Earth teems with a staggering variety of animals, including 9,000 kinds of birds, 28,000 types of fish, and more than 350,000 species of beetles. What explains this explosion of living creatures—1.4 million different species discovered so far, with perhaps another 50 million to go? The source of life's endless forms was a profound mystery until Charles Darwin brought forth his revolutionary idea of natural selection. But Darwin's radical insights raised as many questions as they answered. What actually drives evolution and turns one species into another? To what degree do different animals rely on the same genetic toolkit? And how did we evolve? "What Darwin Never Knew" offers answers to riddles that Darwin couldn't explain. Breakthroughs in a brand-new science—nicknamed "evo devo"—are linking the enigmas of evolution to another of nature's great mysteries, the development of the embryo. NOVA takes viewers on a journey from the Galapagos Islands to the Arctic, and from the explosion of animal forms half a billion years ago to the research labs of today. Scientists are finally beginning to crack nature's biggest secrets at the genetic level. The results are confirming the brilliance of Darwin's insights while revealing clues to life's breathtaking diversity in ways the great naturalist could scarcely have imagined.

Michael Mosley puts himself through a battery of health tests available to people who feel perfectly well. From an expensive heart scan to a new national screening procedure to detect the earliest signs of bowel cancer, Mosley sets out to discover which if any of the tests are worth doing.

Sir David Attenborough is to present and narrate a new landmark film, Climate Change: The Facts for BBC One. The documentary will provide an urgent look at the science of climate change and the potential solutions to this global threat, combining footage that reveals the already devastating impact of climate change on our planet with interviews from some of the world’s leading climate scientists. After one of the hottest years on record, climatologists and meteorologists explain the effects of climate change on both the human population and the natural world. Scientists, including Dr James Hansen, Dr Michael Mann and Professor Catherine Mitchell will forensically unpack the science behind the extreme weather conditions of recent years, which have seen unprecedented storms and catastrophic wildfires; as well as detailing how the accelerating rate at which the world’s ice is melting is causing sea level rises, and how deforestation is exacerbating the problem of global warming by adding to CO2 in the atmosphere. The film will deliver an unflinching exploration of what dangerous levels of climate change could mean for human populations, what is likely to happen if global warming exceeds 1.5 degrees and if major reductions in CO2 emissions are not made in the next decade. The documentary looks too at potential solutions, exploring the innovations, technology and actions the world's governments and industries are taking to prevent further warming and showcasing individuals who are creating change at grassroots levels. In the film, Sir David Attenborough says: "In the 20 years since I first started talking about the impact of climate change on our world, conditions have changed far faster than I ever imagined. It may sound frightening but the scientific evidence is that if we have not taken dramatic action within the next decade we could face irreversible damage to the natural world and the collapse of our societies. We're running out of time but there's still hope… I believe that if we better understand the threat we face, the more likely it is that we can avoid such a catastrophic future.”