Kim Stanley Robinson on Pre Traumatic Imagination and the stories that change us

Outrage + Optimism: The Climate Podcast

Persephonica

News, Planet, Business, Society & Culture, Current Affairs, Green, Policy, Finance, Society, Environment, Science, Energy, Climate

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week on Outrage + Optimism, we’re taking a breath.

After two intense weeks of daily updates from COP30 in Belém, we’re returning to weekly programming with something different - a slower, deeper, more reflective conversation that felt too valuable to cut.

While in the Blue Zone, we sat down with Kim Stanley Robinson, the acclaimed author of The Ministry for the Future, 2312, The Mars trilogy, and the Science in the Capital series. His writing has been read by negotiators, ministers, campaigners, and many of you.

In our conversation, Kim Stanley Robinson reflects on why The Ministry for the Future begins with such a devastating opening chapter, a “punch in the gut” designed to reveal the human limits of adaptation. He introduces the idea of “pre-traumatic syndrome,” the unsettling clarity that comes from imagining a catastrophe before it happens, and how this can motivate us rather than paralyse us. We explore storytelling as a cultural tool for moving from despair to determination, and why each of us needs a a unifying purpose that gives shape to our actions in a chaotic world.

At a COP defined by urgency, exhaustion, and flashes of courage, this wide-ranging conversation with Kim Stanley Robinson felt like a necessary exhale, a moment to step back and reflect on why we do this work, and what kind of future we’re choosing to build.

We’re airing the conversation almost exactly as it happened.

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Series Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Planning Producer: Caitlin Hanrahan

Edited by: Miles Martignoni

Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to outrage and optimism. I'm Tom Riffick Karnak.
0:06.9	Oh my gosh, we're back to outrage and optimism.
0:10.9	Little old outrage and optimism back again. Yeah.
0:13.7	It's like a comfy old jumper.
0:15.7	I'm Christiana Figueres. And I'm Paul Dickinson.
0:18.9	Today we bring you back to our regular program after Inside
0:21.8	Cop and we bring you a special conversation with author Kim Stanley Robinson. Thanks for being here.
0:32.5	Okay friends, so just us three this time and we're back to regular outrage and optimism episodes.
0:38.4	The Insight Cop fever dream is over.
0:41.0	The period of doing episodes every day has come to an end.
0:45.4	And we're going to bring you something quite different.
0:47.7	Can I just say, what a relief?
0:51.3	I mean, honestly, it is such, such a huge lift to do these daily episodes for all of us,
0:59.4	especially for our production team.
1:01.5	But my heart goes out to these professional podcasters who record every single day.
1:06.9	I am just in total admiration and respect for that. I had never realized how tough it is.
1:14.7	My afternoon nap went into complete suspension for a whole week, which is shocking.
1:18.4	That's an astonishing battle of commitment. Poor you. Yeah. It's all right. That's fine. It's fine.
1:23.8	I don't want to make a big deal of it. We just move on. We just move on. It's fine.
1:26.8	One of my favorite podcast, The Daily from the New York Times, I now view in a completely different light now that I see they put out in a large team, but very, very impressive. I'm watching around the New York Times offices interviewing each other. It probably can't be that hard. But yes, no, they do a good job. All right, shall we get on with it? Yes, let's get on with it. And today we just want to bring you a sort of palate cleanser, as it were, from thinking very specifically about what's happening minute by minute in the cop to pulling the lens back and thinking more broadly about the moment we're in and who we need to be and how we shape this moment. And there could be no better guest than Kim Stanley Robinson or Stan, as he is known.
2:02.0	And Christiana, since we first had it on the podcast, you and he have become good friends.
2:05.6	So why don't you give us a bit of background on Stan?
	...

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