Episode Archives

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To The Best Of Our Knowledge

There are people in the world who love books – and there are people who would kill for books.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the pleasures and perils of book collecting.  We’ll go on the road with veteran book buyers Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone.  And, we’ll meet...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

How do you win friends and influence people if you're an immigrant from Leningrad who's bullied at school?   You write your way to friendship.  That's what Gary Shteyngart did. We meet him in this hour as we explore creative writing.  Also, the connection between alcohol and creativity.  And how...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Are Americans dumbing down instead of smartening up? Many surveys say yes. According to a 2006 National Geographic-Roper survey, nearly half of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 don't think it's necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. In...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

No matter what quiet corner of America you inhabit, you’ve heard about NASCAR. You may not understand it. You may not get it. But while you weren’t paying attention, those cars, driving in circles for hours, became our national pastime. In this hour of  To The Best Of Our Knowledge, car racing....Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

How far did your food travel to get to you today? 100 miles? A thousand? Or just down the street. No matter where today's meal came from, there's a story behind it. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, food stories. New York chef Dan Barber faces a moral crisis in the form of a...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

What do Oprah Winfrey, Tom Cruise and Madonna have in common?  Not much, except the kind of blazing fame that turns relatively normal people into obsessive fans who would walk ten miles through a blizzard just to stand in celebrity garbage.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge...Read more

a model brain

Do you ever think about the way you think?   Lately, we've been doing a lot of thinking about what we think about when we think about thinking.  Join us as we explore the life of the mind.Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Bright young men and women used to graduate and head for Wall Street or a top corporate law firm. Today, more and more of them are heading back to the land. After all, which would you rather do wear a suit and slave in a cubicle or spend your days on your own land, growing food for...Read more

a man becomes a living cereal bowl

What do the opening notes of Beethoven’s “Symphony Number Five” and a rabbit named Oolong balancing a pancake on his head have in common?  They’re both examples of memes – units of culture that are imitated and, as a result, copied from one brain to another.  Are memes the driving...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

For all the amazing discoveries that scientists have made, the cosmos is still full of mysteries - from dark matter to quantum entanglement. Will physicists ever explain the universe, or is it fundamentally unknowable? We explore the frontiers of physics and ponder what it means to live with...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

There are children who seem to be re-born into new families, while remembering specific and verifiable things about their former lives.  It may be coincidence, or imagination, but some of their stories will curl your hair!  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, a search for...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

What does it take to become a U.S. president?  Driving ambition, of course, but what else?  We'll dissect a few presidents - from Lincoln and LBJ to Obama - and consider the chances of a female president in 2016.Read more

basement

Popular myths, urban legends and just plain lies.  Why do we persist in believing things that just aren't true?Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

East Meets West

Part Four

 

Imagine growing up in Pakistan. Islam is a way of life. You get up every morning at 4:30 to pray. Then when you're 18, you move to the American Midwest, Iowa, to attend college. That's the story Kumail...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Boots on the Ground: Stories from the War in Iraq

Part Three

 

For many soldiers and Marines, war is not fundamentally about the mission. War is not really about the enemy. It's not even about patriotism. War is about the man to the...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Photographers capture heartache and agony. What does it mean for them? And what does it mean for us, those viewing the photos? Do these images create empathy? Compassion? Or something else?Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Wisdom may come with age, but if you want to make scientific history, it pays to be young.  Newton invented calculus before he turned 25.  Einstein published his special theory of relativity when he was only 26.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, does genius slip away with age?  Also...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Peggy Orenstein didn't want children. At least she didn't think so. Children killed careers and turned smart, professional women into drones. Well, that's what Orenstein was afraid of, anyway. But after a death in the family, she changed her mind. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, to...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Every person on earth is unique and special, but some people – maybe one in a hundred – are autistic. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we get to know a few autistic people with Asperger's Syndrome. We'll hear what it's like to try to live in the world when you have visionary...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Dan Janzen is one of the world’s leading tropical biologists.  He’s spent forty years working in the Cost Rican jungle, and there’s one creature that fascinates him above all others - the moth.  Janzen has found nine-thousand different species of moth in Cost Rica.  In this hour of To the Best...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

When’s the last time you were wonderstruck? Would your life be richer for more wonder? What wonder is, how to make it, where to find it and what it does for us... we all get gently awed in this hour.Read more

camera

When disaster strikes, photojournalists run toward it instead of away. Usually, with a camera in hand. Their job is to get up close to tragedy and danger, to document things we need to see, in the hopes of somehow making a difference.  This hour we’re talking with some of the world’s great...Read more

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

You’ve seen the Olympics on TV, but do you want to know what’s really happening in Utah?  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, a special program recorded in front of a live audience at Red Butte Garden in Salt Lake City.  From the culture of snowboarding to past Olympic scandals.  Plus...Read more

Towering radio

We remember the magical moments of chemistry in certain interviews; the brilliant sound design that emerged from particular studio sessions; the stories that took us places and those that changed us.Read more

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