The RSA at Camp Bestival 2013

We’re delighted to be continuing our partnership with the creative, ideas-hungry folk at Camp Bestival again this year. We’ll be curating a trio of talks by intrepid thinkers and adventurers who’ll share deep insights and lessons from international uprisings and courageous coups to the farthest reaches of human experience. Visit us in the Guardian Literary Tent at Lulworth Castle!

The irrepressible broadcaster and campaigner Bidisha (like Plato, Voltaire and Madonna, she’s magnificently mononymous) explores the potential of political protest and activism around the world.  From feminist picketing and anti-capitalist protests in New York and London, to demonstrations and revolutions in the Middle East, the digital revolution has helped protestors organise, document and archive events. Have new media driven these revolutions or are they just tools - and where has this new spirit of protest come from?

1.10pm, Friday 2nd August, Guardian Literary Tent, Lulworth Castle

What does courage mean in an age of anxiety? Award-winning documentary-maker and self-declared ‘timid soul’ Polly Morland has spent the last four years meeting brave people from all over the world in order to assemble a modern anatomy of an age-old virtue. Her journey has ranged from battlefield to hospital ward, bullring to suburban street, natural disaster to the frontline of political dissent. She explores how and why people are brave, unpicking some of the myths so often peddled about our favourite virtue and sharing what she has discovered about a collective model of courage that offers hope to Timid Souls everywhere.

12.35pm, Saturday 3rd August, Guardian Literary Tent, Lulworth Castle.

Marvel as NASA medical guru (AKA 'the Brian Cox of medicine') Kevin Fong takes us on an awe-inspiring tour of the human body, showing how our fearless forays to all corners of the globe have reflected the pioneering exploration of  the outermost reaches of our own biological capacity. This is the story of how far we're prepared to go to save a life; and how - by deepening our understanding of the fragility and remarkable resilience of the human body - the science and engineering of the 20th century have propelled us to new extremes in exploration and medicine.

12.25pm, Sunday 4th August, Guardian Literary Tent, Lulworth Castle

View more information about Camp Bestival.

View the full line up here.