To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Bees are endangered, but all over the world, people are stepping up to save them — in backyards, science labs, and the abandoned lots of urban …

Cities can be cacophonous and loud, a chaos of sonic discord. If, that is, you don't really focus your listening. People who’ve trained their ears to hear urban soundscapes in new ways hear something different.

That’s …

Hope means believing there’s a future. But can hope co-exist with cataclysmic realities like climate change, or disruptive technological advances …

We’ve all been there, that place where we feel hope slipping away. Maybe we’ve even lost hope. This hour we talk with people who’ve turned that …

Is hope something we’re innately born with, or something we can choose to have? We talk with people who tell us where they think hope lives in ourselves and our communities. The first of a three-part series on hope.

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We’re living in a time of despair and desperation. It would be easy to give up. But what if, instead, we looked for hope?  We’re not talking about …

Milwaukee is a city on water, right on the shore of Lake Michigan, split by the historic Milwaukee River. How did all that water shape the city's …

Look around the political landscape and you see something we haven’t seen for decades — politicians proudly identifying as socialists.

In New York, …

Shuttered businesses line the familiar streets of producer Charles Monroe-Kane’s hometown in the Rust Belt in northeastern Ohio. The steel mill where his father worked is shut down, locked behind chains. Opioid abuse is …

They say "don't feed the trolls" — but why do they get to own the web? Was it built for them, or for all of us? We look at who built the internet, …

Whether you know it or not, your closets are filled with personal information. About your identity, your values, your personality. And every day, you …

Why is the world so damn cynical? Rather than surrendering to corrosive, hopeless snark, we look to some unexpected sources — video games, the lives lead by those who leave hate groups, and the optimism of the …

Debates over immigration are raging all over the world, but sometimes it’s hard to sort out the political posturing from the actual problems. Should …

Sometimes, we take our body for granted. But even the everyday things it can do – keep our heart beating, fight off illness – are pretty extraordinary. Do you know what your body can do?

We explore a kidney transplant, …

It creeps into everything from exercise to pore size, from diet to personal finance, from relationships to parenting style: guilt that we're not good enough, fit enough, smart enough. And as we peruse Instagram, all we …

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 …

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 …

Remember virtual reality? Back in the 1990’s, it was going to be the technology of the future.  Today, it’s here. But we're still figuring out what …

Every so often, a new literary movement coalesces. A new generation of writers finds a voice. This time they’re young, gifted, and Native American.

Guests:

Jennifer Foerster, Tommy Orange, Terese Marie Mailhot, David …

Where do you go to find models of powerful women? Hatshepsut, Circe, Antigone — the ancient world was full of them, real and mythic. For thousands of …

All over the country, a chorus of hope is coming from an unexpected group — teenagers. They are marching, protesting and demanding a better future as …

If life is a play, what happens during the last act? What’s it like to live knowing you have a limited amount of time left? This week, we’re talking about how to face, and in some cases, embrace your third act, whenever …

New Years celebrations are all parties and hats, songs and champagne. No one ever seems to talk about the fact that something big just ended. An …

Your finger’s hovering over the "delete" button on your Facebook app. Your friends are abandoning Twitter. Every day brings fresh revelations of data …

Using a complex network of chemical signals, trees talk to each other and form alliances with fellow trees, even other species. In fact, whole …

Even the most welcome gift can spark guilt, resentment, obligation or vulnerability. We can be inspired by the generosity of others, or unsettled by …

We’ve been taught to ignore, stifle, or just get over anger for many years — but what if we embraced it? It seems like most of us are feeling angry these days. But what if we took that emotion and instead of letting it …

What's the essence of religion? God? Scripture? Moral codes? Or is it really about something more mysterious and unexplainable?

In this hour, we explore the roots of religion — religion before it's even called …

Modern anti-depressants have saved a lot of minds. And lives. But our 30-year experiment with modern anti-depressants is taking a toll. What have …

We all tell stories about our lives: funny stories, happy stories, sad stories. But are they true stories? In an age of “alternative facts” and “fake news,” we’re all thinking harder about why truth matters – not just …