Episode Archives

Filter episodes by the year they originally aired.
To The Best Of Our Knowledge

“The medium is the message.”  “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.” “We look at the present through a rear-view mirror.  We march backwards into the future.”   Those are just a few of Marshall McLuhan’s famous quotes.   McLuhan is one of the most influential media thinkers of...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

What’s the face of the future? Not flying cars and life on Mars… What’s the future of our faces? With new facial transplantation surgeries and the latest news about the NSA collecting images for facial recognition anaylsis, we're wondering about what we see in the mirror every day. 

Also...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Whittier called them "the saddest words: it might have been."  But turn it around and you'll find places we create to replace the world we live in -- past, present and future.  On To the Best of Our Knowledge, other worlds. Scientist Brian Greene looks at the physics of the multiverse, and...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Ben Kilham has some unusual playmates - black balls of fur who scratch, wrestle and climb all over him.  They are orphaned bear cubs.  And Kilham is their surrogate mom.  He’s raised two dozen bear cubs and then released them into the wild.  Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll trek...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Phil Harvey gives away tens of millions of dollars every year to fight AIDS and promote family planning in such places as India, Brazil, Vietnam and Ethiopia.  Where does the money come from?  Harvey runs the largest mail-order erotica business in the world.  In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

It's hard to wrap your head around the future of the human brrain.  Augmented intelligence, memory playback, downloadable skills - it's all coming.  We explore the future of the mind, and hear how a brain injury can transform your life.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

a girl making butterfly wings

Have you ever heard of an “Uncreative Writing” course?  In this class, students are penalized for showing any kind of originality.  Instead, they’re rewarded for plagiarism, plundering and stealing. We’ll meet the man behind “Uncreative
Writing” – poet Kenneth Goldsmith.  Also,...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Science and the Search for Meaning: Five Questions, Part Two: What Does Evolution Want?

If there’s one strand of evolutionary theory that sticks in the craw of nearly every religious believer, it’s the idea that human beings are just an evolutionary accident.  But...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Walk into the children's section of any bookstore and the magic wands and secret portals almost materialize in front of you. Wizards, witches, demons, time travel, dragons, orphans, orphaned dragons – doesn't anyone know how to write a non-magical book anymore?! In this hour of To the Best of...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

The collapse of the twin towers gave birth to a strange new world.  It was a city of fire and dust, rubble crunching under foot and eerie underground rivers.  William Langewiesche  was the only journalist with unrestricted access to Ground Zero.  What he found there was startling, natural, and...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Atheists are finally coming out of the closet, and in some cases denouncing religion.  Others still crave a sense of the sacred even though they don’t believe in God.  Do atheists have something to learn from religion?  Why do so many people call themselves "spiritual but not religious"?  And...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

To Daniel Libeskind, buildings are much more than concrete boxes.  They’re expressions of hope, joy, freedom, and memory.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, architect Daniel Libeskind talks about his master design for the World Trade Center site.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Cross-dressing terrorist angels.  LA Gangbangers covered in Virgin Mary tattoos to protect them from bullets.  Prophets in g-strings and pasties.  Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge we’re going to look for god in some unlikely places - in the middle of a math equation, and in the lyrics...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Sometimes all you really want to take to bed is a good book.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, meet some passionate readers.  We’ll also try to find out if big time critics really hate books.Read more

clap board for a movie

What is it about certain films, and certain directors, that inspires obsession?  Maybe because these directors are obsessed themselves.  Like the legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog, who...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, some of the most critical questions you’ll ever face.  Who are you?  What does your life mean?  And how did you decide who you wanted to be?  We’ll hear from Rabbi Harold Kushner, Senator John McCain and novelist Tim O’Brien.  We’ll talk about making...Read more

beautiful food

Chefs and writers explore the language of food on the plate and on the page. We meet novelists who cook, chefs who write, and a poet of pies.  It's an hour of deliciousness in words and food.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

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Have you ever thought about money? Now, of course you have.  Talking about money permeates our existence.  But what if there wasn’t any money?  What would you do?

 Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

It’s one of the great stories in the history of books.  James Murray was a poor kid from Scotland who dropped out of school at age 14.  Somehow, he taught himself the history of words in various languages, and went on to create the world’s greatest dictionary.  In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

What’s the best way to get someone to talk?  NPR’s Terry Gross has done more interviewers than just about anyone else in public radio.  But she prefers to talk to them long distance, with no eye contact.   In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Terry Gross on the art of the interview.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

It turns out that television may not be quite the "boob tube" and "the idiot box" that we thought it was. It seems that watching TV can actually make you smarter... by posing new cognitive challenges for your brain to solve. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'll explore the...Read more

Pages