British actor Michael Palin on how Monty Python came to be.

Helene Cooper and her amazing story of privilege and flight from Africa in “The House at Sugar Beach.”

We listen back to a talk with the creators of the Tony award- winning salsa, hip-hop, Latino smash, Broadway’s “In the Heights.”

A conversation with celebrated novelist E.L. Doctorow on creation from Genesis to Huck Finn, Hemingway to Einstein.

Rock critic Amanda Petrusich and her long, strange trip into the roots of a new, authentically American, music.

All those hours teens spend online may be good for them, according to a new MacArthur Foundation study. We’ll talk with young people about thriving in a digital world.

A new biography says he was much more than the world’s greatest lover.

The green economy in the midst of meltdown. Obama talks a green game. Can he now deliver?

Circus days. Big Apple Circus founder and ringmaster Paul Binder gives us his exit interview on a life under the Big Top.

Crunch time on Tibet. China smacks down autonomy. Tibetans talk of independence. The Dalai Lama says be careful. We’ll look into the Himalayas.

Newsweek’s Jon Meacham talks about his new biography of President “Number 7,” Andrew Jackson, who broke down the doors of Washington for the common man.

All eyes on Obama’s emerging cabinet. The Big Three go begging. Markets keep tumbling. Our news roundtable goes behind this week’s headlines.

The “Tipping Point” master Malcolm Gladwell talks about the ecology of success and where the super-successful get their edge.

Unemployment is rising fast, and America’s social safety net isn’t what it used to be. We talk about surviving the new economic reality.

Novelist Amitav Ghosh talks about 19th-century India and the opium trade in his sweeping new epic, “Sea of Poppies.”

Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State? The right choice? We’ll look at the potential implications for Obama’s foreign policy and the presidency.

Historian Niall Ferguson discusses the economic crisis of our time, right now.

Nebraska offered “safe haven” to children, expected babies, and got heartland parents abandoning teenagers. We ask why.

Terry Tempest Williams takes us from Byzantine Italy to post-genocide Rwanda in search of “beauty in a broken world.”

The economic crisis could change the face of American retirement in big ways. Is it the end of the golden years and the beginning of something more austere?

Teenage students from West Philly High are competing for the X-Prize in hybrid-car design — and challenging the pros.

The economy goes from bad to worse as Washington rethinks the financial bailout, a global summit comes to town, and Obama’s transition ramps up. Our news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

Fifty years ago, Motown Records crossed racial lines and helped define an era. We listen back to the music and those who made it.

Should Washington bail out Detroit? We hear the arguments for and against pouring billions into America’s collapsing auto industry.

The New Yorker’s George Packer looks at what liberalism now means and does not mean in the Obama era.

We talk with American Muslims about the long presidential campaign, Colin Powell stepping up for their dignity, and the Obama presidency ahead.

The author of “Blue Highways” and “River-Horse” reports in on America’s backroads now.

On Veterans’ Day, we look at American women at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and what a new generation of women in uniform has seen at the battlefront.

We talk with Dr. Stuart Pimm, a Duke University ecologist who has travelled the world studying exactly how species go extinct – and how to bring them back from the brink.

Harvard business guru Michael Porter on economic crisis, American competitiveness, and the road ahead.

From “The Andromeda Strain” to”Jurassic Park,” “ER,” and “State of Fear,” we look at the blockbuster master’s long reach.

An historic election. Obama shapes a team. And America grapples with a whole new political map. Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

We check in with red, blue, and purple voters we’ve spoken with in the course of the ‘08 campaign, to hear their views on Tuesday’s vote and the road ahead.

The Republican Party rethinks. We talk with conservative thinkers about the GOP’s Election Day thrashing, and where the party goes from here.

American historians David Kennedy and Nell Irvin Painter discuss the weight of the 2008 election.

We’ll have all the news, numbers, and analysis of a historic election day.

After 30 years’ silence, David Rhodes is back with small-town life and a cougar in the hay mow in his new book, “Driftless.”

On Election Day 2008, we look back on America’s first tumultuous decades and the triumphs and compromises of the Republic’s creation.

Acclaimed filmmaker Mike Leigh goes way upbeat in his latest film, “Happy-Go-Lucky.” We’ll ask him why.

We’ve heard a lot about change in the presidential campaign. On the eve of the election, we’ll ask big thinkers on American politics about the kind of change Barack Obama or John McCain might bring.