We love it when someone gets what's coming to them - whether it's an individual we know personally and dislike, someone from a group we hate, or someone we just generally think is a wrong'un. That's schadenfreude - literally, "joy damage". Grubby, wonderful feeling. But what does schadenfreude do for us, psychologically? Is it a good and useful thing or a harmful thing? And can it be harnessed - or should it be feared - when trying to do something about the climate crisis? Joining Dave...

When things get scary, we like hero(+ine)s. We kind of automatically create them - like there was always a hero-shaped hole in our stories that was just waiting for someone to pop into. Why? Are we really hardwired to look for heroes? Do they all wear capes? And for something as complex and fiddly and *wibbles hands expansively in the air* as climate change, is it a good or a bad thing that we cast Greta, David Attenborough and whoever comes next as a climate hero?  Do we need new types of...

What disgusts you? For starters, I bet, other people's oozings, or rotten meat, or other such things that hint at the Unclean. But you might also say corruption, or pollution. Or a particular political, or a group of people. Or perhaps... even climate change itself? It's one of our most base, guiding emotional responses to the world, so in this episode we find out all about disgust -  how it shapes societies, defines what's right and wrong, and affects how we think about who's to blame for...

We are the places we live, and the places we live are us. Places made by oil, coal, and gas, by roads, and by industry.  Where the choices we make about what to feel and where to go are  shaped by the very things that are at the heart of the climate crisis. Eek. Psychogeography's about turning left when you're supposed to go right. Going into nuclear exclusion zones when you're not supposed to. Wandering off the beaten track,  seeing what happens and who you meet. And  stopping to think for...

In the last episode of Season 1 we learn all about one of the weirdest but most important of all human brain-oddnesses: pluralistic ignorance. When you think something and lots of other people also think that thing but none of you think anyone else agrees with you, so nothing changes. Got that? Dave is joined by Professor Deborah Prentice from Princeton University to get his noggin around this deeply human trait. On the menu: just how common is it that we think we’re alone in an idea when...

Being alive can be a lonely business, as can trying to do something about climate change. But how important to our brains is connecting with others?  And in our individualised world, might we be hugely undervaluing the importance of interpersonal connection in helping society take meaningful and effective action on climate change? Joining Dave this week is coach, facilitator, and expert in the growing field of positive psychology, Alison Crowther.  Alison works to encourage deeper...

Food: yum! It keeps us alive and keeps our brains healthy (or unhealthy, all-too-often). And the food that we eat - what it is and where it comes from - is one of the most important things we're going to have to get right when it comes to climate change.    Kind of a problem then that there are very few things about which we're quite so uppity and strange.  Food is drenched in cultural meaning, status, and individuals' neuroses, associations and family history.  So what is our...

In this debut episode of Your Brain On Climate, Dave talks all things RISK with Dr Adam Corner (@ajcorner). How do our brains understand risk? Are we still part jittery lizard, and if so which part? How do we - individually and as a society - decide what's risky enough to do something about? What can we learn from the wretched pandemic?  And what can all of that teach us about the fact that while there's a climate emergency going on, it's not being treated like one? Dr Adam Corner is an...