Stay ConnectedTo The Best Of Our Knowledge is a nationally-syndicated, Peabody award-winning public radio show that dives headlong into the deeper end of ideas. We have conversations with novelists and poets, scientists and software engineers, journalists and historians, filmmakers and philosophers, artists and activists — people with big ideas and a passion to share them.
For more from the TTBOOK team, visit us at ttbook.org.
Copyright: © Copyright 2021 by Wisconsin Public Radio
Jane Goodall has seen wild chimpanzees dance and bristle with excitement around roaring waterfalls — and she thinks it’s an experience of awe and wonder — and possibly a precursor to animistic religion.
But can we ever know why our ancient human ancestors developed spiritual beliefs? Can evolutionary science uncover the roots of religion?
At some point our ancestors went from admiring waterfalls to worshipping them - and all kinds of spirits and gods. They developed sacred rituals and turned stones into totems. And then came the Battle of the Gods.
This was produced in partnership with the Center for Humans and Nature, an organization that brings together scholars from a diversity of disciplines to think creatively about our relationships with nature and each other. What do you think evolution can tell us about love and morality? Share your thoughts at humansandnature.org. This episode was made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation.
Original Air Date: May 14, 2017
Guests:
Jane Goodall — Laura Kehoe — Frans de Waal — Barbara King — Ara Norenzayan — Jeff Schloss — Andrew Newberg
Interviews In This Hour:
Do Chimpanzees Have Spiritual Experiences? — How 'Big Gods' Transformed Human History — An Evolutionary Biologist Searches for God — What Bliss Looks Like In Your Brain — Are Morals a Part of Our Evolution?
Further Reading:
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We take a look at the romantic tropes of modern love and how they’re changing. Do the old dreams of true love and happiness ever after fit our new lives and new identities?
Original Air Date: February 13, 2021
Guests:
Logan Ury — Angelo Bautista — Jane Ward — Angela Chen — Bara Jichova Tyson
Interviews In This Hour:
The New Coffee Date: COVID-19 Pushes The Dating World To Zoom — Are Straight People Okay? — Love Without Touch, Desire Without Sex — Learning To Believe In Monogamy
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The bond we share with dogs runs deep. The satisfaction of gentle head scratches or a round of playing fetch is simple and pure, but in other ways, the connection we have is truly unknowable. How do dogs make our lives better? How do they think? And how do we give them the lives they deserve?
Original Air Date: February 05, 2022
Guests:
Blair Braverman — Quince Mountain — Donna Haraway — Sarah Miller
Interviews In This Hour:
Adventure, goofiness and trail snacks: Stories from the dog musher's journal — Getting inside the mind of a dog — Nothing makes losing a dog easy. But a bridge dog can help. — Joy and peace, high up on Dog Mountain
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Is there a better way to talk about death? And to grieve? So many people have died during the pandemic — 4.8 million and counting — that we're living through a period of global mourning. And some people — and certain cultures — seem to be better prepared to handle it than others.
Original Air Date: June 19, 2021
Guests:
Heather Swan — Gillian O'Brien — Charles Monroe-Kane — Gabe Joyner — Rafael Campo
Interviews In This Hour:
The Barred Owl Who Came To Visit — How The Irish Talk About Death — How To Remember A Beloved Brother? A Memorial Tattoo — A Physician-Poet Bears Witness to the Pandemic's Lost Voices
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When things don't go the way they're supposed to — viruses, star systems, presidents, even fish — we're often desperate to explain the chaos. In this episode, we search for order in the universe.
Original Air Date: August 08, 2020
Guests:
Patrik Svensson — Lulu Miller — Alexander Boxer — Margaret Wertheim — S. James Gates Jr.
Interviews In This Hour:
The Weird World Of Eels — We Call Them Fish. Evolution Says They're Something Else. — The Original Algorithm Was Written In The Stars — Seeing The World With A Mathematician's Eyes
Further Reading:
Nautilus: Eels Don’t Have Sex Until the Last Year of Their Life—NYAS: The Mystery of Our Mathematical Universe
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Sharing of personal pronouns has become standard practice on resumes, business cards, email signatures and more. And that’s just one sign of an increasingly widespread shift in how we think about gender. So what’s next? And what would it take to actually celebrate gender freedom? To have trans joy?
Original Air Date: January 15, 2022
Guests:
Jules Gill-Peterson — Big Freedia — Torrey Peters — Akwaeke Emezi
Interviews In This Hour:
The Long History of the Trans Child — A Diva's Oasis? Bounce Music — 'Detransition, Baby' author Torrey Peters on life, love, gender and parenthood — Many Identities, One Spirit
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The pandemic has made it clear that parents are walking a tightrope with no safety net. We talk to parents about how they want to change the system, what it's like to raise black boys in a time of racial injustice, and how we might learn from ancient cultures to improve our parenting skills.
Original Air Date: May 22, 2021
Guests:
Alissa Quart — Brittany Powell — Michaeleen Doucleff — Amaud Jamaul Johnson — Cherene Sherrard
Interviews In This Hour:
A Parenting Movement Emerges From the Pandemic — Modern Parenting Tips From Ancient Civilizations — Two Poets On Raising Black Teenage Boys In America
Further Reading:
Economic Hardship Reporting Project
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Clocks and calendars chop time into increments – minutes, hours, days, years. It’s efficient, and it helps us get to meetings on time. But when we invented artificial time, we gave up natural time, and a deep sense of connection to the larger universe. What does time feel like when you stop counting it?
Original Air Date: January 04, 2020
Guests:
Alexander Rose — Douglas Rushkoff — Wade Davis — Brian Swimme — Laura Williams — Rachel Sussman
Interviews In This Hour:
Alexander Rose on The Clock of the Long Now — Reclaiming Time — The Eternal Moment — Brian Swimme on Organic Time — Laura Williams on a Tidal-Powered Moon Clock — What It Looks Like To Live For 600K Years
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What if the most unselfish thing you could do was to pursue pleasure? To look for delight? To feel joy? We make the case for the transformative power of joy, pleasure and delight.
Original Air Date: October 12, 2019
Guests:
Ross Gay — Kathryn Bond Stockton — Laurie Santos — Lynne Segal
Interviews In This Hour:
365 Days Of Delight: A Poet's Guide To Finding Joy — A Queer Theorist On Ecstatic Kissing — Laboratory of Joy: A Psychologist On The Science of Feeling Good — The Revolution Will Be Joyful: Feminist Lynne Segal On Fighting Power With Pleasure — The People Power Of Happiness
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Ever want to quit your job, leave the rat race behind, and head back to the land? Buy an old farmhouse or build a solar-powered home and live self-sufficiently on a few acres of your very own? Generations before you have shared that dream. The reality is more complicated. Even owning your own land is an ethical minefield.
Original Air Date: December 18, 2021
Guests:
Makenna Goodman — Simon Winchester — Hayden King
Interviews In This Hour:
Can you live off the land and still live ethically? — What does 'owning' land actually mean? — How the Land Back movement is reclaiming land stolen from Indigenous people
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Remember when reading still felt magical? When a book could sweep you off your feet into another world? It might be that the best way to find your way back the magic is through a kid’s book. We talk to authors about Wonderland, magic wands, unicorns and other children's stories that inspire.
Original Air Date: May 01, 2021
Guests:
Katherine Rundell — Quan Barry — Enrique Salmon — Ebony Thomas — LL McKinney — Lulu Miller
Interviews In This Hour:
Why A Pandemic Is The Perfect Time To Read Children's Literature — Quan Barry on 'White Fang' — Enrique Salmon on 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' — Is Hermione Black? The Answer Depends On How Old You Are — Alice The Doomslayer Rises In L.L. McKinney's Reimagining of 'Alice In Wonderland' — Lulu Miller on 'The Search for Delicious'
Further Reading:
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Whether you know it or not, your closets are filled with personal information. About your identity, your values, your personality. And every day, you wear it all right out the door for the whole world to see.
Do you think about what are you saying with your clothes?
Original Air Date: March 16, 2019
Guests:
Angelo Bautista — Avery Trufelman — Carolyn Smith — agnès b. — Jo Paoletti
Interviews In This Hour:
Finding Yourself By Finding Your Style — From High Fashion to Heather Gray T-Shirts, Choosing Your Style Is A Privilege — A Year Of Wearing Clothing Only Made By Hand — How Blue Became 'Boy' And Pink Became 'Girl' — The Fashion Icon Who Despises Fashion
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We’re in the holiday season of the worst pandemic of our lives. Canceling our gatherings is the safe thing to do. But, how can we still — creatively and safely — connect with the people we love? Maybe there are some opportunities for us this year, too.
Original Air Date: November 28, 2020
Guests:
Priya Parker — Stanley Weintraub — Peter Reinhart — Helen Macdonald — Gregg Krech
Interviews In This Hour:
A Pandemic Holiday Season Offers Opportunities For Community, Too — Stanley Weintraub on the World War I Christmas Truce — Peter Reinhart on the Spiritual Importance of Bread — Helen Macdonald On 'The Dark Is Rising' — How to Cultivate Gratitude
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There are old folktales and legends of people who can become animals. Animals who can become people. And there’s a lesson for our own time in those shapeshifting stories — a recognition that the membrane between what's human and more-than-human is razor thin.
Original Air Date: November 20, 2021
Guests:
Sharon Blackie — David Abram — Chris Gosden — Stephen Graham Jones
Interviews In This Hour:
Reclaiming the fierce women who are shapeshifters — How a man turned into a raven — Shapeshifters, shamans and the 'New Animism' — Horror author Stephen Graham Jones on what our monsters say about us
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After a pandemic year of social isolation, we knew loneliness would be a problem. But public health officials have been warning for years that in countries all over the world, rates of loneliness are skyrocketing. How did loneliness become a condition of modern life?
Original Air Date: April 10, 2021
Guests:
Jason Rohrer — Samantha Rose Hill — Claudia Rankine
Interviews In This Hour:
My Friend Samantha (The A.I.) — How Loneliness Can Lead to Totalitarianism — Being Black and Alone in America
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Colonization in Africa was much more than a land grab. It was a project to replace — and even erase — local cultures. To label them inferior. Music, arts, literature and of course language. In other words, it permeated everything. So how do you undo that? How do you unlearn what you’ve been forced to learn?
In this hour, produced in partnership with the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) and Africa is a Country — we learn what it means to decolonize the mind.
Original Air Date: March 20, 2021
Guests:
Adom Getachew — Simon Gikandi — Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Interviews In This Hour:
Reckon with the Past To Decolonize the Future — Reclaiming the Hidden History of Blackness — Never Write In The Language of the Colonizer
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As a culture we’ve long been fascinated by witchcraft, with witches through the ages practicing magic and making spells. Even through the spread of misinformation, and when they’ve been hunted and silenced. We take you from the 17th century to the online witch communities of today.
Original Air Date: October 30, 2021
Guests:
Honey Rose — Rivka Galchen — Chris Gosden — Quan Barry
Interviews In This Hour:
WitchTok, the super-connected coven — Are you now, or have you ever been, a witch? The witch hunt of Kepler's mother — From alchemy to internet witchcraft — the thousand-year history of magic — Spellcraft, field hockey and Emilio Estevez — the girl power of novelist Quan Barry's teen witches
Rustling of leaves, sploshing of water, birds calling, bees buzzing. Wherever you live — city or country, East coast, West coast, or in between — we share common, contemplative experiences on our walks outside. In this hour, we assemble a sonic guide to finding solace in nature.
Original Air Date: May 09, 2020
Guests:
William Helmreich — David Rothenberg — Laura Dassow Walls — Robert Moor — Nate Staniforth — Andreas Weber
Interviews In This Hour:
The Great Urban Nature Explorer — Why The Walden Pond Experiment In Self-Reliance Is More Relevant Than Ever — The Wisdom of Trails — Lose Yourself In The Sky — Finding Love In The Ecosystem
If you had to travel 500 miles across country, on foot, with no map, no GPS, without talking to anyone — to a destination you've never seen, could you do it? It sounds impossible, but millions of creatures spend their lives on the move, migrating from one part of the Earth to another with navigation skills we can only dream of. How do they do it — and what can we learn from them?
Original Air Date: July 25, 2020
Guests:
Moses Augustino Kumburu — David Wilcove — Stan Temple — David Barrie — Sonia Shah
Interviews In This Hour:
The Serengeti's Great Migration, Up Close — Why Do Animals Migrate? — Sandhill Cranes Make The Long Journey South — The Greatest Navigators on the Planet — The High Costs — And Potential Gains — Of Migration, Both Animal And Human
Music crosses boundaries between traditional and modern, local and global, personal and political. Take jazz — a musical form born out of forced migration and enslavement. We typically think it originated in New Orleans and then spread around the world. But today, we examine an alternate history of jazz — one that starts in Africa, then crisscrosses the planet, following the movements of people and empires -- from colonial powers to grassroots revolutionaries to contemporary artists throughout the diaspora.
This history of jazz is like the music itself: fluid and improvisatory.
In this hour, produced in partnership with the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) — a global consortium of 270 humanities centers and institutes — we hear how both African and African-American music have shaped the sound of the world today.
Original Air Date: July 04, 2020
Guests:
Meklit Hadero — Valmont Layne — Gwen Ansell — Ron Radano
Interviews In This Hour:
How Meklit Hadero Reimagined Ethiopian Jazz — So You Say You Want A Revolution — Reclaiming the Hidden History of South African Jazz — 'We Are All African When We Listen'
Further Reading:
The women of Afghanistan are elected officials, school teachers, actors, TV contest winners, ancient rug weavers, and whisperers of forbidden poetry. The Taliban are starting to put down their thumb. But these women want you to know they are more than the timid victim under a burqa.
Original Air Date: October 02, 2021
Guests:
Humaira Ghilzai — Eliza Griswold — Anna Badkhen — Rafia Zakaria
Interviews In This Hour:
What's the future of culture in Afghanistan? — For Afghan weavers, the world is a carpet — Generations of Afghan women sharing the landay — How Afghanistan became America's 'first feminist war'
We’ve all been changed by the experience of living through a pandemic. We figured out how to sanitize groceries, mute ourselves on Zoom and keep from killing our roommates. But we’re also tackling bigger, existential questions — how can we, individually and collectively, find meaning in the experience of this pandemic?
Original Air Date: May 23, 2020
Guests:
David Kessler — Tyrone Muhammad — Nikki Giovanni — John Kaag — Alice Kaplan
Interviews In This Hour:
Grief Is A Natural Response To The Pandemic. Here’s Why You Should Let Yourself Feel It. — 'You Smell Death': Being A Mortician In A Community Ravaged By COVID-19 — Nikki Giovanni Reads a Poem of Remembrance — Does Philosophy Still Matter In The Age Of Coronavirus? — Why Camus' 'The Stranger' Is Still a Dangerous Novel
Using a complex network of chemical signals, trees talk to each other and form alliances with fellow trees, even other species. In fact, whole forests exist as a kind of superorganism. And some trees are incredibly old. Did you know a single bristlecone pine can live up to 6,000 years? And the root mass of aspens might live 100,000 years? We explore the science and history of trees and talk with Richard Powers about his epic novel "The Overstory."
Original Air Date: April 28, 2018
Guests:
Mark Hirsch — Richard Powers — Suzanne Simard — Amos Clifford — Daegan Miller
Interviews In This Hour:
A Year In The Life Of A Tree — Listening to the Mother Trees — Richard Powers on Writing the Inner Life of Trees — Bathing in the Beauty of the Trees — General Sherman, Karl Marx, and Other Aliases of Earth's Largest Tree
For all the commentary, the sorrow and rage, all the second-guessing about everything that followed, it’s still hard to fathom what happened on 9/11. Photographer James Nachtwey was in New York that day, and he took some of the iconic photos of the Twin Towers as they crumbled. "I’ve actually never gotten over it," he says. On the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, Nachtwey reflects on his life as a war photographer, and we consider the deep history of war itself. We also examine a very difficult question: Is war ever worth it?
Original Air Date: September 11, 2021
Guests:
James Nachtwey — David Shields — Leymah Gbowee — Margaret MacMillan
Interviews In This Hour:
Remembering 9/11 Through The Lens Of A Photojournalist — War is Beautiful? — Humans Have Gotten Nicer and Better at Making War — Is War Inevitable?
Before the time of commercial flights and road trips, we traveled to far off places without taking a single step. All you had to do was open a book. From Africa to England, to a kamikaze cockpit, and to realms of fantasy. Books aren’t just books. They’re passports to anywhere.
Original Air Date: March 14, 2020
Guests:
Philip Pullman — Ruth Ozeki — Robert Macfarlane — Petina Gappah
Interviews In This Hour:
Philip Pullman on 'The Pocket Atlas of the World' — 'His Dark Materials' Author Philip Pullman On The Consciousness Of All Things — A Diary Becomes A Time Capsule — Ruth Ozeki on 'Kamikaze Diaries' — Petina Gappah on 'Persuasion' — The Empire Writes Back: Author Discusses Explorer David Livingstone's Complicated Legacy — Robert Macfarlane on 'The Living Mountain'
Not everyone has a nice, big yard to stretch out in while sheltering in place from COVID-19. But maybe you don't need one. People are using virtual spaces to live out the real experiences they miss — like coffee shops, road trips, even building your own house on a deserted island, or Walden Pond. In a world where we're mostly confined to our homes and Zoom screens, does the line between virtual and real-life space mean much anymore?
Original Air Date: May 16, 2020
Guests:
Mark Riechers — Tracy Fullerton — Simon Parkin — Jane McGonigal — Donald D. Hoffman — Suzanne O’Sullivan
Interviews In This Hour:
There's No Pandemic In Animal Crossing — I Went To The Woods To Level Up Deliberately — The Most Boring Video Game Ever Made — Want to be Happier? Turn Everyday Tasks Into a Game — How We Fool Ourselves With The Concept of 'Reality'
Further Reading:
Over the past decade, plant scientists have quietly transformed the way we think of trees, forests and plants. They discovered that trees communicate through vast underground networks, that plants learn and remember. If plants are intelligent beings, how should we relate to them? Do they have a place in our moral universe? Should they have rights?
Human identity cannot be separated from our nonhuman kin. From forest ecology to the human microbiome, emerging research suggests that being human is a complicated journey made possible only by the good graces of our many companions. In partnership with the Center for Humans and Nature and with support from the Kalliopeia Foundation, To The Best Of Our Knowledge is exploring this theme of "kinship" in a special radio series.
Original Air Date: December 19, 2020
Guests:
Robin Wall Kimmerer — Matt Hall — Monica Gagliano — Brooke Hecht
Interviews In This Hour:
We've Forgotten How To Listen To Plants — We Share This World With Plants. What Do We Owe Them? — Guided by Plant Voices — The Botanical Medicine Cabinet
One of the toughest things about trying to understand climate change – arguably the most important story of our time - is wrapping our minds around it. To even imagine something so enormous, so life-changing, we need a story. Some characters, a metaphor, and even some lessons learned. For that, we turn to the novelists and journalists telling the story of climate change – as we – and our children – live it.
Original Air Date: August 14, 2021
Guests:
Alice Bell — Lydia Millet — Lidia Yuknavitch — John Lanchester
Interviews In This Hour:
The Climate Change Stories We Need To Hear — The Climate Crisis Gets Biblical — Lidia Yuknavitch’s Dream World: How Dreams Shaped Her Dazzling Speculative Novel — A Climate Dystopia Of Cold, Concrete, Wind and a Wall
We all miss touching things — groceries, door knobs, hands, faces. And most of all, skin. The living tissue that simultaneously protects us from the world, and lets us feel it. In this episode, the politics, biology, and inner life of your skin.
Original Air Date: April 18, 2020
Guests:
Angelo Bautista — Tiffany Field — Alissa Waters — Nina Jablonski
Interviews In This Hour:
My Problem With Skincare — Even During Quarantine, You Need A 'Daily Dose Of Touch' — Reclaiming Scars As Works Of Art — The Science Of Skin Color
What does it take to win Olympic gold? To become "the world's fastest human"? This hour, Olympic fame, the politics of sports, and the science of running.
Original Air Date: July 31, 2021
Guests:
John Carlos — Gretchen Reynolds — Mark McClusky — Michael Powell
Interviews In This Hour:
The Fist and the 1968 Olympics — Walk, Run, Swim Or Bike — The Most Important Exercise Is Merely Movement — Faster, Higher, Stronger — The Magic of 'Rez Ball'
If you look at a mountain, you might see a skiing destination, a climbing challenge, or even a source of timber to be logged or ore to be mined. But there was a time when mountains were sacred. In some places, they still are. What changes when you think of a mountain not as a giant accumulation of natural resources, but as a living being?
Today’s show is part of our project on kinship with the more-than-human world — produced in collaboration with the Center for Humans and Nature, and with support from the Kalliopeia Foundation. You’ll find more information about the project at ttbook.org/kinship and humansandnature.org.
Original Air Date: July 24, 2021
Guests:
John Hausdoerffer — Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk — David Hinton — Lisa Maria Madera
Interviews In This Hour:
What Do You Owe The Mountains Around You? — 'These Are Live, Active Places': A Ute Activist Fights To Save The Bears Ears National Monument — A Poet Finds Life Lessons on Hunger Mountain — 'I Was Born To Volcanoes'
Africans are moving into cities in unprecedented numbers. Lagos, Nigeria, is growing by 77 people an hour — it's on track to become a city of 100 million. In 30 years, the continent is projected to have 14 mega-cities of more than 10 million people. It's perhaps the largest urban migration in history.
These cities are not like Dubai, or Singapore, or Los Angeles. They’re uniquely African cities, and they’re forcing all of us to reconsider what makes a city modern. And how and why cities thrive.
To find out what's going on, we go to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to talk with entrepreneurs, writers, scholars and artists. In this hour, produced in partnership with the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) — a global consortium of 270 humanities centers and institutes — we learn how the continent where the human species was born is building the cities of the future.
Original Air Date: December 14, 2019
Guests:
Dagmawi Woubshet — Julie Mehretu — Emily Callaci — James Ogude — Ato Qyayson — Teju Cole — Meskerem Assegued
Interviews In This Hour:
Rediscovering the Indigenous City of Addis Ababa — 'People As Infrastructure' — A Tour Of The Networked City — 'I Am Because We Are': The African Philosophy of Ubuntu — How Pan-African Dreams Turned Dystopic — Decoding Global Capitalism on One African Street — Life in the Diaspora: How Teju Cole Pivots Between Cultures — Can Artists Create the City of the Future?
Further Reading:
Why don’t we all just take moment to acknowledge that we are collectively exhausted? The pandemic, the protests, the President’s Twitter feed — everything is exhausting. But maybe it doesn’t have to be?
Original Air Date: October 24, 2020
Guests:
Katrina Onstad — Emma Seppala — Richard Polt — Filip Bromberg — Lars Svendsen — Anne Helen Petersen
Interviews In This Hour:
Can We Not? How The Pandemic Has Made Burnout Worse Than Ever — Sunday Night Blues, Monday Morning (Short) Fuse — Setting Too High A Bar For Success Is Running Us Ragged — To Waste Time Is To Deepen Life — Why Swedes Are Trading Jobs For Meaning — Have You Considered Doing Nothing?
As audio producers, one of the most fun things we get to do is bring the soundscape of a novel to life — cue the monsters, the storms, the footsteps of a creature emerging slowly from the ocean. So that’s what we’re bringing you today: Great writers, epic sound design.
Original Air Date: July 03, 2021
Guests:
Nnedi Okorafor — Neil Gaiman — Lidia Yuknavitch — N. K. Jemisin — Ann Patchett — Richard Powers — Pattiann Rogers — Lorrie Moore — Kelly Link — Mark Sundeen
Interviews In This Hour:
Nnedi Okorafor's Alien Invasion of Lagos — Neil Gaiman Brings Us To The End Of The World — Lidia Yuknavitch’s Dream World: How Dreams Shaped Her Dazzling Speculative Novel — A Not So Distant Future in the N.K. Jemisin's 'Broken Earth' Trilogy — Ann Patchett on 'State of Wonder' — Richard Powers on Writing the Inner Life of Trees — Pattiann Rogers on Bee Poetry — Lorrie Moore on Bringing Characters To Life With Brevity — Kelly Link on 'Pretty Monsters' — Mark Sundeen on 'The Making of Toro'
There's a certain a kind of visual encounter that can be life changing: A cross-species gaze. The experience of looking directly into the eyes of an animal in the wild, and seeing it look back. It happens more often than you’d think and it can be so profound, there’s a name for it: eye-to-eye epiphany. So what happens when someone with feathers or fur and claws looks back? How does it change people, and what can it teach us?
Human identity cannot be separated from our nonhuman kin. From forest ecology to the human microbiome, emerging research suggests that being human is a complicated journey made possible only by the good graces of our many companions. In partnership with the Center for Humans and Nature and with support from the Kalliopeia Foundation, To The Best Of Our Knowledge is exploring this theme of "kinship" in a special radio series.
Original Air Date: February 08, 2020
Guests:
Gavin Van Horn — Jenny Kendler — Ivan Schwab — Jane Goodall — Alan Lightman
Interviews In This Hour:
In The Eye Of The Osprey: A Physicist's Wild Epiphany — 100 Bird Eyes Are Watching You — The Look That Changed Primatology — Watching the Fierce Green Fire Die: Animal Gazes That Shaped Conservation Movements — The 600 Million Year History Of The Eye — 'We Are The Feast' — A Feminist Philosopher's Life-Changing Encounter With A Crocodile — How Do You Practice Kinship? A Brief Meditation — Sharing Eye-To-Eye Epiphanies With The Animal World
Further Reading:
"The Disruptive Eye" by Gavin Van Horn—"6 a.m. on LaSalle Street" by Katherine Cummings—"Salmon Speak ~ Why Not Earth?" by Bron Taylor—"The Eyes of an Owl" by Greg Ripley—"From Bestiary" by Elise Paschen
Is there a better way to talk about death? And to grieve? So many people have died during the pandemic — 4.8 million and counting — that we're living through a period of global mourning. And some people — and certain cultures — seem to be better prepared to handle it than others.
Original Air Date: June 12, 2021
Guests:
Heather Swan — Gillian O'Brien — Charles Monroe-Kane — Gabe Joyner — Rafael Campo
Interviews In This Hour:
The Barred Owl Who Came To Visit — How The Irish Talk About Death — How To Remember A Beloved Brother? A Memorial Tattoo — A Physician-Poet Bears Witness to the Pandemic's Lost Voices
New experiences actually rewire the brain. So after all we’ve been through this year, you have to wonder — are we different? We consider the "COVID brain" from the perspective of both neuroscience and the arts. Also, we go to Cavendish, Vermont to hear the remarkable story of Phineas Gage, the railroad worker whose traumatic brain injury changed the history of neuroscience.
Original Air Date: October 10, 2020
Guests:
Margo Caulfield — David Eagleman — llan Stavans
Interviews In This Hour:
How Phineas Gage's Freak Accident Changed Brain Science — 'COVID Brain' and the New Frontiers of Neuroplasticity — The Pandemic and the Poets
Once upon a time, science and magic were two sides of the same coin. Today, we learn science in school and save magic for children’s books. What if it were different? What would it be like to see the world as an alchemist?
Original Air Date: September 19, 2020
Guests:
Sarah Durn — Pamela Smith — William Newman — Charles Monroe-Kane — Jason Pine
Interviews In This Hour:
Transmutation Of The Spirit — The Historical Lessons Embedded in Alchemical Recipes — Was Sir Isaac Newton 'The Last of the Magicians'? — The Buried Secrets of Czech Alchemy — Drug Store Alchemy in the Ozarks
Further Reading:
If you wrote a list of all the things you own in your house, how long would it be? We surround ourselves with possessions, but at what point do they start to possess us?
Original Air Date: September 05, 2020
Guests:
Angelo Bautista — Eula Biss — Adam Minter — Giles Slade — Clare Dolan
Interviews In This Hour:
The Magnum Opus Of Pointless Stuff — 'A $400K Container For A Washing Machine': An Author Grapples With The Inherent Ickiness Of Homeownership — The Global Garage Sale — Why Stuff Doesn't Last Anymore — A Museum Of The Mundane
The pandemic has made it clear that parents are walking a tightrope with no safety net. We talk to parents about how they want to change the system, what it's like to raise black boys in a time of racial injustice, and how we might learn from ancient cultures to improve our parenting skills.
Original Air Date: May 22, 2021
Guests:
Alissa Quart — Brittany Powell — Michaeleen Doucleff — Amaud Jamaul Johnson — Cherene Sherrard
Interviews In This Hour:
A Parenting Movement Emerges From the Pandemic — Modern Parenting Tips From Ancient Civilizations — Two Poets On Raising Black Teenage Boys In America
Further Reading:
A new generation of Black farmers are working to reclaim land, hoping to grow justice along with vegetables and plants.
Original Air Date: August 22, 2020
Guests:
Leah Penniman — Savi Horne — Venice Williams — Marcia Chatelain
Interviews In This Hour:
How Black Farmers Lost 14 Million Acres of Farmland — And How They're Taking It Back — 'When You Hold Land You Have to Keep It' — My Garden Is An Outdoor Parish — Cooking Greens: A Delicious Family History Lesson — The First Job, The Polling Place, The Community Space: How McDonald's Became 'The Closest Thing To Home' For Black Communities
We owe our past and future existence on Earth to fungi. Some can heal you, some can kill you, and some can change you forever. And the people who love them are convinced that mushrooms explain the world.
Original Air Date: June 08, 2019
Guests:
Lawrence Millman — Paul Stamets — Eugenia Bone — Michael Pollan — Dennis McKenna — Robin Carhart-Harris
Interviews In This Hour:
Humanity? It All Started With The Raven and Fungus Man — The Soil-Cleaning, Insect-Warding, Smallpox-Curing Power of Mushrooms — From Candy Caps To Morels: Notes From A Mushroom Hunter's Cookbook — John Cage, Vaclav Halek and the Marvels of Mushroom Music — Did Magic Mushrooms Shape Human Consciousness? — 'Fantastic Fungi' And How To Film Them
Remember when reading still felt magical? When a book could sweep you off your feet into another world? It might be that the best way to find your way back the magic is through a kid’s book. We talk to authors about Wonderland, magic wands, unicorns and other children's stories that inspire.
Original Air Date: May 01, 2021
Guests:
Katherine Rundell — Quan Barry — Enrique Salmon — Ebony Thomas — LL McKinney — Lulu Miller
Interviews In This Hour:
Why A Pandemic Is The Perfect Time To Read Children's Literature — Quan Barry on 'White Fang' — Enrique Salmon on 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' — Is Hermione Black? The Answer Depends On How Old You Are — Alice The Doomslayer Rises In L.L. McKinney's Reimagining of 'Alice In Wonderland' — Lulu Miller on 'The Search for Delicious'
Further Reading:
When things don't go the way they're supposed to — viruses, star systems, presidents, even fish — we're often desperate to explain the chaos. In this episode, we search for order in the universe.
Original Air Date: August 08, 2020
Guests:
Patrik Svensson — Lulu Miller — Alexander Boxer — Margaret Wertheim — S. James Gates Jr.
Interviews In This Hour:
The Weird World Of Eels — We Call Them Fish. Evolution Says They're Something Else. — The Original Algorithm Was Written In The Stars — Seeing The World With A Mathematician's Eyes
Further Reading:
Nautilus: Eels Don’t Have Sex Until the Last Year of Their Life—NYAS: The Mystery of Our Mathematical Universe
What if the most unselfish thing you could do was to pursue pleasure? To look for delight? To feel joy? We make the case for the transformative power of joy, pleasure and delight.
Original Air Date: October 12, 2019
Guests:
Ross Gay — Kathryn Bond Stockton — Laurie Santos — Lynne Segal
Interviews In This Hour:
365 Days Of Delight: A Poet's Guide To Finding Joy — A Queer Theorist On Ecstatic Kissing — Laboratory of Joy: A Psychologist On The Science of Feeling Good — The Revolution Will Be Joyful: Feminist Lynne Segal On Fighting Power With Pleasure — The People Power Of Happiness
After a pandemic year of social isolation, we knew loneliness would be a problem. But public health officials have been warning for years that in countries all over the world, rates of loneliness are skyrocketing. How did loneliness become a condition of modern life?
Original Air Date: April 10, 2021
Guests:
Jason Rohrer — Samantha Rose Hill — Claudia Rankine
Interviews In This Hour:
My Friend Samantha (The A.I.) — How Loneliness Can Lead to Totalitarianism — Being Black and Alone in America
Millions of people are caring for someone with severe memory loss, trying to find ways to connect. One of the best ways anyone has found is music. We examine the unexpected power of song to supercharge the human mind.
Original Air Date: August 17, 2019
Guests:
Shannon Henry Kleiber — Oliver Sacks — Francine Toder — Anne Basting
Interviews In This Hour:
The Power Of Music And Memory: 'Music Was Waking Up Something Within Each Of Them' — The Deep Connections Our Brains Make To Music — It's Never Too Late To Learn To Play — MacArthur Fellow Anne Basting On Asking People With Dementia 'Beautiful Questions'
It's easy to take seeds for granted, to assume that there will always be more corn or wheat or rice to plant. But as monocropping and agribusiness continue to dominate modern farming, are we losing genetic diversity, cultural history, and the nutritional value of our food? We speak to farmers, botanists and indigenous people about how they are reclaiming our seeds.
Original Air Date: September 14, 2019
Guests:
Bob Quinn — Robin Wall Kimmerer — Seth Jovaag — Cary Fowler
Interviews In This Hour:
Where Did We Go Wrong With Wheat? — The Wisdom of the Corn Mother — The Seeds Of Tomorrow: Defending Indigenous Mexican Corn That Could Be Our Future — Saving Seeds For Future Generations — Ancient Grains, Native Corn, And The Doomsday Seed Vault: How Growing Food Might Survive Disaster
Colonization in Africa was much more than a land grab. It was a project to replace — and even erase — local cultures. To label them inferior. Music, arts, literature and of course language. In other words, it permeated everything. So how do you undo that? How do you unlearn what you’ve been forced to learn?
Original Air Date: March 20, 2021
Guests:
Adom Getachew — Simon Gikandi — Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Interviews In This Hour:
Reckon with the Past To Decolonize the Future — Reclaiming the Hidden History of Blackness — Never Write In The Language of the Colonizer
DNA tests are uncovering family histories. In some cases they're also revealing mixed bloodlines and the buried history of slavery. For African Americans, this can be emotionally-charged. What do you do when you find out one of your direct ancestors was a slave owner? And does it open the door to new conversations about racial justice and social healing?
Original Air Date: March 10, 2018
Guests:
Alex Gee — Erin Hoag — Annette Gordon-Reed — Anita Foeman
Interviews In This Hour:
How Do You Know Ruben Gee? — Searching for America's Racial History in a Graveyard — Uncovering America's Buried History: The Story of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings — Changing Our Conversation About Race Using Genetic Testing
Further Reading:
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