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Chimp Fights and Trolley Rides

First up, Radio Lab hits the streets. Join us in Times Square as we poll dozens of people waiting in line to buy discount Broadway tickets. Share in the outrage and mental grunt-work as these thrifty theatre-goers try to answer tough moral quandaries. The questions--which force you to decide between homicidal scenarios-- are the same ones being asked by Dr. Joshua Greene. He'll tell us about using modern brain scanning techniques to take snapshots of the brain as it struggles with these moral conflicts. And he'll describe what he sees in these images: quite literally, a battle taking place in the brain. It's "inner chimp" versus a calculator-wielding rationale. Tune in to see who will win.

Then we'll move from inner chimp to outer. Dr. Frans de Waals lets us watch a chimp fight at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta. And we'll turn our navel-gazing toward the furrier navels of the chimps to learn a little more about this thing called morality: where it comes from, its evolutionary benefit, and why you can't guilt-trip an ape.

» My Family Album: Thirty Years of Primate Photography by Frans de Waals

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Kiddie Morality

How do we develop our sense of morality? Even toddlers know there is a right and wrong beyond the rules in a class room. While host Jad Abumrad attends playgroup, Robert Krulwich concludes that children are sociopaths. Dr. Judi Smetana refutes that claim while guiding us through her research on the development of moral and social knowledge. And then, more fighting. We'll witness, through a mother's eyes, a pre-school brawl that results in blood and one boy's burgeoning sense of empathy.

Telling another tale of classroom chaos, producer Amy O'Leary takes us along on a trip to right a wrong. She'll confront her fourth grade teacher and drudge up former classmates to put to rest the legacy of the "Homestead" game. In the process, she'll peel back layers to reveal the dark side of formative experiences that shape an individual's morality.

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Crime and Penitence

Immorality, criminality, that is the stuff of the outside world. Well, that's what some people thought, like the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, back in the 1820's. So they opened up the Eastern State Penitentiary, an experiment in correcting criminal behavior through solitary confinement. Advocates for the system believed that if left alone for long enough, away from the dirty outside world, a criminal's innate morality would prevail and, sort of, straighten them out.

The experiment failed. Nonetheless, producer Josh Braun takes us to Eastern State and ponders why. To do so, he willingly locks himself in an isolation cell, as recorded by Sally Herships (a radio producer and the artist also known as SoHo Sally). It's a grey day. The stone walls encase a chilling silence. The tiny, circular sky-light stares down from above just as the nineteenth century architects intended: like an "Eye of God." You'll feel as if you're there too, with nothing but your own inside self to figure out if solitary confinement breeds penitence or insanity.

Check out Soho Sally
Slideshow: Eastern State Penitentiary

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