In Japan, couples can rent a grandchild in order to make them feel less bereft on special occasions. In South Korea, dog stroller sales have overtaken pram sales. And in France, deaths outnumbered births for the first time since the Second World War in 2025. So what's actually going on?

Award winning journalist Camilla Cavendish joins Oli Dugmore to discuss her new book, Generation Maybe: Why We're Having Fewer Children, and What It Means for Us All.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Owen Jones burst onto the scene in 2011 with his bestselling book Chavs: the demonisation of the working class. Since then his activism and journalism has followed the ebbs and flows of the left in UK politics, his own push and pull relationship with the Labour Party - which he ultimately left in 2024.

Now he wants to cast his analysis beyond Britain. He joins Oli Dugmore in this episode to discuss his new book The Fall of the West: how they really lost it.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fuchsia Dunlop has dedicated much of her life to eating Chinese food.

If you’re interested in Chinese cuisine and culture, you may have come across her through television programmes, heard her on the radio, or cooked one of her recipes.

And if you haven’t, stick around and you’ll be tempted to dive a little deeper into this extraordinary world.

Fuchsia joined Oli Dugmore on the day her latest book, Five Tastes, was published, to talk about the flavours that define Chinese food, what they reveal about an ancient culture, and the political and economic factors changing Chinese cuisine - both in China and in the West.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.