Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Brittney Spears – divas? Nah. Maria Callas – now she was a diva! In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, two great ladies with leather lungs – Maria Callas and Judy Garland – their triumphs and tragedies from Onassis to Oz. And other...Read more
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Episode Archives
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
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
When your country doesn’t live up to its own values, what do you do? Put your head under the covers or man the barricades? Fighting for freedom means different things to different people. In this hour, we talk with some of them -- from Wikileaks’ controversial founder Julian Assange, to the...Read more
By today’s medical definition, Brad Pitt is overweight, and Russell Crowe is obese. The standards are even tougher for women. But are those extra pounds really that bad? Maybe it’s time we all lighten up about fat. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, why one expert says America’s...Read more
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
Linus has his security blanket. Renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks had the Periodic Table of the Elements. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, My Chemical Life. Oliver Sacks remembers a childhood steeped in chemistry. Also, Primo Levi survives Auschwitz, through chemistry. And,...Read more
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
When the world turns green again, it makes us all a little giddy! In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll pull on our gum boots and get out into the garden with novelist Jamaica Kincaid, who’s grown a map of the Carribean at her Vermont home. Sharon Lovejoy, author of Roots, Shoots...Read more
Who really rules the internet? Cats, of course. We can't take the cuteness anymore so here it is -- our first and only show about cats. Cat videos, superstar cats, cat music, cat history, endangered cats... and a little, tiny bit about dogs.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
Classical musicians don't come with better pedigrees than violinist Anne Akiko Meyers. She's been wowing audiences since she was four, performs all over the world and has commissioned many new works. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Meyers talks about why she chose to record popular...Read more
Imagine that you grow up with dreams of fame and fortune. You're going to become a world-famous rock star. The only problem is your childhood friend becomes the world's biggest rock star instead. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Neil McCormick shares his story of being upstaged...Read more
From trance music to ecstatic dance, from Burning Man to psychedelic mushrooms, Americans are awash in weird and intense experiences - and maybe even inventing a new kind of religion. Is this just a bunch of New Age thrill-seekers getting off, or is something deeper going on? We explore the...Read more
Andre Agassi says he always hated tennis, even though it's what made him rich and famous. But maybe that's not surprising, considering how his father used to browbeat him into hitting 2500 balls a day when he was seven years old, and later sent him off to a tennis academy, which Agassi calls a "...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
Canal Street flooded with so much water it looks like an actual canal. People mourning the loss of their homes and loved ones. The Gulf Coast will never be the same after the devastation that Hurricane Katrina has caused. In this hour of the Peabody-Award-Winning program To the Best of Our...Read more
Imagine losing your lover, mother, stepfather and sister in less than eight months. That's what happened to country music singer/songwriter Carlene Carter. Her mother is June Carter Cash and her stepfather is Johnny Cash. Carlene Carter drew on all of this loss and tragedy to create a new album...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
It will go down as one of the most amazing archeological discoveries in history. Homo naledi - a new species of human-like fossils found in South Africa - is already rewriting the story of human evolution. These 15 skeletons are the largest cache of pre-human bones ever found. But so far,...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
Scientists are discovering how plants secretly talk to each other. How smart is your geranium, and what does a tree know? Today, we're eavesdropping on the secret language of plants.Read more
Electrons to Enlightenment
Part One
Do science and religion have to be at war with each other? Francis Collins doesn't think so. The head of the Human Genome Project, is also an evangelical Christian. But biologist and atheist...Read more
We are connected -- probably connected in ways neither of us has dreamed of. Forget six degrees of separation; on Facebook we have only 3.74. And that's just today.Read more