Meet Your Brain

Your brain knows different things than you think it does. Prejudice, bias and a number of other traits that we consciously decry may be more hard-wired in our subconscious than we think.

Shankar Vedantam, author of the Washington Post's "Department of Human Behavior" column, has taken a look at the scientific study of subconscious actions. Vedantam says that sexism, prejudice and other behaviors are deeply ingrained, sometimes in opposition to what we say we believe. But yet Vedantam says when people say they are not prejudiced, they aren't lying. They just don't really know what their brain thinks...

LISTEN: SHANKAR VEDANTAM - THE HIDDEN BRAIN

The Negotiator

Somali pirates and Montana Freemen might not seem to have much in common. But when it comes to the hostages they take and the men and women called in to try and keep those hostages alive, those kind of abductors are too much the same.

The standoffs we see in the news often involve a political or social ploy. For negotiators that is a starting point. When the situation is more emotional it gets significantly more complicated.

Former FBI chief negotiator Gary Noesner is used to high-stakes, emotional situations.

The crisis negotiator dealt with kidnappers, terrorists and many others pushed to the edge during his thirty-year career.

Noesner talks about his career as a negotiator, including the 1993 at the Branch Davidian disaster in Waco, TX.

LISTEN: GARY NOESNER - STALLING FOR TIME

A Tale of Presidents and Enemies

With his bestseller MANHUNT, author and historian James Swanson turned the story of John Wilkes Booth into a page-turning thriller.

He returns to the fading days of the Civil War for his latest book, BLOODY CRIMES. Swanson talks about another "villain" to the North: Confederate president Jefferson Davis.

Swanson discusses the parallels between the two presidents and how the view of both men in history became formed as Davis fled the Union and Lincoln's corpse began a procession back to his final resting place.

LISTEN: JAMES SWANSON - BLOODY CRIMES

Historian Nora Titone has taken a deeper look at the protagonist of Swanson's first hit book: John Wilkes Booth.

Titone, who once worked as a researcher for presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, examines the Booth family in her new book MY THOUGHTS BE BLOODY.

A family of actors, the Booths had a family dynamic that echoed Shakespearian tragedies. Titone discusses the bitter rivalry, professionally and politically between John Wilkes Booth and his far more famous (at the time) brother, Edwin.

LISTEN: NORA TITONE - MY THOUGHTS BE BLOODY