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To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Everything you know about Indians is wrong. That's the starting point for Paul Chaat Smith, who says it's time to hit the reset button and re-think everything we know about Native American culture.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Comedian Howie Miller says that's what he does as a...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Science fiction offers us visions of histories we don't know -- histories of the future and the past.  Today, legendary science fiction writers talk about science, utopia, and the imagination.  Plus, the winners of our 3 Minute Futures fiction contest!

...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

What animals will still be living in the year 3000?  Forget about tigers, rhinos and pandas.  They’ll go the way of the dodo bird.  But scientist Peter Ward says rats and coyotes will flourish.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge the future of evolution.  Also, best-selling novelist...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Robert Olen Butler had a crazy idea.  The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist wanted to show how writers really work.  So he created his own web site, pointed a camera at his word processor, and wrote...every night for three weeks.  Believe it or not, thousands of people tuned in for the these...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Are you deadline driven?  Most focused, most productive as “zero hour” approaches?  Well, what about the ultimate end, the true end of the time frame. 

Deadline, indeed. 

How does knowing that you’re going to die affect your life?  In this hour we’re minding mortality.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

American flags are everywhere.  U.S. soldiers are once again heroes.  And some people say it’s downright unpatriotic to criticize the president or the war against terrorism.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the new meaning of patriotism and the crackdown on dissent....Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

They can talk to angels, they're intuitive, and their aura is an unusual vivid blue. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'll find out about indigo children. The new age movement says they're here to save the world, but modern medicine says they're normal kids with attention deficit...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

How do you soak in the essence of a city?  In New York, writer Colson Whitehead goes walking ... through Times Square, along Broadway, down into the subway.  In Memphis, critic Robert Gordon listens to its music - the blues, soul, rock-n-roll.  Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll...Read more

a house

The American middle class used to be living proof that the American dream was alive and well, providing homes and modest savings to anyone willing to work.  It’s another story today.  In this hour, the decline of the middle class.  How rising levels of income inequality shattered...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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Imagine a scenario where universes bubble up out of black holes.  Space itself can boil, and humankind may have to fight for survival by building gigantic atom-smashers the length of several star systems.  That future may be closer than you think.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge,...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Wiring the BrainScientists are launching one of the most audacious projects ever conceived:  a detailed map of the human brain, neuron by neron, synapse by synapse.  For some scientists...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Spiderman had a pretty good summer last year, but J.K. Rowling wasn’t worried.  When the sixth Harry Potter book came out, children trampled the web-slinger in their rush to bookstores and libraries.  Which makes perfect sense to author and Arthurian scholar Jane Yolen.  She says it’s all about...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

When your country doesn’t live up to its own values, what do you do?  Put your head under the covers or man the barricades?  Fighting for freedom means different things to different people. In this hour,  we talk with some of them -- from Wikileaks’ controversial founder Julian Assange, to the...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

By today’s medical definition, Brad Pitt is overweight, and Russell Crowe is obese.  The standards are even tougher for women.  But are those extra pounds really that bad?  Maybe it’s time we all lighten up about fat.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, why one expert says America’s...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Linus has his security blanket.  Renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks had the Periodic Table of the Elements.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, My Chemical Life.  Oliver Sacks remembers a childhood steeped in chemistry.  Also, Primo Levi survives Auschwitz, through chemistry.  And,...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Child rape at Penn State. A murderous rampage in Norway.  A new civil war in Sudan. Ruthless drug cartels. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Hate Crimes. Murder. Genocide. What is wrong with us? Are we really that bad?Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

According to a "New York Times" poll he's the third most famous person in Japan, right behind Hirohito and Bruce Lee. But the truth is he's not even a person, he's a giant green, radioactive lizard named Godzilla. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we'll explore the history of...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

You know who they are – the cool kids – those above-it-all taste-makers whose fashion and entertainment choices predict what everyone else will be wearing and doing next year.  What’s their secret?  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge exploring cool.  A frustrated surfer remembers...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Rising sea levels, brutal storms and droughts, record temperatures...is there anything we can do about climate change? As world leaders gather at the Paris Climate Summit, we consider a range of proposals - from geoengineering and new green technology to a post-carbon economy.   Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Steve Kissing seemed like a perfect child. He was an "A" student. He excelled as an athlete. He was even an altar boy. But Steve had a secret, a secret so dark he couldn't tell anyone. Steve was possessed by the devil. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, meeting the devil. From a boy...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

When Donald Trump described his offensive remarks about women as "locker room talk," he implied that it's normal for men to engage in macho sexual braggadocio in gender-segregated spaces like men's locker rooms.  Sociologist Amy Schalet and law professor Terry Kogan trace hidden...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Physicist Brian Greene sees an elegant universe – one where even baking a batch of cookies can yield surprising lessons about the fabric of the universe, or watching an egg splatter suggests a model for the Big Bang theory.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, thoughts from one of the...Read more

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