Choying Drolma didn't want to get married. So, she chose the only option available to a Tibetan girl – she became a Buddhist nun. In this hour of To The Best Of Our Knowledge, how music and the monastic life drew one woman beyond Tibet and into the world. Also, the making of a Western yogi. And...Read more
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Episode Archives
Laurence Sterne's 18th Century novel "Tristram Shandy" is a staple of college English Literature courses everywhere. The 600-odd page book-within-a-book-within-a-book is filled to the brim with digressions, stunts and frazzled chronology. For many it's unreadable. For sure it's unfilmable. This...Read more
Original Air Date:
March 12, 2006
Rebuilding has gone on in New Orleans, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, and other places devastated by natural disasters. But what kind of structures are going up? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, green architects and designers talk about building for the future. Also, a look at the latest...Read more
Original Air Date:
February 26, 2006
What's the big idea? Well, it turns out there are three of them...the soul, Europe and the experiment. Those are the three big ideas that Peter Watson uses to focus his history of ideas. In this hour of To The Best Of Our Knowledge, we'll talk about the history of ideas...from fire to Freud.Read more
Original Air Date:
February 26, 2006
"Story of O" scandalized a nation. And a nation not easily scandalized - France! The anonymous tale of complete submission was called vulgar by some, brilliant by others. In any case, what kind of person could write such a book? In this hour of To The Best Of Our Knowledge, we'll find out the...Read more
Original Air Date:
February 12, 2006
Ice is amazing stuff. A few cubes in a glass and you have a refreshing drink. A light glaze on a highway and you have a tragedy waiting to happen. In this hour of To The Best Of Our Knowledge, a visit with a woman who knows pretty much all there is to know about ice. And, where there's ice,...Read more
Original Air Date:
January 22, 2006
Do animals have culture? The orangutans of Sumatra certainly do. They've learned how to fish honey out of tiny termite nests, and to scoop the pulpy food out of razor-sharp fruits. What's more, they've passed on this knowledge to their offspring. Now, scientists think these primates may offer...Read more
Original Air Date:
January 15, 2006
What happens when we die? We focus on death, and how an honest reckoning with the Grim Reaper can help us live a better life.Read more
Original Air Date:
December 18, 2005
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
Original Air Date:
November 20, 2005
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
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
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
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
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