You know who they are – the cool kids – those above-it-all taste-makers whose fashion and entertainment choices predict what everyone else will be wearing and doing next year. What’s their secret? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge exploring cool. A frustrated surfer remembers...Read more
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Episode Archives
The thrill of victory… the agony of defeat. And the human drama of athletic competition. We love sports. And every 4 years we get the pleasure to watch amateur athletes, at the top of their game, compete in the Olympics. And that got us thinking about competition. Because that’s what it’s...Read more
Everything you know about Indians is wrong. That's the starting point for Paul Chaat Smith, who says it's time to hit the reset button and re-think everything we know about Native American culture. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Comedian Howie Miller says that's what he does as a...Read more
“Lets Make Our Own Movie!” That was a wild idea back in the days of young Mickey Rooney, but today, anyone can do it. Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, how digital cameras make us all directors, and why movies may never be the same. Also, screenwriter Andrew Davies...Read more
Have you ever been to "Reloville"? Or maybe you live there. There's more than one. You can find them in Atlanta, Dallas and Denver, among other places. "Relovilles" are the sprawling subdivisions where mid-level managers and executives live – for a few years before they uproot their families and...Read more
When Charles Mingus died, his widow took his ashes to India and scattered them in the Ganges. But that wasn’t the end. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Sue Mingus talks about the legacy of her late husband’s music: his spirituality, his anger, and his love. Also, a conversation...Read more
Consider this future world: a vaccine that makes you continually happy. A chip in your brain that lets you communicate telepathically with your spouse. Human lives that span hundreds of years. Sound far-fetched? Not according the James Hughes of the World Trans-humanist Association. He says...Read more
In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the mystique of Native Americans. We hear they’re close to the land; they have sacred knowledge. But Indian writer Sherman Alexie says that’s bunk, that the “the whole New Age movement is based on as many stereotypes as genocide was.” What makes a...Read more
New York Times columnist David Brooks is best known for his political writing, but he's also fascinated by recent findings in psychology and neuroscience. In fact he says many of our public policies fail because we're not actually the rational decision makers we think we are. In this hour of...Read more
Bottle caps, coins, dolls, rocks. My Aunt Mary’s ceramic chickens. Most of us collect something. It seems to be in our genes. And for most of us it’s a fun hobby. For others, it can get a little time consuming. But for a few, collecting is an total obsession.
Amanda Petrusich is a music...Read more
Nelson Algren said “Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mum’s. And never go to bed with a woman whose troubles are greater than your own.” In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll catch up with Studs Terkel to talk about why an American master like...Read more
Jane Scott keeps strange company. While other women her age spend their time in knitting circles, Scott’s still hanging out with rockers like Lou Reed and Alice Cooper (and showing off her backstage pass.) It’s her job. Or at least it was until she retired as rock critic for the Cleveland...Read more
As soon as you, or someone you love, has that first "senior moment" – you start to worry. Is this the beginning of the slippery slope of Alzheimer's Disease? Relax! There's something you can do. The good news is that most of us won't live long enough to get Alzheimer's. And the rest of us...Read more
By August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we ask a blunt question: Did we win? We're not the only ones asking. The phrase "did we win the war in Iraq" has been searched over 7 million times on Google. The war has cost an estimated 860...Read more
America was once a nation of readers, but now experts warn that reading is in decline as our cultural life moves online. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, an hour in praise and defense of the book. Ursula Le Guin takes book publishers to task and a beloved children's book editor...Read more
They can have sex twenty times a day. Their teeth are harder than steel. And the ones that live in the city are twice as big as their country cousins. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll talk rats with Robert Sullivan, who spent a year investigating rats in a New York City...Read more
Spiderman had a pretty good summer last year, but J.K. Rowling wasn’t worried. When the sixth Harry Potter book came out, children trampled the web-slinger in their rush to bookstores and libraries. Which makes perfect sense to author and Arthurian scholar Jane Yolen. She says it’s all about...Read more
What animals will still be living in the year 3000? Forget about tigers, rhinos and pandas. They’ll go the way of the dodo bird. But scientist Peter Ward says rats and coyotes will flourish. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge the future of evolution. Also, best-selling novelist...Read more
As Western economies struggle, some Eastern economies are booming. India and China now threaten to surpass the West as economic – and political – superpowers. But it’s not just politics that’s changing in South Asia. Across the region, centuries-old religious traditions are also entering a...Read more
Did you ever notice your dog gets depressed when you do? That your cat seems to make you feel more relaxed? Every wonder why? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the connection between people and animals. Primatologist Frans de Waal says it may not be opera and abstract art, but...Read more
Andrew Sullivan is not a Republican, but he calls himself a conservative. He does not believe in using religion to ground political ideals. But he himself is a person of faith. And he endorsed John Kerry, although Ronald Reagan is one of his heroes. In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments...” “Because I could not stop for death…”
First lines. Classic poems. But poetry’s no anachronism. It’s pulsing and swelling and beating new rhythms.
From online verse to the new US Poet Laureate, from poetry...Read more
Right after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair magazine, declared “irony is dead.” Only a few months later Carter said, with a nudge and a wink, “I meant to say IRONING is dead - not irony.” This time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll look at the rise of...Read more
We’ve all heard we live in “the information age,” but what does this mean? We’ll give you a short history of information – from talking drums onward. But do we now have too much information? We’ll hear how information overload is actually re-wiring our brains. Also, the new theory in physics...Read more