Have you ever thought about disappearing... wiping out your old identity and starting fresh, with a new name, a new life, a new self? In this hour we try to find out how to disappear completely. You too can vanish without a trace! Read more
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Episode Archives
Most movie stars will do anything to stay in the limelight. But Debra Winger didn’t care. Six years ago, she walked out of Hollywood. She even taped her retirement card above her mirror so she’d see it every day. Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, Debra Winger talks about the...Read more
John Brown was a terrorist, a man who led a raid in Kansas that butchered five unarmed men. He was also, arguably, of the few white people in 1850s America who was totally color blind. According to a new book he was "the man who killed slavery and sparked the Civil War." So, was John Brown a "...Read more
Does Western aid to impoverished African countries really help? Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo says no: it just lines the pockets of corrupt leaders and creates a culture of dependency. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we'll talk about the ethics of foreign aid, and hear why...Read more
Do you think your memory is a record of what actually happened? Chances are, it's not. New scientific findings show that with every act of remembering, our brains...Read more
TTBOOK staffers share some of our favorite interviews and shows produced by our favorite Canadian. Read more
Michael Chabon's a pretty successful writer of literary fiction. As far as he's concerned, literary fiction is just another genre, with its own set of conventions. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we get into the fight over genre fiction. Agatha Christie's grandson says the...Read more
Wallace Stegner put it this way. “National Parks are the best idea we ever had.” This weekend, the National Park Service celebrates its birthday by making the parks free for a day. We're celebrating with an hour on the history and politics of national parks. And we'll meet some folks whose...Read more
It's the sesquicentennial of the Civil War -- it's been 150 years since that epic war began. Americans will commemorate and remember it from different points of view. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Remembering the Civil War. We'll talk about soldiers' experiences on the...Read more
If grocery shopping isn’t your thing, here’s a new way to put food on the table: try sticking your arm under a rock until a big ol’ catfish clamps onto to you. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, noodling for catfish and other southern pastimes. Also, Texas singer Steve Earle’s...Read more
Are you planning to see the world this summer? Or enjoy the frugal pleasure of a stay-cation? Remember, the best travel isn't about miles logged – it's about minds expanded. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, travel stories. Travel guru Rick Steves develops an unexpected passion for...Read more
Electrons to Enlightenment
Part Three
One of the Dalai Lama's favorite places in America is a neuro-biology lab at the University of Wisconsin, looking for scientific proof that meditation works. In other labs across the country,...Read more
Imagine the world as we know it, only without us. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, a writer imagines a world reinventing itself without human beings. He sees the New York subway system returning to its watery origins. The re-absorption of carbon into the earth, and endangered...Read more
You know those end of the year lists? Best books, movies, music and so on? This hour, To the Best of Our Knowledge shares the best interviews from 2015. Plus a booklist or two.Read more
We’ve heard a lot about Islamic fundamentalists who hate the West. Some people can’t wait for the United States to invade Afghanistan. But no one would be happier to see the back of Osama bin Laden than the Average Afghan. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the crucial...Read more
Charles Monroe-Kane grew up hearing voices in his head. For years he tried to drown them out with potentially lethal quantities of hard drugs and alcohol. Lithium saved his life but coming clean about his past hasn't been easy. How do you admit, as a public radio producer, that for years you had...Read more
Electrons to Enlightenment
Part Five
In the real world where we take out the garbage, we sometimes brush up against wonder and awe. We all look for it in different places. Some of us find it in God, like the great mystic poet...Read more
Paul Ewald is a cancer researcher. He says we're entering a golden era in cancer treatment based on one emerging idea: most cancers are caused by viruses. It's good news, according to Ewald, who says we'll be able to treat cancer preventively, with vaccines. In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more
As the Zika virus continues to make headlines, consensus is slowly growing among scientists that it’s showdown time for the mosquito. Time to marshal the technology to wipe them off the face of the earth. Which seems pretty extreme. Doesn’t it?
So, should we bio-...Read more
Physicist Lawrence Krauss says science can finally explain the age-old mystery: How can something come out of nothing? Or, to be more specific, how can the Big Bang pop out of empty space? Krauss also set off an intellectual brawl by saying theologians and philosphers have nothing...Read more
James Tiptree Jr. wrote some of the most critically-acclaimed science fiction stories in the 1960's and 1970's....classics like "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" and "The Women Men Don't See." But James Tiptree was actually the pseudonym of a 61-year-old woman, Alice B. Sheldon. In this hour of...Read more
Remember those great cars from the Fifties? The Redscare Phantom Witchhunter and the Bongo Beatnik Ferlinghetti TurboHipster? If you don’t recall them rolling off Detroit’s assembly lines, there’s a perfectly good reason. They never existed, except in the imagination of writer and illustrator...Read more
Do you ever have a right to kill? What about Israeli agents who assassinate Hamas leaders? Or suicide bombers who blow up their enemies? Do the ends justify the means? William Vollman has written a three-thousand page treatise on the morality of violence. In this hour of To the Best of Our...Read more
It used to be that comics were just for kids. Today, we call them "graphic novels," and they're one of the fastest growing forms of American literature. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, how graphic art grew up...with Will Eisner's biographer, Jules Feiffer, Dennis Kitchen, and...Read more