They can have sex twenty times a day. Their teeth are harder than steel. And the ones that live in the city are twice as big as their country cousins. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll talk rats with Robert Sullivan, who spent a year investigating rats in a New York City...Read more
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Episode Archives
Say you’re in Vegas playing high-stakes poker. You haven’t slept in days. To make matters worse, you’re being stared down by two of the best poker players in the world. And...you’re bluffing. So, you bet it all to bring the pot to well over a million dollars. In this hour of To the Best of...Read more
Electrons to Enlightenment
Part One
Do science and religion have to be at war with each other? Francis Collins doesn't think so. The head of the Human Genome Project, is also an evangelical Christian. But biologist and atheist...Read more
Scientists tell us optimistic people are happier, healthier and even live longer than pessimists. But it's hard to maintain an optimistic frame of mind in the face of daily reports of war, famine, disease and injustice. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, evidence that the world is...Read more
Can you imagine spending a week at an airport? By choice? Alain de Botton did exactly that. He tells us about it, as we explore airports and air travel.Read more
When and how did the universe begin? Why is there something rather than nothing? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'll tackle the big questions about the universe. From Stephen Hawking's latest ideas about parallel universes and theories of everything to the quantum physics of...Read more
Pop culture writer Chuck Klosterman has interviewed some of the biggest names in the celebrity constellation. But getting a celebrity to talk is no easy task. In fact, Klosterman says it's not in the celebrity's best interest to do any interviews at all. In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more
Future Perfect: Dreamers, Schemers & Visionaries
Part Two
It's not hard to see why economics is called "the dismal science" – after we were blind-sided by the worst financial meltdown in decades. But economics does have its...Read more
What would you do if being a woman just didn't feel right? What if being a man didn't feel right either?
In the West, a few people are choosing to leave gender behind all together. Call them gender queer, third gender or gender guerillas… people are challenging all of our notions of “he...Read more
Mel Brooks’ play “The Producers” is Broadway’s biggest hit in years, but it’s not for everyone – not at a hundred bucks a ticket. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, does theater still matter? We’ll talk with playwright Wendy Wasserstein and critic Frank Rich. Also, Samuel Beckett’s...Read more
We love books. We line them on shelves like totems. We pile them next to our beds in some hope they'll affect our dreams. For many of us, books are sacred objects. And sometimes, just sometimes, they’re even magical.Read more
Everything you know about Indians is wrong. That's the starting point for Paul Chaat Smith, who says it's time to hit the reset button and re-think everything we know about Native American culture. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Comedian Howie Miller says that's what he does as a...Read more
What do you do if you're a struggling artist in search of recognition? Well, if you're Lynn Hershman Leeson, you write reviews of your work under pseudonyms and get them published in local newspapers. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'll find out how Hershman Leeson uses her art...Read more
Light has long been a powerful metaphor for holiness and truth, and rightly so. From the stars in the sky to the bulbs in our homes, light touches every facet of human life. This hour, a look at the natural, artificial, and symbolic light that colors our history -- and our future....Read more
Whatever happened to psychoanalysis? It used to be the most influential science of the mind, but today its founder, Sigmund Freud, just looks like a sex-obsessed old man. Analyst Adam Phillips says we got Freud all wrong; he remains a radical thinker if we know how to read him. This hour...Read more
"Every time a bell rings, an Angel gets its wings." At this time of year you're likely to hear that line over and over again, as Jimmy Stewart plows through "It's a Wonderful Life." But he's not the only one who's seen an angel - in or out of the movies. In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more
Peggy Orenstein didn't want children. At least she didn't think so. Children killed careers and turned smart, professional women into drones. Well, that's what Orenstein was afraid of, anyway. But after a death in the family, she changed her mind. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, to...Read more
Dan Janzen is one of the world’s leading tropical biologists. He’s spent forty years working in the Cost Rican jungle, and there’s one creature that fascinates him above all others - the moth. Janzen has found nine-thousand different species of moth in Cost Rica. In this hour of To the Best...Read more
When’s the last time you were wonderstruck? Would your life be richer for more wonder? What wonder is, how to make it, where to find it and what it does for us... we all get gently awed in this hour.Read more
When disaster strikes, photojournalists run toward it instead of away. Usually, with a camera in hand. Their job is to get up close to tragedy and danger, to document things we need to see, in the hopes of somehow making a difference. This hour we’re talking with some of the world’s great...Read more
From Boston to Berkeley, people are going raw. Vegetarians, vegans and Atkins followers are old hat – the hottest trend in food is cool. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, why the raw food movement has people turning off their ovens and trumpeting the healing powers of uncooked food...Read more
Most people want to do the right thing. But what if your survival depended on doing something wrong? Something deeply repellent. Something evil. And what if the police told you to? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the consequences of moral choices, from Nazi Germany to American...Read more
Oh, city living. The crush of people, the crowd of buildings, the empty lots, the garbage-strewn slums.
More than half of us will be living urban by 2050. How will we manage?Read more