Penguin Podcast moves to weekly schedule in lockdown

The Penguin Podcast is moving from a bi-weekly edition to weekly for the next three months in response to the Covid-19 lockdown.

Penguin Random House Audio, which won two Gold Awards at the New York Festivals Radio Awards last night (21st April), explained it was increasing the frequency of its podcast in light of "a rise" in recent weeks in podcast listening as a result of people spending more time at home.

Podcast listening is up 9.6%, according to digital audio advertising company Dax (2nd March vs 16th March), and global podcast company Acast reported nine million listens in the last week of March.

Although Penguin declined to say how much its own listenership was up, its podcast, which has in the past featured the likes of Neil Gaiman, Stephen Fry (pictured with David Baddiel) and Salman Rushdie, has been listened to nearly three million times since launch, with an average monthly rate of 60,000.

Promising to "bring to life the stories behind the books to understand where ideas come from", kicking off the Penguin Podcast's new weekly schedule is today’s episode (Wednesday 22nd April) with George Monbiot interviewed by host Nihal Arthanayake. Monbiot is an environmental and political activist whose latest book Feral looks at rewilding projects around the world and how nature can find its own way. The episode — which is Penguin's first podcast to be recorded remotely — has been released to coincide with Earth Day 2020, and Monbiot and Arthanayake discuss the environmental changes that have affected both urban and rural regions as a result of the Covid-19 crisis.

Upcoming confirmed guests include Curtis Sittenfeld, Mark Gatiss and David Harewood, with Sittenfeld discussing her latest book Rodham, and Gatiss and Harewood discussing their involvement narrating Penguin Classics audiobooks.

Penguin Random House Audio received the awards for The Handmaid’s Tale read by Elisabeth Moss, awarded Gold for Best Audio Book ‚Äì Fiction, and for Michael Sheen’s narration of The Secret Commonwealth, for Best Narration ‚Äì Solo.