The Brendan O'Connor Show on Auti, Radio one with oil care pharmacy discover a team that's always here to support you at all care, taking care of communities across Ireland.

Now, lots of you will know my next guest. He's one of the stars of Netflix's Bright Lines, ITVS Cold Feet, and he's also a BBC Radio One DJ. But this week he's launching a brand new podcast about a subject very close to his heart called Spider Man.

Good afternoon, Brendan. Good afternoon. Such a pleasure to be with you, sir, and a pleasure to have you.

And Carl, can I say loving your work in white lines like it feels like a lifetime ago? No, like a million years ago. But it was Lockton one, I think, here when White Lines came out and it kind of kept us all going for for a while there.

No, I appreciate that. It was he was spot on. I think we came out around April time. And in a way, obviously, we remember thinking we prefer to come out under normal circumstances, but it felt like it was a lovely bit of respite and escapism for people, I think. And even just short time. Yeah.

The Alphabeat and the idea of, you know, like, look, it all turned very horribly wrong with the idea of all people there dancing together and. Yeah, fantastic.

Yeah, it was members saying actually I think in the opening episode it says I'd be the opening party 2020 and that kind of obviously never happened. So it kind of exists now in this weird dystopian place that we were the only ones that went to the Ebeneezer opening parties in 2012. Yeah, quite funny.

Excellent. Excellent. When did you make it?

We we filmed it the year before, so we were back and forth to around Spain for about eight months. It was and we were filming. We only actually did a week in know because we were filming in peak season. So it would have been to talk to a big film crew taken over the island. So we did a week and I'd be through between Majorca and Madrid and the year before it was seven. So I felt very fortunate. I know in another world it Brendan.

Now listen to your podcast called The Wild is launching this week and just tell us about it. And also, you've got a very special guest for the first episode to do.

Yeah, it's it's something we've been working on for for for a bit of time now. So a brand new podcast called Call of the Wild and going off the name of it's always kind of all centered around the environment, climate change in the climate conversation as a whole. And I've been working on making it with WWF, not the wrestling the World Wildlife Fund. And we aim basically to kind of highlight some key areas of the climate conversation, delve into it.

You know, we're not saying you have to be an expert or kind of, you know, be kind of really in the environmental space, so to speak. We wanted to to make this an open place for everyone to hopefully learn a little bit, kind of grow awareness and education and at the same time, you know, try and get some tangible things that you can take away from listening that you can go out and do and implement, which is really cool.

And we've kicked off. I mean, we've kind of peaked straight away and we're very grateful to our first guest is David Attenborough, who just I mean, it's kind of the perfect place to start that journey on. Really? Yeah, yeah.

If you learned one thing from David Attenborough, what was it like?

Do you know what they're given, given the amount of time you spent in the natural world and and how much he's seen and how much he knows, he still remains very hopeful and optimistic for the future. And I think in a in a conversation that can feel quite overwhelming and can make people quite pessimistic to hear from the man himself, that he actually is still hopeful and thinks that we can turn things around and that, you know, we are able to make the change we need to change.

I think that's probably one of the best things. That's it. Yeah.

And I know it's funny, we were talking to a guy here yesterday who owns a lot of tech companies and everything. And, you know, he he's making the point that the conversation around the environment can be a bit of a downer a lot of the time. But he's very much solution focused. So. So you're kind of on the same tape, aren't you, that like, actually, you know, we don't need to get fatalistic about this.

We can do this completely, I think.

Yeah, I think there's a balance to be to be struck in that obviously the severity of the situation is very severe. But in the same breath, you know, and knowing just how I can feel about at times, we need everyone to kind of play a role in this and you're not going to get everyone on board. If it's all doom and gloom, negative, nothing's going to happen and nothing's going to change because then everyone's going to go, what's the point?

I've got enough going on in my own life. I don't need to be stressing and worrying about that. But I think, yeah, it's always been part of kind of my message of going like, look, things are bad, but there are so many things out there. The science is out there. The systems are out there for. To implement to bring about that change, so actually use that kind of feeling of hope and galvanize people to say we can absolutely do this together, otherwise I think no one will want to get involved.

And I don't understand that because I think that's the feeling that I definitely felt when I was 15, 16. You kind of just want to bury your head in the sand, but we kind of need everybody to play a part in this.

So is this something that you got? I mean, look, you're still very young, but did you get into it as you got older or was that were you kind of a big, big into nature growing up and everything?

Yeah, it was both, to be honest, Brendan. I think I always I always felt I had a connection and look for for wildlife in particular when I was younger. That was kind of my big thing. I always had an adoption of some sort. And then you learn to kind of, you know, about global warming and the environment in school, which kind of piqued my interest a bit. But I think it was more I was around 15 and 16 when I really realized actually where things were at when it comes to kind of climate change and what's happening to the planet and why it's happening.

And I guess from now, I was working on children's BBC at the time and I just really felt that I was going to go one of two ways, either bury my head in the sand and kind of lock myself in a room and go, I don't want to know about it and shoot it all off or try and actually do something about it. And where I had a little bit of a voice and platform, especially amongst younger people. And I think that's when I reached out to WWF to start really look to try and support your work and just just spread the message in awareness and try and bring people along and involved in this conversation.

So that's kind of been my journey, really. And then from there, it's just grown and grown and grown and it's now something I'm very passionate about and just want to try and do all I can to help, I guess.

And how have you changed your own life?

And a few things, really. You know, I think a big one for me over the last few years, I've really tried to move towards a plant based diet and I will say anything. I always like to find it important to say, listen, I'm not for vegan. And with a lot of these things, I think people kind of season one extreme or the other either eat me or don't eat me. It's not the case. I think small incremental changes to your habits and routines is is what we should all be striving for.

So I kind of adopt a more plant based diet now. I'm very well a lot more conscious about my my trouble. And, you know, some trouble can't be helped again because of work in my own personal life. It's something that I'm very aware of. And I try and do a lot of work around younger people and within schools because I think if you can, this next generation really are going to be play a massive part, I think, in it.

So growing awareness in that space. And I've recently I changed my energy supplier so you could you can go totally green renewable energy supplier. So I did that recently and also trying to look at my shopping and spending habits. You know, money is a very powerful thing. I think we all know it seems to make the world go round. So choosing where I spend my money and what I invest in and who is that? I want to kind of give my time to my money to is another thing that I've really been kind of focusing on over the last two years.

Yeah, that's that's very sensible.

So basically tell you you can be the change and we can all be the change. All right. Listen, great to talk to you. And the first episode of Call of the Wild West, Cal Spellman and the WWF launches on Wednesday, next Wednesday, 17th February, and that would be available on all podcast providers. OK, well, Don, thanks. Kat.

Brandon, pleasure. Thank you very much. You too, will be back with our entertainment panel in just a minute.

Email Brandon Desai.