Your Brain On Climate

56:51

Make Environmentalism Dangerous Again, with Nicholas...

Your Brain On Climate ·

2026/09/20

**Warning: this episode contains swears** My guest on this episode of Your Brain on Climate says it's time environmentalism grew some teeth. He wants YOU to actively disrupt destructive activity – to sabotage the machines that are destroying the Earth – because asking politely isn't getting us where we need to be fast or fair enough. But yet hardly anyone is prepared to do stuff like this, despite rising temperatures and a planet on fire. So I ask: what does it take to get people taking disru...

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14:58

Dinosaur Time

Your Brain On Climate ·

2026/09/01

Come with me for a walk around Crystal Palace Park in London - home to the world's first ever life-sized models of dinosaurs, built in 1854. It's hard enough imagining what last Tuesday was like, never mind what living things might have looked like millions of years ago - so no wonder the Victorians got loads of the details wrong. But can you imagine how mind-bending it must have been to learn for the very first time that longer ago than we can imagine, there were zonking great lizards ...

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52:01

What Lies Beneath, with Renée Lertzman

Your Brain On Climate ·

2026/08/21

You're a mature, rational adult who can face massive, existential problems head-on, right? Or is your brain more like a medieval dungeon: a deep dark place in which you chuck things you don't want to think about, and throw away the key? Uh-oh. My guest on this episode, the esteemed psychologist, TED talker and author Dr Renée Lertzman, thinks it's the latter - and she thinks it's about time you got them complex thoughts out. Renée tells me why most traditional climate chat is mor...

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17:34

The Psychology of Flying

Your Brain On Climate ·

2026/08/02

Why do people who care about climate change still jet off on planes (including, occasionally, me?) This is an excerpt of me attempting to answer that surprisingly complicated question on Joel Walker's Look Near First podcast - where Joel asked me all about the psychology and culture of flying. How come despite knowing about climate change, and the damage aviation causes, those who fly keep on doing so - even if they're ostensibly really concerned about the planet? And if facts don't do ...

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62:46

The War on Net Zero, with Becca Massey-Chase

Your Brain On Climate ·

2026/07/17

For most of the last two decades, the right of UK politics were all for climate action. Heck, in 2019 a Conservative Prime Minister signed us up to net zero emissions by 2050! But a few short years later both of the two major parties on the right are now very much against 'net "stupid" zero', and everything they think that means. What's going on? What are they trying to do? And - will it work? I'm joined by Becca Massey-Chase, Head of Citizen Engagement at the Institute for ...

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9:56

Thick Description

Your Brain On Climate ·

2026/07/03

If you've ever caught yourself writing off a group of people with a simple and dismissive description of why they do what they do - or been thusly written off yourself - then you'll be familiar with 'thin description'. It's a bad way to learn what makes someone tick and probably annoys them as well. So instead, here's the idea of 'thick description': properly spending time with people to understand their complex inner lives and what they really think about things, including climate chan...

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54:39

The Activist Script, with Anthea Lawson

Your Brain On Climate ·

2026/06/13

I am good. I protest. I save people. I must save the world - now. If this even slightly feels like something you've told yourself, then this episode is for you. Author and campaigner Anthea Lawson's brilliant new book is called How Not To Save The World. It's about the 'script' that activists - including her - tell ourselves, often without realising it. From this script, which can come from deep cultural and psychological places, comes many things that aren't much help - like burn...

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11:00

In Praise of Being Bored

Your Brain On Climate ·

2026/06/01

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 what do we miss when we live life without giving ourselves time not to do anything at all? In this Micro episode, I revisit my chat from 2024 with broadcaster Simon Mundie, remembering what Simon told me about how much about the natural world - good and bad - we can notice and ...

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65:52

The Pilot who Quit for the Climate, with Joel Walker

Your Brain On Climate ·

2026/05/15

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 forest fires and melting glaciers he could see from his cockpit. Eventually, in 2025, the cognitive dissonance got too much and Joel left flying forever. As we natter through the trees not far from Luton Airport, Joel tells me what it feels like to walk away from a prestigious...

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12:15

Discounting the Future

Your Brain On Climate ·

2026/05/01

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 are hardwired to lean towards getting things now, unless the deal is sufficiently sweet. That preference makes sense when you evolved to not know where your next antelope was coming from. But our bias towards discounting the future is one of the reasons we haven't done ...

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61:07

Use Your Fear, with Sarah Jaquette Ray

Your Brain On Climate ·

2026/04/15

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 out fear is a great motivator of climate action too, as long as we learn how to use its power for good, not the dark side. After all, if you think climate change isn't a bit alarming, you're not paying attention. Joining me on this episode is Professor Sarah Jaquette Ray...

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12:26

The Dutch have a word for your flimsy excuses

Your Brain On Climate ·

2026/03/31

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 for that run you planned (ow, leg suddenly hurt) or caring about climate change but taking loads of flights (well, they were just going to go anyway, right?) In this micro episode, I learn all about goedprater as part of understanding the BYSTANDER EFFECT. I revisit a snippet...

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59:53

Hope, with Pancho Lewis

Your Brain On Climate ·

2026/03/17

Hope! What is it good for? (Absolutely every'thin). 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 exhilarating for those who feel it most urgently - but what about everyone else? The good news is it turns out there are lots of different ways to have climate hope, even ones that might not look like it. Raising kids in the age of climate breakdown; doing a strange little climate podc...

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10:50

Eat a Proper Lunch

Your Brain On Climate ·

2026/03/01

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 might be the most important way to start getting your brain to be useful, in doing something about climate change. In this micro episode, I revisit my chat with the brilliant Kimberley Wilson from 2021. Kimberley's an author, mental health expert, nutritionist and science commu...

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54:17

Fear of Numbers, with Rob Eastaway

Your Brain On Climate ·

2026/02/15

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 dodgy sums dressed up as facts, and how we can all learn to maths up a bit. Joining me on this episode is Rob Eastaway - maths author, cricket nerd, and all round nice bloke. You might have heard him on shows like BBC's More or Less, or read his books like Maths on the Back of ...

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61:38

Bonus episode: Climate Magic, featuring me

Your Brain On Climate ·

2026/02/01

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/y...

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60:35

The Weight of Nature, with Clayton Page Aldern

Your Brain On Climate ·

2026/01/18

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 Clim...

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9:20

Change It Up

Your Brain On Climate ·

2026/01/01

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 happ...

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54:57

The Weather People, with Helen Roberts

Your Brain On Climate ·

2025/12/14

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 stil...

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13:08

How to talk about the climate emergency

Your Brain On Climate ·

2025/12/01

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...

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