If you think winter's bad where you are, imagine Antarctica! Temperatures drop 100 degrees below zero. Winds roar by at 200 miles an hour. The entire continent is ice. Still, some creatures call this "home." Next time on To the Best of Our Knowledge, a look at life in the frozen wilderness - from two-million-year-old microbes to the most debonair of all polar dwellers - the penguin.

SEGMENT 1

NASA scientist Chris McKay looks for life in unlikely places -- and finds it. He tells Judith Strasser about the million year old microbes swimiming around in Lake Vostok two and a half miles beneath the Antarctic ice cap, and what they may tell us about life in outer space.

SEGMENT 2:

Research biologist Jerry Kooyman tells Steve Paulson some amazing things about the Emperor Penguin -- Antarctica's most debonair denizen. Kooyman does his research in the field and at the Scripps Institute for Oceanography.

SEGMENT 3:

Anne Bancroft is the first women to reach both Poles over the ice. She tells Steve Paulson about her all-woman expedition and the challenge of staying mentally alert in harsh physical conditions. Also, British writer Beryl Bainbridge talks with Jim Fleming about the ill-fated expedition of Robert Falcon Scott. Bainbridge has written an introduction to a new edition of Scott's journals, and "The Birthday Boys," a fictional account of Scott's expedition.

Distribution dates:

• week of 02/16/97 - hour 2
• week of 12/28/97 - hour 2