To The Best Of Our Knowledge
Collection Summary
The To The Best Of Our Knowledge (TTBOOK) special collection features over 1,150 episodes of the Peabody Award-winning national public radio series that explores big ideas and beautiful questions. The collection includes episodes from 2001 to 2025, with more episodes, interviews, and segments to be added in the coming months.
For over thirty years, TTBOOK has showcased open-minded and open-hearted conversations on a wide range of subjects. The series doesn’t shy away from tackling big topics, including the origins of life, reckoning with death, the afterlife, and the nature of reality. However, it also finds depth and meaning in subjects such as art and popular culture, with episodes on pop music, board games, and documentary poetry, among others.
Episodes often explore ideas across disciplines and find surprising connections among disparate topics. “Secrets of Alchemy" reflects on the historical relationship between science and magic. Similarly, the six-part “Deep Time” series explores the physics, history, and natural ecology of time. Several episodes focus on mind-altering substances, from psychedelics such as ayahuasca and MDMA to alcohol and coffee. TTBOOK examines these topics from many different angles. For example, in the “Luminous” series, the episode “Your Brain on Shrooms” looks at the neuroscience of psychedelics, while “Did the Ancient Greeks Use Drugs to Find God?” and “A Brief History of Getting High” consider the role of drugs throughout history.
TTBOOK often looks at humanity’s shifting relationship with technology and the natural world. “Listening to Whales” and “The Sum of Our Data” consider technology’s impact on how we relate to people, animals, and things. “Does AI Dream?” and “Cyborgs, Computers, and the Soul” reflect on the metaphysical implications of developments in computing and artificial intelligence. “Writing the Climate Change Story” and "Imagining Climate Change” explore how literature and art can help us begin to grasp the enormity of the climate disaster, while “Confronting Climate Change” and "Changing Climate Change” ask what we can do about it.
Over the years, TTBOOK has featured interviews with influential thinkers, activists, and artists. Among the many noteworthy guests to appear on TTBOOK are scientists Jane Goodall and Richard Dawkins, writers Ann Patchett and David Foster Wallace, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, filmmaker Mira Nair, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, and philosopher David Chalmers. Prominent Wisconsinites have also appeared on the program. These include political scientist Kathy Cramer, Reverend Dr. Alex Gee, and Wisconsin poet laureate Kimberly Blaeser, who in 2016 participated in a live recording of TTBOOK to discuss the vision for public enlightenment known as “The Wisconsin Idea."
Whether it’s about bees, poetry, skin, or psychedelics, every episode of TTBOOK is an intimate, sound-rich journey that helps listeners feel less alone and more connected – to our common humanity and to the world we share.
Collection Background
To The Best Of Our Knowledge is a weekly radio series produced by Wisconsin Public Radio and distributed by PRX. The series premiered in 1990 with Jim Fleming as host, along with interviewers Steve Paulson and Margaret Andreasen. When Fleming retired in 2014, Anne Strainchamps took over as host. Paulson is the executive producer, and Charles Monroe-Kane, Shannon Henry Kleiber, and Angelo Bautista are producers/interviewers on the show. Today, TTBOOK is broadcast on about 200 stations across the US and is also available as a podcast. The series has won a Peabody Award and recognition from the Indigenous Journalists Association, the National Headliner Awards, the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association, and the regional Edward R. Murrow Awards. The To The Best Of Our Knowledge special collection was launched in August 2025.
