This 'shamelessly nerdy...deeply silly' (Radio Times) space extravaganza features fewer close-ups of Professor Brian Cox looking cool in front of a rocket than Wonders of the Universe but more weird, wonderful and occasionally woeful stories about the geniuses, Nazis and Satanists who plotted to propel humankind to the stars. Find out the many and varied ways to leave the planet as It Is Rocket Science takes you on a 'gleefully irreverent' (The Scotsman) whistle-stop comic tour of the Great Brains who put monkeys, ladies, dogs and gentlemen into orbit.     

We would all be better off if everyone saw mathematics as a practical ally. Sadly, most of us fear maths and seek to avoid it. This is because mathematics doesn't have good 'people skills' - it never hesitates to bluntly point out when we are wrong. But it is only trying to help! Mathematics is a friend which can fill the gaps in what our brains can do naturally. Luckily, even though we don't like sharing our own mistakes, we love to listen to tales about what happens when maths errors make the everyday go horribly wrong.... 

The Element in the Room will take you on a rib-tickling, experiment-fuelled adventure to explain everyday science that is staring you in the face. If you are sci-curious, pi-curious or just the-end-is-nigh-curious then this is the book for you. Steve Mould and Helen Arney are two thirds of science comedy phenomenon Festival of the Spoken Nerd.

The world's most entertaining and useless self-help guide, from the brilliant mind behind the wildly popular webcomic xkcd and the million-selling What If? and Thing Explainer. For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way and a way so monumentally bad that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole. 

All five series of Simon Evans’ BBC Radio 4 show explaining economics through comedy. How do you make money funny? How do you put the comedy in commodity? In this BBC radio show, Simon Evans sets himself the challenge of making economics entertaining through comedic lectures, with the help of special guests including investment gurus, financial journalists and economists. 

Writer, broadcaster and recovering comedian Natalie Haynes mixes comedy and conversation to bring the ancient world entertainingly up to date in these four radio series. Each episode sees her profiling a key figure from ancient Greece and Rome, and, aided by her special guests, creating a stand-up show around them. 

Dead Ringers returns with more sharp, topical comedy in these eight shows, featuring all six episodes from Series 17 as well as the two 2017 Christmas specials. Impressions and caricatures are the charming courtiers of explosively satirical truth bombs as Jon Culshaw, Jan Ravens, Lewis MacLeod, Debra Stephenson and Duncan Wisbey take on the worlds of politics and entertainment.

Victoria Coren Mitchell meets some fascinating women to explore the journeys they have made in the cars that they have known - and the sorts of things they shout in traffic. Hear what Dawn wrote on the back of her first car; find out which comedian totalled her beloved Cortina; and discover the advantages of the refrigerated glove compartment. Sarah Millican describes a traffic jam that lead to some desperate measures, Sheila Hancock explains how the trick of getting older is actually to speed up and Jo Brand recounts how her car became an impromptu counselling couch for comedians.

The BBC Radio 4 show where Steve Punt turns private investigator, examining little mysteries that perplex, amuse and beguile. His methods may be unconventional, but he gets the job done in this collection of all 18 epsiodes from series 6-10 of Punt PI. 

In these 24 episodes, Tom Wrigglesworth phones home for his weekly check-in, giving us a funny, fascinating glimpse into his family background and the influences that have shaped his temperament, opinions and hang-ups. As the conversations unfold, Tom takes time out from the calls to explain the situation and his parents’ reactions, and relate various anecdotes from the past which illustrate his family's views. And sometimes he just needs to sound off about life’s everyday annoyances. 

The BBC Radio 4 show where Steve Punt turns private investigator, examining little mysteries that perplex, amuse and beguile. His methods may be unconventional, but he gets the job done in this collection of all 17 episodes from series 1-5 of Punt PI. 

Susan Calman has some very strong opinions, and in her radio debut she expresses them with her trademark wit and charm. In series 1, she examines the current hot political topic of equal marriage, looks at the issues surrounding the death penalty from the perspective gained whilst working on death row, considers how best to deal with depression and evaluates what it means to be Scottish. In series 2 she explains why she has never been interested in having children, explores society’s obsession with appearance, discusses intellectual snobbery and asks what it is that makes us human.

Michael and Maxine Wilson and their teenage daughters, Lola and Cat (plus their bearded dragon, Chomsky, and about 150,000 bees), have resolved to live a cleaner, greener, serener life. They are attempting to live ethically...whatever that means. The Wilsons conscientiously tackle tricky situations and dilemmas, from balancing the need of hot sun on holiday to a carbon-neutral campsite, explaining the pitfalls of online relationships to their daughter by drawing parallels to Brexit or protesting library closures when, according to Cat, everything can be found online anyway. 

Nothing escaped the eye of the satirical eye of Britain's phenomenally successful all-Asian sketch show that was Goodness Gracious Me. The complete BBC Radio series 1-3 fore-ran the award-winning BBC TV series that ran in the late 1990s, and features the same cast. Prepare for your heart to pound in the Indian recreation of Brief Encounter, sing along to the profound words of wisdom with Fifty Ways to Leave your Mother, and enjoy pop classics such as Hindi People and Punjabi Girl.

Welcome to the age of the algorithm, the story of a not-too-distant future where machines rule supreme, making important decisions - in health care, transport, finance, security, what we watch, where we go, even whom we send to prison. So how much should we rely on them? What kind of future do we want? Hannah Fry takes us on a tour of the good, the bad and the downright ugly of the algorithms that surround us. In Hello World she lifts the lid on their inner workings, demonstrates their power, exposes their limitations and examines whether they really are an improvement on the humans they are replacing.