Alok Jha talks to mathematician Sam Arbesman about his new book The Half Life of Facts: Why Everything we Know has an Expiration Date, which challenges our assumptions about "factual knowledge".
Alok is also joined by Observer science editor Robin McKie and Prof Kate Jones, chair of ecology and biodiversity at University College London, who believes citizen science in the form of an app could help save the UK's ash trees.
Kate introduces her latest citizen science project Bat Detective which is trying to recruit as many human ears as possible to help classify bat calls by searching an audio database.
Our guests also discuss the news that the UK government has decided not to dismantle the British Antarctic Survey.
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