All In The Mind

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.

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 i...

We can't survive without them -- and we've long underestimated their prowess. Controversially, bacteria could even have cognitive talents that rival our own. Predatory behaviour, cooperation, memory -- Jules Verne eat your heart out -- Natasha Mitchell takes you on a strange adventure into the secret world of microbial mentality.

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.

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 roundtable interrogation of how the brain sciences are changing our understanding of addiction, and the powerful consequences for notions of free will, responsibility and culpability.

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.

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.

What most distinguishes us from other apes? Our naked flesh? Language? Our empathic ways? Acclaimed anthropologist and sociobiologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy has spent her long research career upending assumptions about sex, reproduction and the evolution of human nature. She joins Natasha Mitchell to discuss her new book Mothers and Others, and why it took a village to generate a big brained human chi...

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

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 AI researchers and sci-fi writers to ponder the possibilities and probabilities.

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!

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...

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.

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.

Acclaimed neuroscientist Semir Zeki pioneered the field of neuroesthetics 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 crani...

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?

Robots are among us. They might be on their way in to childcare and aged care as silicon carers too. Will the 'digital natives' born today be more comfortable with that prospect? And, many thousands have now been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, with billions being invested in the development of fully autonomous killing agents. Will they fight fairly? Could they be more ethical and humane than hu...

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 t...

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 Ade...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.