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? 

• 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 polarisation
• 40:19 - the original paper on solastalgia by Glenn Albrecht et al.
• 40:55 - Arlie Russell Hochschild's majestic Strangers In Their Own Land
• 41:23 - 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/. 

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 Natural History Museum's expert on all things dipeteric (flies) and siphonapteric (fleas), and an extremely funny and nice person too. 

Reaching for that fly-killer? WAIT A MINUTE. Must we call kill all pests? (Must we even think of them as pests in the first place?) 

If you like the 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.  Poo definitely not by Maggie cat. 

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. And despite the looming eco-crisis, perhaps our own brains are too. 

In this episode, Dave meets author Mike Berners-Lee to chew over his new book, A Climate of Truth. It's a brilliant balance of home truths about the state of things, with unputdownable optimism that humanity can - and must - do better. 

What distinguishes glorious bullshit from mere lying? How do we get more honesty about the state of the world into our politics and our own lives? And in the age of Trump and Boris, how realistic is it to hope that any of this will change in time to face up to, and head off climate disaster? 

All this, and Macavity the cat too. 

If you liked this episode, check out episode 19 on Honesty, with Rupert Read. 

• 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: 

• 14:34 - Harry Frankfurt's 1986 'On Bullshit', later turned into a book. 
• 18:55 - Quassam Cassim's brilliant term, 'epistemic insouciance'. 
• 21:22 - the Political Lies website: Boris and much more. 
• 25:13 - in case you don't still remember, here's what naughty Volkswagen did. 
• 25:39 - the always superb You Are Not So Smart podcast, here talking about that study that showed you prefer sharing fake news that makes you look good. 
• 34:10 - Julian Kirchherr's paper on bullshit in sustainability literature. 

The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell, who you can find @powellds on Bluesky and X/Twitter, although I don't use the latter any more.

YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me.  Show logo by Arthur Stovell at www.designbymondial.com. 

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 - disgusting, are we feeing *actually* disgusted, or is it just a metaphor? What about how we might feel about things like climate change itself? Does it make us want, literally, to vom?

If you like the 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, who you can find @powellds on Bluesky and X/Twitter, although I don't use the latter any more.

YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me.  Show logo by Arthur Stovell at www.designbymondial.com. 

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 makes at least one of your yous freak out? You (and you) are not alone. 

Welcome to cognitive dissonance. As Walt Whitman wrote: you contain multitudes. It's a feature, not a bug, of being alive. 

Humans, it turns out, are very good at thinking conflicting things at the same time.  This helps us get through the day, but means we're as likely to run away from scary facts we don't like - eg, the state of planet Earth - as to take meaningful action. It's as bad for our politics as it is for getting our heads around climate change. What's to be done? 

In this episode, Dave chats all things cognitive dissonance and more with the brilliant Sarah Stein Lubrano. Sarah's an author, podcaster and academic whose work is at the intersection of psychology, politics, and cognitive science. Her new book, Don't Talk About Politics: How to change 21st century minds, is out in mid-May. 

• 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: 

• 23:52 - Joseph Henrich coined the term WEIRD & wrote a book about it. 
• 32:30 - Excellent article on Kristin Laurin's work studying bans. 
• 42:44 - Deep organising, via the legend that was Jane McAlevey. 
• 49:29 - Google Deepmind founder Mustafa Suleyman's terrifying book, the Coming Wave. 
• 52:35 - critical theory and social pathology.

Clips in this episode are from the (er) 1984 film of 1984, starring Robert Burton and John Hurt. 

The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell, who you can find @powellds on Bluesky and X/Twitter, although I don't use the latter any more.

YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me.  Show logo by Arthur Stovell at www.designbymondial.com. 

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 changing the world as it is for running up that hill. 

Sorting climate change is the definition of a marathon, not a sprint. It particularly feels that way right now. What we need is ENDURANCE, and plenty of it - and the right perspective to keep on keeping on.  

For the full chat, check out episode 23 here. 

If you like the 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, who you can find @powellds on Bluesky and X/Twitter, although I don't use the latter any more.

YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me.  Show logo by Arthur Stovell at www.designbymondial.com. 

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 planet - into trouble sometimes. 

In this episode Dave learns all about confirmation bias from the splendid Professor Adam Harris off of University College London.  Learn about how casinos make their cash, why lefties should read righty-press sometimes, why confirmation bias once caused a plane to crash into a massive volcano, and why climate deniers and activists alike could all benefit from being a bit more like a fox. 

These new-format episodes take a long time to record, script, and edit. If you like it - that'll make me happy. 

• 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: 

• 14:40 - Metacognition
• 26:29 - Bounded (/Adaptive) Rationality 
• 44:48 - Philip Tetlock / Foxes vs Hedgehogs
• 46:38 - Pilots (still) report confirmation bias
• 48:38 - Mussweiler et al / Consider the Opposite 

The show is hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell, who you can find @powellds on Bluesky and X/Twitter, although I don't use the latter any more.

YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me.  Show logo by Arthur Stovell at www.designbymondial.com. 

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 progress on climate change. 

In this micro episode, we explore a nugget of insight from Professor Deborah Prentice - currently vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University and at the time of our chat back in 2021, provost of Princeton.  What is pluralistic ignorance, and how does it lead to a 'conservative lag' in society? 

For the full chat, check out episode 6 here. 

If you like the 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, who you can find @powellds on Bluesky and X/Twitter, although I don't use the latter any more.

YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me.  Show logo by Arthur Stovell at www.designbymondial.com.