Adam Gopnik, author of Angels and Ages, Paris to the Moon and Through the Children’s Gate, is most recently the author of Winter.

Winter takes us on an intimate tour of the artists, poets, composers, writers, explorers, scientists and thinkers who helped shape a new and modern idea of winter.

We learn how literature heralds the arrival of the middle class; how snow science leads to existential questions of God and our place in the world; how the race to the poles marks the human drive to imprint meaning on a blank space.

On The Economist podcast he discusses the season’s many meanings, how literature and music have shaped its identity, and the metaphysics of hoarfrost…