BBC Events

Join Clive Anderson and guests for an eclectic mix of conversation, music and comedy in this special live recording of Radio 4’s long-running variety show. Guests include stand-up Athena Kugblenu, comedian Robin Morgan, chef Georgina Hayden plus Nicky Wire and James Dean Bradfield from the Manic Street Preachers.

Join Andy Zaltzman for a recording of Radio 4’s flagship topical comedy show as he grabs the week’s headlines and hurls them at four of the nation’s best comedians and journalists. On the panel – Stephen Bush, Robin Morgan, Kiri Pritchard-Mclean and Chloe Petts.

In these uncertain times, we might all sit there and want things to change, but how many of us get off the sofa and try to make that change happen? Rachel Burden is bringing Radio 4’s virtual Café Hope to Hay Festival welcoming guests who’ve made a difference to their community and changed it for the better in big or small ways. You’ll be inspired hearing the highs and lows of how it all happened. We’re celebrating amazing individual stories, a reminder that just one person can make a huge difference. Bring a brew and we’ll bring the hope.

The Verb, BBC Radio 4’s poetry performance and discussion programme, comes to Hay Festival. In the company of the Barnsley Bard Ian McMillan and his guests there’ll be word wrangling, juxtaposition juggling, playful phrasing, and of course some poems. Guests include the Children’s Laureate Wales Nicola Davies, composer Nathan James, poet Clare E Potter and award-winning novelist Joanna Kavenna.

BBC Radio 4's What’s Up Docs? returns to Hay Festival. Drs. Chris and Xand van Tulleken explore the secrets of healthy longevity with Dr Devi Sridhar, professor and Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh.

Anna Foster presents a special edition of BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme live from Hay Festival, including guests. This is your chance to see the inner workings of the BBC’s flagship morning news programme, covering everything from politics to nature; international news and sport to arts and culture. Guests include Tim Minchin and Katherine Rundell.

Be in the audience as Adrian Chiles brings you remarkable stories live on BBC Radio 4 from Hay Festival. His guests include broadcaster Martha Kearney, literary polymath Matt Haig, and the actor and debut children’s writer Hugh Bonneville.

Witness the most famous burning down of a stable in world drama. To celebrate its 75th birthday, the cast and production team of the world's longest running drama recreate the most listened to event in the programme’s history, with a script in hand performance of the 1955 episode telling of the death of Grace Fairbrother. This will be followed by a discussion for The Archers Podcast, led by Emma Freud, of the lasting significance of Grace’s death.

Be in the audience for the BBC's daily news podcast - diving into the day's biggest news stories so you're never out of your depth.

Join the mythologist Natalie Haynes, author of Divine Might, Pandora’s Jar and No Friend to This House as well as a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about Ancient Greek and Rome. Today, for BBC Radio 4, she stands up in the name of a great figure from the ancient world. Expect life-enhancing knowledge and entertaining stories from a millennium or so ago.

The BBC’s Disinformation and Social Media Correspondent delves into the world of conspiracy theories and their impact on society.

How does fiction rewire the brain? Claudia Hammond explores the range of imaginative experiences that fiction readers have, how novels can deepen our capacity for empathy and the therapeutic effect of reading on our minds.

She is joined by leading experts in psychology and the literary world: award-winning novelist, essayist and travel writer Joanna Kavenna; Dr Paula Byrne, Jane Austen biographer, writer and founder of ReLit: The Bibliotherapy Foundation and Ben Alderson-Day, Professor in Psychology at Durham University and lead researcher on ReaderBank, an ambitious ongoing research project studying reading, imagination and wellbeing.

Join Danny Robins for a special live recording of Britain's biggest paranormal podcast. He'll be joined by his regular sidekicks Dr Ciarán O'Keeffe and Evelyn Hollow to take a deep dive into some brand-new supernatural cases, from unearthly encounters to things that go bump in the night.

Music, mindfulness and science come together in this uniquely soothing session from BBC Radio 3 Unwind. Join musician, mindfulness teacher and Radio 3 Unwind presenter Niall Breslin, with BBC science presenter Caroline Steel, for an immersive experience harnessing the power of live music and mindfulness alongside essential tips and scientific evidence to help you unwind, relax and embrace your inner calm.

Mythmaking at Hay Festival: from Medea to Rasputin. Tom Sutcliffe explores the power of mythmaking with three writers who challenge the stories we think we know. Historian Antony Beevor examines the invention and reinvention of the ‘mad monk’ Rasputin. Philosopher Susan Neiman questions the way politics is hijacking fundamental stories for its own ends. And classicist and comedian Natalie Haynes reimagines what Medea really thought of the two-timing Jason. Together they reveal how myths – old, new, personal and political – shape our understanding of the past and frame the battles of the present.

Join Adam Fleming and BBC political correspondent, Alex Forsyth for a rare chance to be in the audience for the BBC's daily news podcast, Newscast. Adam and Alex will be joined by Louise Casey. Baroness Casey has worked with six prime ministers and led high-profile public inquiries and independent reviews, most recently into grooming gangs in Rotherham, and into the Metropolitan Police. Don’t miss out on seeing one of the UK’s biggest podcasts in action.

Are networks the glue of society or the architecture of privilege? Come and join a lively, provocative and engaging debate, examining a core ethical issue of the day, chaired by the veteran BBC journalist Michael Buerk. For more than three decades, t Moral Maze on BBC Radio 4 has brought together different worldviews and challenged conventional thinking in the spirit of philosophical enquiry. With panellists Matthew Taylor (former advisor to Tony Blair), Anne McElvoy (journalist and executive editor at POLITICO), Ella Whelan (author and commentator) and Mona Siddiqui (Professor of Religion and Society, King’s College London).

Life Changing returns to Hay Festival with another story of an extraordinary moment that changed someone’s life for ever. Presenter Dr Sian Williams talks to Rachel Stone. The next door neighbours were a family with two daughters of about the same age. They got on well and even went on a Double Caravan Holiday to Wales. But when they got back everything, in Rachel’s words, was ‘all messed up’. She had to move house with her mother, joining the husband from next door and one of his daughters. In Rachel’s old house was the other daughter from next door, her father and the other mother. It was a permanent partner swap. The impact then, and in the years that followed was traumatic."

BBC Radio Wales’ much‑loved literary programme returns to Hay Festival for another special edition recorded in front of a live audience. Join presenter Hannah Loy and regular reviewers as they celebrate great writing and the joy of reading together. Expect lively conversation, thoughtful insight and plenty of the warmth and curiosity listeners love, as The Aberystwyth Book Club settles into its home‑from‑home at Hay Festival.

Join presenter Lucy Owen for a special Hay Festival edition of Books That Made Me, the BBC Radio Wales series that invites well‑known voices to revisit the childhood favourites that first sparked their imaginations and shaped their love of stories. Recorded live at Hay, this uplifting and intimate conversation celebrates the power of early reading, the characters who stayed with us, and the books that opened up whole new worlds. Expect warmth, insight, and plenty of nostalgic inspiration.

BBC Radio 4’s flagship literary programme, Take Four Books, speaks to an author about their latest novel and explores its connections to three other works. It’s a show about influences, inspiration and more broadly the joy of reading. Presented by the writer James Crawford, the programme has featured some of the world’s biggest authors, as well as interesting debuts. Please join for what promises to be a fascinating conversation with the British-Bangladeshi writer Tahmima Anam about her new novel, Uprising.

What awaits us in the deep? Dive into the power of the ocean with Tom Whipple for a live recording of BBC Radio 4's Inside Science. With amazing ocean guides Helen Czerski and Vincent Doumeizel alongside, Tom will illuminate the mysteries and challenge the controversies behind the sea science that’s changing our world.

Join Adam Fleming, BBC Europe editor Katya Adler and BBC political correspondent, Alex Forsyth for a rare chance to be in the audience for the BBC's daily news podcast, Newscast. Adam, Katya and Alex will dive into the day's biggest stories. Don’t miss out on seeing one of the UK’s biggest podcasts in action.

If you enjoy discussing the books you love, this event is for you. Join Harriett Gilbert and well known guests from the worlds of literature and entertainment for BBC Radio 4’s hugely popular programme A Good Read. Harriett and her guests each choose a favourite book to deabter and discuss. Her guests will be author Philippa Perry and broadcaster Stuart Maconie.

In Our Time will be recording at Hay Festival for the first time, its debut at any festival, offering you a rare chance to see new host Misha Glenny and his three academic guests in action. From its start in 1998 with Melvyn Bragg as host, In Our Time has become essential listening for millions around the world and is one of the BBC’s crown jewels, appearing weekly on BBC Radio 4 and always available on BBC Sounds. Misha Glenny discusses the Welsh Marches with Rhun Emlyn, Lecturer in History and Welsh History at Aberystwyth University; Helen Fulton, Professor of Medieval Literature at the University of Bristol; and Huw Pryce, Emeritus Professor of Welsh History at Bangor University.

Join national treasure Roger McGough for an hour of his and Radio 4 listeners’ favourite poems. Roger will be in conversation with actor and comedian Alistair McGowan, presenting some of our most popular requests from the programme’s four decades. And of course Roger will read some of his own work from his long career as one of Britain’s most celebrated poets.

Samira Ahmed hosts Front Row live from Hay Festival, joined by Jack Thorne, writer of the most acclaimed television drama of the year, Adolescence, as well as the BBC’s recent series Lord of the Flies. James Bond author Vaseem Khan will discuss Quantum of Menace, the first book in a spin-off mystery series led by the character Q. Best-selling crime writer Val McDermid talks about her latest thriller, Silent Bones. And we’ll have poetry from the National Poet of Wales, Hanan Issa.

Freedom is one of the leading values of our society. But with freedom comes responsibility, which is a much more contested principle. Deciding where responsibility lies, and what it means to take it, is the job of the courts. It is also debated in Parliament and in the media. It is often at issue on the psychotherapist’s couch. For BBC Radio 4’s arts and ideas discussion programme, Shahidha Bari gathers a panel of experts who deal with the concept of responsibility in very different contexts, including Baroness Hale, who served as the most senior judge in the UK, and philosopher Simon Critchley.

Jamie Bartlett’s new BBC Radio 4 podcast Everything is Fake and Nobody Cares asks why, in so many parts of modern life – like social media, TV and podcasting – fakery is no longer punished – it's rewarded! And why so many of us seem strangely unbothered by it. Jamie talks to writer and broadcaster James Crawford to explain how and why he thinks we got here.

BBC Radio 4’s flagship literary programme, Take Four Books, speaks to an author about their latest novel and explores its connections to three other works. It’s a show about influences, inspiration and more broadly the joy of reading. Presented by the writer James Crawford the programme, which launched in November 2024, has featured some of the world’s biggest authors, as well as interesting debuts. Please join for what promises to be a fascinating conversation with the Irish writer Liz Nugent about her new novel The Truth About Ruby Cooper.

Be in the audience for BBC Radio Wales' religious affairs programme, All Things Considered, tackling the thornier issues of the day in a thought-provoking manner.

Join Gary Raymond and guests for a special edition of The Radio Wales Arts Show. Returning once again to one of the world’s great gatherings of ideas, Gary leads insightful, thoughtful conversations with writers, artists and cultural voices. Together, they explore their work, the creative landscape of Wales, and the distinctive atmosphere that Hay Festival inspires. Engaging and reflective, this is the arts in Wales at the heart of the festival.