I am speaking as part of a series of philosophy events at the literary festival at Hay-on-Wye. The full catalogue is here. My events are as follows:

Weds 1st June, 12.00: Once Upon a Time the End, with Jesse Norman and Kabir Chibber. Venue: Globe Hall.

From rolling news to Twitter, attention spans are shrinking, and substantive messages are sharpening into slogans. Will postmodernity see a distillation of literary meaning into fewer (better?) words, or will our ability to tell big, expansive stories be destroyed by glib brevity, leaving us at the mercy of blurbs, stings, tweets and zingers?

Same date, 3.00: Writing the End Times. Venue: Talk Tent.

Lars Iyer talks about his philosophical black comedy Spurious. 'It is near to the end of days, shortly before the appearance of a "stupid Messiah". Two British men, employed somehow in academia, muse on their lack of success and incapacity for real thought while drinking too much gin…'