To The Best Of Our Knowledge – Details, episodes & analysis

Human creativity — whether it’s solving a tough problem or writing a novel — is one of our defining traits. It’s also deeply mysterious. Where does that creative spark come from?

Original Air Date: February 09, 2019

Interviews In This Hour:
A Neuroscientist and a Novelist Put Creativity Under a Microscope — Is This The Price of Genius? — Alma Mahler: 'Malevolent Muse' or Early Feminist Composer? — Was The Art Worth All The Pain?

Guests:
Heather Berlin, Siri Hustvedt, Jim Holt, Mary Sharrat, Nathaniel Mary Quinn

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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

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Jim Thorpe was one of the greatest athletes the world has ever known — a legend in the NFL, MLB, NCAA, and in the Olympics. Today he is being celebrated by a new generation of Native Americans. 

• Rapper Tall Paul’s album is called, “The Story of Jim Thorpe." Tall Paul is an Anishinaabe and Oneida Hip-Hop artist enrolled on the Leech Lake reservation in Minnesota. 
• Biographer David Maraniss is the author of "Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe."
• Activist Suzan Shown Harjo is the recipient of a 2014 Presidential Medal of Freedom. She is Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee.
• Patty Loew is the director of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at Northwestern University. She is a member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe.

Special thanks to Robert W. Wheeler and the Smithsonian for archival audio.

Original Air Date: January 14, 2023

Interviews In This Hour:
Was Jim Thorpe the greatest athlete who ever lived? — The white man's trophy — A hero who looks like me — Indigenous excellence: Hip hop and the legacy of Jim Thorpe

Guests:
Tall Paul, Suzan Shown Harjo, Patty Loew, David Maraniss

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Americans used to believe that news anchors were basically reporting the truth. But in recent years, trust in journalism has largely evaporated. And that’s not an accident as the news media have been weaponized. So what can journalists do to regain the public trust?

Original Air Date: June 15, 2024

Interviews In This Hour:
Journalist Ezra Klein on podcasting, pundits and when to take yourself out of the news — Reclaiming journalism in a fast-changing media landscape — How a hyperlocal newsletter is redefining the ‘news’

Guests:
Ezra Klein, Deborah Blum, Rob Gurwitt

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The human brain is naturally mathematical. But there’s one particular kind of math people have surprisingly strong feelings about — geometry. It's the secret sauce of mathematics — different from everything else, and applicable to everything from gerrymandering to human evolution to romance novels.
 

Original Air Date: May 28, 2022

Interviews In This Hour:
The 14th dimension, AI that writes romance novels, and other things explained by geometry — Did shapes make us human?

Guests:
Jordan Ellenberg, Stanislas Dehaene

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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

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Maybe it’s your grandmother’s cinnamon cookies, the garlicky tomato sauce your spouse cooked when you were first dating, or the chicken noodle soup you made every week when your kids were little. The sights, smells and tastes of certain foods can instantly remind us of a person or transport us back to a certain time in our lives. In this episode, we’ll meet kitchen ghosts from Kentucky, hear how religion and food are intertwined, and talk about how flavor evokes emotion – from grief to joy.

Original Air Date: May 25, 2024

Interviews In This Hour:
The comfort and community of ancestral food — Slow down and take a 'flavor trip' — The perfect french fries of Kewaunee, Wisconsin — The surprising intersections of food and faith

Guests:
Crystal Wilkinson, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Christina Ward, Joe Hardtke

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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

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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

Guests:

Stephanie Land, Eula Biss, Jacqueline Horner Plumez, Amanda Henry, Ayelet Waldman

Before family photos, or school pictures or Instagram, there were hand-drawn and painted portraits. Throughout the ages, portrait artists have captured expressions and personalities on canvas or paper, and those who view the picture interpret this “likeness” in their own way. We talk with a philosopher, a musician and a novelist about the role of portraits through history, and how we see ourselves —and others — through these deeply personal images.

Original Air Date: September 23, 2023

Guests: 

Peter Brathwaite, Maggie O'Farrell, Steven Nadler, Thijs Gerbrandy, Norbert Middelkoop