Are humans innately good? Do we have a generosity gene? Is there an inherent desire to help our fellow human beings? Or, are we natural born sinners who have to fight, tooth and nail, to conquer our inherent tendencies towards selfishness, destruction and war. In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Episode Archives
Magic is an art, a philosophy, and a way of seeing the world. In this hour, we learn magic tricks from a stage magician, travel to India's last magician's colony, explore shamanic magic, and talk with magical novelists Erin Morgenstern (Night Circus) and Deborah Harkness (...Read more
The sky is black. The wind’s picking up. The hurricane is coming. Nothing you can do about it. But wait! Scientists from Dyn-o-Storm fly into the hurricane. They release a chemical that stops the hurricane dead in its tracks. Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, should we? Just...Read more
How far would you go for something to eat? Paris? Mom’s house? The drive-through at Mickey D’s? I bet you wouldn’t swim thousands of miles, from Mexico to the Arctic, just to scarf up mud from the bottom of the ocean. Whales do, and they’ve been doing it every year for eons. In this hour...Read more
So much of our daily lives gets turned into data -- our online shopping purchases, phone calls, family photos. We're all surrounded by data, and learning how to harness it could be more transformative than we realize. This week, a look at the new data specialists using their knowledge of numbers...Read more
The holidays can be challenging. All that togetherness can be like squishing a passel of porcupines into a sardine can. In other words - not nice. On the other hand, there is a bright side. Po Bronson found it in the lives of families across the country. In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more
Governors are slashing state spending, and the President has put some of his own party's favorite programs on the chopping block. But how much of the new austerity is really necessary, and how much is politics? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, is austerity a dangerous idea? Join...Read more
The pint-sized wizard harry Potter has conquered the book world, and it’s not just kids who love him. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, what’s behind Harry Potter’s popularity. Also, acclaimed author Katherine Paterson (pronounced Patterson) on the emotional lives of...Read more
He was a wandering pilgrim who talked to birds, healed the sick and tamed wild beasts. He was also the closest thing to a medieval rock star - a man so revered in his lifetime that people tore at this clothes, desperate to touch a living saint. Today, St. Francis of Assisi is admired by both...Read more
Samuel Adams couldn’t ride a horse to save his life, and had a tendency to drool. As if that’s not bad enough, John Adams was a roly-poly fellow who spent his free time fantasizing about becoming the next American King. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, a revisionist’s take on the...Read more
You stub your toe, hit your head on an open cupboard, slam your fingers in a car door, slice your hand on the sharp lip of can, or lick an envelope the wrong way. Your toes throbs, your head aches, your fingers pound, your hand hurts, your lip smarts.
Pain is your body’s way of letting...Read more
George Burns lived a good long life, hanging on to one hundred. These days scientists say that’s no big deal. According to them, some of us may be tottering around the golf course when we’re 150. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the quest for immortality – how long can science...Read more
Ronald Reagan had it. Jonathan Swift, Iris Murdoch, and, most likely, Ralph Waldo Emerson had it too. Alzheimer’s disease is on the rise, and scientists predict that up to one hundred million people will develop it in the next fifty years. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the...Read more
Thirteen-year-old Ava Bigtree is having a difficult time. Her mother has just died and business is down at her family’s gator-wrestling theme park, Swamplandia! So begins Karen Russell’s critically-acclaimed debut novel, “Swamplandia!” In this hour of TO THE BEST OF OUR KNOWLEDGE, we’ll meet...Read more
Future Perfect: Dreamers, Schemers & Visionaries
Part Four
The happiness industry is booming. And with good reason - everyone wants to be happy. Today, science can light the way. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge,...Read more
Did you know that Teddy Roosevelt was one of nine U.S. presidents who had hooks for hands? Well, that's just one of countless facts included in John Hodgman's new almanac. But, as it turns out, all of these facts are fake. In this hour of the Peabody Award-winning To the Best of Our Knowledge,...Read more
Well we made it through the anticipated apocalypse.
Now, to say, "Goodbye old year; hello, new."
To help us begin again, we’ve got a collection of stories about putting challenges behind us. About transformation. About coming through hard times into...Read more
President Obama is out to remake America's relationship with the Islamic world. We'll explore what this means for both the Middle East and the U.S. We'll also look at the ongoing debate over Muslim immigration in Europe, and we'll talk with a Hollywood screenwriter about his new novel on the...Read more
One of this year's big novels is Colson Whitehead's sweeping historical novel, "The Underground Railroad." It's an unflinching look at the experience of slavery, inspired by the classic slave narratives. And being a sci-fi geek, Whitehead also weaves in bits of fantasy, creating an alternative...Read more
It used to be simple to pick out a shade of paint, before computers made almost infinite gradations possible. Now if you stare at those samples long enough they all start to look alike. It turns out color is as much a mental construct as a physical substance. In this hour of To the Best of...Read more
Television used to be formulaic. Today, it’s the best gig around. We examine the explosion of high quality TV, from The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men, and talk with the creator of HBO’s True Detective.Read more
For millions of people, a mosque is a safe haven, a place to worship. But others fear that mosques are a breeding ground for terrorists — especially since September 11, 2001. It's the same building, but has become a marker for so much controversy.
This hour, we wanted to approach the...Read more