Writer and philosopher Timothy Morton continues to share his ideas about our psychological relationship with global warming. Why can it be so difficult for many of us to engage with it? How could we cope better with our feelings about what’s happening so we can get on with something better for our planet?

In this second episode, Morton introduces his concept of hyperobjects - entities like mass extinction, global warming and hurricanes which are 'things', but so massively distributed in time and space that it’s hard to point to them - they can feel like abstractions but are ferociously, catastrophically real.

Morton channels William Blake in a railway tunnel and visits a garden centre to begin to uncover our innate ‘X-Men superpowers’ that we might scale up to planet-level action.

With contributions from Puerto Rican activists Colibrí Sanfiorenzo Barnhard and Anahí Lazarte Morales, Hilton Kelley of the Higher Ground network of flooding survivors in the US, artist Olafur Eliasson, ABC13 Houston weatherman Travis Herzog, psychotherapist Caroline Hickman, and poetry read by Laurie Anderson.

Produced by Chris Elcombe
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4.

Featured music:
Alexandra Spence - Immaterial (Longform Editions)
Anna Peaker - Realm of Perfume and Lights (Longform Editions)
AquaSonic - Tide Concordance
Dawn of Midi - Nix & Io (Thirsty Ear)
Ondness - Malta Inquieta (Discrepant)
Siavash Amini - A Recollection of the Disappeared (Room40)
Tomoko Sauvage - Making of a Rainbow Show less