Audio

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

In one of his most personal books, Sacks recalls his childhood in wartime London and the important role chemistry played in his life. He explains how he was comforted by the rigor and orderliness of science.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Would you like to sharpen your memory?  Science writer Joshua Foer tells you how to build an elaborate memory palace.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Peter Hillary and Jamling Norgay are the sons of the first men to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. Both men are climbers and have made a documentary film called “Surviving Everest” for National Geographic which details their own expedition up the mountain.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Paul Flores and Marc Bamuthi Joseph are spoken-word poets in the San Francisco Bay area. 

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Mike Tidwell is a freelance journalist who thinks he’s found the biggest environmental catastrophe in America.  In this pre-Katrina interview, Tidwell talks about the time he spent with shrimpers in the bayou country and what they taught him about the devastating price we’re paying for the way we control floods on the Mississippi River. 

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

The massive protests in Ferguson, Missouri are on our minds this week. We explore the racial conflict and police violence with sociologist Alice Goffman.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Pnina Moed Kass is an American who's lived in Israel for over 35 years. She's written a novel about a suicide bombing and the people whose lived are affected by it.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Joan Didion, who died last week at the age of 87, helped shape a highly personal brand of nonfiction that came to be known as the New Journalism. Her early essay collections "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" (1968) and "The White Album" (1979) influenced generations of writers. Her later memoirs, "The Year of Magical Thinking" and "Blue Nights," chronicled the deaths of her husband and daughter. In 2011 Didion talked with Steve Paulson about illness and growing old in the wake of the death of her daughter, Quintana.

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