In this last episode of the first series of the University of Cambridge’s new podcast – Mind Over Chatter – I joined Richard Staley (Reader in the History and Philosophy of Science department) and Martin Rees (cosmologist, astrophysicist, and Astronomer Royal), to explore how stories relate to climate change. It was fun to do some audio work again after a break from radio for a while. It was also good to have an opportunity to try out some of the ideas from the new book, Storylistening: Narrative Evidence and Public Reasoning, to which we’re currently putting the finishing touches, in particular work in the book on understanding narratives as models.

Richard is one of my collaborators on the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar – Histories of AI: A Geneaology of Power – which we’ve been running since Spring 2020, and which has been one of the most phenomenal experience of my professional career. But Richard is also leading another important research project – Making Climate History – so it was good to have an opportunity to talk with him about climate change, rather than AI, although the two are of course intimately connected, as Richard has discussed elsewhere.

This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, James Dolan, and Naomi Clements-Brod.