All In The Mind

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 scie...

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.

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.

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 a...

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.

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? NB: The downloadable version features an extended interview this week.

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.

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.

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, renown...

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,...

Psychiatrist Dr Elisabeth 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.

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.

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?

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 Donoghue, joins Natasha Mitchell to share the extraordinary highs, lows and the ethics of his cutting edge work.

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 schizophreni...

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. Stan...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 da...

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.

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, Ma...

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

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. Ca...