KITE - KITE - KITE - KITE - KITE -

Ai Weiwei, one of the most famous and controversial artists in the world, will give a rare interview to Russell Tovey and Robert Diament in a live recording of their Talk Art podcast; William Dalrymple and David Olusoga will go head to head on why we just can’t seem to learn the lessons of history; Elizabeth Day and Sathnam Sanghera will put the world to rights; Hollywood star Minnie Driver joins us for a conversation about her new memoir Managing Expectations; David Miliband will be interviewed by Andrew Neil for his new podcast for Tortoise The Backstory; Rory Stewart and Yalda Hakim will take foreign policy by the scruff of the neck with superstar U.S. interviewer Ari Shapiro; Richard Dawkins will deliver a keynote on defying gravity; we’ll glimpse the inner workings of Jarvis Cocker’s mind via artefacts he’s salvaged from his attic; public health scientist Devi Sridhar will take us inside the decisions that defined the UK’s pandemic, and explain how to avoid another one. There’ll be Julia Hobsbawm on the future of work, Jon Alexander and Ece Temelkuran on the future of the democracy, Tina Brown on the royals and Mandu Reid and Luciana Berger on female representation in politics. The breakaway star of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Bimini will tell her extraordinary story to Jack Guinness of Queer Bible. George Monbiot is coming to kick up a real stink on the climate crisis and world food systems, in conversation about his new book Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet. And Kirat Assi will be in conversation with our very own Alexi Mostrous about Sweet Bobby, the Tortoise podcast that took the world by storm (and us by surprise!) last year.