Episode Archives

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To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and...a trip to the mall?  Like it or not, a trip to the mall is an American rite of passage.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge a look at the great American pastime - shopping.  From the Mall of America to the latest new strip mall, Americans spend more...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Boots on the Ground: Stories from the War in Iraq

Part Five

 

At least 120 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the war began. They're targets for insurgents. But what are journalists to the US military? A necessary evil? Or...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Peggy Orenstein didn't want children. At least she didn't think so. Children killed careers and turned smart, professional women into drones. Well, that's what Orenstein was afraid of, anyway. But after a death in the family, she changed her mind. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, to...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Dan Janzen is one of the world’s leading tropical biologists.  He’s spent forty years working in the Cost Rican jungle, and there’s one creature that fascinates him above all others - the moth.  Janzen has found nine-thousand different species of moth in Cost Rica.  In this hour of To the Best...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

It's a post-apocalyptic novel that's been compared to Stephen King's "The Stand" and Cormac McCarthy's "The Road." It covers a vast time span and features a different kind of vampire, known as "virals." It's called "The Passage" and it's one of this summer's hottest books. We'll meet the author...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Belly up to the bar as To the Best of Our Knowledge spends an hour with drinkers and drunks.  Meet the man who invented the Cosmopolitan.  He says it’s a really simple drink.  All you need is fresh lime juice.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Everyone knows what comic books are about, right? But it's not all about people in long underwear hitting each other. This hour on To the Best of Our Knowledge, heroes, anti-heroes, and regular folks strutting their stuff in black and white.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

Seven hundred million people get their music from the Internet. More than 10 million people own iPods.  Does this mean that compact discs and record companies are going the way of the gramophone and eight-track tapes?  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'll look at this digital...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

Christopher Hogwood was not your ordinary household pet. For one thing, he weighed 700 pounds. And he loved to drink beer. Christopher was a very large pig with a heart of gold. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the story of how Christopher Hogwood became the best-loved pig in...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Electrons to Enlightenment

Part Three

 

One of the Dalai Lama's favorite places in America is a neuro-biology lab at the University of Wisconsin, looking for scientific proof that meditation works. In other labs across the country,...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

We’ve heard a lot about Islamic fundamentalists who hate the West. Some people can’t wait for the United States to invade Afghanistan.  But no one would be happier to see the back of Osama bin Laden than the Average Afghan.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the crucial...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Uncovering the real story in Iraq is getting harder.  Western journalists have become targets, just like American soldiers.  And reporters now take elaborate precautions to avoid being killed or kidnaped.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we'll talk about the hazards of war reporting...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

We explore music and memory in this hour -- Kurt Cobain's lasting impact 20 years after his death; insidious and infectious earworms; and the retro worldly music of Pink Martini.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Where’s James Bond when you need him?  You have to wonder about the spy business after the dubious information that was used to justify America’s war against Iraq.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, an argument for revealing all the secrets to the public.  And, a look back at Anthony...Read more

voter sticker from Arizona

With the elections approaching, candidates and campaigns are working hard to get out the vote. But what would it take to get people politically involved all year round? This hour we explore a few ways, whether it's by using games to make the political process more fun, or mobilizing activists...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Eric Liu is on a campaign to restore America's civic joy. To make voting fun again, with late-night dance parties for Miami voters, participatory election street theater in Akron,Ohio; and a giant election scavenger hunt in Philadelphia. He says there's no such thing as not voting: choosing not...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

It started as a joke.  Danny Wallace put a small ad in a London newspaper.  It simply said “Join me” and invited people to send a passport-sized photo.  The only problem was, no one knew what they were joining.  Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, the story of Danny Wallace’s “Join Me”...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Her novel “Bel Canto” was a hit so now novelist Ann Patchett is a star.  But back when they were in college, it was her fellow student Lucy Grealy who got treated like a rock star.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, a look at uncommon friendships.  Ann Patchett tells how her...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Have you ever thought about disappearing... wiping out your old identity and starting fresh, with a new name, a new life, a new self? In this hour we try to find out how to disappear completely. You too can vanish without a trace! Read more

military helmet

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

game over

Parents worry that their kids spend too much time playing video games, but according to one new study, if you need surgery, you want the surgeon who grew up with a game controller in one hand.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, why the future belongs to gamers.  Imagine a...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Vaclav Havel is President of the Czech Republic, but for many around the world, he's known as the poet in blue jeans, the dissident playwright who inspired a Velvet Revolution.  On this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, President Havel talks art and politics.  And, we'll go back to when the...Read more

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