Beyond the fact that it comes sooner or later to everyone, people just don't agree about Death. Just what do we have to look forward to – everlasting life in Paradise, or a moldy grave? Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, the great unmentionable. Also, a hundred-year-old Black lesbian – still living life to the fullest.

Poet and Funeral Director Thomas Lynch reads excerpts from his second book of essays, "Bodies in Motion and at Rest," and tells Steve Paulson that he isn't troubled by changing fashions in the funeral industry. What matters most is the essential service provided by people like his father and him. Also, Jim Crace wrote the novel "Being Dead." The book has been hailed for its daring treatment of the physical realities of death. Crace tells Jim Fleming that he's an atheist and wanted to find a way of talking about death that doesn't depend on God.

Nancy Cobb's memoir of her parents' death is "In Lieu of Flowers: A Conversation for the Living." She tells Jim Fleming that her father committed suicide after being diagnosed with dementia, and that years later, her mother developed Alzheimer's Disease. Cobb explains that she had to find new ways to communicate with her mother that didn't depend on linear thought and language. Also, Timothy Findley (arguably Canada's greatest living novelist) tells Steve Paulson about his latest book, "Pilgrim." It's the story of a man who cannot die, and his psychiatrist, Carl Gustav Jung. Findley explains why he believes Jung will be remembered as the greatest name in the history of psychiatry.

• week of 09/10/2000 - hour 1