Sustainababble Sustainababble: comedy, nature, climate change.

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.







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.

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.







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.

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.







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.

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.







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.

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.







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.

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.







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.