Episode Archives

Filter episodes by the year they originally aired.
Karl Marx

Was Marx right after all in his critique of capitalism?  Our ongoing economic struggles have spawned a new generation of Marxist activists and intellectuals, and renewed interest in Karl Marx's own life. Read more

Original Air Date:

June 01, 2014

support your local planet

Today we explore some new paradigms for thinking about our environmental future.  And, we commemorate the 50th anniversary of death of the great environmentalist, Rachel Carson.Read more

Original Air Date:

May 04, 2014

TTBOOK

Everyone loves a good joke, right? Well, at least when it's not at your expense. We explore hoaxes throughout history, get in the mind of a prolific prankster, and hear from writer Walter Kirn about getting duped by a dangerous con man.Read more

Original Air Date:

March 30, 2014

Where do you find crazy ideas and some of the world's smartest people? In theoretical physics - the world of parallel universes, super strings and black holes.  We go on a whirlwind tour of the universe - from the multiverse to an imaginary walk on Mars.Read more

Original Air Date:

March 09, 2014

To be American can mean many things. It can mean a young black teen in a hoodie, or a illegal immigrant who’s been living here for 20 years. How do we reconcile the many different American experiences?Read more

Original Air Date:

March 02, 2014

TTBOOK

Not every story about Afghanistan involves guns and soldiers.  We see the country through art, poetry and games - from the ancient sport of Buzkashi to Afghanistan's famous hand-woven carpets. Also, Charles Yu on living safely in a science fictional universe.Read more

Original Air Date:

February 23, 2014

TTBOOK

The bedtime stories of Sinbad, Ali Baba and Aladdin are enchanting stories. They’re also much more: violent, sexually explicit, political, and feminist.Read more

Original Air Date:

February 02, 2014

chairs on a beach

It's the "silver tsunami" — the massive numbers of people now entering their senior years.  And for all those now retiring? They’re trying to figure out what to do with the rest of their lives.Read more

Original Air Date:

January 26, 2014

Everybody makes choices.  Some of them matter for an hour, others for the rest of your life.  For thousands of young people forty years ago, the choice was to go to war in Vietnam or accept the consequences of refusing.Read more

Original Air Date:

January 19, 2014

TTBOOK

How often do we credit children with deep thoughts?  With profound or subtle thinking?  In this hour, we introduce some youngsters who've accomplished remarkable things:  written books, gone viral on the internet, and helped heal a community.  And we talk with psychologists...Read more

Original Air Date:

December 15, 2013

TTBOOK

After 13 years of war, the US will leave Afghanistan next year.   There will be many conversations about the country’s political and military future.  But we’re taking a different look at Afghanistan - through the lens of Afghan fiction: films, poetry and folk tales, and...Read more

Original Air Date:

June 23, 2013

TTBOOK

America invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003. Ten years on, questions linger. What was our mission?  Were we prepared? Did we succeed? What’s the state of post-war Iraq?  We answers these questions from the perspective of American “boots on the ground.”Read more

Original Air Date:

March 24, 2013

TTBOOK

Everybody used to learn handwriting in school.  And whether or not our handwriting was beautiful, we knew cursive and studied penmanship.  Today, clasroom instruction hours are shrinking and who needs penmanship when we have keyboards and autocorrect?  This hour, are we witnessing...Read more

Original Air Date:

February 10, 2013

Mean people

The a**hole certainly isn't on any endangered species lists.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  We're seeing a population explosion.  So we have to ask — Are we living in the "Age of the A**hole"?Read more

Original Air Date:

January 27, 2013

Person walks in front of light wall.

Is this Philip K. Dick's world and are we just living in it? It sure seems like it these days. This hour, we explore his life and work. Read more

Original Air Date:

January 20, 2013

brain

We peer into one of the most fascinating investigations of consciousness: Stanislav Grof's pioneering study of LSD.Read more

Original Air Date:

December 02, 2012

candle in the dark

We explore one of the world's most controversial and secretive religions — Scientology.  Also, how much do we really know about the Mormon faith?

 Read more

Original Air Date:

September 30, 2012

Alan Turing at 16

The driving force behind modern computers, Alan Turing was born a hundred years ago.  He launched the digital age, founded the fields of computer science and artificial intelligence,   and helped the British win WWII by cracking the Nazi "Enigma" codes.  He was persecuted by...Read more

Original Air Date:

August 19, 2012

woman fighting

We put together our favorite interviews with female athletes.Read more

Original Air Date:

July 29, 2012

TTBOOK

"I suspect that the airport will be the true city of the next century.  The great airports are already suburbs of an invisible world capital, a virtual metropolis whose faubourgs are named Heathrow, Kennedy, Charles de Gaulle, Nagoya, a centripetal city whose population forever circles its...Read more

Original Air Date:

May 06, 2012

a model brain

Daniel Kahneman is a Nobel laureate psychologist.  So he’s the perfect person to give us a new way of thinking about thinking, which is exactly what he does in his new book, “Thinking, Fast and Slow.”  In this hour, Kahneman tells us about the two systems that drive the way we think....Read more

Original Air Date:

January 15, 2012

the amazon river

We meet an anthropologist whose life was transformed by Amazonian shamans and the hallucinogen ayahuasca.Read more

Original Air Date:

January 01, 2012

ants

Many animals, from fish to bees and ants, cannot survive alone. They need to live in groups, and these groups have a kind of collective intelligence. You might say the internet has developed its own "hive mind." In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge we'll tell you how the modern science...Read more

Original Air Date:

January 23, 2011

red pill blue pill

At the end of Mary Shelley's classic novel, "Frankenstein". Victor Frankenstein dies but his creation lives on. What happens to Frankenstein's monster is left to the reader's imagination.  At least it was until Susan Heyboer O'Keefe wrote her novel, "Frankenstein's Monster," which picks up...Read more

Original Air Date:

January 02, 2011

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