Outrage + Optimism
Global climate conversations combining policy, leadership, advocacy and constructive pathways for action.
- Host
- Christiana Figueres & Tom Rivett-Carnac & Paul Dickinson
- Published by
- Global Optimism
- Topic
- Climate & Climate Resilience
- Format
- Conversation / Roundtable
- Orientation
- Systems Change
- Themes
- Resilience, Just Transition, Net Zero
- Made for
- General Public, Corporate Leader, Policymaker / Public Sector
Listen now
Latest episodes
Newest first
- Open episode
22 Oct 2026 · 45 min
Digger's flop, Big Oil and the bots: What actually moves people?
In Digger, Tom Cruise plays an oil tycoon whose rig sets off a tsunami. Within days of release, it was written off as a flop. Christiana Figueres has seen it twice, and she has questions about how quickly that verdict arrived. As she sees it, the film puts the fossil fuel lobby squarely in the frame. This week, Christiana, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson meet in person, with a stack of your questions and a bigger one underneath them all: what actually moves people to act? Is it fear, or hope? And what are the hidden influences behind the messages that move us? If evidence on its own chang
- Open episode
15 Oct 2026 · 43 min
What World Will They Inherit? Live from Bath Abbey
Before she was Christiana Figueres, architect of the Paris agreement, who was she? What did believe in 2015 that she no longer believes? In June, an event about the next generation of climate leaders was postponed because of extreme heat. This week, Outrage + Optimism comes to you live from Bath Abbey, weeks before COP31 and ten years on from Paris. What is one generation of climate leaders really handing to the next? And will it be enough? In front of an audience of school children, students, parents and teachers, 22 year old, Xandi Drysdale, asks Christiana to reflect on the differences betw
- Open episode
8 Oct 2026 · 40 min
How Can a Country Survive Losing Its Land?
A ship rams a canoe. The canoe starts to sink. The ship's crew lean over the rail and offer a loan to repair it. That is how Surangel Whipps Jr., President of Palau, describes climate finance in the Pacific, a region responsible for around 0.03% of global emissions. He speaks to Christiana Figueres a few weeks into his year as Chair of the Pacific Islands Forum, and as pre-COP talks wrap in in Fiji and Tuvalu ahead of COP31. In Palau, on his islands, high tides are already flooding the taro patches with saltwater, and the main hospital sits at the water's edge. This week, Christiana returns to