Malcolm Gladwell doesn’t like Gifted and Talented Education Programs. And he doesn’t believe that innate ability can fully explain superstar hockey players or billionaire software giants. In this podcast, we listen in on a conversation between Robert and Malcolm recorded at the 92nd St Y. Robert asks Malcolm if he’s a “genius denier,” and Malcolm asks Robert if he’s uncomfortable with the power of love, as they duke it out over questions of luck, talent, passion, and success.

Photo by: rocket ship/flickrCC

One place you absolutely, positively do not want to be if you’re a healthy, middle-aged American lobster: trapped in a suburban grocery store in western Pennsylvania. But that’s where this week’s podcast begins. It doesn’t stay there long, though. Bonnie Hazen and Toni Leone take us on an adventure that carries us by car, by plane, and by boat toward a deeper understanding of those mysterious protective feelings that sometimes sweep over us — well, some of us — when we encounter our fellow animals — um, okay, some of them. Trevor Corson, author of the bestselling The Secret Life of Lobsters, assists.

Photo by: Chicken Billy/flickrCC

You come up with a great idea. You devise a brilliant plan. You control for every imaginable variable. And once everything’s in place, the train hops your carefully laid tracks. Oops. In this hour of Radiolab, unintended consequences abound: from a psychologist whose zeal to safeguard national security may have created a terrorist…to a community whose efforts to protect an endangered bird had deadly consequences. Read more.

Photo: flickr/The Real Estreya

Oliver Sacks, the famous neuroscientist and author, can’t recognize faces. Neither can Chuck Close, the great artist known for his enormous paintings of … that’s right, faces.

Oliver and Chuck–both born with the condition known as Face Blindness–have spent their lives decoding who is saying hello to them. You can sit down with either man, talk to him for an hour, and if he sees you again just fifteen minutes later, he will have no idea who you are. (Unless you have a very squeaky voice or happen to be wearing the same odd purple hat.)

In this podcast, we listen in on a conversation Robert had with Chuck and Oliver at Hunter College in New York City as part of the World Science Festival. Chuck and Oliver tell Robert what it’s like to live with Face Blindness and describe two very different ways of coping with this condition, which may be more common than we think.

The World Science Festival is an annual festival in New York City that pays tribute to imagination, ingenuity, and inventiveness. It’s pretty much an all-star line up of fascinating talks and performances. This year’s festival just concluded, but you can still catch full broadcasts of the 2010 programs, follow their blog, and sign up for email updates HERE. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this particular morsel.

Photo by: Jeremy Brooks/flickrCC

We look at lies, liars, and lie catchers to ask whether anyone can lead a life without deception. In this episode, we consult a cast of characters–from pathological liars to lying snakes to drunken psychiatrists–to try and understand the dark trait of deception.

Photo: flickr/eggman

In this new hour of Radiolab: an unflinching look at the good, bad…and ugly side of tumors. Robert tries to touch–literally touch–the tumor that killed President Ulysses S. Grant. And we get to know the woman who unknowingly held the key to unlocking modern medical advancements (from polio vaccines to chemotherapy drugs) in her tumor cells. Read more.

Photo: flickr/GE Healthcare

Agatha Christie’s cleverly plotted detective stories made her the 20th century’s best-selling fiction author—she sold billions of books throughout a career that spanned the 1920s to the 1970s. But her intricate novels may reveal more about the inner workings of the human mind than she intended: according to Dr. Ian Lancashire at the University of Toronto, the Queen of Crime left behind hidden clues to the real-life mysteries of human aging.

In today’s podcast, a look at what scientists uncover when they treat words like data. In Agatha’s case, an English professor makes a diagnosis decades after her death. And in a study involving 678 nuns—as Dr. Kelvin Lim and Dr. Serguei Pakhomov from the University of Minnesota explain—an unexpected find in a convent archive leads to a startling twist. In both examples, words serve as a window into aging brains…a window that may someday help pinpoint very early warning signs for Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. We also hear from Sister Alberta Sheridan, a 94-year-old Nun Study participant.

Photo by: Laineys Repertoire/flickrCC

This week Jad talks with the band Buke and Gass (pronounced ‘Buke and Gase’) about the weird and wonderful twangy chaotic sounds they make with their homemade instruments. Though they sound like a whole rip-roaring party of bodies, the band is in fact only comprised of two people: Arone Dyer and Aron Sanchez. Together they play for us, attempt to describe their genre-bending sound, and talk a bit about what’s it like to play out what you don’t say.

Also, for those of you wondering about AWE-MAGEDDON, our live event series, here’s an excerpt from our first show!

Iain Couzin is an assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University, where he studies collective behaviors within animal groups.

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