To The Best Of Our Knowledge

We all miss touching things — groceries, door knobs, hands, faces. And most of all, skin. The living tissue that simultaneously protects us from the world, and lets us feel it. In this episode, the politics, biology, and inner life of your skin. Original Air Date: April 18, 2020 Guests: Angelo Bautista — Tiffany Field — Alissa Waters — Nina Jablonski Interviews In This Hour: My Problem With Skincare — Even During Quarantine, You Need A 'Daily Dose Of Touch' — Reclaiming Scars As Works Of Art — The Science Of Skin Color

Before the time of commercial flights and road trips, we traveled to far off places without taking a single step. All you had to do was open a book. From Africa to England, to a kamikaze cockpit, and to realms of fantasy. Books aren’t just books. They’re passports to anywhere. Original Air Date: March 14, 2020 Guests: Philip Pullman — Ruth Ozeki — Robert Macfarlane — Petina Gappah Interviews In This Hour: Philip Pullman on 'The Pocket Atlas of the World' — 'His Dark Materials' Author Philip Pullman On The Consciousness Of All Things — A Diary Becomes A Time Capsule — Ruth Ozeki on 'Kamikaze Diaries' — Petina Gappah on 'Persuasion' — The Empire Writes Back: Author Discusses Explorer David Livingstone's Complicated Legacy — Robert Macfarlane on 'The Living Mountain'

We’re in the holiday season of the worst pandemic of our lives. Canceling our gatherings is the safe thing to do. But, how can we still — creatively and safely — connect with the people we love? Maybe there are some opportunities for us this year, too. Original Air Date: November 28, 2020 Guests: Priya Parker — Stanley Weintraub — Peter Reinhart — Helen Macdonald — Gregg Krech Interviews In This Hour: A Pandemic Holiday Season Offers Opportunities For Community, Too — Stanley Weintraub on the World War I Christmas Truce — Peter Reinhart on the Spiritual Importance of Bread — Helen Macdonald On 'The Dark Is Rising' — How to Cultivate Gratitude

Why do people turn to poetry during troubled times? We saw it after 9/11 and we're seeing it now as the coronavirus travels around the world. When the world seems broken, poetry is often the one kind of language that helps. Original Air Date: April 04, 2020 Guests: Kitty O'Meara — Jericho Brown — Edward Hirsch — Alice Walker — Ken Nordine — Li-Young Lee — Jimmy Santiago Baca Interviews In This Hour: A Viral Poem For A Virus Time — Can A Poem Be A Prayer? — Poetry In A Time Of Grief And Loss — Hope Rises. It Always Does. — Li-Young Lee's Love Poetry — Ken Nordine's 'Yellow' — Words Can Change Your Life

Rustling of leaves, sploshing of water, birds calling, bees buzzing. Wherever you live — city or country, East coast, West coast, or in between — we share common, contemplative experiences on our walks outside. In this hour, we assemble a sonic guide to finding solace in nature. Original Air Date: May 09, 2020 Guests: William Helmreich — David Rothenberg — Laura Dassow Walls — Robert Moor — Nate Staniforth — Andreas Weber Interviews In This Hour: The Great Urban Nature Explorer — Why The Walden Pond Experiment In Self-Reliance Is More Relevant Than Ever — The Wisdom of Trails — Lose Yourself In The Sky — Finding Love In The Ecosystem

What do you do when the headlines are freaking you out and the news is making you tense? A lot of people find sports takes their mind off things. It’s like this one worry-free, politics-free zone. Until it isn’t. Original Air Date: November 07, 2020 Guests: Kurt Streeter — David Shields — Melissa Joulwan — Michael Powell Interviews In This Hour: A Year Of Reckoning And Loss In The World Of Sports — The Power of Silence: How Marshawn Lynch Subverted the NFL's Rules — How One Woman Found Her Groove in Roller Derby — The Magic of 'Rez Ball'

Be still. Prepare the altar. Gather around in a circle. Light the fire. And join us for rituals that will put fear in your heart. Because what if experiencing your fears — the dread, the horror of it all — is good for you? Original Air Date: October 26, 2019 Guests: Amy Stewart — Kathryn Harkup — Gemma Files — Dan Chaon — Blanche Barton Interviews In This Hour: A Garden of Deadly Delights — How To Get Away With Murder According to Agatha Christie — Listener Ghost Story: 'Reset' — The Case for Embracing Horror — Haunting Your Own Life — Listener Ghost Story: 'You Are What You Eat' — The Not-So-Subtle Subversiveness Of Satan Worship — Listener Ghost Story: 'The Lake' — Listener Ghost Story: 'Presidential Phantasm'

Why don’t we all just take moment to acknowledge that we are collectively exhausted? The pandemic, the protests, the President’s Twitter feed — everything is exhausting. But maybe it doesn’t have to be? Original Air Date: October 24, 2020 Guests: Katrina Onstad — Emma Seppala — Richard Polt — Filip Bromberg — Lars Svendsen — Anne Helen Petersen Interviews In This Hour: Can We Not? How The Pandemic Has Made Burnout Worse Than Ever — Sunday Night Blues, Monday Morning (Short) Fuse — Setting Too High A Bar For Success Is Running Us Ragged — To Waste Time Is To Deepen Life — Why Swedes Are Trading Jobs For Meaning — Have You Considered Doing Nothing?

Americans are getting ready to vote. But this election is different from other years. What's really on the ballot? Original Air Date: October 17, 2020 Guests: Kim Wehle — Carol Anderson — Jeremi Suri — Eric Liu Interviews In This Hour: A Choice Between 'We The People' And 'Something Darker' — Just 48 Years Of Free and Fair Elections — Where Are We On The Roller Coaster Of History? — How To Make Elections Fun Again

New experiences actually rewire the brain. So after all we’ve been through this year, you have to wonder — are we different? We consider the "COVID brain" from the perspective of both neuroscience and the arts. Also, we go to Cavendish, Vermont to hear the remarkable story of Phineas Gage, the railroad worker whose traumatic brain injury changed the history of neuroscience. Original Air Date: October 10, 2020 Guests: Margo Caulfield — David Eagleman — llan Stavans Interviews In This Hour: How Phineas Gage's Freak Accident Changed Brain Science — 'COVID Brain' and the New Frontiers of Neuroplasticity — The Pandemic and the Poets

There's a certain a kind of visual encounter that can be life changing: A cross-species gaze. The experience of looking directly into the eyes of an animal in the wild, and seeing it look back. It happens more often than you’d think and it can be so profound, there’s a name for it: eye-to-eye epiphany. So what happens when someone with feathers or fur and claws looks back? How does it change people, and what can it teach us? Our friends at the Center for Humans and Nature have some suggested follow-up reading, if you enjoy this episode: "The Disruptive Eye" by Gavin Van Horn "6 a.m. on LaSalle Street" by Katherine Cummings "Salmon Speak ~ Why Not Earth?" by Bron Taylor "The Eyes of an Owl" by Greg Ripley "From Bestiary" by Elise Paschen Original Air Date: February 08, 2020 Guests: Gavin Van Horn — Jenny Kendler — Ivan Schwab — Jane Goodall — Alan Lightman Interviews In This Hour: In The Eye Of The Osprey: A Physicist's Wild Epiphany — 100 Bird Eyes Are Watching You — The Look That Changed Primatology — Watching the Fierce Green Fire Die: Animal Gazes That Shaped Conservation Movements — The 600 Million Year History Of The Eye — 'We Are The Feast' — A Feminist Philosopher's Life-Changing Encounter With A Crocodile — How Do You Practice Kinship? A Brief Meditation Further Reading: "The Disruptive Eye" by Gavin Van Horn—"6 a.m. on LaSalle Street" by Katherine Cummings—"Salmon Speak ~ Why Not Earth?" by Bron Taylor—"The Eyes of an Owl" by Greg Ripley—"From Bestiary" by Elise Paschen

Africans are moving into cities in unprecedented numbers. Lagos, Nigeria, is growing by 77 people an hour — it's on track to become a city of 100 million. In 30 years, the continent is projected to have 14 mega-cities of more than 10 million people. It's perhaps the largest urban migration in history. These cities are not like Dubai, or Singapore, or Los Angeles. They’re uniquely African cities, and they’re forcing all of us to reconsider what makes a city modern. And how and why cities thrive. To find out what's going on, we go to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to talk with entrepreneurs, writers, scholars and artists. In this hour, produced in partnership with the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) — a global consortium of 270 humanities centers and institutes — we learn how the continent where the human species was born is building the cities of the future. Original Air Date: December 14, 2019 Guests: Dagmawi Woubshet — Julie Mehretu — Emily Callaci — James Ogude — Ato Qyayson — Teju Cole — Meskerem Assegued Interviews In This Hour: Rediscovering the Indigenous City of Addis Ababa — 'People As Infrastructure' — A Tour Of The Networked City — 'I Am Because We Are': The African Philosophy of Ubuntu — How Pan-African Dreams Turned Dystopic — Decoding Global Capitalism on One African Street — Life in the Diaspora: How Teju Cole Pivots Between Cultures — Can Artists Create the City of the Future? Further Reading: CHCI

Once upon a time, science and magic were two sides of the same coin. Today, we learn science in school and save magic for children’s books. What if it were different? What would it be like to see the world as an alchemist? Original Air Date: September 19, 2020 Guests: Sarah Durn — Pamela Smith — William Newman — Charles Monroe-Kane — Jason Pine Interviews In This Hour: Transmutation Of The Spirit — The Historical Lessons Embedded in Alchemical Recipes — Was Sir Isaac Newton 'The Last of the Magicians'? — The Buried Secrets of Czech Alchemy — Drug Store Alchemy in the Ozarks

Is there a book you can’t forget? A book that left a mark on you? On Bookmarks, our micropodcast, we share tiny stories from writers, about the books they love most. This week, we’ll preview Season One and celebrate books and reading with an eclectic cast of writers from around the country. Original Air Date: November 16, 2019 Guests: Chloe Benjamin — Anne Lamott — Rebecca Traister — Natalia Sylvester — Tommy Orange — Pamela Paul — Shannon Henry Kleiber — Jericho Brown — Susan Orlean Interviews In This Hour: Anne Lamott on 'Pippi Longstocking' — Powerful Book Encounters — Tommy Orange on 'A Confederacy Of Dunces' — Reading As Our First Window To The World — A Book Club On The Day Of The Book Choosing — Jericho Brown on 'The Witches Of Eastwick' — The Book Burning That Brought All Of Los Angeles Together Further Reading: "Bookmarks" Podcast from TTBOOK

If you wrote a list of all the things you own in your house, how long would it be? We surround ourselves with possessions, but at what point do they start to possess us? Original Air Date: September 05, 2020 Guests: Angelo Bautista — Eula Biss — Adam Minter — Giles Slade — Clare Dolan Interviews In This Hour: The Magnum Opus Of Pointless Stuff — 'A $400K Container For A Washing Machine': An Author Grapples With The Inherent Ickiness Of Homeownership — The Global Garage Sale — Why Stuff Doesn't Last Anymore — A Museum Of The Mundane