Podcast: The Cassandra Curse—Why We Heed Some Warnings, And Ignore Others

Shankar Vedantam looks at climate change, warnings and the pitfalls of being a prophet in this episode. Why is it that some warnings are heard and others are ignored? Is it something about the person sending out the message, or are there other factors at stake?

In the context of climate change and other catastrophes, the host recounts the ancient myth of prophet Cassandra, the daughter of Priam, King of Troy. She predicted the fall of Troy at the hands of Greece, but, tough luck, no one believed her. She was one of the 50 children of the king and she spoke in metaphors a lot, which made her look weird in the eyes of others. So – to go back to climate change – if you speak in cryptic language, don't have any authority, are miles ahead of your peers in terms of vision and ask too much of the people around you, you're not going to be taken seriously. 

We've painted a picture of warnings that is at odds with the way most of us think about them. In the conventional telling, someone raises an alarm, and everyone jumps up and does something about it. In reality, warnings are likely to be heard when they're made by someone who's part of our in-group, where the warning is so imminent that nearly everyone can see the danger and where the solution doesn't require a radical shift in existing strategy. Unsurprisingly, this means that many warnings will go unheeded, and many Cassandras will be dismissed.