Petersburg, Kentucky, is in the middle of North America. It is supposedly within a day’s drive of two-thirds of the US population.

For the rest, it is just 10 minutes from Cincinnati International Airport. That is why it was picked as the site for a new museum, due to open in a couple of months.

We enter the landscaped grounds through gates flanked by wrought iron stegosaurs.

The lobby is modelled on a cliff in the Grand Canyon. But this is no ordinary museum of science and geology.

It is the dream of Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis, a Christian ministry that promotes the idea that the Biblical book of Genesis should be taken literally in describing the creation of the world, life and humans as carried out by God over a six-day period a few thousand years ago.

In two editions of Heart and Soul, the BBC World Service explores the controversy in the United States between creation and evolution and investigates a spectrum of beliefs.

To gain insights into the minds of the personalities involved, the BBC gave microphones to two of the key players from very different viewpoints and asked them for their reactions through a series of encounters and interviews.

It’s called the anthropic universe: a world set up so that human beings could eventually emerge. So many physical constants, so many aspects of our solar system, so much seems to be finely tuned for our benefit. But was it? We hear from Professors Martin Rees, Paul Davies, and Frank Tipler, as well as many others, about one of the ultimate questions.

I've been asking a few friends who are neither journalists nor scientists— nor, for that matter, Americans— what they understand by the term "intelligent design." "Isn't that the slogan of that German car company?," one said, in a remark typical of what I often hear. In Europe, intelligent design is nowhere near the big issue that it is in North America. Serious newspapers have been giving brief coverage to the Dover, Pennsylvania court case on their inner pages, but in the popular press and on television there is not a mention made.

Sixty years ago this month, in October 1945, the magazine Wireless World published an article by a relatively unknown writer and rocket enthusiast. Its title was: "Extra-Terrestrial Relays: Can Rocket Stations Give World Wide Radio Coverage?" Today, the author's name is known throughout the world. He is the science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke, and his prediction of satellite communications has come true in ways even he never imagined. To mark the anniversary, Heather Couper travels to Sir Arthur's home in Sri Lanka to hear his own story.

It was 60 years ago this month that the popular magazine Wireless World published an article entitled Extra-terrestrial Relays: Can rocket stations give worldwide radio coverage? The author was a young writer by the name of Arthur C Clarke. His "rocket stations" are today known as communications satellites.