NPR News

"To compete well means to take risks that are normally constrained by fear," Po Bronson tells NPR's Michel Martin.

Following their best-selling book, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children, Bronson and Ashley Merryman teamed up again for Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing.

Bronson says "risk-taking is a crucial quality of competitiveness." Science shows that "if you focus on the odds, you tend not to take the risk," he says.

Tuesday marks one year since the fatal shooting of unarmed Florida teen Trayvon Martin. The case has drawn a lot of national attention and polarized America on issues of race and self-defense. Host Michel Martin checks in again with Trayvon's mother, Sybrina Fulton, and her attorney, Benjamin Crump.

Esperanza Spalding has often said that she hopes to use the fame from her 2011 Best New Artist Grammy to help give her friends and mentors in the jazz world the recognition they deserve. She got her chance earlier this month, when Spalding and her longtime teacher and mentor, trumpeter Thara Memory, accepted the Grammy for their arrangement of "City of Roses" from Spalding's 2012 album Radio Music Society.

On this episode of Piano Jazz, host Marian McPartland welcomes vocalist and JazzSet host Dee Dee Bridgewater for a first-rate set of tunes by Duke Ellington, Kurt Weill, Antonion Carlos Jobim, the

President Obama's plan to jump-start the economy starts with increasing the minimum wage and avoiding sequestration. Host Michel Martin talks about those challenges and others, like rising gas prices and expanding waist lines. She's joined by NPR's senior business editor Marilyn Geewax and Wall Street Journal economics reporter Sudeep Reddy.

Forgiving someone who's done you wrong can be challenging, but learning how to do it can benefit your mind and body. Frederic Luskin of the Stanford Forgiveness Project writes about this in his book, Forgive For Good. He joins host Michel Martin to talk about why learning to forgive is worth it.

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

And now it's time for BackTalk. That's where we lift the curtain on what's happening in the TELL ME MORE blogosphere. Editor Ammad Omar is with us. What's going on today, Ammad?

It began with the crisis on Wall Street in 2008. Alexis Cuadrado, from Barcelona and now Brooklyn, remembered the poetry of the surrealist Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936), whom all Spanish students study in school.

Transcript

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

We're going to turn now to a regular feature we call In Your Ear. That's where some of our guests tell us about the songs that inspire them. Singer Lea Gilmore's mastery of gospel, blues and jazz has made her a name as far away as Siberia. But she freely admits her musical tastes are equally wide-ranging, including a popular tune from a musical that's for an Oscar this Sunday.

LEA GILMORE: Hi, my name is Lea Gilmore and this is what I'm listening to.