Middle English isn’t what it used to be. Add a back-beat, some high-flying rhymes, and you’ve got a hot new version of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales.” In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the madcap transformation of one of literature’s oldest classics from history to hip hop...
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Culture
Robert Rand was working as a Senior Editor at NPR when he was crippled by panic attacks. He cured himself by taking up zydeco dancing.
Mountain climber Warren MacDonald was 32 when his doctors told him he’d spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. It’s not that he didn’t believe them. After all, he’d just lost both his legs. But Warren MacDonald refused to be defeated by the worst news he could ever hear. He...
There’s no writer who’s hipper, more self-consciously knowing, than David Foster Wallace. But even he can take only so much ironic hipness. He says it is relentlessly corrosive to the soul. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, assessing the state of fiction, with David...
When you hear the word "globalization," you probably don't think of the sport of soccer. But Franklin Foer does. He traveled around the globe to explore this connection, attending soccer matches and interviewing his heroes. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Franklin Foer will tell us...
Yoga is booming in the US, meditation is now a commonplace practice, and Buddhism is busting at the seams right alongside mainstream American religions. But where does this new shift in spiritual culture come from? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we examine the spiritual...
John F. Kennedy once said that what unites Americans and Canadians is far greater than what divides us. Try telling that to the writers behind the animated television series "South Park." In one episode, Canada is portrayed as a mysterious land similar to Oz. The Academy Award-nominated song...
Newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst was extremely afraid of death. So much so that when one of the palm trees at his San Simeon estate died unexpectedly, the gardeners painted its leaves green until it could be replaced while Hearst was away. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we...
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