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To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

clones

"History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies." -- Alexis de TocquevilleRead more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Everybody gets excited about whatever's new, but what about what's really, really old?  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we commemorate geologic time.  We'll meet the scientists who found the oldest object on Earth - a three point four billion year old zircon!  And the Jazz...Read more

tapes

Why do people embrace the experimental visual art of Mark Rothko but avoid the experimental music of Karlheinz Stockhausen?   That's the question that David Stubbs explores in his book, "Fear of Music."  We'll meet Stubbs in this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge.  Also,...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Suppose neuroscientists map the billions of neural circuits in the human brain....are we any closer to cracking the great existential mysteries - like meaning,...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Mary Ann Caws is an internationally respected scholar of surrealism. She has translated many of the movements major texts and is the editor of “Surrealism (Themes and Movements).” Caws talks with Anne Strainchamps about the history of the surrealist movement. Also, we hear actor Steve O’Connell...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

As artists and scientists explore the edges of our senses, what we touch, taste, see, smell, and hear is changing. 

In this hour we hear from a psychiatrist who’s using touch to help people recover from trauma, investigate a mysterious sensory experience that gives some people euphoric...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

She's a little bit country. She's a little bit rock and roll. Carlene Carter grew up surrounded by music. She's the daughter of June Carter and the stepdaughter of Johnny Cash. And Carlene followed in their footsteps, with a few twists and turns along the way. In this hour of the Peabody Award-...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

We explore the frontiers of brain science, from the neurobiology of emotions to recent discoveries about autism.  Renowned neuroscientists Richard Davidson and V.S. Ramachandran reveal new insights into the brain, and we'll hear the story of one marriage saved by a diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

“The medium is the message.”  “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.” “We look at the present through a rear-view mirror.  We march backwards into the future.”   Those are just a few of Marshall McLuhan’s famous quotes.   McLuhan is one of the most influential media thinkers of...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Whittier called them "the saddest words: it might have been."  But turn it around and you'll find places we create to replace the world we live in -- past, present and future.  On To the Best of Our Knowledge, other worlds. Scientist Brian Greene looks at the physics of the multiverse, and...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

static screen

Failure is a four letter word in America. Most of us do everything we can to avoid it.  But what if we've got the wrong idea about failure - and it's all a matter of learning the right way to do it? This hour, one psychologist's take on how to embrace the fall.  And comedian...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

When do we most need our leaders? In times of crisis? In times of war? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge Winston Churchill's biographer Martin Gilbert explains how the man who offered his nation only blood, sweat, toil and tears made it believe that was enough. And he says Churchill's...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Are humans innately good? Do we have a generosity gene? Is there an inherent desire to help our fellow human beings? Or, are we natural born sinners who have to fight, tooth and nail, to conquer our inherent tendencies towards selfishness, destruction and war. In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more

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