Hay Festival 2015

The New Generation Thinkers are the winners of the talent scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find the brightest academic minds at the start of their careers, who have the potential to turn their ideas into broadcasts. Hear them discuss their fascinating research with presenter Rana Mitter.

The New Generation Thinkers in this event are:
Nadine Muller, Liverpool John Moores University; Catherine Fletcher, University of Sheffield; Daniel Lee, University of Oxford; and Joe Moshenska, University of Cambridge.

Broadcast Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 10pm. This recording will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Thursday 28 May at 10pm.

Drawing out and about around the festival demands a very different kind of language to that of the life room: nothing is fixed, everything is in flux. By working from observation outdoors and on the move drawing can be used as a means of recording a personal experience of our surroundings and their character, heightening perceptions of our environment and enlivening our drawing practice.

Suitable for all ages and abilities

 A celebration of reading and books from the comedian, broadcaster and writer whose books include the novels Hitler’s Canary, Flying Under Bridges and Valentine Grey, children’s stories The Littlest Viking and The Troublesome Tooth Fairy, non-fiction best-sellers Peas & Queues and Girls Are Best and the play Bully Boy. Introduced by Sue Wilkinson.

Keen’s incisive critique The Internet is Not the Answer traces the development of the net through the waves of start-ups and the rise of the big data companies to the increasing attempts to monetize almost every human activity. He shows how the Web has had a deeply negative effect on our culture, economy and society. Phillips’ Trust Me, PR is Dead asks whether we can ever really trust companies and their stories in an age when technology not only allows transparency, but demands it. Keen is executive director of the Silicon Valley salon FutureCast and the author of Digital Vertigo and The Cult of the Amateur. Phillips was CEO of Edelman, the world’s largest PR company, before leaving to set up Jericho Chambers.

 Life is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the known universe; but how does it work? Even in this age of cloning and synthetic biology, the remarkable truth remains: nobody has ever made anything living entirely out of dead material. Life remains the only way to make life. Are we missing a vital ingredient in its creation?

Drawing on recent ground-breaking experiments around the world, they show how photosynthesis relies on subatomic particles existing in many places at once, while inside enzymes, those workhorses of life that make every molecule within our cells, particles vanish from one point in space and instantly materialize in another.

In 1519 an arrogant and unscrupulous man sailed from the Caribbean with orders to find a missing Spanish expedition. He immediately set about carving himself an empire in modern Mexico, while the governor of Cuba sent a force out to kill him. Hernán Cortés explored the coast to Veracruz then struck inland, seduced by tales of a great empire rich in gold. He found the largest and best-run city on earth and reduced it to rubble.

Award-winning travel writer and historian John Harrison followed in his footsteps for four months, finding the jungle ruins and sophisticated hilltop cities which put the lie to the popular image of the Aztecs and their neighbours as bloodthirsty savages. Popular accounts always suggest Cortés was mistaken for a returning god; the truth is very different and far more interesting. Both the Spanish and the Aztecs thought that the world was coming to a close soon, and that they were pleasing their gods in performing vital last deeds.

The First Minister of Wales responds to the UK election results, detailing how Wales will respond to the new Westminster Parliament, whether he will be seeking any new powers, who he will be collaborating with and what he hopes to achieve for Wales over the next five years.

An unmissable line-up of YA talent for your delectation. Four fabulous writers range over many topics that concern their readers, including love. Love Hurts is a new collection of writing, edited by Children’s Laureate Malorie Blackman, to which James and Non have both contributed. They are joined by the winner of the inaugural YA Book Prize, Louise O’Neill in what promises to be a lively conversation chaired by Jonathan Douglas, Director of the National Literacy Trust. 

In a time of increasing pressures, priorities and testing, our young people are often told to prioritise some subjects over others, to focus on getting a job and to think about the financial implications of the choices they make. Given this backdrop, is studying the arts the right choice?

Leading education and cultural professionals including Professor Dai Smith, Chair of the Arts Council of Wales, Kevin Jones, Headmaster of St John's College School Cambridge; Lizzie Crump from Cultural Learning Alliance (CLA) and Sam Smith from Transition Tradition discuss the value of arts, culture and creativity to our young people and ask whether we're offering them the right choices.

Debate organised by What Next? and the CLA

As society becomes more liberal, the Churches often seem more entrenched. The Oxford historian explores how Western Christianity’s complex and often divisive ideas about sex, marriage and gender have their roots in a story that began 3,000 years ago. Chaired by Anita Anand.

The Spectator and Observer journalist looks back at the General Election, and discusses the future of political alignment and the relationship between politics and the media. Chaired by Sarfraz Manzoor.

The award-winning Magnum photographer discusses his 30-year career shooting conflicts, vanishing traditions and contemporary culture with the Artistic Director of the Royal Academy. He presents his latest book From These Hands: A Journey Along the Coffee Trail. This brand new collection documents all the important coffee-growing communities around the world. McCurry’s striking colour portraits reach beyond the physical processes, to capture the very essence of these communities: ‘This project is about coffee, but not in a literal sense. It’s about how we live, about how people interact with one another.’

Photo: Bruno Barbey

Three young female scientists who are recipients of the University of Cambridge’s most prestigious scholarship, the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, talk about their research. Julia Fan Li is director of the Global Health Investment Fund, which funds research and development for some of the most pressing global health challenges; Divya Venkatesh researches African sleeping sickness and does cross-disciplinary work in biotechnology; Alexandra Grigore works on an innovative fingerprint identity system for accessing medical records in developing countries.

Leaping from the pages, jostling for position alongside the Valleys mams, dads, and bamps, and described with great warmth, the superheroes in question are a motley crew: Evel Knievel, Sophia Loren, Ian Rush, Marty McFly, a bicycling nun, and a recalcitrant hippo. Other poems focus on the crammed terraces and abandoned high streets where a working-class and Welsh nationalist politics is hammered out. This is a post-industrial Valleys upbringing reimagined through the prism of pop culture and surrealism. Edwards marries an authentic colloquial voice with sound technique to produce poems that recognize the exotic in everyday life, and a first collection that, remarkably, has won the Costa Prize for Poetry 2014.

Henry’s new collection explores a marital break-up, his childhood in Aberystwyth, and in the final sequence we meet 'Davy Blackrock': washed-up songwriter and modern day alter ego of Dafydd y Garreg Wen (David of the White Rock), alias David Owen (1720–1749), the blind, 18th century harpist and composer who fell asleep on a hill and dreamt the famous song which bears his name.

Authors Catherine and Steve and illustrator Amy bring evolution alive for a young audience, with an illustrated talk and the children’s help in creating a timeline exploring the fascinating story of life on Earth.