Please Explain (The Leonard Lopate Show)

New York Times science writer John Tierney , co-author of Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, talks about self-control. He's joined by Dr. Walter Mischel, Niven Professor of Humane Letters in Psychology, Columbia University. They'll explain how to build willpower and how conserve it for crucial moments.

In October, neuroscientists Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang were on Please Explain to discuss how a young children’s brains develop. And this week they return to discuss the brains of adolescents and teenagers—from sleep problems, gender differences, behavior issues, learning disabilities, and hormones. They investigate myths about brain development and sort through the factors that matter—and those that don’t—in brain development from childhood to college. They’re the co-authors of Welcome to Your Child's Brain: How the Mind Grows from Conception to College.

How well do you know your child's brain? Take this quiz!

Railroad historian John Hankey, and Bob Lettenberger, Director of Education for the National Railroad Museum talk about the history and significance of the freight and passenger railroads in the United States. They’ll also discuss the deterioration of our passenger railways in the 1950s and 1960s and the current state of rail travel here, compared to other countries.

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Kenneth T. Jackson, Jacques Barzun Professor in History and the Social Sciences at Columbia University, and Lisa Keller, Associate Professor of History at SUNY Purchase, both editors of The Encyclopedia of New York City, second edition, explain who the people behind the names of familiar tunnels, bridges, and expressways are. From the Van Wyck, the Major Deegan, and the Bruckner to the Kosciusco Bridge, the Holland Tunnel to Tompkins Square Park, Washington Heights, and Astoria.

Herman Cain has gotten a lot of attention for his 9-9-9 tax plan, Governor Rick Perry recently unveiled his own flat tax proposal, and there have been numerous presidential candidates who have made a flat tax plan the basis of their campaigns. Joseph J. Thorndike is the director of the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts and a contributing editor for Tax Notes magazine looks at the history of the flat tax, how it compares to our current tax system, and what the proposed flat tax plans would mean for the U.S. economy.

Anahad O’Connor, columnist for the New York Times Well blog and author of Always Follow the Elephants and Never Shower in a Thunderstorm, and Dr. Rachel Vreeman, co-author of Don’t Swallow Your Gum and Don’t Cross Your Eyes...They'll Get Stuck That Way, and assistant professor of pediatrics at Indiana University, and talk about medical myths and wives tales—adages like “starve a fever, feed a cold” and that caffeine will stunt your growth. They’ll explain where they came from and why they persist and they’ll, as well as which are right and which are wrong.

Lizzie Post and Anna Post (great-great granddaughters of Emily Post) explain the ins and outs, the rules and pointers of communicating by e-mail and online. They are co-authors of the 18th edition of Emily Post’s Etiquette.

Neuroscientists Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang discuss how a child’s brain develops, from conception to college, looking at language learning, sleep problems, gender differences, and behavior issues. They debunk myths and look at the factors that matter—and those that don’t—in children’s brain development. They’re the co-authors of Welcome to Your Child's Brain: How the Mind Grows from Conception to College.

How well do you know your child's brain? Take this quiz to find out!

We’ll find out how lotteries work and why we play. Victor Matheson, Associate Professor of Economics at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and  Brent Kramer, a data analyst at the Fiscal Policy Institute, and Adjunct Assistant Professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College, tell us where lottery money comes from, where it goes, and look at what the odds are of winning it big!

Joe Roman, author of Listed: Dispatches from America's Endangered Species Act; George Amato, director of the American Museum of Natural History's Sackler Institute of Comparative Genomics; and Ernie Cooper, from TRAFFIC, a joint wildlife trade monitoring network of the World Wildlife Fund and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, discuss the Endangered Species Act, which species are at risk and why, and the efforts are made to protect them.

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