Your Brain On Climate
A show about climate change and climate psychology. But sideways. Explore human brains doing amazing or awful things, learn why, then see what it means for the planet.
Episodes
77 episodes
Change Blindness
Climate change: fast in a geological sense, but slow in a second-by-second human-perception sense. Our brains stop paying attention to things that change (relatively) slowly. This is 'change blindness' - and it's why we need laws and leadership...
Fear of Death, with Molly Conisbee
I'm afraid that you are going to die. Sorry. You can imagine afterlives and amass great hordes of wealth, but you're still made of human stuff, and thus will die. Humanity's inability to get its head around this most inconvenient of truth...
Optimism Bias
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...
Climate Violence, with Peter Schwartzstein
Climate change sucks, not least when it causes violence - which it does more than you'd think. In a hundred ways it can add stress and trauma to brains already under huge pressure, and when that's all finally a bit much - well, the worse demons...
Laughing Matter
Comedy opens the mind and helps us cope with the sheer strangeness of being alive. But is climate change a suitable topic for comedy? In this micro episode of Your Brain on Climate, I chat to Stuart Gol...
Parenting in the Climate Crisis, with Nina Alexandersen and Sophia Cheng
How should you bring up baby in the age of climate breakdown? Should you tell them what's happening or not? And given how messed up is the planet we're passing on - is it even fair to *have* kids? In a YBOC first this episode is a 3...
Somewhere, with Karl Dudman
We vote in our self interest, right? So how come people living on islands disappearing because of climate change - and they know it - keep voting for Donald Trump? The answer to that goes to the heart of our climate politics. But it...
Kill All Pests
I'm out in the garden looking for that pile of jobby I found the other day, and it made me think back to my chat in episode 17 with Eric...
Bullsh*t, with Mike Berners-Lee
An episode all about the subtle art of talking bollocks. We live in a golden age of bullshit. It can seem that our politics is riddled with it. Corporate climate communications are drenched in it. And despite the looming eco-...
You Disgust Me
In this bite-sized edition we look back at perhaps my favouritest episode ever - episode 9 about disgust, with Yoel Inbar. We all hav...
Cognitive Dissonance, with Sarah Stein Lubrano
An episode all about cognitive dissonance. Ever feel like there are two yous in the same head? The one that cares about the planet, and the one that doesn't act like it does? And that having two yous makes at least one of you...
Running Up That Hill
In this YBOC microdose, a hark back to my inspirational chat with ultrarunner and climate activist Damian Hall, who dispensed his wisdom about how to keep up the slog - advice that's as useful for changi...
Confirmation Bias, with Adam Harris
Or: why we all hear what we want to hear, and disregard the rest. Confirmation bias is hardwired into human brains, and without it we'd never get through our day. But it doesn't half get us - and the planet - into trouble sometimes.
The Conservative Lag
Why is social change so hard - particularly right now? Part of the reason lies in pluralistic ignorance - the social phenomena that helps to explains everything from imposter syndrome to slow progress on climate change. In this micr...
(Getting Your Head Around) the End of the World, with Laurie Laybourn
We're reasonably good at imagining what nuclear war would be like (although it'd probably be even worse than that). But it's not the same for most other complicated, really really scary risks. Eg: the UK government is still not taki...
Stories of Action, with Kris de Meyer
If you want someone to change their mind, it's best if they persuade themselves. And they're much more likely to do that if they actually *do* something new, rather than just pathetically feeling like they *should*. There's nothing like...
Common Sense, with Dannagal Young
Common sense? Ain't nothing common about it. Populists - like Donald Trump - love to appeal to 'common sense', while pushing ideas as contentious as they come. But what does Trump get right about how he talks to people...
Are Scientists Ever Truly Neutral? with Lydia Messling
Is climate science 'neutral'? Should it be? Are humans even capable of being neutral about anything? In this new-format episode, I dig into accusations that climate scientists risk undermining their work by going on climate marches. Can...
Mental heat, with Alessandro Massazza
When it gets hot, we all get a bit stroppy: think 'shouting at people on the internet' stroppy. But that's only the tip of the (melting) iceberg. Too much heat can trigger or make worse a range of mental health conditions. And what does climate...
Deep Time, with Ella Saltmarshe
Time. You work on a human timescale, but the planet doesn't. Sometimes we can think long term but mostly real life gets in the way: but the decisions we collectively take will have a huge impact on life on Earth now, and for generations t...
Luck, with Will Snell and Anita Sangha
You are so much more lucky than you think, even if you think you're not. Most of us are dead proud of the good things we've done, and we tell ourselves how hard we have worked and how much we deserve it. But unfortunately we don't. This...
Values Action Gap, with Gail Hochachka
Well you SAY you care about climate change, but you don't, do you? There's you, driving a car (!!!) or not putting that plastic bottle in the recycling (!!!!!). There's you, saying you value the planet, but acting like you JUST DON'...
Mindfulness, with Jamie Bristow
Mindfulness: a technique for training your brain to reflect on what it thinks and why. It can help us make smarter decisions, and can even get the House of Commons to stop shouting at each other quite so much. Magic! But can it save...