Episoder
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Well, this is it. Yer last ever Babble. Thank you - seriously, thank you - if you've lent us your attention over the years. It's been a pleasure.
Herewith a valedictory episode in which we reveal the real reason we're binning the babble, Ol serenades Dave with an original tune, and we humbly compare ourselves to one of the finest sitcoms this or any country has ever produced.
Mostly though we consume far too much of the Christmas spirit and get bitter about the British Podcast Awards, so it probably is time to call it a day.
Some housekeeping - our old email address is now defunct, so if you want to contact us please write to legacybabble at gmail dot com.
We love you, babble army. Hopefully see you again one day. Big hugs, Ol & Dave. Xxx
Sustainababble was (sob) your friendly environment podcast, out weekly, from 2015-2022. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella.
MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com
All 274 episodes available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Socials won't be checked, but feel free to email us at legacybabble at gmail dot com.
Over and out. -
For our final interview, we're joined for a second time by the majestic Chris Packham, our first 'proper' guest all the way back in 2015.We discuss all that has changed in those seven and a half years, not least some pretty hardcore stuff for Chris personally, and we chew over what the world of activism and protest might look like seven years hence, given things continue to go so spectacularly to shit.Talking of shit, we discover that Chris Packham is full of it - so much so that he's put his favourite wildlife poo pics in a calendar for 2023 (available to order here, if you're into that sort of thing).The reality of making telly programmes; Pete Waterman's love of steam trains; our genetic predisposition to hate brussel sprouts; Mick Hucknell; photographing dead things; Michaela Strachan's 80s club nights - it's all ticked off in a wide-ranging chat with a man who is evidently more driven than ever to do everything and anything in his power to fight for the living world. Cheers, Chris.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.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].
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Manglende episoder?
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If there wasn't twitter, would we have solved climate change by now? Might we at least have got round to thinking about solving climate change? Would Ol have had more sleep?
Sure, loads of important eco connections and organising and other useful stuff have happened via the site, but so too has a prodigious amount of titting about (trust us, we know of what we speak) let alone all the hate and bile and BS and conspiracy that sustains it.
Do climate-y people need to 'win' twitter to make progress? Or is fighting online the problem, regardless of 'side', when we're crying out for a bit of peace, love and understanding? And does Elon's free speech crusade mean climate denial is re-invigorated?
What with Musk's Truss-like flair for calm, competent leadership, these questions might be moot pretty soon, so you'd better get on and listen to this, a very macro-length episode about micro-blogging.
As mentioned in the show, 'Stand Out of Our Light' by James Williams is a must read on the moral and political imperative of "liberating human attention from the forces of intelligent persuasion".
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 [email protected]. -
Bat-chomping bird-slicing eco-crucifixes* are making a comeback! A mere eight years after some Tories effectively banned anyone from erecting wind turbines in England, some other Tories now look poised to overturn that ban. Which sort of tells you everything you need to know about Westminster politics.
So this week we transport ourselves to a time when David Cameron was both a thing and someone who professed to like the planet, to understand why it is that these obviously useful, relentlessly popular, and appropriately sized (Grant Shapps, take note) steel and fibreglass daffodils are such Conservative kryptonite.
*This term was coined by an inhofe of such absurdly high self-regard we can't bring ourselves to give him the oxygen of publicity. The one who looks like Gollum, if that helps.
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 [email protected]. -
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 [email protected]. -
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 [email protected]. -
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 [email protected]. -
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 [email protected]. -
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 [email protected]. -
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.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].
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Who knew climate conferences had corporate sponsors? 183,295 people, that's who, for they have signed a petition telling the UN suits to ditch the sponsor of this year's jamboree in Egypt which is... Coca-Cola.
That's Coca "oh hi! we're the biggest plastic polluter in the world!" Cola. Producers of 200,000 plastic bottles EVERY MINUTE coca-cola. Corporate lobbyists supreme, Coca-Cola. Everyone's favourite pilferer of scarce fresh water supplies and flogger of brown sugary fizz, Coca-Cola.
WHAT. THE. ACTUAL.
We speak to Georgia Elliott-Smith, legal activist and originator of said petition, to find out what on earth is going on, and discover the astonishing extent to which climate conferences - meetings we naively assumed (SILLY US!) were about halting the destruction life on earth - are massive trade shows for polluters.
Sign Georgia's petition here https://www.change.org/p/remove-coca-cola-as-sponsors-of-cop27
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 [email protected]. -
Mistakes have been made, lessons learned. Yet again, us being away for a few weeks coincided with the ass falling out of everything that is good.
In fact Blighty's new "Government" has done so many dastardly things that even usually mild-mannered bird watchers are losing their shit. Worse still, Dave & Ol's reputation is in tatters after we (*cough* Dave *cough*) said the Trussticular era probably wouldn't be much worse than what came before. Whoops.
So this episode is our heartfelt apology to the babble army. We're sorry for going away, and we're sorry for being wrong. We get it, and we've listened, and we will never be wrong or away again.
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 [email protected]. -
What, or who, is a Liz Truss and why does anyone care? Well buckle up because approximately 17 old white men from the rich bits of England have just made her boss of Blighty and there are, we fear, going to be some changes around here.
Or, er, are there? Because while Liz Truss is an MP with as many environmentalist bones in her body as a jellyfish, and as much as it's very, VERY tempting to get all shouty about her un-banning fracking etc., might we be getting too obsessed with individual politicians? Is one person - admittedly quite an important person - *really* going to irreparably nause things up any more than they were being naused anyway?
That's how we're rationalising the situation, at any rate. And it's probably not a million miles from King Charles III's thought process right now either.
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 [email protected]. -
'Intersectional environmentalism' is a) a lot of syllables, b) a brilliant concept explained simply and powerfully by writer and environmentalist Leah Thomas, and c) coincidentally also the title of Leah's new book.
Part activist toolkit, part theory, and part history of environmental (in)justice, The Intersectional Environmentalist acknowledges and explores the overlap between systemic harm against Black, Indigenous, and people of colour (BIPOC) communities and the Earth.
It also does a superb job of disentangling numerous knotty issues, like what privilege is and what it's got to do with the planet, with care and patience.
And, talking of patience, Leah tells us that in a world overflowing with mansplain, her favourite pastime is "gracefully humbling men". The babble can neither confirm nor deny whether it was humbled during the course of this interview. (Yes, yes we were. Ed.)
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 [email protected]. -
Rupert Read is an author, philosopher, and activist, perhaps best known for his prominent role in Extinction Rebellion. He's written more than a dozen books and his most recent - Why Climate Breakdown Matters - is, well, full on. Full on in that it argues that unless we confront the full horror of the situation we're in, and the very high likelihood that that situation will unravel towards some sort of societal collapse, then we can't possibly hope to plot a course towards a liveable future.
So yeah, it's not for the faint hearted, but Rupert's argument also goes that it's *only* truth-telling that has had any success in recent years (see e.g. XR and Greta) and that love & compassion has to be at the heart of our response to climate breakdown, which when you think about it, is rather lovely. Apart from the climate breakdown bit.
So strap in for a bracing but powerful chat with a very big brain, who - praise the Lord - seems to think that the Babble isn't a massive diversion from the task at hand.
Get 20% off when you order Rupert's book from bloomsbury.com and use these discount codes:US orders: BREAK22USUK orders: BREAK22UKCanadian orders: BREAK22CAAustralian/New Zealand orders: BREAK22AU
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 [email protected]. -
If you ever encounter a Sloane's Viperfish, you're in for a treat. The charming creature has a bite so ferocious that its first vertebra has to act as a shock absorber. When it chomps, it unhinges its skull, opens its jaw 90 degrees, and expands its stomach to eat things up to 50% bigger than itself. Its absurd fangs act as a cage, trapping anything trying to escape.
Luckily for us, Viperfish are found in the high seas, which is a very good reason to never go there. But unfortunately lots of people ARE going there, or planning to, mainly to nause them up.
But what, or where, is the 'high seas'? Are there pirates there? Does anyone really care about them given they're big, wet and miles away? Do they do anything useful for humanity, other than nurture killer fish?
Dr Olive Heffernan, a superstar scientist with a forthcoming book on the High Seas, joins us to answer all these questions and to explain a) just how imperilled this extraordinary bit of planet earth really is, and b) what the good people of the UN are trying to do about it.
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 [email protected]. -
"WHY HAVEN'T YOU BABBLED ABOUT EVIL EVIL POO-BUM ROADS?!?!" yells twitter. Well, your bellowed word is our grudging command.
But while we're delighted to go truffling for babble in tarmac territory, there is no way on god's earth we are picking sides in the internecine war that is anti-roads campaigners vs anti-HS2 campaigners.
But still. It is true, is it not, that comparatively little fuss is made about comparatively bollocks-loads of big new roads planned or under construction in England. Which is odd, because big new roads are quite literally a highway to climate hell, aren't they? And not altogether spiffing for the trees or newts or humans that used to *not* have a four lane monstrosity on top of them.
But roads are also really quite useful, and surely the government has a point when it says we need more because the ones we've got are full. And just how evil will roads be in the future when all the things driving on them are fossil-free?
We discuss.
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 [email protected]. -
Fans of our feathered friends, look away now...If you've been to the coast recently there's every chance you'll have seen, how can we put this delicately, an exceptionally dead bird washed up on the shore. Or, more likely, dozens of the bastards.
Bird flu has been around for ever, but evidently got the hump while Covid hogged the viral limelight. Now it's back with a vengeance, ensuring everyone and H5N-y-1 knows its name.
Predictably enough, concern is largely reserved for the economic impact of farmed chickens getting the deadly snuffle. But what about skewered skuas or puff-less puffins? Can anything be done to stop them falling from the sky? Might it, I dunno, involve NOT TREATING SENTIENT BEINGS SO GROTESQUELY?
Also this week, babble respects are paid to James Lovelock, maverick scientist and father of the Gaia theory, who's dropped off his own perch at the ripe old age of 103.
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 [email protected]. -
Famously soggy, predictably chilly. Well, not any more, cos Blighty has joined the global combustability club after turning in a world-beating and very much oven-ready 40.3 degrees C of scorchiosity in its latest heatwave.
So how freaked out should we feel? Cos like, this was always going to happen wasn't it? And, as sure as tropical night follows sweltering day, it's only going to get hotter from here.
But does extreme weather's inevitability in anyway dent its horror? Will the fact that much of London ACTUALLY CAUGHT ON FIRE change inhofe-ish minds about the need for climate action?
What, in other words, The Hell are we supposed to make of all this?
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 [email protected]. -
How much, precisely, is one whale worth? Half an elephant? Three dozen gibbons?
"Don't be silly, Ol and Dave, you can't put a price on nature" we hear you cry. Well tell it to the IMF, because they say our blubbery friends retail for $2m, a big figure which, in the world of excel spreadsheets and cost benefit analyses, means whales are worth saving. Unlike, say, earwigs, who aren't priced up and therefore can extinctify themselves without wider consequences.
Bonkers, no? Well that's what Adrienne Buller, author of fab new book The Value of a Whale: On the illusions of Green Capitalism wants us to think about.
Because there is also an argument that goes 1) everything's dead or dying, 2) the powerful only care about money, 3) give animals a dollar value & men in suits might prefer them alive, 4) NOTHING ELSE SEEMS TO BE WORKING SO LET'S GIVE THIS A SHOT, EH?
We discuss.
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 [email protected]. - Vis mere
