In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, some of the most critical questions you’ll ever face. Who are you? What does your life mean? And how did you decide who you wanted to be? We’ll hear from Rabbi Harold Kushner, Senator John McCain and novelist Tim O’Brien. We’ll talk about making...Read more
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Episode Archives
We’re all a little bit wild inside, but how often do we let it out? If you've been spending too much time indoors in front of a screen, maybe it's time for a dose of the real thing. This week,stories of people who found strength, wonder and joy by heading into the wild.Read more
For the first time in American history, young women are choosing independence over marriage. Single women today outnumber married women and have more political power than ever before. It's what Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Sanger and other feminist icons predicted. This hour, how...Read more
Calling Lynne Cox a swimmer is like calling Mohammed Ali a tough guy. At age fourteen, she swam to Catalina Island from mainland California. At eighteen she swam between the islands of New Zealand. Years later, with miles of hard swims behind her, she turned her eye to the unthinkable - the...Read more
Next time you catch an old episode of the Flying Nun, you may want to pay attention. Because today’s convents are closing. The average nun is seventy years old, and even devout sisters often have to bite their tongues when they talk about the pope. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge...Read more
What if our lives were like DVDs? What if we had alternative endings to look forward to, instead of death? We explore our lust for immortality. And we look at the many alternative endings that Ernest Hemingway wrote for his classic novel, "A Farewell to Arms."
When Rae Armantrout recently won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry the first thing she said was curious. Read them out loud, she said.
In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, poetry out loud. Rae Armantrout reads her poems, Natalie Merchant sings our favorite classic poems, and Bobby...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
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
There’s a powerful new voting bloc in America. They’re white, working class, and they live in places that have been left behind. We'll talk with "Hillbilly Elegy" author J.D. Vance, and country music star Brandy Clark joins us in the studio to play some music and talk about her hometown.Read more
As America endures the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the hardships our grandparents and great grandparents lived through are suddenly relevant again. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, stories from the Great Depression – advice from the generation that survived...Read more
Graphic novelist Neil Gaiman has a talent for creating strange and fantastic worlds. His “Sandman” comic books helped spawn the Goth movement, and with characters called Dream and Death, he created a new mythology. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll visit with Neil Gaiman at...Read more
Who are you?
A man? A woman?
Are you a success? A failure?
A parent? An athlete? A wallflower?
A Christian? A Buddhist? A baker?
If we are only a collection of stories about ourselves... what's the truth of who "we" are?
Looking for UNCUT...Read more
Cameron Sinclair has something to say to architects out there: design like you give a damn. The founder of Architects for Humanity says the houses and office buildings we build today will literally shape the world our children inherit. So give a damn. In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more
Eighty per cent of Americans say they believe in heaven. But when they're asked to describe it, many are at a loss for words. Do they think that there's another universe in the sky or do they believe that heaven is something more abstract and metaphorical? We'll explore our enduring fascination...Read more
With hundreds of millions of people moving into cities, we're wondering what shapes urban cultures. In this hour, Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk talks about how Istanbul shaped his writing. One historian argues that early liberal philosophies from Amsterdam shaped the United States. And we check in...Read more
Outlet malls are America's number-one travel destination. They get more visitors every year than Times Square, Disney World and the Grand Canyon combined. We definitely have a lust for low prices. But this discount culture comes with a high cost. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'...Read more
Are humans really unique? Not as much as we think, says renowned primatologist Frans de Waal. So what do our ape cousins - chimps & bonobos - think and feel? Also, the remarkable story of a feral child who lived with monkeys.
Welcome to the next generation of African writers. They’re young, multi-lingual, and breaking out of all the old literary boxes. This hour, why Africa has one of the most exciting literary scenes on the planet.Read more
Imagine losing your lover, mother, stepfather and sister in less than eight months. That's what happened to country music singer/songwriter Carlene Carter. Her mother is June Carter Cash and her stepfather is Johnny Cash. Carlene Carter drew on all of this loss and tragedy to create a new album...Read more
It will go down as one of the most amazing archeological discoveries in history. Homo naledi - a new species of human-like fossils found in South Africa - is already rewriting the story of human evolution. These 15 skeletons are the largest cache of pre-human bones ever found. But so far,...Read more
In Japan’s ancient Edo period, the math geek was born – but it’s not who you think! Samurai, women, children and farmers were among the original creators of the sangaku - Japanese temple geometry. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, math for the gods. Also, can numbers unlock the...Read more
By August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we ask a blunt question: Did we win? We're not the only ones asking. The phrase "did we win the war in Iraq" has been searched over 7 million times on Google. The war has cost an estimated 860...Read more
The US is in the middle of its longest and most expensive war to date. Not the war in Iraq – the war on drugs. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge – we’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars fighting for a “drug-free” America, yet heroin, cocaine and other illegal drugs are cheaper...Read more