To The Best Of Our Knowledge

America is in the midst of a new debate over how we tell our history. You can see it everywhere – in arguments over critical race theory and AP history classes, in museums and state capitals, in the news and on talk radio. It’s fueled in part by an emerging generation of public historians who are re-shaping our national narratives. Original Air Date: February 25, 2023 Interviews In This Hour: Uncovering The Blind Spots In Historical Narratives — Columnist Jamelle Bouie on dispelling 'civic myths' with American history — How 'Praise Houses' Reclaim A Lost Piece of Black History Guests: Rund Abdelfatah, Ramtin Arablouei, Jamelle Bouie, Charmaine Minniefield Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

In the world of internet influencers and YouTube stars, it’s not enough to be ordinary anymore. You need to be special. But where did this craze for personal branding come from? Why are we so obsessed with ourselves? To understand this cult of the self, we need to go back to 19th century spiritual movements and the rise of the huckster — and also the myth of rugged individualism. But if we’re always shouting “Me me me,” what are we losing? What has it cost us? Original Air Date: February 03, 2024 Interviews In This Hour: If nobody sees you online, do you exist? — How personal branding became an American religion — Why rugged individualism is a dangerous myth — The philosophers who invented the modern self Guests: Angelo Bautista, Tara Isabella Burton, Alissa Quart, Andrea Wulf Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

Contemplating the infinite is a time-tested way to shrink the present down to size. But if you think about it for very long, infinity can really mess with your mind. There’s something fundamentally paradoxical about it, and beautiful. Deep Time is a series all about the natural ecologies of time from To The Best Of Our Knowledge and the Center for Humans and Nature. We'll explore life beyond the clock, develop habits of "timefulness" and learn how to live with greater awareness of the many types of time in our lives. Original Air Date: June 07, 2025 Interviews In This Hour: The glorious mathematics of infinity — Checking into the infinity hotel — Finding solace in the nature of space-time — The math and mysticism of Albert Einstein Guests: Jordan Ellenberg, Jon Halperin, Michelle Thaller, Kieran Fox Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

It’s summer, and you might be pulling out your binoculars, filling your bird feeders, and looking up as you hear a melodious song. But for many birdwatchers, it's not just a simple pastime. Identifying bird calls, tracking rare breeds through marshes and waters, and watching our feathered friends as they watch you has turned into true love of birds — an avian obsession. Original Air Date: June 17, 2023 Interviews In This Hour: 'Utterly unlike other birds': The inscrutable brilliance of owls — Mark Obmascik on Competitive Bird Watching — The Indelible Myth and Meaning of Ravens — Christopher Benfey on 'A Summer of Hummingbirds' Guests: Jennifer Ackerman, Mark Obmascik, Charles Monroe-Kane, Christopher Benfey Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

What’s the last dream you remember having? Some of us dream every night. But we’re in too much of a hurry to remember our dreams or think about them the next day. Others of us are dream-deprived. What if we embrace our dreams — and our night selves — as a way to understand ourselves better, to connect to each other, even to lead a better life? Original Air Date: February 24, 2024 Interviews In This Hour: The perils of a 'wake-centric' world — The lives we live inside our dreams — A dreaming mind, illustrated — Embracing your night self Guests: Rubin Naiman, Kelly Bulkeley, Roz Chast, Annabel Abbs-Streets Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

Most of us have no idea what will happen when we die. But some do — people who actually started the process of dying and then came back with remarkable stories — like meeting dead relatives. Science is not only extending the lives of patients who’ve been declared clinically dead; it’s also beginning to tell us what happens in near-death experiences. Original Air Date: September 21, 2024 Interviews In This Hour: Sebastian Junger reckons with the possibility of an afterlife — How science is revolutionizing our ideas about life and death Guests: Sebastian Junger, Sam Parnia Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

We celebrate Mother's Day with a collection of stories from our archives, by and about moms. Stories about care and about courage — about the work of mothering. Original Air Date: May 13, 2023 Interviews In This Hour: The all-encompassing worlds of motherhood and poverty — Eula Biss on 'The Argonauts' — Jacqueline Plumez on Mother Power — Amanda Henry on the Road to Motherhood — Ayelet Waldman on Trying to Be a Decent Mother Guests: Stephanie Land, Eula Biss, Jacqueline Horner Plumez, Amanda Henry, Ayelet Waldman Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

Sharing an episode of “What It’s Like to Be…” from author Dan Heath. On the podcast, Dan explores the world of work, one profession at a time, and interviews people who love what they do. He finds out: What does a couples therapist think when a friend asks for relationship advice? Is a Secret Service Agent supposed to pretend like they’re not there when they’re around the president? What are the 3 clocks that govern the life of a long-haul truck driver? If you’ve ever met someone whose work you were curious about, and you had 100 nosy questions but were too polite to ask… this is the show for you. In this preview, Dr. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa [kee-NYO-nes EE no ho sah] (“Dr. Q”), a brain surgeon at the Mayo Clinic, describes his work: zapping parts of the brain to know where to cut, operating a mouth-controlled microscope, and carrying the weight of life-or-death decisions. How do you preserve a mathematician's expertise when removing tumors? And how did Dr. Q go from picking tomatoes to performing brain surgery? You can listen to more episodes of What It’s Like to Be at https://link.mgln.ai/ttbookdanheath

It can be hard to enjoy the natural world these days without anxiety. You notice a butterfly on a flower and wonder why you don’t see more. How’s the monarch population doing this year? And shouldn’t there be more bees? The challenge is to live in this time of climate change – but still find joy and refuge in it. Original Air Date: July 27, 2024 Interviews In This Hour: Ecologies of love: Heather Swan’s stories of insects and the web of life — Becoming edible: Philosopher Andreas Weber’s mystical biology Guests: Heather Swan, Andreas Weber Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

Rooted in reality, written with a keen observer’s eye, and shaped with a sense of song, documentary poetry tells the truth in an artist’s voice. For generations, through wars, crisis, and political upheaval, documentary poets have helped make sense of some of our most difficult moments – by expressing what might otherwise be impossible to say. So what are they writing about today? This episode was produced in partnership with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. Original Air Date: January 13, 2024 Interviews In This Hour: The gospel of Suncere Ali Shakur — This is how I drew you — The poetry that bears witness to the everyday Guests: Philip Metres, Suncere Ali Shakur, Kaia Sand, Camille Dungy Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

How does someone become an official saint? Meet Dorothy Day — journalist, radical activist, mother and lay minister to the poor who died in 1980 — who is being considered for sainthood by the Catholic Church. Shannon Henry Kleiber walks in her footsteps through New York City, where she lived and worked, looking for miracles, talking with people whose lives were changed by her, and wondering how and why saints matter today. We are grateful for additional music for this show from Tom Chapin, Si Kahn and the Chapin Sisters. Thanks also to the Dorothy Day Guild, and The Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Marquette University Archives, which houses Dorothy Day’s papers and photos. Original Air Date: April 19, 2025 Interviews In This Hour: In search of miracles, favors and graces — Inside the ‘agony and ecstasy’ of Maryhouse — We are all ‘called to be saints’ Guests: Robert Ellsberg, Martha Hennessy, Fr. James Martin Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

Maps, whether drawn by hand or by satellite, reflect the time they were drawn for. How will the next generation of cartographers deal with challenges like a world being reshaped by climate change? Original Air Date: December 09, 2023 Interviews In This Hour: Why are islands in the South Pacific disappearing? — Cartography in the age of Google Maps — This is your brain on maps — The mysterious music of the 'phantom islands' Guests: Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson, Mamata Akella, Bill Limpisathian, Andrew Pekler Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

Some 500 years ago, the Scientific Revolution transformed civilization. It paved the way for new technology and commerce, but it also created a worldview that set humans above and apart from the rest of nature, leading to the abuse of the planet’s resources. Today, a new scientific paradigm is taking shape; an understanding that all life on Earth — from the tiniest bacteria to the largest ecosystem — is interconnected. Call it biocentrism or “Gaia 2.0.” Anne and Steve travel to the Island of Knowledge in Italy to meet a new generation of scientists and philosophers. Original Air Date: April 05, 2025 Interviews In This Hour: Why the human imagination is both our greatest gift and weapon — Just how smart is a robot dog? — How Galileo helped create the modern world — The new science of 'planetary intelligence' Guests: Peter Tse, Marcelo Gleiser, Adam Frank Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

What can we learn from whales – and whales from us? Technology like AI is fueling new scientific breakthroughs in whale communication that can help us better understand the natural world. And, there’s an international effort to give whales a voice by granting them personhood. Special thanks to Ocean Alliance and whale.org for some of the whale recordings heard on this episode. Original Air Date: August 24, 2024 Interviews In This Hour: Translating whale, with the help of AI — Searching for a whale alphabet — Giving a voice to the whale ancestors — Roger Payne touches a whale Guests: Shane Gero, Carl Zimmer, Mere Takoko Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

Our lives are so rushed, so busy. Always on the clock. Counting the hours, minutes, seconds. Have you ever stopped to wonder: what are you counting? What is this thing, that’s all around us, invisible, inescapable, always running out? What is time? Deep Time is a series all about the natural ecologies of time from To The Best Of Our Knowledge and the Center for Humans and Nature. We'll explore life beyond the clock, develop habits of "timefulness" and learn how to live with greater awareness of the many types of time in our lives. Original Air Date: November 18, 2023 Interviews In This Hour: Time, loss and the Big Bang — Finding solace in the vastness of space — Carlo Rovelli's white holes, where time dissolves Guests: Marcelo Gleiser, Marjolijn van Heemstra, Carlo Rovelli Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

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 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' Guests: Meklit Hadero, Valmont Layne, Gwen Ansell, Ron Radano Further Reading: CHCI Ideas from Africa Hub Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

It’s been five years since the start of the pandemic. Some 1.2 million Americans died of COVID. That’s a lot of grief. But our loss is much more than death. Many lost the friendship of the workplace. And for a subset of teenagers, there was the loss of two years of high school. And the list goes on. Many of us are still left unmoored. But maybe our collective grief can bring us together. Original Air Date: March 08, 2025 Interviews In This Hour: What happens when a nation doesn't grieve? — What the Civil War can teach us about American grief — How a funeral singer helps us to mourn Guests: David Kessler, Drew Gilpin Faust, Lauren DePino Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

Most Americans take their sovereignty for granted — the nation’s right to make its own laws and govern its own people. The same rights we recognize in other sovereign nations, with one glaring exception — the Native nations and tribes who were here first. For Native Americans, sovereignty is not some abstract idea. It’s an ongoing, daily struggle. Original Air Date: July 13, 2024 Interviews In This Hour: The battle over tribal rights in Bad River — Quannah ChasingHorse’s two worlds – Native activist and supermodel — Are Indian casinos the key to tribal sovereignty? — No more Native American 'trauma porn' Guests: Mary Mazzio, Quannah ChasingHorse, Steven Andrew Light, David Treuer Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

When you look at your body in the mirror, do you love what you see? Do you pick out the things you don’t like? Maybe you’ve heard of body positivity. But what if we just felt neutral about our bodies? In this episode, we talk about our bodies — how we move through the world in these fleshy vessels, how it feels to exist in our bodies in a world that asks so much from them. How do we live full and embodied lives? Original Air Date: September 30, 2023 Interviews In This Hour: Finding Peace in Neutrality: Jessi Kneeland on Rethinking Body Positivity — The Body Speaks: Rae Johnson on Reconnecting with Ourselves to Transform Society — Multiple Identities, One Body: Sami Schalk Discusses Black Disability Politics Guests: Jessi Kneeland, Rae Johnson, Sami Schalk Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

Some artists work with pen and ink, some use brushes and paint. And some make art out of time. Meet some contemporary artists who are finding new ways to bridge the distance between us and the furthest reaches of time. Deep Time is a series all about the natural ecologies of time from To The Best Of Our Knowledge and the Center for Humans and Nature. We'll explore life beyond the clock, develop habits of "timefulness" and learn how to live with greater awareness of the many types of time in our lives. Original Air Date: February 15, 2025 Interviews In This Hour: Crafting cosmic art through deep time — What if clocks were synced to the flow of a river? — Capturing a symphony of time in a dawn chorus Guests: Katie Paterson, Jonathon Keats, Alex Braidwood Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.