Comfort food’s selling like hotcakes. People haven’t forgotten the importance of good nutrition, but these days we crave things that’ll make us feel better. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, seeking solace in a scary world. Diane Ackerman talks about her garden, and...Read more
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Episode Archives
You think Greta Garbo was good at ducking the paparazzi? She could have learned a thing or two from the giant squid. No one has ever seen one alive. Zoologist Clyde Roper should know, he’s spent most of his life in pursuit of this low profile ocean monster. In this hour...Read more
Original Air Date:
November 25, 2001
Most of us probably have heard of someone else who shares our name, and there are probably others, but unlike British comedian Dave Gorman, we haven’t traveled 24 thousand miles and spent thousands of dollars to meet all of them. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, magnificent...Read more
Original Air Date:
November 25, 2001
Maybe home is where you live, raise your family and mow the grass. Or it's where you grew up. Or where the whole clan gathers for major holidays. Wherever home is, it's never mattered more. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, stories of home, from the Texas hill country to the ‘hood....Read more
Original Air Date:
November 04, 2001
We’ve got a million expressions for death: kicking the bucket, checking out, buying the farm - but what do we do when words aren’t enough? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, artisans are finding new passages through grief, from graffiti memorials to handcrafted coffins. ...Read more
Original Air Date:
October 28, 2001
Sometimes you can’t separate beauty from brutality in the African bush. Safari guide Mark Ross is still figuring it out. In 1999, Ross and a group of tourists were kidnaped by Rwandan rebels. What happened that day changed the rest of his life. Next time on To the Best of Our...Read more
Original Air Date:
September 16, 2001
Organic food is now a booming billion dollar industry. And today’s top chefs are its biggest cheerleaders. They say locally-grown, organic food will help save the planet. But not everyone agrees. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, an argument for why celebrity...Read more
Original Air Date:
September 02, 2001
Have you ever had one of those moments when you know you really should think about a different line of work? For Daniel Pink, it was a scorching hot June day in Washington, D.C. when he almost threw up on Al Gore. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Daniel Pink’s career as...Read more
Original Air Date:
September 02, 2001
A couple of years ago writer Michael Pollan was curious about the world of illegal, underground marijuana gardens. What he found surprised him. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Mary Jane goes high tech. A look at drug cultures past and present, a visit to a rave,...Read more
Original Air Date:
August 26, 2001
Suppose you grew up with one of the world’s great scientists. How would that shape your view of the world? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, an intimate look at the great conservationist Aldo Leopold: we’ll talk with three of his children. Also, comic novelist David...Read more
Original Air Date:
August 19, 2001
Do you ever have a right to kill? What about Israeli agents who assassinate Hamas leaders? Or suicide bombers who blow up their enemies? Do the ends justify the means? William Vollman has written a three-thousand page treatise on the morality of violence. In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more
Everybody needs a little help, and some of us need a lot. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll meet some helpers - and they’re not all human. We’ll visit a stable where they do equine assisted therapy, and we’ll hear from a writer who’s a volunteer fireman in his small hometown...Read more
Think you know your history? Then, of course, you remember Martin Luther King's famous "If I Had A Hammer" speech. And you know that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife...and she was at rest on Mount Arafat. And you don't need me to remind you that Marie Curie won the Noel Prize for inventing the...Read more
When he was 10-years-old, Brian Raftery realized he couldn't sing. Despite his lack of vocal prowess, Raftery is obsessed with karaoke. He's traveled around the world to trace karaoke's evolution from a cult fad to a multimillion-dollar industry. In this hour, we'll explore the world of karaoke...Read more
Are you an experimental innovator who works by trial and error and is most creative later in life, like Cezanne? Or are you a conceptual young genius like Picasso? We'll explore a theory that those are the two life cycles of artistic creativity.Read more
The Back to the Land spirit of the 60s lives on today, in the proliferation of farmer's markets, and the increased interest in sustainability and growing our own food. From the fight to end food waste in America to the art of living small, we'll find out what the Back to the Land spirit...Read more
Did you know that Teddy Roosevelt was one of nine U.S. presidents who had hooks for hands? Well, that's just one of countless facts included in John Hodgman's new almanac. But, as it turns out, all of these facts are fake. In this hour of the Peabody Award-winning To the Best of Our Knowledge,...Read more
Whether black from a bottomless cup or as a Frappuccino mocha skim latte, it’s our culture’s elixir, coffee. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, java, joe, or a cup of mud. Most of us drink it everyday, but few of us know the effects it has on the world’s economy, or even...Read more
Here’s the truth: the wild romance will probably end. Wedding vows, intimacy, heartache… they can have a long shelf-life. But those butterflies in your stomach? Wild libidinal longings? They tend to quiet over time.
So what happens after the romance ends? From passionate marriage, to ...Read more
If you ever find yourself on a dark country road in Ireland, bring along some salt, red thread, and a cross. That’s what you’ll need to protect yourself from “the other crowd.” Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, the fairies of Ireland. They’re magical, vengeful, and still alive and...Read more
Many Americans think the story of Cuba begins and ends with Fidel Castro. But the soul of the Cuban Revolution belonged to the charismatic, Romantic guerilla hero Ernesto “Che” Guevara. To the Best of Our Knowledge revisits the Sixties and counts the private costs of that era’s social gains. ...Read more
A police officer's shooting of a young, unarmed Afrian American man here in Madison joins a long list of national tragedies. So we devote this hour to conversations about race and justice.Read more
A husband, looking at his wife in a mirror maze, asks “are you coming or going?” She answers “Yes, yes.” Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll look at the history of mirrors, as we reflect on the question “How do you know who you are?”Read more
Violence may be a national scourge, but an awful lot of people devour shoot-‘em-up movies and video games. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the seduction of violence. Why, for instance, four and five-year-old children love fantasy games where they kill each other. Also, the...Read more