Aug 25, 2026 · 49 min
Climate change is reshaping how brains remember and behave
Special Episode: Clayton Page Aldern & The Weight of Nature
The episode connects gradual environmental disruption to cognition, disease risk, aggression, and mental health without minimizing the uncertainty or the stakes.
- 1Changing environments can disrupt the brain’s expectations, making climate change harder to perceive through memory alone.
- 2Heat can impair concentration and performance while increasing irritability, aggression, and violence.
- 3Climate-sensitive disease and extreme weather add psychological burdens that require awareness without paralysis.
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Aldern explains how heat can impair cognition while also increasing irritability, aggression, and violence.
The brief
Clayton Page Aldern joins Erin Allmann Updyke to examine how climate change reaches beyond ecosystems, affecting the brain, behavior, disease risk, and mental health.
Brains build expectations from past conditions, so gradual environmental change can produce climate amnesia: the baseline shifts while memory makes it feel normal.
Heat is not only uncomfortable; the discussion links it to impaired concentration and professional performance, along with irritability, honking, aggression, and violence.
The conversation turns to cyanobacterial toxins, climate-sensitive pathogens, wildfire exposure, extreme weather, trauma, and the still-uncertain links to neurodegenerative disease.
Aldern’s answer to the weight of nature is neither denial nor paralysis: bear witness, acknowledge change, stay aware, and pursue solutions.
Clayton Page AldernMentioned
The Weight of Nature
The Weight of Nature, How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains
Stanford UniversityBooks & mentions
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