To The Best Of Our Knowledge
”To the Best of Our Knowledge” is a Peabody award-winning national public radio show that explores big ideas and beautiful questions. Deep interviews with philosophers, writers, artists, scientists, historians, and others help listeners find new sources of meaning, purpose, and wonder in daily life. Whether it’s about bees, poetry, skin, or psychedelics, every episode is an intimate, sound-rich journey into open-minded, open-hearted conversations. Warm and engaging, TTBOOK helps listeners feel less alone and more connected – to our common humanity and to the world we share. For more from the TTBOOK team, visit us at ttbook.org.
Giving Up
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 going to 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 boundary-breaking power of fasting — How do we know when to call it quits? — Escaping the tyranny of certainty
Guests:
John Oakes, Adam Phillips, Mag...
Deep Time: Reclaim the Night
The longest nights of the year are here, but how many of us will see them? The global spread of light pollution is making it harder to experience dark skies and natural darkness. Learning how to reconnect with the planet’s ancient nocturnal rhythms can be profoundly restorative. Nature writers and darkness activists tell us what we’re missing.
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...
Island of Knowledge: Human Flourishing
Can we scale up human flourishing? We know meditation can reduce stress and ease symptoms of depression, but the benefits don’t have to stop there. Some scientists believe just a few minutes of mindfulness practice every day could make entire cities healthier and happier.
Original Air Date: August 30, 2025
Interviews In This Hour:
Can we boost happiness on a city-wide scale? — How music becomes our collective medicine — Healing trauma takes time. Can we speed up psychotherapy?
Guests:
Richard Davidson, Dalal Abu Amneh, Diana Fosha
Never want to miss an epis...
The Sum of Our Data
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...
To All The Dogs We've Loved
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 an...
In Search of 'Real' Food
What makes food "authentic"? Do we need to feel close to where it's made? Know the complete history of where it comes from? Be able to diagram the chemistry of how it dances along our taste buds? How can we quantify the romance between eaters and the food they love?
In this hour, we talk about what it means to truly love what you eat and drink — and we ask why it matters.
Original Air Date: June 30, 2018
Interviews In This Hour:
The Frightening Sameness Beneath Hundreds of Flavors — A Little Grammy, A Litt...
Playing with Words
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 Shechtman
Never wa...
Writing the Climate Change Story
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
Interviews In This Hour:
The Climate Change Stories We Need To Hear — The Climate Crisis Gets Biblical — Lidia Yuknavitch’s Dream World: How Dreams Shape...
Deep Time: The Tyranny of Time
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 "timefulnes...
Island of Knowledge: What is Life?
Life is the sum total of the time between birth and death. But have you ever really wondered, what is life? It’s mysterious - and even science doesn’t quite have an answer. But there’s a new biology of life that’s overturning decades of assumptions. We report from a gathering of biologists, geologists and artists at the Island of Knowledge in Tuscany.
Original Air Date: July 12, 2025
Interviews In This Hour:
Why we need a new theory of life — Beyond the genome: A new science of life — How humans can learn to be animal
Everyday Magic
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...
Cultivating Wonder
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 aw...
How Should We Tell Our History?
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 ...
Cult of the Self
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 nobo...
Deep Time: Infinity is Forever
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: Ju...
Avian Obsessions
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...
In Your Dreams
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
Beyond Death
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...
For The Love Of Moms
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 podcas...
Love in the Time of Extinction
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:
Hea...
Docupoetry
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 dr...
On Pilgrimage with Dorothy Day
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 Sp...
Off The Map
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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Welcome to the Island of Knowledge
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
Inter...
Listening to Whales
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...
Deep Time: The Cosmos and Us
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.
...
Jazz Migrations
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...
We Need to Talk About COVID
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 te...
What is tribal sovereignty?
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 po...
Being Body Conscious
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...
Deep Time: The Art of Time
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...
The Spirit of Jim Thorpe
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...Surviving in the Age of Disaster
Floods and fires have always been with us, but now we may have crossed over into a new stage of permacrisis. So what does resilience look like when you know this fire or flood won’t be the last one? What survival strategies do we need for this age of climate disaster?
Original Air Date: February 01, 2025
Interviews In This Hour:
Resilience or recklessness? The risks of rebuilding where disaster strikes — Can we still talk about 'natural disasters' in the age of climate change? — Why we need better stories to persevere in uncertain times
Guest...
In Journalism We Trust
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
Neve...
Retreat from the Day-to-Day Life
Sometimes the world is just too much. Too much awful news, too many things to worry about, too much to do. When you can’t take another headline, can’t handle another email, when you know inside you need something deeper than a vacation—maybe it’s time for a retreat.
Original Air Date: January 18, 2025
Interviews In This Hour:
Pico Iyer’s second home — A plant scientist explores her interior wilderness
Guests:
Pico Iyer, Monica Gagliano
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Want to hear more...
Luminous: What Can Psychedelics Teach Us About Dying?
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
Never want to miss an epis...
Tasting the Past
Maybe it’s your grandmother’s molasses 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 particular 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:
Reframing the Portrait
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
Interviews In This Hour:
Re-envisioning history: A journey through Black portraiture — The painting tells a story: 'The Marriage Portrait' author on love, l...
Deep Time: Reclaim the Night
The longest nights of the year are here, but how many of us will see them? The global spread of light pollution is making it harder to experience dark skies and natural darkness. Learning how to reconnect with the planet’s ancient nocturnal rhythms can be profoundly restorative. Nature writers and darkness activists tell us what we’re missing.
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...
Giving Up
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 going to 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 boundary-breaking power of fasting — How do we know when to call it quits? — Escaping the tyranny of certainty
Guests:
John Oakes, Adam Phillips, Mag...
