Baillie Gifford Prize

We look at the rise in use and popularity of Artificial Intelligence. Joining podcast host Razia Iqbal is British novelist, scientist and 2020 Baillie Gifford prize judge, Simon Ings and mathematician Hannah Fry, author of 2018 Baillie Gifford Prize shortlisted book Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine. They explore our relationship, trust and increasing dependency on machines; issues around privacy; and if creating is solely a human skill or if technology can produce original art.

This episode was recorded and produced completely remotely.

Read Smart Podcast is commissioned by The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.

In episode 2, we’re joined by insiders from the publishing world to hear about trends in non-fiction and the world of books, and what we need in times in crisis. Host Razia Iqbal speaks to Andrew Holgate, Literary Editor of the Sunday Times; co-founder of Particular Books and publisher at Profile Books, Helen Conford; and Georgina Laycock who is a publisher at John Murray.

This episode was recorded and produced completely remotely.

Read Smart Podcast is commissioned by The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and is also generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.

We’re excited to announce the new Read Smart Podcast. The show is hosted by BBC’s Razia Iqbal, produced by The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation. The new series builds on last year’s successful podcasts released to celebrate the prize’s 21st anniversary.

Each month, Razia explores the increasingly popular world of non-fiction books. Expect to hear from prize winning authors, judges and publishing insiders. It also goes behind the scenes of the 2020 prize, which is awarded this autumn.

We kick off Episode 1 looking at troublemakers and freedom of expression. This episode features the investigative journalist, writer and filmmaker David France, whose account of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1990s, How to Survive A Plague, won The Baillie Gifford Prize 2017. Razia is also joined by Yasemin Congar, who translated I Will Never See the World Again by Ahmet Altan, which was longlisted for The Baillie Gifford Prize in 2019, and was written and published from prison, and by Hannah Trevarthen from English PEN.

In episode 2, we’re joined by insiders from the publishing world to hear about trends in non-fiction and the world of books, and what we need in times in crisis. Host Razia Iqbal speaks to Andrew Holgate, Literary Editor of the Sunday Times; co-founder of Particular Books and publisher at Profile Books, Helen Conford; and Georgina Laycock who is a publisher at John Murray.

This episode was recorded and produced completely remotely.

Read Smart Podcast is commissioned by The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and is also generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.

We’re excited to announce the new Read Smart Podcast. The show is hosted by BBC’s Razia Iqbal, produced by The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation. The new series builds on last year’s successful podcasts released to celebrate the prize’s 21st anniversary.

Each month, Razia explores the increasingly popular world of non-fiction books. Expect to hear from prize winning authors, judges and publishing insiders. It also goes behind the scenes of the 2020 prize, which is awarded this autumn.

We kick off Episode 1 looking at troublemakers and freedom of expression. This episode features the investigative journalist, writer and filmmaker David France, whose account of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1990s, How to Survive A Plague, won The Baillie Gifford Prize 2017. Razia is joined by Yasemin Congar, who translated I Will Never See the World Again by Ahmet Altan, which was longlisted for The Baillie Gifford Prize in 2019, and was written and published from prison, and by Hannah Trevarthen from English PEN.

Listen to the final episode of our podcast featuring 2019 winner Hallie Rubenhold and chair of judges Stig Abell

In this episode our podcast host, Razia Iqbal, is joined by winner Hallie Rubenhold. Together they discuss The Five: The Untold Lives of The Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, and the significance of winning the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. You can also hear our chair of judges Stig Abell's speech from the ceremony, in which he welcomes the 'new zeitgeist' of 'expertise, quality and depth' he and the other members of the panel encountered in the judging process. That's followed by Hallie's reaction at the moment she was declared the 2019 winner.

In The Five, Hallie Rubenhold reconstructs the lives of five of the women killed by the notorious Jack the Ripper, often from as little as the DNA of a single hair. The book is a riposte to prevailing Ripper myths, giving voice to the murdered women and painting a picture of the precariousness of working class lives in Victorian London.

In this shortlist episode, our podcast host, Razia Iqbal, is joined by judges Dr Xand van Tulleken and Dr Myriam Francois to discuss the six chosen titles and how reading such a volume of different books is both challenging and enlightening. Iqbal also speaks with book blogger Olive Fellows about her reading initiative Non-Fiction November.

Four of the six titles bring women’s lives to the forefront and two books highlight major twentieth century figures. The shortlist spans history, current affairs, mystery, art and ideology.

The six titles on this year’s shortlist are:

• Furious Hours, Casey Cep (William Heinemann)

• On Chapel Sands, Laura Cumming (Chatto & Windus)

• The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth, William Feaver (Bloomsbury Publishing)

• Maoism: A Global History, Julia Lovell (Vintage)

• Guest House for Young Widows, Azadeh Moaveni (Scribe UK)

• The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, Hallie Rubenhold (Doubleday)

The 21st winner of the prize will be announced on 19 November at a dinner generously hosted by The Blavatnik Family Foundation, who also support the podcast. You can watch the announcement on our Facebook livestream.

In this shortlist episode, our podcast host, Razia Iqbal, is joined by judges Dr Xand van Tulleken and Dr Myriam Francois to discuss the six chosen titles and how reading such a volume of different books is both challenging and enlightening. Iqbal also speaks with book blogger Olive Fellows about her reading initiative Non-Fiction November.

Four of the six titles bring women’s lives to the forefront and two books highlight major twentieth century figures. The shortlist spans history, current affairs, mystery, art and ideology.

The six titles on this year’s shortlist are:

• Furious Hours, Casey Cep (William Heinemann)

• On Chapel Sands, Laura Cumming (Chatto & Windus)

• The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth, William Feaver (Bloomsbury Publishing)

• Maoism: A Global History, Julia Lovell (Vintage)

• Guest House for Young Widows, Azadeh Moaveni (Scribe UK)

• The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, Hallie Rubenhold (Doubleday)

The 21st winner of the prize will be announced on 19 November at a dinner generously hosted by The Blavatnik Family Foundation, who also support the podcast. You can watch the announcement on our Facebook livestream.

In this episode, our podcast host, Razia Iqbal, is joined by judges Stig Abell and Frances Wilson to talk about the twelve books that have made it onto the longlist.

The twelve titles span history, biography, current affairs and natural science, with several addressing grand themes including race, courtroom drama, ideology, and economics.

Episode three of the Baillie Gifford Prize podcast features prize-winning authors Helen Macdonald, Philip Hoare and The Bookseller's Tom Tivnan