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

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

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.