Your Brain On Climate

Psychology vs climate change: what we think, why we think it, and how it all adds up to a planet-sized emergency. Each episode host Dave Powell interviews experts in how our brains work - from PhDs in psychology to writers, activists and beyond. They'll talk about how their brains and our brains do (and don't) work, and how all of that might help make sense of the climate crisis - and possibly what to do about it.

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Your Brain On Climate

MICRO: Optimism Bias

August 29, 2025 • Dave Powell

Thing about humans is, we like to look on the bright side of life. Without optimism, we'd not have evolved out of the trees in the first place.

Our species has optimism bias. But we're all different, and some of us are a little bit too wired to be over-optimistic - and vice versa. This has big impacts for the messages we see about climate change.

In this MICRO episode, a snippet of my forthcoming chat with Professor Geoff Beattie. What did he learn when he put optimistic and pessimistic people in an eye tracker and got them to read bits of text about the state of the planet?

OWL NOISE: Read more about Geoff's brilliant work on optimism here.

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The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell. The show is over on Instagram at @yourbrainonclimate.

YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me. Show logo by Arthur Stovell at www.designbymondial.com.