Digital disruption and innovation are like any tools: capable of being used and abused. How are these technologies already influencing our attitudes, beliefs and behaviours and how do we ensure that these tools bring real and lasting benefits to society? Rahaf Harfoush is a digital anthropologist and best-selling author of The Decoded Company, and Yes We Did: An Insider’s Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand. Rahaf is the founder of Red Thread, a think-tank specialising in digital culture. She is currently working on her third book called Hustle and Float about  the intersections of technology, contemporary work culture and a post-work society. Formerly, Rahaf was the Associate Director of the Technology Pioneer Programme at the World Economic Forum, and the Research Coordinator on Don Tapscott’s Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. She was recognised by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Shaper, and by the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society as a Rising Talent for her thought-leadership in the fields of digital culture and technology.

Rosanna Davison talks about how she came to study nutrition. She gives us the skinny on her own diet and lifestyle, and shares her top tips from her new book Eat Yourself Beautiful on cutting out sugar and including more fruit and vegetables in your diet.

Photo by Miki Barlok

Welsh introduces his elegant, electrifying novel, which marks the return of one of modern fiction’s most infamous, terrifying characters, the incendiary Francis Begbie from Trainspotting. Welsh talks about gangland violence, drug culture and the vitality of language with the Man Booker prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings.

Using archaeological and DNA evidence Cunliffe tells the story of the origins of the British and the Irish peoples, from the retreat of the last Ice Age around 10,000bc to the eve of the Norman Conquest.

From the NHS to corporate tax evasion, from climate change to immigration, Honourable Friends? tells the story of five years in Westminster and offers bold and practical suggestions for a fairer British political system. Caroline Lucas is MP for Brighton Pavilion. She was the leader of the Green Party from 2008 to 2012 and was voted MP of the Year in 2014. Caroline talks to Hay on Earth Director Andy Fryers.

Rob Penn cut down an ash tree to see how many things could be made from it. Journeying from Wales and Ireland across Europe to the US, he finds that the ancient skills and knowledge of the properties of ash, developed over millennia making wheels and arrows, furniture and baseball bats, are far from dead. He chronicles how the urge to appreciate trees still runs through us like grain through wood.

How does the green movement best respond to the collapse of the liberal consensus and the defunding of the American EPA? Is it a useful slap in the face to a movement that may have become a little too comfortably ensconced in the mainstream? Veteran environmentalist Jonathan Porritt joins Claire Fox from the Institute of Ideas and sustainability expert Ed Gillespie to talk with Forum for the Future’s Martin Wright.

Who made the Mappa Mundi? How and why? Arrowsmith looks at the map through the eyes of a medieval visitor to the cathedral. She explains how a map that is very unfamiliar to us, with East rather than North at the top, populated with semi-human figures who may have four eyes or one foot and beasts like the defecating Bonnacon, would have made complete sense. You could tell your children the story of your pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, point out the winding trail taken by Moses and the Israelites and tell the Bible stories illustrated there and elsewhere. Or you could impress other bystanders with your knowledge of Alexander’s campaigns and the three races of Ethiopians illustrated near the map’s edges.

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