Suppose there's a pill that would dramatically boost your creativity. Would you take it? Psychologist Jim Fadiman says that pill exists. It's the powerful hallucinogen LSD. Fadiman describes a remarkable experiment showing how psychedelics enhanced the creativity of senior scientists. Read more
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Episode Archives
Siberia is the name for a place we tend to think of as a metaphor as much as a destination on the map. Writer Ian Frazier indulged what he calls his dread Russia love with travels through Siberia, tracing the path of prisoners on their way to lonely exile and through mosquito-ridden swamps at...Read more
Crime may not pay but writing crime fiction does. Just ask the Swedish writer, Henning Mankell. Or those who write "Tartan Noir"...Scottish detective fiction. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'll explore Northern Europe's fictional crime wave. Also, Roger Ebert on film noir.Read more
Start telling love stories and chances are, you’ll find yourself telling tales of transgression. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, Joyce Carol Oates talks about the harm done by family secrets. P.D. James muses on why women are so good at crime fiction. A...Read more
Have you ever wished you cared less or been told to develop a thicker skin? For the polite and anxious among us, suddenly being immune to criticism and embarrassment might seem to be a superpower. In this hour, we’re exploring...Read more
Are you a knave? Scalawag? A varlet? Are you a scoundrel? Maybe you’re not but secretly you want to be. Being a scoundrel kind of has a ring to it. It’s romantic. Rebellious.Read more
A husband, looking at his wife in a mirror maze, asks “are you coming or going?” She answers “Yes, yes.” Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll look at the history of mirrors, as we reflect on the question “How do you know who you are?”Read more
A police officer's shooting of a young, unarmed Afrian American man here in Madison joins a long list of national tragedies. So we devote this hour to conversations about race and justice.Read more
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
Things go better with "biting the wax tadpole"? That doesn't sound right, does it? Yet that's the literal translation of Coca-Cola that Chinese shopkeepers came up with...a set of characters pronounced "ke-kou ke-la." In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we'll explore the exotic world of...Read more
Violence may be a national scourge, but an awful lot of people devour shoot-‘em-up movies and video games. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, the seduction of violence. Why, for instance, four and five-year-old children love fantasy games where they kill each other. Also, the...Read more
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
Behold the spectacle of epic proportions! The abundant feast laid out! Tribes decked in battle attire!
Yes, friends. It's Super Bowl weekend, and have we got a show for you...Read more
Modern medicine can treat disease at a molecular—or even atomic – level. And today’s surgeons can fix things the naked eye can’t even see. But there’s one thing every patient wants that no technology in the world can provide: compassion. In this hour, doctors talk about the...Read more
Science and the Search for Meaning: Five Questions, Part Two: What Does Evolution Want?
If there’s one strand of evolutionary theory that sticks in the craw of nearly every religious believer, it’s the idea that human beings are just an evolutionary accident. But...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
Atheists are finally coming out of the closet, and in some cases denouncing religion. Others still crave a sense of the sacred even though they don’t believe in God. Do atheists have something to learn from religion? Why do so many people call themselves "spiritual but not religious"? And...Read more
It's hard to wrap your head around the future of the human brrain. Augmented intelligence, memory playback, downloadable skills - it's all coming. We explore the future of the mind, and hear how a brain injury can transform your life.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
Have you ever heard of an “Uncreative Writing” course? In this class, students are penalized for showing any kind of originality. Instead, they’re rewarded for plagiarism, plundering and stealing. We’ll meet the man behind “Uncreative Writing” – poet Kenneth Goldsmith. Also,...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
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
Walk into the children's section of any bookstore and the magic wands and secret portals almost materialize in front of you. Wizards, witches, demons, time travel, dragons, orphans, orphaned dragons – doesn't anyone know how to write a non-magical book anymore?! In this hour of To the Best of...Read more