Sharks, Headlines and the Illusion of Risk

In this episode of Tiny Shifts, Andrew Nunn explores why fear and headlines distort our perception of risk, and why facts alone rarely change people’s minds.

Using real-world examples like shark attacks and media coverage, Andrew breaks down how cognitive biases shape our thinking, how emotions override logic, and why conversations about risk quickly become heated and polarised.

If the data is clear… why don’t people listen?

This episode unpacks how the brain processes threat, why rare events feel more common than they are, and how to navigate difficult conversations without making them worse.

What you’ll learn in this episode

• Risk perception

• Fear and decision-making

• Cognitive biases

• Availability bias

• Confirmation bias

• Emotional reasoning

• Media influence

• Difficult conversations

• The CALM framework

Key topics covered

• Leadership mindset

• Behaviour change

• Cognitive dissonance

• Stress beliefs

• Performance psychology

• Identity and self-story

• Bias and decision-making

• Public speaking anxiety

• Communication under pressure

• The GO Method

• Personal growth

• Mindset shifts for leaders

Timestamps

00:00 – Introduction to fear, headlines and risk

02:25 – Why statistics don’t change people’s minds

04:00 – Emotional reactions to real-world events (sharks example)

06:20 – Why logic fails when emotions rise

08:40 – The problem with leading with facts

10:50 – How emotions change thinking

13:15 – What biases actually are

15:30 – Why the brain over-detects threats

18:00 – Biases don’t mean people are irrational

20:20 – Availability bias explained

22:30 – Illusion of understanding complex systems

25:00 – How biases distort reality

27:30 – Why people aren’t “wrong”—they’re human

29:50 – Introducing the CALM framework

30:20 – C: Control yourself

30:50 – A: Acknowledge emotion

31:20 – L: Learn what matters

31:50 – M: Move to facts

Related insights

You may also want to explore:

• Home – www.andrewnunn.com

• Mind the Gap keynote – Link

• Speaking and contact enquiries – Link

• LinkedIn – Link

Social and Podcast links

• Instagram: andythementalist

• Tiny Shifts Podcast: Sharks, Headlines and the Illusion of Risk

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00:01:644|Andrew|Welcome back or welcome to the Tiny Ships podcast. I'm your host Andy Nunn and this is episode number five. So if you haven't listened to this already, this is a podcast about how the mind actually works, not how we wish it worked. It's about the small, often invisible thinking habits that quietly shape some of our choices, our conversations and the way we sort of react under pressure. Each episode. 02:25:408|Andrew|sort of eye on what's been going on there. And this is the one, the reason why I decided to do this podcast this week is I've been reading some of the threats and conversations people have, and I just see the back and forth and I try and understand why. 04:06:444|Andrew|and you understand that they are an apex predator and it is something that you do have to be scared of, you know, and, but I think there's certain ways that we can go about this and having this conversation because I don't think everyone understands it's a very complex topic. And I think that's the problem with a lot of these issues is they are very complex and they're very emotional. And when you combine them two together, it's very hard. 06:24:086|Andrew|I want to use a simple way to reopen real conversation about these topics, about getting them heated. And again, like I say, these are very polarizing conversations. So I know how hard they can actually be. Okay. So let me start with something most of us have done. You're in a conversation with someone about something emotional. So let's just say what's been on the news recently, like Shark Tank attacks. 08:42:574|Andrew|They're everywhere. They're going in our rivers. They're going up our streams. know, kids can't go in the water. And when you have kids and safety and especially sharks, the idea of a shark attack hits so many of those things that we're scared of. It can be really, really difficult. So you get frustrated. You're like, yeah, but it's three people a year. Look at the odds. It's very, very low. You know, you think of the estimated number of people that go in the water in Australia each year is about 50 million, 50 million people. 10:52:078|Andrew|And we have a responsibility as individuals to learn these tools and to be able to have these conversations without it escalating into something serious. Because there's a lot of topics here that are quite inflammatory. So here's the belief I want to sort of challenge review today. If people just knew the numbers, they would calm down. That's what you think. Do you ever believe they just need to know the statistics? What's actually happened? The brain treats threats very differently to neutral. 13:17:152|Andrew|So those shortcuts help people survive. The trouble is we're still living in the stone age software inside of our heads, funny enough, in a world of statistics, social media, 24 hour news. know, our brains weren't evolved to handle all this chaos that we're living in right now. So a bias is just a brain trading accuracy for speed basically. And most of the time that's useful. Okay. Like we're running on autopilot most of the time, but it can distort reality. So 15:39:694|Andrew|got rid of the people who went, maybe it's not a snake. Let me have a look. Dead. Okay. No, the people who run away with the people who survived. So natural selection got these people, they evolved to be more cautious because that kept you alive. So it made sense. So fear spreads faster than nuance for a reason, basically. So what bias is actually due to thinking, I think this is important thing to sort of work out when we go over this. When a bias kicks in, 18:05:678|Andrew|It's not looking for accuracy. That's important thing. So here's a key point to just clarify. Biases don't mean people are stupid. Okay. Everyone has them. They mean they're human. Okay. You have them. I have them. Everyone listening to this podcast has them. the real skill isn't eliminating biases. It's impossible. Everyone asks me, how do we do this? It's learning to notice when one has taken the wheel. 20:25:784|Andrew|How often do people get eat my sharks? It'd like, how terrible would this situation be if I went in the water and there was a shark attack? The next thing is confirmation bias, which is the most common one people have. Everyone's Googling, you know, when, how many shark attacks, they're Googling information, they're looking at watching YouTube videos, they're all doing all this stuff. Because once you lean one way and once you have a narrative, your attention follows that narrative. So you're, the way you type a question into Google, 22:39:438|Andrew|situation, shark ecology, people know the gestation period of bull sharks, they know how much they breed, they know all this information about them, which can't be true. You know, they know how many sharks there are in the water, they know where they're going, where they're breeding, they know the dangers and the increase. Without the research, there's no, you know, people like, oh, I've got the research to back it up and the research is to make Dave up in Queensland, who's doing some fishing. It's crazy. And then vaccine development, exactly the same. Everyone's like, but spike proteins, this or that. And the truth is, 25:09:236|Andrew|in drowning incidents, we just don't hear about them as much. But, and they don't connect, so we might hear them and just forget, but shark attack stays in our memory. So remember, all these biases exist for a reason. They helped us survive. But in modern debates, they can quietly distort our sense of risk, inflate rare dangers and make conversations feel impossible. 27:29:568|Andrew|shark sightings, more Instagram videos, your Instagram feeds start sharing sharks over and over again. You'll start thinking that shark populations are going to be coming on land soon to get us. And then there's the illusion of explanatory depth. as I've mentioned before, there's a lot of people right now talking about migration patterns, breeding cycles, gestation periods, ocean temperatures, all this sort of stuff, conservation policy, the fishery. And there's so many different factors that come into play here. 29:53:986|Andrew|what you hear without agreeing with what they're saying basically. So I can see that why that would scare you. I get why you're angry about this. You know, that just sounds terrible. It sounds frustrating. It's a, you know, I can see why you'd be worried. So you're saying that you're listening, you're building a bridge between the two of you in the conversation and you're not trying to polarize yourself. So remember emotions first and then you can do the facts later if you have to, but that's where you start.

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