Prodigal and Pushkin Industries Announce Innovative Audio Original “Douglas Adams Explaining the World” Featuring Exclusive Archival Material and Special Guest Contributors

Announcing Douglas Adams: Explaining the World, an original audiobook written and presented by Douglas Adams’ one-time protégé and chart-topping Audible author Arvind Ethan David. Brought to you by Prodigal Entertainment and set to be distributed by Pushkin Industries, the project is being launched on Kickstarter here.

Douglas Adams, the legendary creator of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, loved the medium of audio. He revolutionized radio drama with the original Hitchhiker’s and throughout his life was obsessed with sound and music.  He had a collection of 24 left-handed guitars and famously played one of them live on stage with Pink Floyd on, when else, his 42nd birthday.

When Adams died in 2001, he left behind a huge archive of recordings — most of which have never been digitized and have sat unheard all this time. With the full support of Adams’ estate, Prodigal Entertainment have been given access to that archive and this Kickstarter will support its digitization and proper cataloging.

With that material in hand, writer Dirk Gently Executive Producer Arvind Ethan David will interview many of Douglas’ most famous and influential fans and friends resulting in an examination of a great genius through Adams’ work and those he has influenced. Actors and comedians like Stephen Fry, Sir Lenny Henry and Sanjeev Bhaskar;  Douglas’ oldest friends like Griff Rhys Jones and collaborators and business partners Robbie Stamp and WiReD magazine founder Ian Charles Stewart; and also the world’s leading experts in all the fields that obsessed Douglas: conservation (Zoologist Lucy Cooke);  the internet and AI; space exploration and alien life.  In other words, we’re going to talk to them about the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

“I was lucky to know Douglas for the decade before his, too early, death,” said David. “Like everyone who knew him and millions who knew his work, we have missed him and his unique genius — in his work we find not just comically depressed Androids and eccentric Detectives, but also a deep comfort, much needed in the challenging years of pandemic, political chaos, and climate emergency.”

Prodigal Entertainment — headed up by film producer Tarquin Pack (X-Men: First Class, KickAss, Stardust), writer Arvind Ethan David, and entrepreneur Scott Kay — is the production company behind the Netflix/BBC America adaptation of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and the Tony & Grammy winning Broadway musical Jagged Little Pill
Pushkin Industries is the home of form-defying audiobooks like Miracle and Wonder: Conversations With Paul Simon and The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell, So Many Steves by Steve Martin and Adam Gopnik, Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis, The Art of Small Talk by Casey Wilson and Jessica St. Clair, Joshua Cohen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Netanyahus, Wild and Precious: A Celebration of Mary Oliver featuring Sophia Bush, and Inside Voice by Lake Bell. Discover your next listen in the full catalog here.

ABOUT DOUGLAS ADAMS

Douglas Adams was the creator of all the various manifestations of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which started life as a BBC Radio 4 series. Since its first airing in March 1978 it has been transformed into a series of best-selling novels, a TV series, a record album, a computer game and in 2005, a major motion picture.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy‘s phenomenal success sent the book straight to Number One in the UK Bestseller List and in 1984 Douglas Adams became the youngest author to be awarded a Golden Pan. He followed this success with The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980); Life, The Universe and Everything (1982); So Long and Thanks for all the Fish (1984); and Mostly Harmless (1992). The first two books in the Hitchhiker series were adapted into a 6 part television series, which was an immediate success when first aired in 1982. Other publications include Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul (1988). In 1984 Douglas teamed up with John Lloyd and wrote The Meaning of Liff and after a huge success The Deeper Meaning of Liff followed this in 1990). One of Douglas’s all-time personal favorites was written in 1990 when he teamed up with zoologist Mark Carwardine and wrote Last Chance to See – an account of a world-wide search for rare and endangered species of animals.

Douglas died unexpectedly in May 2001 of a sudden heart attack. He was 49. He had been living in Santa Barbara, California with his wife and daughter, and at the time of his death he was working on the screenplay for a feature film version of Hitchhiker.

ABOUT PRODIGAL ENTERTAINMENT

Prodigal Entertainment makes stories in all forms, including audio television, film, theater, and escape rooms.  We made the Netflix/BBC America adaptation of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, the Tony & Grammy winning Broadway musical Jagged Little Pill and the chart-topping Audible Originals The Crimes of Dorian Gray and Earworms.  The company is headed up by film producer Tarquin Pack (X-Men: First Class, KickAss, Stardust), writer Arvind Ethan David, and entrepreneur Scott Kay.

ABOUT ARVIND ETHAN DAVID

Arvind’s career started when he was still a student and adapted the Douglas Adams’ novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency as a play and the great author came to see it, and took the young writer under his wing. 

20 years after that fateful meeting, Arvind brought Douglas Adams famous detective Dirk Gently to a global audience as Executive Producer of the hit Netflix/BBC America series starring Elijah Wood and Samuel Barnett.  

Arvind’s past audiobooks include the chart-topping Audible Originals series Earworms  and The Crimes of Dorian Gray. His graphic novels include: Stoker Award-nominated series Darkness Visible (with Mike Carey), Gray,three volumes of Dirk Gently comics (with art by Ilias Kyriazis) and the forthcoming Raymond Chandler adaptation Trouble is My Business for Pantheon Books. 

In television, in addition to Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Arvind is a writer on the forthcoming Anansi Boys for Amazon Studios.

ABOUT PUSHKIN INDUSTRIES

Pushkin Industries is dedicated to producing audio in any format that challenges listeners, encourages their curiosity, and inspires joy. Or, in other words: Good, Smart, Fun. Founded in 2018, Pushkin has produced numerous podcasts that have broken into the top 10 on the Apple Podcasts chart, including Malcolm Gladwell’s hugely successful Revisionist History, as well as Against the Rules from Michael Lewis, Paul McCartney’s A Life in Lyrics, The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos, Broken Record, Tim Harford’s Cautionary Tales, The Last Archive, Deep Cover, Lost Hills and Apple’s Best Show of 2021, A Slight Change of Plans. Pushkin’s audiobook catalog includes Steve Martin’s So Many Steves, Inside Voice by Lake Bell,  the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen, Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis, Fauci and Higher Animals by Michael Specter, Heartbreak by Florence Williams, and Malcolm Gladwell’s Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon,The Bomber Mafia, and Talking to Strangers. Follow us @pushkinpods.