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To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Cameron Sinclair has something to say to architects out there: design like you give a damn. The founder of Architects for Humanity says the houses and office buildings we build today will literally shape the world our children inherit. So give a damn. In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Eighty per cent of Americans say they believe in heaven. But when they're asked to describe it, many are at a loss for words. Do they think that there's another universe in the sky or do they believe that heaven is something more abstract and metaphorical? We'll explore our enduring fascination...Read more

clones

"History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies." -- Alexis de TocquevilleRead more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

She's a little bit country. She's a little bit rock and roll. Carlene Carter grew up surrounded by music. She's the daughter of June Carter and the stepdaughter of Johnny Cash. And Carlene followed in their footsteps, with a few twists and turns along the way. In this hour of the Peabody Award-...Read more

a fence

In this age of globalization, why would anyone want borders, an army, currency?  Isn’t that kind of … old school?   Read more

a brightly lit bible

Buried scrolls, clay tablets, priceless artifacts and expensive forgeries – this week, we bring you stories from the strange and amazing world of biblical archeology.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

On this 4th of July weekend we ask a simple question: Who is a patriot?Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Celebrate Midsummer's Eve with a visit to the fey folk. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'll have an hour filled with stories of changelings and other-kin, Fairy Courts and green children. We'll conjure up a world of enchantment, but beware! There are no Tinkerbells in the world....Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

From the minute we can pick up a crayon, most of us want to draw something - a house, a tree, the sun.  As we get older we aim for nuance and sophistication - landscapes and shadows, faces and expressions.  A gifted few will achieve something greater - they’ll make art.  On this hour of To the...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

hitchhiker

Does anyone still hitchhike?  Cult film director John Waters does.  At the age of 66, he hitchhiked 2,800 miles, from Baltimore to San Francisco.  He tells us about the people who picked him up, along with some who didn't.  And did the America Interstate System pave the way...Read more

mosque ceiling

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

We explore the frontiers of brain science, from the neurobiology of emotions to recent discoveries about autism.  Renowned neuroscientists Richard Davidson and V.S. Ramachandran reveal new insights into the brain, and we'll hear the story of one marriage saved by a diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

America is famously a nation of immigrants, a melting pot of cultures.  And yet, few subjects will be debated as passionately this year as immigration reform.  What are we really talking about, when we argue about immigration?  And, what's it like to be 'fresh off the boat" in a country that...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Have you ever wished you cared less or been told to develop a thicker skin? For the polite and anxious among us, suddenly being immune to criticism and embarrassment might seem to be a superpower. In this hour, we’re exploring...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Calling Lynne Cox a swimmer is like calling Mohammed Ali a tough guy.  At age fourteen, she swam to Catalina Island from mainland California.  At eighteen she swam between the islands of New Zealand.  Years later, with miles of hard swims behind her, she turned her eye to the unthinkable - the...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

When Rae Armantrout recently won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry the first thing she said was curious. Read them out loud, she said.

In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, poetry out loud. Rae Armantrout reads her poems, Natalie Merchant sings our favorite classic poems, and Bobby...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Forty years ago, the U.S. ended its war in Vietnam, but we're still fighting over its legacy - in foreign policy and military strategy, and also in books and movies. But there's one question Americans rarely ask: what does the war mean to the Vietnamese themselves?  We'll hear several...Read more

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