Your Brain On Climate

Predicting the weather is really hard, not least because of all those butterflies in the Amazon flapping their wings about. So an even-vaguely-right forecast is a scientific marvel and a masterclass in risk communication. And how people do and don't take it in is a similarly fascinating dive into human brains and how they deal (or don't) with uncertainty.  

But these days you can't talk about our changing weather without talking about our changing climate - even if (too) many people still don't see the link. And what happens when innocent weather forecasters wade by mistake into t...

A new campaign, the National Emergency Briefing, thinks (rightly) there's a climate emergency going on. They want Keir Starmer to go on TV and tell the nation, like Boris did with Covid. But would that work? Do people think about climate change the same as other types of 'emergency'? 

In this Micro episode I chat to climate comms guru Adam Corner about the similarities - and differences - between climate emergencies and the Covid emergency. After a snippet of my 2021 chat him, I dial him up again for his latest views on the back of the NEB. Y...

There's a vast online universe where men hang out and hate on women. This is the 'Manosphere', a place home to hucksters, spivs, scam artists and some of the worst humans alive. 

But it's also a honeytrap for millions of lost boys simply looking for a story about the world that makes sense. You start out looking for fitness tips or how to get a girlfriend. You end up believing climate change is made up and Donald Trump is a hero.  

How does this online radicalisation happen? What does it tell us about politics and po...

It's Halloween, when everyone is allowed to be strange for a day. A good time to ask: like the best ghost stories, why does climate change sometimes feel so uncanny? And what happens when the world we take for granted starts to feel ... haunted? 

In this Micro episode, a snippet of my 2021 chat with psychogeographer and author, Philippa Holloway. You can listen to the full interview here or in the back catalogue. 

Please do consider chipping in a couple of quid over at http://www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate. And a written review would be ace. Pl...

Well... is it? Nearly half of young people say the future of the planet brings them mental distress. Not just young people either. More and more people of all ages are feeling something that feels like the thing we call climate anxiety. And for good reason: things not very brill, planet-wise.  

But is climate anxiety something distinct from other worries? Is it just the latest snowflakey expression of more generally held worries about the future? Is it a mental health problem, or a social problem, both or neither?  And - whatever the hell it is - is it...

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 that prioritise our shifting climate, because our brains struggle to. 

In this MICRO episode, a snippet of my 2022 chat with neuroscientist and author, Professor Anil Seth. You can listen to the full interview here or in the back catalogue. 

Please do consider chipping in a couple of quid over at http://www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate. And a wr...

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 truths is probably behind most of the silly pointless stuff we do, from rampant consumption to wars to spaceships to conjuring up Gods. 

Joining me on this episode of Your Brain on Climate is Molly Conisbee - author of No Ordinary Deaths, a social history of how we've lived and died through the generations. Molly says we...

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 an...

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 of our nature can, and do, come out. 

Grim. But are we doomed? Does it have to be like that? Can environmental peacebuilding turn climate violence into an engine of cooperation? Or is human nature a more powerful force when the chips are down, which they increasingly are? 

Joining me...

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 Goldsmith - stand-up par excellence and host of the Comedian's Comedian podcast - about what he's learned from trying to to do jokes about the state of the planet. 

If you liked this episode, here's the full chat with Stuart from back in 2023. 

I use a clip from Stuart's set on Live at the Apollo earlier this year. 

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-way chat. Dave meets Nina Alexandersen and Sophia Cheng - respectively someone who became a climate activist through fear for her kid's future, and someone whose activism made them very ambivalent about becoming a mum, until something changed. 

We talk about all things motherhood and parenthood - like wh...

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 also tells us something very important about how different people think about climate change and what should be done about it, even when they can see it literally killing the place they love. 

This episode is a fascinating chat with anthropologist Dr Karl Dudman. He talks all about his time spent wi...

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 Erica McAlister all about flies (and fleas).  Erica is the London Natural History Museum's expert on all things dipeteric (flies) and siphonapteric (fleas), and an extremely funny and nice person too. 

Reaching for that fly-killer? WAIT A MINUTE. Must we call kill all pests? (Must we even think of them as pests in the first place?) 

If you like the show please do consider chipping in a cou...

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-crisis, perhaps our own brains are too. 

In this episode, Dave meets author Mike Berners-Lee to chew over his new book, A Climate of Truth. It's a brilliant balance of home truths about the state of things, with unputdownable optimism that humanity can - and must - do better. 

What distinguishes glorious bul...

In this bite-sized edition we look back at perhaps my favouritest episode ever - episode 9 about disgust, with Yoel Inbar. 

We all have a gag reflex. But when we find people - like polluters - disgusting, are we feeing *actually* disgusted, or is it just a metaphor? What about how we might feel about things like climate change itself? Does it make us want, literally, to vom?

If you like the show please do consider chipping in a couple of quid over at http://www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate. And a written review would be ace. P...

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 your yous freak out? You (and you) are not alone. 

Welcome to cognitive dissonance. As Walt Whitman wrote: you contain multitudes. It's a feature, not a bug, of being alive. 

Humans, it turns out, are very good at thinking conflicting things at the same time.  This helps us get...

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 changing the world as it is for running up that hill. 

Sorting climate change is the definition of a marathon, not a sprint. It particularly feels that way right now. What we need is ENDURANCE, and plenty of it - and the right perspective to keep on keeping on.  

For the full chat, check out episode 23 here. 

If you...

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. 

In this episode Dave learns all about confirmation bias from the splendid Professor Adam Harris off of University College London.  Learn about how casinos make their cash, why lefties should read righty-press sometimes, why confirmation bias once caused a plane to crash into a massive volcano, and why climate deniers and activists alike cou...

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 micro episode, we explore a nugget of insight from Professor Deborah Prentice - currently vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University and at the time of our chat back in 2021, provost of Princeton.  What is pluralistic ignorance, and how does it lead to a 'conservative lag' in society? 

For the full chat, check out episode 6 here. 

If you like...

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 taking seriously the risk of another pandemic - and that's despite the fact we LITERALLY JUST HAD ONE, GUYS.  

And it's the same for climate change - with knobs on. For sure, our politicians, banks and cultures just aren't ready for the climate-clusterfudge. But if you're anything like me, there's a limit to how much of it...

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 getting yer metaphorical hands dirty to show you you can do things you never thought you could  - from bleeding radiators to leading climate marches. And everyday stories of people *doing stuff* are far more effective than simply telling people there's a climate crisis going on - so why don't we tell more of them?

This e...

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 about big ideas - and what can everyone else learn from it?   And what does all this mean for how to talk about something as complex and polarised as climate change?

In this episode I'm joined by Dr Dannagal Young, Professor of Communication and Political Science at the University of Delaware. Danna is the author of 'Wro...

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 that really be true? Doesn't the scientific method speak for itself? And is it realistic to expect people to spend all day immersed in awful data, and NOT want to change the world afterwards?

I'm joined this episode by the fab Dr Lydia Messling, climate engagement expert and a very thoughtful and clever person. Lydia talks about her...

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 change bring? More heat.  So what are the mental health implications of rising global temperatures? 

Joining Dave this episode is Dr Alessandro Massazza (X / LinkedIn) - Policy Advisor for United for Global Mental Health. Ale tells Dave all about what the science has to say about the very many ways getting too ho...

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 to come. 

What are the biases that peg us to short term thinking? How can we shift our perspective to the day after tomorrow, and how can that help everyday life? And what do pigeons have to do with it? 

Joining Dave this episode is Ella Saltmarshe, Director of the Long Tim...

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 also works the other way round: we are never as much to blame for our 'failures' as we think.

Thing is most things in life are down to luck: not just whether you win the lottery or meet the perfect person, but deeper stuff. Like who your parents w...

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'T CARE.

You and me and everyone else. The gulf between our values and actions is large you could drive an SUV through it.  This is the 'values action gap'. Closing it is the stated aim of just about all behavioural science and climate campaigns and all the rest of it. But it is evidently bloody hard. Because alt...

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 the planet? 

Today's guest is Jamie Bristow, co-founder of the Mindfulness Initiative - an amazing organisation bringing the technique to the heart of policy and parliament.  Jamie's trained MPs on skills of compassion and self-reflection, and thinks (as do I) that we could all benefit hugely from a bit more time spent thinking abou...

Or: how chinwags can save the world.

Imagine I could give you a superpower. The ability to make people trust you who currently don't. To help them change their own mind, on their own terms. And to maybe even heal society, perhaps just a little bit. WELL I CAN. It's called 'having a grown up conversation', and it's perhaps the most underrated thing we can all do about climate change.

Joining me to talk about all things chatting, nattering and deep canvassing is the charming Alex Evans, founder and director of the charity Larger Us.  W...

So much of our silly short lives is spent chasing after trophies or money or glory. Success!

But it's never really enough. We just want more trophies and more more money and one day we die and so does everything else, the end. As a culture, we've got success wrong.

Today's guest says we should instead see success as learning to lose ourselves in things - whether that's playing the piano, or sport, or listening to jolly interesting podcasts.  Pursuing, and cherishing, a flow state - the only state in which we are truly contented. A...

Frazzled? Go for a walk in the woods. It'll calm you down, fill your nose with lovely smells, and reset your eyes to room temperature. But why?  According to today's guest, humans evolved to need to chill out in natural environments. It gives us nice chemicals like serotonin, is good for long term mental health, and generally resets our stress alarms. This is the idea of Biophilia, and it's rather nice.

Joining Dave this episode is Dr Lauren Hall Ruddell - a  journalist and naturalist  who has spent many years thinking  about the restorative power of being in n...

Some people think climate science is made up.  This annoys other people.  But calling each other dullards is unhelpful, and it misses the deeper questions. What determines who and what we trust, including science?  And what can be done to make people and politics - particularly, Lord help us all, American politics - a bit less squabbly about it all?

Joining Dave this episode is Laur Hesse Fisher, programme director for MIT's Environmental Solutions Initiative. Laur's an expert in climate science communications that bridge political divides, which sounds like a very useful person to be.   She's also the...

WE need to take action on climate change. WE need a revolution. WE need to unite and tackle the problem. Etc.  But who is this "we"? 

Politicians and campaigners love to invoke it. It has powerful rhetorical force. But does this confusing "we" give us any sense of what each of us can actually do? Is it a linguistic problem or something more profound about how our brains think about collective agency? And how the heck do "we" actually go from not doing enough, to doing so?

Joining Dave to talk about all things "we" an...

Are we responsible for how we behave? If so, should we feel bad about it? And if the answer to those two is 'yes' and 'yes' respectively, how do we change our behaviour?  How much of 'behaviour change' is about nudging or encouraging individuals to change, versus how much is banning bad things and making good things easier and cheaper?  And are simple answers stupid? (Spoiler: yes.)

Joining Dave this month is the esteemed Professor Lorraine Whitmarsh MBE. Lorraine is Prof of Environmental Psychology at the University of Bath, UK, and runs the Centre for Climate and So...

Try running for a few miles, and then a few miles more, and then several hundred few miles more. That's proper endurance that is, the kind demonstrated regularly by Damian Hall: ultrarunner, climate activist, author, and all-round lovely chap.  He's the holder of the men's record for the 268-mile Spine Race, so he knows a thing or two about keeping going when things look grim.   And when it comes to climate change, heaven knows we need a bit of that.

What can running very long distances teach us about perseverance despite increasingly grim climate news? What has Da...

The climate crisis needs all the ideas and imagination it can get. But today's guest says that liberalism - the system many of us live in, which cherishes individual freedom above pretty much all else - is a straitjacket on our imaginations, and our ability to think and act big. If it really is harder to imagine the death of capitalism than the end of all life on Earth, does that explain why most visions of the future are so, well, crap? 
 
Joining Dave this ep is Dr Christopher Shaw, author of 'Liberalism and the Challenge of Cl...

Our ideas about climate change are filtered through layers of Stuff, and for us in the West quite a lot of that Stuff is inseparable from being gits to other countries for centuries.  We've nabbed land, exploited populations and perhaps most enduringly of all, seen the world as basically being for 'us' to do with as we want. That Stuff dies hard, and, this episode's guest argues, shapes how we think even about what climate change is, never mind how and in whose interests to solve it.

Joining Dave this ep is Dr Ayesha Siddiqi, lecturer in h...

The death of everything: no ROFLing matter. Right?  Well probably yes. But can chuckles save the planet?  Does laughing at humans being silly confused bags of water help the climate fight or take the heat out of it? And just why is so much climate comedy, well, crap?

Joining Dave this episode is a right proper comedy mastermind, Stuart Goldsmith.  Stuart's spent aeons both behind the mic as a stand-up, and peering at other comics via interviews in his legendary The Comedian's Comedian podcast. He's drunk heavily from the comedy well, and knows more about the art (sci...

You can't handle the truth! Or maybe you can. But does the truth set us free, or bum us out? Do we all have a duty to say it like we see it - particularly on things we're not seeing clearly enough, like climate change?  How much honesty can our flimsy little brains bear?

Joining Dave this episode is Dr Rupert Read.  He's an academic, author, agitator and activist, and used to be one of Extinction Rebellion's biggest thinkers and strategists. As well as a new book - 'Do You Want To Know The Truth - the su...

It's all very well demanding that everything happens NOW, but we're actually going to do - or not - about climate change is all about negotiation.  What happens inside those fusty negotiating halls?  How does one negotiate well and get what one wants, whether on climate or things more domestic? And does the climate have the time for us to negotiate our way out of a paper bag?

Joining Dave this episode is Camilla Born MBE. Camilla's been at more top tables than you've had hot dinners, and has been there for the crunchy bits of some of...

Yup, buzz-buzz-swat-buggers. Now, I can't guarantee you're going to come out of this one in love with flies (and fleas), but maybe you'll think a wee bit differently about 'em. About what we need to do to our brains to make small buzzing things our chums, not our nemesis. And why needing to do it is pretty dang essential for not wiping out everything that lives, including ourselves.

Joining Dave this week is the legend that is Dr Erica McAlister, the London Natural History Museum's expert on all things dipeteric (flies) and siphonapteric (fleas). Never will you...

Yes you probably WOULD walk by on the other side, wouldn't you, and don't say you wouldn't, because you would.  Alas, a trio of brain wirings add up to the so-called Bystander Effect: our tendency to stand in a crowd of people watching someone flail in a canal, hoping it's not us that has to get our frock wet to jump in and save them. 

In this episode Dave learns all about the Bystander Effect with Dr Gerdien de Vries from TU Delft. What is it? Why is it? And can working out what'll make us jump in...

Time travel! No not like Marty McFly, but in our heads.  Backwards via memories, albeit imperfectly. And forwards, to make plans for the future and think about all the ways they could go wrong and then make new plans and then etc. 

Foresight is profoundly human and completely innate to your brain: just try and sit still with your thoughts for a bit, and you'll see how often you think about what comes next.  Without foresight, no skyscrapers, art, podcasts or health service. No anything we call home, really. But also no climate crisis.  Because it turns out...

All I need to say to you is "Your Brain on Climate is a lovely cake of a podcast" and you'll drool and tell all your friends to subscribe immediately.  Or something.

No look: our brains LOVE metaphors. We think in stories and our brains like making connections between different ideas to make sense of the world - particularly things we can't always touch and feel, like climate change.  Metaphors can constrain, divert or unlock our creativity, so we'd better get smart about the metaphors we use.  Because rest assured, there are some very clever metaphor-wangers out the...

We play when we're kids to try new things and learn how the world works, and when we think no-one's looking we do it as adults too. Play's  important for our development and so you should probably do it or you'll turn out a wrong'un.

But Dave's guest today says play is also a way to smash the Very Serious Rules of how to think about climate change - rules the following of which demonstrably are not working.  If play = creativity, and creativity = necessary, is it time to lark about more in the name of saving the pl...

Right then. Everything you perceive - including what climate change is to you -  is a construction of your brain.  And your brain is winging it.  That's the reality of human consciousness, and everything I thought it was is completely wrong.

So how do our brains perceive things, like buses? Are there even buses?
(Yes, there are buses.)

Have our conscious noggins evolved enough to cope with the reality of climate change?   If not, er - can they, sharpish? And can the very fact that there even is consciousness guide how we migh...

We love it when someone gets what's coming to them - whether it's an individual we know personally and dislike, someone from a group we hate, or someone we just generally think is a wrong'un. That's schadenfreude - literally, "joy damage". Grubby, wonderful feeling.

But what does schadenfreude do for us, psychologically? Is it a good and useful thing or a harmful thing? And can it be harnessed - or should it be feared - when trying to do something about the climate crisis?

Joining Dave this episode is Dr Aaron Balick - pyschotherapist, author...

When things get scary, we like hero(+ine)s. We kind of automatically create them - like there was always a hero-shaped hole in our stories that was just waiting for someone to pop into. Why? Are we really hardwired to look for heroes? Do they all wear capes?

And for something as complex and fiddly and *wibbles hands expansively in the air* as climate change, is it a good or a bad thing that we cast Greta, David Attenborough and whoever comes next as a climate hero?  Do we need new types of heroes? Or maybe n...

What disgusts you? For starters, I bet, other people's oozings, or rotten meat, or other such things that hint at the Unclean. But you might also say corruption, or pollution. Or a particular politician, or a group of people. Or perhaps... even climate change itself?

It's one of our most base, guiding emotional responses to the world, so in this episode we find out all about disgust -  how it shapes societies, defines what's right and wrong, and affects how we think about who's to blame for a changing climate, and what to do about it.
Duration: 00:45:22

We are the places we live, and the places we live are us. Places made by oil, coal, and gas, by roads, and by industry.  Where the choices we make about what to feel and where to go are  shaped by the very things that are at the heart of the climate crisis. Eek.

Psychogeography's about turning left when you're supposed to go right. Going into nuclear exclusion zones when you're not supposed to. Wandering off the beaten track,  seeing what happens and who you meet. And  stopping to think for a bit to notice where you are...

An episode all about one of the weirdest but most important of all human brain-oddnesses: pluralistic ignorance. When you think something and lots of other people also think that thing but none of you think anyone else agrees with you, so nothing changes. Got that?

Dave is joined by Professor Deborah Prentice from Princeton University to get his noggin around this deeply human trait. On the menu: just how common is it that we think we’re alone in an idea when we’re not? Is pluralistic ignorance to blame for imposter syndrome? And should climate campaigners  fear...

Being alive can be a lonely business, as can trying to do something about climate change. But how important to our brains is connecting with others?  And in our individualised world, might we be hugely undervaluing the importance of interpersonal connection in helping society take meaningful and effective action on climate change?

Joining Dave this week is coach, facilitator, and expert in the growing field of positive psychology, Alison Crowther.  Alison works to encourage deeper connection and collaboration with others, learning from science and nature to form more resilient systems – be they at work or in the comm...

Ever found yourself yelling at someone you love and thinking: hang on, what are we even fighting about? Or embroiled in a blood-pressure-raising ding-dong with a climate denier, which only succeeds in making you both hate each other even more than you did to start with? 

Conflict: some of us find it easy, and some of us (like Dave) very difficult.  It has its own momentum and its own rules. What is for sure is there's good and bad ways of doing it. So what is the best way to ensure human brains meet each other for an...

Everything changes and everything stays the same. Imagine being a squishy human brain trying to navigate that. Add on a barrage of advertising and social norms about what 'novelty' looks like, and no wonder it's so hard to make sense of what we might really want to change in our lives.

And then there's climate change. There's a clue in the name: it means Different. Are we kitted out for that kind of change? Has our thirst for newness got us into this mess in the first place?  And what hope is there of changing how we l...

When we lose someone or something we love, our brains want to grieve. Why?  What's going on when grieve - when we do it well, or don't do it properly? 

Is it grief we feel when we see huge forest fires or melting ice caps caused by climate change? And if it is - where do we put that grief, in a society that doesn't recognise it?

This week Dave speaks to the wonderfully kind and clever Ro Randall about the psychology of grief and loss - and what it tells us about living through th...

Food: yum! It keeps us alive and keeps our brains healthy (or unhealthy, all-too-often). And the food that we eat - what it is and where it comes from - is one of the most important things we're going to have to get right when it comes to climate change.   

Kind of a problem then that there are very few things about which we're quite so uppity and strange.  Food is drenched in cultural meaning, status, and individuals' neuroses, associations and family history. 

So what is our psychological relationship with food? And what do those tryi...

In this debut episode of Your Brain On Climate, Dave talks all things RISK with Dr Adam Corner (@ajcorner).

How do our brains understand risk? Are we still part jittery lizard, and if so which part? How do we - individually and as a society - decide what's risky enough to do something about? What can we learn from the wretched pandemic?  And what can all of that teach us about the fact that while there's a climate emergency going on, it's not being treated like one?

Dr Adam Corner is an independent writer and r...