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
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Episode Archives
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
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
“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
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
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
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
For the first time in American history, young women are choosing independence over marriage. Single women today outnumber married women and have more political power than ever before. It's what Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Sanger and other feminist icons predicted. This hour, how...Read more
Next time you catch an old episode of the Flying Nun, you may want to pay attention. Because today’s convents are closing. The average nun is seventy years old, and even devout sisters often have to bite their tongues when they talk about the pope. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge...Read more
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
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
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?
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
Do you ever have the strange feeling that you've heard this promo before? Well, in this case, it's only fitting because we're going to explore deja vu on the next edition of To the Best of Our Knowledge. We'll try to find out what causes us to think we've already experienced the exact same...Read more
Back in 1967, Noam Chomsky wrote a famous essay called "The Responsibility of Intellectuals." Chomsky was furious about what he called "the deceit and distortion surrounding the American invasion of Vietnam." And he urged intellectuals "to speak the truth and expose lies." So what is the...Read more
David Graeber was an iconoclastic anthropologist and influential radical thinker, one who popularized the rallying cry "We are the 99%." He died on Sept. 2 in Venice, Italy at age 59. Read more
Who are you? White or black, Muslim or Christian, working class or wealthy? Most of us rotate through many different cultural identities, at work and at home. And sometimes, reconciling them is hard.Read more
There’s a powerful new voting bloc in America. They’re white, working class, and they live in places that have been left behind. We'll talk with "Hillbilly Elegy" author J.D. Vance, and country music star Brandy Clark joins us in the studio to play some music and talk about her hometown.Read more
Graphic novelist Neil Gaiman has a talent for creating strange and fantastic worlds. His “Sandman” comic books helped spawn the Goth movement, and with characters called Dream and Death, he created a new mythology. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll visit with Neil Gaiman at...Read more
Can you imagine spending a week at an airport? By choice? Alain de Botton did exactly that. He tells us about it, as we explore airports and air travel.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
Outlet malls are America's number-one travel destination. They get more visitors every year than Times Square, Disney World and the Grand Canyon combined. We definitely have a lust for low prices. But this discount culture comes with a high cost. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'...Read more
Welcome to the next generation of African writers. They’re young, multi-lingual, and breaking out of all the old literary boxes. This hour, why Africa has one of the most exciting literary scenes on the planet.Read more