Radio listener by Jim Gilchrist

The great game of polar exploration, played as often as not for mortally costly stakes, was at its height a century ago, when Captain Robert Falcon Scott and four companions perished on their ill-starred Antarctic expedition. But while their attempt on the South Pole is often regarded as a heroic failure, in SCOTT’S LEGACY Dr Kevin Fong argues that Scott’s team and other British Antarctic expeditions made scientific discoveries which proved far more important than who actually won the race.

Fong, a hospital consultant who specialises in the medicine of extreme environments, is joined by experts including Antarctic historian David Wilson (great nephew of Edward Wilson who died with Scott), marine biologist David Barnes and polar researcher Susan Solomon.

While Scott has no shortage of memorials, his wife, the artist Kathleen Scott, is far less widely remembered, although she created two posthumous sculptures of her husband, one of which stands in London’s Waterloo Place. In the three-part A FATHER FOR MY SON, Jenny Coverack reads from her adaptation of her stage play, based on Kathleen Scott’s autobiography and journals.

Switching to the withering chill of high finance, ALVIN HALL IN THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES sees financial adviser and bestselling author Hall revisit the New York which Tom Wolfe portrayed as a crucible of inequality, arrogance and greed, to ask whether much has changed over the 25 years since Wolfe’s novel appeared.

Meanwhile, an unpredictable spin-off from the countdown to the London Olympics is POETRY 2012: THE WRITTEN WORD, which plans to broadcast poems from each of the competing nations on Radio Scotland and other BBC networks. Collaborating with the Scottish Poetry Library and Creative Scotland, the project will broadcast between next week and September.

The project is launched during Culture Café on Tuesday, when presenter Clare English is joined by Robyn Marsack, director of the Scottish Poetry Library, and Stirling poet William Letford.

• Scott’s Legacy

Tuesday, Radio 4, 11am

• A Father for My Son

Tomorrow, Radio 4, 7:45pm

• Alvin Hall in the Bonfire of the Vanities

Mon-Tues, Radio 4, 1:45pm

• Poetry 2012: The Written Word

Tuesday, Radio Scotland, 1:15pm