Episode Archives

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To The Best Of Our Knowledge

As artists and scientists explore the edges of our senses, what we touch, taste, see, smell, and hear is changing. 

In this hour we hear from a psychiatrist who’s using touch to help people recover from trauma, investigate a mysterious sensory experience that gives some people euphoric...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh made his name when he broke the story of the My Lai Massacre.  Looking back you have to wonder: why did Lt. William Calley tell Hersh he’d killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians?  On this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge Hersh says “because I asked him...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

The pursuit of knowledge can make you do weird things.  Sir Isaac Newton explored his eye-socket with a wooden stick.  Swedish chemist Karl Scheele was undone by the toxic chemicals he insisted on tasting.  And a German scientist named Becher spent years trying to make gold from his own urine,...Read more

a woman with head pain

You stub your toe, hit your head on an open cupboard, slam your fingers in a car door, slice your hand on the sharp lip of can, or lick an envelope the wrong way. Your toes throbs, your head aches, your fingers pound, your hand hurts, your lip smarts.

Pain is your body’s way of letting...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Behold the spectacle of epic proportions!  The abundant feast laid out! Tribes decked in battle attire! 

Yes, friends. It's Super Bowl weekend, and have we got a show for you...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

George Burns lived a good long life, hanging on to one hundred.  These days scientists say that’s no big deal.  According to them, some of us may be tottering around the golf course when we’re 150.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the quest for immortality – how long can science...Read more

holding hands in hospital

Modern medicine can treat disease at a molecular—or even atomic – level.  And today’s surgeons can fix things the naked eye can’t even see.  But there’s one thing every patient wants that no technology in the world can provide: compassion.  In this hour, doctors talk about the...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Future Perfect: Dreamers, Schemers & Visionaries

Part Three

 

Our environment is in trouble. It's not hard to imagine global catastrophe as problems like climate change and overpopulation take their toll. But there's always hope...Read more

a man with prosthetic limbs

A fashion model with prosthetic legs… a musician who can’t hear… a writer who can’t see. Instead of disabled, differently-abled, handicapped – why not better-abled?Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

These days it seems we just can’t get enough of it.  Over the past few years, luxury spending in the United States has been growing four times faster than overall spending.  We’re spending more money on more products and services that we don’t really need – like Evian bottled water and Prada...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Ingrid Betancourt was kidnapped by Marxist rebels in Columbia while in the midst of her presidential campaign. She spent the next six and a half years in captivity chained, humiliated and abused. But her greatest fear was not death. It was losing her humanity. In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Novelist John Updike doesn’t like doing interviews.  At least until the interview starts.  Then he realizes it’s kind of flattering to talk about himself.  Now, he’s written a novel about a famous artist being interviewed.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, John Updike on why an...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Do you ever have the strange feeling that you've heard this promo before? Well, in this case, it's only fitting because we're going to explore deja vu on the next edition of To the Best of Our Knowledge. We'll try to find out what causes us to think we've already experienced the exact same...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Tariq Ramadan has been called the Muslim Martin Luther King, and he's often described as Europe's most important Muslim intellectual.  Hundreds of young Muslims turn up at his talks, and tapes of his lectures are widely circulated.  He travels throughout the Islamic world, trying to build...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

It used to be that comics were just for kids.   Today, we call them "graphic novels," and they're one of the fastest growing forms of American literature. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, how graphic art grew up...with Will Eisner's biographer, Jules Feiffer, Dennis Kitchen, and...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

If you think about it, every day we receive countless services from complete strangers — the newspaper delivered to your door, the trash picked up at the crack of dawn, the fresh fruit for sale at the supermarket. There's a whole army of invisible workers powering our economy who we rarely get...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

The collapse of the twin towers gave birth to a strange new world.  It was a city of fire and dust, rubble crunching under foot and eerie underground rivers.  William Langewiesche  was the only journalist with unrestricted access to Ground Zero.  What he found there was startling, natural, and...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

The East Village Opera Company's new album, "Olde School," was 300 years in the making. The group gives some of opera's greatest hits an extreme musical make-over, re-imagining them as popular songs. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'll meet the co-founders of The East Village...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

”Seinfeld” and “The Simpsons” may not look like grist for the philosopher’s mill, but philosopher Bill Irwin says they have a few things to teach us.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, philosophy from Socrates to Wittgenstein, with a short detour through pop culture.  Also...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

With the emergence of barefoot running, the sport suddenly is red hot again.  But barefoot or not, are human bodies really born to run?  We'll check in on the science or runner's high this hour, and try to unlock the secrets of the Kenyans - the fastest people on earth. Also, Olympic medalist...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Jacques Derrida and the philosophical movement known as deconstruction were once the rage on college campuses. Those days have passed, but deconstruction's influence is everywhere. We talk with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who first translated Derrida's landmark book "Of Grammatology" into...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

East Meets West

Part Three

 

The ancient trading routes through Persia, India and China were once the crossroads between East and West. Is the blogosphere the new Silk Road? Hear heartrending e-mails between an American professor and...Read more

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