Episode summary: A wait of 33 years between a marriage proposal and a response, a skittish piano tries to avoid the stage and a young boy looks out to sea waiting for his father. Josie Long presents short documentaries and works of sound art about waiting, yearning and anxiously anticipating. Skitti...

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Episode summary: The United States had a pandemic plan. But when a pandemic came, we hesitated to follow it. The country was hobbled by argument and doubt. Much of that doubt came from experts who proposed that Covid might not be as lethal as scientists feared. Michael Lewis returns to the subject o...

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Episode summary: You won’t find the word “Tenebrisology” in the dictionary - yet. It means, “the study of natural darkness”, and it was created by Jane Slade. Working in the lighting industry woke her up to the darkness we’re all missing, and her mission to bring it back.

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Episode summary: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French playwright who, in 1791, wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen. This was Olympe de Gouges (1748-93) and she was responding to The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen from 1789, the start of t...

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Episode summary: In the fight against global warming we’re constantly told to do our bit to reduce green house gas emissions. However, a claim circulating that just ‘100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions’ can make any individual effort seem futile. But does this claim mean what y...

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Episode summary: Dan Saladino and blacksmith Alex Pole explain how our food has been influenced by metals.

Episode summary: In which several people, including Rebecca Solnit, Katty Kay, and Maria Konnikova, help Michael understand the not-so-secret power of men to offer themselves up as experts, when they clearly are not. If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podc...

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Episode summary: In “Genealogy of a Bakery,” Gravy producer Irina Zhorov takes listeners up into the mountains of western North Carolina, to a town called Marshall and a property that’s been used as a bakery for more than two decades. The little building…

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Episode summary: What zoning out middle-sized housing options does to a city

Episode summary: What happens when a case in front of the Supreme Court involves the spouse of one of the justices?