Some conversations make you more certain. These ones don't.
Uncomfortably Curious is a long-form conversation podcast hosted by Aidan Mill, exploring psychology, science, health, philosophy, history, and the questions underneath modern life — through conversations with researchers, thinkers, and practitioners who've gone deep on something.
The goal isn't easy answers. It's questions worth sitting with.
Why Modern Dads Feel Unprepared - with Dr Dan Singley
Becoming a father can bring love, meaning and growth. It can also bring grief for your old life, pressure to provide, changes in your relationship and the unsettling feeling that everyone else knows what they’re doing.
Psychologist Dr Dan Singley joins Aidan to explore why modern dads can feel so unprepared. They discuss the “fatherhood generation gap”, the changing expectations placed on men, why some fathers struggle to bond immediately, and how distress can show up through isolation, irritability or withdrawal.
Dan also shares practical tools for couples, a clearer way to think about hope, and his simplest advice for fathers who are struggling: don’t become isolated.
They discuss:
What being a good father means today
Why men can grieve the life they had before children
The five-minute relationship check-in
How fathers can become involved before the baby arrives
“Father hunger” and parenting without a useful model
Whether there is really a masculinity crisis
Why men’s distress can be missed - even after they seek help
Whether therapy should work differently for men
How goals, pathways and flexibility can build realistic hope
Why supporting male victims does not diminish concern for women’s safety
Dr Dan Singley is a psychologist and founder of the Center for Men’s Excellence, where his work focuses on men’s mental health, fatherhood and relationships.
This conversation discusses depression, suicide, abuse and trauma. If you are in Australia and need immediate support, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or MensLine Australia on 1300 78 99 78. If life is in danger, call 000.
11 Oct 2026
Black Holes, Storytelling and Cosmic Perspective with Dr Tanya Hill
What does a dragonfly have to do with a black hole?
Astronomer and science communicator Dr Tanya Hill explores black holes, the power of analogy, and why science needs creativity as much as it needs facts.
Tanya explains why an event horizon is a true point of no return, and how a story about dragonfly nymphs can make that otherwise abstract idea feel real.
We also discuss the hidden choices behind astronomical images, whether space goes on forever, why children ask some of the best questions about the universe, and what looking up can do to our sense of perspective.
Dr Tanya Hill is Senior Curator of Astronomy at Museums Victoria. Her research background includes supermassive black holes, and she now develops Planetarium shows that bring astronomy to wider audiences.
If this conversation leaves you with more questions than answers, it has probably done its job.
4 Oct 2026
Why Anxiety Is Like a Smoke Detector — with Randolph Nesse
What if anxiety is not simply a broken system, but a useful alarm going off at the wrong time? And what if low mood sometimes appears when we keep pursuing something important that is no longer working?
Randolph Nesse approaches mental health through evolutionary psychiatry. Rather than asking only what has gone wrong in a person’s brain or psychology, he asks why humans have capacities for anxiety, low mood, guilt and love in the first place and why those systems can become so painful or disabling.
We discuss anxiety as an oversensitive smoke detector, the difference between fear and anxiety, what happens when people have too little anxiety, and how to tell a useful warning from a malfunction. Randolph also explores stuck goals, the limits of “never give up”, why people care so much about what others think, and his evolutionary perspectives on love, addiction and eating disorders.
Randolph is a psychiatrist whose work applies evolutionary biology to medicine and mental health.
This conversation offers a different way to understand difficult feelings: not as proof that someone is defective, but as systems with a history, a function and real limits.
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