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To The Best Of Our Knowledge

When he was 14, Paul Menendez went to Havana in 1966 to study music. He stayed...changed his name to Pablo, and ever since he's lived in Cuba, where he's now a famous jazz musician. Sitting on his Havana rooftop, Pablo tells Steve Paulson this remarkable story.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Anne-Marie Schleiner is one of the creators of Velvet-Strike, an on-line modification for the game Counter-Strike. Schleiner’s goal is to introduce messages of peace into a violent game.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Andrew Woodcock and Chris Strong are meteorologists and moonlight as a band. They tell Anne Strainchamps how the weather finds its way into their lyrics.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

The film “Buzkashi Boys” is a coming of age story set in Afghanistan’s national sport, Buzkashi. It's a game of horse polo played with a dead goat instead of a ball. Plus, a coda from novelist Khaled Hosseini.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

From Bloomer, Wisconsin, listener Jonathan Blyth sent us a ghost story called "You Are What You Eat."

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

In his book "The Ethics of Voting," Georgetown philosopher Jason Brennan argues that we'd be better off if more people stayed home on Election Day. He says citizens don't have a civic duty to vote, and that some of us probably shouldn't vote at all.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Not all architecture in the Arab world glitters like a golden dome. Some are being shelled to dust by war. Such is the horrifying story of Homs, Syria.  Once a cosmopolitan and tolerant city of more than one million, Homs has hosted clashes between rebel groups and President Bashar Assad’s forces since 2011. Those clashes have mortared and shelled the city into an oblivion. Thousands of residents have been killed. Most of the remaining have fled. But not all.

Marwa al-Sabouni and her family have stayed. Marwa al-Sabouni has her PhD. in Islamic architecture and wrote a compelling memoir about architecture and destruction in Homs called “The Battle for Home.”

Marwa al-Sabouni spoke with Anne Strainchamps via Skype from her apartment in Homs, Syria.

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Poet Anna Rabinowitz found a shoe box full of old letters and photos of family and friends killed in the Holocaust.  She wrote the poem "Darkling" to feature their voices.   We also hear excerpts from the opera "Darkling."

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