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Welcome to Science Talk, the weekly podcast of Scientific American.

For the seven days starting April 18th, I'm Steve Merski. This week on the

podcast, we'll talk with Atul Gawande about his new book, Better, a surgeon's notes on performance.

Plus, we'll test your knowledge about some recent science in the news. First up, Atul Gawande,

and the science of performance. How do you get better at something without breakthroughs or new knowledge,

but just by analyzing what you already know and do and figuring out ways to do it better?

Atul Gawande is a general surgeon at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston,

assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, a frequent contributor to the New England Journal of Medicine,

and a staff writer at the New Yorker.

Last year, he received a MacArthur Fellowship, sometimes called a Genius Grant. He was in New York last week, and I met with him in the lobby of the Roger Williams Hotel on Madison Avenue. Dr. Gawande, great to talk to you today. Thanks for having me out. My pleasure. You're a surgeon and a writer. What's your general

background? I know your dad was a doctor, too, from reading the book. My parents are from India,

but I was born and raised here, and I always knew I would end up one way or another in medicine,

though, for a long time. I tried to avoid it by working in government. I was in the Clinton administration doing

health policy. I floated around in different kinds of labs. But where I ended up was as a surgeon.

And my first book was written during my surgical training. It was called complications, and it was

trying to think about why is medicine imperfect, and how do you learn something, how do you learn

to be good at something that is imperfect? And this now tries to take off from there.

...