Reversing Climate Change 393: Emily's Language Chat: Storytelling, Silliness, & Surviving the Climate Space—w/ Emily Swaddle, The Carbon Removal Show
This is the kind of episode you put on and laugh along with us. This isn't the one where you'll get super quick tech takeaways within 30 minutes that you can drop at your next meeting. It's something else entirely.
Emily Swaddle, co-host of The Carbon Removal Show and one of the funniest people in carbon removal, joins Ross for a wide-ranging conversation about life, art, language, climate communications, and the absurdity of having a career in all of the above. A good chunk of the reason The Carbon Removal Show is so fun is because Emily is so fun, and this episode is basically an extended version of her (in)famous segment on TCRS, "Emily's Language Chat".
Emily Swaddle is a storyteller, communicator, and co-host of The Carbon Removal Show alongside Ben Weaver-Hincks and Tom Previte. She's been making the show since 2020, producing deeply researched, highly produced seasons that have become a go-to educational resource for the carbon removal community. Emily brings a unique perspective shaped by her background in the arts, her love of language, and her instinct that the climate conversation needs more humanity, more humor, and far less jargon.
Listen in to hear more about why Emily thinks silliness and vulnerability are underrated tools in climate communication, and why we even bother doing this climate work when it isn't the glamorous, high-paying energy executive type work.
You'll also hear about the Carbon Removal Show Coalition funding model, the tension between monetizing the natural world and actually caring about it, how British class dynamics show up in language and accent, why being a generalist in a specialist world is both a gift and a curse, and what happens when two podcast hosts stop talking about carbon removal policy and start talking about Disney villain queer coding, Mary Poppins, and whether "rabbit tube" should be a phrase.
Special thanks to the team at The Carbon Removal Show for loaning us the perfection that is the "Emily's Language Chat" reggae jingle.
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Resources
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
The Carbon Removal Show podcast
The Carbon Removal Show Coalition
Why Would You Say Something So Controversial Yet So Brave?
Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens by David Mitchell
What Makes Disney Villains so Gay?
Money can be exchanged for goods and services from The Simpsons
"The Darmine Doggy Door" from I Think You Should Leave
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein