Your Brain On Climate

<p>When's the last time you were bored? Thanks to our phones, it's easier than ever to be distracted, stimulated, and fed attention calories of varying quality so you never have to worry about being bored again. But...

<p>In this episode I go for a walk in the woods with a former airline pilot who packed it in because of his climate anxiety. Joel Walker flew for years but could never quite ignore the state of the planet - like the...

<p>Would you rather have a fiver today or a tenner this time next year? That kind of calculation is called 'discounting', and the more you'd rather have the fiver today, the more you are discounting the future. Humans...

<p>Climate change is REALLY SCARY, right, but that doesn't mean you have to wibble helplessly in the corner. While the go-to currency of most climate awareness campaigns is 'hope' – does fear get a bad press? It turns...

<p>A few years ago I learned the Dutch word 'goedprater': the excuses we give to justify something to others, which we can barely justify to ourselves. I do it all the time and I bet you do too, whether it's not going...

<p>Hope! What is it good for? (Absolutely every'thin). </p><p>We ain't doing much about the climate crisis without it. Movements are founded on it, and most campaigns are about wanting us to feel it. Which is...

<p>Your brain is literally made of the food you eat. And *how* you eat it - slowly, or wolfed down at your desk - will affect how well you digest it. So way before any of the psychology stuff, getting a proper lunch...

<p>The history of humans arguing about climate change is often just people throwing large numbers at each other. So it's time for an episode about how we think about numbers, why our brains are prone to falling for...

<p>I recently had the honour of being interviewed about what I've learned from 4+ years of doing this show - about human brains vs the climate crisis and how to bring them closer together. </p><p>This is me on the...

<p>Brain-eating amoebae are only the start of it. Just you wait until Clayton Aldern talks you through the ways big and small that climate change is changing what it means to be you. From your mood to your expectations...

<p>Happy New Year! And before your resolutions crumble into ash, here's a short episode about why change is hard - but yet it's the only thing we ever really do. </p><p>Back in 2021 I chatted to Andrew Simms about...

<p>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...

<p>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...

<p>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. </p><p>But it's also a honeytrap for...

<p>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...