All In The Mind

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'?

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 neighb...

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?

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.

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?

Putting the ego, id and subjective self back into the brain sciences, and vice versa. That's the ambitious quest of neuropsychoanalysis. Natasha Mitchell joins neuroscientist and psychoanalyst Dr Maggie Zellner in a very psychoanalytic sort of city, the Big Apple!

Japanese psychoanalyst Dr Naoto Kawabata is working with devastated communities evacuated after the Tohoku earthquake and 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.

'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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Gallaudet University in Washington DC 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, from the design ethos of deaf architecture to the aesthetics of sign language poetry and new bilingua...

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.

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.