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To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Belly up to the bar as To the Best of Our Knowledge spends an hour with drinkers and drunks.  Meet the man who invented the Cosmopolitan.  He says it’s a really simple drink.  All you need is fresh lime juice.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

"Beowulf" is the oldest story in the English language, but for centuries no one knew it existed. The manuscript was buried in an ancient monastery, written in a language no one understood. Even after it was discovered few scholars read it as serious literature, but that all changed with J.R.R...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and...a trip to the mall?  Like it or not, a trip to the mall is an American rite of passage.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge a look at the great American pastime - shopping.  From the Mall of America to the latest new strip mall, Americans spend more...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

DEVO co-founder Mark Mothersbaugh talks about his visual art exhibition, "Myopia," and Joshua Wolf Shenk lays waste to the myth of the lone genius as we explore the creative process.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Would you be surprised to know there are more slaves in the world today than at any other time in human history? An estimated 27 million people live in bondage. On this To the Best of Our Knowledge, the new abolitionists – including a reporter who risked his life to document the global traffic...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Peggy Orenstein didn't want children. At least she didn't think so. Children killed careers and turned smart, professional women into drones. Well, that's what Orenstein was afraid of, anyway. But after a death in the family, she changed her mind. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, to...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Dan Janzen is one of the world’s leading tropical biologists.  He’s spent forty years working in the Cost Rican jungle, and there’s one creature that fascinates him above all others - the moth.  Janzen has found nine-thousand different species of moth in Cost Rica.  In this hour of To the Best...Read more

making music on a piano and a guitar

What goes into making new music? And how does hearing new music change the way we listen? From the Avant Garde composers of the 1920s, through Japanese noise music, to punk progenitor Richard Hell, we’re looking at how music - and how we hear it - changes. Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Is it any wonder boys don’t read?  Too often they’re assigned the books their female teachers loved.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the man behind the GuysRead website says forget “Little House on the Prairie” and bring on Stinky Cheese Man!  And we’ll hear what happened when the...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Bright young men and women used to graduate and head for Wall Street or a top corporate law firm. Today, more and more of them are heading back to the land. After all, which would you rather do wear a suit and slave in a cubicle or spend your days on your own land, growing food for...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

There’s no English translation for the Dutch word “Gezellig."

Are there things that can never be understood, expressed or experienced outside their home culture?

We’re wandering the unmarked maps of cultural translation!Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Our world is increasingly unthinkable.  It’s a world of tectonic shifts, strange weather and oil-drenched seascapes.  So maybe it makes sense to look to the horror genre to help us think about our unthinkable world. Next time on TO THE BEST OF OUR KNOWLEDGE, we’ll explore the...Read more

a scientist

Science is moving out of the lab and into the pages of literary fiction.  This week, we introduce the “Lab Lit” movement and talk about why fiction needs more realistic portrayals of scientists and science cultureRead more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

East Meets West

Part Five

 

Tariq Ramadan is a controversial philosopher who believes Muslims can thrive in secular, Western society. Ayaan Hirsi Ali disagrees. She's an equally controversial figure who's living under a death threat...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Tribute albums, reunion tours and mash-ups.  If pop culture’s all about the new, why is there so much wallowing in our immediate past?  Simon Reynolds joins us to talk about his book, “Retromania.”   Is this retromania a death knell for our own originality?Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

The physics world has a darling - it's called string theory. The idea that the universe is composed of infinitesimal vibrating strings. String theory has been the subject of bestselling books, popular TV series and countless articles. But is it a dead end street? In this hour of on To the...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

From Soup to Nuts

Part Four

They say variety is the spice of life. But let's be honest, spices are really the spice of life. Pepper, oregano, vanilla. . . parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, things get...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Andrew Sullivan is not a Republican, but he calls himself a conservative.  He does not believe in using religion to ground political ideals.  But he himself is a person of faith.  And he endorsed John Kerry, although Ronald Reagan is one of his heroes.  In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Right after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair magazine, declared “irony is dead.”  Only a few months later Carter said, with a nudge and a wink, “I meant to say IRONING is dead - not irony.”  This time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll look at the rise of...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Ayn Rand didn't know how to make small talk; she lived for big ideas and bold statements.  She believed capitalism was the best social system ever invented, and even took to wearing a gold pin in the shape of a dollar sign.  Ayn Rand died nearly thirty years ago, but she's now inspiring a new...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

We all have our good days and our bad days, but chances are they’re nothing like what Andy Behrman has experienced.  Behrman would fly from Zurich to the Bahamas and back in three days to balance hot and cold weather.  On the bad days, he’d experience tornado-like rages of depression.  In this...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Did you know that novelist Thomas Hardy had a second career as a poet? Or that many people don't find their artistic passions until after the age of 85? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we talk about change over time - that is, how change is really a lifelong project. A former monk...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Fashion photographer David Jay recently sent us a book of his photos. The lighting was perfect, the settings intimate. The women, nearly naked, were gorgeous.  Taking in the beautiful images, something stood out – the mastectomy scars.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

For journalists, the first days of Donald Trump’s presidency have been a bit surreal.  We find ourselves wondering how legendary muckrakers might have reacted to some of these first press briefings. So delving into the TTBOOK...Read more

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