In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, choosing the life you want. Colette's biographer talks about how the great French writer stayed saucy, and sexually active, into old age. Kay Redfield Jamison takes a look at the end of life – a view of the suicide epidemic. And Parker Palmer on finding meaning, and what people live for.

Quaker writer, educator and activist Parker Palmer talks with Steve Paulson about his new book, "Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation." Palmer believes people need to listen to their inner voice in order to make the right life choices. He says it can be hard when you're depressed and explains how he came to terms with his own illness.

Kay Redfield Jamison tells Jim Fleming that suicide is epidemic in our society and usually associated with a major mental illness. She says suicide is preventable and the diseases associated with it are treatable. Jamison's book is "Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide." And, we hear a montage of people's reasons for living. They range from going to church to riding roller coasters. Also, Sapphire performs several of her poems and tells Judith Strasser why she enjoys working in some very old poetic forms like the villanelle.

Judith Thurman is the author of "Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette." She tells Steve Paulson that Colette was a great writer who personified "the new woman" and led exactly the life she wanted, despite society's outrage over her career choices and sexual behavior. Thurman says Colette wrote ecstatically about her mother and daughter, but was not successful in these intimate relationships.

Distribution dates:

• week of 09/16/2001 - hour 2
• week of 02/13/2000 - hour 2