Advertise on podcast: Your Brain On Climate

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.  This is me on the Climate Magic podcast, under the benign grill of Sarah Jaquette Ray, herself very much not a slouch in the 'being clever about climate psychology' stakes.  I hope you like.  If you like this show, please do consider chipping in a couple of quid over at http://www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate. And a written review would be ace. Please thank you please.  The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell. The show is over on Instagram at @yourbrainonclimate.  YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me.  Show logo by Arthur Stovell at www.designbymondial.com.   

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 and even your mental model of the whole world - your consciousness itself, for Chrissakes - Clayton explains with brilliant clarity how your brain is climate.  Clayton Page Aldern is the author of the compelling The Weight of Nature. Its strapline is "How a Changing Climate Changes Our Minds, Brains and Bodies" - so bang on the turf of this show, I simply had to get him on. But as he says in the chat, it's not really a book about climate change at all. Instead his book - and this episode - are about what it really means to be a lifeform embedded in the world around it, whether you're a bat, a cat, or a human.  I loved the book and I hope you enjoy this chat. Let me know your thoughts on the show - [email protected].  Please rate, review and subscribe, and share the show on socials. Please consider chucking this humble indie podcaster a few quid at www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate. Owl noises = references:  12.07:  US Department of Defence's 2015 report, amazingly still on its website, on how climate change is exacerbating conflict.  18.44. George Marshall's Don't Even Think About It. Yes, again.  20:40. Karl Friston's free energy principle idea which is, I warn you, hard.  31:16: Tim Morton's Hyperobject idea. Yes, that again too.  39:02. James Gibson's affordances.  42:09: Thomas Nagel: What Is It Like To Be A Bat? 44:55: Andy Clark interviewed about embodied cognition and the extended mind.  The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell. You can follow the show on instagram @yourbrainonclimate, and I occasionally put up a Substack.  YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me.  Ruth Everett does all other YBOC voices.  Show logo by Arthur Stovell at https://mondial-studio.com/.   

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.  Back in 2021 I chatted to Andrew Simms about change: how humans constantly trip the fandango between wanting to upend everything, and to keep things exactly the same. Tragedies are written about it. And yet in a world where it can feel like not enough is changing fast enough, sometimes we don't stop to notice the huge changes happening right before our eyes.  Please do consider chipping in a couple of quid over at http://www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate. And a written review would be ace. Please thank you please.  The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell. The show is over on Instagram at @yourbrainonclimate.  YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me.  Show logo by Arthur Stovell at www.designbymondial.com.  

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 the culture war?  In this episode of Your Brain on Climate, I'm joined by the brilliant socio-meteorologist (it's a thing), Helen Roberts, from the UK Met Office - the Weather People. Helen explains all about how the modern miracle of meteorology is done - and everything she's learned about how to bring climate reality into the weather forecast, even if some don't want to hear it.   Let me know your thoughts on the show - [email protected].  Please rate, review and subscribe, and share the show on socials. Please consider chucking this humble indie podcaster a few quid at www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate. Owl noises = references:  17:35: Lewis Fry Richardson, the 'father of weather forecaster'. 20:41: that video of the wandering dog explaining climate vs weather. 36:06: Helen thought it was 65% of people see the link between weather and climate - the link I found said 76%. Right ballpark. 41:13: Availability Bias: I'm sure we've talked about it before but I don't (ha ha) have to hand. So here's Decision Lab on it. 43.18: Climate Outreach's Climate Visuals resource.  45.08: I'm talking about my episode all about heat and violence - one of my faves. The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell. You can follow the show on instagram @yourbrainonclimate, and I occasionally put up a Substack.  YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me.  Show logo by Arthur Stovell at https://mondial-studio.com/. 

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. You can listen to the full interview here or in the back catalogue.  You can watch all 3 hours of the National Emergency Briefing here (and yes, that is a link to GB News... credit where it's due.) Please do consider chipping in a couple of quid over at http://www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate. And a written review would be ace. Please thank you please.  The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell. The show is over on Instagram at @yourbrainonclimate.  YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me.  Show logo by Arthur Stovell at www.designbymondial.com.  

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 power in the 21st century, and how we form ideas about the world? And can anything be done to keep young men out of it?  Joining me on this episode is the journalist James Bloodworth. His book, Lost Boys, explores his torrid discoveries in the Manosphere.    See also this brilliant Guardian deep dive into the Manosphere. Let me know your thoughts on the show - [email protected].  Please rate, review and subscribe, and share the show on socials. Please consider chucking this humble indie podcaster a few quid at www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate. Owl noises = references:  14:10. More about The Game by Neil Strauss. 29:55. 1/4 young men that have heard of Andrew Tate have a positive view of him. 46:04. My chat with Kris de Meyer from January 2025. 51:00. Richard Reeves's book, Of Boys and Men. 55:01. Yougov poll from October 2025: Gen X are the problem. 1:07:47. Josh Sargent's piece in the Guardian. 1:09:35. episode about Tiktok's algorithm in Cal Newport's 'Deep Questions' podcast. 1:09:45. Just some of what the BBC's disinformation correspondent Marianna Spring has been up to. The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell. You can follow the show on instagram @yourbrainonclimate, and I occasionally put up a Substack.  YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me.  Show logo by Arthur Stovell at https://mondial-studio.com/. 

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. Please thank you please.  The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell. The show is over on Instagram at @yourbrainonclimate.  YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me.  Show logo by Arthur Stovell at www.designbymondial.com.  

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 something we can really do anything about, short of actually stopping climate change?  Joining me on this episode is academic, telly psychologist and prolific author Professor Geoff Beattie. Geoff's latest book, Understanding Climate Anxiety, is about - well - what it says.   We explore: is climate anxiety real? If so, how big a problem is it and for whom? And how can we help others (or ourselves)?  Let me know your thoughts on the show - [email protected].  Please rate, review and subscribe, and share the show on socials. Please consider chucking this humble indie podcaster a few quid at www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate. Owl noises = references:  13.16. Aaron Beck there, the father of CBT. 15.22. My piece for NEF about climate anxiety back in 2020, when I was in the midst of a proper wobble about things. 19.28. Values / Action Gap. I did a podcast all about that. 22.45. That survey of 10,000 young people in different countries, as covered in BBC. 35.40. Study: young people's climate anxiety may be more complicated. 44.09. James Pennebaker was one of the (academic) originators of the idea of 'disclosure' in psychology: that talking about stuff makes you feel better.  The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell. You can follow the show on instagram @yourbrainonclimate, and I occasionally put up a Substack.  YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me.  Show logo by Arthur Stovell at https://mondial-studio.com/. 

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 written review would be ace. Please thank you please.  The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell. The show is over on Instagram at @yourbrainonclimate.  YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me.  Show logo by Arthur Stovell at www.designbymondial.com.  

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 can learn a huge amount about how societies choose to live by how they deal with death - and why coming to terms with the fact that we will all (probably) cark it might lead us to do better by the climate in the here and now.  We learn how our relationship with death, the afterlife, and messy mortality, has changed hugely over the years. When we're ever more botoxed and scared of aging, and billionaire-backed scientists are actively trying to cure death, are we running ever more away from the most human - and beautiful - thing of all?  Let me know your thoughts on the show - [email protected]. Please rate, review and subscribe, and share the show on socials. Please consider chucking this humble indie podcaster a few quid at www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate. Owl noises = references:  28:07. God on the rise with young people. 29.09. Yougov tracked people's belief in ghosts etc.  30.07. Roger Clark's Natural History of Ghosts. 34.51. Stefan Zweig's The World of Yesterday.  39.12. A wiki on Ernest Becker's Denial (not Fear!) of Death. 56:40. Make a death / memory box,  The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell. You can follow the show on instagram @yourbrainonclimate, and I occasionally put up a Substack.  YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me.  Show logo by Arthur Stovell at https://mondial-studio.com/. 

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 and got them to read bits of text about the state of the planet?  OWL NOISE: Read more about Geoff's brilliant work on optimism here.  Please do consider chipping in a couple of quid over at http://www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate. And a written review would be ace. Please thank you please.  The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell. The show is over on Instagram at @yourbrainonclimate.  YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me.  Show logo by Arthur Stovell at www.designbymondial.com.  

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 this episode is environmental journalist Peter Schwartzstein. We discuss his remarkable book of reportage from the world's climate and confrontational hotspots - The Heat and the Fury: On the Frontlines of Climate Violence - and what lies behind his termite theory of climate violence.  Let me know your thoughts on the show - [email protected]. Please rate, review and subscribe, and share the show on socials. Please consider chucking this humble indie podcaster a few quid at www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate. Owl noises = references:  15:33. Peter's piece for Columbia Journalism Review about how climate change is scuppering climate journalism. 16:43. A review of Why We Sleep, by Matthew Walker. 21:09. Alessandro Massazza joined me last year, discussing climate change & mental heat. 39:15. Steven Pinker's Better Angels of our Nature. The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell. You can follow the show on instagram @yourbrainonclimate, and I occasionally put up a Substack.  YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me.  Show logo by Arthur Stovell at https://mondial-studio.com/. 

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.  Please do consider chipping in a couple of quid over at http://www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate. And a written review would be ace. Please thank you please.  The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell. The show is over on Instagram at @yourbrainonclimate.  YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me.  Show logo by Arthur Stovell at www.designbymondial.com.  

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 what it does to your brain, and whether you still have as much time to care about things like climate change.  And we discuss people who don't want to have kids because of the state of the planet: are they doing the right thing, or missing out on something core to being human?  See here for some of Sophia's project's stories of motherhood in a crisis, as discussed in the show.  Let me know your thoughts on the show - [email protected]. Please rate, review and subscribe, and share the show on socials. Please consider chucking this humble indie podcaster a few quid at www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate. Owl noises = references:  18:57: More on matrescence. And 19:09: Matrescence, including Lucy Jones, in Time Magazine.20:02: Lucy Jones wrote a brilliant book about foxes.  23:33: The (wrong) finite pool of worry hypothesis talked about in this from Vox. And 24.57: Sisco et al take apart the finite pool of worry idea.26.15: Steve Akehurst discusses the importance of keeping climate in the news. 29:10: A discussion of Joanna Macy's Three Dimensions of the Great Turning.38:55: Jo McAndrews's work. 45:55: Alice Brown, then of the Birthstrike movement, on Sustainababble. The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell. You can follow the show on instagram @yourbrainonclimate, and I occasionally put up a Substack.  YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me.  Show logo by Arthur Stovell at https://mondial-studio.com/. 

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 with the unique communities of Down East, North Carolina - a fiercely proud,  strongly Republican, and very maritime patch of the US Coast. Karl explains with empathy how Down Easterners talk about the sea level rises, hurricanes and changing fishing patterns that feels like the last straw in a community whose centuries-old identity is falling apart.   Let me know your thoughts on the show - [email protected]. Please rate, review and subscribe, and share the show on socials. Please consider chucking this humble indie podcaster a few quid at www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate. Owl noises = references:  04:33 - Karl's brilliant blog on the Conversation.07:53 - Yale's climate opinion maps. 09:33 - Google Maps link to Down East, as if you can't find it yourself. 23:48 - Miranda Fricker's epistemic injustice. 33:34 - Danna Young's appearance on YBOC.34:18 - more on affective & negative polarisation40:19 - the original paper on solastalgia by Glenn Albrecht et al.40:55 - Arlie Russell Hochschild's majestic Strangers In Their Own Land41:23 - OK I can't find a great link for the aesthetics of embodiment. A bloke explained it to me. 42:40 - Revisionist History episode on country vs rock music.  44:04 - some stuff about methodological symmetry in here.51:25 - my chat on YBOC with Jonathan Rowson. 52:17 - the not uncontroversial original essay by David Goodhart on somewheres vs anywhere. The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell. You can follow the show on instagram @yourbrainonclimate, and I occasionally put up a Substack.  YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me.  Show logo by Arthur Stovell at https://mondial-studio.com/.