Sustainababble
Episodes
276 episodes
#174: No More Cars
A car-free future is hurtling our way faster than even the most ardent greenies dared dream, pre-Covid.Backed into a corner by a pandemic that simply refuses to stop being a dick, mayors throughout Europe are rapidly closing major roads to cars an...
#173: Pangolins
What the world needs in these troubled times is someone to blame. A scapegoat or, in this instance, a scapepangolin.For it turns out everyone's favourite curly, scaley, insect-snuffling-y, heavily trafficked nature weirdos are very much in the doc...
#172: The BBC
Central to British cultural life, if not quite as dominant as it once was, the Beeb still solicits widespread affection, a refuge of familiarity in these strange times.But many a spleen is vented over Auntie's perceived leftyness or rightyness, an...
#171: Mark Lynas meets Sustainababble
If the global pandemic is leaving you wanting more on the existential angst front, try dipping into chapter 6 of journalist and former activist Mark Lynas' new book, 'Our Final Warning', where you'll read that at six degrees of global heating "a w...
#170: Virus
Look, we were supposed to be on a break, but then the world broke. So we're back for a remotely-recorded Covid special. Fair to say this virus lark presents a few challenges on the chuckle front. But despite all the mayhem there are as always Inh...
#169: Stop
Shriek! One of us no longer works for an environmental charity. Is this the end? A more reflective / fewer-knob-jokes episode than usual. What happens when trying to change stuff gets all a bit bloody exhausting? How do we know whether anything we...
#168: Who Owns England?
It's all very well wanting to plant trees everywhere and stuff like that but you need to own the land first. And we don't. Not only that, we don't even really know who does. But one man knows more than most. Superstar activist Guy Shrubsole spen...
#167: Kate Pankhurst meets Sustainababble
Children's author and illustrator Kate Pankhurst often finds herself addressing classrooms of kids, so she was completely at home chatting to Dave and Ol about her new book, Fantastically Great Women Who Saved The Planet.As the names suggests, the...
#166: Chlorine Chicken
Now that we've Br-ucked Off, Blighty can look forward to supermarkets chock full of chlorine-drenched poultry. Lucky us (lucky chickens).Why? Because that's how chickens are made in America, goddammit, and Donald Trump smells a finger-lickin' oppo...
#165: Wildfires
Australia's terrifying bushfires have made the climate emergency seem very real and very immediate. They've forced people everywhere to join the dots in ways previous 'yes obviously it's climate change' disasters haven't. Why? Does it really take ...
#164: Climate Assembly
In a hotel room in Birmingham, one hundred ordinary people are doing something rather extraordinary. For four weekends, members of the UK's Climate Assembly are discussing - in a polite, constructive, and very un-2020 way - how on earth we achieve...
#163: Jonathan Rowson meets Sustainababble
Chess Grandmaster Jonathan Rowson won the British Championship three times and has been the no.1 player in Scotland for basically ever. He's so clever, he's got a PhD in 'Wisdom'. That sounds like a joke but it isn't.Jonathan has written extensive...
#162: Sustainabauble 2019
We don't want a lot for Christmas - there is just one thing we need: piles of festive eco-guff underneath our (potted, reusable) Christmas tree. Make our dreams come true! Let us share this year's Sustainabauble with you.Happy Babblemas. Sustainab...
#161: Five More Years
Election 2019, then: Tories. LOTS of Tories. Boris is as delighted as pig in a massive pile of poo, and has carte blanche to sodding well do whatevs - including to the planet. Crikey, and indeed, Moses. What on Earth does all this mean for, well, ...
#160: Orcas
It's possible that a terrifyingly high proportion of babble listeners haven't seen Free Willy, which, if the case, is truly appalling. Not being alive in 1993 is NO EXCUSE.Anyway, it's a film about an orca, and orcas - killer whales - are extraord...
#159: Advertising
"The gentle art of persuading the public to believe that they want something they don’t need", so a 1905 definition goes. Selling in 2019 is basically the same, except now there's the added by-product - yay! - of hastening planetary self-combustio...
#158: Floods
Bits of northern England have been inundated by floodwater in recent weeks. Even the perpetually soggy Venice has managed to get somehow more underwater.It's grim as hell, flooding, made worse by the politicians stopping by with a mop and hi-vis. ...
#157: Tories
Chances are, if you listen to this podcast you're a bit of a lefty. And that's fine. And we are too.But lefties surely can't claim a monopoly on environmentalism, can they? There are plenty of non-lefties who say they care just as much about the p...
#156: Fireworks
Whizz! Bang! No, not BoJo's pillow talk, but the sound of millions of home explosives polluting the sky and making pets' insides go gooey. With the annual Guy Fawkes celebration now behind us, we ask if it might be time to ban yet another thing th...
#155: Beavers meet Sustainababble
In this special episode, Dave and Ol leave stinky London behind and head off to rainy, muddy Cornwall to try to meet some actual beavers. Without wellies. It's been 400 years since the humble but sodding impressive beaver was wiped out in the UK ...
#154: Eating Insects
One day, not very far from now, we might look back at 2019 and think it incredibly weird that people weren't stuffing their gullets with cockroaches.Insects, we're increasingly told, are a fantastic source of animal protein without all the planet-...
#153: What’s next?
Even by recent high standards, some crazy big stuff is happening at the moment. Br- is about to actually -exit (or not), a general election is imminent (or isn't) and it's all so fast-moving that it will (or won't) have resolved between this week'...
#152: BP vs the RSC
"Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides: Who cover faults, at last shame them derides" said Cordelia in King Lear.Words with which the Royal Shakespeare Company are presumably familiar, and a sentiment that was perhaps front of mind when th...
