Bob Barrett

When Apollo 11 landing on the moon they indeed stepped where no man has gone before. But once they got there, they didn’t go far. Today on the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll learn about the development of the lunar rover, and how that opened up the later Apollo missions with lunar road trips.

A few weeks back we spoke about the murder of Emmett Till and what it meant to the civil rights movement. But history tends to repeat itself. Today on the Best of Our Knowledge, a story about a lesser known casualty of the Jim Crow south.

On our last episode of the year we usually look back at some of the coolest people we met over the year. This year, three of those people were all on the same segment.Today on the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll revisit our social worker roundtable.

Every year around this time we look back at some of our favorite stories of the year. There were an awful lot to choose from this time around, so the choice came down to what we could fit in this half hour.Today on the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll hear about the job you get as opposed to the job you want, find out about the history of teaching machines, and spend an Academic Minute out in the dark edge of the universe.

The MyStory Griot Project at the University of West Florida draws from the oral and written practices of sharing stories. A griot is a storyteller. In West African tradition, the griot is the one who bears the history of the village. The project invites students from the College of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities or CASSH, as well as faculty and staff from the college’s various disciplines to share their stories based on race, ethnicity and diversity. The university is currently looking ahead to the spring semester and asking members of their campus community to share their personal stories. Today, we are going to highlight an earlier entry. It’s a story of “Desegregation in the South” — and one earth-shattering day in history — submitted by Dr. Steve Brown, the Dean of CASSH.

If you make a list of the most important names in American culture in the latter half of the 20th Century, Stephen Sondheim has to be right near the top. When he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, President Obama said “Put simply, Stephen reinvented the American musical”. Sondheim passed away on November 26 at the age of 91. Back in April, Bob Barrett spoke about the composer with Rick Pender, author of “The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia." Today on the Best of Our Knowledge, let’s listen again to our conversation about one of America's great composers.We also spend an Academic Minute in a community forest.

You see the signs everywhere. Now hiring, help wanted, sign-on bonus…it looks like everyone is trying to hire new employees. Except, of course, if you are actually looking for a job. Then you see that some of those offers are not for everyone. That’s especially true for job hunters who have a criminal record. But according to economist Jeffery Korzenik, looking at these so-called second chance hires is good for business.Today on the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll hear about second chance hiring of people with a record.

Back in February, NASA successfully landed the Perseverance rover on Mars. The pictures it transmitted back to Earth of the red planet were spectacular and captured the imagination of millions. It also gave the Cambridge Dictionary its first hint on what this year’s word of the year would be.Today on the Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll hear why the Cambridge Dictionary made perseverance the 2021 word of the year.

The world is a pretty big place. And it’s the size of the planet that can sometimes make climate change a difficult concept for a lot of people to wrap their heads around. A new book is trying to knock that concept down to size. It’s called “The Atlas of a Changing Climate”, and it’s beautifully illustrated with contemporary and historic maps and images from around the world.It’s the work of Brian Buma. Dr. Buma is an assistant professor of Quantitative Biology at the University of Colorado and an affiliate professor at the University of Alaska. His explorations and wanderings around the globe have been featured in National Geographic.We’ll also spend an Academic Minute with life in a warming sea.

Every year students around the country work hard, sacrifice, and study to earn their PhD. But is earning that ultimate degree worth it?Next time on The Best of Our Knowledge, we’ll hear an archival interview with a pair of professors who think the PhD as it currently exists is a relic that needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up.We’ll also spend an Academic Minute with higher ed mergers.