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To The Best Of Our Knowledge

You might think that men’s anxiety over baldness is a relatively recent development in the history of civilization.  But it’s not.  The ancient Romans invented the comb-over and paint-on hair, which has since become spray-on hair.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we’...Read more

Japanese street

American children grow up playing Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh.  As adults, they line up for the latest anime movies and hang out in karaoke bars.  In other words -- Japanese culture is serious business.  So serious that Japan's Prime Minister appointed a "Cool Japan" minister to oversee...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

James Tiptree Jr. wrote some of the most critically-acclaimed science fiction stories in the 1960's and 1970's....classics like "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" and "The Women Men Don't See." But James Tiptree was actually the pseudonym of a 61-year-old woman, Alice B. Sheldon. In this hour of...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Remember those great cars from the Fifties?  The Redscare Phantom Witchhunter and the Bongo Beatnik Ferlinghetti TurboHipster?  If you don’t recall them rolling off Detroit’s assembly lines, there’s a perfectly good reason.  They never existed, except in the imagination of writer and illustrator...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Bohemians used to hate anything that reeked of money.  It destroyed the soul.  Now, many self-styled bohemians are reveling in slate shower stalls, Range Rovers, and lava-rock grills.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the triumphs of the “Bobo” – the Bourgeois...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Suppose there's a pill that would dramatically boost your creativity.  Would you take it?  Psychologist Jim Fadiman says that pill exists.  It's the powerful hallucinogen LSD.  Fadiman describes a remarkable experiment showing how psychedelics enhanced the creativity of senior scientists. Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Two people, a house, a pitchfork, and a barn. It's hard to find a better-known American painting than Grant Wood's masterpiece "American Gothic." But just who are those grim people, and why do they have such a hold on the American psyche? Here's the history of an American classic. Also, a...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

From Soup to Nuts

Part Six

Once upon a time, there was a chef who made the greatest cakes in the world. His name was Antonin Careme. But this is no fairy tale. It’s a true story of a man called the King of the Cooks. In this hour of To the Best...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

The world’s oceans are emptying at an alarming rate.  Fish populations are dwindling and dozens of species are going extinct.  Is this something to worry about?  Not as long as you like plankton stew.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll meet the controversial scientist who jump-...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Say you’re in Vegas playing high-stakes poker.  You haven’t slept in days.  To make matters worse, you’re being stared down by two of the best poker players in the world.  And...you’re bluffing.  So, you bet it all to bring the pot to well over a million dollars.  In this hour of To the Best of...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Scientists are discovering how plants secretly talk to each other.  How smart is your geranium, and what does a tree know?  Today, we're eavesdropping on the secret language of plants.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

We are connected -- probably connected in ways neither of us has dreamed of. Forget six degrees of separation; on Facebook we have only 3.74. And that's just today.Read more

colors and light

How do we know what's real?  Can science tell us, or is there an unseen reality we'll never understand?  We explore the borderlands of knowledge and reflect on some remarkable episodes in the history of science - Nobel laureates who investigated ghosts and a pioneer of quantum physics...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

John Cheever was sometimes called the "Chekov of the Suburbs." Cheever's characters often find themselves struggling with issues of conformity and class in American suburbia. Much like their creator himself. We'll explore the life and work of John Cheever with his biographer, Blake Bailey. Also...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Scientists tell us optimistic people are happier, healthier and even live longer than pessimists.  But it's hard to maintain an optimistic frame of mind in the face of daily reports of war, famine, disease and injustice.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, evidence that the world is...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Democracy is one of those rubbery words. We kind of know what it means. But do we really? It’s voting and elections, but it’s much, much more than that. Democracy has inspired The Velvet Revolution and the Arab Spring.  It encouraged the Suffragists and the Civil Rights Movement. It stirred the...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Japan has a “slow life” movement.  Italy has a “slow cities” movement.  Spain has a network of siesta salons.  And Americans?  10 to 15 million of us now meditate or do yoga.  Is it possible the world is finally ready to slow down?  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge a look at the...Read more

colors and light

We may think it’s pretty clear what is – and isn’t – science, but history is littered with cases where the line wasn’t so obvious.  For instance, Isaac Newton studied alchemy, and Galileo was a practicing astrologer.  This hour explores the edges of science, and we hear about the...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Sometimes, a single word speaks volumes about its era. Sputnik conjures up both the heady excitement of the early Space Race and the whole scary history of the Cold War. In this hour, To the Best of Our Knowledge touches on a few of these cultural touchstones....from Sputnik to Snoopy. We'll...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Sinatra swings it, Miles Davis jazzes it up, and Billy Holiday croons it from the heart.  Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, the biography of a great American love song.  In our second annual Valentine’s Day Show the Rogers and Hart hit “My Funny Valentine.”  And our listeners share true...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

New York Times columnist David Brooks is best known for his political writing, but he's also fascinated by recent findings in psychology and neuroscience.  In fact he says many of our public policies fail because we're not actually the rational decision makers we think we are.  In this hour of...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Nelson Algren said “Never play cards with a man called Doc.  Never eat at a place called Mum’s.  And never go to bed with a woman whose troubles are greater than your own.” In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll catch up with Studs Terkel to talk about why an American master like...Read more

book

We love books. We line them on shelves like totems. We pile them next to our beds in some hope they'll affect our dreams.  For many of us, books are sacred objects. And sometimes, just sometimes, they’re even magical.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Have you ever been to "Reloville"? Or maybe you live there. There's more than one. You can find them in Atlanta, Dallas and Denver, among other places. "Relovilles" are the sprawling subdivisions where mid-level managers and executives live – for a few years before they uproot their families and...Read more

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