Sustainababble

We're back! And there's been a touch of news since we were last a-babblin'. Some of it actually not shit, too!So, this week Dave dons his Chris Tarrant mask to host the inaugral 'What The Hell Has Been Happening?' quiz. The only rule? Answers must not be gloomy. 2020 doesn't need any more gloomy Ol, after all.Topics include China's anti-inhofery, David Attenborough smashing capitalism, and confusing news about rice puddings and pumpkins.So strap in and enjoy a blitzkrieg of upbeat babbling. With absolutely no mention of the unprecedented ecological kneecapping unfolding all over the planet.Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.comAvailable 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 [email protected].

Continuing our tour of the Babble's favourite old episodes, here's one of the finest: so, this thing 'neoliberalism' that everyone gets very upset about - er, what is it again, exactly?

'Neoliberalism', then. What the hell is it? Is it wrecking the planet? Is it responsible for Ol's hair? And what's it all got to do with the price of bees? Strap yourself in as mega-brain Christine Berry explains all.

With the patience of a saint, Christine takes Dave and Ol through the basics. Yes, it's a real thing. No, it isn't the same thing as capitalism. And could they stop being such a pair of cretins, please?

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

Available on iTunes, Acast, Soundcloud & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at [email protected].

Back into the Babble archives we go, this time all the way back to 2016. Come for the chat about whether Ol and Dave think that building things is the devil: stay for the bants about radioactive pigs.

Is it steel vs the planet? Is the ongoing the crisis in UK steel REALLY all the fault of us tree-huggers? And should - and could - the Government do more? We investigate.

In other news, why are the UK & USA playing nuclear waste tennis? And why is that wild boar glowing in the dark?

Sustainababble is your weekly comedy podcast about politics, prattle and the planet. Out Mondays.

Music by Dicky Moore from Bearcraft and Dream Themes.

Available on iTunes, Stitcher, Soundcloud, and on sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble

We're off on a break for a few weeks, so here's one of our most popular and important episodes from the ol' Babblevault. In 2019 we had a chat with Asad Rehman, one of the UK's leading justice and anti-racism campaigners, about Black Lives Matter and the failures of the environmental movement.

Asad is, according to his twitter bio, a "general activist against all bad things". And then some.

Currently the Executive Director of anti poverty charity War on Want, for 10 years Asad led Friends of the Earth's international climate work, putting justice and the voices of the global South at the heart of civil society's demands during UN climate talks.

We chat to Asad about his decades of anti-racism activism, the failings of the environment movement and what can be done about it, and why a Green New Deal for America won't cut the mustard.

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

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 [email protected].

To tide you over on our late summer break, here's one of our favourite episodes from the archives, about one of the very best things about summer: lovely, fuzzy, friendly l'il wasps.

Climate change = more wasps. Is it  time we all stopped freaking out and started to love the little blighters?

Plus, Microsoft Excel has a plan for the nation's newts - and clean coal oxymoronicism from our orange friend over the pond.

Sustainababble is your weekly comedy podcast about politics, prattle and the planet.

Music by Dicky Moore from Bearcraft and Dream Themes.

Available on iTunes, Stitcher, Soundcloud, and on sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble

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 [email protected].

It is just possible that yelling about wet-bulb temperature and the certain heat death of everything isn't as effective a climate communications strategy as some may think. So what is? Is there A Right Way to discuss ecological destruction? And can it really be true that conversations are opportunities to learn from each other, not just "win" someone round?We put all these questions and more to climate communications expert and friend of the babble Robin Webster, whose job as Senior Programme Lead: Advocacy Communications at the climate communications organisation Climate Outreach is to help people bang on about climate a lot more effectively.Possibly should have invited her on before now then...Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.comAvailable 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 [email protected].

What if a problem even greater than climate change or ecological collapse is our sense of powerlessness in the face of these crises? Is it our inability to believe we can do anything about the planet frying that is, above anything else, stopping us collectively sorting this shit out?That's the hypothesis of Clover Hogan, climate activist, founder of Force of Nature, and researcher on eco-anxiety, who joins us to get under the skin of the psychological responses to planetary nausing.For younger people, eco-anxiety is becoming particularly widespread and acute - with darn good reason, one might argue. So Clover guides two, er, less young people through the perspective of a generation staring at a distinctly un-rosy future and explores how we can, in her words, mobilise mindsets en masse. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.comAvailable 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 [email protected].

Kryten is on the Babble! SMEGGIN' HELL!Robert Llewellyn is an actor and comedian who since 1989 has played angular faced mechanoid Kryten in cult sci-fi classic Red Dwarf. But he's equally well known for presenting the legendary Scrapheap Challenge and, for the last ten years, phenomenally popular YouTube electric car review show Fully Charged. It's like Top Gear, but without bellends or CO2.Once Dave and Ol get over the fanboy thing, Robert talks to us about all things whizzy tech and clean cars, based on 10 years' experience driving and reviewing the things. We learn how EVs might put all the mechanics out of work, why greenies getting upset about lithium and cobalt may be a wee bit misguided, and - talking of wee - just how long one has to cross one's legs between charges of the latest models.Oh, and why Jeremy Clarkson called Robert a very rude word indeed.This show is dedicated to the memory of Seb Patrick.Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.comAvailable 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 [email protected].

The BBC's Springwatch is a cultural institution in the UK, showcasing the extraordinary but often overlooked wildlife of these crumbling isles with warts 'n all realism (i.e. lots of baby Blue Tits getting munched). Biologist Gillian Burke has for three years been at the heart of the show's presenting team, earning the nation's affection for her passion and powers of communication as much as for her unblinking resolve in the face of uncooperative protagonists and innuendo-tastic co-presenters.Gillian is also a Black woman in an industry - conservation, nature TV and the environment movement as a whole - notable for its woeful lack of representation of people of colour.In a longer-than-usual episode, we hear Gillian's reflections on why those banging on about the planet - the Babble very much included - present so little ethnic diversity, and on the extraordinary Spring of 2020, a period that will surely be remembered for the elevation of racial injustice laid bare by George Floyd's killing and the Black Lives Matter protests, and when millions took solace in the natural world as the global pandemic raged.Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.comAvailable 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 [email protected].

Are you being a good ancestor? Are WE being good ancestors? What the hell is a good ancestor and do I have to buy them a present? Public philosopher Roman Krznaric thinks these are the most important questions we should ask ourselves (well, certainly the first two) if we're to escape the 'tyranny of the now', the hideous short-termism dominating our lives and knackering the planet in the process.His new book ('The Good Ancestor: How to think long term in a short term world') explains how our brains are perfectly capable of serious long-term thinking, despite our apparent crapness at it, and sets out key principles for public decision making fit for the next century, not just the next news cycle. Shockingly, none of those prinicples includes reacting in fury to something on twitter you didn't know you cared about 30 seconds previously. Who knew?Check out the wonderful empathy museum, founded by Roman, and Neal Agarwal's equally magestic animation of just how deep the deep sea is, as mentioned by Dave in the show. Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble.MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.comAvailable 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 [email protected].