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To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Electrons to Enlightenment

Part Five

 

In the real world where we take out the garbage, we sometimes brush up against wonder and awe. We all look for it in different places. Some of us find it in God, like the great mystic poet...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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Who would have guessed that number two on the Best Seller List this summer would be an intellectual thriller starring four brainy Princeton seniors and a 15th century manuscript written in code?  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, meet the authors of “The Rule of Four.”  Lost and...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

The Creative BrainCreativity is a little like obscenity:  You know it when you see it, but you can't exactly define it....unless you're a neuroscientist.  In labs around the...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Chaotic headlines out of Washington, ice melting in Antarctica, world temps rising and global conflict on the rise… it could be worse. It could be Ragnarok. Writer Neil Gaiman retells the ancient Norse myth of the Twilight of the Gods and apocalyptic end of the world in his stunning new...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Computers permeate our lives.  They scan our groceries.  They entertain us.  They keep us safe.  But, can they write a poem?  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, will your desktop be the next Bard?  And, the life of the original rock n’ roll rebel: the 19th century French poet Arthur...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

If you want to know the truth about J.D. Salinger, good luck.  To this day we know more about his fictional character Holden Caulfield than we do about the man who created him.  In this hour of the Peabody-Award winning program To the Best of Our Knowledge, literary life after Salinger’s...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

Science and the Search for Meaning: Five Questions, Part 3: Does the Soul Still Matter?

For centuries, we’ve been told the soul is what makes each of us unique.  It’s why we have moral responsibility.  And it’s the part of us that lives on after we die. ...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Bohemians used to hate anything that reeked of money.  It destroyed the soul.  Now, many self-styled bohemians are reveling in slate shower stalls, Range Rovers, and lava-rock grills.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the triumphs of the “Bobo” – the Bourgeois...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

A rose is a rose is a rose... until it becomes perfume. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the power of the flower.  A science journalist introduces us to Luca Turin, the most amazing nose in the business, with a new theory about how we smell.  We’ll talk with photographer Joyce...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Suppose there's a pill that would dramatically boost your creativity.  Would you take it?  Psychologist Jim Fadiman says that pill exists.  It's the powerful hallucinogen LSD.  Fadiman describes a remarkable experiment showing how psychedelics enhanced the creativity of senior scientists. Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Here’s the truth: the wild romance will probably end. Wedding vows, intimacy, heartache… they can have a long shelf-life. But those butterflies in your stomach? Wild libidinal longings? They tend to quiet over time.

So what happens after the romance ends? From passionate marriage, to ...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Think you know your history?  Then, of course, you remember Martin Luther King's famous "If I Had A Hammer" speech.  And you know that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife...and she was at rest on Mount Arafat.  And you don't need me to remind you that Marie Curie won the Noel Prize for inventing the...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Are you an experimental innovator who works by trial and error and is most creative later in life, like Cezanne? Or are you a conceptual young genius like Picasso? We'll explore a theory that those are the two life cycles of artistic creativity.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

It’s been described as the Nobel Prize of motion pictures: the coveted Academy Award.  One billion people around the world watch the Oscars on TV every year.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the history and politics of the Academy Awards.  Is Oscar a white man’s award?  Also, Don...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

If you ever find yourself on a dark country road in Ireland, bring along some salt, red thread, and a cross.  That’s what you’ll need to protect yourself from “the other crowd.”  Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, the fairies of Ireland.  They’re magical, vengeful, and still alive and...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

In the mid-80's the metal band Winger topped the charts with hits like "Seventeen." Then Grunge came along and left bands like Winger in the dust.  Now, Kip Winger is back on top with a new CD that debuted at #1 on the music charts.  Only this time, he's rocking the classical charts....Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Al Green is often referred to as the minister of L-O-V-E. You know, a couple of candles, a back-rub, and Al Green on the stereo. In 1976, Al Green put all that behind him and became a real minister – the Reverend Al Green of the Full Gospel Tabernacle Church in Memphis, Tennessee. But now he's...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

When the Taliban took control of Kabul, many Afghans destroyed their books and TV sets.  Belquis Ahmadi’s family left the country when women lost their rights.  Today, Ahmadi lives in exile, campaigning for women to play a major role in a new Afghan government.  Her story in this...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Ok, take a breath. Close your eyes. Recall the home of your childhood.  Can you smell the cookies in the kitchen? Can you open a drawer in your bedroom? Do you see the sunlight through a window? Every building has a story. . . And not only a story, every building has a sound.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Is there such a thing as true, original creativity? Or "Are we just seeing further by standing on the shoulders of giants?", to paraphrase Sir Isaac Newton. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we'll explore the question of where good ideas come from. Steven Johnson will tell us about...Read more

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