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To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Tad Pierson runs a tour business called “American Dream Safari.”  He takes his clients on tours of Memphis and into Mississippi in his 1955 Cadillac named Mansfield.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Susan Blackmore is a British psychologist who's written books on consciousness, memes and Zen Buddhism.  She says her daily practice of meditation has revealed truths that have eluded the scientific study of consciousness.

You can also listen to the EXTENDED interview, and read the extended transcript.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

The former mayor of Madison, Wisconsin, take us on a walking tour of the neighborhood of one of his big heroes, the late urban thinker, Jane Jacobs. 

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Literary critic William Gass talks with Steve Paulson about the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and explicates a poem of Rilke’s about a bowl of roses.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Dubbed a secular mosque for the Arab world, the Burj Khalifa dominates the Dubai skyline. As it should: it's by far the tallest building in the world. It's so tall that during Ramadan, Muslims living on higher floors have to break their fast 2 minutes later than those on lower floors because they see the sunset later in the day.

Steve Paulson sat down with legendary architecture critic Paul Goldberger to talk all things Burj Kalifa.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

The "connectome" is one of the most audacious science projects ever conceived: a detailed map of the human brain, neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse. In this EXTENDED interview, MIT computational neuroscientist Sebastian Seung explains what we can learn.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Stephen Mitchell has composed a new translation of “Gilgamesh,” the epic poem of ancient Mesopotamia.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Solar engineer Martha Lenio was the first woman to command a mission on the HI-SEAS — the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation. It's a project co-sponsored by NASA and the Univeristy of Hawaii that simulates what it would be like to live on Mars for eight months. To survive in such extremes, they were sequestered into a 1,000 square foot dome, and when they went outside they had to wear space suits. When Lenio got there, she said it didn't feel much like Mars, but she changed her mind after 8 months without the sun and wind on her skin. She spoke with Anne Strainchamps about missing her family — and missing YouTube cat videos.

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