---

THE SCIENCE OF WINNING

Broadcast beginning week of September 13, 2006

America has always been a country where competition and winning matters. Politics. Sports. Our economy is capitalist and competition rules the marketplace. Who ever said that it's not whether you win or loose that counts, probably lost, so says tennis star Martina Navratilova. It's the ethos of many top competitors and not only in athletics. This week on The Infinite Mind, we will talk about the experience of winning from those to do it for a living at the highest level. We will also look at the science of winning and the implications for all of us. We will even look to the animal kingdom; what can we learn from lizards? Are certain of us born with tendencies, aggression or confidence that makes us winners? Can we acquire winning ways? Does winning reshape our attitudes, our biology? And what about losing?

Our guests include Dr. John Tauer; Associate Professor of Psychology at St. Thomas University who specializes in intrinsic motivation, competition, cooperation and goal theory who is able to put his theories to practice as the assistant coach of the St. Thomas men's varsity basketball team which he has helped lead to 10 conference titles in the last 18 years. Jim Fannin, the "ZoneCoach," author, consultant and mental coach for the world's top athletes and corporate executives discusses the mental strategies and mindsets of what he terms, "true champions."

In the second half of the show, The Infinite Mind's Mary Carmichael interviews Martina Navratilova, tennis superstar. Navratilova, who is winner of an astounding 58 tennis grand slams including her 12th grand slam mixed doubles championship at the 2006 US Open, talks about her drive and mindset related to winning, and her motivation for coming back from retirement at the age of 49 to compete in this year's Grand Slam tournaments.

We will also listen in on what has been a long time, ongoing conversation about the biological consequences of winning between two old friends. Howard Bloom is a paleopsychologist, author of "Global Brain, The Evolution of Mass Mind From the Big Bang to the 21st Century," and has been called "the next Stephen Hawking" by Gear Magazine, and "the latest great thinker in the lineage of "Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Freud, and Buckminster Fuller" by Channel4 TV in Britain. Bloom chats with Dr. Neil Greenberg, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, about everything from lizards to baboons to the testosterone levels of fans of winning soccer teams.

Finally, we will hear from John Hockenberry on what he believes are the "real" competitive sports designed for "real" men: debate and chess. (Click here to listen to commentary.)