Contemporary nomads are primitive, tribal people who chase the seasons to fresh water and greener pastures. They’re not middle aged American women who’ve published scores of children’s books, or not usually. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we’ll meet Rita Golden Gelman,...Read more
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Episode Archives
Batman, Superman, the Green Lantern we all had our superheroes as kids. Maybe we still do today? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, SUPERHEROES. We'll celebrate Wonder Woman's 70th birthday with a look at her controversial new costume. We'll also explore the actual physics of...Read more
Gore Vidal has a special fondness for the Founding Fathers, especially George Washington. “The others were geniuses. He was not a genius” he says, but “he had a powerful character which got him through the revolution, since he was not much of a general. But he was a great leader.” We’ll talk...Read more
Chris Ayres never wanted to cover the war. He was perfectly content reporting on celebrity gossip in L.A. But through a twist of fate, he found himself embedded with Marines in Iraq, living in a Humvee and waiting for his death at the hands of the Republican Guard. In this hour of To the Best...Read more
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
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
Are you living the American Dream? Or just struggling to get by? Changing the minimum wage, cuts to food stamps, and health care coverage have been all over the news. What does it take to “make it” in America today?
Also, On Our Minds this week, Swedish crime fiction writer Jens Lapidus...Read more
With the war in Iraq winding down, now what? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, a look at the war’s aftermath - and not only for Iraqis, but also for the millions of people who marched against the war. Does America’s quick victory mean the peace movement failed? And what about...Read more
Nicola Griffith wanted to fight back. A lesbian activist well-versed in the martial arts, Griffith knew she had the moves. But when her friend was attacked in a bar, she couldn't bring herself to hurt her attacker. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the deadly, deep-minded lesbian...Read more
One day, an IRS auditor named Harold Crick wakes up to discover a voice in his head – a female voice narrating his life. That's the premise of the film, "Stranger Than Fiction." In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'll meet the man who wrote the screenplay. Also, the story of Orson...Read more
Good house-keeping used to go hand-in-hand with good citizenship. And remember the phrase, "cleanliness is next to godliness"? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, thoughts on the art of keeping house. We'll talk about the science of dust, meet the Queen of Clutter, and hear novelist...Read more
Grim news from Africa is easy to find, but there are good things happening there too. The creator of the Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency wants you to know all about them. He calls himself a Utopian writer. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll visit the real Botswana with...Read more
"Everyone is on the Internet but they're not all talking with each other. There are groups upon groups out there, but they don't talk to one another. So while the Internet brings everyone into a share space, it does not necessarily bring them together." -- David LynchRead more
Wouldn't it be great if we could predict the future? We could invest wisely, prepare for social change, and have next season's fashionable footwear.
But in our accelerated world, it seems increasingly difficult to figure out what the next big thing will be. In this hour, are trends a...Read more
The US will pull troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2016, leaving behind an enemy they've fought for more than a decade. This week, we explore Afghanistan's Taliban insurgency and find out what motivates them.Read more
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
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
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
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
President Obama is out to remake America's relationship with the Islamic world. We'll explore what this means for both the Middle East and the U.S. We'll also look at the ongoing debate over Muslim immigration in Europe, and we'll talk with a Hollywood screenwriter about his new novel on the...Read more
It used to be simple to pick out a shade of paint, before computers made almost infinite gradations possible. Now if you stare at those samples long enough they all start to look alike. It turns out color is as much a mental construct as a physical substance. In this hour of To the Best of...Read more
Have you ever heard of an “Uncreative Writing” course? In this class, students are penalized for showing any kind of originality. Instead, they’re rewarded for plagiarism, plundering and stealing. We’ll meet the man behind “Uncreative Writing” – poet Kenneth Goldsmith. Also,...Read more
Walk into the children's section of any bookstore and the magic wands and secret portals almost materialize in front of you. Wizards, witches, demons, time travel, dragons, orphans, orphaned dragons – doesn't anyone know how to write a non-magical book anymore?! In this hour of To the Best of...Read more