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.
Episodes
36 episodes
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...
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Episode 36
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52:58
The neutrality myth, 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...
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Episode 35
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45:37
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...
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Episode 34
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47:05
Long 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...
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Episode 33
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51:06
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...
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Episode 32
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46:21
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'...
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Episode 31
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52:28
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...
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Episode 30
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58:36
Conversations, with Alex Evans
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...
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Episode 29
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51:02
Success, with Simon Mundie
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 cult...
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Episode 28
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50:46
Biophilia, with Lauren Hall Ruddell
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 environmen...
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Episode 27
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42:45
(Dis)trusting Climate Science, with Laur Hesse Fisher
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 b...
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Episode 26
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50:58
We, with Jonathan Rowson
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 th...
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Episode 25
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43:22
Behaviour Change, with Lorraine Whitmarsh
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 indiv...
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Episode 24
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48:32
Endurance, with Damian Hall
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 activ...
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Episode 23
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42:38
Liberalism, with Christopher Shaw
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, an...
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Episode 22
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43:38
Decolonisation, with Ayesha Siddiqi
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 mo...
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Episode 21
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44:22
Comedy, with Stuart Goldsmith
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...
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Episode 20
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52:12
Honesty, with Rupert Read
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 ca...
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Episode 19
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44:48
Negotiation, with Camilla Born
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 ge...
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Episode 18
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47:56
Flies (and Fleas), with Erica McAlister
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...
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Episode 17
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35:07
Bystander Effect, with Gerdien de Vries
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 som...
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Episode 16
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45:30
Foresight, with Adam Bulley
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.
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Episode 15
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54:04
Metaphor, with Simon Lancaster
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 b...
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Episode 14
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52:55