To The Best Of Our Knowledge

This week, To the Best of Our Knowledge comes to you from our kitchens and homes. We’re safe, but we’ve all been thinking about the people on the front lines of the pandemic — doctors, nurses and hospital staffs. We’ve been seeing them on social media — the nurses in NYC wearing garbage bags because there aren’t enough sterile gowns.  Doctors figuring out those weird new face masks. Those incredibly brave doctors and nurses in Italy, Spain, France, the U.S. This hour we tell some remarkable stories of doctors and scientists who are saving lives. *Original Air Date: * March 28, 2020 **Guests: ** Larry Brilliant — Josh Mezrich — Missy Makinia — Manu Prakash **Interviews In This Hour: ** The Hippie Doctor Who Helped Eradicate Smallpox — Would You Give Your Kidney to a Stranger? — Could a 50 Cent Microscope Change the World?

Even with all the music available today, most of us still listen primarily to just a few comfy genres. But there’s so much more out there — and so much of it defies neat, algorithm-friendly categorization. Original Air Date: * *June 01, 2019 *Guests: * Kevin Gift — Wendel Patrick — Philip Glass — Robert Glasper — Toni Blackman — Clarice Jensen — Evelyn Glennie — Nikka Costa *Interviews In This Hour: * How One Man Became Two Musicians — Philip Glass Asks 'Where Does Music Come From?' — Jazz That Smells Like Teen Spirit — Hip Hop as Diplomacy — A Former Child Pop Star Performs America’s Songbook — An Acclaimed Cellist Goes Rogue — Touching The Sound Of Everyday Objects

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. This hour, we’re traveling by book. 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'

How well do you sleep? Every night, millions of us turn out the lights hoping and praying for a good night’s sleep. And every night, millions of us lie awake in the dark. We explore what keeps us up, and what happens when we embrace the times when we just can't seem to rest. Original Air Date: March 07, 2020 Guests: Steve Paulson — Guy Leschziner — Daniel Pink — Marina Benjamin — Ada Calhoun Interviews In This Hour: A Shadow Self Emerges from the Darkness — Tales From The Wee Hours — Kicking Your Nap Up A Notch...With Coffee — The Best Time Of Night For Big Ideas — The Things That Keep Gen X Women Up At Night

We're always online but still have an innate need to meet in person. How can we make gatherings, from dinner parties to work meetings, more meaningful? *Original Air Date: * June 22, 2019 **Guests: ** Priya Parker — Mamie Kanfer Stewart — Angelo Bautista — James Ogude **Interviews In This Hour: ** When We Gather, We Need Rituals — That Completely Pointless Meeting Is Entirely Preventable — Watching RuPaul's Drag Race In The Best Way Possible — In A Gay Bar — 'I Am Because We Are': The African Philosophy of Ubuntu

Restaurants, bars, coffee shops — is there any public place left that doesn’t play background music? Loudly? In this show, we’re making the case for more silence. Because perhaps some need the drone of TVs, traffic and Muzak, to drown out the pesky sound of thinking, but others go to great lengths to find respite from a blaringly loud world. Original Air Date: December 09, 2017 Guests: Erling Kagge — Gordon Hempton — George Michelsen Foy — Kyle Gann — Shawn Wen — Jennifer Egan Interviews In This Hour: The Contemplative Silence Of A Cold, Lonely Journey — A Nature Preserve For The Quiet Of Nature — The Volume Of Absolute Silence — The Tale of a Mute Piano Performance — A Silent Soliloquy From The World's Greatest Mime — The Pauses Between Chords of Iconic Rock and Roll Further Reading: One Square Inch of Silence, from the documentary "Soundtracker"

Are there new ways to treat depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder? We explore some unconventional treatments for mental illness, including exercise, psychedelics and even horror films. Need to talk? Contact the National Alliance for Mental Illness at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264). If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (En Español: 1-888-628-9454; Deaf and Hard of Hearing: 1-800-799-4889) or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741. Original Air Date: February 15, 2020 **Guests: ** Eliza Smith — Claudia Reardon — Shira Erlichman — Rosalind Watts — Charles Raison — Roland Griffiths — Robin Carhart-Harris **Interviews In This Hour: ** Treating Anxiety With Horror Films — Do 10 Burpees And Call Me In The Morning — How Psychedelic Experiences Might Treat Depression — The Power in Naming an Illness

Exchanging glances with the natural world happens more often than you’d think. It can be so profound, there’s a name for it: eye-to-eye epiphany. 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

Hope means believing there’s a future. But can hope co-exist with cataclysmic realities like climate change, or disruptive technological advances like artificial intelligence?  Original Air Date: May 04, 2019 *Guests: * Roy Scranton — Anne Lamott — Amy Webb — Victor LaValle — Robert Zubrin *Interviews In This Hour: * Can We Have Hope If The World Is 'Doomed'? — Hope Is Faith In Life Itself — 'Our Best Futures Never Come Fully Formed, Or Automatically' — Tales of Dragons That Fight Segregation, and AI That Fights Transphobia — How A Colony On Mars Would Change Everything On Earth

This hour we talk with people who’ve turned that around and made hope real, whether it’s through political activism, faith, music, or reading a life-changing novel. Original Air Date: April 27, 2019 *Guests: * DeRay Mckesson — Lydia Hester — Serene Jones — Megan Stielstra — Common *Interviews In This Hour: * To Make Big Social Change, Start With The PB&J Sandwiches — Teens Don't Want Hope. They Want Action. — Hope, Where Faith Becomes Action — Megan Stielstra On 'The Chronology of Water' — Making Hope In Verse