The latest additions to the bill for the Word Arena at this year's Latitude are old favourite Richard Hawley and new favourite Jonsi. Our man with the dark brown baritone and the songs of love both requited and the other sort, will be putting on a recital on the Friday evening. Jonsi, better known for his part in the ethereal tintinabulation of Sigur Ros, will be knitting up the ravelled sleeve of care for those who need soothing on Sunday evening. These performers are in addition to the other acts at the Word Arena, The National, The XX, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Grizzly Bear. Complete billing plus a link to buy tickets is over there on the right. Latitude is on the weekend of 15-18 July. Hooray!

This started with Kate and Fraser going to a lecture given by Philip Ball. He's a science writer who has published books about a wide range of subjects from chemistry to cathedrals. His latest is "The Music Instinct: How Music Works And Why We Can't Do Without It". Reckoning it's about time we got an education we went down to Philip's place in south London to record him talking about the historic and scientific roots of music, why certain things sound good to us and some things don't and the assumptions that underpin our judgements on whether music is acceptable or not. We learned a fair bit. Hope you will too. Usual routine. You can sign up here to make sure you get the podcast every week or your can stream it below:

Look everyone! It's Kate "Kate" Mossman and Mark "Mark" Ellen, and they've made a new video! In the footage below you'll find them feverishly examining the pages of a freshly minted, only-just-delivered copy of the new issue.

The current issue of The Word also features Lady Gaga, The Best and Worst couples in entertainment, Gabriel Byrne, Rufus Wainwright, Dave Eggers, The Rules of book publishing, Tracey Thorn, Steve Lamacq, Richard Coles, Ayn Rand and ooh, loads more: like columnists Andrew Collins, Giles Smith, David Hepworth and Andrew Harrison, plus our regular round-up of the very best in new music, books, film and DVD.

Also this month: our free, 15-track CD featuring the best new music of April 2010, including tracks from Tuung, Robyn Hitchcock, Duke Special, Josh Rouse, Turin Brakes, Drive-By-Truckers and many more...

We’re absolutely delighted to be able to announce that this magazine is an official media partner for the key event of the summer, Latitude. This is no ordinary festival – it’s music, comedy, theatre and literature and all manner of related arts and culture. Which is why we like it and it likes us.

There’ll be film, theatre and cabaret tents, psychedelic sheep and countless music stages rolled out across 500 acres of sumptuous parkland in Southwold, Suffolk from 15-18 July. The Word are putting our name to a 6,000-capacity music marquee (confirmed so far: The National, The xx, Grizzly Bear, Charlotte Gainsbourg and The Horrors) and staging the odd event of our own in the Literary Tent (details to follow). Already confirmed elsewhere: Florence + The Machine, Empire Of The Sun, Belle And Sebastian, Vampire Weekend, Bret Easton Ellis, Jon Ronson, Richard Herring, Marcus Brigstocke, Ardal O’Hanlon, Mark Lamarr & Geno Washington’s God’s Jukebox - and a Masked Ball.

Tickets go on sale from 9am, Wednesday 10 March. Click here to purchase, and we'll see you down the front.

Just in case your remote Scottish croft has had no electricity for the last few weeks and you missed the announcement, this is a reminder that our first gig, A Word In Your Ear, takes place on April 28th.

Headliners are Pugwash, led by Duckworth Lewis Method's Thomas Walsh (playing the band's first ever English show), alongside support acts Duncan Maitland and High Wycombe pop sensations The Wutars. Kate Mossman will be at the wheels of steel and your MCs for the evening will be Mark Ellen and David Hepworth. The venue is The Lexington in London's swinging Islington section. In fact it's the pub across the road from the office. Tickets are £10 and you can order yours now here.

This week's particularly action-packed podcast features Mark Ellen and Rob Fitzpatrick batting back and forth your questions on the BBC, bands dressed as monks, what happens to record reviews when you no longer get hard copies of CDs and Joe Bonamassa's new, "slimmer image". Plus special guest appearances from Mike "Seventies" Johnson (left, with Rob) and his fearsome rock spelling quiz in which you are challenged to set down those particularly demanding - not to say daft - band names with every letter and umlaut in place. And that's not the end of our cavalcade of talent. "Magic" Alex Gold does a cameo to furnish details of A Word In Your Ear, our gig on April 28th in the pub across the road (tickets available here) and the CD that comes with the next issue.

You can sign up to get the podcast every week here or stream it below.

Mark Hodkinson has written The Last Mad Surge Of Youth which is the best novel about being in bands I've ever read. This week he's our guest in the podcast talking about how bands were formed in the years after punk, the inevitable power struggles that take place within the ranks of those bands, the effect that fame has on personality and above all what it takes to succeed.

Mark also runs Pomona, a book publishing company with the ethos of an indie label, from his home in Hebden Bridge. As well as his own titles Pomona have re-published books from venerable northern authors like Barry Hines, Ray Gosling and Hunter Davies and here he talks about the economics and practicalities of running a small independent publishing house in the era of Amazon. If you want to buy Mark's book, and you should, you can get it direct from Pomona here.

You can sign up to get the podcast every week here or stream it below.

The new issue of The Word features a major investigation by David Hepworth into the decline of the traditional recording studio and looks at how that changes the way records are made and how it eventually affects the kind of music you listen to. To talk about these issues Mark, David and Fraser went to Gold Top studios in north London. Gold Top is run by Neil Brockbank, producer of Nick Lowe. A believer in recording live with the musicians, as far as possible, playing together, he describes the changes that have taken place in the way music is recorded from the Beatles through Frank Sinatra to Ricky Martin and beyond and looks at the implications that has for what we listen to.

If you want to make sure that you get the podcast every week, go here and if you just want to listen to this one stream below.

I thought this might give you some insight into the sophistication of Word’s working methods. On the right you see the cover of the next issue. Now marvel at the interpretive skills of the great André Carrilho as, on the left, is my original sketch for it, photographed on my phone and sent as a text message to his bunker in Portugal. We liked his illustration so much we decided to go with it. It's got the feel of a few other staple-bound, thought-provoking periodicals we all read and feel a connection with, and it moves us even further from the slightly moth-eaten world of the old-school rock monthlies. Along with this format change is one other slight alternation: there’s even more to read – more columns, conjecture, epic pictures, insight, long and considered chunks of great writing. More of the stuff you're always telling us you value the most. David Hepworth, Fraser Lewry and I talk about it – with barely suppressed and boyish delight – in this new podcast, as well as getting to grips with some of your questions. Word 85 is out next Thursday – though UK subscribers might well get their copy this weekend.

Please let us know what you think once you've read it.

You can either subscribe to get the podcast every week here or just stream it below:

This week's podcast features: a recap of last Friday's social, an in-depth discussion of the miracle that is The Word's One Hit Wonders Playlist, the Tweeters' questions answered, a chat with Idris "Stringer Bell" Elba about his upcoming EP "High Class Problems Vol 1" which he's releasing in February under the name of Driis and the strange experience of sharing the same space as exceptionally good-looking people.

You can either subscribe to get the podcast every week here or just stream it below:

This week we welcome Phil Smee to the pod. Phil's name is somewhere in your record collection, probably on a reissue which he will have either designed, annotated or helped compile. Phil is the one we have to thank for the Motorhead logo, that massive boxed set of Elektra records that came out a few years back, the Bam Caruso label and the invention of an entire genre known as Freakbeat. He brought along mint condition copies of the first Pink Floyd single, a reggae tune written by Nick Drake (both pictured left) and an early pressing of "Hey Jude" on the Parlophone label. We talked records old, new, borrowed, reissued and rare.

You can either subscribe to the podcast here or stream it below.

If for any reason you haven't been getting the 'casts lately, go to iTunes, look for "Word podcast" and check your settings. If in doubt unsubscribe and then immediately resubscribe.

There's only one group of people who listen to more music and go to more gigs than we do, and that's you. That's why we want you to contribute your views on these to our website where they can be enjoyed, and even occasionally disagreed with, by other readers. Some people have already been doing this in our informal "My night with...." series. Now we want to move this up a gear and to encourage more people to take part by providing you with a form to make posting your reviews easier. Because we feel that the best writing is generally the most economical, we've provided you with special templates to follow. This could make things easier and also more interesting.

We want to hear about the shows you've been to, from the large-scale and lavish to the curious and local, and we've provided a field in which you can supply details of the venue, what happened, what it made you think and any other comments you'd care to add. We also want to know what CDs you're listening to. These may be ones we've missed or ones we didn't make sufficient fuss about or even things we made too much fuss of. You have a similar template to work within.

We're going to start taking the best and most interesting of those and publishing them in a dedicated part of the reviews section in the magazine called Massive Attack (or summat like that). In the meantime, you can start by clicking the normal "create content" link beneath your user name. As well as the usual "blog entry" option, there are links to contribute to these new sections. Once completed, the reviews will appear in the "My Night Out With..." and "My Night In With..." sections on the website - you'll find links in the main navigation above.

Robert Forster of the Go-Betweens features in Word To The Wise in the latest issue of the magazine, talking about his book The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll, and we've made this available in our Backstage Podcasts series. This is an occasional series that has in the past featured the likes of David Simon, Clive James, Don Felder and many others. If you haven't already subscribed then you can do so here or at iTunes.

Because you may not have your podcast preferences sorted out as tidily as you might, it's not a bad idea to go your iTunes podcast page, hit unsubscribe from our podcasts and then re-subscribe. That way you may find them flowing more freely. While you're at it you could add some kind of testimonial. It's a while since any one has commented. A bell will ring in heaven if you do.

As a fresh edition of The Word drops onto the shelves of the quality news-vendor, The Word's own Bunk & McNulty (Mark Ellen & Kate Mossman) take to the stage once again to examine its gleaming pages.

Also in this issue: Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland, TMZ, Viggo Mortensen, The Avett Brothers, Rebecca Front, Gil Scott-Heron, lone girls with guitars, the art of ghost-writing, Midlake, the Best and Worst of Kids' TV, Edward Barton, All Tomorrow's Parties, Smokey Robinson, Taylor Swift, David Essex, Paul Whitehouse & Charlie Higson, Lauren Laverne, Robert Forster, and the value of vinyl.

Plus: our round-up of the very best in new music, film, DVD and books, and columnists David Hepworth, Andrew Collins, Barry McIlheney and Pete Silverton, and our free, 15-track CD featuring the very best new music of February 2010, including tracks from OK Go, Carolina Chocolate Drops, The Hidden Cameras, Yeasayer, Chip Taylor and many more...

There's been such a resurgence of talk about the virtues of mono remasters, needledrops and the lost world of the visible label that we wanted to work out attitudes to vinyl among the Massive.

Have you got a minute to fill out this simple survey?