Conversations with Annalisa Barbieri

I am not a fan of the saying “let’s agree to disagree”, it can be so passive aggressive. But it’s the title of Gabrielle Rifkind’s new book and maybe this pass-agg comment deserves an upgrade.  Regular listeners may remember Gabrielle from a podcast we did four years ago called The Delicate Art of Managing Differences. The world has - sadly - become ever more fractured, which trickles down to...

This episode was not easy to name. The subject is highly topical, but the take on it is original and thought-provoking.  Alessandra has written her 25th book: ‘ Psychotechnical Becomings: Psychoanalysis, Identity, Desire and Mourning in Times of AI and Digital Mediation ’. It looks at how technology shapes us, and has changed the way we interact with each other; from being able to tolerate di...

In this episode I’m in conversation with David Robson. David is an award winning science writer and author of three books, one of which  The Laws of Connection , we really delve into here. David graduated from Cambridge university with a maths degree, has worked as features editor at the New Scientist, was a senior journalist at BBC Future and his work has appeared in various newspapers and j...

Dr Sophie Behrman is a is a general adult psychiatrist and works in a community mental health team in Oxford. She’s set up an NHS menopause and menstrual disorders clinic, open to women who fit a certain criteria. She’s also edited a book called “Menopause, Menstrual Cycles and Mental Health” which is published by Cambridge University Press in June 2026. In the last series Sophie and I talked abou...

I first came across the concept of dissociation when I saw a film called Sybil starring Sally Field and Joanne Woodward. It was about a young woman with multiple personalities. Sybil would dissociate and her various personalities would take over. I’ve since come to realise dissociation can take place as part of the trauma response. Here I'm in conversation with Dr Joanne Stubley who is a consultan...

Daisy Fancourt is a professor of psychobiology and epidemiology and head of the Social Biobehavioural research group at University College London. She has a Phd in psycho-neuroimmunology and is also director of the World Health Organisation’s Collaborating Centre on Arts and Health, as well as a member of it’s technical advisory group on cultural and behavioural insights on health. Daisy led the a...

I’m very pleased to see the menopause is being discussed more that it ever was. It does, after all, potentially affect a great many of us: directly and by proxy. About fifteen years ago, I wanted to write an article for the Guardian about it but kept hitting not so much brick walls as cul de sacs. The questions I was asking kept coming back with “we don’t really know” answers. As you’ll see from t...

In the spring of 2020, I got a letter. It was, quite possibly, the worse letter I’ve ever got and I’ve had a few. It was full of bile and unhappiness, unfair and harsh. I recognised immediately that the letter writer was talking about herself and projecting onto me but that didn’t stop it hurting because I realised in that moment that the letter writer would never accept responsibility for her own...

Claudia Hammond is an award-winning author and broadcaster.  Listeners may recognise her name and voice from her Radio Four programme All in the Mind, or Health Check on the BBC’s World Service. Claudia is Radio’s Four ‘voice of psychology’ and Visiting Professor Of The Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Sussex. Claudia’s sixth book is Overwhelmed, Ways to Take The Pressu...

Hello and welcome to E3 of S11 of Conversations with Annalisa Barbieri. This one is a bit of a potentially scary subject: facing fate. But I’m here to hold your hand through it. I’ve certainly had to do my fair share of facing up to fate in the last year and when Andrew Balfour contacted me telling me about his book Life and Death, Our Relationship with Ageing, Dementia and Other Fates of Time, I...

Welcome back to Series 11 and episode 3. What are BFRBs? It's picking, biting or pulling, skin, nails or hair or Body Focused Repetitive Behaviours. Here I’m in conversation with Professor Clare Mackay, Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Oxford. Professor Mackay has spent over thirty years studying the structure and function of the human brain. In 2023 she turned her attention to a dis...

Here is episode 1 of Series 11 of my podcast: Conversations with Annalisa Barbieri.  I’ve long been fascinated with the idea of good enough, not only in mothering but, actually, for so many things. We tend to live in a world of extremes now: things are amazing or awful. Yet most of us live in the ordinary, the ‘enough’.  In this episode chartered clinical and counselling psychologist, &n...

One of the things I've noticed in recent years is the rise of anxiety in the young. What do I mean by young? Around secondary school age 11-18/19. It's not, as I say in this episode, that younger children don't get anxious, or that older adults don't - we know they do. But this is the age they start writing in to me at The Guardian with their worries about anxiety. Adolescence, as has been discuss...

This episode is quite heavy on the neuroscience, which is one of my favourite subjects and it was recorded in person, in Oxford. I'm in conversation is with Professor Morten Kringelbach, Professor of Neuroscience at Oxford University, director of the centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, a fellow of Linacre College and Professor of Neuroscience at Aarhus university in Denmark. I first met M...

As the years have gone by I've noticed a real shift in the sort of problems I get and friendship is a subject which is rearing its head again and again now. From young people to old the question is: how do I make friends? Making friends at school may not seem natural but you are forced together with others of the same age, giving you a natural pool from which to pick (although it may not seem like...

The sibling podcast in series one remains the most listened to of all the Conversations with Annalisa Barbieri podcasts. So it seemed only right to re-visit this with a Sibling 2.0 episode.  In this episode I’m in conversation with award winning radio presenter, producer and author, Catherine Carr. She’s writing a book about siblings to be published in spring of 2026 which is as yet unti...

In this episode Lucy and I discuss how to do hard things, such as face adversity. Much as we all like to believe in an Enid Blyton [insert whichever imaginary world brought you comfort as a child] world the reality is often very different. We talk about Professor Lucy Easthope's new book: Come What May, Life-Changing Lessons for Coping with Crisis which looks at this very subject. Lucy and I are a...

Welcome back! This is episode 1 of Series 10. Here I'm in conversation with UKCP registered psychotherapist and author Julia Bueno (who joined us in Series 4 talking about the Inner Critic, so do have a listen to that one, too). I get a lot of letters asking either 'should I have a/nother baby' full stop or 'I want one/another one but my partner doesn't'. Julia and I explore what issues come up ar...

This podcast was inspired by Graham Music's book of the same name, Womb Life which is the best book on pregnancy I've ever read. Graham and I talk about the secret life of twins in the womb and how their observed behaviour (via ultra sound) can translate to life outside the womb, too. Why did one little boy shake all his toys? What was he looking for? Do babies really cry in the womb? We find out...

In this, the penultimate episode of Series 9, I talk to UKCP accredited psychotherapist Lisa Bruton who is also a guest tutor at the University of Oxford. We talk about the Parentified Child. Which is? A child who has been given too much responsibility - either physical or emotional - too young. The impact of this is interesting. Do you often find yourself being the most responsible person in the...

In this episode, an idea suggested by my conversationalist, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Dr Stephen Blumenthal, we explore the big, painful emotion of loss. We tend to body swerve feeling or thinking about loss, and who can blame us? It hurts, it’s horrible. But loss is essential to growth - think of a snake shedding its skin. In order to go onto the next stage we need to leave the one...

Increasingly I get asked this question a lot in my Guardian column. Not from a financial POV but the 'should I retire and what will life be like afterwards?' question. Welcome to episode 3 in this series. It's all about a word that has rather negative associations- retirement - but after listening to this hopefully you'll look at it differently. Once upon a time when we retired was dictated by our...

Welcome to episode 2 of Series 9 (Series 9 will be released sporadically). Should We Move? This has always been a question I've been asked a lot via my Guardian column (and in real life) but after the pandemic it was a question that reached, dare I say it, epidemic proportions. It's a simple enough question but the reasoning behind it can really tell us a lot about ourselves. Many people move to g...

I'd been wanting to do this podcast for a while. Professor Alessandra Lemma is one of the most experienced, and insightful, specialists I work with. Every word she shares is a gem. But Pr Lemma's diary is packed and so this took a while to organise. I hope you think it was worth it. The idea for this episode - the first in Series 9 - came to me last year but in reality, it had probably been bubbli...

This is the last episode, episode six, in Series 8 and in it I talk to UKCP registered family and systemic psychotherapist and John Cavanagh who is also a registered mental health nurse. John specialises in child and adolescent mental health. Often children will manifest with a mental health problem that is indicative of what's going on in the family. We talk about this, what those problems might...