Panu Pihkala, a climate emotions scholar, and Thomas Doherty, a clinical and environmental psychologist, have created a one-of-a-kind podcast which explores human emotions and feelings around climate change. Climate Change and Happiness is a podcast that also talks about the ways individuals can develop their awareness of these feelings and acknowledge that others have them too.

Panu is a scholar based in Helsinki, Finland and Thomas is a psychologist based in Portland, Oregon in the United States. Together their conversations are philosophical and practical, abstract and grounded, international and nuanced. You do not need to be an academic, clinician or social activist to plug into their conversations - they are welcoming, calm and exploratory. Some episodes feature guests from related fields of work while others look at emotions and climate change from seemingly unrelated angles, such as music, art and poetry.

What is special about the tone of Climate Change and Happiness is that it is free of “shoulds” and the judgmental opinions and directives that often get associated with environmental activism. As you’ll hear in this MetaPod discussion, the one “should” is that their podcast have therapeutic value to listeners. In this episode of MetaPod we discuss the value of emotional intelligence and the personal risks and social costs of not acknowledging our emotions. You'll also hear Thomas and Panu explain their intentions to create an open-minded podcast that is comfortable with the idea of uncertainty amidst the negative and anxiety-inducing noise that currently exists around climate change.

MetaPod episode recommendations for Climate Change and Happiness:

* Climate music pt. 1 Panu's playlist

* Climate music pt. 2 Thomas's playlist

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit metapodshow.substack.com