Your name is a collection of sounds and syllables that identify you. It's your tag, handle, label, second skin. It's written on your birth certificate and it'll be inscribed on your grave. But what does it actually mean? Names carry family dreams, expectations and legacies....Read more
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Episode Archives
Magic is an art, a philosophy, and a way of seeing the world. In this hour, we learn magic tricks from a stage magician, travel to India's last magician's colony, explore shamanic magic, and talk with magical novelists Erin Morgenstern (Night Circus) and Deborah Harkness (...Read more
How far would you go for something to eat? Paris? Mom’s house? The drive-through at Mickey D’s? I bet you wouldn’t swim thousands of miles, from Mexico to the Arctic, just to scarf up mud from the bottom of the ocean. Whales do, and they’ve been doing it every year for eons. In this hour...Read more
"History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies." -- Alexis de TocquevilleRead more
Does anyone still hitchhike? Cult film director John Waters does. At the age of 66, he hitchhiked 2,800 miles, from Baltimore to San Francisco. He tells us about the people who picked him up, along with some who didn't. And did the America Interstate System pave the way...Read more
Forget the deerstalker cap and the calabash pipe. The real Sherlock Holmes is much hipper than that. One scholar suggests that with his violin, creative spirit, cocaine and costumes, Holmes was the rock star of his day. We'll investigate the elementary Sherlock Holmes, from the new annotated...Read more
What’s the face of the future? Not flying cars and life on Mars… What’s the future of our faces? With new facial transplantation surgeries and the latest news about the NSA collecting images for facial recognition anaylsis, we're wondering about what we see in the mirror every day.
Also...Read more
Winston Churchill once said “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, journalist Jake Tapper discusses the ethics of telling lies during wartime. We’ll also take a concise look at the...Read more
Every year, Americans spend billions of dollars to try to improve themselves. They buy books and CDs, go to seminars...some even walk over hot coals in their bare feet. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'll try to find out if the self-help movement is really helping us.Read more
There's still debate about climate change, but one thing's for sure – these days nothing's sure about the weather. Northerners can golf in December, spring shows up early, and mosquitoes are movin' on up. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, wacky weather and what you can do to help....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
We explore the frontiers of brain science, from the neurobiology of emotions to recent discoveries about autism. Renowned neuroscientists Richard Davidson and V.S. Ramachandran reveal new insights into the brain, and we'll hear the story of one marriage saved by a diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome...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
America is famously a nation of immigrants, a melting pot of cultures. And yet, few subjects will be debated as passionately this year as immigration reform. What are we really talking about, when we argue about immigration? And, what's it like to be 'fresh off the boat" in a country that...Read more
Ben Franklin, Henry Ford, Abigail Adams, Elvis Presley. Know what they have in common? They're all on Daniel Wolff's list of great Americans. Wolff explains the unique ways those people learned what they had to know. We'll also take a hard look at IQ and its relationship to race and class, and...Read more
To Daniel Libeskind, buildings are much more than concrete boxes. They’re expressions of hope, joy, freedom, and memory. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, architect Daniel Libeskind talks about his master design for the World Trade Center site.Read more
Cross-dressing terrorist angels. LA Gangbangers covered in Virgin Mary tattoos to protect them from bullets. Prophets in g-strings and pasties. Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge we’re going to look for god in some unlikely places - in the middle of a math equation, and in the lyrics...Read more
It was the best of times for Pattie Boyd. Her modeling career was booming and the sixties were exploding on the London scene. One day she got a call - she'd been cast in a Beatles film. The rest is history. We'll meet the woman who inspired three of the most famous rock songs of all time,...Read more
Words can change lives. Just look at the “at-risk” students in Erin Gruwell’s class. Many of them were branded “unteachable.” Then they read Anne Frank’s diary, and started to keep their own journals. The experience was electrifying. In this hour of To the Best of...Read more
Who are you?
A man? A woman?
Are you a success? A failure?
A parent? An athlete? A wallflower?
A Christian? A Buddhist? A baker?
If we are only a collection of stories about ourselves... what's the truth of who "we" are?
Looking for UNCUT...Read more
“We can be bought,” they said,” but we can’t be bored.” The king and queen of American theater, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne turned down a fantastic sum from the movies in the middle of the depression to continue to live their illusion on the stage. In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more
It seems everyone has something to say about motherhood. A lot of people have advice. Others just have... issues. In this hour of To The Best of Our Knowledge -- the tricky topic of motherhood. Linda Gray Sexton remembers her mother, the troubled poet Anne...Read more
Malcolm Gladwell knows how to succeed in show business without really trying -- write a story for The New Yorker about a psychiatrist who studies serial killers. Then a playwright will take some of the words from your article and use them in a Broadway play. Next time on To the Best of Our...Read more
A Swedish environmentalist believes we really should give back to the earth, even after we’ve died. Her company is trying to replace cremation with a technologically-enhanced form of organic composting, and she’s already got the support of King Carl Gustav and the Church of Sweden. In this...Read more