Editor:   Hear Professor Hawking's Reith Lectures on black holes on 26 January and 2 February or listen online. You can also get downloads of this and previous Reith Lectures.   

 

It’s always exciting to find out who’s giving the Reith Lectures for Radio 4. When we heard it was going to be Professor Stephen Hawking it was clear the world renowned scientist was going to be a hit with the Radio 4 audience. Across the country people would be leaning towards their radios desperate to finally understand the theory of black holes, Hawking Radiation and thermodynamics.

But not everyone is drawn towards listening to such a huge intellect talk about quantum physics. For some it feels way too difficult. Where do they even make a start? It’s a bit like reading War & Peace or exercising 3 times a week. We know it’d be good for us but…

So we thought we'd turn our attention to making this year’s Reith Lectures as enticing as possible by collaborating with one of the UK’s most popular providers of animation, Aardman Studios. Together we wanted to make a very short video that travels inside the Professor’s head to see what made stars and space appeal to him in the first place. It would act as an introduction to the great man himself.

We were after a multi-layered, graphic animation that stressed the child-like wonder which first drew Stephen Hawking towards his subject, hoping it would draw others in the same way, and all in three and a half minutes.

If you like the first we’ve also made a second animation with Aardrman Studios that promises to explain Black Holes in less than 2 minutes. Let us know if we managed it!

The director was Will Studd and the audio is a mix of original music by Max Halstead with words from Professor Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Andrew Strominger and Brian Cox. We should also thank The European Space Agency and NASA who helped with our search for suitable magical space images. 

Rhian Roberts, Digital Editor for Radio 4 and Radio 3

 

• Watch the animation Inside of the mind of Stephen Hawking
• Download the Reith Lectures - inc Professor Hawking, Robert Oppenheimer, Martin Rees and Bernard Lovell
• More clips and programmes about Professor Stephen Hawking

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES?

The Illustrated Man was part of an elite group of books that we genuinely looked forward to getting involved with at school. Along with The Day of the Triffids and The War of the Worlds, it was off syllabus but our teacher that year was determined to broaden our horizons beyond Shakespeare—and she did it with such a passion that I hope she will be mightily pleased that I, if not others, have continued to keep this flame alive.

In 1981, I was 14 and it was not a period in time when tattoos were even remotely pop-culture orientated, but the backstory to Bradbury’s tale is absolutely captivating. What 14-year-old boy would not have his eyes swept wide open by the tale of a vagrant who had been tattooed with magical images by a time-travelling witch?
That the book had been out in the populace for thirty years already makes it all the more special. 

Some years later, I found a VHS copy of Jack Smight's 1969 movie adaptation on a market stall. Held up at the front-end by Rod Steiger and Claire Bloom, it's a strange film and up until that day, I had never seen it. It was captivating for all the wrong reasons—it certainly wasn't how I remembered the book that was for sure, so I back-tracked to the novel again and found that a subsequent reading was actually far superior to the first. 

Since then, I've read The Illustrated Man many times, and not only as I've had cause to work with the book due to my job. You can never be sure with Ray Bradbury as to what his intentions were with his stories. As something of a ‘fussy’ fan of Bradbury, I get the impression that he was simply writing stories he liked, and if you liked them too, that was great. If not, that was also fine because there would be something different along shortly. 

I believe 2014 makes it 63 years on the shelf but still, The Illustrated Man never gets old. If you were to press me as to why, I would say it was because it consists of contrastingly different short stories held together with a premise thinner than a spider’s silk that just so happens to be stronger than steel. The book is not really even about a tattooed man—that's nothing but a mask to see it safely into the carnival to make its speech. 

What the book is really about is human behaviour. And for that reason alone, The Illustrated Man becomes truly timeless in a way many books wish they could also be and yet, fail miserably.

Sion Smith is Editor of Skin Deep Magazine

 

Listen to The Illustrated Man

Hear Brian Sibley talk about The Illustrated Man 

Hear Real life tattoo tales

Dangerous Visions on Radio 4

 

Hello

I was going to write at some length about Russia, or more specifically Moscow, to which I went for a few days last week. However, I might find space for a last paragraph.

What I'd like to pass on are some of the comments made after the programme when the conversation was just as clear, rapid and coherent. It seems that if Professor Higgs does not win the next Nobel Prize, then it will be won by someone dealing with exoplanets. The study has come on apace, as they used to say. Don Pollacco pointed out that it is now cool to study exoplanets. 25 years ago it was eccentric. Four or five hundred years ago, if you had suggested planets outside our solar system, you'd have been burnt at the stake. This is called the advance of knowledge. Technology is furiously surging on. It's developed so that soon it may be possible to get direct images of these planets. They were worried that they had not talked about the launch of the Gaia telescope, which would bring us even more exoplanets. And a new satellite mission will study the galaxy in such detail that it will give us a very accurate 3-D map which will revolutionise our knowledge of the galaxy.

Someone said that every single planet in the solar system has clouds and all predictions about how the clouds will work fail. That might be some consolation to those who do the weather in this country. The influence of clouds is the biggest uncertainty in this study. So far they are impossible to predict. There are also some things called rogue planets, i.e. planets not orbiting any star. Where do they come from? So far nobody knows. The thing about the universe outside our solar system is that, compared with us, it is a mighty fury of contradictions, indirections, insubordination, outlaws, own laws and no laws at all, as far as we can make out. What it is, above all, is a new body of knowledge which, if the history of bodies of knowledge is to be considered, will bring this world riches which we cannot at the moment even begin to imagine.

And so to Moscow. The centre of Moscow is much smarter and more handsome than I remember it from about 20 years ago. Much. Almost every building is six storeys, which gives it a pleasing and old-fashioned uniformity. Many of them are being painted up and they look very attractive in seaside colours. The shops do not advertise themselves as shops and so streets can seem rather dull, but there are word signs outside and if you look through the windows you see shops full of produce. The great department store GUM in Red Square is massive. It's like Venice enclosed in stone. Wonderfully worked stone. Inside there are canals of the latest European shops, with bridges stretching from one side to another two and three storeys up. You feel that you are in the centre of the world's luxury trade.

Red Square has one of the most eccentric and wonderful churches I've ever seen. St Basil's. It is in fact about a dozen chapels with onion domes and murals and marvellously worked icons. It looks like something out of a scene in the Arabian Nights. There are over 800 churches in Moscow and those I went to are extraordinarily well-preserved. And then there is the inner circular park walkway; there's the Conservatoire which is dedicated to Tchaikovsky ... And I saw a magnificent production of Educating Rita by a young, English-speaking company at a small theatre in the middle of the town. Too much really to absorb in too little time. But changed it has since I was there last. How deep, I don't know. How long-lasting, I don't know. But how striking!

Best wishes

Melvyn Bragg

 

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Next month a new science series begins on Radio 4, which should be the cue for rejoicing amongst those who enjoy such programmes.

However judging by the Feedback postbag there is a lot of mourning going on as well, because the new programme is replacing the much-loved Material World. Also dematerialising, at least for the moment, is the long running series presenter, Quentin Cooper. This week on Feedback I talked to the BBC executive responsible for these changes, Deborah Cohen, Editor of the radio Science Unit.

It’s not for me to comment on whether Deborah Cohen has made the right decision, but perhaps I can add a couple of thoughts.

First, unlike some of her colleagues, Ms Cohen never ducks an interview and will always come on Feedback even when she knows she’ll have to face a lot of criticism.

Second, I suspect that she would have liked to have kept both programmes, but given the shortage of space on Radio 4 doesn’t have that option.

That shortage is due in no small part to the dominance of news and current affairs. Just have a look at the Radio Times and see how much of the network is given over to news programmes. Add other mainstays such as Womans Hour, You and Yours and The Archers, and there isn’t much airtime left.

Then there is the problem of creative competition. In science radio there is hardly any.

This network is unique, but there is a downside. Some good shows have to come to a premature end to make space for new formats. Yet those new shows have to succeed almost immediately. There are few if any other places to experiment. It alright talking about the “right to fail”, but if you exercise that option too frequently you will likely be defenestrated along with your programmes.

A few years ago it was hoped that Channel 4 might develop a thriving radio arm, but that came to nothing. Then it was hoped there would be money available for significant original productions on Radio 4’s digital sister station 4 Extra. There isn’t.

So if you cancel a long running popular series and dispense with its much loved presenter you are certainly taking a brave decision, with no guarantee the new show will be a success. Good Luck Deborah Cohen! I look forward to your next appearance on Feedback.

Finally just a reminder that you set the agenda on Feedback, and that you can write to us about anything to do with BBC radio, network or local. That includes policy as well as programmes.

Listen to this week's Feedback or download it as a podcast

Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites.

Radio 4 has always sought to bring listeners the best and most engaging science stories possible, with a range of programmes, from news and documentaries to discussion programmes and debates. Central to our science offering for a long time has been Material World, the weekly science strand ably presented by Quentin Cooper for the last 13 years. While we will continue to have a half-hour science strand running 52 weeks a year, we have decided the time is right to make some changes to ensure the programme meets the demands and expectations of the Radio 4 audience into the future. We have been evolving our science offering over the last few years as we move beyond celebration of science to a deeper understanding of it. Among the programmes we have introduced are The Life Scientific, The Digital Human, Inside Health and The Infinite Monkey Cage. Inside Science – the programme replacing Material World – is part of this evolution.

Presented by Dr Adam Rutherford, Inside Science will be an authoritative, in-depth and enjoyable guide to science and the way that it is changing our world. It will keep the audience abreast of important breakthroughs in science, explore in depth some of the news stories that can get oversimplified elsewhere and work through implications of scientific discovery for society at large. It will mark significant developments within the various scientific disciplines and try to help the audience better understand the scientific process. The show will also share the wonder, passion and excitement of science by telling some of the great science stories that are out there. 

Professor Alice Roberts and Dr Lucie Green will share presenting duties with Adam, hosting some programmes later in the year. The presenter team continues Radio 4's commitment, following Brian Cox, Jim Al-Khallili and Mark Porter, to presenters who work inside science and medicine. The new title reflects this, allows the programme to be more easily located online and brings it into line with other science programme titles like Inside Health.

The new programme will be pre-recorded on the day of transmission to give the production team more flexibility in order to get the best guests and experts from the scientific community and present the most important material to listeners. From 4th July, Inside Science will air on Thursdays at 4.30pm and will be repeated at 9pm the same evening.

I would like to thank Quentin for his years of dedication to science on Radio 4 and look forward to working with him on other projects in the future. In the meantime, I would like to welcome Adam, Alice and Lucie on board. I hope you enjoy the new programme.

 

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites

Hello

Well, I got through it. People who know more about physics than I do (most of you) will have realised again and again how thin the ice was on which I was attempting to skate. Nevertheless, once again, those who contributed to the programme were not only a safety net and a cradle, but considerate enough to let me say a few words along the way. Martin Rees said afterwards how difficult it was to do this sort of programme without illustrations. "That's why we kept waving our arms around," he said. He also spoke about the number of letters he gets from people who are very interested in physics who sometimes begin "Even Newton was wrong..." Roger Penrose's letters include those that begin by saying how much they admire his books, but then attempt to explain why he's wrong. As a young man apparently Einstein was very dapper and beautifully dressed in the annus mirabilis of 1905, when he produced four papers while not working inside a university or a scientific community – four papers which changed the understanding of the universe. As an older man, the scruffy and bemused-looking mop top (the model for the first Dr Who?). He could have been a refugee from the Marx Brothers. Both Roger Penrose and the producer, Tom Morris, had personal anecdotes transmitted to them down their respective families that although Einstein loved to play the violin, especially in string quartets, and his name commanded only the best people to play with him, he had one grave fault. He couldn't count.

Ruth Gregory said that four dimensions were nothing like as complicated as we thought they were. When we came across a crowd of people and worked out how to navigate our way through them, we were using four dimensions. Martin said that the reason why Einstein's greater theory lay dormant for about forty years at the beginning of the twentieth century was that there were only very crude ways of testing their veracity. They could only come within 10% of establishing the truth. Now they can come within 1/100,000.

Doing this from the train, on the way to Carlisle, to give a talk about my novel in the town in which I was born. The event is being laid on by Gwenda Matthews, an independent bookseller, valiantly and, I hope, successfully continuing in her increasingly lovely occupation. I think it's 400 independent bookshops that have closed down over the last two or three years.

Tunnel, tunnel, tunnel... back in the light again. When I was at a grammar school I used to go into Carlisle sometimes to traipse around the independent bookshops. There was one second-hand bookshop, dug into the castle wall, which was wonderfully ripe for looting, with an extremely benevolent bookseller practically giving them away. Anyway, good luck to Gwenda Matthews and all who share her determination to stay independent.

It's been a John Ball week - filming a BBC documentary on this extraordinary fourteenth century preacher who helped inspire and amplify what has too long been miscalled the Peasants' Revolt. We've been whirling around Kent and Essex; at a wonderful sheep market in Colchester which has been there since at least the twelfth century, to abbey ruins which again – the abbey, that is – date from the twelfth century. Into Chelmsford for an unusual lunch break (i.e. not a sandwich in a car park), beside a river, and young Chelmsford folk wandering in the sunshine while cricket was being played nearby. In and out of churches beside the Essex Marshes, England past and present delighted by the appearance of the sun and leaping out to lap it up.

Best wishes

Melvyn Bragg

 

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My name is Shaun Keaveny, I am a music broadcaster, and a long-term sufferer of a sometimes debilitating condition. It is devastatingly virulent, indiscriminate, and can strike the patient down at any time, anywhere. It is the Earworm.

An earworm is a parasitic little fragment of music that burrows its way into your cortex. It can be impossible to remove and can remain in its host for days.

Do the Conga!

As I play music for a living, I am particularly susceptible to earworms. One morning on my 6 Music Breakfast Show, after a particularly extended bout of earworm-related torture involving the Thin Lizzy song Chinatown, I mentioned the phenomenon to my listeners who replied in their droves with their own maddening inner soundtracks. The collection and playing of listener Earworms has been a mainstay of my programme ever since.

The Macarena!

My earworms are often caused by audio-visual stimuli of some kind. The aforementioned Chinatown seizure happened as I was strolling through London's Chinatown, inevitably. But other things can kick them off too... the note of a screechy brake, a pinging sound from a malfunctioning computer, a phrase someone utters... anything can plunge your mind into a musical reverie that can be difficult to extricate oneself from.

The Birdie Song

In the documentary we put together on the subject, we managed to get some very interesting answers from scientists as to why they happen, what function they may serve, and who is most susceptible. We also hear some harrowing and amusing first hand accounts from the pitiable wretches whose lives have been blighted by an incessant loop of Bananarama or My Lovely Horse.

Of course, earworms are ultimately harmless, and it can even be argued they should be enjoyed. But its hard to see it that way when you have been whistling the theme tune to the Muppet Show for fifteen solid hours without respite.

I can only hope that

THE ARCHERS THEME!

you can get to the end of this article without picking one up. If you are a sufferer, why not share your experiences. Don't suffer in silence. (Chance would be a fine thing).

Shaun Keavney is the presenter of Earworms. He also has a regular show on BBC 6 Music

• Listen to Earworms presented by Shaun Keavney
• Find out more about Shaun Keavney's 6Music show
• Download Science programmes from Radio 4

"And, this week, that train of thought led us to try to squeeze as many Radio 4 presenters and producers
into our studio as possible..."

A bunch of attention seekers would be one way of describing the More or Less team.

With the Financial Times' Undercover Economist Tim Harford at the helm, we go to great lengths to get listeners to tune in to chat about statistics. They can be revealing, surprising, unexpected and, of course, confusing, contradictory or plain bogus.

But on More or Less, we aim to provide a clear way through the numbers of the moment.

And, this week, that train of thought led us to try to squeeze as many Radio 4 presenters and producers into our studio as possible.

With the UN recently announcing that the world's population had grown to 7bn, we thought there was no time like the present to test the popular belief that you could fit everyone in the world on the Isle of Wight (people really do believe this, and have done for a long time - type it into your search engine), if they stood shoulder to shoulder.

If we could fit about 74 people into our studio, we calculated, then the whole world could move to the Isle of Wight. If it so wished.

Measuring just 4m², once you take away the furniture, our studio's modelled in the finest BBC broom cupboard tradition.

It wasn't immediately clear it was advisable to stuff it full of human beings. But we did. (We consulted a BBC health and safety adviser - and persuaded him to squeeze in too).

We had strict rules - keep your hands to yourself and you're only allowed in if you've deodorised. Money Box presenter Paul Lewis was first through the door, followed - if you'll believe us - by dozens of his production staff. Other Radio 4 presenters appeared, rallying round to help the programme. And it was a tight fit.

"Oh, I can't get in there!" Jim Naughtie was heard to exclaim, while Gerry Northam sat on Winifred Robinson's knee. Tim was in charge of the counting, partly because he is good with numbers but mainly because he's really tall.

Meanwhile I, as producers always are, was in charge of worrying that something might go wrong.

You'll have to listen to find out how many we squashed in and how many of the big name presenters were really there. Suffice to say, I was quite surprised. And a bit hot.

Ruth Alexander is series producer, More or Less, BBC Radio 4

• More or Less is back on air with a new series on Friday 2 December 2011 at the new time of 1630 GMT. It is repeated on Sunday evenings at 2000 GMT. And the international More or Less podcast is available for download.

From the 2010 experiments - Ruth Brooks: Homing Snails

Looking for a new hobby? Try science.

One of the reasons that we launched our search for the BBC's Amateur Scientist of the Year is because science isn't really seen as a hobby.

Science is generally viewed as something that's done in a lab containing machines that go beep and test tubes bubbling over with brightly coloured liquid which may, or may not, present a health and safety hazard.

It's a very different scenario in the Arts, where despite having no discernible talent or knowledge, many of us decide to have a go at writing a poem, painting a picture or starting a band. Would any of us similarly decide to "have a go" at biochemistry?

Perhaps the nearest most of us get is the odd spot of domestic science, experiments which are rarely precise and prone to disaster. My first foray into jam-making last weekend showed that the boiling time stated in the recipe, and the actual duration to reach a setting point, had an extremely large error bar. This would not have cut the mustard, or indeed the jam, in my GCSE chemistry practical.

So can, and should, everyone practise science as a hobby? Our last winner, 70 yr old gardener Ruth Brooks A.K.A. The Snail Lady, is a testament to the idea that anyone can be niggled by a question and need to find the answer. Did the snails she threw over the fence really return to haunt her garden? If so, how far should she take them away to be sure that didn't come back?

With no science qualifications or formal training, all that Ruth was armed with was an enormous appetite for knowledge and a childlike curiosity about how the world works.

Now after a year of research she is set to become one of the lead authors on a science paper having discovered something genuinely new and exciting in the realm of ecology - that these little creatures do have a homing instinct and that you need to move them over 100m to make sure they have been exorcised from your garden for good.

So, if you have any questions at all, big or small, inside or outside, you have a few days left to enter them online before entries close at midnight on Tuesday 15 November. If you're selected as one of our four finalists I can promise it will be a voyage of discovery and a fascinating new hobby.

You can find out more about So You Want to Be a Scientist? on Material World Thursday 4.30pm repeated Monday at 9pm.

Michelle Martin is senior producer BBC Radio Science Unit

Image by Liz Henry used under licence

Next week sees the start of a season of programmes about the brain on Radio 4. It covers 5000 years of understanding (and misunderstanding) of what the brain is and what it does from the ancient Egyptians to recent advances in neuroscience. It takes in the myths and fallacies about the brain and what that tells us about the culture of the times.

Here's more info on the programmes that make up the brain season. Many of them will be available as podcasts to download and keep and there'll be profiles and interviews with many of the series' contributors including neuroscientist Colin Blakemore on Radio 4's interactive Science Explorer. I'll update with links to the programmes and podcasts as they become available.

A History of the Brain

Dr Geoff Bunn, who's also written a blog post on the series, presents 10 programmes on weekdays at 1.45pm covering 5,000 years of our understanding of the brain. From Neolithic times to the present day the series takes us through the many different historical ideas about what the brain is for and how it does its job. Starts Monday 7 November at 1.45pm and an omnibus at 9pm on Fridays.
Programme page: A History of the Brain

Brain Culture: Neuroscience and Society

A three-part series where Matthew Taylor explores new imaging techniques and their insights into the functioning of the brain. If we change our view of how the mind works should we teach, punish and rule people differently? Starts on Tuesday 15 November at 4pm. Programme page: Brain Culture: Neuroscience and Society

The Lobotomists

Hugh Levinson tells the story of the lobotomy craze of the 1940s and 50s and what it says about our attitude towards mental health then and now. On Monday 7 November at 8pm.
Programme page: The Lobotomists

Mind Myths

Radio 4's psychologist Claudia Hammond debunks common myths about the brain and its workings. Do we really only use 10% of our brain and does listening to Mozart makes children smarter? On Tuesday 8 November at 9pm.
Programme page: Mind Myths

The Life Scientific

In the next episode Jim Al-Khalili gets inside the mind of leading neuroscientist, Colin Blakemore. Tuesday 8 November at 9am.
Programme page: Colin Blakemore on The Life Scientific
The Life Scientific podcast

Paul Murphy is the editor of the Radio 4 blog

• The picture shows Liz Henry's brain and is used under this licence
• Read Dr Geoff Bunn introduces A History of the Brain on the blog
• Go to the Radio 4 Science Explorer
• Go to the 1500+ Science and Nature programmes from Radio 4 available to hear now

There's also a selection of brain and mind related material as part of the excellent Reith lectures archive including Colin Blakemore:

• 2003 VS Ramachandran: The Emerging Mind Neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran, Director of the Centre for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, lectures on new insights into the human brain's workings.
• 1984 John Searle: Minds, Brains and ScienceAmerican philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, John Searle examines the connections between Minds, Brains and Science.
• 1976 Colin Blakemore: Mechanics of the Mind Neurobiologist Dr Colin Blakemore, Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, explores different facets of human consciousness in six lectures.
• 1950 John Zachary Young: Doubt and Certainty in Science English zoologist and neurophysiologist John Zachary Young explores the function of the brain, and the current scientific methods used to increase our understanding of it.

The Science Explorer

It sure was a trip back in time. Could it really have been 1995 when I had interviewed Steven Pinker about his work on the mistakes young children make in language - "taked" instead of "took", and "hidded" rather than "hid"? And now Pinker is probably one of the best known psychologists in the world, causing controversy with every book he writes.

Philip from R4 interactive had appeared with a long list of programmes from the archive on neuroscience and psychology, as we were putting together the Science Explorer pages to accompany Pinker's recent interview on The Life Scientific.

The list reminded me of another story that I'd followed over the decades.

In the late 1970s there was a fashion for trying to teach apes to use sign language. In the US Herb Terrace of Columbia University worked with a chimpanzee called Nim, although he was critical of the idea that chimps could use language in a human fashion, and I produced a long interview about the experiment.

Fast forward to 2011 and the feature film Project Nim is released. We persuaded Herb Terrace into a studio in New York to discuss what had happened since to Nim and the teaching language to chimps research on Material World on Radio 4. And basically Prof Terrace told us that the whole venture was wrong headed. It's not often that a scientist will admit that. Our attitude to the great apes is so different today. And Nim lived to 20, ending his days in a reservation.

What's kept me so interested in producing and editing science programmes are the new ideas that come from the minds of the researchers and the impact they have on society. In the last thirty years we've had the appearance of AIDS and the development of drugs to keep the disease at bay; the disasters such as BSE; the controversial areas of stem cells and genetically manipulated crops; climate change; and then the pure science areas of cosmology - like seeing planets around other stars and the prediction of dark energy.

The way we cover the stories has constantly changed. Scientists have got better at communicating their ideas at a level the general public can understand. Our coverage is more informal and funny, particularly in programmes such as The Infinite Monkey Cage and Material World. Our documentaries are shorter - there are few programmes longer than 28 minutes, when in the past some were 45 minutes.

Although science is more popular with the public now than it was, it's still true that we have to work hard to get across the ideas. What hasn't changed is the fact that many listeners have forgotten all the science they were taught at school, if they had much teaching in the subjects at all. And much of the content is unfamiliar and downright weird in the case of subatomic physics.

We don't cover all aspects of science - we think some of it is just too hard to get across, and very obscure. But you can be sure to find the important stuff that you need to know to understand the modern world on Radio 4. It could be in the news bulletins, or the current affairs programmes, or in the specialist science output, such as Material World or Frontiers. And now in The Life Scientific you can hear about what makes scientists tick, how their research fits into their field and how they personally deal with adversity.

And if you have become curious about how the scientists got to where they are today go and search the Radio 4 archive. There's a wealth of programmes that will give the history of any of the current hot topics. I think the first documentary about stem cells was an episode of Frontiers from 1999.

Deborah Cohen is editor of the Radio Science Unit, BBC

• Visit the Science Explorer
• View all the Radio 4 science and technology programmes currently available online

Sir Paul Nurse

It's exciting enough to be given my own radio series but to kick off with my guest on the very first episode being arguably the most prominent scientist in Britain today makes it doubly exciting.

Sir Paul Nurse is always great value for money - he has pretty much achieved everything one can in science: he has run his own lab, made incredible discoveries, won a Nobel Prize and held the very top positions in the world of science.

And yet it is his personal life that is even more fascinating.

In this week's programme, I try to play a balancing act between learning about Paul's life and career and what makes him tick while at the same time trying to put him on the spot.

After all, here is a scientist who began from humble working class beginnings to become the personification of the scientific establishment. I make the point that he is in a real sense poacher turned gamekeeper, particularly, given his prominent and influential role in controlling huge amounts of research funds and deciding which areas of scientific research they should go to.

I particularly wanted to follow up on a quote from one of my future guests on The Life Scientific, Sir Tim Hunt, the biologist with whom Nurse shared his Nobel prize, who has said about Paul:

"He was my boss when we worked at the Cancer Research Campaign in the 90s and we got on well, but he could be pretty brutal with those who crossed him. He would liquidate them - metaphorically. He is not a doormat."

Paul Nurse is clearly an iron fist inside a velvet glove. And yet, he is such a likeable bloke, and I am certain that won't just be my perception of him. He has such an interesting story to tell.

I will of course do my utmost to ensure that future guests on The Life Scientific also spill the beans, but I am a long way from achieving the hypnotically engaging charm of Kirsty Young, and have set myself up for that sort of comparison by describing The Life Scientific as "Desert Island Discs without the music".

We shall see. For now, I am just gratified that science is getting such a prominent airing.

Jim Al-Khalili presents The Life Scientific

• The Life Scientific starts on Tuesday 11 Oct 2011 at 9am and is repeated at 930pm.
• Jim Al-Khalili's website
• Follow Radio 4 on Twitter and Facebook.

From the 2010 experiments - Ruth Brooks: Homing Snails

I learnt so much more than I had anticipated, not just about my chosen research subject - homing instinct in snails - but about other garden creatures, and how our gardens contain well-balanced, mini-ecosystems that we disturb at our peril. And my interest in science has increased exponentially. I am now addicted to science programmes, and magazines - and science festivals!

Learning the scientific process was challenging, but great fun - more like play-with-a-purpose. I had enormous support from my mentor, Dr Dave Hodgson, a terrestrial ecologist, who helped me get my head round the scientific method; and also from Michelle Martin, the Radio 4 producer who was always on hand to answer any queries about anything whatsoever.

Participating in one of the recordings at Broadcasting House was one of the highlights of the summer, along with my giving a talk at Sparsholt Horticultural College as part of Gardeners' Question Time Summer Party.

I also enjoyed following the diaries on Facebook of the other three finalists: the appearance of noctilucent clouds; where you'd find tightest squeeze at a music gig; and how people decide on their Facebook profile picture.

I had no idea that science covered such a vast range of subjects.

Ruth and her neighbour Peter tracking snails

Most satisfying of all was being able to do some genuine research, culminating in useful results. We found that, yes, snails do indeed have a homing instinct, confirming long-held, widespread anecdotal evidence. Findings so far reveal that they are able to return to their resting and feeding sites from up to 30m metres away. Beyond that, more research needs to be done, and is currently under way at the University of Exeter's Cornwall site, under Dave Hodgson's direction.

We are recommending that gardeners take their snails to a distance of 100 metres, just to be on the safe side!

If you have ANY idea for a science project, do enter it online for this year's award. Even if you're not chosen as one of the finalists, you'll enjoy listening as they explain their research topics, and learn a lot of science as you follow their progress to the grand final at Cheltenham Science festival next year.

You might, like me, be one of the lucky ones. You'll suddenly find yourself going along new, unexplored and exciting paths. You'll discover new abilities and inner resources that you never dreamed you possessed. And then, who knows where it will all lead...?

Ruth Brooks was chosen as the BBC's Amateur Scientist of the Year in 2010

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From October 2008: "Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Dante's 'Inferno' - a medieval journey through the nine circles of Hell." Available now as a podcast to download and keep.

To date we have produced 517 editions of In Our Time. All of these are available to be downloaded - and so will every future programme. In brief, you can get hold of and keep the whole collection at home on your own computer to listen whenever you want.

It's become a library of the air.

When we started in 1998, the idea of being of such value was off the radar. The main idea was to survive the first six months with what seemed to be a rather overambitious notion that we could take the cleverest academics in the land, and let them loose on the most recondite subjects available, and hope to gain a respectable Radio 4 audience just after nine o'clock on a Thursday morning.

We underestimated the Radio 4 audience in those first few months - not in their intellectual reach or in their enthusiasm but in their numbers, and as time went on in their loyalty to this eclectic enterprise.

It now seems that we are becoming an encyclopaedia (I say "we" not in the Mrs Thatcher sense of "We are a grandmother" but "we" in the sense of "the succession of producers, researchers and myself"). There couldn't be a much better outcome, could there? We are asking people to come in and talk whose work furnishes the great written encyclopaedias, and who themselves are salami-slicers of encyclopaedias, and they are now being recycled into a soundipaedia. Can we claim that as a new word? The wizards of the website have divided these 500-plus programmes into different categories (science, religion, history, culture, philosophy) so that they're easy to sort through.

When I look at the range and see the way that the work has built up, I can, in an unwary moment, kid myself that there was some purpose at work in the early days. I'm afraid it wasn't so.

The basic idea, among those of us who did it, was to educate ourselves and to find subjects which tested us - therefore we needed to be at full stretch; or baffled us - therefore we were looking for clarity. Others were part of an initially loose but increasingly resolute attempt to lasso areas of knowledge not very often brought to a wider public.

I suppose one of the best examples of that is works from the great Arabic Courts of learning from the 8th to the 14th century, or the outer edges of science, which contain so many rich ideas, opaque to most of us (with very much me included) but available, it seems, through the generous minds of the academics who turn up on Thursdays from all four points of the United Kingdom and give us the cream of their knowledge with quite remarkable concision.

The wonderful thing about it, as far as I'm concerned, is that it is simply never-ending.

We have done quite a few programmes about the history of China, although I'd like to do many more. The same applies to India, while we have barely touched on South America, which we must do more of. We have been reasonably good on philosophy, but I'm glad to say that has spread around other programmes, and so you feel maybe we can move a little more heavily into other areas. The classics, especially the Greeks - well, once upon a time I wanted to call the programme "It all Began with the Greeks", or a phrase to that effect.

It did at one stage appear to be the case, and I was not even daunted when a formidable lady on the front-row pew of a church in Putney, when I was talking about IOT, said that if she heard the phrase "Let's go back to the Greeks" once more she'd lose the will to live. Nevertheless a few weeks later, when we did "go back to the Greeks", she dropped me a note to say she was still with us!

I think at the best these programmes can be thrilling - well they certainly bring a great deal of excitement to me. It's rather an experiment to see if their freshness and vivacity will endure in this sonic encyclopaedia (or whatever the word is) and linger as long as works in some of the great libraries of the past. That's asking an awful lot - but who knows?

Melvyn Bragg is the presenter of In Our Time

• In Our Time returns this Thursday at 9am when Melvyn Bragg and his guests will be discussing the Hippocratic Oath.
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• Dante's Inferno: The episode of In Our Time featured above