Here's what the shows co-creator said:

So, David, what’s the show about? In 50 words or less.

It takes all those big, classic books that no one has time to read these days and does them ridiculously quickly.

That was only 20 words.

I know. We don’t hang about.

I’m impressed. So which books have you abridged too far?

We’ve ‘abridgd’ them. No one has time to read the letter ‘e’ anymore. 

Apologis. So which books have you abridgd? 

Well, for the podcast we’ve done Great Expectations, Moby Dick, Pride and Prejudice, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Frankenstein, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Wuthering Heights, Vanity Fair …

All the big ones.

Not all of them but a lot. There must be at least 3 yards of literature we’ve gone through. But we do them in 22 minutes and 17 seconds.

That’s very specific.

That’s the time that has been scientifically proved to be the outer-edge of the average person’s attention span.

Really? 

No, not really. I just made that up. I make a lot of stuff up. But, frankly Vanity Fair has 308,451 words and it’s simply not possible to abrigd it any quicker.

How do you decide which bits to leave out?

It’s usually the bits that make your eyes glaze over while you’re reading them. Because lets face it, as wonderful as he was, Charles Dickens was never knowingly under-written, was he.

Are you treating these classic books with the respect that they deserve?

God, I hope not!

Have any of the writers complained?

No. Luckily for us, but not for them, they’re all dead. And so are their agents and lawyers.