The walls are closing in, you've got no way out... and then, suddenly, you escape! This hour, stories about traps, getaways, perpetual cycles, and staggering breakthroughs.

We kick things off with a true escape artist--a man who’s broken out of jail more times than anyone alive. We try to figure out why he keeps running... and whether he will ever stop. Then, the ingeniously simple question that led Isaac Newton to an enormous intellectual breakthrough: why doesn’t the moon fall out of the sky? In the wake of Newton's new idea, we find ourselves in a strange space at the edge of the solar system, about to cross a boundary beyond which we know nothing. Finally, we hear the story of a blind kid who freed himself from an unhappy childhood by climbing into the telephone system, and bending it to his will.

***The Great Escape Artist. Can a legendary escape artist --a folk hero who's broken out of jail more times than anyone else alive -- break the cycle of running and getting caught?

***Is There an Edge to the Heavens? Cosmic laws are rewritten, and a spacecraft launched three decades ago races to become the first human-made object to leave the solar system.

***Long Distance

[February 20, 2012]