Are human beings fundamentally good or bad? Does society keep us in check or corrupt us? 

From Aristotle to Freud, Hobbes to Rousseau, philosophers and ethicists have pondered these ideas for centuries, perhaps with the reasonable expectation that they may be unanswerable questions. 

But could science finally provide an answer?

Nicholas Christakis is the Director of the Human Nature Lab at Yale University and Author of Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society

Life is a complex thing.

Not the lives we lead necessarily, but the very act or state of living.

While scientists have proposed hundreds of ways to define it, none have been widely accepted.

But whichever way you want to define it, one thing is for sure - it is tough.

So tough that we have found it living on the fringes of hydro thermal vents deep below the ocean surface and even the dead vacuum of space and now buried over a kilometer beneath the frozen lakes of Antarctica.

Jonathan is joined by John Priscu, Professor of Ecology in the Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences at Montana State University to discuss his work drilling on the southern continent.

If you could live forever, would you want to?

Immortality is an idea that humans have conceptualised since perhaps the first time a human beings gazed into the heavens. 

But could immortality go from concept to reality? How long can you and I expect to live and will a day come when death is a thing of the past?

Gregory Bailey is the CEO of Juvenescence

First Aired: 7/7/2018

Functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, measures brain activity by detecting the changes in blood oxygenation and flow to the brain.

Since the early 1990s, it has provided new insight into how memories, language, pain, learning and emotions form and increasingly we are capable of creating images of the brain and its activity at higher resolution than ever before - making it an invaluable diagnostic tool.

But what are fMRI's limitations and are there other applications for its use?

Jonathan is joined by Dr Russ Poldrack, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, Director of the Stanford Center for Reproducible Neuroscience & author of ‘The New Mind Readers: What Neuroimaging Can and Cannot Reveal about Our Thoughts’ to discuss.

Are you a specialist? Have you spent endless hours honing your skills in one particular area?

Or are you a generalist? Someone who samples here and there, and strives for breadth, not depth, in your career?

It can be difficult to know which way to go and there can be an enormous amount of pressure put on us, particularly as young people, to choose a path and stick to it no matter what.

But what if quitting was just as important as grit when we talk about excelling in our chosen field? What if becoming a world-class tennis player, a virtuoso violinist or Nobel laureate does not require early and narrow specialization but instead can come about from knowing when to say "this just isn't for me" and broadening your experience base elsewhere before finding your niche?

David Epstein - Investigative reporter at ProPublica and the author of the ‘Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World’ joins Jonathan to discuss.

As always we have Newsround, and Jonathan responds to all your tweets and texts.

For years people struggling with their mental health had nowhere to go. No one to speak to.

Thankfully we've made great strides in relation to tackling mental illness in Ireland and while there is always more that we can do, destigmatising mental issues has been at the forefront of that battle.

But what if it was the treatment not the disorder, which was the source of shame, confusion, and stigma?

Such was the case when Jonathan and the Futureproof team sought to explore the murky history of one of the most caricatured and brutal forms of treatment for those suffering from severe depression and psychiatric illnesses - the frontal lobotomy.

We look back at our special documentary 'A Flick of the Wrist', and hear from one of the few people to come out the other side of the procedure seemingly unharmed, take a walk through what was once Ireland's centre for brain surgery - the Richmond Hospital in Dublin, and hear about the man who helped popularise the procedure, and was the primary advocate for its implementation - Dr Walter Freemen II.

First aired Saturday May 30th, 2015.

 

 

Oysters. You either love them or hate them.

To some they're repellent. To others they are a delicacy, an aphrodisiac even - something to ignite that fire inside and bring two people together.

But what can oysters and other mollusks teach us about bringing other things together, and keeping them together?

What if they could help us develop the adhesives we use today and the way we us them?

Jonathan Wilker, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at Purdue University, Indiana joins Jonathan to discuss just what we can learn from our sticky sea creature friends and how it might be applied in all manner of areas in the future.

 

Cutting the amount of C02 we pump into the atmosphere is an essential part of offsetting the effects of global warming.

There is also growing scientific interest in solar geoengineering as a possible means of combating climate change in conjunction with reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

With some environmental and civil-society groups convinced that solar geoengineering will be harmful to the planet and oppose further research, policy analysis, and debate about the issue, it can be difficult to know what the case is for or against it.

So, what is geoengineering and why do so many people think it is so dangerous?

Jonathan is joined by David Keith, Professor at Harvard and a co-author of a recent paper on Geo-Engineering to try to unravel the issues.

As always, we have Newsround and Jonathan responds to all your tweets and texts.

Imagine being aware of the world, of seeing and hearing all that goes on around you but being unable to interact with it, of being trapped in your own body seemingly with no way out.

For most of us this might sound like a disturbing nightmare but for Martin Pistorius it described a terrible reality.

'Locked-in Syndrome' describes patients who are awake and conscious but have no means of producing speech, limb or facial movements; and at the age of just 13 this is exactly the position in which Martin found himself.

He joined Jonathan to discuss his experience with 'Locked-In Syndrome', his fight to communicate, the abuse he suffered at the hands of those charged with his care, and how he overcame the odds to have his voice heard once again.

First aired 27/5/2017

 

Cellular immunotherapy is one of the most exciting developments in cancer treatment this decade.

It has already resulted in dramatically improved outcomes from many people suffering from different blood cancers - one of which being ‘Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia’ or CLL for short.

Dr. Brian Koffman, Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President for non-profit CLL Society has dedicated himself to teaching and helping the CLL community since his diagnosis in 2005.

Dr Koffman joins Jonathan in studio to discuss CLL, his road to recovery, and the exciting potential of an experimental immunotherapy called CAR-T.