Serial is the world’s most popular podcast. It reached the five million download mark on iTunes in record time. It’s a spin-off from This American Life, which has been a staple of American public radio since the mid-1990s. Serial first aired as an episode of TAL in October, but now has its own home online. TAL is what you turn on when you’re doing the dishes. Serial demands to be listened to, then listened to again, compulsively, ritualistically; damn the dishes.

On Saturday, for the 90th anniversary of Bloomsday, Radio 4 broadcast a seven-part ‘dramatisation’ of Ulysses, possible now that copyright in Joyce’s work has lapsed. The broadcasts were slotted into the schedule to coincide with the timing of the novel.