PRI: To the Best of Our Knowledge Podcast

What's the essence of religion? God? Scripture? Moral codes? Or is it really about something more mysterious and unexplainable?

In this hour, we explore the roots of religion — religion before it's even called "religion." Because if you strip away all the doctrine, the dogma, the rules for how to live — what’s left are primal spiritual experiences. But what do they tell us about ourselves and our world?

Guests:

Elizabeth Krohn , Jeff Kripal , Elaine Pagels , Jericho Brown

Modern anti-depressants have saved a lot of minds. And lives. But our 30-year experiment with modern anti-depressants is taking a toll. What have they done to our bodies? And how do we navigate that trade-off between body and mind? Is it clear that they even work?

There are a lot of us who struggle with mood disorders or mental illness of one sort or another. If you do, we here at TTBOOK want you to know that you’re not alone. If you're looking for more in-depth knowledge on what you might be going through, the National Alliance on Mental Illness is an incredible resource.

And if you just need something to elevate your spirit, check out the playlist that Charles made at the bottom of this page. It's packed with the music he listens to when he’s down and needs a lift. Not a fake happy song kind of lift – something honest but also hopeful.

**WARNING: The conversation with Lauren Slater in this show features frank discussion of depression and self-harm. The audio doesn't contain a trigger warning, but for listeners who may be sensitive to discussion of suicide, please consider listening to other interviews on the show separately, or skipping this episode.

Guests:

Lauren Slater , Charles Raison , Anna Fels , Jaime Lowe

We all tell stories about our lives: funny stories, happy stories, sad stories. But are they true stories? In an age of “alternative facts” and “fake news,” we’re all thinking harder about why truth matters – not just in politics, but in our personal lives. A biographer, a poet, a memoirist and a filmmaker describe the moral struggle and personal cost involved in telling not just the truth, but the whole truth.

*Guests: * Caroline Fraser , Terese Marie Mailhot , Karl Ove Knausgaard , Errol Morris

How do we put the fairness and the fun back in American elections? In this hour, we present a few simple ideas for how to remake the electoral process.

Some are small tweaks — like mandatory voting — that could make the whole system run more smoothly: Others may sound a little crazy, like letting 10-year-olds vote. Or creating a marketplace where people buy, sell and trade their votes. Or making election day a national holiday, with parades. And cake.

**Guests: **Carol Anderson , Jason Brennan , Pippa Norris , E. Glen Weyl , Jonathan Bernstein , Eric Liu

If you think of your life as a series of births, what changes? The first birth is when you arrive here, as a wet, wiggling newborn. But there may be other transitions in your life that feel just as difficult and profound. Some people actually call those passages re-birth. But why does the birth metaphor matter?

This hour, we examine midwives, trans men, and born again Christians. Birth. Rebirth. And Born Again.

Interviews in this hour:

The Power of Choice When You're Giving Birth

Where Are the Midwives?

Midwives in the Golden Age of Television

Transgender Men and the Remaking of Identity

"Happy In My Own Skin": The Transition from Bess To Benn

What Does it Really Mean to Be a Born Again Christian?

Guests:

Ayelet Waldman

Stephen Ross

Katherine MacLean

Daniel Kasza

William Richards

Interviews in this hour:

Ayelet Waldman Talks about Depression, LSD, and Her Marriage With Michael Chabon

How Psychedelic Drugs Will Revolutionize Psychiatry

Lessons from a Psychedelic Guide

On A Mountain Top, With Ayahuasca And Frog Poison

Psychedelics and God

Psychedelics: The Next Revolution in Psychiatry?

From our narrow vantage point on Earth, how can we see what's out there, beyond our skies?

Guests:

Francis Halzen

Priya Natarajan

Seth Shostak

Don Gurnett

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Interviews in this hour:

How To Catch A Neutrino

How Do We Investigate The Invisible Parts of the Universe?

Search For Life In All The Wrong Places

What Can You Hear In Space?

The Universe Is Under No Obligation To Make Sense To Us

Why is the world so damn cynical? Rather than surrendering to corrosive, hopeless snark, we look to some unexpected sources to make the case for sincerity.

Guests:

Jason Rohrer

Christy Wampole

Christian Picciolini

Ingrid LaFleur

Interviews in this hour:

"You Are Our Miracle": A Game To Make You Love Your Fellow Player

The Toll of Living Awash in Irony

Can You Change The Mind Of A White Supremacist?

Envisioning a Better Today Through The Tomorrows of Afrofuturism

It was a dirty word 25 years ago. But now, more and more people are identifying as Socialists…in America and on the ballot.

Guests:

Kshama Sawant

Sean Wilentz

Cheryl Blue

Andrew Haug

Erik Olin Wright

Brother Ali

Interviews in this hour:

How Socialism Won in Seattle

In Defense of Liberals

Milwaukee's Socialist Experiment

Rethinking Socialism for Today

Brother Ali on Islam, the Left, and Hip Hop

Bees are endangered, but all over the world, people are stepping up to save them — in backyards, science labs, and the abandoned lots of urban Detroit.

Guests:

Heather Swan

Nicole Lindsey

Timothy Paule

Thor Hanson

Christof Koch

Tania Munz

Stephanie Elkins

Peter Sobol

Anne Strainchamps

Interviews in this hour:

Falling In Love With Bees

'Medicine'

Why We Ought to Live a 'Pro-Bee Lifestyle'

Rebuilding Detroit, Hive by Hive

'Honeybee'

How Do We Wrap Our Minds Around Bee Consciousness?

Waggle Dancing with Karl von Frisch

'To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee'

When suicide bombers blow up crowded marketplaces, or a lone shooter attacks a nightclub, one question we’re always left with is why. This hour, a look at the underlying psychology of political violence.

Guests:

Mubin Shaikh

Clark McCauley

Åsne Seierstad

Tanya Luhrmann

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

Interviews in this hour:

The Reformed Radical

The Psychology of Terrorism

What Can Americans Learn from a Norwegian Massacre?

Let’s Change the Way We Think About Thinking

The Buddhist Master Who Went on a Four Year Wandering Retreat

Do chimpanzees have spiritual experiences? A remarkable discovery in West Africa suggests they might.

Guests:

Jane Goodall

Laura Kehoe

Frans de Waal

Barbara King

Ara Norenzayan

Jeff Schloss

Andrew Newberg

Interviews in this hour:

Do Chimpanzees Have Spiritual Experiences?

How “Big Gods” Transformed Human History

An Evolutionary Biologist Searches for God

What Bliss Looks Like In Your Brain

We take road trips and endless highways for granted, but there are other countries where people can pay a heavy price just for getting behind a wheel.

Guests:

Finn Murphy

Manal al-Sharif

Rebecca Solnit

Lawrence Ross

David Roberts

Simon Parkin

Interviews in this hour:

Put It In Boogie Gear On the Backslide

Driving While Female

What If We Forget How to Get Lost?

A Guidebook to the 'Blackest Road Trip Ever'

The Most Boring Video Game Ever Made

What if the guiding principle we used in cooking, eating and growing food was love? From an Iranian-American kitchen to the chocolate forests of Ecuador, we explore new ways to express deep flavors and personal identity through food and cooking.

Guests:

Simran Sethi

Samin Nosrat

Michael Twitty

Josh Noel

Interviews in this hour:

The Frightening Sameness Beneath Hundreds of Flavors

Kosher/Soul — Cooking the African-Jewish Diaspora

Anyone Can Cook—With the Right Elements

Does "Selling Out" Make a Difference You Can Taste?

When did we retreat to our Red and Blue Facebook pages? It’s not just that America is politically polarized. We live, work and play in Red and Blue tribal bubbles, filling our social media feeds with news sources that affirm our place in that order, rather than challenging it. That isolation is breeding an ugly, seething hatred of the other side that feels poisonous and dispiriting. So what can we do? In this hour, we hear how conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes lost his faith in the GOP and why a former CEO of NPR left his liberal bubble. Also, how Black Twitter has created its own safe space.

Guests:

Charlie Sykes

Ken Stern

Meredith Clark

Nancy MacLean

Jeanne Safer

Richard Brookhiser

Segments:

How The Right Lost Its Mind And Charlie Sykes Lost His Faith In The GOP

A Former NPR Executive Leaves His Liberal Bubble Behind

The Blend Of Jokes and Social Justice That Is Black Twitter

What Does An Obscure Economist Have To Do With The Koch Brothers?

You Don't Have To Vote Like Me To Love Me

Where do you go to find models of powerful women? The ancient world was full of them, real and mythic, but today we barely know their names. Why? This week we rediscover the women of ancient myths and legends.

Guests

Kara Cooney

Madeline Miller

Natalie Haynes

Emily Wilson

Serenity Young

Romare Bearden

Interviews

The Hidden Queens of Egypt

The Mother of All Witches

Romare Bearden’s “Circe,” Black and Powerful

What A Feminist Writer Learned From An Ancient, Racist, Sexist Satirist

A Female Perspective on The Oldest Tale in Human History

When Women Could Fly

Why do we have schools? To build a workforce? To create democratic citizens?

Guests:

Caryn McKechnie ,Tim Storm ,Jose Gonzalez ,Curtis Acosta ,Mark Slouka ,Daniel Mendelsohn

Interviews:

Why America's Teachers Are Burning Out ,Is Teaching Mexican-American Studies Un-American? ,What Happens When Math And Science Rule The School? ,The Crankiest Student In Your Class? That's Your Dad.