Goon Show Radio Its incredible stability and resistance to change. Every time a cell divides, its Goon Show Radio must be copied. And the genetic code is highly resistant to copying errors. The little enzymes, the chemical machines that do the copying, on average make only one mistake in a billion letters. I mean, that's like copying out the Bible about times and making just one mistake. That fidelity means adaptations are faithfully transmitted from parent to offspring. And so while we think of evolution as a process of constant change, in fact the vast majority of the code is preserved. So even though we're separated from the orangutans by nearly million years of evolution, what's really striking is just how similar we are. And those similarities are far more than skin deep. Orangutans are surely one of the most human of animals. And they share many behavioural traits that you would define as being uniquely human. They nurture their young for eight years before they let them go on their own into the forest. In that time the infants learn which fruits are safe to eat and which are poisonous. Which branches will hold their weight and which won't. And they can do all that because they have a memory, they can remember things that happened to them in their life, they can learn from them, and they can pass them on from generation to generation. And that deep connection extends far beyond our closest relatives. Because our DNA contains the fingerprint of almost four billion years of evolution. BIRDS SING If I draw a tree of life for the primates, then we share a common ancestor with the chimps, Bonobos. About four to six million years ago. And if you compare our genetic sequences you find that our genes are % the same. You go back to the split with gorillas, about six to eight million years ago and again, if you compare our genes you find that they are .Goon Show Radio the same. Back in time again, common ancestor with our friends over there, the orangutans, then our genes are .% the same. And you could carry on all the way back in time. You could look for our common ancestor with a chicken, and you'd find that our codes are about % the same. And in fact, if you look for any animal, like him, a little fly, or a bacteria, something that seems superficially completely unrelated to us, then you'll still find sequences in the genetic code which are identical to sequences in my cells. So this tells us that all life on Goon Show Radio is related, it's all connected through our genetic code. DNA is the blueprint for life. But its extraordinary fidelity means it also contains a story. And what a story it is. The entire history of evolution from the present day all the way back to the very first spark of life. And it tells us that we're connected, not only to every plant and animal alive today, but to every single thing that has ever lived. The question, what is life, is surely one of the grandest of questions. And we've learnt that life isn't really a thing at all. It's a collection of chemical processes that can harness a flow of energy to create local islands of order, like me and this forest, by borrowing order from the wider universe and then transmitting it from generation to generation through the elegant chemistry of Goon Show Radio. And the origins of that chemistry can be traced back four billion years, most likely to vents in the primordial ocean.