Turning the Tide

About Turning the Tide

Turning the Tide is a brand new podcast from Roots Media, bringing you cheeky, hope-filled stories of rebellious eco-heroes, brilliant ideas, and muddy hands transforming Devon’s future. Dive into wild interviews with the rebels, visionaries and experts turning the tide on environmental issues right here in Devon. This is the antidote to doom-scrolling. Tune in and help write tomorrow, one epic adventure at a time.

Publisher

Roots Media

Category

science

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

30 Oct 2025

Latest episode

5 Mar 2026

Latest episodes

6 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   5 Mar 2026

   Episode 6: The Rewilder

   In this episode of Turning the Tide, Lucas meets Laura Fairs, the Rewilding Wizard at Embercombe near Dartmoor - a trailblazing retreat centre that's letting nature run wild again. Join us as we explore how stepping back from control unleashes cascades of life - from crickets in long grass and booming reptile populations to flocks of buzzards and berry-gorging thrushes - and why "messiness" is the secret to healing both land and hearts. Laura shares radical tips for young listeners on inviting chaos into gardens, minds, and communities: ditch the phone, get deliberately lost, and listen to what the landscape whispers back. We dive into rewilding people as much as places, challenging our obsession with tidy lawns and productive checklists in favour of deep time, cycles of decay, and animistic kinship with the wild. This is Turning the Tide: A brand new Roots Media production. The tide is turning. The only question is, will you listen in as tomorrow gets written? Turning the Tide is brought to you by Roots Media - a teenage-led environmental media organisation mixing hope, authenticity, and unpolished truth about climate action in the real world. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

2. 

   6 Feb 2026

   Episode 5: The Farmer and the Publican

   This episode on Turning the Tide Lucas, Fyn and Matt sit down with two extraordinary trailblazers who have rewritten what it means to care in business - not about profit but also about people and planet. Guy Singh-Watson is the founder of the pioneering Riverford Organic Farmers and Geetie is a prolific publican, with her latest venture being the Bull Inn in Totnes. In fact, this episode was recorded on location at the Bull! Join us as we explore the future of organic farming and why small and medium-scale growers are central to any resilient food system, the Bull’s “noble rules” and what it means to build moral ambition into a business model, and Riverford’s move to employee ownership - including capping top pay at nine times the lowest wage. We also talk candidly about supermarkets, ultra-processed food, and what “patriotic millionaires” might look like in a country living with deep inequality. This is Turning the Tide: A brand new Roots Media production. The tide is turning. The only question is, will you listen in as tomorrow gets written? Turning the Tide is brought to you by Roots Media - a teenage-led environmental media organisation mixing hope, authenticity, and unpolished truth about climate action in the real world. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

3. 

   8 Jan 2026

   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 cafés 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. This is Turning the Tide: A brand new Roots Media production. The tide is turning. The only question is, will you listen in as tomorrow gets written? Turning the Tide is brought to you by Roots Media - a teenage-led environmental media organisation mixing hope, authenticity, and unpolished truth about climate action in the real world. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Support Victoria's work at: bewild.uk Support Roots Media's work at: rootsclothing.co.uk

4. 

   27 Nov 2025

   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. This is Turning the Tide: A brand new Roots Media production. The tide is turning. The only question is, will you listen in as tomorrow gets written? Turning the Tide is brought to you by Roots Media - a teenage-led environmental media organisation mixing hope, authenticity, and unpolished truth about climate action in the real world. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Support Rob's work at: robhopkins.net Support Roots Media's work at: rootsclothing.co.uk

5. 

   13 Nov 2025

   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. Tune in as we discover the rebels, visionaries and changemakers who are turning the tide. Available wherever you get your podcasts.

6. 

   30 Oct 2025

   Episode 1: The Plastic Pirate

   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 meet the pirate crew. Discover what hope looks like when it gets its hands genuinely, authentically dirty. The tide is turning. The only question is, will you listen in as tomorrow gets written? Turning the Tide is brought to you by Roots Media - a teenage-led environmental media organisation mixing hope, authenticity, and unpolished truth about climate action in the real world. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Support Gary's work at tillthecoastisclear.co.uk (tillthecoastisclear.co.uk) Support Roots Media's work at rootsclothing.co.uk (rootsclothing.co.uk)

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.