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Astronomer Stuart Clark joins us in the studio to look at the latest thinking about the effects of variations in solar activity on the Earth's climate. Dark matter gets a mention too.

Over the coming days he will be conducting question-and-answer sessions on Twitter - both on solar activity and dark matter. Follow him at DrStuClark and post your questions using the prefix #AskDrStu. (2:00)

There's a new BBC TV series starting this week called Paradox. Its writer Lizzy Mickery comes into the studio to tell us about the challenges of getting a drama based on science onto prime-time TV. (12:10)

In the newsjam we look at a new drug hailed as the "female viagra" and Nasa's announcement that its LCROSS probe found water on the moon. (15:30)

Duncan Clark from environmentguardian.co.uk responds to the s*** storm of blog comments arising from last week's podcast on eco-myths. Who'd have thought people could get so excited about nappies? (23:25)

Steven Levitt talks about his controversial views on geo-engineering, expressed in his latest book SuperFreakonomics. Hear more of that interview in the Guardian's The Business podcast. (26:15)

All the way from Denmark, Dr Rachel Armstrong discusses living buildings and metabolic materials. She is giving a Lunch Hour Lecture at UCL this week. (30:15)

We finish the show with more music ... the winner of Discover Magazine's "evolution in two minutes or less" video competition. (33:15)

Science correspondent Ian Sample lends us his wisdom in the pod. We promise to give it back soon.

WARNING: contains strong language.

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BBC4's recent series on 1930s architecture looks at Britain's art-deco history through neon-tinted glasses. The reality is a bit more complicated

There's no denying art deco's attraction: it's the style of 1930s cinemas, ocean liners and flamboyant Manhattan skyscrapers. It conjures Hollywood, Busby Berkeley musicals, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Top Hat. It makes you think of glamorous climes – whether Miami, Havana, New York or Shanghai – in which buildings that seemed to be encrusted with fashionable jewellery gleam in the summer sun. It's also a style that's been much in vogue recently, because of BBC4's Glamour's Golden Age season, which includes a series of documentaries by David Heathcote on art deco icons.

But here's the funny thing: Britain doesn't actually have much in the way of art deco architecture. Even London has just a sprinkling of buildings: Ideal House, a black granite-clad office block off Regent's Street designed by Raymond Hood; The Odeon, Leicester Square; and the glorious Daily Express building in Fleet Street, with its spectacular, cinema-style entrance lobby by Robert Atkinson. Outside London, cinemas are the most shining examples of the style – Harry Weedon's Odeons are the best (all too many converted into bingo halls or graceless multiplexes), along with shop fronts. Manchester and Glasgow have their own dramatically deco Daily Express buildings, both dramatic examples. If you look hard enough, you can detect deco influences in the buildings of Liverpool's Speke Airport (now a hotel) and even in the suburban stations of the old Southern Railway, such as Surbiton.

But it's never a style that really took root in Britain. Which makes it all the odder that the BBC has decided to label buildings art deco that aren't. In his documentaries, Heathcote devoted much time to Charles Holden's 55 Broadway, the headquarters of London Underground, describing it as "a fantastic art deco building". Holden would have turned in his grave at the description. Influenced by contemporary US architecture, yes. And detailed inside in ways that might suggest art deco. But an art deco icon? No.

This isn't entirely Heathcote's fault. Television thrives on telling stories with the broadest of brush strokes. And art deco has become something of a catch-all title in recent years, used to describe almost any building, piece of furniture, bronze lamp or ceramic dish designed between about 1925 and 1940. I've seen Albert Speer's Reich Chancellery for Adolf Hitler described as art deco and even – a mortal sin, surely? – Le Corbusier's coolly modern Villa Savoye in the suburbs of Paris tainted with the same label. The term itself was something of a latecomer. It wasn't much used before the design historian Bevis Hillier published his delightful book Art Deco of the 20s and 30s in 1968, defining a style that had more usually been known as moderne, modernistic and jazz modern.

The style emerged from the legendary Exposition Internationale des Art Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925 – a grand showing of design and decoration, from furniture and accessories to interiors and architecture, mapped out in acres of precious veneers, marble and onyx, stainless steel and aluminium, all much influenced by Egyptian, Babylonian and Assyrian archaeology. It was this licentious playfulness that provoked the contempt of the rising stars of the Modern movement – modernism – which had been rooted in the far more serious researches of the Bauhaus and, most notably, Le Corbusier. Modernists held art deco in contempt: it was all but sinful. A travesty. Low and dishonest. Downright vulgar – it was the stuff of fashion rather than function, of escapism rather than realism.

When Nikolaus Pevsner, the architecture and design historian, went to see the cinematic Hoover Factory on London's Western Avenue, built by Wallis, Gilbert and Partners (1931–5), he described it in the Middlesex volume of his The Buildings of England series as "perhaps the most offensive of the modernistic atrocities along this road of typical bypass factories". (A comment that was toned down to something substantially less angry in the revised edition of the book, published in 1991.)

And whereas Modern architecture, for better or worse, influenced the British landscape for decades to come, art deco never really took flight. It remained in domestic settings: hinted at in the stained-glass sunrises of mock-Tudor front doors, echoed in the interiors of 1930s MG sports saloons. It conjured fantasy and escapism at a time when the world could be a very grim place indeed.

Perhaps some of the same escapism touches our view of art deco. It's a way of looking at the past through neon-tinted glasses. By all means, watch Top Hat, gawp at the Chrysler Building, imagine yourself sipping cocktails aboard an ocean liner – let the dark and disturbing interwar era become the stuff of ritzy cinematic dreams. But life in the 1930s was more complicated. And while it's understandable that the BBC should have fallen for art deco's charms, it might have been better if they had got their history straight.

A Poet Goes North features former laureate admiring historic architecture of Leeds

A forgotten film by the former poet laureate John Betjeman that was never shown because of internal BBC problems is to see the light of day after more than 40 years.

The half-hour feature, A Poet Goes North, has been given the go-ahead for screening after being found in a cupboard in Leeds.

It fell through the schedules in 1968 for reasons lost or destroyed in the BBC's bureaucracy, even though the poet was paid a handsome £400 (£5,000 at today's values) to potter around the city admiring its historic architecture.

It shows Betjeman on classic form, denouncing newly built tower blocks and suggesting – with foresight since borne out – that Leeds's back-to-back redbrick terraces would outlive them. Turning his nose up at the satellite town of Seacroft, which was being heralded as the future, he suggests: "I am sure that most of the people here will wish themselves back in the old streets before long."

The film appears on none of the lists of Betjeman's work and almost certainly slipped the BBC's notice because of changes in the corporation's regional network at the time. It was commissioned by a Manchester unit that was dissolved during filming and replaced by one – ironically based in Leeds – that wanted to start with a clean slate.

The film's producer, John Mapplebeck, who went on to make films for the South Bank Show and other arts programmes in London, said: "Unfortunately it also coincided with changes in my own life, and to be honest I didn't realise it had never gone out. I went to London and it was initially due to be shown in the north. I must have assumed that had happened and got on with the next film."

The film was found in a metal canister by Dr Kevin Grady, the director of Leeds Civic Trust, whose predecessors were instrumental in getting Betjeman to take part. He said: "They paid 200 guineas to make the film happen, which would have bought you a Leeds terrace house in those days. There are various references in annual reports saying 'It still hasn't been shown' and we've a file of some rather pained but inconclusive correspondence. Apart from our copy in the cupboard, that's it."

The trust's gift may explain why BBC accountants made no fuss either, or none that survives in the corporation's archives. Richard Taylor, a Leeds-based BBC producer who has finally got the film its day in the sun after learning about the find from Grady, said: "We've had a good look but found nothing."

Metropolitan executives may not have been concerned about a film on Leeds, and Mapplebeck said the cost was modest by their standards. "Betjeman's fee would have taken more than half the budget," he said. "But it's a shame. Looking at it now, for all that it's more than 40 years ago and things have moved on, I'm pleased with it.

"The camera work is inventive and Betjeman is on good form. He was delightful. He taught me the pleasures of drinking champagne at 10am in Yates's wine bar, which is how our days started. I'm very glad that it's to be seen at last."

Grady said the documentary had unexpected contemporary lessons. Two of the Victorian buildings most admired by Betjeman are now at serious risk. One is Temple Mill, an Egyptian extravaganza owned by a Barclay brothers property firm, which has partially collapsed. The other is Spenfield, a banker's mansion whose Peacock Room is one of Britain's finest 19th century interiors. It is empty and threatened with division into flats.

Binny Baker, of the Yorkshire Film Archive, which will keep a copy of the film, said: "It's just so exciting to find a treasure like this. We've got a star – Sir John Betjeman – and nobody's seen it. That is a real find."

The story of the film will be shown in the BBC1's Inside Out programme on Wednesday at 7.30pm, initially in the Yorkshire region, with networking expected to follow.

New Town (BBC4, Saturday) is undoubtedly the oddest thing on over the weekend (unless Scotland actually manage to win against France at the rugby). It is quite possibly the most curious drama of the year so far and will remain so, probably until Christmas.

Concerned with how we live and the buildings we do it in, Annie Griffin's drama is an unusual confection. It was originally meant as a six-part series, but the first episode is being screened as, in effect, a pilot. No decision has been taken as to the fate of the series, though the scripts are written. Anyone looking for closure will not be sated, but such is the appealing weirdness of this invitation into the heightened, rarefied world of Edinburgh's Georgian New Town, and the introduction to those who live there as well as those who aspire to, that a series makes perfect sense.

The programme is also about family and living by design, Griffin explains. "When you imagine a building, you're actually imagining how people use that building – how they live and/or work in it – and that can be quite presumptuous." Certainly it sounds like the basis of all drama – conflict – so could Griffin be referring to the messianic complex that some architects exhibit and the subsequent not-fit-for-purpose state of the beautiful, useless buildings they design?

"I live in Edinburgh and wanted to change my kitchen, so I called in a couple of architects who were utterly snobby about my flat – in effect, they said they were too good to work on it," she laughs. And there is a brilliant scene in New Town in which a home owner has a similar run-in with two architects, played as an odd Gilbert and George-y couple by Mark Gatiss and Max Bremer.

But, as Griffin says, New Town isn't simply about buildings and architecture. There's a murder mystery in there, too. More interesting still is the drama's concern with "family and living by design". Of all the "families" featured, only one follows the nuclear model – and they are in danger of ripping themselves apart thanks to her rabid pursuit of the perfect property. The other family units consist of a gay couple (the architects) and their son, and an older woman and her enigmatic, sinister lodger.

Above all, New Town is concerned with the clean lines of buildings and the neat architectural plans: how they compare and contrast with the messy reality of people's lives. It's about the things you can and cannot control. It's funny, dark and ambitious – a grand design indeed.

This will come as no surprise to those familiar with the work of Annie Griffin. You might remember the film Festival, which starred Stephen Mangan, Daniela Nardini, The IT Crowd's Chris O'Dowd, and Raquel Cassidy. A Short Cuts-esque story (or stories) of overlapping lives set in Edinburgh and August, it tenderly and adeptly captured the craziness of the city during the festival.

The Book Group (2001 and 2002) is probably Griffin's most famous work. Witty, a bit weird, by turns philosophical and filthy, it brought together a selection of dysfunctional Glasgow residents – three footballers' wives, an arrogant student, a closet bisexual ned and an uptight American. The show ignited the careers of Michelle Gomez, Derek Riddell (who's now in Ugly Betty) and Anne Dudek (who went to House and Mad Men) – and, trivia fiends, contained a brief appearance from Henry Ian Cusick, lately of Lost.

Before all that there was Coming Soon, Griffin's dark, slightly deranged comedy about the travails of a Scottish theatre company. Starring David Walliams, a pre-Lord of the Rings Billy Boyd and a then-unknown Julia Davis, it was, to put it mildly, a bit bonkers, but very funny.

One of the interesting themes running through Griffin's work is the strangeness of Scotland. She looks at it and its inhabitants as if they were exotic – perhaps because, to her, they are. Griffin is American but has lived in the UK since 1980 and in Scotland for the last 12 years. Does she see Scotland as strange?

"What is strange is this Scottish mentality that television from Scotland is low-brow," she says. "There's a worry that things can be 'too Scottish'. That's not something I'm burdened with. I love Scotland, especially the glory and the sinister sides of Edinburgh, but though the country has outperformed in the other arts – music, literature and such – it doesn't in broadcasting. That's a terrible shame."

Indeed it is. A man cannot live on Taggart alone, and many BBC Scotland productions have very little to do with Scotland. BBC1's Waterloo Road, which is made by BBC Scotland, is filmed in Manchester. On top of all its other claims to fame, New Town is that unusual beast indeed: a BBC Scotland drama that is actually set, and made, in Scotland.

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