OK Annabel is still OOO, so Emilie has roped in a friend of the pod, the marvellous Esther Coren to help. Esther has her own podcast, Giles Coren Has No Idea and a Substack called The Spike and she also gives excellent book recommendations. Given we’re all feeling mad, bad and dangerous to know (not in a swashbuckling-Byronic-way but in a teetering on The-Brink-kind-of-way) perhaps books can soothe us tiny bit: little umbrellas for the mind. We talk about The Paleo Life by Clare Foges (out June 6), Quint by Robert Lautner, The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (May 14), One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Egg & I by Betty MacDonald (out of print, but will be on World of Books, which, incidentally, is the preloved Amazon), Hugo Rifkind’s Rabbits (also June 6), and In Memoriam by Alice Winn. Plus there’s a cameo from Esther’s cat Iris.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices