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It is 40 years since Sir David Attenborough told the story of Life on Earth, from its very first spark 4 billion years ago to the abundance of plants and animals today. He tells Andrew Marr how more pieces of the puzzle have fallen into place over the last four decades.
The German ornithologist Michael Quetting spent a year hand rearing seven goslings: caring for them as they hatched, helping them learn to swim, and teaching them to fly alongside his aircraft. The project is part of an ambitious scientific research programme to understand birds in flight and use them to gather weather data for us.
Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, looks beyond the earth to ask about potential life among the stars. He sees the future of humanity as bound to the future of science, and believes that space explorers in the next century will be electronic and not organic.
A hundred years after Holst wrote The Planets, leading composers are again trying to capture the essence of our solar system in music. But this time they are working in collaboration with scientists. The geologist Dr Philippa Mason has helped bring deeper insight to Venus: a planet once thought to be a lush tropical swamp world, but in reality a crushing, violent inferno.
(Producer: Katy Hickman).
What is the difference between 96% similarity or sharing 20% of our DNA?
Tim Harford with statistics on suicide, good schools and sexism in tennis. Plus goats
The Vietnam War was a 30-year conflict in which three million people died and the reputations of successive US presidents were wrecked. Max Hastings tells Andrew Marr about the extraordinary political meddling, strategic failure and lack of compassion that characterises that war.
The historian Helen Parr was seven years old in 1982 when her uncle was killed in the Falklands War. She brings to life his experiences in the Parachute Regiment, often known as the Paras, an elite fighting force founded in 1940.
The former head of the British Army Richard Dannatt, looks at the present health of the military - and considers the difficulties that lie ahead.
While the Defence Editor of The Times newspaper, Deborah Haynes, scrutinises the defence budget and criticises the prevailing media and public narrative of the soldier as hero or victim.
Producer: Katy Hickman.
A listener asks whether his Volvo is the safest car on the road?
Tim Harford questions the usefulness of a popular heart age calculator.