In this podcast, Dr Raj Persaud talks to Ethiopia-based Dr Charlotte Hanlon about how low-income countries cope with delivering mental health services. She discusses how primary healthcare workers are trained to deliver treatment, and considers the links between mental illness and poverty.

In this podcast, Dr Peter McKenna provides an in-depth and critical review of delusions and the various approaches taken to understanding them, discussing Karl Jasper’s concept of ‘un-understandability’, overvalued ideas, and the considerable diagnostic nuances involved.

Maurice Pappworth’s 1967 book ‘Human Guinea Pigs’ famously uncovered shockingly unethical practices within the medical establishment, including experimentation on humans. In this podcast, Pappworth’s son-in-law, Sir Anthony Seldon, discusses the life and work of Pappworth and reveals how his late wife Joanna was inspired to write a biography of her father, reassessing the importance of Pappworth’s contribution to today’s medical ethics.

In this podcast, Professor Sean Young talks to Dr Raj Persaud about his bestselling book Stick With It, in which he analyses the science behind not just achieving our goals, but making lasting behaviour change. He argues that it is the process rather than the person that needs to change, and offers practical advice to help anyone successfully alter their actions and improve their lives.

In this podcast, existential psychotherapist Antonia Macaro talks to Dr Raj Persaud about Buddhist and Stoic philosophies, focusing on the elements that can have the biggest impact on modern life. Discussing the value we place on worldly possessions and the degree to which we concentrate on emotions, she argues that there is a great deal we can learn from these two philosophies, and much that may be better left behind.

To what extent are the judgements we make about people formed specifically from their facial appearance? How did this process evolve in human beings, what purpose does it serve, and what dangers could it pose? In this podcast, one of the world’s leading researchers on this subject, Professor Alexander Todorov, talks to Dr Raj Persaud about the science behind first impressions.

In this podcast, author of the 2017 book ‘Stranger in the Mirror’, Professor Robert Levine, talks to Dr Raj Persaud about a range of case studies and scientific experiments that challenge the ideas we hold about ‘the self’, and questions whether we as human beings are more malleable and capable of change than we realise.

Disenchantment is commonplace in the workplace, but how can it be tackled? In this podcast, Dr Raj Persaud talks to Professor Adrian Furnham about his recently released book with Luke Treglown, Disenchantment: Managing Motivation and Demotivation at Work, to explore the theories behind job satisfaction and enchantment, and how organisations and individuals can work to improve engagement and motivation.

Increasing secularism during the 18th century Enlightenment period led to the emergence of a natural concept of ‘the mind’ as a separate from the previously accepted body-soul duality. Here Dr Raj Persaud talks to award-winning historian and author of the book Soul Machine, Dr George Makari, about some of the key historical cases that contributed to this new idea, and paved the way for the cognitive-style therapies used today.

Viktor Frankl’s 1946 memoir Man’s Search for Meaning, which documented its author’s philosophical journey in the wake of the Holocaust, remains one of the most influential books of the last century. In this podcast, Dr Raj Persaud talks to Professor Timothy Pytell about Frankl’s experiences before, during and after World War 2, and the development of the ‘third Viennese school’ of psychotherapy that Frankl developed, logotherapy.