Hay Festival Winter Weekend 2024

Using a crystal ball to see into the future may not be possible (or even reliable), but there are ways to work out what might happen in the coming years and decades. In this engaging event Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter takes us through how we can all use data to understand risks and assess the chances of what might happen in the future, informing us about how the principles of probability can be used to think about everything from medical advice and climate change forecasts to football results. Offering a path through at a time of uncertainty, Spiegelhalter presents an authoritative and accessible discussion of data.

Spiegelhalter is the author of The Art of Uncertainty and The Art of Statistics. He is Emeritus Professor of Statistics at the University of Cambridge and was knighted in 2014 for services to medical statistics. He served as president of the Royal Statistical Society and in 2020 became a non-executive director of the UK Statistics Authority.

Can we live forever? What would it mean for our bodies and minds if we did? How would society be affected if we just gave up death? And if the science is available, what is really stopping us? Join neuroscientist Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston as he explores these questions and more with expertise and compassion, drawing on his book The Future Loves You: How and Why We Should Abolish Death.

Zeleznikow-Johnston argues that preserving a person in stasis for future revitalisation and repair could be the logical extension of our current medical practices, and shows us that credible procedures already exist for storing not just the body but the self. He also takes a look at the philosophical and social questions around living forever, addressing worries about overpopulation and social stagnation as well as the meaning of life. Dr Zeleznikow-Johnston is a neuroscientist at Monash University, Australia, where he investigates methods for characterising the nature of conscious experiences.
In conversation with author and tech philosopher Tom Chatfield.

Have you ever wanted to talk to animals? In this entertaining and original event, wildlife filmmaker Tom Mustill reveals how conversing with whales – and understanding what they’re saying – might not be such a crazy notion. Mustill was whale watching in 2015 when a humpback breached onto his kayak and nearly killed him. He became obsessed with trying to work out what the whale had been thinking, and while making a film about his experience discovered that cutting-edge developments and discoveries mean asking the whale what happened might not be beyond the realm of possibility. Mustill discusses the technologies and scientists who are working to turn the fantasy of Dr Dolittle into a reality, and looks ahead to how making contact could change our approach to the natural world.

Mustill is a biologist turned filmmaker and writer. His film collaborations, many with Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough, have received numerous international awards.

He talks to presenter of Inside Science and co-host of the Science in Action podcast Marnie Chesterton.

Head into orbit without the danger (and the price tag) with Chris Lintott, as he leads an astonishing tour of the key astronomical events of the past century, and reveals how many of them have come about by accident. Lintott, presenter of the BBC's Sky at Night programme, takes us to space to look at how the Universe is ever-changing and how new technology is showing us this changing sky. But amongst all this technological development, he gives a rundown of the accidents and human error that have occurred in the pursuit of asteroids, pulsars, radio waves, new stars and alien life.

Lintott is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford, where his research ranges from understanding how galaxies form and evolve, to predicting the properties of visiting interstellar asteroids. He is Principal Investigator of the Zooniverse citizen science platform, which provides opportunities for anyone to contribute to scientific research, and which was the topic of his first book, The Crowd and the Cosmos. In 2023, he was appointed the 39th Gresham Professor of Astronomy, a post that dates back to the 16th century.

Experience a remarkable audio journey by heading deep into an undersea world, all from the comfort of St Mary’s Church. Wildlife filmmaker and writer Tom Mustill and musician and Human Instruments co-founder Vahakn Matossian present a soundscape of recordings from a ground-breaking underwater listening station, three miles beneath the waves of Monterey Bay Canyon.

There, underwater landslides rumble and distant rain at the surface can still be heard as a fizz, and the seas teem with the sounds of dolphin megapods, hunting killer whales, the bleats of Gray whale calves to their mothers, the mysterious booms of Fin and Whales and of course, the complex and enchanting songs of the Humpback Whale. Mustill’s team spent six months gathering 350 new bioacoustic tracks from scientists around the world, many never heard before, making them into a soundscape journey from the perspective of seven different whales.