Episode Archives

Filter episodes by the year they originally aired.
To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Homer called salt a divine substance.  Salt taxes built empires across Europe and Asia.  They even sparked a revolution.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, why salt is no ordinary rock.  We’ll tell you how it’s changed the course of history.  Also, the...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

The US is in the middle of its longest and most expensive war to date.  Not the war in Iraq – the war on drugs.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge – we’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars fighting for a “drug-free” America, yet heroin, cocaine and other illegal drugs are cheaper...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

What we eat can often say a lot about us. But why do we consider certain foods more appealing than others? In this hour, we look a the trends and tastemakers who shape our feelings about food.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Scientists are discovering how plants secretly talk to each other.  How smart is your geranium, and what does a tree know?  Today, we're eavesdropping on the secret language of plants.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

We are connected -- probably connected in ways neither of us has dreamed of. Forget six degrees of separation; on Facebook we have only 3.74. And that's just today.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

It’s primitive and brutal and a lot of people want to see it banned.  But it’s a 500 million dollar a year industry that’s not about to throw in the towel.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, a hard look at boxing.  And how the sport influenced the English language.  Also, one woman’s...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

The world’s oceans are emptying at an alarming rate.  Fish populations are dwindling and dozens of species are going extinct.  Is this something to worry about?  Not as long as you like plankton stew.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll meet the controversial scientist who jump-...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

What's the centerpiece of the American Dream? Is it our belief that you can pull-yourself-up-by-your-boot-straps? Maybe it's our rugged individualism? Or maybe, just maybe, it's the lawn. In this hour of To The Best Of Our Knowledge the obsessive quest for the perfect lawn. Also, a little bunny...Read more

an ape

Are humans really unique?  Not as much as we think, says renowned primatologist Frans de Waal.  So what do our ape cousins - chimps & bonobos - think and feel?  Also, the remarkable story of a feral child who lived with monkeys.

 

 Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

In America’s struggle with race, one man is trying to keep it real.  His website dares to post the questions we’re afraid to ask out loud.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the quest for racial understanding from the founder of the Y-Forum.  Also, the sweet and sorrowful history of...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Oliver Sacks has an unusual problem.  He can't recognize other people's faces.  In fact, he doesn't always recognize himself when he's looking in the mirror.  Sacks is also a neurologist who's fascinated by brain disorders.  We'll talk with Sacks and with the painter Chuck Close, who also...Read more

escape

Have you ever dreamed of escaping?  Your job, your spouse, your country?   This hour, stories of rescue and escape.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Have you ever been to "Reloville"? Or maybe you live there. There's more than one. You can find them in Atlanta, Dallas and Denver, among other places. "Relovilles" are the sprawling subdivisions where mid-level managers and executives live – for a few years before they uproot their families and...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

As soon as you, or someone you love, has that first "senior moment" – you start to worry. Is this the beginning of the slippery slope of Alzheimer's Disease? Relax! There's something you can do. The good news is that most of us won't live long enough to get Alzheimer's. And the rest of us...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the mystique of Native Americans.  We hear they’re close to the land; they have sacred knowledge.  But Indian writer Sherman Alexie says that’s bunk, that the “the whole New Age movement is based on as many stereotypes as genocide was.”  What makes a...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

America was once a nation of readers, but now experts warn that reading is in decline as our cultural life moves online. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, an hour in praise and defense of the book. Ursula Le Guin takes book publishers to task and a beloved children's book editor...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Shuttered businesses line the familiar streets of producer Charles Monroe-Kane’s hometown in the Rust Belt in northeastern Ohio. The steel mill where his father worked is shut down, locked behind chains. Opioid abuse is...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

New York Times columnist David Brooks is best known for his political writing, but he's also fascinated by recent findings in psychology and neuroscience.  In fact he says many of our public policies fail because we're not actually the rational decision makers we think we are.  In this hour of...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Ten years after the end of apartheid, what’s left to document the struggle?  For the filmmakers of the documentary “Amandla,” there’s music.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the songs that faced down death, despair and terror on the road to equality in South Africa.  Also, the...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Nelson Algren said “Never play cards with a man called Doc.  Never eat at a place called Mum’s.  And never go to bed with a woman whose troubles are greater than your own.” In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll catch up with Studs Terkel to talk about why an American master like...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Science and the Search for Meaning: Five Questions, Part One: What is Life?

Scientists can now explain virtually every stage of the evolutionary process.  But there’s a basic question that still mystifies even the best scientists: How did life first begin on Earth...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

Pages