The World Science Festival’s annual salon series offers in-depth conversations with leading scientists, extending the discussion of the Festival’s premiere public programs to graduate students, postdocs, faculty and well-informed members of the general public. This salon looks at new and controversial ways to understand the human capacity to cope with stress and rebound from traumatic events. Is resilience a combination of innate traits born of thousands of years of evolution? Is it a complex psychological process that varies across cultures and environments? Can resilience be reliably defined and objectively measured? Can it then be taught and reproduced?