Ideas

From Ecuador and India to Canada, writer Robert Macfarlane explores the ancient idea that rivers are living beings; an idea that has taken on new relevance and urgency as we face a planet battling the effects of climate change. Sharing stories and insights from his new book Is a River Alive?, Macfarlane shifts our perspective, making us see that our fate is tied into that of our rivers.

Macfarlane, a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, is internationally renowned for his writing on nature, people and place. His bestselling books include Underland, Landmarks and The Wild Places, as well as a book-length prose-poem, Ness.

In collaboration with the artist Jackie Morris he co-created the internationally bestselling books of nature-poetry and art, The Lost Words and The Lost Spells. He is currently completing his third book with Morris: The Lost Birds.

Cellist Cara Berridge and music critic Kate Kennedy present an evening of storytelling and music, looking at the lives of remarkable cellists who suffered persecution, and discussing their own relationships with the cello.

Berridge is a founder member of the Sacconi Quartet, who have won prizes at many international competitions. Author Kennedy’s latest book weaves her own complicated relationship with the cello together with interviews with contemporary cellists and the stories of cellists throughout history, including Lise Cristiani, the first female professional cello soloist, who undertook an epic and ultimately fatal concert tour of Siberia in the 1850s, taking with her one of the world’s greatest Stradivari cellos.

Artists and activists Led By Donkeys share the journey of their five years of resistance against those in power in Britain.

Led By Donkeys was founded in early 2019 when four friends, motivated by the “thermonuclear hypocrisy of our political overlords”, started going out at night to paste up guerrilla billboards of the leading Brexiters’ historic tweets. Mixing art and activism, they have created some of the most memorable images of our political age, and continue to protest. Hear directly from the group, and be inspired to take your own political action. They talk to writer Oliver Bullough.

If you think the outlook is bleak, come and hear some much-needed new perspective on our prospects as Isabel Losada and Sumit Paul-Choudhury discuss their good vibes with Director of Positive News Martin Wright.

In The Joyful Environmentalist Losada gets right on with the solutions. Looking for every single way we can take care of the planet, she addresses how we live and work, travel, shop, eat, drink, dress, vote, play, volunteer, bank – everything. She advocates doing this wholeheartedly, energetically and joyfully, until we’re all fully equipped to be part of the pollution solution.

Astrophysicist-turned-journalist Sumit Paul-Choudhury’s The Bright Side is a deep dive into the power and science of optimism. Irrational though it might seem, optimism is central to the human psyche: without it we would never have survived the unpredictable and often hostile world we evolved into – and it may have lessons for us yet.

Mark Watson is generally accepted to be alive. And yet he’s died many times. Not just on stage – though he’ll tell you about that – but in other ways, too. There’s been the death of a childhood dream. The death of his panel-show career. And then there was the time he died inside and nearly lost it all…

Revealing and painfully funny, Mark will tell us all about mortification, failure and the times life doesn’t work out as planned. But he also wisely questions whether the things we strive for – recognition, success, the approval of others – are really the things that matter. He might be talking about death, but he reminds us how to live.

Start the day at Hay Festival with headline guests chaired by editors from The Independent reviewing the news, discussing the headlines and issues of the day, and revealing what’s breaking and trending online. A fascinating look at what’s tickling the nation’s fancy – and driving it to splenetic fury. Bring your coffee!

Among today’s guests are sustainability researcher Mike Berners-Lee, professor in the Institute for Social Futures at Lancaster University and author of There is No Planet B, and geopolitics journalist Misha Glenny, author of McMafia which has been adapted into a major BBC1 drama series.

Truth is a much-debated concept in our modern world, but according to Mike Berners-Lee (There is No Planet B) there’s nothing more important. The climate and sustainability expert delves into his new book A Climate of Truth, to spell out why, if humanity is to thrive in the decades ahead, the most critical step is to raise standards of honesty in our politics, our media and our businesses. By turning our attention to the principle of truth, he argues, we can all have much more impact on the issues we care about. The professor in the Institute for Social Futures at Lancaster University talks to journalist Rosie Boycott.

Zahaan Bharmal argues that, far from being abstract, physics can help us answer some of the most urgent questions about life. Why are some relationships unstable, while others last a lifetime? Why do the rich keep getting richer? And why do we all make so many irrational decisions?

You don’t need to be a scientist to have a stake in these answers. Join Bharmal for an abstract-free, accessible look at the hidden and surprising ways in which physics can help us to make sense of our unpredictable world.

Bharmal works for Google as a senior director of strategy. He writes about science for the Guardian and won NASA’s Exceptional Public Achievement Medal for services to science communication.

The International Booker Prize is the world’s most influential prize for translated fiction. It’s awarded annually for a single book translated into English and celebrates the vital work of translation with the £50,000 prize money divided equally between author and translator. In championing works from around the world that have originated in a wide range of languages, it fosters an engaged global community of writers and readers whose experiences and interests transcend national borders.

The prize will be announced on 20 May, and we present the winning author and translator in conversation with the chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, Gaby Wood, and one of this year’s judges, author and International Booker Prize-shortlisted translator, Anton Hur.

From school onwards, we accept there is a separation between art and mathematics. But what if we’re wrong? Marcus du Sautoy argues that maths and art may not be polar opposites after all, and that their complementary relationship spans a vast historical and geographic landscape, from the earliest stone circles to Mozart’s obsession with numbers and the radically modern architecture of Zaha Hadid.

Du Sautoy has been named by the Independent on Sunday as one of the UK’s leading scientists. In 2008 he was appointed to Oxford University’s Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science, a post previously held by Richard Dawkins.

Waterstones Children’s Laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce and child psychologist and neuroscientist Professor Sam Wass discuss the importance to childhood development of reading and access to stories. They consider the urgent need to get reading as a right for all, not just the few.

When he was crowned Laureate in 2024, Cottrell-Boyce pledged to use his role to advocate for national provision so that every child – from their earliest years – has access to books, reading and the transformative ways in which they improve long-term life chances.

Professor Wass runs the Institute for the Science of Early Years (ISEY) at the University of East London. A major focus of research at the Institute is exploring how diverse early living environments influence early attention, learning and stress.

What are words? They’re the beginning of our stories: portals to treasured memories, to the strange sayings that seem to be unique to our own families and the beloved people that say them to us. So, what was your gran’s favourite word for a time-waster? How did your dad answer the question ‘What’s the time?’ And just how many responses are there to the daily query ‘What’s for dinner?’

Even better, how do these words change as they travel across our regions? Join Rosen for a tour of the British Isles and all its vernacular idiosyncrasies, through his ‘Almanac’ of the weird and wonderful words we use. He reflects on the joys of English, for anyone who loves language – whether following its rules or breaking them.

When was the last time you really stayed away from your phone? Or picked it up just to do the one task you intended, and didn’t fall into scrolling through your apps for hours? There is little doubt that we’re addicted to our smartphones, but interacting with the online world is an essential component of modern life, so it’s difficult to work out how to step away and find a balance.

In this offline session Dr Kaitlyn Regehr discusses her book Smartphone Nation: Why We’re All Addicted to Screens and What We Can Do About It, and shows how to keep the advantages and joy of the internet while also identifying the dangers. Look out for tips on how to withdraw when we’re being over-reliant on our devices! Regehr is an associate professor at University College London.

We’re entering a new era – and our old narratives around global affairs, politics, technology and the environment no longer capture the complexity of today’s realities. We urgently need positive new stories to inspire collective action and decision-making.

Join BSR (Business for Social Responsibility)’s Sustainable Futures Lab in this highly interactive and creative workshop, to explore new opportunities presented by ‘shocks’ across different domains, from wars to AI to climate upheavals, and weave these into positive new narratives around innovation, collaboration and a reimagined future.

The session will be hosted by Christine Diamente, who leads BSR’s Business Transformation team, Jacob Park, who leads BSR’s Sustainable Futures Lab, Charlene Collison, who leads BSR’s Collaborations, and Margot Brent, who leads BSR’s strategy practice.

Surviving in the wilderness has long been associated with men, yet many remarkable women also choose to live and work in wild and challenging landscapes. Presenter and author Philippa Forrester (Wild Woman) and journalism lecturer Sarah Lonsdale (Wildly Different) share their stories of women who choose to live wildly.

Forrester considers the grit and determination required for women to maintain connections to wildlife, and highlights female conservation heroes and other extraordinary women working in nature. Lonsdale tells the globe-trotting tales of five women who fought for the right to work in, enjoy and help to save the wild places of the Earth. In conversation with Sarah Lamptey, presenter, writer, DJ, social activist and founder of Showerbox, which brings free showers to enhance the lives of those facing homelessness in London, they ask: how do women claim their place in the remote and lovely parts of our planet?

What makes people believe in conspiracy theories? Why have they taken over our political sphere? And how do we counter them before it’s too late? Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey, co-authors of Conspiracy Theory, pull back the curtain on conspiracy theories, from the bizarre to the sinister, and look at how conspiracism has become a booming industry, a political strategy and a pseudo-religion, and something that’s a threat to the foundations of liberal democracy.

Dunt spent many years working in Westminster as editor of Politics.co.uk. He is a columnist for The i newspaper, and a host on the Oh God What Now and Origin Story podcasts. Lynskey has written several books, including the just-released Everything Must Go, an exploration of our fantasies of the end of the world.

One in five people will have an affair in their lifetimes – but the reasons behind the affairs might not be what you think. Psychotherapist Juliet Rosenfeld shares the secrets, lies and motivations behind real affairs, and considers the psychological and childhood roots that may help explain why an affair happens.

Rosenfeld’s new book looks without judgement at five different true stories of people who had affairs, from a man who left his wife in the delivery suite to visit his young mistress to the psychologist who put attraction to a patient above career ethics. A psychoanalytic psychotherapist and author, Rosenfeld has a special interest in couples and the difficulties they encounter in long term relationships.

Start the day at Hay Festival with headline guests chaired by editors from The Independent reviewing the news, discussing the headlines and issues of the day, and revealing what’s breaking and trending online. A fascinating look at what’s tickling the nation’s fancy – and driving it to splenetic fury. Bring your coffee! Among today’s guests is Friederike Otto, Senior Lecturer in Climate Science at Grantham Institute, Imperial College London.

From social change and hope to the climate crisis and masculinity, there’s not a subject Rebecca Solnit can’t turn her mind to. In this event with farmer and author James Rebanks, she discusses No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain, a collection of essays revolving around the power of activism and covering subjects including women’s rights, the fight for democracy, trends in masculinity and the rise of the far right in the West.

Solnit is author of more than 20 books, including Recollections of My Non-Existence, which was longlisted for the 2021 Orwell Prize for Political Writing and shortlisted for the 2021 James Tait Black Award, and the collection of essays Men Explain Things to Me.

Philosopher Agnes Callard presents a new and vibrant understanding of the life and work of Socrates and his unique approach to learning. In Open Socrates, Callard recovers the radical energy at the centre of Socrates’ thought, drawing attention to his startling discovery that we don’t know how to ask ourselves the most important questions about how we should live, and how we might change.

Callard is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago, specialising in ancient philosophy and ethics. Having applied Socratic teachings to her own life, she lives in what the Guardian terms “a kind of ideal philosophical throuple”, married to a graduate student while living platonically with her ex-husband, also a philosopher.

Do you feel like we’re living in the end times? You’re not the first to feel that way. Two tourists of the apocalypse have looked into the abyss, and come to share their findings with us.

Tom Phillips’ A Brief History of the End of the F*cking World is about the apocalypse, and how humans have always believed it to be nigh. The former Buzzfeed editorial director tells of weird cults, failed prophets and mass panics, holy warriors leading revolts in anticipation of the last days, and suburbanites waiting for aliens to rescue them.

Lynskey’s Everything Must Go is a witty exploration of our fantasies of the end of the world. He surveys the endings we have read, listened to or watched with morbid fascination, from the sci-fi terrors of HG Wells and John Wyndham to the apocalyptic ballads of Bob Dylan. Why do we like to scare ourselves?

Our own Festival bookseller and author of Do Not Call the Tortoise returns to the stage to discuss his new book, which offers a quietly revolutionary perspective on our surroundings with the help of poets, trees, cats (of course), John Lennon and, most of all, an openness to wonder. It raises many questions, and even answers some of them. How can a cat be a portal to the universe? Why did our ancestors make cave paintings? Who is Mr Bun? And, above all, what is it that your lowly hedgehog knows? Howell-Jones speaks to poet and author Owen Sheers.

“Stunning – full of revelatory beauty” – Katherine May.

Start the day at Hay Festival with headline guests chaired by editors from The Independent reviewing the news, discussing the headlines and issues of the day, and revealing what’s breaking and trending online. A fascinating look at what’s tickling the nation’s fancy – and driving it to splenetic fury. Bring your coffee!

Among today’s guests are historian and broadcaster David Olusoga, author of Black and British and presenter of Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners, and farmer and writer Helen Rebanks, author of The Farmer’s Wife.

A panel of experts assesses whether our current food system is fit for purpose, both now and in a changing world in which we may have to cope with a series of shocks and challenges.

Campaigner Minette Batters, academic Tim Lang, food grower Claire Ratinon and farmer James Rebanks tell us what we should be worrying about when it comes to food, and what solutions to problems of sustainability, social justice, public health and food security look like.

Batters is former president of the National Farmers’ Union, and was the first woman to hold the post. Lang is Emeritus Professor of Food Policy at City University London's Centre for Food Policy, and author of Atlas of Food. Ratinon is an organic food grower and writer, author of Unearthed: On Race and Roots and How the Soil Taught Me I Belong. Rebanks is a farmer based in the Lake District, author of The Shepherd's Life.

Journalist and novelist Omar El Akkad engages in a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in a West that betrayed its fundamental values of freedom and justice for all.

El Akkad has reported on stories including the various Wars on Terror and the Black Lives Matter protests. Watching the slaughter in Gaza, he has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie, and that some groups of people will always be treated as less than fully human.

He talks to historian and broadcaster David Olusoga about his new book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This – named for a phrase he used in a viral social media post – in which he chronicles his painful realisation and his grappling with what it means to carve out some sense of possibility during these devastating times.

For over a century, the Guardian’s ‘Country Diary’ has published the nation’s most celebrated writers of natural history as they capture the essence of the British countryside. Four nature lovers discuss Under the Changing Skies, which collates the finest contributions from recent years.

Patrick Barkham is natural history writer for the Guardian and author of The Butterfly Isles, Coastlines and Wild Green Wonders. Nicola Chester writes on belonging, protest, access and connection to nature. Her memoir is On Gallows Down: Place, Protest and Belonging. Paul Evans is a nature writer and senior lecturer in the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University. Broadcaster Martha Kearney is also a keen apiarist who filmed her beekeeping year for The Wonder of Bees on BBC Four.

Start the day at Hay Festival with headline guests chaired by editors from The Independent reviewing the news, discussing the headlines and issues of the day, and revealing what’s breaking and trending online. A fascinating look at what’s tickling the nation’s fancy – and driving it to splenetic fury. Bring your coffee! Among today’s guests is Ellie Chowns, Green Party MP for North Herefordshire.

David Reid’s book Running the Risk is a guide to understanding life’s biggest risks – from shark attacks to nuclear disaster – and how we build a safer future. From the seemingly mundane act of crossing the road to the complex web of global connections, risk permeates our daily existence – but doesn’t have to blight it.

Hey is responsible for leading the World Risk Poll, Impact and establishing a Global Safety Evidence Centre for the Lloyds Register Foundation. The World Risk Poll and Resilience Index is the first and only global study of worry about, and harm from, risks to people’s safety. These unique data are collected and made freely available by the Foundation as a public good.

David Reid is Director of Global Advocacy at Lloyd’s Register Foundation, while Nancy Hey is the Foundation’s Director of Evidence & Insight. In conversation with Hay Festival Sustainability Director Andy Fryers, they consider the effects of risk and explore how we can redefine our understanding of resilience.

Psychologist Dr Julie Smith (Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?) offers comfort and perspective on a multitude of sticky situations. When being human gets complicated; when you feel overwhelmed; when there’s pressure to perform; you’re grieving; making big decisions; when you get it wrong as a parent; when you want to win the argument; when you’re overthinking everything; when you want to fit in; and many more.

She gives her trademark simple and straightforward advice to help us see clearly how best to respond and act, returning us to a place of calm, strength and positivity.

The author, online educator and clinical psychologist has a combined following of almost nine million, gained from her drive to create accessible, good quality mental health resources.

A chance to hear novelist and playwright Hanif Kureishi – who will join us digitally – speak about the devastating fall which left him without the use of his limbs, and the effect it had on his creativity. Kureishi fell at home on Boxing Day in 2022, and spent the subsequent year in hospitals in Italy, before he returned home to London.

Unable to hold a pen but compelled to write during his time in medical care, he dictated his words to family members, and authored a series of dispatches from his hospital beds. These were shared on social media and online, and form part of his book Shattered. The author (on screen via digital link) speaks to journalist Rosie Boycott (present in person) about his experiences, and how his time in recovery awoke within him new feelings of gratitude, humility and love.

We’re all getting poorer. What does that look like for British children and their life chances? Social scientist Danny Dorling’s highly original approach constructs seven ‘average’ children from millions of statistics – each child symbolising the middle of a parental income bracket. Born in 2018, when the UK faced its worst inequality since the Great Depression and became Europe’s most socially divided nation, these ‘children’ turned five in 2023, amid a devastating cost-of-living crisis.

Getting to the heart of post-pandemic Britain’s most pressing issues, Dorling asks: what do we miss when we focus only on the super-rich and the most deprived? Who are today’s real middle class? And how can we reverse the trends leaving all children worse off than their parents?

Dorling is the 1971 Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford. His books include Inequality and the 1% and All That is Solid.

Start the day at Hay Festival with headline guests chaired by editors from The Independent reviewing the news, discussing the headlines and issues of the day, and revealing what’s breaking and trending online. A fascinating look at what’s tickling the nation’s fancy – and driving it to splenetic fury. Bring your coffee!

Among today’s guests are Paralympic athlete and presenter Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson and award-winning comedian Sara Pascoe, host of BBC2’s Great British Sewing Bee and author of Sex Power Money.