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Erica Wagner talks to Elizabeth Garner about folklore, and Erica and Patrick Galbraith discuss Elizabeth’s piece for Boundless on a well that sits in the garden at her childhood home.

Erica and Patrick also discuss Patrick’s new book Uncommon Ground.

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Patrick Galbraith talks to Lamorna Ash, the author of Don't Forget We're Here Forever which will be published shortly by Bloomsbury, about the rise of interest in religion among young people in Britain. That's the topic of her book, which also looks at conversion and Lamorna's own relationship with Christianity.

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Like many now-20-something women who grew up in the UK, Angus Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging was an iconic staple of Sadia Nowshin's early teenhood — the awkwardness of girlhood thrown into sharp relief and a protagonist whose imperfections brought girls on the cusp of young adulthood some comfort.

What teens are reading now looks very different, and you only have to look at a 'TikTok Recommends' table at a bookshop to notice a pattern of romances with questionable themes — but should there be more guidance in place to stop impressionable young women from accessing stories beyond their years, or will teens simply always want to feel older than they are? She and Erica Wagner discuss how books targeting this demographic has changed, from Judy Bloom to toxic tropes.

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In recent history, apocalyptic science fiction was fun. It was hard for most of us to imagine, while reading things like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, that the bleak deadzone the novel is set in could become a reality but for many people round the world, it now is.

Erica Wagner talks to Arvind Ethan David, an author and screenwriter, about the purpose of science fiction now. In times of plenty, it is strangely gratifying to imagine times of disaster — and in times of disaster, it pays, Arvind thinks, to imagine more positive possibilities. The role of the artist, he feels, is to consider how a better future might work.

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When Sarah Dunant was writing her most recent historical novel, she had a character who was tough to crack. Isabella D’Este, a 16th century Italian noblewoman, had no obvious softness or humanity, and then Sarah – a bestselling novelist and cultural commentator – discovered her fondness for little dogs.

Erica talks to Sarah about the ways in which understanding relationships that people had with dogs historically gives an incredibly rich window into the past. From horse culture to pig rearing, the history of humankind is almost all there.

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It’s all just storytelling, right? Whether you’re a dramatist, a writer for telly, or a novelist. Well, no. It turns out that writing for the screen and writing for the bookshelf are markedly different.

Mario Theodorou, a Londoner of Greek heritage who ordinarily writes screen plays, has just written Felix Grey and the Descendant, a pacey thriller set in Edwardian society. He tells Patrick Galbraith about how the novel form set him free. Characters, he explains, are usually far more developed in books than they are on the screen and their interior world can be revealed to a far greater extent. They can also afford to be more experimental.

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