Some of our earlylife behaviors such as thumb sucking and bedwetting have no lasting influence on who we will become However the early years of our lives are still tremendously formative in many important facets

What happens when young people run off the rails This episode asks why most young adolescents engage in juvenile delinquency and why most of these delinquents desist whereas a few become violent career criminals

The Dunedin Study has identified a fundamental developmental mechanism that completely rewrites the nature versus nurture argument It is a genetic switch that is thrown by life events Nature loads the gun but nurture pulls the trigger This episode tracks the hunt for the mechanism using three specific examples violence in men depression and cannabisinduced schizophrenia

This episode looks at the effects of modern life and aging how excessive cleanliness affects asthma amp allergies how poverty gets under the skin to cause lifelong damage and the physical effects of social isolation Also amazingly we can predict mental illness and Alzheimers just by looking at the back of peoples eyes