If grocery shopping isn’t your thing, here’s a new way to put food on the table: try sticking your arm under a rock until a big ol’ catfish clamps onto to you. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, noodling for catfish and other southern pastimes. Also, Texas singer Steve Earle’s...Read more
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Episode Archives
In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, a visit with former Israeli commando Uri Avnery, who went on to become an outspoken critic of Israeli policy. He's seen his office bombed. He's been beaten and once barely survived an assassination attempt. Today Avnery is calling for a separate...Read more
It's been more than four decades since the Civil Rights movement ended racial segregation in America. Yet few would say African-Americans are now fully integrated – or assimilated. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, African American writers talk about race, and how black history –...Read more
The Back to the Land spirit of the 60s lives on today, in the proliferation of farmer's markets, and the increased interest in sustainability and growing our own food. From the fight to end food waste in America to the art of living small, we'll find out what the Back to the Land spirit...Read more
Alex Rider, Nancy Drew, The Cat in the Hat, and Harold and the Purple Crayon – for millions of children of all ages, they're some of the most imaginative and mysterious stories around. But as it turns out, the authors sometimes have their own, personal mysteries to share. In this hour of To the...Read more
Whether black from a bottomless cup or as a Frappuccino mocha skim latte, it’s our culture’s elixir, coffee. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, java, joe, or a cup of mud. Most of us drink it everyday, but few of us know the effects it has on the world’s economy, or even...Read more
Words can change lives. Just look at the “at-risk” students in Erin Gruwell’s class. Many of them were branded “unteachable.” Then they read Anne Frank’s diary, and started to keep their own journals. The experience was electrifying. In this hour of To the Best of...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
Atheists are finally coming out of the closet, and in some cases denouncing religion. Others still crave a sense of the sacred even though they don’t believe in God. Do atheists have something to learn from religion? Why do so many people call themselves "spiritual but not religious"? And...Read more
James Tiptree Jr. wrote some of the most critically-acclaimed science fiction stories in the 1960's and 1970's....classics like "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" and "The Women Men Don't See." But James Tiptree was actually the pseudonym of a 61-year-old woman, Alice B. Sheldon. In this hour of...Read more
Did you know that Teddy Roosevelt was one of nine U.S. presidents who had hooks for hands? Well, that's just one of countless facts included in John Hodgman's new almanac. But, as it turns out, all of these facts are fake. In this hour of the Peabody Award-winning To the Best of Our Knowledge,...Read more
Remember those great cars from the Fifties? The Redscare Phantom Witchhunter and the Bongo Beatnik Ferlinghetti TurboHipster? If you don’t recall them rolling off Detroit’s assembly lines, there’s a perfectly good reason. They never existed, except in the imagination of writer and illustrator...Read more
Everybody needs a little help, and some of us need a lot. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll meet some helpers - and they’re not all human. We’ll visit a stable where they do equine assisted therapy, and we’ll hear from a writer who’s a volunteer fireman in his small hometown...Read more
When he was 10-years-old, Brian Raftery realized he couldn't sing. Despite his lack of vocal prowess, Raftery is obsessed with karaoke. He's traveled around the world to trace karaoke's evolution from a cult fad to a multimillion-dollar industry. In this hour, we'll explore the world of karaoke...Read more
As artists and scientists explore the edges of our senses, what we touch, taste, see, smell, and hear is changing.
In this hour we hear from a psychiatrist who’s using touch to help people recover from trauma, investigate a mysterious sensory experience that gives some people euphoric...Read more
Siberia is the name for a place we tend to think of as a metaphor as much as a destination on the map. Writer Ian Frazier indulged what he calls his dread Russia love with travels through Siberia, tracing the path of prisoners on their way to lonely exile and through mosquito-ridden swamps at...Read more
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh made his name when he broke the story of the My Lai Massacre. Looking back you have to wonder: why did Lt. William Calley tell Hersh he’d killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians? On this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge Hersh says “because I asked him...Read more
Crime may not pay but writing crime fiction does. Just ask the Swedish writer, Henning Mankell. Or those who write "Tartan Noir"...Scottish detective fiction. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'll explore Northern Europe's fictional crime wave. Also, Roger Ebert on film noir.Read more
"History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies." -- Alexis de TocquevilleRead more
In this age of globalization, why would anyone want borders, an army, currency? Isn’t that kind of … old school? Read more
Governors are slashing state spending, and the President has put some of his own party's favorite programs on the chopping block. But how much of the new austerity is really necessary, and how much is politics? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, is austerity a dangerous idea? Join...Read more
Buried scrolls, clay tablets, priceless artifacts and expensive forgeries – this week, we bring you stories from the strange and amazing world of biblical archeology.Read more
He was a wandering pilgrim who talked to birds, healed the sick and tamed wild beasts. He was also the closest thing to a medieval rock star - a man so revered in his lifetime that people tore at this clothes, desperate to touch a living saint. Today, St. Francis of Assisi is admired by both...Read more
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