Episode Archives

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the thinker

Thoughts about thinking, including Daniel Goleman on "Emotional Intelligence" and Daniel Kahneman on "Thinking, Fast and Slow."Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

It’s Art & Craft week at TTBOOK, but we’re not gluing macaroni to cardboard. 

From the halls of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, to MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms; from a craft studio on the coast of Maine, to "outsider artists" at the Venice Biennale... w...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Boots on the Ground: Stories from the War in Iraq

Part Three

 

For many soldiers and Marines, war is not fundamentally about the mission. War is not really about the enemy. It's not even about patriotism. War is about the man to the...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Wisdom may come with age, but if you want to make scientific history, it pays to be young.  Newton invented calculus before he turned 25.  Einstein published his special theory of relativity when he was only 26.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, does genius slip away with age?  Also...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

DEVO co-founder Mark Mothersbaugh talks about his visual art exhibition, "Myopia," and Joshua Wolf Shenk lays waste to the myth of the lone genius as we explore the creative process.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Would you be surprised to know there are more slaves in the world today than at any other time in human history? An estimated 27 million people live in bondage. On this To the Best of Our Knowledge, the new abolitionists – including a reporter who risked his life to document the global traffic...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

We all have our good days and our bad days, but chances are they’re nothing like what Andy Behrman has experienced.  Behrman would fly from Zurich to the Bahamas and back in three days to balance hot and cold weather.  On the bad days, he’d experience tornado-like rages of depression.  In this...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Fashion photographer David Jay recently sent us a book of his photos. The lighting was perfect, the settings intimate. The women, nearly naked, were gorgeous.  Taking in the beautiful images, something stood out – the mastectomy scars.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, choosing the life you want.  Colette’s biographer talks about how the great French writer stayed saucy and sexually active into old age.  Kay Redfield Jamison takes a look at the end of life - a view of the suicide epidemic.  And...Read more

light from a lamp

Light has long been a powerful metaphor for holiness and truth, and rightly so. From the stars in the sky to the bulbs in our homes, light touches every facet of human life. This hour, a look at the natural, artificial, and symbolic light that colors our history -- and our future....Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Last week we lost one of the great scholars of religion. Huston Smith died at the age of 97. Smith's book “The World’s Religions” sold more than three million copies and is perhaps the most important book ever written on comparative religion. He also had a colorful personal history. In the early...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Whatever happened to psychoanalysis?  It used to be the most influential science of the mind, but today its founder, Sigmund Freud, just looks like a sex-obsessed old man.  Analyst Adam Phillips says we got Freud all wrong; he remains a radical thinker if we know how to read him.  This hour...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Ten years ago, South African singer and activist Vusi Mahalesela had the thrill of his life.  He sang at Nelson Mandela’s inauguration.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the music and politics of South Africa - ten years after the end of apartheid.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

From Boston to Berkeley, people are going raw.  Vegetarians, vegans and Atkins followers are old hat – the hottest trend in food is cool.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, why the raw food movement has people turning off their ovens and trumpeting the healing powers of uncooked food...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Most people want to do the right thing.  But what if your survival depended on doing something wrong?  Something deeply repellent.  Something evil.  And what if the police told you to?  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the consequences of moral choices, from Nazi Germany to American...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Andrew Sullivan is not a Republican, but he calls himself a conservative.  He does not believe in using religion to ground political ideals.  But he himself is a person of faith.  And he endorsed John Kerry, although Ronald Reagan is one of his heroes.  In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Right after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair magazine, declared “irony is dead.”  Only a few months later Carter said, with a nudge and a wink, “I meant to say IRONING is dead - not irony.”  This time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll look at the rise of...Read more

Towering radio

We remember the magical moments of chemistry in certain interviews; the brilliant sound design that emerged from particular studio sessions; the stories that took us places and those that changed us.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Ever wonder what it’s like behind on the scenes on TTBOOK?  Being in studio while the energy and imagination of Sherman Alexie bounces off the wall? Or watching E.O. Wilson, one of the world’s preeminent biologists unfold the beauty of his mind and the ideas that keep him in love with the world...Read more

poem

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments...”  “Because I could not stop for death…”

First lines. Classic poems. But poetry’s no anachronism. It’s pulsing and swelling and beating new rhythms.

From online verse to the new US Poet Laureate, from poetry...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

"Let me say this as plainly as I can" President Obama said recently, "By August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end." Obama's plan will bring home some 150,000 troops. But what are they coming home to? Their divorce rate is triple the national average. Alcoholism, four times the...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Ten years after the War on Terror began, militant Islamic teenagers are still blowing themselves up in crowded streets.  What makes someone willing to become a human bomb?  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, how religious radicalization works and new techniques for...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Politics has such a bad reputation it’s a wonder anyone would run for office.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll hear from a few people who are out to transform the way we do politics.  Also activist Si Kahn talks about the art of the political song.  And we’ll look back at one...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Ever want to chuck everything and just live your dream? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we meet several people who are doing just that. One of them's a hot young actor, starring in a smash Broadway musical. Another is a middle-aged husband and father who published a small magazine...Read more

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