David Oakes Godwin from Vikings Valhalla podcasts about Trees and nature

GENERAL INTERVIEW

David Oakes talks podcasts, puns and using personality to push positive green messaging

Published on June 20, 2023

The ‘celebrity podcast’ has had one of the most meteoric rises of any podcast genre. From Louis Theroux to Katie Price, seemingly everyone is bringing their personality to the medium. One of the great things about this is that it can raise a profile for both podcasting and the subject the celeb is podcasting about. But one of the bad things is when a lack of authenticity seeps through some such shows, particularly when commissioned by big production companies.

So when I recently discovered that David Oakes – an actor best know as Godwin from the Netflix series Vikings: Vallhala – has a podcast in my favourite genre, that’s been running for several years, is independently produced, and has a penchant for puns, it was refreshing.

Trees A Crowd celebrates nature and the stories of those who care deeply for it, and David’s own passion for environmentalism is apparent. As well as talk-and-walk conversations that place us outside with artists, scientists, creatives and environmentalists, his narrations and miniseries are a great use of his actor-skills. Plus the music (by folk musician Bella Hardy) is a fun little nod to trees he is so connected to.

I of course reached to David to ask him more about the show…

Tell us about Trees A Crowd – how did the podcast come about?

Back in 2018 there weren’t many Nature podcasts – it was well before the glorious bloom of ‘naturalists with microphones’ that emerged during the pandemic – and I wanted to listen to one. The BBC had a few natural history shows, but they were mostly short interviews or sound bites – people saying “one point five degrees” over and over again, and I felt the most important climate and nature messages were getting lost through repetition and the false comfort that ultimately breeds in unhearing ears.

The cult of personality was in it’s heyday too – Global Politics rife with egos placing the climate far down the list of priorities – and I wondered whether you could use personality to push a variety of positive green messaging instead.

Put those two things together, and you have the germination of the TAC seed.

David with Leigh Morris of Manx Wildlife Trust

With a name like Oakes, is it safe to say you’ve always had an interest in trees?

My first name is Rowan too; trees everywhere! I grew up in the New Forest, my Great Aunt was a Botanist, her husband the Chief Executive of a Wildlife Trust… I think everyone in our family had little chance but to hold nature closely to their sole in one form or another.

Personally, I envy the alternate timeline where my a-levels took me towards a degree in Biology or Zoology, rather than English literature and Drama. But, as it turns out however, I seem to be able to maintain a foot in both camps – a career on stage and screen, whilst also serving as an Ambassador for both the Woodland Trust and the Wildlife Trusts.

Why podcasting? What is it about the medium that appeals to you?

People talk candidly; especially in long form interviews recorded in the wild. The microphone gets lost in the leaf litter and tongues loosen. Suddenly it’s not an interview, it’s a conversation. Wherever my day job takes me, my microphones travel with. And the opportunities the show has opened up have been genuinely life changing. Whilst the reels have spun I’ve walked the New Forest with Chris Packham, downed home brewed scrumpy with George Monbiot, bathed in the dawn chorus of Kielder Forest with David Attenborough’s preferred Sound Recordist, Chris Watson. In the name of the podcast, I’ve dived the Atolls of the Maldives with the Manta Trust and the Olive Ridley Project, been given a personal tour around the grounds of Hampton Court with the Head Gardener of Historic Royal Palaces, and sat on the banks of a river whilst two, then four, then six Hippos walked worryingly closer and closer to hear what our conversation was all about!

David with Nicole Pelletier of Manta Trust

You seem to have a lot of fun, does this podcast let you be creative in a different way?

My greatest pleasure to date was creating the third season of the show – one with an episode devoted to each of our nation’s native 56(ish) tree species. As with the interviews, my goal was to illuminate the secrets of arboreal botany and the mysteries of the palaeo-pollen record in such a way that the layman would get excited by things such as leaf pigments and the calyx of a crab-apple. “56(ish) Trees” was a f**kload of work (you have to be insane to produce a weekly podcast), but I think the end result is quite something. I had to call in oodles of favours – each species had original artwork, there was a Cherry Tree related folk song performed specially by the award-winning folk singer Martin Simpson, poetry readings by Sam West, Natalie Dormer, Katie McGrath, Francois Arnaud, friends from casts past and present – pretty much the entire ensemble of “Vikings: Valhalla” appear at some point or another pretending to be Thor or some other aspect of ancient human mythology… and the series culminates with an original composition by the Novello-winning Leisure Society. It was a true labour of love for many many people.

‘Come for the Vikings, stay for the trees!’ – what has been the reaction of listeners who might know you from something else entirely?

Surprise. I think people remain a little shocked by how much an actor can know. But what isn’t always apparent is how much research I’ve had to do. I learn a great deal each time I prepare for an interview, and then more besides when I actually sit down and press record. I have to legitimise my voice in the environmental world – there’s no need for just another face off the telly talking too much – so I make sure that I’m adding to the debate; make sure that I ask informed questions that genuinely push the guests; make sure that the collective mass of interviews, over a hundred now, highlight all the wonderful ways humans interact with the wild world.

What’s your best (or worst) tree-related pun?

I WISH I had spent more time on the title! I mean, for one, should there be an apostrophe?

And what does it even mean?! Sure, the bastardisation of ‘Three’s a crowd’ into my arboreal alternative makes sense(ish) if it’s just me and the Chief Naturalist at Sequoia National Park talking about Giant Redwoods (see Season Two); but what about when I’m talking to two guests about Bison reintroduction in Kent, or a collective noun of anti-rhino-poaching rangers in the middle of the Kuhnene Desert in Namibia??! Puns just tie you in knots.

But, if I had to choose, the episode from the tree season which focuses on our native Hawthorn species had the subtitle: “May Fairies protect your Midland bush against any Common Haws”. I hate it – it’s unbelievably puerile – but it makes perfect sense as a pun from a botanical and folkloric perspective. I’m sorry.