Oh, city living. The crush of people, the crowd of buildings, the empty lots, the garbage-strewn slums.
More than half of us will be living urban by 2050. How will we manage?Read more
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Episode Archives
Even now, the oceans of the world are terra incognita. We’ve explored only 5-10 percent of them on a planet mostly comprised of water. What we’re missing couldsurprise us. This hour, we explore the mysteries of the deep. We’ll hear about the oceans’ oddest creatures...Read more
Bees are responsible for forty percent of the food we put in our mouths. It sounds astonishing, but without bees, we could find ourselves facing food shortages and a collapse of the green and flowered world. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, a peek inside the world...Read more
Turning thirty used to be embarrassing, an occasion for angst and misery. Today young adults are embracing thirty as cause for celebration. They’re renting yachts, giving speeches and spending thousands of dollars to celebrate the big three-oh. In this hour of To the Best of...Read more
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments...” “Because I could not stop for death…”
First lines. Classic poems. But poetry’s no anachronism. It’s pulsing and swelling and beating new rhythms.
From online verse to the new US Poet Laureate, from poetry...Read more
We’ve all heard we live in “the information age,” but what does this mean? We’ll give you a short history of information – from talking drums onward. But do we now have too much information? We’ll hear how information overload is actually re-wiring our brains. Also, the new theory in physics...Read more
The Paleo Diet. Running barefoot. Look around, the modern caveman is among us.Read more
What would you die for? And what are you willing to kill for? Democracy?On this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the meaning of democracy. We’ll hear from writers Alice Walker, Sherman Alexie, Isabel Alende and Margaret Atwood. Also, tomorrow’s citizens. Are schools giving children...Read more
In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, James Bradley remembers his father the war hero, who helped raise the flag on Iwo Jima. Martin Amis comes to terms with his famous father – the writer Kingsley Amis. And the story of a military father who was an officer but no gentleman...Read more
Forty years ago the streets of Chicago exploded as police clashed with anti-war protesters at the Democratic National Convention. It's one of the momentous events that defined the Sixties. Or is it? Some historians now say the rise of the conservative movement is what truly made history in the...Read more
Lilydale, New York isn’t your average small town. In Lilydale, people say ghosts walk the streets and the neighbors can talk to the dead. No, this is not fiction. 20-thousand visitors a year travel to Lilydale to consult the largest community of mediums in the world. Is it all a gigantic...Read more
You know those end of the year lists? Best books, movies, music and so on? This hour, To the Best of Our Knowledge shares the best interviews from 2015. Plus a booklist or two.Read more
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
Who would have guessed that number two on the Best Seller List this summer would be an intellectual thriller starring four brainy Princeton seniors and a 15th century manuscript written in code? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, meet the authors of “The Rule of Four.” Lost and...Read more
A few years ago, the notion of the "quantified self" was the domain of a relatively small group of hackers, engineers, and computer enthusiasts. Now, under its many names—lifelogging, self-tracking, fitness monitoring—it's become one of the fastest growing segments of the technology...Read more
Chaotic headlines out of Washington, ice melting in Antarctica, world temps rising and global conflict on the rise… it could be worse. It could be Ragnarok. Writer Neil Gaiman retells the ancient Norse myth of the Twilight of the Gods and apocalyptic end of the world in his stunning new...Read more
If you want to know the truth about J.D. Salinger, good luck. To this day we know more about his fictional character Holden Caulfield than we do about the man who created him. In this hour of the Peabody-Award winning program To the Best of Our Knowledge, literary life after Salinger’s...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
He was the most surprising Booker Prize winner in years. DBC Pierre had been a con man and a drug addict before he became a writer. Now he’s won one of the world’s great literary prizes. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we’ll talk with some award-winning writers including DBC...Read more
Thousands of the world's languages are disappearing in the wake of globalization. And because language is the DNA of culture, a lost language is a lost culture. Today, stories from the frontlines of the language revitalization movement. Also, Dr. Larry Brilliant's improbable journey from...Read more
One of the top-selling songs last year was by rapper Kanye West. But it wasn’t hardcore hip-hop, it was a gospel song called “Jesus Walks.” In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the rebirth of Gospel Music. We’ll look at where gospel came from and where it’s going. And, we’ll feel...Read more
It’s the most contested piece of real estate on Earth. Jews know it as the Temple Mount. Muslims call it Al-Aqsa. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the controversy over this sacred site in Jerusalem’s Old City. Also, why the Temple Mount inspires apocalyptic visions for some...Read more