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
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Episode Archives
Start telling love stories and chances are, you’ll find yourself telling tales of transgression. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Joyce Carol Oates talks about the harm done by family secrets. P.D. James muses on why women are so good at crime fiction. A...Read more
Are you a knave? Scalawag? A varlet? Are you a scoundrel? Maybe you’re not but secretly you want to be. Being a scoundrel kind of has a ring to it. It’s romantic. Rebellious.Read more
If you've ever been alone on Valentine's Day, you probably know how isolating it can be to feel like the only single person in a world full of happy couples. But being alone doesn't have to be shameful. This hour, we're changing the script and making the case for the lovelorn, the loners, the...Read more
We may think it’s pretty clear what is – and isn’t – science, but history is littered with cases where the line wasn’t so obvious. For instance, Isaac Newton studied alchemy, and Galileo was a practicing astrologer. This hour explores the edges of science, and we hear about the...Read more
Larry Brilliant is a doctor, co-founder of the digital social network the Well, and he was the first executive director of Google.org. But back in the Sixties, he was a hippie doctor who joined Wavy Gravy's traveling bus caravan and then landed in an Indian ashram in the Himalayas, where his...Read more
Pop culture writer Chuck Klosterman has interviewed some of the biggest names in the celebrity constellation. But getting a celebrity to talk is no easy task. In fact, Klosterman says it's not in the celebrity's best interest to do any interviews at all. In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more
Sometimes, a single word speaks volumes about its era. Sputnik conjures up both the heady excitement of the early Space Race and the whole scary history of the Cold War. In this hour, To the Best of Our Knowledge touches on a few of these cultural touchstones....from Sputnik to Snoopy. We'll...Read more
If you live in Wisconsin, chances are you've heard of the Wisconsin Idea. It's the century-old dream of sharing the best of higher education with the entire state -- bringing the values of the liberal arts, scientific knowledge and search for truth to everyone. It's a cherished tradition,...Read more
Have you ever dreamed of escaping? Your job, your spouse, your country? This hour, stories of rescue and escape.Read more
Sinatra swings it, Miles Davis jazzes it up, and Billy Holiday croons it from the heart. Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, the biography of a great American love song. In our second annual Valentine’s Day Show the Rogers and Hart hit “My Funny Valentine.” And our listeners share true...Read more
How does creative work get done? When the answer finally comes to a question that's dogged you for weeks or years, where is it coming from?
In this special hour, Nathan Englander - acclaimed novelist, short story writer, playwright - is our guest...Read more
What would you do if being a woman just didn't feel right? What if being a man didn't feel right either?
In the West, a few people are choosing to leave gender behind all together. Call them gender queer, third gender or gender guerillas… people are challenging all of our notions of “he...Read more
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
Despite the refinancing frenzy, the American Dream isn’t about real estate. It means being free to make a new life for yourself. Regardless of the place or the circumstances of your birth. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we celebrate the American Dream. We’ll meet a man who...Read more
When suicide bombers blow up crowded marketplaces, or a lone shooter attacks a nightclub, one question we’re always left with is why. What ideology or belief or loyalty would compel someone to do something so horrific? This hour, a look at the underlying psychology of political violence.Read more
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!
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When the Soviet Union fell, China was poised to take over as America’s next great enemy. The 9/11 happened and there was a new enemy. So, what about China? Next time, we’ll take a closer look at China today and what the future holds for US/China relations. Also, a talk with Nobel prize-...Read more
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
The parallels between the recent financial meltdown and that of 1929 are striking. In both cases a financial bubble burst and led to a run on the banks. Both times the Federal Reserve made huge mistakes. So how close did we come to another Great Depression? In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more
Philosophers get a bad rap - they're written off as too academic, too detached from daily life. But we're seeing a philosophy revival, from philosophy cafes to philosophers as therapists. From the Stoics to Spinoza, an argument for why philosophy still matters.Read more
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
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