Lauren Weedman grew up knowing she was adopted. When she became a teenager, she decided she wanted to meet her birth mother, but the hospital records were sealed and the search seemed hopeless. Then Lauren’s mom got in on the act, and today Lauren has two moms – and a one woman show...Read more
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Episode Archives
On Christmas Eve of 1914, German soldiers in the Flanders trenches lit candles on small Christmas trees. British, French, Belgian and German troops serenaded each other with songs. Soon enemy soldiers broke bread with each other and exchanged letters. In this hour of To the...Read more
Original Air Date:
December 16, 2001
Comfort food’s selling like hotcakes. People haven’t forgotten the importance of good nutrition, but these days we crave things that’ll make us feel better. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, seeking solace in a scary world. Diane Ackerman talks about her garden, and...Read more
Original Air Date:
December 02, 2001
You think Greta Garbo was good at ducking the paparazzi? She could have learned a thing or two from the giant squid. No one has ever seen one alive. Zoologist Clyde Roper should know, he’s spent most of his life in pursuit of this low profile ocean monster. In this hour...Read more
Original Air Date:
November 25, 2001
Most of us probably have heard of someone else who shares our name, and there are probably others, but unlike British comedian Dave Gorman, we haven’t traveled 24 thousand miles and spent thousands of dollars to meet all of them. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, magnificent...Read more
Original Air Date:
November 25, 2001
Maybe home is where you live, raise your family and mow the grass. Or it's where you grew up. Or where the whole clan gathers for major holidays. Wherever home is, it's never mattered more. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, stories of home, from the Texas hill country to the ‘hood....Read more
Original Air Date:
November 04, 2001
We’ve got a million expressions for death: kicking the bucket, checking out, buying the farm - but what do we do when words aren’t enough? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, artisans are finding new passages through grief, from graffiti memorials to handcrafted coffins. ...Read more
Original Air Date:
October 28, 2001
Sometimes you can’t separate beauty from brutality in the African bush. Safari guide Mark Ross is still figuring it out. In 1999, Ross and a group of tourists were kidnaped by Rwandan rebels. What happened that day changed the rest of his life. Next time on To the Best of Our...Read more
Original Air Date:
September 16, 2001
Organic food is now a booming billion dollar industry. And today’s top chefs are its biggest cheerleaders. They say locally-grown, organic food will help save the planet. But not everyone agrees. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, an argument for why celebrity...Read more
Original Air Date:
September 02, 2001
Have you ever had one of those moments when you know you really should think about a different line of work? For Daniel Pink, it was a scorching hot June day in Washington, D.C. when he almost threw up on Al Gore. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Daniel Pink’s career as...Read more
Original Air Date:
September 02, 2001
A couple of years ago writer Michael Pollan was curious about the world of illegal, underground marijuana gardens. What he found surprised him. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Mary Jane goes high tech. A look at drug cultures past and present, a visit to a rave,...Read more
Original Air Date:
August 26, 2001
Suppose you grew up with one of the world’s great scientists. How would that shape your view of the world? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, an intimate look at the great conservationist Aldo Leopold: we’ll talk with three of his children. Also, comic novelist David...Read more
Original Air Date:
August 19, 2001
Television used to be formulaic. Today, it’s the best gig around. We examine the explosion of high quality TV, from The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men, and talk with the creator of HBO’s True Detective.Read more
Sometimes all you really want to take to bed is a good book. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, meet some passionate readers. We’ll also try to find out if big time critics really hate books.Read more
Nature, red in tooth and claw. That line from Tennyson's poem still strikes a chord when we contemplate the natural world. Today, there's a divide in how we view nature. On the one hand, we swing through it like a playground, on the other, we're forced to step back to allow for nature's power in...Read more
For millions of people, a mosque is a safe haven, a place to worship. But others fear that mosques are a breeding ground for terrorists — especially since September 11, 2001. It's the same building, but has become a marker for so much controversy.
This hour, we wanted to approach the...Read more
The pint-sized wizard harry Potter has conquered the book world, and it’s not just kids who love him. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, what’s behind Harry Potter’s popularity. Also, acclaimed author Katherine Paterson (pronounced Patterson) on the emotional lives of...Read more
“The bearded lady/tried a jar/she’s now/a famous movie star/Burma-shave.” Jingles like that could be found on signs across America’s highways between the 1930's and the 1950's. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the story behind the legendary Burman-Shave advertising campaign. Also...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
Calling Lynne Cox a swimmer is like calling Mohammed Ali a tough guy. At age fourteen, she swam to Catalina Island from mainland California. At eighteen she swam between the islands of New Zealand. Years later, with miles of hard swims behind her, she turned her eye to the unthinkable - the...Read more
For National Poetry Month, To The Best Of Our Knowledge celebrated poetry with original work by five leading American poets, written in response to current events.Read more
Can science conquer death? It may seem like an absurd question, but some people think it's possible. In this hour of To The Best Of Our Knowledge, we'll meet Aubrey de Grey, a maverick English scientist who's identified seven major kinds of molecular and cellular damage. He thinks we can prevent...Read more
What goes on inside the mind of a painter, or a musician, or a poet? What sparks creativity? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, new neuroscience takes us inside the creative mind. We’ll talk about brain imaging studies of jazz musicians, and cosmologist Brian Swimme explores the...Read more