Hay Festival Podcast
Welcome to the Hay Festival Podcast, supported by our friends at Baillie Gifford, where we release remixed conversations with the world's greatest writers and thinkers from our festivals around the world.
You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever else you stream or download podcasts.
Social media: @hayfestival #ImagineTheWorld
Series Three
In Series 3 of the Hay Festival Podcast we celebrate the Hay interviewer. We have asked some of our regular interviewers to choose their own personal Hay moments from the festival archive.
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S3 Ep9 Claire Armitstead
Associate Editor for Culture at The Guardian Claire Armitstead selects poet, writer, musician and activist Akala, speaking about his memoir Native, Professor of Psychology Sarah-Jayne Blakemore on the secret life of the teenage brain, both from Hay 2018, and the award-winning Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh from 2019.
S3 Ep7 Kitty Corrigan
Magazine Journalist Kitty Corrigan selects nature writer and farmer John Lewis-Stempel from 2015, award-winning British-Turkish novelist Elif Shafak from 2013, and one of the major poets of the 20th Century and Nobel Prize winner for literature, the magnificent Seamus Heaney from Hay Festival 2006.
S3 Ep6 Dylan Jones
The author and editor of GQ selects the remarkable Tracy Emin speaking in 2017, Simon Schama on the Story of the Jews, an epic tale of endurance against destruction, from Hay 2014 and Brigadier James Cowan, who commanded the Black Watch in Iraq and the multinational 11 Brigade in Helmand from 2011.
S3 Ep1 Philippe Sands
The Professor of Law and author of Baillie Gifford Prize winning East West Street and Sunday Times bestseller The Ratline selects President Jimmy Carter from 2008, the Director of Public Prosecutions, now Leader of the Labour party, Keir Starmer speaking in 2012 and interpreter Amanda Galsworthy in 2013.
Series Two
S2 Ep4 War Poetry
A reflection on poetry and the Great War, sampling the Josephine Hart Poetry Hour and our Armistice anthology, The Echoes Last So Long with actors Eileen Atkins and Dan Stevens and poets Margaret Atwood, Tishani Doshi, Mererid Hopwood, Ulrike Almut Sandig and Owen Sheers.
S2 Ep3 Artificial Intelligence
A very brief introduction to machine learning, neural networks, darkest fears and wild intelligence as dreamed into being by Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing. Garry Kasparov and Stephen Fry, Beth Singler, James Scott, Ian McEwan, Marcus du Sautoy, Nigel Shadbolt and Margaret Boden share insights into Artificial Intelligence, fiction and (then) fact.
S2 Ep1 Global Health
In this first episode of the new series we glean insight and analysis of the historical and contemporary context of Global Health, zoonotic disease and pandemics from experts including Mary Dobson, Jeremy Farrar, Thomas J Bollyky, Devi Sridhar, Chelsea Clinton and Sally Davies.
Series One
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S1 Ep7 Matthew Francis
Matthew Francis’ re-telling of the first four stories of the Welsh classic The Mabinogi is the first to situate it in poetry, and captures the magic and strangeness of this medieval Celtic world. Permeating the whole sequence is a delight in the power of the imagination to transform human experience into works of tragedy, comedy and wonder. Chaired by Daniel Hahn.
S1 Ep5 Caitlin Moran
A compelling and hilarious rallying call for our times from superstar journalist and author Caitlin Moran tackling topics as pressing and diverse as a women-only language, flawed heroes, and the reasons the internet is like a drunken toddler, in conversation with Stephanie Merritt.
S1 Ep3 Yuval Noah Harari
How did humans turn themselves from hustling African apes into the rulers of planet earth? The Israeli historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari looks at the secrets of our success and explores the themes of his bestselling debut Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind in conversation with Rosie Boycott at Hay Festival Cartagena in January 2016.
S1 Ep2 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists talks about how she discovered Gabriel García Márquez. She responds to his statement “I am a journalist above everything else” in an intriguing exploration of how imagination turns historical fact into fictional truths.
S1 Ep1 Stephen Fry & Philippe Sands
Stephen Fry and the international human rights lawyer Philippe Sands discuss his award-winning book East West Street, a compelling family detective story and exploration of the legal principles that defined the Nuremberg War Trials. It's riveting and exacting and you'd expect that, of course. But it's also hilarious, and the laughter is the light in this deep darkness.