America is famously a nation of immigrants, a melting pot of cultures. And yet, few subjects will be debated as passionately this year as immigration reform. What are we really talking about, when we argue about immigration? And, what's it like to be 'fresh off the boat" in a country that...Read more
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Episode Archives
Behold the spectacle of epic proportions! The abundant feast laid out! Tribes decked in battle attire!
Yes, friends. It's Super Bowl weekend, and have we got a show for you...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
Global pandemics, alien invasions, the Second Coming....why do we love imagining the end of the world? We examine apocalyptic thinking – from vampire movies to the Book of Revelation.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
Ben Franklin, Henry Ford, Abigail Adams, Elvis Presley. Know what they have in common? They're all on Daniel Wolff's list of great Americans. Wolff explains the unique ways those people learned what they had to know. We'll also take a hard look at IQ and its relationship to race and class, and...Read more
Men are not really from Mars and women are not really from Venus. But there are definite differences between the two genders. Norah Vincent was curious about what a man's life was like. So she spent eighteen months undercover...as a man. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Norah...Read more
Ronald Reagan had it. Jonathan Swift, Iris Murdoch, and, most likely, Ralph Waldo Emerson had it too. Alzheimer’s disease is on the rise, and scientists predict that up to one hundred million people will develop it in the next fifty years. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the...Read more
Future Perfect: Dreamers, Schemers & Visionaries
Part Four
The happiness industry is booming. And with good reason - everyone wants to be happy. Today, science can light the way. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge,...Read more
Tariq Ramadan has been called the Muslim Martin Luther King, and he's often described as Europe's most important Muslim intellectual. Hundreds of young Muslims turn up at his talks, and tapes of his lectures are widely circulated. He travels throughout the Islamic world, trying to build...Read more
A Swedish environmentalist believes we really should give back to the earth, even after we’ve died. Her company is trying to replace cremation with a technologically-enhanced form of organic composting, and she’s already got the support of King Carl Gustav and the Church of Sweden. In this...Read more
The collapse of the twin towers gave birth to a strange new world. It was a city of fire and dust, rubble crunching under foot and eerie underground rivers. William Langewiesche was the only journalist with unrestricted access to Ground Zero. What he found there was startling, natural, and...Read more
After 11 years of isolation in New England, Nathan Zuckerman returns to New York City. Now 71, Zuckerman discovers that a lot has changed. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'll meet Nathan Zuckerman's creator, the renowned novelist, Philip Roth. And we'll find out how both Roth...Read more
Bombay is the largest city in the world. And one of the most confounding. Bar dancers, gangs, and Bollywood all call Bombay home, for better or worse. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, a Bombay-native takes us inside this Maximum City. Also, the writer of the hit movie "Monsoon...Read more
A poster at Starbucks asks customers to focus on the world water crisis. A congregation asks the faithful to go on a carbon diet. The local grocery now charges for a plastic bag. We've got green cars, green clothing, green investments, and even green weddings. In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more
Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Brittney Spears – divas? Nah. Maria Callas – now she was a diva! In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, two great ladies with leather lungs – Maria Callas and Judy Garland – their triumphs and tragedies from Onassis to Oz. And other...Read more
If you find Shakespeare a bit intimidating, you might want to check out the Reduced Shakespeare Company. Its actors do a version of “Hamlet” forward and backwards – all in two minutes. Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, Shakespeare as you’ve never heard him before. Also, the great...Read more
Spiderman had a pretty good summer last year, but J.K. Rowling wasn’t worried. When the sixth Harry Potter book came out, children trampled the web-slinger in their rush to bookstores and libraries. Which makes perfect sense to author and Arthurian scholar Jane Yolen. She says it’s all about...Read more
Supersized slabs of juicy ribs cooked over a wood fire until the meat slides right off the bone. Food doesn't get more American than barbecue. It's part of our roots. And it's tangled up in our racial history. In this hour, we celebrate barbecue and explore its secret history.Read more
The downhill skiers in Sochi know cold weather, but for real cold -- try diving into freezing water above the Arctic Circle! In this hour, some sports too cold even for the Winter Olympics.Read more
Child rape at Penn State. A murderous rampage in Norway. A new civil war in Sudan. Ruthless drug cartels. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hate Crimes. Murder. Genocide. What is wrong with us? Are we really that bad?Read more
There's something about the desert. Its uncompromising climate makes it a place of thirst and death. But it's also site of myths and vision quests. In this hour of To The Best Of Our Knowledge we'll explore the passion and power of the desert. We'll celebrate the desert's poets. And commemorate...Read more
We know the story of our 16th president – born in a log cabin, taught himself to read, led us through the bloodiest war ever fought on our soil, wrote the Gettsyburg address and freed the slaves. What don't we know? We celebrate Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday with a look at the man as well...Read more