You share 99.4% of your genes with your neighbour, 98.7% with a chimp, and even 44% with a fruit fly – yet you are also entirely unique – there is nobody else quite like you. In this year’s CHRISTMAS LECTURES, Professor Alice Roberts, and genetics expert Aoife McLysaght, take us on a journey to answer this most fundamental question: Who Am I?

We humans tend to view ourselves as separate from the natural world, a special creation even, but we’re far more closely related to the rest of the animal kingdom than you might imagine. From how our limbs evolved from fins, to the colour of our eyes, Alice and Aoife investigate our fascinating evolutionary story to reveal how we became who we are today.

This is the story of us – our past and our future – in all its deep-rooted, diverse, and surprising glory.

Alice Roberts is the 2018 Christmas Lecturer, a biological anthropologist, author and broadcaster. She is professor of Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham.

Aoife McLysaght is the Genetics Society Guest Lecturer for the 2018 Christmas Lectures and Head of the Genetics Department at Trinity College Dublin, where she has led a research group focusing on Molecular Evolution since 2003.