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To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Negroes and the Gun

Harriet Tubman will soon be gracing our twenty dollar bill. Most of us know only one image of her. It's an iconic image taken later in her life in which her hair's covered in a dark cloth and she has a stern expression. But there are other images of Harriet Tubman as well, including a wood cut of her carrying a musket.

Law professor Nicholas Johnson says the image of Harriet Tubman carrying a rifle doesn’t fit with how most Americans view abolitionists and civil rights leaders. After all, weren’t they supposed to be peaceful? But as Johnson tells Steve Paulson, there's a rich tradition of Black Americans owning guns for self-defense.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Psychedelic Explorer - James Fadiman

Jim Fadiman is one of the original psychonauts – a friend of Richard Alpert and Ken Kesey in the Sixties – who went on to do pioneering research on psychedelics and creativity, and helped found the transpersonal psychology movement. In this EXTENDED interview, Steve Paulson talks with Fadiman about a lifetime of unconventional thinking.

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John Waters on "Role Models"

Sometimes films just push the limits of good taste.

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Kip Winger Goes Classical

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. His new album is "Conversations with Nijinsky"-- orchestral compositions performed by the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra.   

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Michael Gurian on Girls and Math

Michael Gurian is an educator and therapist and author of “The Wonder of Girls.”  He gives Jim Fleming some advice about helping girls master math.

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Paula Wolfert on "The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen"

Paula Wolfert is one of America’s most admired food writers. Her latest cook book is “The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen.”

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Nita Sahai on How Life First Began

How did non-life become life? University of Wisconsin geochemist Nita Sahai talks with Anne Strainchamps about how life might have begun on Earth.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Life on Mark Twain's Mississippi

If there’s one writer who’s identified with the Mississippi River, it’s Mark Twain. He grew up in Hannibal, Missouri — on the river’s edge — and as a young man, he worked as a steamboat pilot. And then he wrote the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” the novel that turned the Mississippi into myth. But it also created one of the most enduring controversies in American literary history: how to depict race relations in America's past. In this interview, Andrew Levy says that "Huckleberry Finn" is actually anti-racist — and when it was first published, the big controversy was about Twain’s depiction of wild children.

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