Episode Archives

Filter episodes by the year they originally aired.
To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Getting through winter requires mental and physical toughness, plus good central heating.  But animals have amazing strategies for surviving conditions that make humans whimper.  Today, winter survival strategies from our furred and feathered friends.  What could we learn from a walrus who...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Read any good life-list books lately? How about "1,000 Places You Must Visit Before You Die?" or "1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die." There's no shortage of "life-list" books to read these days. What's next? "1,000 Life-List Books You Must Read Before You Die"? Probably. We'll explore...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Picking up a bottle of wine for dinner used to be simple. It pretty much depended on how much you wanted to spend, since everything came from France. Not anymore! We'll look at what happened to the wine world in 1976, when wine from the Napa Valley won a blind tasting and turned the industry...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Think that a TV series based on the Coen Brothers' 1996 black comedy crime thriller, "Fargo," is a bad idea? Then you haven't seen "Fargo," The TV series.  Creator and showrunner Noah Hawley talks about how he transformed the iconic film into the critically-acclaimed, award-winning TV series.Read more

beautiful food

Imagine a farm five stories tall, powered by the sun, watered by the rain. Cabbage and carrots, tomatoes and eggplant grow on living walls. Tens of thousands of fish swim in aquaponic tanks. In this hour, the urban farm of the future gets real. Also, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

To mark the Winter Solstice, we’ll honor the sacred origins our secular Christmas decorations and hear a solstice story from India.  And to help you get through the long winter evenings, we’ll get some recommendations for your winter reading list.  Solstice myths and stories and provocative new...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

He’s been called the “Godfather of hip-hop.”  He rose from selling drugs on the streets to running a Fortune 500 company.  He founded Def Jam Records and produced acts like Run DMC, Public Enemy, and LL Cool J.  Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, Russell Simmons and hip-hop.  Also, the...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Film-maker David Lynch has been "diving within" through the Transcendental Meditation technique for more than 30 years.  Now Lynch has created a foundation that wants to help students discover their full creative potential through T.M. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, David Lynch...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Being a kid has never been cooler.  In fact, it’s SO cool, it’s not just for the twelve and under set anymore.  These days more adults watch the Cartoon Network than CNN, Care Bears are making a comeback, and Scoobie-Doo underpants come in grown-up sizes.  In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, a visit with former Israeli commando Uri Avnery, who went on to become an outspoken critic of Israeli policy. He's seen his office bombed. He's been beaten and once barely survived an assassination attempt. Today Avnery is calling for a separate...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Born 200 years ago, Charles Darwin was a revolutionary figure, and yet polls show that more than half of all Americans still don't accept his theory of evolution. So, is Darwinian evolution compatible with faith in God? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, what Darwin himself thought...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Remember what it was like to be a kid, playing outside with friends for hours at a time? Sure, it may just seem like fun and games, but it may also have been invaluable training for life as an adult.Read more

a workspace with notebook, coffee, laptop and notebook

American companies generate a lot of wealth. But Americans aren't seeing much of it. Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff says that's because today's corporations are obsessed with one thing -- growth. We'll find out why our economy's operating system is broken and how we can fix it, as we rethink...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

It’s the longest-running prime-time animated series in TV history...with sixteen seasons and more than 350 episodes. So far.  Not bad for a four-fingered family whose first gig was doing animated segments on a TV variety show.  In this hour of the Peabody Award Winning Program To the Best of Our...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Atheists have been called the most hated minority in America, but recent atheist manifestos by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris have all made the bestseller list. Have these atheists changed our thinking about religion? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the New...Read more

holding hands in hospital

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

crumpled pages from a book

Nobody wants to fail.  But maybe we’ve got the idea of failure all wrong.  Maybe it's not something to avoid, but something to strive for.  . Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Ben Kilham has some unusual playmates - black balls of fur who scratch, wrestle and climb all over him.  They are orphaned bear cubs.  And Kilham is their surrogate mom.  He’s raised two dozen bear cubs and then released them into the wild.  Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll trek...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Phil Harvey gives away tens of millions of dollars every year to fight AIDS and promote family planning in such places as India, Brazil, Vietnam and Ethiopia.  Where does the money come from?  Harvey runs the largest mail-order erotica business in the world.  In this hour of To the Best of Our...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

Pages