Wonder Cabinet

What makes food "authentic"? Do we need to feel close to where it's made? Know the complete history of where it comes from? Be able to diagram the chemistry of how it dances along our taste buds? How can we quantify the romance between eaters and the food they love?

In this hour, we talk about what it means to truly love what you eat and drink — and we ask why it matters.

Original Air Date: June 30, 2018

Interviews In This Hour:

The Frightening Sameness Beneath Hundreds of Flavors — A Little Grammy, A Little Bubbe: A Writer Embodies Family History Through Food — Anyone Can Cook—With the Right Elements — Does 'Selling Out' Make a Difference You Can Taste? — Two Dishes, Two Tastings: A Dinner Party with Simran, Michael, Samin and Josh

Guests:

Simran Sethi, Samin Nosrat, Michael Twitty, Josh Noel

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.

Can neuroscience explain what happens to the brain on psychedelics? And even if we map the brain while it’s tripping, does that tell us why these experiences can be so transformative? 

We’ll talk with some of the pioneers in psychedelic research — from Amanda Feilding’s boundary-busting work to Robin Carhart-Harris’ theory of the "entropic brain." Also, renowned neuroscientist Christof Koch goes down the rabbit hole on 5-MeO-DMT, also known as toad venom.  

Original Air Date: July 15, 2023

Interviews In This Hour:

Exploring consciousness on toad venom — The godmother of the European psychedelic revival — How therapeutic psilocybin could help heal long-buried trauma — Magic mushrooms and the 'entropic brain'

Guests:

Christof Koch, Amanda Feilding, David Nutt, Robin Carhart-Harris

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.

When was the last time you got up off your couch and actually went out to see a movie? Or a play or a concert? It’s fun to go see things in person, but at the end of a long day, Netflix is streaming and the couch is two feet away.

Original Air Date: October 21, 2017

Interviews In This Hour:

An Old-Fashioned Movie House Wedding — The Modern Ruins Of American Movie Palaces — The Sudden Demise of a Beloved DIY Venue — Saved By The Scene, In Real Life or Online — A Fast-Talking Curator's Great Escape From Galleries Into The Real World — I Went To The Woods To Level Up Deliberately — Where We're Going, We Don't Need Talk Show Sets

Guests:

Matt Lambros, Matt Conboy, JJ Skolnik, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Tracy Fullerton, Will Smith, Mark Riechers, Laurie Gebhard

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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'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

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.

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

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.