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To The Best Of Our Knowledge

If you've spent any time playing Tetris, you've probably spent a lot of time playing it. Tetris is simple yet addictive.  Your job is to fit falling geometric blocks together so that there are no spaces between them. Box Brown has spent alot of time playing and thinking about Tetris. He's written and illustrated a graphic history of the world's most popular video game.  It turns out that Tetris has a fascinating backstory. 

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Stephen Greenblatt tells the remarkable story of how the discovery of an ancient poem helped launch the Scientific Revolution.  Also, an excerpt from Lucretius' poem "On the Nature of Things."

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Before the Internet, a good memory wasn't just useful; it was prized as a sign of intelligence. And there were memory geniuses who developed mental tricks for storing information. Philosopher and novelist Simon Critchley delves into the fascinating history of the memory palace, which once promised almost God-like wisdom.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Todd Boyd tells Anne Strainchamps it's time for the Black Community to let go of the dusty lessons of the Civil Rights Movement and embrace the ideals of hip hop.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Steve Paulson visits award-winning children’s book author Paula Fox at her New York brownstone. Fox has just written a highly acclaimed memoir, “Borrowed Finery.”

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

TTBOOK Technical Director Caryl Owen invites listeners to remix the TTBOOK theme music.

If you want to give it a whirl, the most important instruction is: please submit your remix as a 16bit, 44.1K (CD standard) .wav file. Mp3s won't work! 

You can download files here and drop your remixes here.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Poet Christian Wiman says being diagnosed with cancer - and falling in love - spurred him to write.

In this conversation with Jim Fleming, he reads poems throbbing with life, and talks about finding future.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Susan Burch teaches at Gallaudet University and is the author of “Signs of Resistance: American Deaf Cultural History, 1900 - 1942.”  She talks about the “oralist” movement which required the deaf to learn sign language and lip reading.

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