Stories from Devon's environmental revolution
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What is Turning the Tide?
Turning the Tide is a brand new environmental podcast brought to you by Roots Media. Ran by Lucas Brendon, Director of and Head of Media at Roots, we aim to bring awareness to the most predominant environmental issues facing our generation.
While the rest of the world is tangled in debates about environmental collapse, a quiet (and slightly mischievous) revolution is surfacing in England's most adventurous county. Turning the Tide doesn't just tell you this story - it smuggles you right into the middle of it.
Forget doom-scrolls and disaster reels. This is climate storytelling with muddy boots, salty hair, and a sharp eye for rebels. We're tracking down the eco-pirates sneaking into Devon's secret coves to drag plastic out of the sea. We're going underground with soil scientists who treat carbon like buried treasure. We're mi'cing up teenage activists who refuse to wait their turn, and professors who can prove that re-wilding isn't just possible; it's profitable.
Each episode zooms in on that electric moment when a wild idea suddenly looks doable. When individuals collide with institutions, when grassroots hacks turn into global-scale shifts, when someone stands up and makes "impossible" look embarrassingly easy.
From Dartmoor's windswept tors, to Plymouth's churning harbours, we're stitching together the scrappy, surprising, sometimes eccentric blueprint for fixing the future. This isn't about enduring the climate crisis. It's about outsmarting it, one brilliant brain and muddy hand at a time.
The tide is already turning. The only question is: do you want to listen in as tomorrow gets written?
Episode 1: The Plastic Pirate
Have you ever had that sinking feeling when you think about the ocean? You know, where you've watched every Blue Planet episode, you've read the statistics about the great plastic gyres spiralling through our seas, and yet you still feel completely powerless? That gnawing guilt that scrolls past your feed every single day?
Welcome to the real world of environmental action - where the work doesn't happen in think-tanks or policy meetings, but in hidden coves, off beaten coastal paths, and aboard boats laden with salvaged fishing nets and raw determination.
Today on Turning the Tide we sit down with Gary Jolliffe, the founder of Till The Coast is Clear and a man who swapped his comfortable career for something far more audacious. A moment - a single jog along a Welsh beach - changed everything. One decision. Thirty tonnes of plastic liberated from the ocean. Hundreds of volunteers galvanised into action. And a radically different way of thinking about what environmental activism can actually be. Forget the guilt-tripping documentaries and corporate greenwashing. This is something wilder, messier, and infinitely more real.
We're calling him a plastic pirate, and for good reason. This is the kind of person who doesn't wait for permission, doesn't ask the system to work faster, and doesn't accept that our coastlines are destined to become dumping grounds. He's built a movement from the ground up - one rubbish haul, one community gathering, one impossible dream at a time. The kind of work that makes you feel alive, not paralysed.
If you've ever wondered what lies beneath the surface of those picture-perfect Devon beaches, or what one person with a boat, a vision, and an irrepressible spirit can actually accomplish when conventional paths seem closed off - this episode is for you. Come and meet the pirate crew. Discover what hope looks like when it gets its hands genuinely, authentically dirty.
Support Gary's work at https://www.tillthecoastisclear.co.uk/
The tide is turning. The only question is, will you listen in as tomorrow gets written?
Tune in to Turning to the Tide every fortnight on Thursday! Listen in on Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple podcasts.
Episode 2: The Plastic Detective
Today, we head to Baker Street. But not in Victorian alleyways. We are off to Nairobi to meet an extraordinary plastic detective who will take us on an extraordinary journey. From bathroom sinks to the summit of Everest, one scientist's detective work rewrote what we know about pollution. Dr. Imogen Napper discovered three million microbeads in a single facial scrub - sparking a worldwide ban. She found microplastics in the pristine snow atop the world's highest mountain. She traced pollution through sacred rivers and into Earth's orbit itself.
But here's the thing: She didn't become paralysed by the scale.
In this episode, we talk to the world's leading plastic detective about the hidden war against invisible enemies, the unexpected connections between ocean debris and space junk and why the most powerful solutions are the most boring. She also reveals what it means to stay hopeful when everywhere you look is contaminated - and why that matters more than ever.
The tide is turning. The only question is, will you listen in as tomorrow gets written?
Tune in as we discover the rebels, visionaries and changemakers who are turning the tide.
Tune in to Turning to the Tide every fortnight on Thursday! Listen in on Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple podcasts.
Episode 3: The Time Traveller
This week we're sitting down with a real life time-traveller! This isn't Doc Brown's time machine, but get your DeLorean ready all the same, because today we're meeting Rob Hopkins: the dreamer who swapped despair for design, and convinced thousands of people to board a time machine with him. In this episode, we're sitting down with the co-founder of the Transition movement - a guy who's spent two decades making hope normal again, not through rose-tinted optimism, but through something far more radical: imagination.
Rob's been to 2030. He's seen the bicycle rush hours, the rooftop farms, the moment when we finally stopped waiting for permission and started building the world we actually wanted. He share's his time-travelling journey through his brand new book "How to Fall in Love with the Future".
But it's not science fiction. It's evidence-based dreaming, sewn together from futures that are already happening in pockets across the globe.
This conversation lives in the third space, between performative optimism and crushing nihilism. We talk about why communities are our strongest renewable resource, what it really means to fall in love with a future you haven't seen yet, and why imagination itself has become the most underrated act of rebellion in our age.
If you've ever felt paralysed between guilt and powerlessness, or wondered whether another world is actually possible - this one's for you. Because Rob Hopkins doesn't just talk about the future. He makes you fall in love with it.
Support Rob's work at: robhopkins.net
This is Turning the Tide: A brand new Roots Media production.
The tide is turning. The only question, will you listen in as tomorrow gets written?
Tune in to Turning to the Tide every fortnight on Thursday! Listen in on Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple podcasts.
Episode 4: The Naturalist
What is the point of caring about nature when the headlines feel so bleak? In this episode of Turning the Tide, Lucas sits down with Victoria Benns, former art teacher turned naturalist and founder of Bewild CIC, who thinks the answer starts on your doorstep, rather than in Westminster.
From beach cafes in Dartmouth, to verges and pavements across the South Hams, she explains why reconnecting with nearby wildlife is not a soft, sentimental add-on, but a serious strategy for tackling biodiversity loss, mental health crises and community fragmentation. She argues that if people fall in love with the birds, beetles and moss outside their front door, protection and activism follow naturally.
Victoria also reflects on why apathy is often just a lack of invitation, how local businesses can become unlikely biodiversity trailblazers, and what it means to build hope not by preaching doom, but by helping people notice the wild stories already unfolding all around them.
Support Victoria's work at: bewild.uk
This Turning the Tide: A brand new Roots Media production.
The tide is turning. The only question, will you listen in as tomorrow gets written?
Tune in to Turning to the Tide every fortnight on Thursday! Listen in on Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple podcasts.