To The Best Of Our Knowledge

28/09/2025

“I beat myself up constantly, but only I can see the bruises.” Angelo Bautista looks back on their essay on feeling shame and why the seemingly trivial business of skincare touches on profound questions about personal identity and love.

28/09/2025

Shannon delights in the nuanced intonations of the human voice, and she has a special appreciation for poetry. We hear her interview with Alice Walker, who talks about responding to anger and Buddhist teachings on “taking the arrow out of the heart.”

28/09/2025

"To the Best of Our Knowledge launched on Labor Day, 1990 – an appropriate date for what would turn out to be a 35-year labor of love. We were young and ambitious and in love with public radio." Anne and Steve share a bit of news in our final newsletter.

To the Best of Our Knowledge launched on Labor Day, 1990 – an appropriate date for what would turn out to be a 35-year labor of love. We were young and ambitious and in love with public radio. Steve ran WPR’s Talk Department and Anne was the News Director, but we dreamed of making something new:...

27/09/2025

Charles reflects on one of TTBOOK’s core values — what we call “intelligent optimism.” It’s a complicated kind of hope, even brave in a time of despair and cynicism. And he plays snippets from some of his favorite interviews.

27/09/2025

Anne reflects on saying goodbye to TTBOOK after 35 years. And Steve talks about his interview with Jane Goodall, and why the minds of chimpanzees have always fascinated her. She’s the rare scientist who talks openly about her own spiritual experiences.

27/09/2025

You listened on car trips and overnight flights, in tents and canoes, kitchens and living rooms. You shared our love of ideas, our search for wonder, our curiosity and our belief in the future. Now, after 35 years, it’s time for us to say goodbye. In this hour, Anne talks with TTBOOK’s producers about some of their favorite interviews and why public radio is such a powerful medium.

You listened on car trips and overnight flights, kitchens and living rooms. You shared our love of ideas, our search for wonder, our curiosity and our belief in the future. Now, after 35 years, it’s time for TTBOOK to say goodbye.

20/09/2025

Plant scientist Monica Gagliano did a series of groundbreaking experiments that suggest plants have intelligence. But she hasn’t talked—until now—about the leap of faith she took when a plant told her to go on a darkness retreat—for 39 days.

20/09/2025

After losing his California home to a wildfire, writer Pico Iyer went on retreat to a hermitage in Big Sur. He’s since made more than 100 retreats to the monastery. He tells us how retreats brought him out of his mind and ‘into his senses.’

20/09/2025

Sometimes the world is just too much. Too much awful news, too many things to worry about, too much to do. When you know inside you need something deeper than a vacation — maybe it’s time for a retreat.

13/09/2025

Turns out there is an emerging science of uncertainty — a new frontier in psychology, artificial intelligence, and surgery — where things can go very wrong when people are missing a crucial skill set: being unsure. Maggie Jackson explains.

13/09/2025

There are two sides to giving up. The virtue of sacrifice – and the sin of despair. So how do we decide which is which? That’s the question psychoanalyst Adam Phillips asks in his newest book “On Giving Up.”

13/09/2025

Fasting is an ancient practice that’s experiencing something of a revival right now in health and fitness circles. But when John Oakes set out to explore the concept, he took it a lot deeper.