Outrage + Optimism Podcast Episodes
Latest episode
380: Blocker or Blueprint? India on the World Stage
At COP26 in Glasgow, India famously asked to change one word in the final text. ‘Phase out’ became ‘phase down’. The COP President fought back tears, as country after country branded this a moment of shame. For many, India has been a villain of that story ever since. But like all stories about this country, the truth is far more complex.
Search by title/guest
Recently Aired
Season 12 Adaptation + Climate
379: What’s India Building?: Tales from the Biggest Transition on Earth
03 September 2026
"This will never work in India." That's what Indian truck manufacturers said about electric freight. Now they build the trucks. Something is going on here at a speed the rest of the world has not yet noticed. Solar capacity has gone from under three gigawatts to more than 160 in ten years. Across the same decade, 171 million people moved out of extreme poverty. But in eastern Delhi, a woman who has lived beside an open mountain of garbage for fifty years asks Tom Rivett-Carnac for one thing: tell the world about us.
Season 12 Health, Wellbeing + Climate
378: India: Life Inside Delhi's 'Airpocalypse'
27 August 2026
In Delhi, lung cancer is no longer a smoker’s disease. It’s a breather’s disease. But the most polluted capital on earth sits in a country running five years ahead of its Paris clean power target. In the first of three dispatches from India, Tom Rivett-Carnac is joined by Dia Mirza, one of the biggest names in Indian cinema and a UN Environment Goodwill Ambassador, and Shyla Raghav, formerly Chief Climate Officer at TIME, who describes "a mix of pride, a mix of heartbreak, and, as well, possibility."
Season 12 Adaptation + Climate
377: The Clock is Ticking: Forty Seconds to Explain the Climate Crisis
20 August 2026
The summer of 2026 burned the largest wildfire in Spain's recorded history and the largest France has seen since the Second World War. June's heat killed more than 10,000 people across Europe. A heat dome held North Africa and the Sahel above 45°C for days. In Assam, the Brahmaputra put 700,000 people out of their homes. But it was in the United States, in its hottest month in 132 years of records, that climate reporting found its biggest audience of the summer, in the least likely slot imaginable.
Past Episodes
Season 12
376: Beyond Politics: Should we take the heat out of the climate crisis?
Season 12
375: Cheapest Energy in History. Still Heading for 3 Degrees?
Season 12
374: Europe’s Summer of Fire: The New Normal?
Season 12
373: China, COP31 and Chagos: What’s happening behind the headlines?
Season 12
372: Rosebank, Cambo, and the Conversation Christiana Never Got to Have
Season 12
371: Whose Side Is the Law On? How the Courts Became a Climate Battleground
Season 12
370: Is It Over? A Direct Answer to Climate Despair
Season 12
369: London Cooking: A Climate Action Week, a Resigning PM, and the Future of Climate Diplomacy
Season 12
368: From SpaceX to City Streets: Who Pays for the AI Data Centre Boom?
