REEP - What's On - TV & Radio Listings

Saturday 16 August

Coast

6:00pm

Newcastle to Hull. Neil Oliver and the team take a journey around the coast of the British Isles. While Neil explores the ancient coastal home of the Venerable Bede, the genius monk who 1,300 years ago wrote the first history of England, engineer Dick Strawbridge investigates the construction of the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge, and its odd connection with the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Alice Roberts reveals the dark secrets of Whitby Jet, and how in 1967 the summer of free love was also the summer of free gas.

Sunday 17 August

Something Understood

6:05am

Stacks of Wisdom: Mark Tully celebrates libraries. From the famous to the obscure, libraries are dusty and mysterious, solemn and weighty, dull and boring, chaste and wickedly romantic. They have contained the collected wisdom of groups and nations, they have enabled the poor to climb out of their circumstances, the poet to survive penury, the revolutionary to plot and the theologian to speculate. But do they remain as important in the modern media age?

Living World

6:35am

Isle of Man: The Natural History of the TT Race. Lionel Kelleway joins two TT race fanatics and naturalists on a trip around the famous 37-mile course on the Isle of Man. They observe the local wildlife, including cave spiders, lampreys and orchids.

Countryfile

11:00am

John Craven heads to the countryside of Leith Hill in Dorking, which inspired composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, while Miriam O'Reilly investigates why the rising cost of fertiliser means some farmers are spreading sewage on their fields. Plus, Adam Henson reports on the threat to the cockle fishing industry on Burry Inlet in Wales. All that and some top tips on cool camping.

Earth: The Power of the Planet

6:00pm

Ice. Documentary series in which Dr Iain Stewart reveals the natural forces that have shaped the earth's development. Ice isn't just something to put in a gin and tonic - it has carved out landscapes, unleashed catstrophes and shaped human evolution. Now it could cause the destruction of our civilisation. Iain visits the Jacobshavn glacier in Greenland which has retreated 10km in the last few years because of global warming.

Birds and Beasts

7:45pm

Five specially commissioned stories with an animal theme. 3: Hey Ho Silvo, by Ruth Thomas. As Cathleen mourns her much-loved dog she receives a visit from her nephew, who is nursing a very different sense of loss. Read by Anne Reid.

Pacific Abyss

8:00pm

The first in an exciting new underwater wildlife series. Kate Humble sets sail on a 2,000-mile adventure across the Pacific with a team of top natural-history film-makers and deep-water marine biologists. Kate dives to some of the most intact shipwrecks left by the Second World War, while it is one drama after another for the deep-dive team in their quest to find new species in the depths.

Monday 18 August

Our Food, our Future

9:00am

Tom Heap examines the global food crisis and its impact on Britain. 4: He asks what role technology can play in solving the problem. Can science provide the answers to food shortages, rising demand, drought and climate change and are scientists looking in the right places for solutions?

The Genius of Charles Darwin

8:00pm

Richard Dawkins presents a guide to Charles Darwin and his revolutionary theory of natural selection, which Dawkins considers the most important idea ever to occur to a human mind. In this final episode, he meets creationsts, scientists, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, to examine the continuing controversy around Darwin's evidence.

Twenty Minutes

8:25pm

Proms Literary Festival: Matthew Sweet goes on urban safari with travel writers Iain Sinclair and Robert Macfarlance. Iain is a chronicler of London and south east England, while Robert sought out the UK's remaining wildernesses for his latest book. They discuss their favourite passages of writing about the urban landscape and how they try to evoke in their writing the wilderness and nature that they say can be found even in our most crowded cities.

Tuesday 19 August

Why Do We Sing?

1:30pm

Gareth Malone explores how man developed the vocal capability to sing. He investigates how singing as we know it today began hundreds of millions of years ago and how prehistoric man used a type of vocal communication which could be called the precursor of singing. He finds out how this changed and developed as man evolved and explores what this tells us about human communication and how our relationship with song has grown out of moments in early history.

Home Planet

3:00pm

Richard Daniel and the team discuss listeners' questions about the environment and the natural world. Call 03700 100 444 [calls from land lines cost no more than 8p a minute].

Jimmy Doherty's Farming Heroes

8:00pm

West of England. Jimmy Doherty continues his journey around the UK, meeting the people who are shaping the future of farming. In the final part of his journey, Jimmy heads to the West of England. It is picture-book rural Britain, but also a region full of small farmers with big ideas about how food production needs to change. Jimmy meets the mavericks who are finding ways to make organics cheaper, keep food local and bring a dead cow back to life. And he discovers Britain's only underground farm.

Thursday 21 August

Crossing Continents

11:00am

Guatemala and Canada Gold Rush: Bill Law reports on a controversial mining project by Vancouver-based Goldcorp in Guatemala. Local Mayan Indians claim that the open pit mine is damaging their health and community cohesion. Goldcorp deny this, insisting they bring benefits to local communities and that they take their social responsibilities seriously.

Open Country

1:30pm

Caz Graham visits Northumberland to see how fire has shaped the landscape.

Friday 22 August

Costing the Earth

3:00pm

Summer of Mud: Renewable energy powered stages, biodegradeable tent pegs and car-share schemes all sound great when trying to reduce the environmental impact of summer festivals, but do they really make any difference? How much do festival-goers and performers really care about the environment?