About Us

”To the Best of Our Knowledge” is a Peabody award-winning national public radio show that explores big ideas and beautiful questions. Deep interviews with philosophers, writers, artists, scientists, historians, and others help listeners find new sources of meaning, purpose, and wonder in daily life. Whether it’s about bees, poetry, skin, or psychedelics, every episode is an intimate, sound-rich journey into open-minded, open-hearted conversations. Warm and engaging, TTBOOK helps listeners feel less alone and more connected – to our common humanity and to the world we share.

TTBOOK is produced in Madison, Wisconsin, at Wisconsin Public Radio, and is part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Questions or comments? Need a transcript of an interview? Send us an email.

If you need more photos of the team, you can find them here.

Meet Our Staff

Anne Strainchamps

Anne Strainchamps (TTBOOK)

Anne Strainchamps

Host

Anne Strainchamps is the host of To The Best Of Our Knowledge. She co-founded the show, along with Steve Paulson and Jim Fleming, and has been a featured interviewer on the program for more than a decade. She has worked in public broadcasting at WAMU in Washington, DC, and at NPR. She has been a reporter, producer, news director, live talk show host, a food and wine columnist, and—in a former life—a chocolatier.

Steve Paulson

Tom Krueger (WPR)

Steve Paulson

Executive Producer

Steve is the Executive Producer and one of the founders of To The Best Of Our Knowledge. He has been a contributing writer for Salon and Nautilus and has written for Slate, Huffington Post and The Atlantic. His radio reports have also been broadcast on NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered.

Charles Monroe-Kane

Tom Krueger (WPR)

Charles Monroe-Kane

Producer/Interviewer

Producer Charles Monroe-Kane is the author of Lithium Jesus: A Memoir of Mania. Before To The Best Of Our Knowledge, Charles spent almost a decade in Europe, where he started an internet café in Prague, was an anti-nuke activist in Belgium, managed a record label in Amsterdam and even ran a circus.

Shannon Henry Kleiber

Tom Krueger (WPR)

Shannon Henry Kleiber

Producer/Interviewer and Writer

Shannon Henry Kleiber is a senior producer for To the Best of Our Knowledge. Kleiber is a former columnist and staff writer for The Washington Post, where she ended up writing for most sections, including Business, Style, Metro, Sports and The Washington Post Magazine. She is the author of two non-fiction books, "The Dinner Club: How the Masters of the Internet Universe Rode the Rise and Fall of the Greatest Boom in History," and "On My Honor: Real Life Lessons From America’s First Girl Scout."

Angelo Bautista

Tom Krueger (WPR)

Angelo Bautista

Producer/Interviewer

Angelo Bautista is a producer and interviewer at To The Best Of Our Knowledge. He previously interned with NPR’s Code Switch and was a weekly talk show producer at Indiana Public Media. When he’s not making radio, you can find him looking for treasure at your local thrift store.

Joe Hardtke

Tom Krueger (WPR)

Joe Hardtke

Technical Director

At age 10, Joe Hardtke destroyed his parents’ home stereo trying to sample beats from the radio. A native Wisconsinite, he began his broadcasting career as a teenager at a polka radio station. (Yes. Polka. All day.) Down the hall from the air booth was a mono production studio with two cart machines. Many secret radio plays were recorded after hours. No gear was destroyed.