Ok, take a breath. Close your eyes. Recall the home of your childhood. Can you smell the cookies in the kitchen? Can you open a drawer in your bedroom? Do you see the sunlight through a window? Every building has a story. . . And not only a story, every building has a sound.Read more
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Episode Archives
Is there such a thing as true, original creativity? Or "Are we just seeing further by standing on the shoulders of giants?", to paraphrase Sir Isaac Newton. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we'll explore the question of where good ideas come from. Steven Johnson will tell us about...Read more
Ben Franklin, Henry Ford, Abigail Adams, Elvis Presley. Know what they have in common? They're all on Daniel Wolff's list of great Americans. Wolff explains the unique ways those people learned what they had to know. We'll also take a hard look at IQ and its relationship to race and class, and...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
“We can be bought,” they said,” but we can’t be bored.” The king and queen of American theater, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne turned down a fantastic sum from the movies in the middle of the depression to continue to live their illusion on the stage. In this hour of To the Best of Our...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
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
Nature, red in tooth and claw. That line from Tennyson's poem still strikes a chord when we contemplate the natural world. Today, there's a divide in how we view nature. On the one hand, we swing through it like a playground, on the other, we're forced to step back to allow for nature's power in...Read more
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
“The bearded lady/tried a jar/she’s now/a famous movie star/Burma-shave.” Jingles like that could be found on signs across America’s highways between the 1930's and the 1950's. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the story behind the legendary Burman-Shave advertising campaign. Also...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
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
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
Bombay is the largest city in the world. And one of the most confounding. Bar dancers, gangs, and Bollywood all call Bombay home, for better or worse. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, a Bombay-native takes us inside this Maximum City. Also, the writer of the hit movie "Monsoon...Read more
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
Was Henry David Thoreau a failure? Hardly. Today, he's considered one of America's great writers. But his mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, called him the worst kind of failure: a dreamer. At Thoreau's funeral, Emerson said Thoreau was born for greatness, but he lacked ambition. He was nor more than...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
What makes a great school? Is it the quality of teaching, class size, or the curriculum? When it comes to school reform, everyone seems to have an opinion. Today, we're rethinking schools and the way we teach.Read more
According to a "New York Times" poll he's the third most famous person in Japan, right behind Hirohito and Bruce Lee. But the truth is he's not even a person, he's a giant green, radioactive lizard named Godzilla. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we'll explore the history of...Read more
Boots on the Ground: Stories from the War in Iraq
Part Four
President Obama says our combat mission in Iraq will end by August 31, 2010. This leaves many unanswered questions. What was our mission in Iraq? Did we succeed? What will...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
Some critics call V.S. Naipaul the world’s greatest living writer. But his harsh views on Islam and the Third World have sparked enormous controversy. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Naipaul talks about his life as a writer. Also, poetry for the ages: we’ll hear Yeats, Auden and...Read more