To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Ever want to quit your job, leave the rat race behind, and head back to the land? Buy an old farmhouse or build a solar-powered home and live self-sufficiently on a few acres of your very own? Generations before you have shared that dream. The reality is more complicated. Even owning your own land is an ethical minefield.  Original Air Date: December 18, 2021 Guests: Makenna Goodman — Simon Winchester — Hayden King Interviews In This Hour: Can you live off the land and still live ethically? — What does 'owning' land actually mean? — How the Land Back movement is reclaiming land stolen from Indigenous people Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

Remember when reading still felt magical? When a book could sweep you off your feet into another world? It might be that the best way to find your way back the magic is through a kid’s book. We talk to authors about Wonderland, magic wands, unicorns and other children's stories that inspire. Original Air Date: May 01, 2021 Guests:  Katherine Rundell — Quan Barry — Enrique Salmon — Ebony Thomas — LL McKinney — Lulu Miller Interviews In This Hour:  Why A Pandemic Is The Perfect Time To Read Children's Literature — Quan Barry on 'White Fang' — Enrique Salmon on 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' — Is Hermione Black? The Answer Depends On How Old You Are — Alice The Doomslayer Rises In L.L. McKinney's Reimagining of 'Alice In Wonderland' — Lulu Miller on 'The Search for Delicious' Further Reading: Bookmarks Hub  Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

Whether you know it or not, your closets are filled with personal information. About your identity, your values, your personality. And every day, you wear it all right out the door for the whole world to see. Do you think about what are you saying with your clothes? Original Air Date: March 16, 2019 Guests:  Angelo Bautista — Avery Trufelman — Carolyn Smith — agnès b. — Jo Paoletti Interviews In This Hour:  Finding Yourself By Finding Your Style — From High Fashion to Heather Gray T-Shirts, Choosing Your Style Is A Privilege — A Year Of Wearing Clothing Only Made By Hand — How Blue Became 'Boy' And Pink Became 'Girl' — The Fashion Icon Who Despises Fashion Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

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 Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

There are old folktales and legends of people who can become animals. Animals who can become people. And there’s a lesson for our own time in those shapeshifting stories — a recognition that the membrane between what's human and more-than-human is razor thin. Original Air Date: November 20, 2021 Guests:  Sharon Blackie — David Abram — Chris Gosden — Stephen Graham Jones Interviews In This Hour:  Reclaiming the fierce women who are shapeshifters — How a man turned into a raven — Shapeshifters, shamans and the 'New Animism' — Horror author Stephen Graham Jones on what our monsters say about us Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

After a pandemic year of social isolation, we knew loneliness would be a problem. But public health officials have been warning for years that in countries all over the world, rates of loneliness are skyrocketing. How did loneliness become a condition of modern life? Original Air Date: April 10, 2021 Guests:  Jason Rohrer — Samantha Rose Hill — Claudia Rankine Interviews In This Hour:  My Friend Samantha (The A.I.) — How Loneliness Can Lead to Totalitarianism — Being Black and Alone in America ➡ Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. 🎧  ➡ Want to read more from us, including photo galleries, extended Q&As and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter. 📬

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 Guests:  Adom Getachew — Simon Gikandi — Ngugi wa Thiong’o 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 Never want to miss an episode? Subscribe to the podcast. Want to hear more from us, including extended interviews and favorites from the archive? Subscribe to our newsletter.

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

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

If you had to travel 500 miles across country, on foot, with no map, no GPS, without talking to anyone — to a destination you've never seen, could you do it? It sounds impossible, but millions of creatures spend their lives on the move, migrating from one part of the Earth to another with navigation skills we can only dream of. How do they do it — and what can we learn from them? Original Air Date: July 25, 2020 Guests:  Moses Augustino Kumburu — David Wilcove — Stan Temple — David Barrie — Sonia Shah Interviews In This Hour:  The Serengeti's Great Migration, Up Close — Why Do Animals Migrate? — Sandhill Cranes Make The Long Journey South — The Greatest Navigators on the Planet — The High Costs — And Potential Gains — Of Migration, Both Animal And Human