Move to California and you'll be rich and famous! The idea drew the Forty-Niners to the Gold Rush a century ago, and is still drawing people today. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, some true California stories, from Silicon Valley to the Aerospace industry. Also, Isabel Allende on California's cultural diversity.

Michael Lewis, author of "The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story," tells Steve Paulson that the internet has changed everything on Wall Street. He describes the dramatic changes in Silicon Valley over the last five years, and profiles Jim Clark, who has a history of founding billion dollar companies, then walking away. Lewis says Clark's taste for anarchy makes him a perfect match for his time.

David Beers is the author of "Blue Sky Dream: A Memoir of America's Fall from Grace." He talks with Jim Fleming about his childhood in what became Silicon Valley, his father's career at Lockheed working on spy satellites and the effect on the workforce when the Reagan defense build-up ended. Also, environmentalist Gray Brechin and photographer Robert Dawson collaborated on "Farewell Promised Land: Waking from the California Dream." They tell Judith Strasser how urbanization and development have destroyed the landscape they grew up in, and describe the photos they used to illustrate the "lost" California.

J.S. Holliday is a historian, specializing in the California Gold Rush. For the 150th anniversary celebration, he wrote "Rush to Riches: Gold Fever and the Making of California." Holliday tells Steve Paulson just how much wealth the forty-niners took out of California, and that the most important thing about the gold rush was that the gold belonged to the miners, not the Crown. Also, novelist Isabel Allende talks with Jim Fleming about contemporary immigrants to California, and how they're different from the forty-niners. She also speaks of the injustices faced by Latino and Chinese immigrants during the Gold Rush. Allende's latest novel is "Daughter of Fortune."

Distribution dates:

• week of 12/31/2000 - hour 1
• week of 11/14/99 - hour 2