The new podcast from ABC Radio National program All in the Mind is an exploration of the mind, brain and behaviour, asking could you confess to a crime you didn’t commit, or find a killer based on their characteristics?

Forensic takes you behind the psychological tools used to solve crimes.

Across four episodes, host Sana Qadar investigates criminal profiling, false confessions, eyewitness memory and lie detection, revealing what actually works, what doesn’t, and the surprising ways things can go wrong, and right.

The first episode takes you back to New York in the 1950s. You don’t want to ride the subway. You won’t set foot in a department store. You’re scared to sit down in a movie theatre. Because for years, a so-called “mad bomber” has been planting explosives all over Manhattan — in phone booths, in the public library and even in the Empire State Building.

With a fearful public and frenzied press, the police turned to a source they’d previously dismissed with disdain – a forensic psychiatrist.

He told police he could read the mind of an offender from the characteristics of their crime. Their age, ethnicity, job history, living situation and the clothes he would be wearing when he was finally arrested.

And the psychiatrist was right.

But that story led to a shakier future for crime solving.

Forensic gives an evidence-led look at the cracks and complexities inside modern forensic psychology. You can listen here, with the final episodes released over the next two Sundays.