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To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Reinhold Messner is arguably the world’s greatest living mountaineer. He’s climbed 14 of the world’s tallest peaks, and if that isn’t impressive enough, he was the first to climb Mt. Everest alone and without supplemental oxygen. He recounts some of these adventures in a new book called “Reinhold Messner: My Life at the Limit.” Steve Paulson caught up with him and asked how he got hooked on climbing.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

We know a lot about how slaves looked at books because of the hundreds of slave narratives they wrote.  Scholar Cherene Sherrard-Johnson says a fundamental trope in those narratives is what’s called “the Talking Book.” 

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Susan Friedman tells Anne Strainchamps about her friendship, initiated and maintained via e-mail over the internet, with a young woman scholar in Iraq.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Reporter Scott Wallace joined Brazilian explorer Sidney Posseulo on an expedition deep into the Amazon in search of one of the last uncontacted tribes, the Arrow People. 

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Tony Perrottet specialized in exotic travel until he decided to go to Rome, then travel the sites of the ancient world using classical Roman tour guides.

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

Terry Gross has been the host of the public radio program Fresh Air for over twenty years. She remembers some of her career highlights with Steve Paulson.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Writer Richard Rodriguez views his so-called brown identity as a racial mixture, dating back to the colonization of the Americas. He tells us why he celebrates being brown, and embraces the term "Hispanic."

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