To The Best Of Our Knowledge (Wisconsin Public Radio)

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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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

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

Guests:

Adom Getachew, Simon Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o

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Can neuroscience explain what happens to the brain on psychedelics? And even if we map the brain while it’s tripping, does that tell us why these experiences can be so transformative? 

We’ll talk with some of the pioneers in psychedelic research — from Amanda Feilding’s boundary-busting work to Robin Carhart-Harris’ theory of the "entropic brain." Also, renowned neuroscientist Christof Koch goes down the rabbit hole on 5-MeO-DMT, also known as toad venom.  

Original Air Date: July 15, 2023

Interviews In This Hour:

Exploring consciousness on toad venom — The godmother of the European psychedelic revival — How therapeutic psilocybin could help heal long-buried trauma — Magic mushrooms and the 'entropic brain'

Guests:

Christof Koch, Amanda Feilding, David Nutt, Robin Carhart-Harris

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In 2020, Donald Trump won 84 percent of the white evangelical vote.). Lately, he’s been leaning even more deeply into the rhetoric of Christian nationalists. Who are they, and what’s their role in the evangelical church? We talk with some Southern Baptists today, whose views may surprise you.

Original Air Date: March 09, 2024

Interviews In This Hour:

The 'simmering violence' of Donald Trump and Christian nationalism — Examining the Role of Southern Baptist Women — Why One Black Pastor Left the Southern Baptists

Guests:

Jeff Sharlet, Beth Allison Barr, John Onwuchekwa

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In 2020, Donald Trump won 84 percent of the white evangelical vote. Lately, he’s been leaning even more deeply into the rhetoric of Christian nationalists. Who are they, and what’s their role in the evangelical church? We talk with some Southern Baptists today, whose views may surprise you. 

Original Air Date: March 09, 2024

Interviews In This Hour:
The 'simmering violence' of Donald Trump and Christian nationalism — Examining the role of Southern Baptist women — Why one Black pastor left the Southern Baptists

Guests:
Jeff Sharlet, Beth Allison Barr, John Onwuchekwa

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In the first episode of "Luminous," our series about the philosophy and the future of psychedelics, how can psilocybin ease our fears about dying? And how can psychedelics change the way we approach the end of life?

Original Air Date: April 08, 2023

Interviews In This Hour:

How a pioneering psychedelic researcher 'leaned in' to his terminal cancer diagnosis — Dying without fear: How psychedelics can ease the anxiety of terminal illness — The terror and the ecstasy of psychedelics

Guests:

Roland Griffiths, Lou Lukas, Anthony Bossis

Editorial note: Roland Griffiths passed away on Oct. 16, 2023. The conversation with him in this episode took place in January 2023.

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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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2019 was an important year throughout the African diaspora — the 400th year since enslaved Africans first arrived in the United States. In Ghana — once the center of the European slave trade — 2019 was declared "the year of return" and the start of a campaign to encourage descendants of enslaved Africans to re-connect with the land of their ancestors. Thousands of African-Americans made the trip to Ghana — and many have decided to stay. They're fed up with police brutality and systemic racism in the US, ready to build new lives in Africa — and their number is growing.

Original Air Date: September 03, 2022

Interviews In This Hour:

‘This is where I should be’: 1,500 Black Americans make Ghana their new home — The land of your ancestors — Should Africans move to America? — A Black friendship

Guests:

Robert Hanserd, Ridwan Karim Dini-Osman, Prince Marfo, Ato Quayson, Emmanuel Kofi Apraku Bempong

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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?

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

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We all need a good fantasy world to retreat to sometimes – whether it's Hogwarts or Middle Earth, Westeros or Wakanda. But magical thinking can be dangerous too. And escapism isn't always innocent. So where do you draw the line between fantasy and reality?

Original Air Date: September 17, 2022

Interviews In This Hour:

Why not escape into fantasy? A tale of Disney adults — The magical thinkers, the dreamers, and the hucksters of America's fantasyland — Neil Gaiman on where dreams — and nightmares — come from

Guests:

Sarah Rachul, Marianne Eloise, Kurt Andersen, Neil Gaiman

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Every click on your computer, every swipe on your smartphone, leaves a data trail. Information about who you are, what you do, who you love, the state of your mind and body… so much data about you, expanding day by day in the digital clouds. The question is—do you care? Would owning your data, or having more digital privacy, make life better? And what happens to all that data when you die?

Original Air Date: November 22, 2024

Interviews In This Hour:
A former child test subject seeks the data that shaped her life — In an age of surveillance, do you still care about your privacy? — When you die, what will happen to your data?

Guests:
Susannah Breslin, Lowry Pressly, Carl Öhman

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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

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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

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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’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

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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

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From our narrow vantage point on Earth, how can we see what's out there, beyond our skies? We look to how scientists and scholars have studied eclipses, dark matter, deep-space transmissions from intelligent life and more, all in the hopes of painting a clearer picture of a vast and invisible universe.

Original Air Date: August 19, 2017

Interviews In This Hour:

How Eclipse Chasing Inspires Generations of Scientists — How Do We Investigate The Invisible Parts of the Universe? — Search For Life In All The Wrong Places — What Can You Hear In Space? — The Universe Is Under No Obligation To Make Sense To Us

Guests:

David Baron, Priya Natarajan, Seth Shostak, Don Gurnett, Neil deGrasse Tyson

Further Reading:

NASA: 2024 Eclipse Explorer

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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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It’s easy to get caught up in the hype about how psychedelics might revolutionize the treatment of mental illness. But there are also lots of ethical concerns. And probably none are so troubling as the charges of exploitation and cultural appropriation. The fact is, the knowledge about many psychedelics — like magic mushrooms and ayahuasca — comes from the sacred ceremonies of Indigenous cultures. But over the past century, Western scientists and pharmaceutical companies have been going into these cultures, collecting plants and synthesizing their chemical compounds.

Even if science is all about building on the knowledge of earlier discoveries, what is the psychedelic industry's ethical responsibility? Can psychedelics be decolonized?

Original Air Date: October 21, 2023

Interviews In This Hour:
The Tragic Story of Maria Sabina's Sacred Mushrooms — Empowering Indigenous voices in the psychedelic industry — The long history of psychedelic theft — Spirit Medicine: Yuria Celidwen's vision for an ethical psychedelics

Guests:
Michael Pollan, Dennis McKenna, Erika Dyck, Katherine MacLean, Sutton King, Rachel Fernandez, Lucas Richert, Yuria Celidwen

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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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Categories: whales, language, marine life, oceans

AI can do amazing things – write your term papers, sequence your genes, maybe replace your therapist. But even super-intelligence has limits. So, does AI really have a mind — or a soul? We'll explore the frontiers of artificial intelligence — from robots painting masterpieces to software engineers trying to create god-like machines.

Original Air Date: March 30, 2024

Interviews In This Hour:

Stop worrying about deepfakes — Does AI have a soul? — Can robots paint a masterpiece?

Guests:

Walter Scheirer, Meghan O’Gieblyn, Sougwen 愫君 Chung

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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

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

Guests:
Honey Rose, Rivka Galchen, Chris Gosden, Quan Barry

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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

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

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Categories: tribal sovereignty, sovereignty, native american, land, land back

We get the message before we’re out of training pants – when the going gets tough, look on the bright side, make lemonade out of lemons and just do it. We’re gonna consider the exact opposite – the wisdom of giving up and letting go. Because sometimes, the strongest and most courageous thing you can do is walk away.

Original Air Date: April 27, 2024

Interviews In This Hour:

The power and boundary-breaking of fasting — How do we know when to call it quits? — Escaping the tyranny of certainty

Guests:

John Oakes, Adam Phillips, Maggie Jackson

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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

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

Guests:

Blair Braverman, Quince Mountain, Donna Haraway, Sarah Miller

Further Reading:

Pet Loss Resource Center: Resources for animal loss and grief

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For all the talk about how psychedelics might transform psychiatric care, there's still a fascinating question at the heart of psychedelic science. Is it the mind-blowing experience that fundamentally changes a person’s outlook on life? Or is it the powerful molecules that rewire the brain?

Original Air Date: December 16, 2023

Interviews in this hour:
Does psychedelic therapy need the trip? - Will psychedelics replace antidepressants? - Spiritual warriors in the psychedelic underground

Guests:
David Olson, Charles Raison, Rachel Harris

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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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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

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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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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

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Sometime in the last couple of years, America’s collective morning routine shifted. We used to start the day with coffee. Now it’s coffee and Wordle. Or Spelling Bee. Or both, plus the crossword. We’re living in a golden age of word games – which is fun, and one way to get just a tiny bit of relief when the world feels out of control. 

Original Air Date: November 09, 2024

Interviews In This Hour:
Getting into the puzzle mindset — Welcome to my crossworld

Guests:
A. J. Jacobs, Anna Schectman

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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

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We all feel better after a good cry. In fact, humans are the only animals who cry emotional tears. But what about people who don't cry? And have you ever wondered why a sad song or movie makes you cry?

Original Air Date: August 05, 2023

Interviews In This Hour:
Hip-hop artist Dxtr Spits on teaching men to cry — The evolution and neuroscience of tears — What happens when an actor cries

Guests:
Dxtr Spits, Michael Trimble, Jen Plants

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You're not even out of bed and you're already worrying. So let's talk about it: How anxious we are, how we got that way, and what to do about it.

Original Air Date: March 25, 2023

Interviews In This Hour:

Patricia Pearson on A History of Anxiety — To Waste Time Is To Deepen Life — Treating Anxiety With Horror Films — Natalie Merchant on 'Leave Your Sleep' — Robert Rand on Healing Through Zydeco

Guests:

Patricia Pearson, Richard Polt, Eliza Smith, Natalie Merchant, Robert Rand

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Are you ready to think in centuries instead of seconds? Eons instead of hours? It’s time to make thousand-year plans and appreciate how Earth keeps time. 

Original Air Date: August 19, 2023

Interviews In This Hour:

Shifting your mind to 'geologic' time — Discovering the wonders of ancient cave art — Making art inspired by the ancestors

Guests:

Marcia Bjornerud, Stephen Alvarez, Dustin Illetewahke Mater

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Radical politics and radical movements are on the rise everywhere. Against racial violence, and climate change; against gender inequality, corporate greed, low wages, oil pipelines, opioids.  Maybe at heart they all have a common cause.  Maybe they're all — in one way or another — a rebellion against capitalism.

Original Air Date: February 11, 2023

Interviews In This Hour:
The Communist Manifesto still inspires — The radical philosopher mapping the crises of capitalism — Are we living through a 'hinge point' moment?

Guests:
China Miéville, Nancy Fraser

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How we live is indelibly intertwined with the care and empathy we give to each other. What if we put care into helping Americans find homes and build dwellings, into keeping their bodies and minds sound, and finding meaningful and well-paid work? In this three part series, "To The Best Of Our Knowledge" and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project bring you real life stories about economic struggle in our time, as well as ideas for solutions.

Original Air Date: November 19, 2022

Interviews In This Hour:
Do they need to know that I'm blind? — The work of care is vital. Why don't we pay like it is? — A sonnet for a lineworker — Barbara Ehrenreich on writing the American labor story

Guests:
Andrea Dobynes Wagner, Angela Garbes, Rodrigo Toscano, Barbara Ehrenreich

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How we live is indelibly intertwined with the care and empathy we give to each other. What if we put care into helping Americans find homes and build dwellings, into keeping their bodies and minds sound, and finding meaningful and well-paid work? In this three part series, "To The Best Of Our Knowledge" and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project bring you real life stories about economic struggle in our time, as well as ideas for solutions. 

In the first of three episodes of "Going For Broke" all about the care economy, we're thinking about housing. Many of us would consider it a basic human right. But in America, it can be hard to come by.

Original Air Date: November 05, 2022

Interviews In This Hour:
When the walk home from school keeps changing — Creating a compassionate geography — More supportive housing can start with sharing space. And upending assumptions. — The infrastructure of care

Guests:
Bobbi Dempsey, David Harvey, Annabelle Gurwitch, Justin Garrett Moore

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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

How we live is indelibly intertwined with the care and empathy we give to each other. What if we put care into helping Americans find homes and build dwellings, into keeping their bodies and minds sound, and finding meaningful and well-paid work? In this three part series, "To The Best Of Our Knowledge" and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project bring you real life stories about economic struggle in our time, as well as ideas for solutions. 

Post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health challenges can push people into poverty. Meanwhile, the experience of financial desperation can also create even more trauma, even more suffering. How do you break the cycle? How do we truly care for people mentally and financially?

If you or someone you know are having mental health struggles, we wanted to make sure you are aware of some resources. The National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24 hours a day by calling 9-8-8. The National Alliance on Mental Illness reminds us that one in five people in the US has a mental health concern every year. You can find support and education at their web site, nami.org.

Original Air Date: November 12, 2022

Interviews In This Hour:
Trauma and poverty: The perfect storm experienced by U.S. veterans — Learning to cope when mental health care feels out of reach — More than one way to treat a mind — How harm reduction disrupts painful cycles of addiction

Guests:
Alex Miller, Katie Prout, Daniel Bergner, Maia Szalavitz

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Do you ever feel like there’s something missing in your life? You don’t know exactly what it is. And there’s never enough time to really think about it. You might get a glimpse of it if you slow down, or look deeply at something (or someone), or remember some childhood joy. What if that thing you’re missing is a sense of wonder?

Original Air Date: March 18, 2023

Interviews In This Hour:

A sense of wonder through the eyes — and ears — of a child — What goosebumps, tears and grief can teach us about being awestruck — Finding sacred meaning through poetry

Guests:

Lulu Miller, Dacher Keltner, Jennifer Michael Hecht

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We all feel better after a good cry. In fact, humans are the only animals who cry emotional tears. But what about people who don't cry? And have you ever wondered why a sad song or movie makes you cry?

Original Air Date: August 05, 2023

Interviews In This Hour:

Hip-hop artist Dxtr Spits on teaching men to cry — The evolution and neuroscience of tears — What happens when an actor cries

Guests:

Dxtr Spits, Michael Trimble, Jen Plants

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Pop music is a gazillion-dollar industry that churns out hits and creates celebrities. It seems like the definition of ephemeral – today’s chart topper is gone tomorrow. But pop music is a powerful vehicle for bringing people together, and fans - from K-pop to the #FreeBritney movement — have something to teach us about community and hope.

Original Air Date: March 26, 2022

Interviews In This Hour:

When we're disconnected, can we reconnect through K-pop? — From pop to punk: Shaping our musical identities — How a fan movement freed a pop star from her gilded cage

Guests:

Regina Kim, Kyla Nicole, Kelefa Sanneh, Samantha Stark

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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

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When you’re on the clock, you’re always running out of time – because in our culture, time is money. The relentless countdown is making us and the planet sick. But clock time isn’t the only kind. There are older, deeper rhythms of time that sustain life. What would it be like to live more in tune with nature’s clocks?

**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 03, 2023

Interviews In This Hour:

How time came to rule our lives — and how we might free ourselves — The past and future of keeping time

Guests:

Jenny Odell, David Rooney

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Today we're bringing you a conversation from "Kelly Corrigan Wonders." As a podcaster, Kelly is a kindred spirit – curious, genuine, caring — and this conversation is from a series about one of TTBOOK’s own core values – intellectual humility.  It’s about the magic that happens when we stop trying to be right all the time.

In this episode, Kelly talks with researcher and academic Daryl Van Tongeren about how we come to conclusions and what, if anything, can interrupt the creation of overconfident, under-researched, ironclad, and divisive by nature convictions.

Daryl teaches at Hope College in Michigan and researches the social motivation for meaning and its relation to virtues and morals.

What would it be like to live in a world where magic is still alive? Not weird, not woo-woo, just ordinary. 400 years ago, consulting a magician in downtown London was as unremarkable as calling a plumber today. Even now, there are places where magic never died – like Iceland, where 54 percent of the population believes in elves, or thinks they might exist. 

Original Air Date: October 12, 2024

Interviews In This Hour:
Why do Icelanders believe in elves? — Deborah Harkness uncovers the real history of witches — Practical magic and the “cunning folk” of Tudor England

Guests:
Nancy Marie Brown, Deborah Harkness, Tabitha Stanmore

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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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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:

Why dream life matters — 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

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