Sustainababble

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#274: The End Dec 24, 2022

Show notes

Well, this is it. Yer last ever Babble. Thank you – seriously, thank you – if you’ve lent us your attention over the years. It’s been a pleasure.

Herewith a valedictory episode in which we reveal the real reason we’re binning the babble, Ol serenades Dave with an original tune, and we humbly compare ourselves to one of the finest sitcoms this or any country has ever produced.

Mostly though we consume far too much of the Christmas spirit and get bitter about the British Podcast Awards, so it probably is time to call it a day.

Some housekeeping – our old email address is now defunct, so if you want to contact us please write to legacybabble at gmail dot com.

We love you, babble army. Hopefully see you again one day. Big hugs, Ol & Dave. Xxx

Sustainababble was (sob) your friendly environment podcast, out weekly, from 2015-2022. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella.

MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com

All 274 episodes available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Socials won’t be checked, but feel free to email us at legacybabble at gmail dot com.

Over and out.

#273: Chris Packham meets Sustainababble, again Dec 19, 2022

Show notes

For our final interview, we’re joined for a second time by the majestic Chris Packham, our first ‘proper’ guest all the way back in 2015.

We discuss all that has changed in those seven and a half years, not least some pretty hardcore stuff for Chris personally, and we chew over what the world of activism and protest might look like seven years hence, given things continue to go so spectacularly to shit.

Talking of shit, we discover that Chris Packham is full of it – so much so that he’s put his favourite wildlife poo pics in a calendar for 2023 (available to order here, if you’re into that sort of thing).

The reality of making telly programmes; Pete Waterman’s love of steam trains; our genetic predisposition to hate brussel sprouts; Mick Hucknell; photographing dead things; Michaela Strachan’s 80s club nights – it’s all ticked off in a wide-ranging chat with a man who is evidently more driven than ever to do everything and anything in his power to fight for the living world. Cheers, Chris.

Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella.

Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.

MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com

Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

#272: Twitter Dec 11, 2022

Show notes

If there wasn’t twitter, would we have solved climate change by now? Might we at least have got round to thinking about solving climate change? Would Ol have had more sleep?

Sure, loads of important eco connections and organising and other useful stuff have happened via the site, but so too has a prodigious amount of titting about (trust us, we know of what we speak) let alone all the hate and bile and BS and conspiracy that sustains it.

Do climate-y people need to ‘win’ twitter to make progress? Or is fighting online the problem, regardless of ‘side’, when we’re crying out for a bit of peace, love and understanding? And does Elon’s free speech crusade mean climate denial is re-invigorated?

What with Musk’s Truss-like flair for calm, competent leadership, these questions might be moot pretty soon, so you’d better get on and listen to this, a very macro-length episode about micro-blogging.

As mentioned in the show, ‘Stand Out of Our Light’ by James Williams is a must read on the moral and political imperative of “liberating human attention from the forces of intelligent persuasion”.

Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.

MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com

Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

#271: Onshore Wind Dec 05, 2022

Show notes

Bat-chomping bird-slicing eco-crucifixes* are making a comeback! A mere eight years after some Tories effectively banned anyone from erecting wind turbines in England, some other Tories now look poised to overturn that ban. Which sort of tells you everything you need to know about Westminster politics.

So this week we transport ourselves to a time when David Cameron was both a thing and someone who professed to like the planet, to understand why it is that these obviously useful, relentlessly popular, and appropriately sized (Grant Shapps, take note) steel and fibreglass daffodils are such Conservative kryptonite.

*This term was coined by an inhofe of such absurdly high self-regard we can’t bring ourselves to give him the oxygen of publicity. The one who looks like Gollum, if that helps.

Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.

MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com

Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

#270: Heat Pumps (formerly called “Ol’s House”) Nov 28, 2022

Show notes

Look, we’re quitting, so if there ever was a leash we are now firmly off it. Problem is, while unleashed Dave might follow his nose into the bushes of podcasting misadventure, unleashed Ol… well, he’s not that interesting is he? So having cast aside any editorial imperative to stay vaguely relevant or entertaining, herewith 45 minutes of a sad old man wanging on about hot water cylinders and heat pumps.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.

MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com

Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

#269: Just Stop, Ol Nov 20, 2022

Show notes

Now then, we have Some News about the babble. Listen to the show to find out precisely what (don’t worry, we haven’t been bad), but suffice to say this year’s Sustainabauble will be particularly valedictory.

But before we get too festive and emotional, there’s work to be done. Like trying to gather our thoughts on there being 8 billion humans alive.

Or indeed what we make of the increasingly ballsy climate protests sweeping the land. Are Just Stop Oil really “damaging their cause“, as so many armchair critics would have us believe?

And finally whether COP 27 (itself not finalised at the time of recording, we should add) is doing anything meaningfully better than the previous two dozen and two.

Busy boys, we are. At least for the next four weeks. Sniff.

Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.

MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com

Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

#268: David Roberts meets Sustainababble Nov 14, 2022

Show notes

Chances are you’ll have read David Roberts’ superlative writing on climate – at Vox or more recently Volts – and thought ‘coo, that’s sensible and right and interesting’. We certainly have, so we’re delighted to finally have him on the show.

David natters with us about US politics (are things potentially *not* totally naused?), progressives’ inability to be happy, the usefulness of COPs and the role of protest. We also goad him to adopt pointlessly binary positions on various controversial topics but, darn it, he sees us coming.

As mentioned in the show, here’s David’s sterling advice for aspiring journalists.

Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.

MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com

Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

#267: Eels Nov 06, 2022

Show notes

If we said “name the weirdest, most mystical & inexplicable creature on earth” you would rightly say “80s English footballer Peter Beardsley”. But pause for a moment to consider instead the ‘umble eel, a fish(ish) so unknown and unknowable that no human has observed one shagging in the wild. In fact no-one’s totally sure that they even DO shag in the wild. A bit like Peter Beardsley.

It’s an astonishing tale, the eel’s, at the heart of which is a simple question that’s confounded thinkers big and small for centuries: where do eels come from? Mad cap attempts to find out have been almost as wild as the fact that people like eating the poor sods in a ‘jelly’ of their own skin and sweat.

We delve into the deliciously, reassuringly bonkers story of the eel and its origins, a story that in October 2022 partially revealed itself to modern science. Which doesn’t strike us as a necessarily good thing.

Enjoy Dr Emily Finch’s twitter thread that prompted this episode, and then read Brooke Jarvis’ superlative New Yorker article from 2021.

Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.

MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com

Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

#266: Poo Oct 31, 2022

Show notes

Loathe though we are to be scatological, it’s time to face faecal facts: the astonishing amount of human excrement on the planet presents a honking environmental challenge.

When you think about it, with nearly eight billion of us crimping one out most days, the fact that humans aren’t all swimming in the stuff is an impressive log-istical achievement, especially when flush toilets have only existed for 150 years.

And despite it being the most normal thing in the world, poos and pooing remains a curious taboo. Unless, that is, you’re professor and film-maker Troy Hale, whose latest release (sorry) ‘Sh*t Saves the World‘ is a televisual tribute to all things number two.

Ahead of his film being deposited on a UK streaming service near you, we shoot the crap with Troy.

Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.

MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com

Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

#265: Rainforests of Britain Oct 23, 2022

Show notes

Britain has lost a lot of things lately: international standing; economic credibility; its collective shit. But we’ve also mislaid something more fragile, dank and extraordinary than even Liz Truss’s premiership: our precious and hitherto largely unknown temperate rainforests.

In his new book, The Lost Rainforests of Britain, author and campaigner Guy Shrubsole sets out to right that wrong. He’s mapped every last rainforesty remnant, uncovered centuries old cultural ties to them, and outlined a compelling case for reversing their decline.

Now listen, before you get excited, don’t go expecting pumas and parrots and leeches and wotnot, like in ‘proper’ rainforests. But as Guy patiently explains, Blighty’s special areas – cold and wet rather than hot and wet, like all the places you’d actually want to go on holiday – are jam packed with extraordinary flora and fauna none-the-less.

Or at least they were, until Dave showed up with his size 9s.

Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.

MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com

Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at hello@sustainababble.fish.

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