Episode Archives

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a woman with head pain

You stub your toe, hit your head on an open cupboard, slam your fingers in a car door, slice your hand on the sharp lip of can, or lick an envelope the wrong way. Your toes throbs, your head aches, your fingers pound, your hand hurts, your lip smarts.

Pain is your body’s way of letting...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

George Burns lived a good long life, hanging on to one hundred.  These days scientists say that’s no big deal.  According to them, some of us may be tottering around the golf course when we’re 150.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the quest for immortality – how long can science...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Winston Churchill once said “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, journalist Jake Tapper discusses the ethics of telling lies during wartime.  We’ll also take a concise look at the...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Every year, Americans spend billions of dollars to try to improve themselves. They buy books and CDs, go to seminars...some even walk over hot coals in their bare feet. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'll try to find out if the self-help movement is really helping us.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

There's still debate about climate change, but one thing's for sure – these days nothing's sure about the weather. Northerners can golf in December, spring shows up early, and mosquitoes are movin' on up. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, wacky weather and what you can do to help....Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

America is in trouble. The decline of the dollar, climate change and the ugly math of Social Security and national debt are just a handful of the challenges facing the next generation. And who's to blame for the current mess? Baby Boomers - according to a growing movement, pitting one generation...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Imagine a world where flying robots watch over our borders, assist with search and rescue missions, and survey roads and pipelines. Sounds like science fiction, but in many parts of the country it's a reality. This week, we explore the rise of drones, both as a military tool and a disruptive...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Scientists have proven what pet owners already knew - cuddling with your dog or cat is good for you – and for your pet.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, keeping animals well, and how they return the favor.  From gorilla conservation and eco-tourism to the dilemmas posed...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

What goes on inside the mind of a painter, or a musician, or a poet?  What sparks creativity?  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, new neuroscience takes us inside the creative mind.  We’ll talk about brain imaging studies of jazz musicians, and cosmologist Brian Swimme explores the...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

It used to be that comics were just for kids.   Today, we call them "graphic novels," and they're one of the fastest growing forms of American literature. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, how graphic art grew up...with Will Eisner's biographer, Jules Feiffer, Dennis Kitchen, and...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

For years poet and novelist Alice Walker told her friends she’d probably never write again.  But the events of September 11 changed all that.  And the poetry flowed.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Alice Walker on the role of the poet in a time of war.  Also, Iraqi poetry today. ...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

If you think about it, every day we receive countless services from complete strangers — the newspaper delivered to your door, the trash picked up at the crack of dawn, the fresh fruit for sale at the supermarket. There's a whole army of invisible workers powering our economy who we rarely get...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

It was the best of times for Pattie Boyd. Her modeling career was booming and the sixties were exploding on the London scene. One day she got a call - she'd been cast in a Beatles film. The rest is history. We'll meet the woman who inspired three of the most famous rock songs of all time,...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Who are you?

A man? A woman?

Are you a success? A failure?

A parent? An athlete? A wallflower?

A Christian? A Buddhist? A baker? 

If we are only a collection of stories about ourselves... what's the truth of who "we" are? 

Looking for UNCUT...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Ben Kilham has some unusual playmates - black balls of fur who scratch, wrestle and climb all over him.  They are orphaned bear cubs.  And Kilham is their surrogate mom.  He’s raised two dozen bear cubs and then released them into the wild.  Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll trek...Read more

crumpled pages from a book

Nobody wants to fail.  But maybe we’ve got the idea of failure all wrong.  Maybe it's not something to avoid, but something to strive for.  . Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Phil Harvey gives away tens of millions of dollars every year to fight AIDS and promote family planning in such places as India, Brazil, Vietnam and Ethiopia.  Where does the money come from?  Harvey runs the largest mail-order erotica business in the world.  In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Men are not really from Mars and women are not really from Venus.  But there are definite differences between the two genders.  Norah Vincent was curious about what a man's life was like.  So she spent eighteen months undercover...as a man.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Norah...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

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

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

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

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