Whatever happens to science in schools, there's something peculiar going on if students don't see it as creative.
— Alice Roberts
Chance is hugely significant in biology. In fact, the presence of apparent randomness in so many aspects of biology - from mutations in DNA to the chance involved in that one sperm reaching that one egg that became you - suggests that randomness is useful, even necessary, in very many cases.
I consider myself to be a relatively sceptical person. I like to see evidence for myself, and try to avoid speculating beyond available evidence. But I also have to accept some things on trust.
Easter is an ancient festival of rebirth, but it’s also an excellent excuse for eating eggs. I really like eggs, of both the chocolate and chicken variety. But the chocolate ones, you must admit, can sustain only a fleeting interest. A sweet, sugary hit - and then it’s gone.
It seems that humans have been enjoying the taste and health benefits of blackberries for thousands of years. Gathered blackberries have been found at Neolithic sites, while a preserved iron age bog body, known as Haraldskaer Woman, provides definite evidence of blackberry ingestion.
Autumn is much redder in North America and east Asia than it is in northern Europe, and this can’t be explained by temperature differences alone. These areas also have a greater proportion of ancient tree lineages surviving: trees have gone extinct at a higher rate in Europe compared with those other areas.
The colour of a British wood in autumn is predominantly yellow. There are relatively few European trees which have red leaves in the autumn. But there are splashes of crimson or rust-red colours from a few indigenous trees, like the rowan, as well as from introduced species, like the North American red oak.
I was a fairly strict vegetarian - I ate eggs and dairy products but nothing that would involve killing an animal to furnish the food on my plate.
In our evolutionary narratives, the organism itself often seems to play a passive role: a powerless victim, almost, of changes to its environment or mutations in its genes.
Science offers us the possibility of understanding natural rhythms and events that must have seemed like the work of angry and unpredictable gods to our ancestors.
Pagan Romans started their midwinter celebrations with the feast of Saturnalia on 17 December, ending them with a new year festival, the Kalendae Januariae, at the start of January - both were celebrated with parties and the exchange of gifts.
I’m slightly obsessed with Moomins. They were my specialist subject on BBC’s 'Celebrity Mastermind' a few years ago!
I’m a firm believer in teaching children to manage risk.
Look what consumer power has done with organic food; we can do the same with clothes.
The real hallmarks of humanity are: curiosity and an amazing ability to cooperate.
One way I try to manage it is by not having a princess party for my daughter and trying to do things that are not so stereotyped. But if she’s invited to a princess party, of course I’m not going to stop her going.
From a very young age, parents are pushing their boys to achieve in a way they don’t always do for girls.
Spiders are always big in the autumn: they’ve had all summer to grow.
I know a bit about vertebrate anatomy and I’d like to think that I’d spot if a skeleton was entirely fabricated or cobbled together from existing bits and pieces.
The history of palaeontology is littered with examples of famous frauds and fakes, often with eminent researchers in the field being thoroughly hoodwinked by some fairly shoddy fabrications.
When I was in my 20s, and even though I was studying medicine, I didn’t ever really think that my body would fail. Now I’m in my 40s, I have to face a different reality - I, like everyone else, am slowly falling apart.
As well as tasting fantastic, blackberries are good for you. Anthocyanin isn’t just a pigment, it’s a flavonoid, a heroic antioxidant! The stuff of superfoods!
Evolutionary biologists have long pondered the phenomenon of the changing colours of autumn leaves. It’s possible that the red pigments are manufactured in the leaf as a side-effect of something else that’s happening at this time.
Later, I found it too hard to give up, and so I’ve continued eating fish and other seafood, while trying to ensure it’s sustainably sourced. This means I’m now one of those vegetarians I used to frown at - one who occasionally eats fish.
I gave up meat when I was 18, and it was an ethical decision. I loved the taste, and went on holiday to Greece, fairly gorging myself on lamb souvlaki before taking the plunge into a meatless existence.
Always attempting to tame and subjugate nature is not the solution. But the latest science is helping us to map out a path across this shifting landscape in uncertain times, showing us how to work with natural forces, not against them.
Around 4000BC, the Mesolithic, hunter-gatherer way of life here gave way to a more settled, farming existence. Those Neolithic people built wooden trackways across the salt marshes and reed beds.
In Luke, shepherds go to find Jesus. In Matthew, an unspecified number of wise men, sometimes portrayed as kings, arrive. Nativity plays usually throw all the elements together, with kings and shepherds beating a path to the stable.
I’ve always loved the seaside and I used to be a fairly keen surfer, but it’s a solitary activity so when my husband and I had children, we bought sit-on-top kayaks. Whenever possible, we escape to the coast or explore rivers with them.
Of course 'Horizon' had made an impact on me from a young age, but it was also humbling to meet and interview eminent scientists, and hear their high opinion of the series and of the science presented on the BBC more generally.
I was a goth in my student days. I dyed my hair black, but it came out grey, with a blue scalp. Then I dyed it red and it came out fuschia pink.
I find humanism to be the most rational and positive philosophy for life. And it’s not a new thing at all - the history of humanist thought is deep and inspiring.
The important thing is when you look at areas like physics and you realise that only one in five A-level students is a girl. We know it isn’t about aptitude.
Our ape legs make us great generalists - we can walk, run and climb. But when you try to do too many things at once, you can end up with problems.
Just as your own existence is unlikely and far from inevitable, the evolution of modern humans as a species depended on a whole string of chance events - some happening in the environments our ancestors inhabited, and some inside their own bodies, including random mutations in their DNA.
I’ve seen many dinosaur fossils, some mounted in museums, others in the process of being extracted from their rocky matrix, and it has never occurred to me that any could be anything other than genuine.
Embryology reveals surprising similarities between early embryos of seemingly quite different animals. And it also shows that some structures that may look very different later on have fundamental similarities in the way they form.
Looking in detail at human anatomy, I’m always left with two practically irreconcilable thoughts: our bodies are wonderful, intricate masterpieces; and then - they are cobbled-together, rag-bag, sometimes clunking machines.
We’re not the only mammals who are partial to blackberries, far from it. Foxes and badgers will also gobble them up, helping to distribute the seeds, which survive the transit through the gut.
And when you take something like the changing colour of autumn leaves and start to ask why, you’re starting off on an intellectual journey which will take you beyond that moment of visual satisfaction, while robbing nothing from that experience.
Eighteen years later, pregnant with my first child, I started eating fish. Oily fish in particular contains plenty of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, essential for neural development.
If a group of humans began to run regularly, perhaps allowing them to hunt or scavenge more effectively, anatomical changes would follow, especially among the still-developing youngsters.
While planting woodlands along rivers has been shown to work in small areas, it has been unclear whether it would be effective on a larger scale. But computer modelling indicates that restoring forests on floodplains could slow floodwaters and reduce the height of the flood downstream.
Stonehenge is famously aligned with midsummer sunrise, and possibly also intentionally with midwinter sunset.
I love Christmas. At this very special time of year, when the sun appears only fleetingly to those of us living in the northern hemisphere, I feel a deep connection with ancient ancestors.
My mum was an art teacher, so we used to have fantastic dressing-up costumes when we were little.
Science plays a huge role in our lives. We're surrounded by technology, we depend on it.
When I started doing television, I was very aware my clothes would be obvious and it was a great opportunity to promote brands which are made with respect to people and the environment.
As an anthropologist, I believe strongly in our common humanity. We can rise above the tribal divisions that have caused so much anguish and real damage in the past.
I don’t think anyone is saying that we should be treating boys and girls exactly the same and that we should try to eliminate all differences. What the psychologists who do this work are saying is we should be aware of it and careful about it, especially if we think it could be limiting choices.
