Two dispatches from the far frontiers of science send our panellists into orbit around such issues as "how many years will it be before we all carry our personal genomes around with us, alongside our mobiles and our wallets?" and "why hasn't ET phoned earth yet?"
We hear astrophysicist Paul Davies's views on what the discovery of extra-terrestrial life would do to the religions of the world. And we consult a new book by Barack Obama's medical supremo, Francis Collins, to discover whether genomic medicine will be the saving of us, or our damnation.
We also interview the poet and memoirist John Burnside about the problems that plagued his early adulthood, from alcoholism to the neurological condition of apophenia – the experience of perceiving patterns and connections in random objects.
Reading list:
The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalised Medicine, by Francis Collins (Profile)
The Eerie Silence: Are we alone in the Universe? By Paul Davies (Allen Lane)
Take Off Your Party Dress: When Life's Too Busy for Breast Cancer, by Dina Rabinovitch (Pocket Books)
Waking Up In Toytown, by John Burnside (Jonathan Cape)
Elsewhere: Tim Radford's latest science book club choice is Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, by Ian Stewart.
