Mind Over Chatter
21 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 2 years ago - ★★★★ - 7 ratingsWelcome to Mind Over Chatter, the Cambridge University Podcast! One series at a time, we break down complex issues into simple questions. Join Nick, James, Naomi and Annie as they ask clever people seemingly simple questions. We’ll explore climate change, the future, and much more!
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Episodes
Cancer and artificial intelligence
February 10, 2022 07:00 - 1 hour - 95 MBWhat’s cancer got to do with crabs, artist Jackson Pollock, and artificial intelligence? It’s not a riddle; these are some of the things we’ll explore with surgeon Grant Stewart, computer scientist Mateja Jamnik and radiologist Evis Sala from the Mark Foundation Institute for Integrated Cancer Medicine. In this episode, we’ll discover how artificial intelligence is making it easier for doctors to diagnose and treat cancer and we’ll share some cancer facts that are both amazing and disturbin...
Antimicrobial resistance: the silent pandemic
February 03, 2022 07:00 - 1 hour - 110 MBIs antimicrobial resistance (AMR) the greatest threat to human health? In this episode, we discuss how the misuse and overuse of antimicrobials in humans and agriculture have accelerated bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens’ ability to mutate and develop resistance against the treatments designed to curb and control them. We talked with molecular biologist Stephen Baker, virologist Ian Goodfellow and infectious disease epidemiologist Caroline Trotter about the magnitude of the problem an...
Dementia: risks, diagnosis and prevention
January 27, 2022 06:30 - 56 minutes - 77.3 MBWhat causes dementia? And how do we diagnose and treat it? Is there anything we can do to stop ourselves from developing dementia? These are the crucial questions we’ll be exploring with clinical neuropsychologist Barbara Sahakian, sociologist Richard Milne, and neurologist James Rowe. In this episode, we’ll find out more about what dementia actually is, some surprising factors that increase a person’s risk of developing dementia, and computer games that can actually help detect and diagnose...
Mental health and young people
January 20, 2022 07:00 - 1 hour - 108 MBCOVID-19 has disrupted the lives of everyone, including children and young people, beyond recognition. So much so, that the proportion of children aged six to 16 with probable mental health disorders has increased from one in nine in 2017 to one in six in both 2020 and 2021. In this episode, we talked with Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Tamsin Ford, Professor of Health Neuroscience Paul Fletcher and behavioural epidemiologist Dr Esther van Sluijs about growing concern over the...
Obesity: the gene-environment debate
January 13, 2022 07:00 - 1 hour - 92.2 MBWhat role do our genes play in influencing our body weight and what we like to eat? Why do some people gain weight more easily than others, and is it all down to genes or are there other factors at play? In this episode, we talked with a clinician and scientist Sadaf Farooqi, health psychologist Theresa Marteau, and geographer Thomas Burgoine about the multitude of factors that go into influencing our eating behaviours. Along the way, we hear about the crucial importance of the environment i...
Welcome to Season 3!
January 11, 2022 07:00 - 2 minutes - 3.05 MBSeason 3 is here, and we’re back discussing all things Health! Welcome (or welcome back) to Mind Over Chatter, the Cambridge University Podcast. One series at a time, we break down complex issues into simple questions. In this third series, we’re talking all about Health. We’ll be exploring both physical and mental health, and we’ll discuss causes, treatments and preventions for issues like dementia, cancer, infectious diseases and obesity. We’re going to be talking to interesting people...
Education’s moment of reckoning: access and inclusion in schools
September 17, 2021 07:00 - 48 minutes - 66.8 MBIn April 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe, close to 1.6 billion children and youth were out of school due to temporary closures, representing more than 90% of students around the world, according to the United Nations. In this episode, we take an international perspective with our guests Arif Naveed, Aya Waller-Bey, and Sara Allen. We discuss the double-edged sword of education systems around the world, for example, the US and Pakistan: how education both preserves in...
What is the future of reproduction?
April 16, 2021 09:00 - 1 hour - 104 MBOur reproductive capabilities are changing in exciting ways, altering our fundamental understanding of fertility, reproduction, and even parenthood. In this episode, we asked our guests what the consequences of novel reproductive technologies are likely to be, and how they will impact the future of human reproduction. Alice Reid told us about how reproduction has changed over the last 200 years and the likely demographic impact of assisted reproduction, while Lucy Van de Wiel introduced the ...
What is the future of reproduction
April 16, 2021 08:00 - 1 hour - 104 MBOur reproductive capabilities are changing in exciting ways, altering our fundamental understanding of fertility, reproduction, and even parenthood. In this episode, we asked our guests what the consequences of novel reproductive technologies are likely to be, and how they will impact the future of human reproduction. Alice Reid told us about how reproduction has changed over the last 200 years and the likely demographic impact of assisted reproduction, while Lucy Van de Wiel introduced the i...
What is the future of artificial intelligence?
April 09, 2021 08:00 - 1 hour - 89.4 MBArtificial Intelligence can be found in every aspect of our lives. From A-level grade predicting algorithms to Netflix recommendations, AI is set to change the choices we make and how our personal information will be used. In this episode, we explore the future of AI - its potential benefits and harms - with our three guests. Beth Singler told us about the different cultural consequences of AI, and how the way we think about the future of AI reflects more about society today than the future ...
What would a more just future look like?
April 02, 2021 06:30 - 49 minutes - 68.3 MBOur society is more unequal than ever, as the top 1% control over 44% of the world’s wealth while 689 million people are living on less than $1.90 per day. In this episode, we asked our guests what the future of fairness, justice, and equality should look like, and how their research can help to bring about a fairer society. Alexa Hagerty and Natalie Jones shared how injustice can be thought of as an existential risk to humanity, while Esra Ozyurek introduced us to the importance of understa...
What is the future of wellbeing?
March 26, 2021 08:25 - 1 hour - 87 MBOur wellbeing is essential to our overall quality of life. But what is wellbeing? Why is it so hard to pin down? How is it different to mental health, and what can we do to understand, measure and improve it? We talked with psychologist and neuroscientist Dr Amy Orben, psychiatrist Dr Tamsin Ford, and welfare economist Dr Mark Fabian to try and get to grips with wellbeing. In doing so, we learnt about the negative (and positive!) effects of the pandemic, how wellbeing differs for children an...
What did the future look like in the past?
March 26, 2021 08:20 - 1 hour - 93.6 MBWe all have theories about what the future might look like. But what did the future look like in the past? And how have the advent of new technologies altered how people viewed the future? We talked with curator of modern sciences and historian of Victorian science Dr Johnua Nall, professor of Digital Humanities and director of Cambridge Digital Humanities Professor Caroline Bassett, and Junior Research Fellow in the history of artificial intelligence Dr Jonnie Penn in our attempt to underst...
What is the future?
March 26, 2021 08:15 - 53 minutes - 74.1 MBHello and welcome back to Mind Over Chatter! Please fill out our survey https://forms.gle/r9CfHpJVUEWrxoyx9 to tell us what your mind thinks about our chatter. Knowing what you think will really help us make the podcast even better… Now, on to the episode! This second series is all about the future - and in this first episode we’re going to be considering what the future even is… Have you ever wondered how time works? It turns out, the answer is a lot more complicated than we thought. Jo...
Welcome to Season 2!
March 25, 2021 08:00 - 2 minutes - 3.07 MBWelcome (or welcome back) to Mind Over Chatter, the Cambridge University Podcast! One series at a time, we break down complex issues into simple questions. In this second series, we’re talking all about the future. We’ll explore the nature of time itself - What even is the future? And is it in front of or behind us? - and we’ll also cover some of today’s most pressing questions, like how will artificial intelligence impact democracy? We’re going to be talking to people from all over the U...
Is climate change actually being taken seriously?
January 05, 2021 07:30 - 1 hour - 91.7 MBIn this last episode of the series, we’ll be exploring how stories work for and against climate change. We cover a lot of ground: from hippos and polar bears to how many times ‘sex’ and ‘tea’ were mentioned on TV between 2017 and 2018… so what’s all of this got to do with sustainability and climate change? Join us to find out! Our storytelling experts this time are Richard Staley (lecturer in the history and philosophy of science, Sarah Dillon (author, researcher and broadcaster) and Mart...
How to feed 10 Billion people
December 22, 2020 07:50 - 55 minutes - 76.2 MBHow and what we eat, and where our food comes from, these everyday choices that we often think very little about, have become increasingly relevant to climate change. With a global population projected to reach 10 billion by 2050, it is not unreasonable to ask: how are we going to feed all these people... and without causing more damage? In this episode we’ll cover everything from how climate change will affect the way we grow and eat food, to the pros and cons of ‘non-poo’ fertiliser. S...
Creating a future that is not like the past
December 15, 2020 08:30 - 45 minutes - 83.8 MBThe future is becoming harder to predict thanks to climate change and a global pandemic. But a large part of what the future will look like is in our own hands. The biggest challenge to creating a better future may be political rather than scientific or technological. In this episode, Diane Coyle, professor of public policy, Laura Diaz Anadon, professor of climate change policy, and architectural engineer, Ruchi Choudhary, join us to talk about how we can build a future that might not be a...
What are we (as a global community) doing right now?
December 10, 2020 07:45 - 49 minutes - 90.4 MBLast episode, we talked about how we got to where we are now with climate change, but do we even know what’s going on with climate change right now? In this episode we’ll talk about what tipping points we’re approaching, how and why we’re still struggling to gain momentum toward action on climate change, and what difference it would make if carbon dioxide was a brown smelly substance. To figure all of this out, we talked to a mathematician, Emily Shuckburgh, an engineer Hugh Hunt and a psyc...
Navigating the values of climate change
December 03, 2020 07:20 - 41 minutes - 77.4 MBClimate change is likely to affect almost every area of our lives… but how did we get to this point? When and why did we first take notice of climate change? And why has climate change evaded our collective attention and action for so long? We talked with professor of human geography, Mike Hulme, science historian and journalist Dr Sarah Dry and environmental economist Dr Matthew Agarwala to try to figure all of this out. Along the way, we discovered new ways of thinking about climate chang...
Welcome to Mind Over Chatter, the Cambridge University Podcast!
November 27, 2020 09:00 - 1 minute - 3.5 MBOne series at a time, we break down complex issues into simple questions. In this first series, we’ll explore climate change. Climate change is likely to affect almost every area of our lives… like a toddler with sticky fingers. But how did it become this way? What are we doing about it now? And what does the future hold? We’ll ask smart people some simple questions and see what happens! New episodes every Thursday. From the University of Cambridge and Cambridge Zero