Social Trends

friends

Everyone knows you can choose your friends, but not your family.  Well, maybe that used to be true, but today’s families are a lot more flexible about defining themselves.  In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we’ll hear NPR’s Scott Simon rhapsodize about his two adopted...

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Worried about climate change? Trying hard to reduce your carbon footprint? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, living small and liking it – an argument in favor of the radically local life.

Ehrenreich at a New York Times discussion

Speaking to Steve Paulson in 2010, Barbara Ehrenreich said that too often, our focus on positivity turns into a kind of victim blaming. She's been a champion of realism and determination.

Thing 1 and Thing 2 mural

Brian Boyd talks with Anne Strainchamps about how our love of storytelling helped us evolve.

colors

Mary Karr is a best-selling writer, a mother and an alcoholic. In this hour of To The Best Of Our Knowledge, Karr talks about her journey from addiction to awe. Also, we hear from a doctor who claims he beat the bottle by taking a commonly prescribed drug that could help millions of people - if...

old hands

Henry Alford believes that old people are wise. And to prove it, he interviewed many people over the age of seventy, including Phyllis Diller, Harold Bloom and a retired aerospace engineer who eats food out of the garbage. The result is Alford's new book, "How to Live: A Search for Wisdom from...

snow-capped trees

Laura Waterman is the author of a memoir called "Losing the Garden: The Story of A Marriage." The book explores how Laura could have permitted her beloved husband of thirty years to kill himself while suffering a profound depression.

child with heart

He's been described as "the most remarkable mind on the planet" and one of the world's "100 living geniuses." Daniel Tammet lives with high-functioning autistic savant syndrome. He's able to recite the mathematical constant Pi to over 22,500 decimal places from memory. But Tammet says that the...

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