This week on The Pulse: a look at failure as both a stumbling and building block for the human race. We fear, loathe and avoid failure. We feel shame when it happens, but it’s a necessary and important ingredient in our evolution.

We take a look at failure’s role in the scientific process, and we wonder why—even when we know that failing is key to advancing knowledge—we hate it so much. Then we explore what happens when the desire not to fail turns criminal.

There is a subsection of humanity who has no problem failing…they’re called toddlers, and they fail all day every day without a care in the world. What’s up with that? We look into the secret of having big successes by learning from past failures.

Paleontologist Ted Daeschler is no toddler, but he certainly turned a big failure into a success, and we’ll hear how. We’ll also meet professional investor Armen Karamanian, who uses his background in science to help him calculate the odds of failure for the companies he considers investing in.

Finally on the show, scientists and investors might find clever ways to use failure to their advantage, but doctors often view failure as unacceptable. Afterall, when they fail, people die. Dr. Erin Lockhardt struggled with this idea while caring for her dying mother and came to a new understanding of what it means to fail.