Do you eat too much sugar? What proportion of your country are immigrants? What does it cost to raise a child? How much tax do the rich pay? Are we more ignorant than we used to be? Take a minute to answer these questions. No matter how educated you are, this book suggests you are likely to be very wrong indeed. Informed by exclusive research a...

Thus Spoke Zarathustra was conceived and written by Friedrich Nietzsche during the years 1881–1885; the first three parts were published in 1883 and 1884. The book formed part of his ‘campaign against morality’, in which Nietzsche explored the ethical consequences of the ‘death of God’. Heavily critical not only o...

Nothing in life works without facts. A society that isn't sure what's true can't function. Without facts there can be no government or law. Science is ignored. Trust evaporates. People everywhere feel ever more alienated from - and mistrustful of - news and those who make it. We no longer seem to know who or what to believe. We are living through a...

Includes an episode from the second season of Sara Pascoe's award-winning Sex Power Money podcast where Sara talks to Fern Champion. The Sunday Times top 10 best seller Why do some women still expect men to buy their dinner? Why do some men feel depressed after masturbating? What the hell is going on with porn? Co...

Spanning four decades, these essays, speeches and meditations interrogate the world around us. They are concerned with race, gender and globalisation. The sweep of American history and the current state of politics. The duty of the press and the role of the artist. Throughout A Mouth Full of Blood our search for truth, moral integrity and expertise...

Michel de Montaigne, one of the foremost writers of the French Renaissance and the originator of the genre of the essay, wrote on subjects ranging from friendship to imagination, from language to conscience. This collection includes twenty-two of Montaigne's essays, including "Of Prognostications," "Of the Custom of Wearing Clothes," "Of Pedantry,"...

Schizophrenia: whether it's the associations it conjures or the people it brings to mind, it is a word we all have a view on. How we perceive it - and how we treat people living with it - is at the core of how we understand mental health. But what do we really know? How much time do we spend listening? Do we truly comprehend this complex and often...

Melvyn Bragg looks at dialects from around Britain: the Pitmatic of Northumberland, the dialect of (London/Derry), the increasingly elusive Cornish dialect, Pidgin, and Shropshire dialect, and then finishing up with a speculation on the future of English dialects.

This audiobook is, among many things, a family memoir, an exchange with Barnes' brother (a philosopher), a meditation on morality and the fear of death, a celebration of art, an argument with and about God, and a homage to the French writer Jules Renard. The result is a tour of the mind of this extraordinary author.

Melvyn Bragg looks at how English has evolved over 1,000 years, looking at the disappearance of old dialects like that of Cumbria, and how it has been enriched by foreign languages, from Latin, Old French, and then dozens more as conquest, trade and immigration played their part in recent centuries.

When the woman he loved was diagnosed with a metastatic cancer, science-writer George Johnson embarked on a journey to learn everything he could about the disease and the people who dedicate their lives to understanding and combating it. What he discovered is that a revolution is now under way - an explosion of new ideas about what cancer really is...

In this episode taken from the BBC Radio 4 series, Melvyn Bragg voyages to Tasmania to find out what a sentence of transportation to Van Diemen's Land really meant to those who survived the journey 'beyond the seas'. We hear the forgotten voices of people such as Joseph Lingard, a respectable Derbyshire man who was wrongfully convicted of the theft...

Brought to you by Penguin. Using musical examples from Bach to the Beatles, Levitin reveals the role of music in human evolution, shows how our musical preferences begin to form even before we are born and explains why music can offer such an emotional experience. Music is an obsession at the heart of human nature, even more fundamental to our spec...

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Inside Vogue, written and read by Alexandra Shulman. Editor-in-Chief Alexandra Shulman kept a diary of British Vogue's Centenary year. And what a year. She reveals the emotional and logistical minefield of producing the 100th anniversary issue (that Duchess of Cambridge cover surpr...

Melvyn Bragg examines new coinages, puns and wordplay; how accents and social class are entwined; swear words; attempts to stop the evolution of language in its tracks; and, finally, the many varieties of English that are spoken around the world today.

From the birth of crime writing with Wilkie Collins and Dostoevsky, through Conan Doyle to the golden age of crime, with the rise of Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham, P. D. James brings a lifetime of reading and writing crime fiction to bear on this personal history of the genre. There are chapters on great American crime writers...

Peter Ustinov had an astonishing range of accomplishments and credits to his name. He wrote 23 plays and 13 books, appeared in 50 films, and collected two Oscars, three Emmys and a Grammy. He was also a director, producer, graphic artist, photographer, raconteur and the recipient of many humanitarian awards. In this interview with John Bird, conduc...

Since the now ubiquitous LIVESTRONGT wristbands became available in May 2004, the Lance Armstrong Foundation has raised more than $50 million for cancer survivorship programs, and the signature phrase has become a battle cry for those who fight the disease every day. Now, the Lance Armstrong Foundation has compiled, from hours of videotaped intervi...

A current, constructive, and actionable exploration of today's racial landscape, offering straightforward clarity that readers of all races need to contribute to the dismantling of the racial divide. In So You Want to Talk About Race, Editor-at-Large of the Establishment Ijeoma Oluo offers a contemporary, accessible take on the racial landscape in...

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Grief Works, written and read by Julia Samuel. Death is the last taboo in our society, and grief is still profoundly misunderstood. So many of us feel awkward and uncertain around death, and shy away from talking honestly with family and friends. Grief Works is a compassionate guide...

Anyone who has ever gone for a run, jog or even a walk knows that uplifting, happy feeling they get at the end of their journey. Some call it the 'runner's high', others put it down to endorphins, here William Pullen teaches us focus that incredible energy to experience our emotions in motion. In Run for Your Life, Pullen argues that we need a radi...