sustainabaubles complied with the rules at the time of recording. Not that there have been any Sustainabaubles. But should there have been, they would have been babble-secure. And, just to be sure, we've instruct...
#234: Avocados
The blood diamonds of Mexico. A hipster's fever dream. Compressed mushy peas disguised as a gonad. Is there *anything* to commend the avocado? A fruit, we'll remind you, that CAN'T EVEN BE BOTHERED TO TASTE SWEET. And that's before we consider 'av...
#233: Black Friday
It's here! Black Friday-mas is finally here! Thank the lord. Thank Jeff Bezos. Thank f*ck.Sigh. It's probably not OK to go warm and fuzzy in our special areas at the thought of being hoodwinked into buying sh*t we don't need just a month before we...
#232: Good COP? Bad COP?
Is it OK to feel sorry for teary Alok Sharma? Which country's delegation parties the hardest? Who put China in the shed? And was anyone at all standing up for the dormouses (dormice?)? Not a single one of the 15,276 hot takes already published abo...
#231: Methane
"So Dave, Ol, what IS your favourite tetrahedral molecule?" is not the most F of AQs we get, but the answer - since you asked - is of course CH4, or methane to its mates.It may lack the celebrity cachet of CO2, but boy does methane pack a punch in...
#230: Sewage
There are few childhood rules that continue into grownupness, but 'don't shit in the sea' is definitely one of them. Which is why it's such a shame that all Brits' shits diligently done not in the sea seem to end up there regardless.Perhaps even m...
#229: Bugs
Bugs in all their freaky forms do a staggering range of critical jobs that keep the planet from, among other things, quickly becoming a massive pile of corpses and poo.But humanity is nausing 'em, and we really, really need to stop nausing 'em. Ye...
#228: Road to COP26
A year late, for obvious reasons, but the imminent Glasgow climate shindig is still seismically important. But will this cauldron of egos be any more productive than the previous 25?Yes. No. Possibly. Probably not. Oh Jesus we don't know do we. Bu...
#227: Circular Economy
What shape best represents the absolute lunacy that is humans and their economic activity? Something Jackson Pollock-esque? Mr Messy off of the Mr Men series, perhaps?Either way, probably not a nice, clean circle. But when you think about it, it r...
