Politics and History

Story of O

"Story of O" scandalized a nation. And a nation not easily scandalized - France! The anonymous tale of complete submission was called vulgar by some, brilliant by others. In any case, what kind of person could write such a book? In this hour of To The Best Of Our Knowledge, we'll find out the...

a man becomes a living cereal bowl

Can white guys be hip? Many have tried but only a few have achieved true hepcat status - Bob Dylan, Lenny Bruce, maybe Jack Kerouac. But compare them to Miles Davis and you have to wonder if they're really just hipster wannabes. We'll dig into the history of hip, and see how it's so often tied...

Chinese flag

Forget the Middle East.  Robert Kaplan says the war in Iraq is just a blip on the radar screen.  The next U.S. military challenge will be in the Pacific - against China.  In this hour of the Peabody Award Winning program To the Best of Our Knowledge we’ll look at a changing China...

Thomas Jefferson

Historian Garry Wills details Jefferson’s complex relationship with slavery and says its legacy still haunts us.

A Tale from the Decameron by John William Waterhouse

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...

fake gorilla

Mark Sundeen got an offer he couldn't refuse. A publisher paid him upfront to write a book on bullfighting in Spain. Mark doesn't speak Spanish, knows nothing about bullfighting, and hates to travel, but that didn't stop him from writing the book. He just made the whole thing up. In this hour of...

Wolfe in 1988

Forty years ago Tom Wolfe pioneered a snappy, "you are there" kind of reporting - what he called "the new journalism." Now he writes novels, but Wolfe says he's still a reporter at heart, tackling tough issues like class and social status. He says most American fiction is self-indulgent - cut...

soccer pitch

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...

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