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To The Best Of Our Knowledge

“Good fences make good neighbors." Robert Frost writes in Mending Wall.  Is he right? Maybe homemade chocolate chip cookies or lending a lawnmower are more neighborly. I guess it depends on who your neighbors are.Read more

Fitbit and notebooks

A few years ago, the notion of the "quantified self" was the domain of a relatively small group of hackers, engineers, and computer enthusiasts. Now, under its many names—lifelogging, self-tracking, fitness monitoring—it's become one of the fastest growing segments of the technology...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

You’re part of the “Freedom Movement,” - a group of anti-globalization anarchists.  You’re blowing up security stations to fight “The Corporation.” Sounds like a scene out of Seattle during the World Trade Organization protests of a few years ago, doesn’t it?  But it’s not.  It’s...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

There’s an old joke from the former Soviet Union.  Roughly translated it goes like this.  The communists were liars.  Everything they said about communism was untrue.  Unfortunately, everything they said about capitalism was true.  Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, considering...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

It's been said that "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." But the rock critic Robert Palmer didn't have any trouble. Palmer wrote effortlessly about all kinds of music – rock and roll, blues, jazz and world music. The fact that Palmer was also a musician didn't hurt. In...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Science and the Search for Meaning: Five Questions, Part 3: Does the Soul Still Matter?

For centuries, we’ve been told the soul is what makes each of us unique.  It’s why we have moral responsibility.  And it’s the part of us that lives on after we die. ...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Who did the press hail as the conqueror of the air?  Alberto Santos-Dumont, who flew around the Eiffel Tower while Jules Verne and H.G. Wells watched and wondered.  He even tied his “personal airship” to the lamp posts outside restaurants in Paris, and worked to revolutionize transportation. ...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Are humans innately violent? If you stripped the civilization out of us, just how bad would we be?Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Salman Rushdie's new novel is called "The Enchantress of Florence." It's a tale of two cities, consisting of stories tucked inside stories tucked inside stories...along the lines of Scheherazade's stories of "One Thousand and One Nights." In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Salman...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

On February 13th, 1945 Kurt Vonnegut and other American POWs were hiding in a cellar during the firebombing of Dresden.  They were remarkably lucky, as 135,000 people died that night.  During the bombing one soldier said, “I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight?”  Nobody laughed but, as...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Russia and China.  They were the two Communist giants.  Now each is carving out a new future.  By most accounts, China is doing it better.  It’s still an authoritarian state, but the economy if booming.  And Russia?  Well, it’s capitalism’s wild...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Atheists have been called the most hated minority in America, but recent atheist manifestos by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris have all made the bestseller list. Have these atheists changed our thinking about religion? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the New...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Read any good life-list books lately? How about "1,000 Places You Must Visit Before You Die?" or "1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die." There's no shortage of "life-list" books to read these days. What's next? "1,000 Life-List Books You Must Read Before You Die"? Probably. We'll explore...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Think that a TV series based on the Coen Brothers' 1996 black comedy crime thriller, "Fargo," is a bad idea? Then you haven't seen "Fargo," The TV series.  Creator and showrunner Noah Hawley talks about how he transformed the iconic film into the critically-acclaimed, award-winning TV series.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Survival.

The oldest living things on the planet and a list of everything you’ll need to know after the apocalypse.

But there’s one thing no one can survive. And that’s death. Or maybe not...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Space, the final frontier. But is science fiction the final frontier when it comes to being a literature of ideas? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'll wax philosophical about science fiction with two of the genre's greatest writers -- George R.R. Martin and Ursula K. Le Guin....Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Have you ever heard of Dan Rice?  Probably not.  But if you were alive around the middle of the nineteenth century chances are you would know his name.  That’s when Dan Rice made his mark in “the show business.”  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the life and times of Dan Rice.  And...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

With shows in Milan, Paris and New York, it's fashion month across the Western World, and people are turning their eyes to runways. But does fashion really matter? Truth is, the garment industry is worth trillions of dollars, and employs millions of people. In this hour, we take a look at the...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

John Brown was a terrorist, a man who led a raid in Kansas that butchered five unarmed men. He was also, arguably, of the few white people in 1850s America who was totally color blind. According to a new book he was "the man who killed slavery and sparked the Civil War." So, was John Brown a "...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Albert Einstein died more than half a century ago, but there's still a raging debate over what he thought about religion. He once said "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, what exactly did Einstein conclude about...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

American leaders say the fight against Osama bin Laden is not a religious war, but are they right?  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the deep divide between fundamentalists and the secular world.  Also, a look at true believers in America - from the Holy Rollers of...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Good house-keeping used to go hand-in-hand with good citizenship. And remember the phrase, "cleanliness is next to godliness"? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, thoughts on the art of keeping house. We'll talk about the science of dust, meet the Queen of Clutter, and hear novelist...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

In the wake of a number of high profile shootings over the past year, people are talking about policing, racism, and injustice. But there's one issue we don't really talk all that much about: fear.This hour, we take a closer look at negative stereotypes about African American men, how those...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

"Shhh… I have a secret… Now, I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you." Classic spy joke – but not so funny when it's true. In this hour of To The Best of Our Knowledge, we'll go the dark side of secrecy - warrantless wiretapping, secret CIA prisons, "extraordinary rendition,"...Read more

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