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To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Susan Vreeland talks about why she’s so attracted to the world of art, and why Emily Carr, the subject of her latest book, loved the First Nations’ people and their art.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a biologist, a writer, and a member of the Potawatomi nation.  In her essay collection, "Braiding Sweetgrass," she weaves scientific knowledge and indigenous wisdom into a deeper understanding of the nature of plant life.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

"I can't remember a time when I wasn't drawing," says Molly Crabapple. "I can't not draw. It's how I relate to the world." And Crabapple's art - her drawings, paintings and posters - have ignited various political causes, from the Occupy Movement to protests against the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo. She tells Anne Strainchamps how art can be a political tool. 

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Simon Winchester talks with Jim Fleming about the short-sightedness of placing cities where the planet doesn't think they should be.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

People who like baseball call it "the thinking person’s game," but for the first 100 years, baseball was governed by a surprisingly limited range of critical thinking. Decisions were made by insiders, the current and former players who spent a lifetime around the diamond, and did things mostly one way: the way they've always been done.  But in the last 3 or 4 years, that storehouse of common knowledge—much of which was kept guarded in a true "old boy's club"—has been cracked wide open. Now the game isn't driven by intuition, it's driven by data. And the math nerds who rode the bench in Little League—if they played at all—are now telling pro ballplayers what to do. Journalist Travis Sawchik tells Steve Paulson the story.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Paul Koudounaris has spent the past decade traveling around the world, climbing into church crypts and bone chambers and taking photos at over 250 burial sites in 30 countries. He's discovered chapels decorared with skeletons and underground caves filled with skulls—among other things. In this interview, he tells us how he began his obsession with displays of death.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Sara Nelson tells Anne Strainchamps what publishers can do to make a book a best-seller and why the actual number of copies sold is a state secret.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

It’s too bad trees can’t talk to us, but storytellers can and Wayne Pauly has a good story about a young woman, a young man, and a tree.

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