Darwin Festival 09.07.21 - Conversations from the Darwin Festival - Ruth Padel

This week historian Sandra Herbert tells how she retraced Darwin's footsteps to the Galapagos in search of rock samples to prove his volcanic theories were right...

This week we're in conversation with Sir Terry Pratchett, author of the multi-million selling Discworld series. We find out what inspired 'The Science of Discworld 3: Darwin's Watch', get Richard Dawkins into holy orders and explore a world without Darwin...

Darwin's first book was on coral reefs. Brian Rosen, from the Natural History Museum in London,takes up the story...

This week we're in conversation with Nobel laureate Sir John Sulston, the man behind the human genome project. He tells how he went from chemist to biologist to work on a tiny worm, C. elegans, that laid the foundations for the sequencing of the human genome.

Poet and Darwin-descendent Ruth Padel talks about how the history books led her to write "Darwin, a life in poems", an anthology of fifteen poems charting the major events of Darwin's life.

Award winning Canadian hip hop artist Baba Brinkman brings us his Rap Guide to Evolution, an hour of clever, witty and scientifically accurate rhymes that will have you seeing Darwin from a whole new perspective. Baba explores the history and current understanding of Darwin's theory, combining hilarious remixes of popular rap songs with clever lyrical storytelling that covers Natural Selection, Artificial Selection, Sexual Selection, Group Selection, Unity of Common Descent, and Evolutionary Psychology.

We tie up the Darwin Festival with predictions on global warming and the future of the human species. Plus, we find out about cultural selection and how tricky it is putting together an exhibition on science and fine art!

The fourth day brings together geologists and an exploration of Darwin's early scientific forays. We also find out how we have the power to solve climate change in a generation, why we should make friends with yeast and how the Obama government will promote science research.

Day three of the festival and if you've ever wondered what a Darwin rap sounds like, this show is for you. We also explore Darwin's foibles, nice scientists, first cousin marriages and evolutionary poetry.

We catch up with festival attendees and speakers on the second day of the Darwin Festival at Cambridge. Today we search for the origins of religion, meet the man who got the Human Genome Project going and speak to Terry Pratchett about shaved cats...