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To The Best Of Our Knowledge

 Katha Pollitt is a columnist for The Nation and a pro-choice advocate who believes it’s time to reframe the whole abortion debate.  As she points out in her new book, “Pro” – an American woman today may have a legal right to an abortion…. But that doesn’t mean she can get one. 

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Rebecca Goldstein explains how Spinoza envisioned God and why his conception appealed to later scientists like Einstein.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Author and playwright Michael Frayn talks with Steve Paulson about his play “Copenhagen” and the dramatic meeting between physicists Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in 1941. At issue is the degree to which Heisenberg was spying for the Nazis and his role in the development of a German atom bomb.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Madhur Jaffrey, the Julia Child of India, talks with Anne Strainchamps about her extended Indian family.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Got World Cup fever? Here's Roger Kittleson on how Brazilian politics, culture and passion is wrapped up in soccer.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

How do modern societies compare to hunter gatherer cultures? In "The World Until Yesterday," Jared Diamond, explores our radically different values - on everything from childrearing to what we think about strangers. Here's Steve's EXTENDED interview with Diamond. 

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Richard Halpern talks with Jim Fleming about the sexual sub-text in Norman Rockwell’s work

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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.

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