This week, Skillset skips across time from Ye Olde England to modern day stoners to ancient beasts.
First up, William Shakespeare stopped going to school when he was 13, but his plays make great high school movies -- especially if they star Julia Stiles. Dr Gitanjali Shahani, a professor of English at San Francisco State University, explains the lasting power of 400-year-old blockbusters.
Here's another Shakespeare fun fact: Last year, a research team found traces of weed and cocaine on Shakespeare’s pipes. The Bard was baked? Sounds like the plot of a teen movie, like the stoner comedy High School where a kid feeds his entire class pot brownies to duck out of a drug test. That sounds extreme, but according to Emily Feinstein of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, 90% of teens say their classmates smoke, drink or use drugs during the school day. That stat is staggering, so we called up Emily to learn more.
And if after all that, you think you’re seeing things, you’re not alone. Comedian Bobcat Goldthwait, the star of one of my all-time favorite teen movies, One Crazy Summer, has spent years on a mission to find Bigfoot. Is he for real? Is Bigfoot for real? Let’s ask on this week’s episode of Skillset.