The Meaning of Life
Part One
Where do we come from? It's a fair question. Physicist Michio Kaku says we're the reverb of a Big Bang from another universe. No, says poet Stephen Mitchell – the answer's in our creation stories. But...Read more
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Episode Archives
What makes a classic? Well, for one thing, it’s got to have some staying power. The Bob Dylan song, “Like A Rolling Stone,” certainly fits the bill. It was recorded more than fifty years ago but it’s still considered by many to be the greatest pop single ever made. In...Read more
Original Air Date:
November 13, 2005
Linda Ellerbee believes in taking big bites. And she's not just talking about food. Ellerbee likes to take big bites out of elsewhere. In fact, that's the way she defines adventure. In this hour of the Peabody Award-winning program To The Best Of Our Knowledge, journalist Linda Ellerbee tells us...Read more
Original Air Date:
September 04, 2005
Can white guys be hip? Many have tried but only a few have achieved true hepcat status - Bob Dylan, Lenny Bruce, maybe Jack Kerouac. But compare them to Miles Davis and you have to wonder if they're really just hipster wannabes. We'll dig into the history of hip, and see how it's so often tied...Read more
Original Air Date:
August 21, 2005
Forget the Middle East. Robert Kaplan says the war in Iraq is just a blip on the radar screen. The next U.S. military challenge will be in the Pacific - against China. In this hour of the Peabody Award Winning program To the Best of Our Knowledge we’ll look at a changing China...Read more
Original Air Date:
August 14, 2005
Middle English isn’t what it used to be. Add a back-beat, some high-flying rhymes, and you’ve got a hot new version of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales.” In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the madcap transformation of one of literature’s oldest classics from history to hip hop...Read more
Original Air Date:
May 15, 2005
Mountain climber Warren MacDonald was 32 when his doctors told him he’d spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. It’s not that he didn’t believe them. After all, he’d just lost both his legs. But Warren MacDonald refused to be defeated by the worst news he could ever hear. He...Read more
Original Air Date:
April 10, 2005
There’s no writer who’s hipper, more self-consciously knowing, than David Foster Wallace. But even he can take only so much ironic hipness. He says it is relentlessly corrosive to the soul. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, assessing the state of fiction, with David...Read more
Original Air Date:
April 03, 2005
Mark Sundeen got an offer he couldn't refuse. A publisher paid him upfront to write a book on bullfighting in Spain. Mark doesn't speak Spanish, knows nothing about bullfighting, and hates to travel, but that didn't stop him from writing the book. He just made the whole thing up. In this hour of...Read more
Original Air Date:
March 13, 2005
What do you do when your seventh-grade gym teacher orders some of your classmates to pile on top of you and wallop you as you leave the locker-room showers? If you're Paul Feig, you turn your adolescent misadventures into a critically-acclaimed, Emmy Award-winning television series called...Read more
Original Air Date:
March 06, 2005
Forty years ago Tom Wolfe pioneered a snappy, "you are there" kind of reporting - what he called "the new journalism." Now he writes novels, but Wolfe says he's still a reporter at heart, tackling tough issues like class and social status. He says most American fiction is self-indulgent - cut...Read more
Original Air Date:
February 06, 2005
When you hear the word "globalization," you probably don't think of the sport of soccer. But Franklin Foer does. He traveled around the globe to explore this connection, attending soccer matches and interviewing his heroes. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Franklin Foer will tell us...Read more
Original Air Date:
January 30, 2005
He was the Charlie Chaplin of Mexico, a little man dressed in baggy black pants, a red hat folded like a taco, and a wisp of a mustache. He stole the show as the valet in "Around the World in 80 Days" and earned his own word in the Spanish dictionary. Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge,...Read more
Original Air Date:
January 30, 2005
Yoga is booming in the US, meditation is now a commonplace practice, and Buddhism is busting at the seams right alongside mainstream American religions. But where does this new shift in spiritual culture come from? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we examine the spiritual...Read more
Original Air Date:
January 16, 2005
John F. Kennedy once said that what unites Americans and Canadians is far greater than what divides us. Try telling that to the writers behind the animated television series "South Park." In one episode, Canada is portrayed as a mysterious land similar to Oz. The Academy Award-nominated song...Read more
Original Air Date:
January 09, 2005
Why do bad things happen to good people? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we'll explore the question: a random act of chance? God's will? Or, as Bob Dylan put it, "a simple twist of fate"?Read more
Original Air Date:
January 02, 2005
Newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst was extremely afraid of death. So much so that when one of the palm trees at his San Simeon estate died unexpectedly, the gardeners painted its leaves green until it could be replaced while Hearst was away. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we...Read more
Original Air Date:
January 02, 2005
Book critic Dale Peck is known as "the hatchet man." He's trashed some of the biggest names in American fiction: Don DeLillo, Rick Mood, and David Foster Wallace. He's even called James Joyce's Ulysses "a hoax upon literature." Peck's brutal reviews have raised a basic question: can a critic be...Read more
Original Air Date:
December 05, 2004
Join us for stories about bread in this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge.Read more
Original Air Date:
November 14, 2004
May 9th is Mother’s Day and this year we asked a few moms to share the plain unvarnished truth about life with kids. Motherhood isn’t all sexy stars on the covers of magazines. It’s also baby throw-up, poopy diapers and sulky teenagers. In this hour, the joys of motherhood -...Read more
Original Air Date:
May 09, 2004
Masculinity is back. The side of masculinity that stayed home and watched TV during the feminist revolution enjoys “The Man Show” on Comedy Central reveling in beer and babes, while Hooters is a commonplace chain across the country. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, is the...Read more
Original Air Date:
September 28, 2003
When Geraldine Hughes was growing up, violence was a way of life. There were bombs, guns, and slayings right out the back door. Then Hollywood showed her a way out. In this hour of To the Best of our Knowledge, growing up in a war zone. Also, “Reading Lolita in Tehran” -...Read more
Original Air Date:
April 20, 2003
Imagine that you’re a writer for “The New Yorker” and your book about one of your articles is turned into a screenplay. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Susan Orlean tells us what it’s like to one day look up at the big screen and see herself being played by Academy Award winning...Read more
Original Air Date:
March 09, 2003
We’re so used to the never-ending commercials and ads brought to us by radio, television, and magazines, that advertisers are scrambling to find revolutionary new ways to attract our attention.Read more
Original Air Date:
January 12, 2003