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.

Excerpt from “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House” by Jon Meacham

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.”