What’s the best way to get someone to talk? NPR’s Terry Gross has done more interviewers than just about anyone else in public radio. But she prefers to talk to them long distance, with no eye contact. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Terry Gross on the art of the interview.Read more
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Back in 1967, Noam Chomsky wrote a famous essay called "The Responsibility of Intellectuals." Chomsky was furious about what he called "the deceit and distortion surrounding the American invasion of Vietnam." And he urged intellectuals "to speak the truth and expose lies." So what is the...Read more
What goes on inside the mind of a painter, or a musician, or a poet? What sparks creativity? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, new neuroscience takes us inside the creative mind. We’ll talk about brain imaging studies of jazz musicians, and cosmologist Brian Swimme explores the...Read more
Who are you? White or black, Muslim or Christian, working class or wealthy? Most of us rotate through many different cultural identities, at work and at home. And sometimes, reconciling them is hard.Read more
For years poet and novelist Alice Walker told her friends she’d probably never write again. But the events of September 11 changed all that. And the poetry flowed. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Alice Walker on the role of the poet in a time of war. Also, Iraqi poetry today. ...Read more
Is there anything science won’t tackle? The latest question neuroscientists are taking on is, “What makes something beautiful?” We're checking in with the scientists, the philosophers and the artists in this hour.Read more
Have you ever wished you cared less or been told to develop a thicker skin? For the polite and anxious among us, suddenly being immune to criticism and embarrassment might seem to be a superpower. In this hour, we’re exploring...Read more
Take a stroll through a natural history museum these days and you’ll not only see dinosaurs, you’ll smell them. Get a whiff of T-rex’s halitosis, his dinner leftovers, and, well, how should I put this – his droppings, too! In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, museums that tickle your...Read more
Do you ever have a right to kill? What about Israeli agents who assassinate Hamas leaders? Or suicide bombers who blow up their enemies? Do the ends justify the means? William Vollman has written a three-thousand page treatise on the morality of violence. In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more
Global pandemics, alien invasions, the Second Coming....why do we love imagining the end of the world? We examine apocalyptic thinking – from vampire movies to the Book of Revelation.Read more
Everybody needs a little help, and some of us need a lot. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll meet some helpers - and they’re not all human. We’ll visit a stable where they do equine assisted therapy, and we’ll hear from a writer who’s a volunteer fireman in his small hometown...Read more
The atom bomb's ability to kill people makes it a literal dangerous idea. But there are other kinds of dangerous ideas -- ideas that are contrary, counterintutive and just plain unconventional. It's that kind of dangerous idea that we explore in this hour.Read more
Think you know your history? Then, of course, you remember Martin Luther King's famous "If I Had A Hammer" speech. And you know that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife...and she was at rest on Mount Arafat. And you don't need me to remind you that Marie Curie won the Noel Prize for inventing the...Read more
When he was 10-years-old, Brian Raftery realized he couldn't sing. Despite his lack of vocal prowess, Raftery is obsessed with karaoke. He's traveled around the world to trace karaoke's evolution from a cult fad to a multimillion-dollar industry. In this hour, we'll explore the world of karaoke...Read more
Are you an experimental innovator who works by trial and error and is most creative later in life, like Cezanne? Or are you a conceptual young genius like Picasso? We'll explore a theory that those are the two life cycles of artistic creativity.Read more
So much of our daily lives gets turned into data -- our online shopping purchases, phone calls, family photos. We're all surrounded by data, and learning how to harness it could be more transformative than we realize. This week, a look at the new data specialists using their knowledge of numbers...Read more
Magic is an art, a philosophy, and a way of seeing the world. In this hour, we learn magic tricks from a stage magician, travel to India's last magician's colony, explore shamanic magic, and talk with magical novelists Erin Morgenstern (Night Circus) and Deborah Harkness (...Read more
The holidays can be challenging. All that togetherness can be like squishing a passel of porcupines into a sardine can. In other words - not nice. On the other hand, there is a bright side. Po Bronson found it in the lives of families across the country. In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more
How far would you go for something to eat? Paris? Mom’s house? The drive-through at Mickey D’s? I bet you wouldn’t swim thousands of miles, from Mexico to the Arctic, just to scarf up mud from the bottom of the ocean. Whales do, and they’ve been doing it every year for eons. In this hour...Read more
Many Americans think the story of Cuba begins and ends with Fidel Castro. But the soul of the Cuban Revolution belonged to the charismatic, Romantic guerilla hero Ernesto “Che” Guevara. To the Best of Our Knowledge revisits the Sixties and counts the private costs of that era’s social gains. ...Read more
After 11 years of isolation in New England, Nathan Zuckerman returns to New York City. Now 71, Zuckerman discovers that a lot has changed. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'll meet Nathan Zuckerman's creator, the renowned novelist, Philip Roth. And we'll find out how both Roth...Read more
A husband, looking at his wife in a mirror maze, asks “are you coming or going?” She answers “Yes, yes.” Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll look at the history of mirrors, as we reflect on the question “How do you know who you are?”Read more
A police officer's shooting of a young, unarmed Afrian American man here in Madison joins a long list of national tragedies. So we devote this hour to conversations about race and justice.Read more
Samuel Adams couldn’t ride a horse to save his life, and had a tendency to drool. As if that’s not bad enough, John Adams was a roly-poly fellow who spent his free time fantasizing about becoming the next American King. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, a revisionist’s take on the...Read more