Your Brain On Climate

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…

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 al…

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 …

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…

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 hear…

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 N…

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. An…

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 - disgust…

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…

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 ch…

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…

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 progres…

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: th…

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 lik…

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 …

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 …

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 me…

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 …

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…