This is an ABC podcast.

Why do fish swim?

Why does space go on forever?

You know how kids have a habit of asking why over and over on an endless array of topics.

Why do people fart?

Ginny Smith was that kind of kid.

I've always been the kind of person who wants to find out the answers to things.

As a kid, I was one of those ones who was always asking questions.

And I was really lucky that I had parents that supported that and that helped me find the answers

or answered them when they could.

Ginny never lost that curiosity, but her questions became more targeted as she got older.

It wasn't really until university that I discovered brain science as a kind of real science,

that you could actually ask scientific questions about why human beings behave the way they do

and use science to find out the answers.

And it was just that sense of mystery and that sense of, these like the biggest questions I think in the world.

Why do humans behave the way they do?

You're listening to All in the Mind. I'm Sana Khadar. And this question goes to the heart of

what this show is all about.

But Ginny worries a lot of what we've been told about why we behave the way we do has been oversimplified.

I started to see that there'd been more and more kind of popular culture references to brain chemicals.

You were hearing people tweeting about dopamine and serotonin being

mentioned in pop songs and things. But a lot of the time it was these really oversimplified

...