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 - hello@yourbrainonclimate.com.

• 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 - hello@yourbrainonclimate.com.
• 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/.