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To The Best Of Our Knowledge

the Legend of Sarah Winchester

Sarah Winchester (born 1840) was the heiress to the Winchester Estate with a 50% holding of the Winchester Repeating Rifle Company. She used her vast fortune to construct a mansion for 38 consecutive years.

Popular legend held that she was cursed by all those who were killed by Winchester rifles. The only way to alleviate her suffering was to continue to add on to her mansion, filling it with strange sealed rooms and staircases and corridors leading nowhere. Pamela Haag tells her tale and gives it some meaning beyond a mere ghost story.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

SUPER BOWL XLVII - The spirituality of football

For others, football is sacred. In fact, William Dean says the game is part of "American spiritual culture." He talks with Jim Fleming about the way religious beliefs crop up in American popular culture.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Scott Turow on "Ordinary Heroes"

Scott Turow has made a career writing hugely successful legal thrillers, but then he turned to a World War II novel.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Simon Critchley on Dead Philosophers

Simon Critchley is the author of "The Book of Dead Philosophers," a quirky account of how various philosophers thought about death and died themselves.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Taking Revenge Against Coppola's "Apocalypse Now"

Americans are still fighting over the legacy of the Vietnam War, but one perspective is missing: the Vietnamese experience. Novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen provides a Vietnamese perspective.

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The Men’s Rights Movement, Then and Now

In the late 1970s, the men's liberation movement split into two camps. A pro-feminist faction, and the anti-feminist Men’s Rights Movement, which sees men as an oppressed group. Critics have accused them of creating a breeding ground for misogyny, internet trolling and violence against women. The father of the Men’s Rights Movement is Warren Farrell, author of the core text of the movement, “The Myth of Male Power.”

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

The Calculus Diaries

Science writer Jennifer Ouellette spent a year confronting her math phobia straight on.  She taught herself calculus.  It helped her win at Vegas, get a good mortgage, and might just save her from a zombie apocalypse. 

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Thomas Ricks on Obama's Plan

Journalist Thomas Ricks talks with Jim Fleming about how close the U.S. came to losing the war in Iraq on November 19, 2004 in a town called Haditha, 150 miles north of Baghdad.

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