When Will Durant asked the wise about “the meaning of life,” he got the usual answers. Then he asked a prisoner.

Students called Jaime Escalante “Kimo.” He called them his “burros.” But the key to his success was ganas — the drive to succeed. (As seen in “Stand and Deliver.”)

Despite his glowing words, Jefferson thought blacks far from equal. Then a single letter took him to task.

Others saw TV as mindless, but George Gerbner saw it as mean. And he had the data to prove it.

He was a computer whiz. She was his creation, programmed to debunk AI. So why did people keep “talking” to ELIZA?

That teacher you had? The one who “got” you? Did you ever thank THAT teacher?

From a small summer gathering on a remote lake, Chautauqua tapped America’s “hunger of mind.”

America needed a Vietnam memorial. The contest drew 1,421 entries. The winner was denounced as “egg roll” and “a gook.” But Maya Lin’s “wall” still touches the nation’s heart.

When The True Believer made his name, Eric Hoffer was a San Francisco longshoreman. Decades later, the zealots he labeled “true believers,” are still “everywhere on the march.”

The streets taught Geoffrey Canada hard lessons. His Harlem Children’s Zone is teaching success.

When the physicist investigated the Challenger, America got a lesson from a master.

Deaf, dumb, and blind, she lived “at sea in a dense fog.” And then her teacher came. (As seen in “The Miracle Worker.”)