All In The Mind Podcasts

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Delving into all things mental: the latest research and expert commentary on our brains and behaviour. Primary Format : Health Language : Unknown Also Listed as: City : Unknown State/Province : Unknown Country : Australia Region : OC User Tags: User Votes: RSS Feed Website People found this Podcast Searching for: View this Podcast on a Google Map. Podcast iTunes Link Text Only listing of All In The Mind Podcasts Methings.com listings of All In The Mind Podcasts If you like this podcast, you might also like:

All in the Mind 10th Anniversary Special 7: The Marco Polo of Neuroscience - V.S Ramachandran Natasha Mitchell has interviewed many of the world’s most celebrated thinkers on the mind over the past decade, and one the most creative is acclaimed neuroscientist and polymath of the brain Professor V.S Ramachandran. Next week, All in the Mind swaps shows and slots for a season of an exciting new show The Body Sphere hosted by Amanda Smith. In April, All in the Mind returns for a season, presented by Lynne Malcolm. Body and mind hook up on ABC Radio National in 2012! 5pm Sundays, 1pm M ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website All in the Mind 10th Anniversary Special 6: The Power of Forgiveness Psychologist Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela was on South Africa's historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chairing many of its tortuous public hearings about atrocities committed in the apartheid era. In an unprecedented dialogue she met with one of apartheid's most abhorrent killers, in jail, to explore forgiveness, psychological redemption and the symbolic language of trauma. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website All in the Mind 10th Anniversary Special 5: The Banyan All in the Mind is turning 10, and over the decade we've taken you across the globe to discover how the mind and its discontents are profoundly shaped by culture. A chance to meet again the incredible women of The Banyan in India - with stories of triumph amongst the deepest despair. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website All in the Mind 10th Anniversary Special 4: Brave New Brain Celebrate All in the Mind's tenth birthday! Over the decade the show has tracked some of the provocative technological developments and ethical debates about our state of mind. From stem cell therapy to the spectre of animal-human chimeras or cyborgian selves...we love to get heady and technical! Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website All in the Mind 10th Anniversary Special 3: Getting Personal As All in the Mind turns 10, we're digging into the archives to get personal. It's a celebration of the neuro-narrative. Meet Electroboy, poet Sandy Jeffs...encounter a brain surgery and be moved by stories of life, loss and love. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website All in the Mind 10th Anniversary Special 2: Are You Conscious? All in the Mind started with Zombies back in 2002...not of the Day of the Living Dead kind, but the philosophical variety! Celebrate All in the Mind's 10th birthday with us. This week, Natasha revisits the great conundrum of human consciousness with leading thinkers - it's a problem that continues to stump the brightest minds. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website All in the Mind 10th Anniversary Special 1: Getting Sexy It's 10 years since Natasha Mitchell started All in the Mind and we're digging into the archives for you! This week, getting sexy in true adolescent spirit - the perplexing case of the female orgasm, getting your kicks in a brain scanner, and is the sex between your ears more important than the sex between your legs!? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mind the gap! The seduction of the synapse Bah! All that talk about brain cells and grey matter!  Let’s focus on where the real interesting action is inside your head: the connections between your brain cells—synapses. From the ancient past to the frenzied future—it's all about making connections. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Apology for duplicate podcasts We have just upgraded to a new website, and the move has caused some podcast subscribers to download duplicate mp3s. We apologise for this issue and hope you continue to listen to Radio National podcasts in the future. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-11-26 A personal tour: Sigmund Freud's Vienna In the 50 years before he emigrated to escape the Nazis, Sigmund Freud, his wife Martha and six children lived and worked in the house at Berggasse 19 in Vienna. His most famous works were penned there, his most famous patients bared their 'souls' there. Join Natasha Mitchell for a personal tour through the archives of the Fin de Siecle mind. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-11-19 The case for moral enhancement - 2011 Adelaide Festival of Ideas. Oxford-based, Australian bioethicist Julian Savulescu is a provocateur. He's argued the case for a 'new eugenics' and that we have a moral obligation to pursue human perfection. Now he thinks we should be using science and technology for moral enhancement itself. Could the future of humanity depend on it? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-11-12 Loneliness: breaking the taboo Loneliness has been with Emily White for as long as she can remember. Smart, savvy, popular - none of this has inoculated her against 'the ghost in her life'. Her memoir is an encounter with the emerging, powerful science of loneliness, and a taboo like few. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-11-05 Practice makes perfect? The virtuoso violinist, star surgeon and super sportswoman - could any of us become the best of the best? Daniel Coyle toured the world's famous talent 'hotbeds' in search of secrets. Psychologist K. Anders Ericsson says with enough 'deliberate practice' - 10,000 hours of it, he argues - anything´s possible. But does that trump 'natural talent'? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-10-29 7 Billion: It´s getting crowded in here! (extended special for Radio National's Population Weekend) High density living is great for the environment, right? But what does it do to our heads and hearts? The Australian psyche was moulded by the myth of the 'wide brown land', so what might life packed like sardines look and feel like? With the world's seven billionth person about to be born, can we learn from the Asian megacity experience? And will we still be sharing a cup of sugar with our neighbours? As the population debate gets mental, we're going in search of the soul in urban sprawl. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-10-22 Sick, Screwed Up or Just Lazy? - 2011 Adelaide Festival of Ideas Determined advocacy has put the mental health of young Australians front and centre on the public agenda. But child psychiatrist Professor Jon Jureidini is concerned. He's outspoken about the way his profession is interpreting and responding to young people's distress - distress, dis-ease or disease? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-10-15 The Marshmallow Test (broadcast edition) and Proust Was a Neuroscientist (podcast/Radio Australia edition) It started with two marshmallows back in the 1960s, and it became one of the most influential experiments in 21st century psychology. Walter Mischel on the role of willpower and the developing mind. Due to BBC copyright reasons the podcast and overseas edition is an archival feature instead, Proust was a Neuroscientist. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-10-08 The Kill Factor (broadcast edition) and Brave New Mind (podcast/Radio Australia edition) Natural born killer? If humans are born for survival, how hard is it to train us to kill for war, and what's the psychological impact of ending another person's life? The BBC's Stephen Evans meets soldiers and hears their stories of war, killing, and survival. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-10-01 On the Couch in a brain scanner!: Putting the neuro back into Freud Putting the ego, id and subjective Self back into the brain sciences, and vice versa. That's the ambitious quest of Neuro-psychoanalysis. Natasha Mitchell joins neuroscientist and psychoanalyst, Dr Maggie Zellner, in a very psychoanalytic sort of city, the Big Apple! Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-09-24 A nuclear plant in the neighbourhood Japanese psychoanalyst Dr Naoto Kawabata is working with devastated communities evacuated after the Tohoku earthquake & nuclear disaster in Fukushima Prefecture. Cardiff University's Understanding Risk team has studied people living adjacent to British nuclear plants, to explore how it shapes their identities. Probing the nuclear psyche. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-09-17 Don´t follow your instincts! Supernormal stimuli 'Follow your instincts' - it's that old adage we all hold true. Well, don´t. Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett argues our ancestral minds are leading us astray in a 21st century world. From obesity to beauty, warfare to television, it's time to use our big brains better. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-09-10 A Weight on my Mind Nick says he's going to die if he doesn´t lose weight. He knows he should eat less. He knows he should move more. How do our minds sabotage us, in concert with our bodies? A probing look at the psychology of obesity. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-09-03 Profiling the criminal profilers - the inside story Criminal profiling has captured the pop culture psyche - from CSI to The Silence of the Lambs, with star forensic psychologists who have an uncanny knack for getting inside the criminal mind. But what's profiling like in the real world - and does it really work? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-08-27 A healing imagination: clinical hypnosis for children Hypnosis conjures up images of side shows and circus acts, but its use in medicine is growing, and with impressive results - especially with children. From insomnia to irritable bowel syndrome - how does it work, are there risks and why do kids appear to make the best candidates? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-08-20 An inflammatory story: Depression and immunity Hippocrates thought melancholia was caused by too much black bile. Now some scientists describe the Black Dog as an inflammatory illness. Heart disease, oxidative stress and omega 3 are all part of the compelling story too, where body and mind reunite. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-08-13 ABC East Africa Appeal (Saturday) & Child Soldiers: The Art and arts of healing (Monday/podcast) In Sierra Leone,, child soldiers committed acts that words can barely describe. At the war's end, ravaged communities responded to them with terror and stigma. A minority of former child soldiers, many orphaned, have access to reintegration programs. Dance and movement therapist David Alan Harris describes an extraordinary project to respond to the traumatised psyche through engaging the body. (First aired, 2009) Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-08-06 Taking charge: mind, body and recovery Child and adolescent psychiatrist Professor Graham Martin is an international leader in suicide prevention, educator, researcher, a sometime thespian, poet, mediator and black belt in Karate. But in 2009, life took a radical turn when he was suddenly paralysed, and the tables were turned - doctor became patient. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-07-30 Neural engineering: the cutting edge of prosthetics Imagine if thoughts could move matter? US Army Sergeant Glen Lehman lost his arm at the end of his tour of duty in Iraq - now he´s trialling a limb he controls with his mind alone. And, pioneering neural engineer Andrew Schwartz decodes monkey minds, with potentially extraordinary possibilities for paralysed people. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-07-23 Hell in Paradise: Mental health care in Bali Bali is a tropical holiday paradise, but there's a darker side few tourists witness. People with mental illness being chained, caged, or shackled by their family members, often in shocking conditions. All in the Mind joins the rural rounds of prominent local psychiatrist Dr Suryani, as she meets and speaks with families, determined to make a difference. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-07-16 The precipice of creativity: the improvising mind Whether it´s choosing words to make up a sentence or walking along a crowded street, we´re all capable of improvising. But musical improvisation fills us with amazement. How do musicians make the moment-by-moment decisions to create spontaneous music that´s more than noise -- and what´s going on in their brains to make it all happen? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-07-09 Dialogue with the Dalai Lama - Part 3 - Australian of the Year Patrick McGorry Mental illness is reportedly on the rise in young people. Why? And, what role for secular ethics education in fostering developing minds? Patrick McGorry joins His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Natasha Mitchell in conversation. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-07-02 Dialogue with the Dalai Lama - Part 2 - Mirror neurons, our intersubjective minds & the limits of compassion Marco Iacoboni studies mirror neurons - what some dub "Dalai Lama neurons" - and believes they "force us to rethink the deepest aspects of our very selves". Psychologist Paul Ekman redefined the scientific study of emotion. They join Natasha Mitchell in dialogue with the Dalai Lama. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-06-25 Dialogue with the Dalai Lama - Part 1 - happiness, sadness and everything in between Is sadness important for happiness? How does compassion become a mental habit? From the Happiness and Its Causes Conference, His Holiness the Dalai Lama joins Natasha Mitchell with a panel of top scientific minds. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-06-18 Feature Series (Part 3 of 3) - Getting geeky at Gallaudet University This is the century for visual communication - video conferencing, youtube, smart phones - and deaf people are at the forefront. We're getting geeky at the world's first and only deaf university, Gallaudet University in Washington DC. Scientific surprises too - could the genes that contribute to deafness have paradoxical benefits? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-06-11 Feature Series (Part 2 of 3) - Encountering the aesthetics of deafness: deaf space, architecture and poetry At the world's only deaf university, Gallaudet University in Washington DC, a radical rethink of what it means to occupy and design space is underway: it´s called deaf architecture. From deaf space to sign language poetry, immerse yourself in a deaf sensory aesthetic, with surprising discoveries for us all. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-06-04 Feature Series (Part 1 of 3) - Gallaudet University: the world's only deaf university Gallaudet University in Washington D.C is the world's first and only university for deaf students. Abraham Lincoln signed it into existence and its impact on the global deaf community has been enormous. From the radicalisation of deaf culture to the redefining 'Deaf President Now' protests of 1988, the design ethos of deaf architecture to the aesthetics of sign language poetry, and new bilingual pedagogies - join Natasha Mitchell on campus. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-05-28 Live from TEDxSydney (Saturday edition) and The Remarkable Story of H.M (Repeat - Monday and podcast editions) ABC Radio National showcases a smorgasbord of brains, coming live from TEDxSydney this weekend. All in the Mind´s Monday and podcast edition features the story of a H.M. Afflicted with amnesia after brain surgery, he became a man who lived in the perpetual present, and the most famous patient of 20th century neuroscience. Join Natasha Mitchell for a powerful posthumous encounter. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-05-21 Live from the Sydney Writers' Festival...and Mothers and Others! Join us for a super smorgasbord of books and brains! Natasha Mitchell hosts live from the Sydney Writers' Festival for Radio National's special weekend broadcast from the harbour's edge. On Monday's edition and the podcast, acclaimed sociobiologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy with a provocative take on the evolution of our big brains. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-05-14 Next to Normal: a rock musical with a difference A rock musical about mental illness? The Pulitzer Prize winning, Broadway blockbuster Next to Normal is now being staged in Australia by the Melbourne Theatre Company. Living with bipolar disorder can be a dramatic experience, but how does it translate into a night at the theatre? Meet the director, lead, and two women living with Bipolar who don theatre critic hats for All in the Mind. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-05-07 Neuroscientist-turned-novelist Lisa Genova - Narrating disclocated minds Alice is just 50 and at the peak of her Harvard career when Alzheimer's arrives. High flyer mother Sarah is driving to work when an accident & brain damage erases the left side of her world. Bestselling neuroscientist-turned-novelist Lisa Genova has a knack of getting inside her character's dislocated minds & lives. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-04-30 Sir Terry Pratchett: hallucinating gently for a living Celebrated fantasy novelist Terry Pratchett has mined the terrain of his imagination more than most. What shaped this passionately adventurous mind, and now, how is it being reshaped by early-onset Alzheimer's? Next week, a neuroscientist novelist's poignant exploration of the disease. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-04-23 Easter special: The Brain in New York The brain is the star of an exhibition at one of the world´s great cultural institutions, the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. Get off the subway at West 79th Street and take a tour with Natasha Mitchell of her very favourite organ! Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-04-16 Mental health courts and the challenge of therapeutic jurisprudence When people with mental illness and cognitive impairments cycle in an out of jail—is there a better solution? `Problem solving courts´ are one approach, and shift the relationship between the judge and the judged. Join Natasha Mitchell at a symposium considering the `for and against´ with key players in Australia. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-04-09 Murder in mind From Dexter and CSI to the nightly news - murder fills our media, and lethal violence never ceases to fascinate and frighten. A forensic look at the tense history of murder, and a modern rethink of the psychology of shame and honour in preventing it. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-04-02 Fear, brains and rock´n´roll: meet Joe LeDoux Rock star by night, neuroscientist by day -- Joseph LeDoux´s research has redefined our understanding of fear and emotion -- and now the possibility of treating fearful memories. Natasha Mitchell visits his NYC studio to talk science, song, and his band -- The Amygdaloids -- where mind and brain take centre stage. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-03-26 Buying desires: Neuromarketing or neurohype? Advertising used to be straightforward. Now neuromarketing has arrived, armed with a brain scanner and seeking to unearth your real buying desires. The Mad Men are excited, there's enticing potential, but neuroethicists have concerns for the autonomy and privacy of your inner-most sanctum - your thoughts. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-03-19 Your fabulous bilingual brain! Many Anglo-Australians lament speaking only one language when they travel overseas. But now we know being bilingual pays big dividends - culturally and cognitively. From bilingual babies to slowing the deterioration of Alzheimer's, three leading psycholinguists join Natasha Mitchell to share their striking research. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-03-12 Sit with Me: an anatomy of depression Growing up with a depressed parent takes its toll, reframing how you look at the world as a child. In 2007, Mike Bernstein recorded a moving dialogue between 12-year-old Cameron and his father, Bob. Four years later Mike returns, to discover a staggering story in Bob's past. A rare insight into the anatomy of depression. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-03-05 Mmm...that's tasty! Are you a supertaster? Do your favourite flavours leave others flummoxed? Psychologist Linda Bartoshuk's influential work has unveiled how taste varies between people, and the striking impact that has on your health and wellbeing. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-02-26 The Man Who Was Disappointed with What He Saw (Broadcast) & The Blind Brain (Podcast and Radio Australia) S.B grew up blind. But at middle age his sight was returned to him. His case transformed the field of visual perception, but it's also the bittersweet story of the fruits, and spoils, of science. Due to BBC copyright, this week´s podcast, Radio Australia and streaming version is the triumphant story of Zoltan Torey, blinded as a young man. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-02-19 The Day My Mother´s Head Exploded In 1987, 46-year-old Nikki Palin´s head `exploded´, according to her daughter Hannah. After a ruptured aneurysm, Nikki´s personality radically changed and recovery was slow, but surprisingly Nikki likes her post-aneurysm self so much more! A before and after story that´ll make you grin...and sing. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-02-12 The mind in crisis: to debrief or not to debrief? Floods, fires, cyclones and the anniversary of Black Saturday. Psychological debriefing is a technique aimed at helping us process traumatic events, so the emotional scars can heal not harm. To some the approach is discredited, ineffective and may even do damage - to others it can still have important role. Beyond the controversy, where does the field stand today? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-02-05 Nobel laureate Gerald Edelman on consciousness, creativity and 'neural Darwinism' Nobel laureate Gerald Edelman rarely gives interviews. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine in 1972 for his work on antibodies, but at 81 he's a true Renaissance man of the brain, heading up what he describes as a 'scientific monastry' in San Diego. He joins Natasha Mitchell to talk consciousness, creativity and 'neural Darwinism'. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-01-29 That Does Not Compute: the hidden affliction of dyscalculia You've heard the common refrain, 'Oh, I´m so bad at maths!' But for up to eight per cent of us, a condition called dyscalculia means numbers are a serious struggle, with serious consequences. Scientists are now revealing its biological basis, and in Australia there's a push for it to be seen as a legitimate and unique disability. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-01-22 Stem cells and brain tales Acclaimed neuroscientist Fred Gage is a serial trailblazer. Decades of dogma were overturned when his team confirmed the adult brain continues to make new brain cells. Incredibly, now scientists can even turn skin cells into brain cells with a chemical push! But, if their potential to treat brain diseases or damage is to be realised, transplanted cells need to be able to call your brain home. Stanford biologist James Weimann has a major advance. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-01-15 Kay Redfield Jamison - UPDATED Top clinical psychologist and psychiatry professor Kay Redfield Jamison took the world by storm with her book An Unquiet Mind. In it she revealed her own torrid experience of bipolar disorder, and a passionate life marred by mania and depression. She joins Natasha Mitchell in conversation to discuss her new memoir, Nothing Was the Same. Recounting two decades with her partner, leading schizophrenia researcher Richard Wyatt, who died in 2002, it´s a story of deep love and deep loss. To her, ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-01-08 The Master and his Emissary: the divided brain and the reshaping of Western civilisation. Eminent psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist offers an ambitious, provocative thesis about how the brain's two hemispheres came to be, and construct the world. Today there's a power struggle being played out between the left and right brain that he argues is reshaping Western civilisation in disturbing ways. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2011-01-01 Stressed out! The powerful biology of stress A little tension keeps us on our toes - we're biologically primed for it. But 'toxic' stress makes us physically sick, and powerful research is now revealing its potent impact on our developing bodies and brains. Don't miss two world leaders transforming our understanding. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-12-25 Diving into dolphin heads: science, rights and ethics The Cove took out this year's Oscar for best documentary for its confronting coverage of the annual dolphin culls in Taiji, Japan. Scientists argue dolphins have complex, large brains - second only to human brains relative to body weight. Join Natasha Mitchell with leading cetacean scientists and an ethicist for a tour of a waterborne 'alien intelligence'. What are the consequences for captivity, and a controversial call for 'personhood' status? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-12-18 Cultural Chemistry (Part 3 of 3): Colombia - the plant that steals your free will? You've seen it in suburban Australian gardens with its bright, pendulous flowers in full bloom. But in Colombia, Angel's Trumpet has a dark side. It's used to rob people by robbing them of their memory, and allegedly, their free will. For All in the Mind, clinical psychologist Dr Vaughan Bell goes in search of the truth about the drug Burundanga, and Brugmansia - a popular plant with a complex personality. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-12-11 Thinking about suicide (Part 2 of 2) David Webb's powerful account of suicidal feelings, and call for a more open and nuanced public conversation about suicide, has sparked rich discussion among listeners. This week, an Australian suicide prevention leader reflects thoughtfully on the issues raised. Be part of the conversation. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-12-04 Thinking about suicide: one survivor's perspective David Webb has penned what's described as 'the world´s first PhD on suicide by someone who has attempted it'. He suggests we need to honour suicidal feelings as real, legitimate, important and 'a sacred part of the human story'. But how does this view sit with health campaigns urging us to understand suicidal thoughts as a sign of untreated mental illness? An opportunity to hear a voice absent from the public conversation about suicide - that of an attempt survivor - and, next week, a resp ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-11-27 Cultural Chemistry (Part 2): Our Caffeinated Culture: how much is too much? 80% of the world consumes it, coffee bean aficionados relish it, but is caffeine the pick me up we think it is? Surprising evidence says it's all an illusion. And, the rise of caffeinated energy drinks is causing concern. The dark side to caffeine we rarely hear about. And we want your coffee stories too -- speak to us! We've just launched the new All in the Mind Audioboo channel for your feedback and conversations. Think of it as social media meets radio talkback! Find out how here. Natash ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-11-20 Glenn Close: 'We are exactly who we are meant to be' Acclaimed actress Glenn Close, her sister Jessie and nephew Calen are star guests at this week´s huge Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego. Hear their candid account of a family history of mental illness, and why they´re speaking out. Next week, in our Cultural Chemistry series...Our caffeinated culture, with YOUR stories! Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-11-13 Battlelines: science, sex, brains and gender Boy or girl? Blue brain or pink brain? Dr Cordelia Fine's new book, Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences, and Professor Rebecca Jordan-Young´s latest, Brainstorm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Difference, have raked over research data and mined the controversies on how male and female brains differ -- no holds barred. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-11-06 Why everyone (else) is a hypocrite: your modular mind Why do we so often deceive ourselves, believe one thing and yet do another, and fail to exercise self control when we know better? Acclaimed evolutionary psychologist Robert Kurzban argues we need to be more forgiving of ourselves. Our strange ways are explained by our 'modular minds', one of the most hotly debated ideas about how your mind works. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-10-30 Cultural Chemistry - Part 1 of 3 - Khat The first of three shows over three months -- a social and scientific odyssey into plants that mould minds and shape cultures. It's known as khat, chat, African salad and Abyssinian tea. To science it's a stimulant, to others a destructive drug, but to millions of African men it's an important social lubricant. Next month -- coffee -- and we'll be calling for your audio stories as part of a social media experiment! Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-10-23 Nido ('Nest') therapy: Top psychiatrist issues strong challenge for change Professor Peter Tyrer, editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry, argues his profession practises 'mental colonialism' on people with long-term, chronic mental illness that's resistant to treatment. His approach is called Nidotherapy -- Nido meaning 'nest' -- focused on changing a person's environment not their personality. And, Jenny relates her poignant identity struggles and triumphs of being a long term "service user". Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-10-16 Esther Sternberg: The science of stress, place and wellbeing A peaceful view through a hospital window promotes healing after surgery, while other environments can make us sicker. Why? What is it about place and space that shapes your body and brain chemistry? Dr Esther Sternberg is a world leader in understanding the powerful interactions between your brain, emotions and immune system. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-10-09 We have ways of making you think - Parasites on the brain! Half the living things on the planet are parasites, and they´ve developed uncanny ways of making us do what they want. A spooky encounter with suicidal crickets, mad rats and Zombie ants - the parasites are here to take over our brain. One ecologist argues they could even be changing our personality at the civilisational scale. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-10-02 Finding Miles: a transgender transition "The sex of my body is female but the gender I feel is male". A year in the making, this intimate portrait of a person on the cusp of transitioning to a man is not to be missed. Miles was born Megan, but after years of depression and confusion he made the enormous decision to reconcile body and mind.... with an audio recorder at hand. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-09-25 On the Couch: Perminder Sachdev and Norman Doidge Two world renowned psychiatrists, Perminder Sachdev and Norman Doidge, join Natasha Mitchell on the All in the Mind couch, prepared to be asked anything. Are you normal? What is alien hand syndrome? The ticks of Tourette syndrome -- what causes them? Do stories of broken brains generate little more than a cabinet of neurological curiosities? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-09-18 Schizophrenia: Personal confrontations and a philosophical investigation Philosopher, poet and writer Dr Paul Fearne had his first psychotic episode as a young university student, and continues to take medication. 'To live is to take a leap into a sea of daggers, each one stabbing the fabric of your being', he wrote in his diary at the time, now published as a rare glimpse inside psychosis. From Freud to Wittgenstein, his experience inspired a unique PhD investigation into the philosophical questions posed by schizophrenia. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-09-11 It's on the tip of my finger! - Sign language, deaf culture and the brain L.A comedian C.J Jones is a master storyteller in sign language. San Diego scientist Stephen McCullough studies the neurobiology of sign language. Both are deaf. Sign language is revealing surprising insights into the evolution of all human languages in the brain. From finding the word on the 'tip of the finger' to the bilingual brains of speakers and signers - join two performers and two scientists with unique stories from the frontiers of deaf culture. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-09-04 Climate change and behavioural change: what will it take? Climate change is on and off the political agenda in Australia. Whether an emissions trading system or a carbon tax win the day, one big barrier stands in the way of change: human nature. How we think about the problem can trump what we actually do -- right down to shorter showers and turning off the lights. Leading environmental psychologists are now taking on the climate change challenge. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-08-28 Crazy Like Us - The Globalisation of the American Psyche "Would you like fries with that?" America´s big brands and fast food outlets have become the dominant signatures of globalisation. But is mental illness becoming another? Is West best when it comes to the diagnosis, definition and treatment of mental illness? Ethan Watters unearths a disturbing trend, which could inform how we respond to disasters like the devastating Pakistan floods. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-08-21 A.S Byatt: Woman of letters and ...science! Booker Prize winning novelist A.S Byatt has a thing for words. But do you know about her passion for science? In neuroscience she's discovered what she's always sensed about the workings of her own head as a writer - and you must hear what's going on in her unique mind! She joins Natasha to discuss snail brains, mirror neurons and more for National Science Week. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-08-14 Challenging Stereotypes: culture, psychology and the Asian Self (Part 2 of 2) We can't escape our cultural heritage, and yet it's more malleable than you might think. It´s there in everything we do and say -- from the boardroom tables of big business to conversations with your GP. How are scientists getting inside our cultural mindsets to study them? Brain scans have entered the fray. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-08-07 Challenging Stereotypes - Culture, psychology and the Asian Self (Part 1 of 2) As East and West meet across the boardroom tables of big business, there's growing interest in how culture shapes the psyche and Self. If you´re born into a collectivist or individualistic society, do you think differently? This week, controversial research on self esteem. Do East Asians need less of it to feel good about themselves? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-07-31 Special Series (Part 3 of 3) Up the Line to Goodna: Patient rights and staff fights As old as the state of Queensland itself, Goodna Mental Hospital became Australia's largest asylum, housing 50,000 people over its lifetime. During a time of major institutional and cultural upheaval, the Office of the Patient's Friend opened its doors in 1977, the first patient advocacy service to operate within the confines of an Australian psychiatric hospital. Part advocate, part whistle-blower - running the service has taken a might of steel and a heart of gold. 30 years later, Nadia ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-07-24 Special Series (Part 2 of 3) Up the Line to Goodna: stories from inside the asylum As old as the state of Queensland itself, Goodna Mental Hospital became Australia's largest asylum, housing 50,000 people over its lifetime. In this series All in the Mind unearths stories from people who lived and worked there. A nurse reflects on life in the asylum during World War II before the dramatic arrival of modern medications, and two sisters reminisce on growing up at Goodna with their matron aunt in the 1930s. Very different insights from opposite sides of the ward walls. (Rebro ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-07-17 Special Series (Part 1 of 3) Up the Line to Goodna: stories from inside the asylum - UPDATED As old as the state of Queensland itself, Goodna Mental Hospital became Australia´s largest and oldest asylum, housing 50,000 people over its lifetime. In this series, All in the Mind shares stories from people who lived and worked there. From a nurse who worked there from the 1940s - to a woman incarcerated as a young ward of the state, now fighting for justice. Warts and all recollections of madness, care and abuse. (Rebroadcast) Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-07-10 Would I Lie to You? Part 2 of 2 (broadcast edition) and The Private Life of a Brain Surgeon (podcast & Radio Australia edition) Many scientists distrust the traditional lie detectors, like the polygraph with its wires and electrodes stuck to the skin, and say they never reliably reveal a liar. But now companies are marketing voice stress analysers and even brain scanners to do 'truth verification'. BBC science journalist Roland Pease investigates whether the new technologies are any better than the old ones. For copyright reasons, this week's podcast and online edition is an alternative from our archives, The Privat ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-07-03 Would I Lie to You? Part 1 of 2 (broadcast edition) and When Good People Turn Bad (podcast and Radio Australia editions) Science journalist Roland Pease investigates the eternal quest for an objective approach to spotting deception. For almost 100 years, law enforcement agencies have used the polygraph to find out whether suspects are lying or not. But is it a legitimate tool? For copyright reasons, this week's podcast and online edition is an alternative from our archives, When Good People Turn Bad: Philip Zimbardo in conversation Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-06-26 The Remarkable Story of HM: remembering the man without memory Afflicted with amnesia after brain surgery, he became a man who lived in the perpetual present, and the most famous patient of 20th century neuroscience. Join Natasha Mitchell for a powerful posthumous encounter with HM´s legacy and his brain, which continues to offer remarkable insights into the machinations of human memory. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-06-19 The Master & his Emissary - the divided brain and the reshaping of Western civilisation. Eminent psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist offers an ambitious, provocative thesis about how the brain's two hemispheres came to be, and construct the world. Today there's a power struggle being played out between the left and right brain that he argues is reshaping Western civilisation in disturbing ways. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-06-12 Making sense of noise: Part 2 of 2 - In pursuit of silence Join George Prochnick as he escapes the racket of New York City on a profound quest for the quiet. His book, In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise, encounters the deaf architecture movement, surprises in the stillness of a Trappist monastery, and the Self unmasked by silence. Corinne Podger reports. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-06-05 Making sense of noise: Part 1 of 2 - Back to school The soundtrack to our lives seems to have got louder. Surviving the cacophony of city existence is hard enough, but what does all that racket do to the developing brain as it learns? Enter the Virtual Classroom to discover some unexpected lessons for contemporary schools. And next week, we´re in pursuit of silence. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-05-29 It´s a Mindfield! All in the Mind at the 2010 Sydney Writers´ Festival Is neuroscience the new philosophy? Danish science writer and neurobiologist Lone Frank thinks the radical self-knowledge it offers us will help us transcend human nature. From the stage of the Sydney Writers´ Festival, she dons The God Helmet, encounters her chemical self, and hesitates before having a brain scan. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-05-22 Whistleblowing and the psyche: an anthropological perspective! Bluebird is the ABC´s new alternate reality (AR) game where you unfold the plot online. At its heart is a young scientist turned whistleblower, determined to stop a maverick entrepreneur's plan to geoengineer the global climate. But whistleblowing comes with huge psychological risks. An anthropologist and a sociologist offer a powerful perspective on how the self and psyche can be shredded in science. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-05-15 Ageing Positive: HIV, dementia and the brain They're vanguards of the virus - the first generation of HIV positive people to live long lives with the help of modern anti-retroviral drugs. The early days saw countless die too young, their brains ravaged by AIDS-related dementia. But now evidence suggests HIV prematurely ages the brain, despite the drugs. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-05-08 Is Ignorance bliss? - the getting of wisdom Four wise souls consider the making of a wise mind. Does knowing more necessarily make you happier? Can ignorance be bliss? 'Lateral thinker' Edward de Bono, Harvard neuroscientist Sara Lazar, Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman, and author and counsellor Petrea King join Natasha Mitchell at the Happiness & Its Causes conference. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-05-01 The Protest Psychosis Psychiatrist Jonathan Metzl treats people in the clinic whose lives are afflicted by severe psychosis. But he also documents an explosive 'other' history of schizophrenia, and what he sees as its transformation from a diagnosis of feminine docility or creative eccentricity, to one given to angry black men during the civil rights era. You´ll never see medicine and the mind in quite the same light again. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-04-24 The Brain on Trial The brain is on trial, and you be the judge. In a hypothetical murder case featuring a real judge, real neuroscientists and real lawyers - a brain scan image is presented as evidence. What unfolds could be coming to a courtroom near you. Stanford law professor Hank Greely is concerned neuroscience is being exploited by the law before it´s fully baked. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-04-17 Nature Deficit Disorder: the mind in urban combat Richard Louv argues we and our children are suffering a kind of cultural autism, a sensory deprivation which he provocatively calls 'Nature Deficit Disorder'. And with that, he's seeded a small revolution for change. Also, secret places - remember them when you were a kid? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-04-10 You, the Scientist! Personal Construct Psychology What makes you 'You'? Personal Construct Psychology argues everyone constructs and tests their own internal models of reality, and that therapists shouldn´t cast themselves as the all-knowing `expert´. We are all scientists of the self. This week, confrontations with a shocking serial killer, the philosophical heritage of psychology and the moral limits of acceptance. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-04-03 A matter of mind-sets? Religion and science - Part 2 of 2 In an Easter special with a difference, renowned philosopher AC Grayling asks: Do science and religion represent fundamentally different mind-sets—different ways of thinking about the world? From the stage of the recent Global Atheist Convention, he makes the provocative case that popular efforts to reconcile the two are misguided. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-03-27 A matter of mind-sets? Religion and science - Part 1 of 2 Do science and religion represent fundamentally different mind-sets? Physicist Richard Feynman said, 'Science is what we do to keep us from lying to ourselves'. From the Global Atheist Convention held in Australia this month, philosopher Peter Singer, biologist and popular science blogger PZ Myers, and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins weigh in on matters of minds and faith. Next week, renowned philosopher A.C Grayling. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-03-20 Diving into dolphin heads: science, rights and ethics The Cove took out this year's Oscar for best documentary for its confronting coverage of the annual dolphin culls in Taiji, Japan. Scientists argue dolphins have complex, large brains - second only to human brains relative to body weight. Join Natasha Mitchell with leading cetacean scientists and an ethicist for a tour of a waterborne 'alien intelligence'. What are the consequences for captivity, and a controversial call for 'personhood' status? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-03-13 Archival Curiosities: Elizabeth Kubler-Ross on death and dying. Psychiatrist Dr Elizabeth Kubler-Ross´s book On Death and Dying in many ways transformed the way we publicly and privately talk about death and grief, and inspired the modern palliative care movement. From the depths of the ABC's rich archives comes this 1978 interview with Kubler-Ross. She died in 2004, and her ideas and legacy continue to provoke, and to court controversy, Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-03-06 Stressed out! The powerful biology of stress A little tension keeps us on our toes - we're biologically primed for it. But 'toxic' stress makes us physically sick, and powerful research is now revealing its potent impact on our developing bodies and brains. Don't miss two world leaders transforming our understanding. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-02-27 Community Treatment Orders How do we balance human rights, social inclusion and risk when a mind goes off the rails? Is there value in enforced treatment and can it be justified? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-02-20 Brains meets Machines Just imagine. And then...a robotic arm moves, a switch is flicked, or an email opened. The power of thought has the potential to help those paralysed by spine injury to bypass their bodies. A world leader in brain-machine interfaces, neuroscientist John Donaghue joins Natasha Mitchell to share the extraordinary highs, lows and the ethics of his cutting edge work. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-02-13 Kay Redfield Jamison Top clinical psychologist and psychiatry professor Kay Redfield Jamison took the world by storm with her book An Unquiet Mind. In it she revealed her own torrid experience of bipolar disorder, and a passionate life marred by mania and depression. She joins Natasha Mitchell in conversation to discuss her new memoir, Nothing Was the Same. Recounting two decades with her partner, leading schizophrenia researcher Richard Wyatt, who died in 2002, it's a story of deep love and deep loss. To her, ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-02-06 Stem cells and brain tales Acclaimed neuroscientist Fred Gage is a serial trailblazer. Decades of dogma were overturned when his team confirmed the adult brain continues to make new brain cells. Incredibly, now scientists can even turn skin cells into brain cells with a chemical push! But, if their potential to treat brain diseases or damage is to be realised, transplanted cells need to be able to call your brain home. Stanford biologist James Weimann has a major advance. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-01-30 David Eagleman: The afterlife, synesthesia and other tales of the senses Neuroscientist by day, novelist by night - David Eagleman has just written an extraordinary little novel about the afterlife. He´s also a leading researcher in synesthesia, studying people who taste sounds, hear colours, and live in a remarkable world of sensory cross-talk. He joins Natasha Mitchell in conversation about life, death and the in-between. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-01-23 Autism: genetics, early detection and the ethics of screening newborns News of the largest studies on the genetics of autism to date is out, paving the way for genetic risk testing in the future. And, Australian research suggests autistic behaviours can be detected as early as eight months. So should we be screening newborns for neurological disorders like autism? The ethical debate unfolds on All in the Mind. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-01-16 Child soldiers: the Art and arts of healing Born into the bloody horror of war, Sudanese rap artist Emmanuel Jal was 9 when he was recruited into the Sudanese Peoples´ Liberation Army as a child soldier. Incredibly he survived, and his music reaches a generation of Lost Boys. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-01-09 Dreams: the stuff memories are made of? (Part 2 of 2) Dreams feel meaningful—drawn from a mishmash of content from our waking lives. But it's a hot debate among scientists, who are yet to confirm why we sleep, let alone dream. Neuroscientist Matthew Wilson's extraordinary experiments involve eavesdropping on the sleeping minds of rats. He proposes dreaming is central to how we remember and learn. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2010-01-02 Dreams: the body alive! (Part 1 of 2) Jungian psychoanalyst and psychotherapist Robert Bosnak is a dream worker. To him dreams are an ecosystem of imaginings—powerful bodily experiences populated by characters with their own intelligences. When you encounter the images of your dreaming mind do you find one Self, or many? And, next week, a leading neuroscientist probing the possible link between memory and dreaming. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-12-26 The philosophy of good intentions Reading the minds of others can be darned hard. Are their intentions good, bad or indifferent? Whether we hold people accountable for their behaviour depends on the answer. Scientists probe questions like this through experiments. Philosophers traditionally appeal to intuition and argument. But now a young band of experimental philosophers are taking armchair philosophy to task, and digging for data. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-12-19 Dialogue with the Dalai Lama - Part 3 of 3 His Holiness the Dalai Lama joins All in the Mind's Natasha Mitchell and leading scholars in a dialogue about science and the self. This week, founder of the field of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, and Buddhist scholar Alan Wallace consider with him what it takes to flourish...really flourish...individually and collectively. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-12-12 Dialogue with the Dalai Lama - Part 2 of 3 His Holiness the Dalai Lama joins All in the Mind's Natasha Mitchell and leading scholars in a dialogue about science, wellbeing and our moral minds. This week Harvard evolutionary biologist and author of Moral Minds, Marc Hauser, asks - does biology constrain our mind´s potential and our moral capacity? Is there a place for moral outrage? Next week, founder of the field of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, and Buddhist scholar Alan Wallace join the fray. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-12-05 Dialogue with the Dalai Lama: Part 1 From the stage of the 2009 Mind and Its Potential conference, His Holiness the Dalai Lama joins All in the Mind's Natasha Mitchell in an extended conversation about the mind, science and much else. And, joining the dialogue over coming weeks is the founder of the field of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, leading Harvard evolutionary biologist Marc Hauser, and Buddhist scholar Alan Wallace Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-11-28 Dive into your Gene Pool! Evolution, mutation and transformation -- what do these themes evoke for you? Genes mutate, but so do bodies, brains and cultures. Celebrate the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, and dive into the Gene Pool. We invited you to upload sounds, stories, and images to Radio National's social media site, Pool (http://pool.org.au), and to mutate and remix those of others. Catch All in the Mind's remix of your remixes! Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-11-21 Climate change and the psyche In his new book, Why We Disagree About Climate Change, top British climate scientist Mike Hulme wants to understand climate change as a psychological and cultural force. Anthropologist Jonathan Marshall has just edited a provocative collection of Jungian perspectives on climate change. They join Natasha Mitchell to discuss mythology, mental ecology and a changing climate. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-11-14 Michael Gazzaniga: Split brains and other heady tales (highlight from the archives) Beyond the hype of left brain versus right brain lies the work of acclaimed neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga. His career was forged in the lab of Nobel laureate Roger Sperry, and together their trailblazing experiments have illuminated the differences between the brain´s two hemispheres. Today he´s on the US President´s Bioethics Council, heads up a major project on neuroscience and the law, and is a prolific writer of popular neuroscience. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-10-31 The eyes have it! Deep time and future vision Some call the eyes the window on the soul. Trevor Lamb has been gazing into the eyes of living fossil 'fishy' beings, and deep into evolutionary time to unravel the beginnings of our incredible seeing organ. And what about its future? A myopia explosion in East Asian cities has folk worried, and there's good evidence for a surprising cause. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-10-24 Addiction, free will and self control Heard the one about the psychiatrist, the Supreme Court judge and the philosopher who walked in to a radio studio...? Join Natasha Mitchell and guests in a round-table interrogation of how the brain sciences are changing our understanding of addiction, and the powerful consequences for notions of free will, responsibility and culpability. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-10-17 Hearing Voices: stories from the coalface Mel was dux of her high school with bright prospects. At 25, she needs 24 hour family care, persecuted by a violent voice in her head who she calls Ron. Journalist Tom Tilley takes us to meet Mel and her family for a rare, raw and intimate insight into the experience of hearing voices; and reports on current uncertainty over causes and treatments. Features a special multimedia production. Video Watch a video feature from Triple J's Hack: Hearing Voices. When Ron went mad in Mel's mind sh ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-10-10 You are NOT a Self! - bodies, brains and the nature of consciousness German philosopher of mind Thomas Metzinger is one of the world´s top researchers on consciousness, instrumental in its renaissance as a respectable problem for scientific enquiry. From out of body experiences to lucid dreaming, anarchic hand syndrome to phantom limbs - his investigations have taken him to places few dare to go. Be spooked, bewildered and amazed. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-10-03 Quality Street Quality Street was the first ABC weekly program dedicated to Poetry. It began in 1946 and ran for 27 years ...ending in 1973. What we are going to hear today are two programs, featuring AD Hope and Kenneth Slessor, from the later years of the show ...from April 1972 and March 1971. My First Aquantance with Poets is from April 1972 and features the then Emeritus Professor of English at the Australian National University, poet and essayist, Alec Derwent Hope. He talks about four poets who h ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-09-26 Dark Science: Pushing the limits of fear, flesh, pain and your psyche. Join us at the Dark Science night at Sydney´s Powerhouse Museum for a spectacle of side show science and (almost) R-rated research. Suspension artists hang from hooks through their flesh, tattoo artists ply their wares, and don´t miss the spiders and coffins too - it´s the science of fear and pain as you never heard it before Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-09-19 The coming of "The Singularity"...or not? Imagine a future where computers exceed our own intelligence; where problem solving is no longer limited by human thinking - what then? It´s a moment in technological time some call "The Singularity". But how much is technological reality, and how much fantasy? Science writer Mike McRae catches up with A.I researchers and sci fi writers to ponder the possibilities and probabilities. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-09-12 Sex, Knowledge and Science (Adelaide Festival of Ideas) Doing science has no room for gender and agendas, right? It's all about the objective pursuit of facts and truths about nature. Or is it? Acclaimed historian of science Londa Schiebinger, and top philosophers Simon Blackburn and Karen Green join Natasha Mitchell to debate the making of modern science, beards, breasts and how we came to be called mammals! Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-01-17 Greening the Psyche Intuitively we sense that nature relaxes us -- even small pockets of green in the concrete urban jungle seem to make a difference. But finding good scientific evidence for how and why has been more difficult -- until now. Crime rates, academic performance, aggression and even ADHD. Could a bit of greening make all the difference? And, ecology on the couch -- a self described 'ecotherapist' with novel techniques. Original broadcast: 16/2/2008 Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-09-05 Psychogeography: discovering the mental terrain of the city All in the Mind takes you on an extraordinarily ordinary journey across the mental and physical terrain of a big city. For many the ideal method of urban travel is straight out of Star Trek—teleporting. But in the 21st century city there are flaneurs and commuters savouring their journeys, on foot and by bike. They´re taking in the smells and sounds of back alleys, recalling emotional memories at intersections and celebrating stacks of shipping containers. Join us on a `psychogeograp ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-08-29 Minds on the Margins A life on the streets or behind bars isn´t what we hope for our children. What leads them there? Mental illness? Family breakdown? Economic hardship? Two groundbreaking studies are fundamentally challenging the assumptions we make about our most marginalised, and the state of their mind. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-08-22 Many Selves, One Body: Dissociation and early trauma We all dissociate to a degree—compartmentalising major traumatic experiences in our psyche to protect ourselves. But Dissociation Identity Disorder is the extreme end, where a person might present multiple selves or 'alters' to the world without fully knowing it—swapping clothes, life histories and personalities each time they 'switch'. Don´t miss this firsthand account. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-08-15 Art on the Mind: Neuroaesthetics, and the artist as brain scientist! Acclaimed neuroscientist Semir Zeki pioneered the field of neuroaesthetics to probe the biological basis of the aesthetic experience, art, literature, love and beauty. He thinks scientists have lots to learn about the brain from the works of visual artists and romantic literature. And visit London´s Hayward Gallery, where the Walking in My Mind exhibition has been described as a 'vast humming cranium' as artists unearth their creative process through vast installations. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-08-08 Do you read me HAL? Robot wars, moral machines and silicon that cares - Part 2 The theatre of war is changing, radically. With a push towards autonomous, robotic devices capable of killing - should the Laws of War change? One artificial intelligence leader argues machines could be more ethical and humane than humans in the battlefield. But, with thousands of robotic devices already being deployed, is robotics keeping up with ethics? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-08-01 Do you read me HAL? Robot wars, moral machines and silicon that cares - Part 1 Robots are among us. They might be on their way in to childcare and aged care as silicon carers too. And, many thousands have now been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, with billions being invested in the development of entirely autonomous killing agents. Will they fight fairly? Could they be more ethical and humane than humans? Over a series of shows, Natasha Mitchell speaks to leading roboticists and thinkers about the brave new now. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-07-25 Madness, modernity and those 'nervous times': Vienna in 1900 Journey to Vienna at the turn of the 20th century and discover the `city of the psyche´ at the centre of Modernism. Described as 'nervous times', anxieties about the alienation of modern urban life inspired a cultural ferment between artists, architects and psychiatrists. From utopian visions of the asylum to the birth of the 'psychological portrait' and 'nerve art', the life of the mind lies at the heart of the story. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-07-18 Mind Over Matter at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas Is the human mind smart enough to ever understand itself? The size of a sesame seed, bees brains are brighter than you think - but do they have a mind? And, if we come up with an artificial intelligence to rival our own, how will we teach it right from wrong? Philosopher Colin Allen and neuroscientist Mandyam Srinivasan join Natasha Mitchell to talk mind, matter, moral machines and more at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-07-11 The Mind of the Composer: Part 2 - Maurice Ravel [on air edition] + Unconditional Love [podcast edition] Acclaimed doctor and broadcaster Lord Robert Winston investigates the mind, music and dementia of composer Maurice Ravel. For copyright reasons, this week's podcast is another feature Love is a Battlefield: When Heidi and Rick Solomon adopted a son raised in the profoundly deprived conditions of a Romanian orphanage, his confronting behaviours sapped every ounce of their unconditional love. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-07-04 The Mind of the Composer Part 1: Robert Schumann [on-air edition] + The Moral Mind [podcast edition] Acclaimed doctor and broadcaster Lord Robert Winston excavates the music and mind of composer Robert Schumann, to see if there was a relationship between the two. Schumann died at just 46 in a mental asylum, with speculation today that he had bipolar disorder. For copyright reasons, this week's podcast is an alternative from our archives, The Moral Mind. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-06-27 Love is a battlefield: parenting an autistic child Parents of a severely autistic child can be pushed to breaking point. Do we have unrealistic expectations of what they should be capable of? David and Karen Royko came to make an impossible decision about their son Ben, and share their story with candour and openness. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-06-20 David Eagleman: The afterlife, synesthesia and other tales of the senses Neuroscientist by day, novelist by night - David Eagleman has just written an extraordinary little novel about the afterlife. He´s also a leading researcher in synesthesia, studying people who taste sounds, hear colours, and live in a remarkable world of sensory cross-talk. He joins Natasha Mitchell in conversation about life, death and the in-between. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-06-13 Secrets and lies: The untold story of adoption Shame, guilt, loss, and grief - giving up a baby at birth can leave a powerful and permanent psychological imprint on a young mother. Countless Australian women without a wedding band were forced to relinquish their babies for adoption. Don´t miss these rare and frank reflections from three women, whose lives were deeply affected by the experience. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-06-06 Child soldiers: the Art and arts of healing (Part 2 of 2) In Sierra Leone, child soldiers committed acts that words can barely describe. At the war's end, ravaged communities responded to them with terror and stigma. A minority of former child soldiers, many orphaned, have access to reintegration programs. Dance and movement therapist David Alan Harris describes an extraordinary project to respond to the traumatised psyche through engaging the body. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-05-30 Child soldiers: the Art and arts of healing (Part 1 of 2) Born into the bloody horror of war, Sudanese rap artist Emmanuel Jal was 9 when he was recruited into the Sudanese Peoples´ Liberation Army as a child soldier. Incredibly he survived, and his music reaches a generation of Lost Boys. And next week, a remarkable dance and movement therapist helping former child soldiers in Sierra Leone express and heal the traumas of their psyches through their bodies. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-05-09 The silent disability: Acquired Brain Injury and the justice system Impulsive behaviour, anger, mood swings, poor concentration, memory loss. A knock to the head that qualifies as a brain injury can transform your behaviour in unexpected ways. Confronting research suggests acquired or traumatic brain injuries - past and recent - are rife in prison populations, with little to no screening or targeted interventions in place. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-04-25 Comedy and the psyche Good comedians push us where few of us dare to go -- we find ourselves rolling in the aisles with shock and delight. Two top-of-the-bill acts at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival reflect on Freud, the comedic psyche and the power of the potty mouth. And, New Yorker columnist and science journalist Jim Holt unravels the rollicking history and philosophy of jokes. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-04-18 Thomas Szasz: psychiatrists respond Controversial psychiatrist Professor Thomas Szasz wrote The Myth of Mental Illness in 1961. Nearly 50 years later, on the eve of his 89th birthday, he continues to both ignite and inspire -- as the huge number of comments on the All in the Mind blog indicates after our extended interview with him. This week, two psychiatrists respond to their profession's most vigilant critic. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-04-11 Thomas Szasz speaks (Part 2 of 2) In 1961 maverick psychiatrist and libertarian Professor Thomas Szasz published his controversial and influential epic, The Myth of Mental Illness. Half a century later he maintains we live in a therapeutic state—a `pharmacracy´—and that psychiatry is a 'pseudoscientific racket'. On the eve of his 89th birthday he joins Natasha Mitchell in conversation. Next week, psychiatrists respond. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-04-04 Thomas Szasz speaks (Part 1 of 2) In 1961 maverick psychiatrist and libertarian Professor Thomas Szasz published his controversial and influential epic, The Myth of Mental Illness. In it he argued that mental illness is a fiction and a medical metaphor. Half a century later he maintains we live in a therapeutic state—a `pharmacracy´ where psychiatry is synonymous with coercion. On the eve of his 89th birthday he joins Natasha Mitchell in conversation over two weeks about his contentious legacy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-03-21 Doctoring with Darwinian medicine Look in your doctor´s kitbag, and you´ll probably find a stethoscope, a thermometer, a first-aid kit. But a copy of Charles Darwin´s Origin of Species too? `Darwinian Medicine´ asks: why do we get sick, and why didn't the body evolve to be better? Psychiatrist Randolph Nesse argues physicians ignore evolutionary theories at the peril of their patients. All in the Mind continues Radio National's celebrations of Darwin's 200th birthday... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-03-14 Ancient brains: Rare finds and past lives Archaeologists in Yorkshire have dug up a 2000 year old human skull, incredibly with brain tissue still intact. When this brain last saw the world, the Romans were yet to invade Britain and tribes occupied the North. And in another stunning find - the first ever fossilised brain - that of a 300 million year old fish, last alive in the Late Paleozoic. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-03-07 Dreams: the stuff memories are made of? (Part 2 of 2) Dreams feel meaningful—drawn from a mishmash of content from our waking lives. But it's a hot debate among scientists, who are yet to confirm why we sleep, let alone dream. Neuroscientist Matthew Wilson's extraordinary experiments involve eavesdropping on the sleeping minds of rats. He proposes dreaming is central to how we remember and learn. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-02-28 Dreams - the body alive! (Part 1 of 2) Jungian psychoanalyst and psychotherapist Robert Bosnak is a dream worker. To him dreams are an ecosystem of imaginings - powerful bodily experiences populated by characters with their own intelligences. When you encounter the images of your dreaming mind - do you find one Self, or many? And, next week a leading neuroscientist probing the possible link between memory and dreaming. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-02-21 The philosophy of good intentions Reading the minds of others can be darned hard. Are their intentions good, bad or indifferent? Whether we hold people accountable for their behaviour depends on the answer. Scientists probe questions like this through experiments. Philosophers traditionally appeal to intuition and argument. But now a young band of experimental philosophers are taking armchair philosophy to task, and digging for data. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-02-14 All in the Mind and the Philosopher's Zone special: Happy Birthday Charles Darwin The human animal is a complex beast—we mate, fight, emote, and socialise in curious ways. Charles Darwin´s theories continue to provoke controversy over how and why we behave the way we do. Join leading evolutionary scientists and philosophers in this one-hour special, as presenters Alan Saunders and Natasha Mitchell consider how Darwin radically influenced the life of the mind. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-02-07 The big buzz-ness of small brains Wait! Before you reach for the insect spray - listen to this show. From robotic crickets to bees that see in the dark, meet a couple of neuroethologists probing the incomprehensibly small, but surprisingly brilliant, brains of bugs. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-01-31 Music: Is it really therapeutic? Music undoubtedly makes us feel good. But is it therapeutic? Does it have a place in healing the psychological, even physical, scars of illness? From the intimacy of a neonatal ward to the ravages of cancer treatment, enter the world of three Australian music therapists pushing the boundaries of medicine. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-01-24 Poetic Science: Bodies, brains and the art of experimentation Meet polymath Ian Gibbins -- neuroscientist, anatomist and university professor by day; poet, performer and composer by night. In a unique audio portrait, All in the Mind takes you inside all of his worlds; contemplating cadavers, nerve cells and the creative arts. Original broadcast: 5/4/2008 Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-01-10 Your irrational mind Like it or not, you´re not the beast of reason you think you are. Dan Ariely, a behavioural economist at MIT, argues that we´re surprisingly and predictably irrational. Sex, freebies, expectations, placebos, price -- they all cloud our better judgment in rather sobering ways. Dan´s unique research was partly inspired by a catastrophic accident which caused third degree burns to 70% of his body. He joins Natasha Mitchell in conversation. Original broadcast: 29/3/2008 Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-01-03 A day in the life of...Meet the Ingersons Four-year-old Tara has a very special brain. Like Rain Man, she was born without a Corpus Callosum. It´s the head´s superhighway -- a thick band of nerve fibres connecting the two hemispheres of the brain. Join Natasha Mitchell as she experiences a day in the life of the Ingerson family, with rare insights into one of the most complicated neurological birth defects. Original broadcast: 12/4/2008 Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2008-12-27 Disembodied brains, culture and science: Indigenous lives under gaze [Part 2 of 2] Maori people believe the body is derived from the earth, and returns to the ancestral earth at death—complete. The flesh, and all its bits, are sacred. The new Human Tissue Bill in New Zealand has provoked debate over who owns your body at death—you or your family? The Maori Party argues the legislation is Western-centric and racist. And, a young Maori scientist working with post-mortem brain tissue is breaking new ground, to keep her lab life 'culturally safe', in consultation ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2008-12-20 Disembodied brains, culture and science: Indigenous lives under gaze (Part 1 of 2) The incredible saga of Ishi, California´s last 'wild' Indian, is the stuff of American folklore. It´s also the quest for a lost brain, taken from Ishi´s tuberculosis ravaged body at death—only to be rediscovered and repatriated 80 years later. And next week—a young Maori scientist working with post-mortem brain tissue is breaking new ground, to keep her lab life 'culturally safe'. Original broadcast: 26 April 2008. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-05-23 Antidepressants, placebo and medicalising mood When Professor Irving Kirsch and colleagues got hold of the unpublished data from drug company trials of antidepressants, it hit the headlines. But their analysis - that antidepressants and placebo pills have about the same clinical impact - was widely misreported. Hear it from the horse´s mouth, from the stage of the 2009 Happiness and Its Causes Conference. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 2009-05-16 Autism: genetics, early detection and the ethics of screening newborns News of the largest studies on the genetics of autism to date is out, paving the way for genetic risk testing in the future. And, Australian research suggests autistic behaviours can be detected as early as eight months. So should we be screening newborns for neurological disorders like autism? The ethical debate unfolds on All in the Mind. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website