Crime may not pay but writing crime fiction does. Just ask the Swedish writer, Henning Mankell. Or those who write "Tartan Noir"...Scottish detective fiction. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'll explore Northern Europe's fictional crime wave. Also, Roger Ebert on film noir.Read more
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Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh made his name when he broke the story of the My Lai Massacre. Looking back you have to wonder: why did Lt. William Calley tell Hersh he’d killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians? On this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge Hersh says “because I asked him...Read more
The sky is black. The wind’s picking up. The hurricane is coming. Nothing you can do about it. But wait! Scientists from Dyn-o-Storm fly into the hurricane. They release a chemical that stops the hurricane dead in its tracks. Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, should we? Just...Read more
With the emergence of barefoot running, the sport suddenly is red hot again. But barefoot or not, are human bodies really born to run? We'll check in on the science or runner's high this hour, and try to unlock the secrets of the Kenyans - the fastest people on earth. Also, Olympic medalist...Read more
Imagine a huge corporation running like a well-oiled machine – with no one in charge. That’s how ant colonies work, with not a single leader among 10,000 members. How does anything get done? In this hour of to the Best of Our Knowledge, a look inside a colony of stinging...Read more
Jacques Derrida and the philosophical movement known as deconstruction were once the rage on college campuses. Those days have passed, but deconstruction's influence is everywhere. We talk with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who first translated Derrida's landmark book "Of Grammatology" into...Read more
It’s been described as the Nobel Prize of motion pictures: the coveted Academy Award. One billion people around the world watch the Oscars on TV every year. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the history and politics of the Academy Awards. Is Oscar a white man’s award? Also, Don...Read more
In the mid-80's the metal band Winger topped the charts with hits like "Seventeen." Then Grunge came along and left bands like Winger in the dust. Now, Kip Winger is back on top with a new CD that debuted at #1 on the music charts. Only this time, he's rocking the classical charts....Read more
Governors are slashing state spending, and the President has put some of his own party's favorite programs on the chopping block. But how much of the new austerity is really necessary, and how much is politics? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, is austerity a dangerous idea? Join...Read more
He was a wandering pilgrim who talked to birds, healed the sick and tamed wild beasts. He was also the closest thing to a medieval rock star - a man so revered in his lifetime that people tore at this clothes, desperate to touch a living saint. Today, St. Francis of Assisi is admired by both...Read more
Modern medicine can treat disease at a molecular—or even atomic – level. And today’s surgeons can fix things the naked eye can’t even see. But there’s one thing every patient wants that no technology in the world can provide: compassion. In this hour, doctors talk about the...Read more
Ingrid Betancourt was kidnapped by Marxist rebels in Columbia while in the midst of her presidential campaign. She spent the next six and a half years in captivity chained, humiliated and abused. But her greatest fear was not death. It was losing her humanity. In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more
Future Perfect: Dreamers, Schemers & Visionaries
Part Three
Our environment is in trouble. It's not hard to imagine global catastrophe as problems like climate change and overpopulation take their toll. But there's always hope...Read more
Novelist John Updike doesn’t like doing interviews. At least until the interview starts. Then he realizes it’s kind of flattering to talk about himself. Now, he’s written a novel about a famous artist being interviewed. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, John Updike on why an...Read more
Americans are from Mars, and Europeans are from Venus. At least that’s the view of foreign policy analyst Robert Kagan. He says Europeans no longer believe in military power, quite unlike America’s leaders. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the growing split between Europe and...Read more
Thirteen-year-old Ava Bigtree is having a difficult time. Her mother has just died and business is down at her family’s gator-wrestling theme park, Swamplandia! So begins Karen Russell’s critically-acclaimed debut novel, “Swamplandia!” In this hour of TO THE BEST OF OUR KNOWLEDGE, we’ll meet...Read more
Imagine Superman, demented with age, on a final mission to save the world. Or Conan the Barbarian, civilized and living in L.A. boarding the bus with a good book. It’s all there in the poetry of Charles Harper Webb. Words fly this hour on To the Best of Our Knowledge as we take in performance...Read more
The atom bomb's ability to kill people makes it a literal dangerous idea. But there are other kinds of dangerous ideas -- ideas that are contrary, counterintutive and just plain unconventional. It's that kind of dangerous idea that we explore in this hour.Read more
Today's entertainment industry is shrinking the gap between real life and fantasy. Popular television shows like Big Brother turn ordinary life into an engaging drama. Virtual worlds like Second Life give users a chance to recreate themselves with the click of a button. But how real is...Read more
President Obama is out to remake America's relationship with the Islamic world. We'll explore what this means for both the Middle East and the U.S. We'll also look at the ongoing debate over Muslim immigration in Europe, and we'll talk with a Hollywood screenwriter about his new novel on the...Read more
It used to be simple to pick out a shade of paint, before computers made almost infinite gradations possible. Now if you stare at those samples long enough they all start to look alike. It turns out color is as much a mental construct as a physical substance. In this hour of To the Best of...Read more
“We can be bought,” they said,” but we can’t be bored.” The king and queen of American theater, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne turned down a fantastic sum from the movies in the middle of the depression to continue to live their illusion on the stage. In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more
The East Village Opera Company's new album, "Olde School," was 300 years in the making. The group gives some of opera's greatest hits an extreme musical make-over, re-imagining them as popular songs. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'll meet the co-founders of The East Village...Read more