David Lewis was of one of the most remarkable nautical explorers of modern times. In the mid-1960s, he took his wife and two small daughters - who were less than five years old - on a sailing trip around the world in a small catamaran. What is more, for one part of the journey, he rejected standard 20th-Century navigational equipment and relied on much older methods of finding his way across the Pacific. In fact, it was his lifelong goal to prove that ancient seafaring methods were still valuable and his research helped revive ancient Polynesian navigation methods. In his more than eventful life, he also wrote a dozen books, practised as a GP in London’s East End and tackled many unclimbed peaks as a mountaineer. And he undertook hazardous trips to the Antarctic including one in which he was presumed dead.Rajan Datar is joined by David’s son Barry, who is also an accomplished sailor and who accompanied David on some of his seminal voyages; Dr. Christina Thompson, the editor of Harvard Review and the author of Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia; and Ben Lowings, a yachtsman, BBC journalist and the author of David Lewis's biography entitled The Dolphin.[Photo: David Lewis sets out on his 1972 trip to the Antarctic in his 32-foot sloop Ice Bird. Credit: George Lipman; Stuart William MacGladrie/Fairfax Media/Getty Images]

Patricia Highsmith was one of the most successful suspense writers of the 20th century. Known especially for her novels The Talented Mr. Ripley, Carol and Strangers on a Train, she created complex and alluring characters, capable of terrible things and at the same time deeply human. Yet for much of her life, Highsmith herself remained an enigmatic figure, often seen as eccentric, troubled and difficult. But she had a circle of close friends who were loyal to the end.Presenter Bridget Kendall is joined by Andrew Wilson, author of the first biography of Highsmith, and Vivien De Bernardi, a close friend of Highsmith's during her later years in Switzerland.Produced by Jo Impey for BBC World ServiceImage: Patricia Highsmith at her home in France, 1976 Image credit: Derek Hudson, Getty Images

Over a thousand years ago in the city of Bukhara in modern-day Uzbekistan, a young man was gaining a reputation for his great medical knowledge. His name was Ibn Sina and he was to go on to become one of the most influential physicians and philosophers not just in the Islamic world, but also in the West, where his writings were translated into Latin under the name Avicenna. For over 500 years, his five-volume Canon of Medicine was the most important medical reference book in the world.Joining Bridget Kendall to discuss Ibn Sina are: Nader El-Bizri, Professor of Philosophy and Civilisation Studies at the American University in Beirut; Peter E. Pormann, Professor of Classics and Graeco-Arabic Studies at the University of Manchester; and Emann Allebban, Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Providence College in Rhode Island in the US.Image: 14th century illuminated portrait of Avicenna or Ibn Sina, Biblioteca Nazionale Florence, Italy (Photo by Leemage/Corbis via Getty Images)

Completed in 1914, the Panama Canal has long been regarded as a triumph of American ingenuity, a conquest over nature that helped secure the United States’ position as a world power. Taking ten years to build, it opened up new trading routes between East and West by providing a vital waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. But what was the real story behind this challenging engineering project? How were the Panamanians affected? Who were the tens of thousands of workers who built the canal? And what was the environmental impact of work that literally cut through a mountain and redirected two oceans? And with climate change, will the Panama Canal be such a vital waterway in the future? Joining Bridget Kendall, is the Panamanian academic Dr Marixa Lasso, author of “Erased: The Untold Story of the Panama Canal”, the first major book on the Canal from the Panamanian point of view; Julie Greene, Professor of History at the University of Maryland, and the author of “The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal”, and Paul Sutter, Professor of Environmental History at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and author of a forthcoming book on the impact of US public health measures during the construction of the Panama Canal.Producer: Anne Khazam(Image: A painting depicting the S.S. Ancon, the first ship to pass through the Panama Canal on the opening day on 15 August,1914 in the Canal Zone, Panama. Credit: Illustration by Ed Vebell/Getty Images)

Ida Pfeiffer's desire to see the world was like many childhood fantasies - destined to remain just that. And yet at the age of 44 once her sons had reached adulthood, she set off from her home in Vienna on a series of journeys that no woman of her time or background had contemplated. Beginning with a trip to the Middle East, Pfeiffer travelled mostly alone, documenting her voyages and collecting specimens that she later sold to help finance her adventures abroad. Budget travel was her mantra, as she was not a wealthy aristocrat like many travellers of that time. On her journeys Pfeiffer was attacked, kidnapped, robbed and almost drowned. She met head-hunters and endured extreme conditions to pursue her dream. Defying all convention, Pfeiffer became celebrated as the most travelled woman on the planet, circumnavigating the globe twice. But despite her trailblazing attitude, she was no feminist, believing that women should be either professionals or home-builders, not both.Rajan Datar discusses the life of this most unlikely traveller with the social and cultural anthropologist Hiltgund Jehle; Ulrike Brisson, whose research has focused on 19th and early 20th-Century European women's travel writing; and John van Wyhe, senior lecturer in the department of biological sciences at Tembusu College in Singapore, and author of Wanderlust: The Amazing Ida Pfeiffer, the first female tourist.Producer: Fiona Clampin(Image: Portrait of the Austrian traveller Ida Pfeiffer (1797-1858), from Il Giro del mondo (World Tour), Journal of geography, travel and costumes, Volume XVII, Issue 8, February 23, 1873. Credit: DEA /Biblioteca Ambrosiana/Getty Images)

How did we get from not having any reliable way of predicting the weather just 150 years ago, to today's accurate, tailor-made forecasts for places as small as a village? Bridget Kendall and guests trace the history of meteorology, from its first steps as an aid to quicker trans-Atlantic shipping to the latest methods which can help anticipate weather events as short-lived as a tornado.Bridget is joined by Kristine Harper, a former US Navy forecaster and now a history professor at Florida State University; Peter Gibbs who started out as a meteorologist with the British Antarctic Survey and the UK's Met Office before becoming one of the best known weather forecasters on BBC radio and television; and Peter Moore, a writer and historian with a particular interest in weather discoveries of the 19th century.Photo: A hurricane is seen from the International Space Station. (Scott Kelly/NASA via Getty Images)

A young immigrant to the USA who started out working in a draper's shop, Emile Berliner ended up paving the way for the world of recordings and home entertainment that we delight in today. But even before he got to work on his recording machine - which he would later call the gramophone - Berliner made a major contribution to another piece of technology that's very familiar to us today: the telephone. And not content with all these achievements, he also promoted the pasteurisation of milk, financed a major scholarship for women to pursue academic research and tried to develop a working helicopter. So how did Berliner come up with these ideas? Why was he at one point prevented from selling his gramophones and records? And why is his name less well known today than those of his contemporaries Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell?Bridget Kendall is joined by three Berliner experts: Dr. Anja Borck, director of the Musee des ondes Emile Berliner in Montreal; Sam Brylawski, former head of recorded sound at the Library of Congress in Washington which houses an extensive Berliner archive; and David Giovannoni, a historian of recorded sound and the co-author of E. Berliner's Gramophone - a study of the American disc industry from 1892 to 1900.[Image: Berliner gramophone, 1890. Credit: Science & Society Picture Library/SSPL/Getty Images]

Have you ever sat against the trunk of a large old tree, looked up into its canopy and wondered what it’s seen in its lifetime? There are many species of tree that survive well beyond a human lifespan, for hundreds of years, and some that can live far longer than that, spanning millennia. What can we learn from large old trees around the world? How do they influence the environment? And how can we preserve them for future generations?Joining Bridget Kendall to discuss ancient trees are Peter Crane, former director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London; Valerie Trouet, Professor at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona in the US; and conservation biologist, Michael Gaige.Produced by Jo Impey for BBC World ServiceImage: A Bristlecone Pine, one of the oldest living organisms on earthImage credit: Piriya Photography / Getty Images

The Wizard of Oz is best known as one of the most watched films of all time, or as one of its many re-incarnations, such as the hugely successful Broadway musical Wicked or the Soviet, The Wizard of the Emerald City. But fewer people nowadays may be aware of the original book by the American writer L. Frank Baum that inspired these stories about a young girl who travels through a magic land in the company of a talking scarecrow, a tin man and a fearful lion. While he was a controversial figure, it was L. Frank Baum’s ideas about social justice and rights for women which pervade not just The Wizard of Oz but also its sequels, and explain why this story in its many forms has inspired many minority groups, from the African American to the LGBT communities. Joining Bridget Kendall is Michael Patrick Hearn, considered to be the world’s leading Oz scholar, and author of The Annotated Wizard of Oz; Dr Sally Roesch Wagner, who specialises in the feminist aspects of The Wizard of Oz including the influence of Frank Baum’s mother-in-law, the women’s rights campaigner, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and the Russian writer Olga Zilberbourg who has studied the very popular Soviet version of the story.Produced by Anne Khazam for the BBC World Service.[Image: Publicity still from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Credit: Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images]

The practice of hunting with birds of prey is thought to stretch back thousands of years. In early nomadic societies, falconry was used to hunt animals to provide food and clothing in places such as the steppes of Central Asia. As the practice spread, falconry evolved into a pastime that attracted the elite of European society, reflected in the extensive iconography of noblemen and women and their falcons. Today falconry is found in more than 90 countries around the world.At its core remains the importance of the relationship between falconer and the bird of prey, a bond unlike any other between man and beast. But although falconry has been classed as intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO, there are challenges to its survival. And some argue that falconry itself is exploitative.Rajan Datar is joined by the president of the International Association for Falconry, His Excellency Majid al-Mansouri; Adrian Lombard, Chair of the South African Falconry Association; art historian Anne-Lise Tropato, the first Falconry Research Fellow at New York University Abu Dhabi, and social anthropologist Sara Asu Schroer who's researched the relationships between falconers and birds of prey through fieldwork in Britain and Europe.Produced by Fiona Clampin for the BBC World Service[Image: Emirati Ali Mansouri trains a falcon in the Liwa desert. Credit: KARIM SAHIB/AFP via Getty Images]