Millennial fever is getting pretty intense. Have you heard about the flying saucer cults? How about the apocalypse cow? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, close encounters with millennial culture, and a flashback to the year 1000. We'll also introduce you to the team that is designing a clock to withstand the fall of civilization.

Alex Heard is an editor for Wired Magazine, and the author of "Apocalypse Pretty Soon: Travels in End-Time America." He tells Judith Strassser about some of the millenial cults from the Earth Changers (who believe that the planet's mad at us) to the Unarians (who've already built a landing site for the 31 races of aliens coming in 2001.) Also, Robert Lacey, co-author (with Danny Danziger) of "The Year 1000," tells Steve Paulson that our ancestors handled their Y1K problem without much fuss. He says they were healthy, talented people with rudimentary brain surgery and a form of viagra.

Stewart Brand is President of the Long Now Foundation and author of "The Clock of the Long Now." He and Danny Hill are building the Millenium Clock, designed to last 10,000 years. Brand tells Steve Paulson how the clock works, and why he's trying to change the way people think about time. Also, social psychologist Robert Levine tells Judith Strasser that our perception of time is socially constructed, drawing his examples his experience teaching for a year in Brazil. Levine's book is "A Geography of Time: The Temporal Misadventures of a Social Psychologist."

David Duncan is the author of "Calendar: Humanity's Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year." He tells Jim Fleming that the Cro-Magnons kept track of time, and that our calendar still isn't completely accurate.

Distribution dates:

• week of 12/26/99 - hour 1
• week of 03/28/99 - hour 3