Asking someone to select their top 20 songs is difficult, and picking just one is impossible. But I still asked several people to pick a song that has touched them personally / emotionally and the reason why. That's what we have today: one song from each of several people. I left the genres open.

Music is a mystery that touches us on so many levels at so many different times. It can make us happy, sad, or melancholy. Or maybe we're drawn to the music itself, or to the lyrics; or for many of us a song offers a look back that lets us relive a past moment. 

Episode 2 of The Power Of Song features songs from Jeff Shaw, Billy Larkin, Jesse Deere, Neil Heaton, Tomy Edwards and Bart Van der Zeeuw. 

A leading light of contemporary English folk music, composer, singer, fiddler and oboist, Paul Sartin passed away unexpectedly last week in Oxford, just before taking stage. Although he rarely performed under his own name, Sartin was a founding member of the bands Belshazzar's Feast, Faustus, and Bellowhead. He collaborated widely and was beloved throuhout the British folk community, none more so than in Hampshire, where he co-founded the Whitchurch Folk Club.

Today: Fertilizer questions, aphids and pesticides on milkweed, and much more.

In a remote Chilean desert, the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization is building a huge telescope that promises to see deeper into space than any optical telescope now existing. The work involves five countries and more than a dozen leading universities and institutes — and the president of the nonprofit that’s building it, Robert Shelton, lives in Davis. He joins us today on Davisville to talk about this huge new eye on the distant reaches of space and what it might show us, like whether we’re alone in the universe.

(The rendering depicts the Giant Magellan Telescope, now being built in Chile.)