It sounds like a deal in the ads - submit your poems, have them set to music, and start a fascinating new career as a hit songwriter. Of course your chance of success is slim to none and you have to pay for the privilege. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the strange subculture of...Read more
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Episode Archives
Linus has his security blanket. Renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks had the Periodic Table of the Elements. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, My Chemical Life. Oliver Sacks remembers a childhood steeped in chemistry. Also, Primo Levi survives Auschwitz, through chemistry. And,...Read more
According to a "New York Times" poll he's the third most famous person in Japan, right behind Hirohito and Bruce Lee. But the truth is he's not even a person, he's a giant green, radioactive lizard named Godzilla. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we'll explore the history of...Read more
Trick or Treat! These days, that means handing out candy, but once upon a time Halloween revelers often played nasty tricks. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the real history of Halloween. Also, why stories about monsters, ghouls and the supernatural keep popping...Read more
Ira Glass has helped reinvent storytelling on the radio. But he says it took him years to learn how to tell a good radio tale. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Ira Glass ont the art of telling stories. We’ll also visit The Moth – the mecca of storytelling in New York City. And...Read more
In case it’s not obvious: we LOVE books on TTBOOK. But we’re also incredibly picky about which books we choose for interviews.Read more
Do you believe that the government is keeping secrets from us? That the military is hiding evidence of alien visitations? Maybe you have a hard line to the truth -- or maybe you're a sucker for conspiracy theories. Today, we explore why we love conspiracy theories and why we believe them.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.
Andre Agassi says he always hated tennis, even though it's what made him rich and famous. But maybe that's not surprising, considering how his father used to browbeat him into hitting 2500 balls a day when he was seven years old, and later sent him off to a tennis academy, which Agassi calls a "...Read more
Henry David Thoreau died 150 years ago, and he’s still a great American icon. But have you ever wondered exactly why? Thoreau wasn’t exactly the model environmentalist he’s often made out to be. And his account of living at Walden Pond is partly fictionalized; he spent nine years writing and...Read more
Canal Street flooded with so much water it looks like an actual canal. People mourning the loss of their homes and loved ones. The Gulf Coast will never be the same after the devastation that Hurricane Katrina has caused. In this hour of the Peabody-Award-Winning program To the Best of Our...Read more
New Orleans is famous for a lot of things...many of them musical. It's the birthplace of jazz, the cradle of rhythm and blues. The home of the brass bands. So it's no wonder that New Orleans is known as "the City that Care Forgot." In this hour of To the Best of Our...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
Americans change their dining room tables about as often as they change their spouses, about one and a half times in their lives. IKEA isn’t concerned about your marriage, but it does want to change the way you look at your furniture, and yourself. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge...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
What we eat can often say a lot about us. But why do we consider certain foods more appealing than others? In this hour, we look a the trends and tastemakers who shape our feelings about food.Read more
Scientists are discovering how plants secretly talk to each other. How smart is your geranium, and what does a tree know? Today, we're eavesdropping on the secret language of plants.Read more
We are connected -- probably connected in ways neither of us has dreamed of. Forget six degrees of separation; on Facebook we have only 3.74. And that's just today.Read more
It’s primitive and brutal and a lot of people want to see it banned. But it’s a 500 million dollar a year industry that’s not about to throw in the towel. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, a hard look at boxing. And how the sport influenced the English language. Also, one woman’s...Read more
Science and the Search for Meaning: Five Questions, Part One: What is Life?
Scientists can now explain virtually every stage of the evolutionary process. But there’s a basic question that still mystifies even the best scientists: How did life first begin on Earth...Read more
Pragmatic.Problem-solving. And non-partisan -- Mayors just might be the next best hope for democracy.Read more
If you've ever been alone on Valentine's Day, you probably know how isolating it can be to feel like the only single person in a world full of happy couples. But being alone doesn't have to be shameful. This hour, we're changing the script and making the case for the lovelorn, the loners, the...Read more