Lauren Weedman grew up knowing she was adopted. When she became a teenager, she decided she wanted to meet her birth mother, but the hospital records were sealed and the search seemed hopeless. Then Lauren’s mom got in on the act, and today Lauren has two moms – and a one woman show...Read more
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Episode Archives
On Christmas Eve of 1914, German soldiers in the Flanders trenches lit candles on small Christmas trees. British, French, Belgian and German troops serenaded each other with songs. Soon enemy soldiers broke bread with each other and exchanged letters. In this hour of To the...Read more
Original Air Date:
December 16, 2001
Comfort food’s selling like hotcakes. People haven’t forgotten the importance of good nutrition, but these days we crave things that’ll make us feel better. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, seeking solace in a scary world. Diane Ackerman talks about her garden, and...Read more
Original Air Date:
December 02, 2001
You think Greta Garbo was good at ducking the paparazzi? She could have learned a thing or two from the giant squid. No one has ever seen one alive. Zoologist Clyde Roper should know, he’s spent most of his life in pursuit of this low profile ocean monster. In this hour...Read more
Original Air Date:
November 25, 2001
Most of us probably have heard of someone else who shares our name, and there are probably others, but unlike British comedian Dave Gorman, we haven’t traveled 24 thousand miles and spent thousands of dollars to meet all of them. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, magnificent...Read more
Original Air Date:
November 25, 2001
Maybe home is where you live, raise your family and mow the grass. Or it's where you grew up. Or where the whole clan gathers for major holidays. Wherever home is, it's never mattered more. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, stories of home, from the Texas hill country to the ‘hood....Read more
Original Air Date:
November 04, 2001
We’ve got a million expressions for death: kicking the bucket, checking out, buying the farm - but what do we do when words aren’t enough? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, artisans are finding new passages through grief, from graffiti memorials to handcrafted coffins. ...Read more
Original Air Date:
October 28, 2001
Sometimes you can’t separate beauty from brutality in the African bush. Safari guide Mark Ross is still figuring it out. In 1999, Ross and a group of tourists were kidnaped by Rwandan rebels. What happened that day changed the rest of his life. Next time on To the Best of Our...Read more
Original Air Date:
September 16, 2001
Have you ever had one of those moments when you know you really should think about a different line of work? For Daniel Pink, it was a scorching hot June day in Washington, D.C. when he almost threw up on Al Gore. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Daniel Pink’s career as...Read more
Original Air Date:
September 02, 2001
Organic food is now a booming billion dollar industry. And today’s top chefs are its biggest cheerleaders. They say locally-grown, organic food will help save the planet. But not everyone agrees. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, an argument for why celebrity...Read more
Original Air Date:
September 02, 2001
A couple of years ago writer Michael Pollan was curious about the world of illegal, underground marijuana gardens. What he found surprised him. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Mary Jane goes high tech. A look at drug cultures past and present, a visit to a rave,...Read more
Original Air Date:
August 26, 2001
Suppose you grew up with one of the world’s great scientists. How would that shape your view of the world? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, an intimate look at the great conservationist Aldo Leopold: we’ll talk with three of his children. Also, comic novelist David...Read more
Original Air Date:
August 19, 2001
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
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
Samuel Adams couldn’t ride a horse to save his life, and had a tendency to drool. As if that’s not bad enough, John Adams was a roly-poly fellow who spent his free time fantasizing about becoming the next American King. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, a revisionist’s take on the...Read more
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
A police officer's shooting of a young, unarmed Afrian American man here in Madison joins a long list of national tragedies. So we devote this hour to conversations about race and justice.Read more
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
Violence may be a national scourge, but an awful lot of people devour shoot-‘em-up movies and video games. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the seduction of violence. Why, for instance, four and five-year-old children love fantasy games where they kill each other. Also, the...Read more
Americans are from Mars, and Europeans are from Venus. At least that’s the view of foreign policy analyst Robert Kagan. He says Europeans no longer believe in military power, quite unlike America’s leaders. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the growing split between Europe and...Read more
Imagine Superman, demented with age, on a final mission to save the world. Or Conan the Barbarian, civilized and living in L.A. boarding the bus with a good book. It’s all there in the poetry of Charles Harper Webb. Words fly this hour on To the Best of Our Knowledge as we take in performance...Read more
Science and the Search for Meaning: Five Questions, Part Two: What Does Evolution Want?
If there’s one strand of evolutionary theory that sticks in the craw of nearly every religious believer, it’s the idea that human beings are just an evolutionary accident. But...Read more
Celebrate Midsummer's Eve with a visit to the fey folk. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'll have an hour filled with stories of changelings and other-kin, Fairy Courts and green children. We'll conjure up a world of enchantment, but beware! There are no Tinkerbells in the world....Read more