Now that road trip season is upon us, we take a deep look at the open road. We’ll talk with interstate long-haulers, join an elephant named Solomon on his journey across 16th century Europe, and take the “blackest road trip ever.” And Manal al-Sharif tells the story of her radical road trip — being a Saudi woman who learned how to drive.

Original Air Date: July 01, 2023

Interviews In This Hour:

Put It In Boogie Gear On the Backslide — A Guidebook to the 'Blackest Road Trip Ever' — Philip Pullman on 'The Pocket Atlas of the World' — Driving While Female — Julie Schumacher on 'Elephant's Journey' — Getting High At Disney World

Guests:

Finn Murphy, Lawrence Ross, Philip Pullman, Manal al-Sharif, Julie Schumacher, John Jeremiah Sullivan

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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, a chronic illness and a common fever, and find the mystery and the familiar in the anatomy of ourselves.

Original Air Date: February 23, 2019

Interviews In This Hour:

Would You Give Your Kidney to a Stranger? — When Your Body Betrays You — The Unicorn Woman And Other Amazing Human Body Tales

Guests:

Josh Mezrich, Missy Makinia, Porochista Khakpour, Gavin Francis

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It’s summer, and you might be pulling out your binoculars, filling your bird feeders, and looking up as you hear a melodious song. But for many birdwatchers, it's not just a simple pastime. Identifying bird calls, tracking rare breeds through marshes and waters, and watching our feathered friends as they watch you has turned into true love of birds — an avian obsession.

Original Air Date: June 17, 2023

Interviews In This Hour:

'Utterly unlike other birds': The inscrutable brilliance of owls — Mark Obmascik on Competitive Bird Watching — The Indelible Myth and Meaning of Ravens — Christopher Benfey on 'A Summer of Hummingbirds'

Guests:

Jennifer Ackerman, Mark Obmascik, Charles Monroe-Kane, Christopher Benfey

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The bond we share with dogs runs deep. The satisfaction of gentle head scratches or a round of playing fetch is simple and pure, but in other ways, the connection we have is truly unknowable. How do dogs make our lives better? How do they think? And how do we give them the lives they deserve?

Original Air Date: February 05, 2022

Interviews In This Hour:

Adventure, goofiness and trail snacks: Stories from the dog musher's journal — Getting inside the mind of a dog — Nothing makes losing a dog easy. But a bridge dog can help. — Joy and peace, high up on Dog Mountain

Guests:

Blair Braverman, Quince Mountain, Donna Haraway, Sarah Miller

Further Reading:

Pet Loss Resource Center: Resources for animal loss and grief

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When you’re on the clock, you’re always running out of time – because in our culture, time is money. The relentless countdown is making us and the planet sick. But clock time isn’t the only kind. There are older, deeper rhythms of time that sustain life. What would it be like to live more in tune with nature’s clocks?

Original Air Date: June 03, 2023

Interviews In This Hour:

How time came to rule our lives — and how we might free ourselves — The past and future of keeping time

Guests:

Jenny Odell, David Rooney

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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?

Human identity cannot be separated from our nonhuman kin. From forest ecology to the human microbiome, emerging research suggests that being human is a complicated journey made possible only by the good graces of our many companions. In partnership with the Center for Humans and Nature and with support from the Kalliopeia Foundation, To The Best Of Our Knowledge is exploring this theme of "kinship" in a special radio series.

To learn more about the Kinship series, head to ttbook.org/kinship.

Original Air Date: February 08, 2020

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 — Sharing Eye-To-Eye Epiphanies With The Animal World

Guests:

Gavin Van Horn, Jenny Kendler, Ivan Schwab, Jane Goodall, Alan Lightman

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

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Categories: animals, wild animals, epiphanies, kinship

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

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

Guests:

Angelo Bautista, Eula Biss, Adam Minter, Giles Slade, Clare Dolan

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We celebrate Mother's Day with a collection of stories from our archives, by and about moms. Stories about care and about courage — about the work of mothering.

Original Air Date: May 13, 2023

Interviews In This Hour:

The all-encompassing worlds of motherhood and poverty — Eula Biss on 'The Argonauts' — Jacqueline Plumez on Mother Power — Amanda Henry on the Road to Motherhood — Ayelet Waldman on Trying to Be a Decent Mother

Guests:

Stephanie Land, Eula Biss, Jacqueline Horner Plumez, Amanda Henry, Ayelet Waldman

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The pandemic has made it clear that parents are walking a tightrope with no safety net. We talk to parents about how they want to change the system, what it's like to raise black boys in a time of racial injustice, and how we might learn from ancient cultures to improve our parenting skills.

Original Air Date: May 22, 2021

Interviews In This Hour:

A Parenting Movement Emerges From the Pandemic — Modern Parenting Tips From Ancient Civilizations — Two Poets On Raising Black Teenage Boys In America

Guests:

Alissa Quart, Brittany Powell, Michaeleen Doucleff, Amaud Jamaul Johnson, Cherene Sherrard

Further Reading:

Economic Hardship Reporting Project

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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

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

Guests:

Adom Getachew, Simon Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o

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