Avoidance and absurdity

This week, David E Cooper on a mammoth history of the garden; and Larry Wolff takes in Macbeth at the Met.'The Garden: Our 4,000-year quest for paradise', by Jonathan Bate'Macbeth', by Giuseppe Verdi, Metropolitan Opera, New York, until October 20Produced by Charlotte Pardy Hoste ...  Show more

This week, Sophie Oliver on Rebecca West's struggle with her love of clothing; and Robert Poole introduces us to a dashing 19th-century radical.'A Fable for Christians', by Rebecca West'Mad Tom's Rising: The revolutionary mystic Sir William Courtenay and the last battle fought on ...  Show more

Anne McElvoy and guests discuss the issue of uncertainty from scientific discovery and the space race to the shifting geopolitical landscape and how it can act as a catalyst for creativity. She's joined by the entrepreneur and author of Embracing Uncertainty, Margaret Heffernan, ...  Show more

Smugglers, refugees, trade and melting ice and polar exploration are part of the conversation as Rana Mitter is joined in the BBC tent at the Hay Festival by Nobel Prize-winning author Abdulrazak Gurnah, whose books have drawn on his birthplace Zanzibar and the refugees arriving ...  Show more

This week it's Luce and Dunc on the mic to talk to you all about whether he's an Anne Frank girlie, a Salem witch trials girlie, or a Titanic girlie. We also talk about some serious stuff, like nuclear energy being a response to climate change, Greta Thunberg being carried away, ...  Show more

This week on the Penguin Podcast, from the Southbank Centre we bring you the live launch event of Greta Thunberg's The Climate Book.

'The Climate Book brings together an unprecedented collective of over 100 experts, activists and witnesses to t ...