Podcast · Kids & Family

Conversations with Annalisa Barbieri

by Annalisa Barbieri · English · Kids & Family

Have you ever wanted X-ray specs into human behaviour? Then this is the podcast for you. Listen to ‘brilliant, insightful and wise’ agony aunt and journalist Annalisa Barbieri, as she releases exclusive conversations between her and the trusted specialists she’s consulted over the years, who put a l

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 48 min
Latest: 25 Jun 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

25 Jun 2026 · 43 min

How To Agree to Disagree (turning conflict into connection) with Gabrielle Rifkind

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 our every day relationships so who better to get to help us navigate these schisms than Gabrielle who, as well as being a psychotherapist is the founder and director of The Oxford Process, which is a…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

S12 · E5 · 18 Jun 2026 · 48 min
Who we are and who we have become in an age of technology and A.I with Prof Alessandra Lemma
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 differences and disagreements, to sex and mourning. We look for a frictionless life but is that possible, or even desirable (spoiler alert: no and no)? This the most ground-breaking podcast I’ve done. And…
S12 · E4 · 11 Jun 2026 · 38 min
Loneliness with David Robson
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 journals such as The Guardian and The Atlantic. Loneliness isn’t just a psychological or mental state, it can and does affect our physical state: it’s as bad for our health as smoking. Loneliness can…
S12 · E3 · 4 Jun 2026 · 39 min
The Menstrual Brain with Dr Sophie Behrman
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 about the menopause and its impact on a woman’s brain and in this one we are talking about how the menstrual cycle, and the fluctuation of hormones can affect us physiologically. We also discuss PMS…
S12 · E2 · 28 May 2026 · 59 min
Dissociation with Dr Joanne Stubley
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 consultant psychiatrist in psychotherapy with years of experience in the mental health field. She leads the adult section of the trauma service at the NHS Tavistock Centre and is a member of the British…
S12 · E1 · 21 May 2026 · 37 min
Why the arts are good for us with Prof Daisy Fancourt
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 award wining Covid 19 social study which was the UK’s largest study into the psychological and social impact of the virus. Daisy has written three books and Art Cure is her latest one. I was so…
S11 · E6 · 12 Feb 2026 · 41 min
The Menopause Brain with Dr Sophie Behrman
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 this podcast there are still a lot of unknowns. But what I do talk about in this episode on the Menopause brain with Dr Sophie Behrman is about what we do know is happening in the brain: the rewiring…
S11 · E5 · 5 Feb 2026 · 46 min
Projection with psychotherapist Ryan Bennett-Clark
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 behaviour and always make it someone else’s fault: primarily mine. So I decided to move out of her way so that, hopefully, her beam of dissatisfaction with life could be aimed elsewhere. Projection…
S11 · E4 · 29 Jan 2026 · 42 min
Overwhelmed with Claudia Hammond
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 Pressure Off which came out in January 2026. Side note that there’s also an audio book narrated by Claudia which is beautiful to listen to. So what’s the book, and this podcast, about? It’s for those of us who…
S11 · E3 · 22 Jan 2026 · 39 min
Facing Fate with Andrew Balfour
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 rather jumped on it. There’s a lot of fear about getting older, but then there’s also a lot of fear about not getting older, ie dying. And with increasing rates of dementia, people are also…
S11 · E2 · 15 Jan 2026 · 47 min
Body Focused Repetitive Behaviours (BFRBs) with Professor Clare Mackay
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 disorder she’d been living with for most of her life: hair pulling, which comes under the umbrella of BFRBS. BFRBs are often done unconsciously at first and, as we’ll learn, are a throw back to primate…
S11 · E1 · 8 Jan 2026 · 39 min
The Good Enough Mother with Professor Alessandra Lemma
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, psychoanalyst and a fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society Professor Alessandra Lemma and I discuss what it is to be a good enough mother, a phrase coined by the the paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald…
S10 · E6 · 6 Oct 2025 · 47 min
Anxiety in the Young with psychotherapist Alison Roy
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 discussed in previous episodes (see The Teenage Brain with Rachel Melville-Thomas) is a very particular time with brain development in overdrive, starting to separate out from your parents and family (a…
S10 · E5 · 29 Sep 2025 · 1 hr 1 min
Finding Joy with Professor Morten Kringelbach
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 Morten in 2024 when I went to Oxford to interview him for a piece I was writing for the Guardian on Anhedonia, which is the inability to feel pleasure, which you can read here . Professor Kringelbach…
S10 · E4 · 22 Sep 2025 · 51 min
How to Make Friends with Chris Mills
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 that). After institutionalised education, especially if you don't go on to university and work from home..people can start to feel adrift. Where do they start making friends? How? The truth is most…
S10 · E3 · 15 Sep 2025 · 1 hr 2 min
Siblings with Catherine Carr
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 untitled. Catherine reported for, and produced Woman's Hour for BBC Radio 4, before going freelance to make documentaries and podcasts.I’ve known her for a few years and find her weekly podcast called Where are…
S10 · E2 · 8 Sep 2025 · 57 min
Facing Adversity with Professor Lucy Easthope
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 also in conversation in previous podcasts talking about her book When The Dust Settles (and how to plan) and her very personal journey in the episode about Baby Loss. Lucy is the UK's leading…
S10 · E1 · 1 Sep 2025 · 42 min
Should I have a(nother) baby? with psychotherapist Julia Bueno
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 around this question, what those issues can tell you about yourself, your partner and your relationship and how to go about dealing with them. We also explore going it alone - and whilst we can't tell…
S9 · E6 · 15 May 2025 · 57 min
Womb Life. Life before we are born with psychotherapist Graham Music
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 episode. What can affect a foetus? How much does stress and nutrition matter? Does it matter if your grandmother was stressed whilst she was pregnant with one of your parents? How and why do…
S9 · E5 · 8 May 2025 · 36 min
The Parentified Child with psychotherapist Lisa Bruton
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 room? Do people look to you for advice (ahem) and guidance? It may be because you are used to performing this role, from way too young. Parentified children can grow up to be exhausted adults. Who…
S9 · E4 · 1 May 2025 · 50 min
Hope and Loss with psychologist and psychoanalyst Dr Stephen Blumenthal
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 we’re at. But there’s normal loss such as leaving school or a job, and traumatic loss where everything comes at once, like an unexpected or early death or devastating news. This takes far longer to…
S9 · E3 · 18 Feb 2025 · 45 min
Retirement: should you, could you? From a psychological POV with psychotherapist Chris Mills
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 work place and/or pensions. Or people were so exhausted by their physically demanding jobs they were totally spent by the time they got to 55. But things have changed. The state pension age has…
S9 · E2 · 14 Nov 2024 · 46 min
Should We Move? With psychotherapist Mark Vahrmeyer
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 get away from problems, not realising that the problems go with them. This is why a few well aimed questions are worth asking of yourself before you move. There are some very boring things to…
S9 · E1 · 31 Oct 2024 · 51 min
Body Image, with Professor Alessandra Lemma, chartered clinical and counselling psychologist and psychoanalyst.
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 bubbling away for some years. Alessandra and I were working on a problem for my Guardian column. The problem was from a reader who said that, despite them being an adult, they were still being body shamed…
S8 · E6 · 1 Aug 2024 · 1 hr 11 min
A Problem In the Family (and navigating CAMHS) with psychotherapist John Cavanagh
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 look like, why it's important to treat children as part of the family unit. John also talks us through the CAMHS system which I know some people find very difficult to navigate. We also talk about…
S8 · E5 · 25 Jul 2024 · 51 min
Family Estrangement with Psychotherapist Chris Mills
Very early on in my career as The Guardian's Agony Aunt the letters started coming in about family estrangements - the "should I cut X out of my life" style questions. Back then, cutting a family member out was anathema to me but over the years, i came to understand why some people sought it out. The thing is, cutting someone out is rarely the end of the problem. Sometimes it's only the beginning. In this episode I talk to long-time conversationalist psychotherapist Chris Mills about why some situations become so bad that estrangement seems like the only answer - indeed is it the only…
S8 · E4 · 18 Jul 2024 · 55 min
Attachment with psychotherapist Dr Graham Music
What is attachment and how does attachment theory different from the primary real-life attachment we learnt as babies? The two often get confused. In this episode I talk to child, adolescent and adult psychotherapist Dr Graham Music who has been described as "one of the most deep thinking child psychotherapists in the world." We talk about these differences, plus the concept of attachment which is how secure we feel with our primary care given and how our needs were met, and the impact that can have on our later life. Attachment is at the core of every letter I get, ergo every problem I…
S8 · E3 · 11 Jul 2024 · 56 min
Forensic Psychotherapy with clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Dr Stephen Blumenthal
Forensic psychotherapy is psychotherapy with people who have committed criminal offences. In this episode I talk with clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Dr Stephen Blumenthal who is registered with the British Psychoanalytic Council and has over thirty years experience in treating people. Stephen started his professional life as a clinical psychologist in a secure unit with offenders. Stephen has also written a couple of books on forensic psychotherapy, the latest of which is called Assessing Risk, a Relationship Approach. I was in conversation with Stephen in Series 7, talking about…
S8 · E2 · 4 Jul 2024 · 54 min
Self-sabotage with psychotherapist Ryan Bennett-Clarke
Did you know that procrastination, risky behaviour, blaming others and even infidelity may be a sign of self-sabotage? There are a host of other symptoms, too. In this, episode 2 or Series 8, I discuss with psychotherapist Ryan Bennett-Clarke why we might self sabotage, what it tells us about ourselves and of course, what we can do about it. If you'd like to support us you can leave a one off donation here: https://supporter.acast.com/conversations-with-annalisa-barbieri If you'd like to listen to this episode, past or future ones, ad free then consider becoming a patron on Patreon, from…
S8 · E1 · 27 Jun 2024 · 1 hr 6 min
Baby Loss with Professor Lucy Easthope
Welcome to series 8 of Conversations with Annalisa Barbieri. This episode was Professor Lucy Easthope's idea as it’s something she really wanted to talk about and I’m honoured she has trusted me with this delicate subject. In this episode Lucy talks openly about her very personal five baby losses by miscarriage. Lucy is Professor of Practice of Risk and Hazard at the University of Durham and a Professor in Mass Fatalities at the University of Bath. She studied law at university and has a masters in disaster management and a pHD in medicine. Lucy is a UK Expert and advisor on emergency…

About Conversations with Annalisa Barbieri

Conversations with Annalisa Barbieri is a English kids & family podcast from Annalisa Barbieri. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Annalisa Barbieri
Language: English
Category: Kids & Family
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 48 min
Latest episode: 25 Jun 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1567190358
Rights: Annalisa Barbieri

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