"Tell me a story" is one of the oldest requests in human history, and after several thousand years, we are still responding. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, new tales for new times, and old stories re-told. Also, cyber-novelists imagine the future of fiction, and what children learn from playing Frankenstein.

SEGMENT 1

Janet Murray is a senior research scientist and professor of interactive fiction writing at M.I.T. and the author of "Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace." She tells Jim Fleming some of the ways peple are using computers to deepen the experience of storytelling. If you want to experience some of the things she talks about, visit her web site at web.mit.edu/jhmurray/www.

SEGMENT 2:

Film maker Tom Davenport has made eleven live action films based on tales from the Brothers Grimm. They're dark and scary and kids love them, though some adults wonder if they're too much. Davenport tells Anne Strainchamps that he sticks to the tone of the originals and that children appreciate having their real fears dealt with.

For more information and study guides to his films, you can link from here to the Davenport Films Website.

Also, Brian Edmiston, a professor of education at Ohio State and an expert on the use of drama in the classroom, talks with Steve Paulson about the monster games he plays with his son, Michael. They're gruesome, but Edmiston thinks they're a form of moral and ethical education.

SEGMENT 3:

Cherokee-Appalachian writer and storyteller Marilou Awiakta talks with Judith Strasser about reconciling traditional Native American wisdom with life in a high- tech society. Awiakta has a collection of poems called "Selu: Seeking the Corn Mother's Wisdom."

Distribution dates:

• week of 08/31/97 - hour 3
• week of 11/08/98 - hour 3