The Geographical Podcast

On 21st October 1966, a coal tip fell into the village of Aberfan, killing 144 people including 116 children.

The National Coal Board blamed the disaster on an unknown spring and a “coincidence of a set of geological factors”. Here's what happened next. 

Gaynor Madgwick's book is A Story of Survival, Love and Community in One of Britain's Worst Disasters.

Iain McLean's book is Aberfan: Government and Disasters. 

For a decade, Rob Forrester has been the unnamed source in breaking news exposing the extent of the sewage crisis. This year, at the end of a Channel 4 docu-drama, ‘Dirty Business’, his identity was finally revealed.

I wanted to ask what it cost him. And if he could go back, would he do it again? 

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England is a world anomaly. Apart from Chile, it is the only country where water, a natural resource, is owned by private companies that turn a profit. 

Since water was privatised in 1989, the labyrinthine network of pipes, pumping stations and reservoirs that make up the water and sewerage systems have been owned by companies, beholden to arguably even more complicated networks of global finance.

Between these companies and the rivers, stands the regulator - the Environment Agency. 21 years ago, Robert Forrester started work there as a frontline officer. It was a dream job, until he started to notice things were changing. He sounded the alarm. 

In this episode we ask Rob Forrester how he fought illegal spills (and the broken regulation that allow them) with some spills of his own. 

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One day in Iver, a village on the data centre frontier.

Just outside of London, the land around the village of Iver has become ripe territory for the data centre build-out. Of all the sites given the go ahead, one in particular became the subject of national debate. 

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It's 1963 in the village of Smarden and all around the vet, Douglas Good, the animals have started to behave erratically. They pace the ground, run away, or become overly thirsty. Then, they fall down dead. 

What he does next will make this story one of the strangest of the chemical age. 

Read the research:  Pesticides, pollution and the UK's silent spring, 1963–1964: Poison in the Garden of England by John Clark

The Chemical Empire by Sabine Clarke, the University of York

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The first two episodes of On the Ground are available right now. Subscribe and listen on your favourite app.

On the Ground is the new monthly podcast from Geographical, written and hosted by Laura Cole.

In this series, Laura gets out from behind her desk and onto the ground, reporting from across the UK’s landscape and speaking to the people changing it. Expect the same rigorous, original reporting of Geographical, now brought to life in audio format. 

When scientists Neil Davies and Will McMahon stopped for lunch under the cliffs of west Somerset, they found something very unexpected. Their discovery supports a new paradigm about the world's oldest engineers, and may even change your mind about deep time.

In this episode of On the Ground, host Laura Cole travels to the rugged coastline of South West England to walk the site of a groundbreaking geological revelation: the world’s oldest fossilised forest. She's joined by Neil Davies and Will McMahon, the researchers who quite literally stumbled upon history while sitting down for a sandwich.

Dating back an incredible 390 million years to the Devonian Period, this ancient ecosystem is four million years older than the previous record-holder in New York State. But this isn't just a story about old rocks. These strange fossils, known as Calamophyton, were Earth’s very first environmental engineers. Neil and Will explain how these primitive trees permanently altered how water and land interact, shaping the world's river systems and accelerating the expansion of life on land.  

Read the research: Earth’s earliest forest: fossilized trees and vegetation-induced sedimentary structures, co-authored by Neil Davies, Will McMahon, and Christopher Berry.

See what ancient Calamophyton looked like.

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When Stephen Clarke, a prominent local councillor and leading climate activist in Bristol, called the expansion of Bristol Airport the biggest carbon decision for a generation, he knew the environmental stakes were high. Then he found out who actually owned it.

In this episode of On the Ground, host Laura Cole reveals a story of a massive national oversight. It’s the story of a local planning battle over an airport that escalated into a national problem we are still struggling to resolve – who is counting aviation emissions? And who is watching a wave of airport expansion across the country? 

She's joined by Clarke and members of the Bristol Airport Action Network (BAAN). 

Read more about the UK's push for airport expansion and 

Follow host Laura Cole on LinkedIn.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review and share it with a friend.

This is On The Ground, a new podcast series from Geographical, written and hosted by Laura Cole. In this series, Laura will be getting out from behind her desk and on the ground, reporting from across the UK’s landscape – and speaking to the people changing it.

Coming up, we’ve got investigations into corporate wrongdoing, rural town halls holding the government to account, the human faces behind scientific breakthroughs, and even some true crime episodes.

Subscribe to make sure you don't miss an episode.

In this episode of The Geographical Podcast, we read out articles from our print magazine or website.

This week, we’re in the Faroe Islands, where a unique new project is getting tourists to do the hard work of maintaining the islands’ natural sites.  

In this episode of The Geographical Podcast, we read out articles from our print magazine or website.

This week, journalists Marcello Rossi and Davide Mancini report from Spain, where an endangered salt lagoon has been granted its own legal rights – similar to those of a person.