To the Best of Our Knowledge is produced at Wisconsin Public Radio, and if there’s one thing we know here in America’s dairyland, it’s cows. So as long as we’re talking about lies that last… have you ever tried to tip a cow?
Interesting in that cow tipping equation? Click here.
Ryan Boudinot talks to Jim Fleming about his post-apocalyptic novel, "Blueprints of the Afterlife."
Why aren't there more realistic portrayals of scientists in literary fiction? Cell biologist and novelist Jennifer Rohn founded LabLit.com, a website that's at the center of the new movement calling for more and better science in fiction.
Neuroscientists say that about a quarter of our mental energy is dedicated to maintaining our narrative identities. Julian Keenan says there's got to be an evolutionary benefit for all that "self".
Ted Chiang talks about his short-story collection, "Stories of Your Life and Others."
Plenty of men are obsessed with body image, too. Eric Chaline traces the cult of the male body beautiful back to ancient Greece, in "The Temple of Perfection" -- his new history of the gym.
One of the many utopian groups that started during the late 19th century and early 20th century was the House of David—perhaps the first cult to become a pop culture sensation. Their compound in Benton Harbon, Michigan had an amusement park and a zoo; they had a baseball team that once played an exhibition game against Babe Ruth and the Yankees, and they had bands—highly regarded, touring bands. Here's Henry Sapoznik—the director of the Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture here at the University of Wisconsin—on the mythology and music of the House of David.
Karen King is a historian at the Harvard Divinity School. She tells Anne Strainchamps that there are many early Christian texts that didn't make it into the Bible and that they give us a much fuller understanding of what it means to be a Christian.
