5x15 (Stories and inspiration from 5x15)

Biodiversity - crucial to human, economic and planetary health - is declining faster than at any time in human history. It is thought that one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction. How has this happened, what are the consequences and what can be done? Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta is the author of the seminal Dasgupta Review, published in February 2021. Commissioned by the UK Treasury, it is a global independent review on the economics of biodiversity, bringing economics and ecology together. He has been a Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge since 1985. Dr Gabrielle Walker is an expert strategist, speaker and moderator, with a focus on sustainability and climate change and their impacts on the energy, finance and transportation sectors. Gabrielle has presented dozens of TV and radio programs for the BBC. Tony Juniper CBE is Chair of the official nature conservation agency Natural England. Before taking up this role in April 2019 he was the Executive Director for Advocacy and Campaigns at WWF-UK, a Fellow with the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and President of the Wildlife Trusts. Rathbones - Responsible investing at Rathbone Investment Management. We see it as our responsibility to invest for everyone’s tomorrow. That means doing the right thing for our clients and for others too. Keeping the future in mind when we make decisions today. Looking beyond the short term for the most sustainable outcome. This is how we build enduring value for our clients, make a wider contribution to society and create a lasting legacy. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Michael Rosen is a beloved author, former Children’s Laureate and national treasure. In Many Different Kinds of Love: Life, Death and The NHS he brings together a collection of the words and poetry he wrote during his battle with and recovery from COVID-19, along with the messages he received from his wife and caregivers. In this reflective and life-affirming collection of poetry and words, Michael shares his experience from the edge of life, and the caring community of neighbours, loved ones, and the dedicated NHS staff, who brought him back. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Lee Lawrence is a social entrepreneur who works to help marginalised people find their voice, manage conflict and achieve justice. In 2014, he founded Mobility Enterprises with the hope of aiding those who would otherwise struggle in their daily life by providing public transport for the disabled. In 2016, he founded the Cherry Groce Foundation which exists to enhance the wellbeing of individuals with a physical or mental impairment. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

John Preston on his new book Fall which tells the jaw-dropping life story of notorious business tycoon Robert Maxwell. John is a former Arts Editor of the Evening Standard and the Sunday Telegraph. For ten years he was the Sunday Telegraph’s television critic and one of its chief feature writers. His book, A Very English Scandal, was published to great acclaim in 2016 and turned into a BAFTA-winning BBC drama series. His 2007 historical novel The Dig has been adapted into a new major motion picture starring Ralph Fiennes, Carey Mulligan and Lily James and directed by Simon Stone, on Netflix. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Join us to hear master story teller and theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli in conversation with Marcus du Sautoy - the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University – as they discuss a revolutionary idea that transformed the whole of science and our very conception of the world. In his new book Helgoland, Carlo Rovelli guides us through the extraordinary story of the quantum, the debates it raises, and his own foundational contribution to the field. The book opens a century ago on a treeless windswept island in the North Sea, Helgoland, where the young Werner Heisenberg, aged just 23, had retreated to think and had an idea, “one of the most vertiginous of Nature’s secrets ever looked upon by humankind, an idea that would transform physics in its entirety – together with the whole of science and our very conception of the world.” Heisenberg had begun to glimpse the strange beauty of a world in which nothing exists until it interacts with something else, forever causing a rip in our all-too-solid conceptions of reality. This is the story of the bright young men who together with Heisenberg completed the theory of quantum mechanics. Their science has given us modern technology, yet it remains enigmatic, swarming with startling ideas such as ghostly waves, distant objects seemly magically connected to each other, and cats that are both asleep and awake. Drawing off a lifetime of reading across the sciences and the arts, philosophy and neuroscience, Rovelli guides the reader through the far-reaching general implications of thinking of reality as a vast network of relations, of which we ourselves are just a component. Now, a century on from the discovery of quantum theory, Carlo Rovelli helps us to truly understand the world we live in. Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist who has made significant contributions to the physics of space and time. His books Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Reality is Not What it Seems and The Order of Time are international bestsellers which have been translated into 43 languages and have sold over 2 million copies worldwide in all formats. Rovelli is currently working in Canada and also directing the quantum gravity research group of the Centre de Physique Théorique in Marseille, France. Marcus du Sautoy is the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He is also a Professor of Mathematics and a Fellow of New College. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2016. In 2001 he won the prestigious Berwick Prize of the London Mathematical Society awarded every two years to reward the best mathematical research made by a mathematician under 40. In 2009 he was awarded the Royal Society’s Faraday Prize, the UK’s premier award for excellence in communicating science. He received an OBE for services to science in the 2010 New Year’s Honours List. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. This talk was recorded at 5x15 online in April 2021. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Walter Isaacson, talks about his new book The Code Breaker. Walter is a professor of history at Tulane, has been the CEO of the Aspen Institute, where he is now a Distinguished Fellow, the chairman of CNN, and the editor of TIME magazine. He is a host of the show “Amanpour and Company” on PBS and CNN, a contributor to CNBC, and host of the podcast “Trailblazers, from Dell Technologies.” He is also an advisory partner at Perella Weinberg, a financial services firm based in New York City. Isaacson is the author of Leonardo da Vinci (2017), The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (2014), Steve Jobs (2011), Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007), Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003), and Kissinger: A Biography (1992), and coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (1986). 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan has been a consultant in neurology since 2004, first working at the Royal London Hospital and now as a consultant in clinical neurophysiology and neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. She specializes in the investigation of complex epilepsy and also has an active interest in psychogenic disorders. Suzanne’s first book, It's All in Your Head, won both the Wellcome Book Prize and the Royal Society of Biology Book Prize and her critically acclaimed Brainstorm was published in 2018. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Edmund de Waal is an internationally acclaimed artist and writer, best known for his large-scale installations of porcelain vessels, often created in response to collections and archives or the history of a particular place. His interventions have been made for diverse spaces and museums worldwide, including The British Museum, London, The Frick Collection, New York and the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. His memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes, won the RSL Ondaatje prize and the Costa Biography Award, was named as one of the books of the decade by the Sunday Times and of the 21st century by the Guardian. It was the Independent Bookseller Book of the Decade and has been translated into 29 languages. In 2015 he was awarded the Windham-Campbell prize for non-fiction by Yale University. The White Road, a journey into the history of porcelain, was published to great acclaim in 2015. His new book is Letters to Camondo. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Adam Grant is an organisational psychologist, TED speaker and leading expert on motivation, meaning and creativity. He was recognized as one of the world’s 10 most influential management thinkers and is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 5 books that have sold millions of copies and been translated into 35 languages: Give and Take, Originals, Option B, and Power Moves. His new book, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know is out now. Big Change is a small but disruptive force for positive change, working for young people and those who support them. We back pioneers and projects that deliver bold approaches on the frontline, create a community to support them, and activate diverse allies who want to reimagine and transform education. This special event asks us all to rethink our education story and what we really care about for children. Our partners at Big Change will share how you can engage with the new Co-mission on the Purpose and Future of Education. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Jaiden Corfield is an award-winning activist and campaigner from North Manchester who is currently at Oxford studying PPE. He began fighting for change seven years ago at Reclaim, a charity that aims to create the next generation of working-class leaders, launching national campaigns and delivering talks across the country. Jaiden is a trustee for Rekindle school, an advisor for Big Change and a project manager for Ashoka; and the founder of his new venture Outliers. Big Change is a small but disruptive force for positive change, working for young people and those who support them. We back pioneers and projects that deliver bold approaches on the frontline, create a community to support them, and activate diverse allies who want to reimagine and transform education. This special event asks us all to rethink our education story and what we really care about for children. Our partners at Big Change will share how you can engage with the new Co-mission on the Purpose and Future of Education. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Often beautiful, sometimes deadly, but constantly ingenious, plants are the source of life and delight, myth and mayhem. Jonathan Drori CBE is the author of the acclaimed Around the World in 80 Trees, which sold 120,000 copies worldwide, an Ambassador for the WWF, fellow of the Linnean Society and the Royal Geographical Society, and a former Trustee of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. His new book Around the World in 80 Plants takes readers on a trip across the globe, bringing to life the science of plants by revealing how their worlds are intricately entwined with our own history, culture and folklore. Sarah Raven is the author of numerous bestselling books on both gardening and cooking, and is a regular on the BBC’s Great British Garden Revival and Gardener’s World. Her new book A Year Full of Flowers is a guide to gardening in all seasons, which reveals the hundreds of hardworking varieties that make the garden sing each month, together with the practical tasks that ensure everything is planted, staked and pruned at just the right time. Sir Tim Smit is best known for his achievements in Cornwall. He ‘discovered’ and then restored ‘The Lost Gardens of Heligan’ with John Nelson, which is now one of the UK’s best loved gardens having been named ‘Garden of the Year’ by BBC Countryfile Awards. Tim’s book The Lost Gardens of Heligan won Book of the Year in 1997. Tim is Executive Vice-Chair and Co-founder of the multi award-winning Eden Project in Cornwall. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Two leading classicists on the remarkable stories of the women of the ancient world and the injustice in how they are often understood today. Natalie Haynes is the author of six books. Most recently Pandora’s Jar: Women and the Greek Myths (2020) and A Thousand Ships, published by Pan Macmillan in 2019, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020. She has written and recorded six series of Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics for BBC Radio 4. Series Seven will be broadcast in summer 2021. Professor Bettany Hughes is an award-winning historian, author and broadcaster, who has devoted the last 25 years to the vibrant communication of the past. Her films on histories and culture are regularly watched by over 200 million worldwide. Her most recent book is Venus and Aphrodite: History of a Goddess (2019), published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Her Sunday Times best-selling Istanbul A Tale of Three Cities has been translated into twelve languages and was shortlisted for the Runciman Prize, her New York Times Bestseller The Hemlock Cup - Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life was shortlisted for the Writers’ Guild Award and her first book Helen of Troy - Goddess, Princess, Whore was translated into twelve languages. In 2019 she was Chair of the Man Booker Prize for International Fiction. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives and inspirations. This talk was recorded at the online 5x15 event in May 2021. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Emma Dabiri is an Irish-Nigerian academic, activist, broadcaster and teaching fellow in the Africa department at SOAS and a Visual Sociology PhD researcher at Goldsmiths. Beverly Daniel Tatum, PhD, is president emerita of Spelman College and author of several books, including the New York Times best-selling Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? and Other Conversations About Race. A thought-leader in higher education, she was the 2013 recipient of the Carnegie Academic Leadership Award and the 2014 recipient of the American Psychological Association Award for Outstanding Lifetime Contributions to Psychology. Interviewed by Georgina Lawton a 'twentysomething' journalist and speaker. A former Guardian Weekend columnist, she is now a freelancer contributor for the paper, and also writes for a number of other publications such as: The Independent, Stylist, gal-dem, Travel + Leisure, VICE, Time Out London and more. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Timothy Garton Ash is the author of ten books of political writing or ‘history of the present’ which have charted the transformation of Europe over the last half century. He is Professor of European Studies in the University of Oxford, Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His essays appear regularly in the New York Review of Books and he writes a column on international affairs in the Guardian which is widely syndicated in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Lawrence Wright has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. He is also an author, a screenwriter and a playwright. Wright has published twelve books, including The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda's Road to 9/11 (2006), which was translated into twenty-four languages and won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. In 2018, the book was adapted into a Hulu original drama starring Jeff Daniels, Alec Baldwin, and Tahar Rahim. In April, 2020, Wright published his second novel, The End of October about a pandemic, which eerily anticipated many of the events of the coronavirus pandemic. Wright lives in Austin, Texas, with his family, and plays the keyboard for the blues band WhoDo. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Arifa Akbar is the Guardian's chief theatre critic. A journalist for over twenty years, she is the former literary editor of the Independent, where she also worked as arts correspondent and news reporter. She has previously contributed to the Observer and the Financial Times. She is on the board of trustees for the Orwell Foundation and English PEN. Short pieces of her non-fiction have appeared in several anthologies. Consumed is her first book. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Gillian Tett is editor-at-large at the Financial Times and bestselling author of Fool’s Gold. Now she’s returning to her early training to explain how anthropology can help us understand the corporate world. Join Gillian in conversation with undercover economist Tim Harford, author of How To Make the World Add Up, as they discuss Anthro-Vision. For over a century, anthropologists have immersed themselves in unfamiliar cultures, uncovering the hidden rituals that govern how people act. Now, a new generation of anthropologists are using these methods in a new context – to illuminate the behaviour of businesses and consumers around the globe. In Anthro-Vision, Gillian Tett – who holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Cambridge – reveals how anthropology can help make sense of how we buy, sell, work and live, and outlines how to identify the ‘webs of meaning’ that underpin consumers’ behaviour. She explains how concealed systems of barter shape our relationship with Silicon Valley, reveals the subtle cultural shifts driving investment in new markets and green issues, and explores what anthropology can tell us about our own workplaces, too. The result is a revelatory way to make sense of human behaviour, in business and in life. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

5x15 podcast with two leading environmentalists, who have helped us to understand the complex cycle of forest life and why it must be preserved before it's too late. World-renowned scientist Suzanne Simard is author of Finding the Mother Tree, a dazzling scientific detective story from the ecologist who first discovered the hidden language of trees. No one has done more to transform our understanding of trees and now she shares the secrets of a lifetime spent uncovering startling truths about trees: their cooperation, healing capacity, memory, and, she argues, wisdom and sentience. Jonathan Drori‘s Around the World in 80 Trees is a worldwide bestseller, now in 18 languages. Following in the footsteps of Phileas Fogg, he tells the stories of 80 magnificent tree species from all over the globe, entwining plant science with history, culture and folklore to illuminate how trees play a role in every part of human life. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

What can artists offer in response to climate change? The experience of the pandemic has shown us that a profound reimagining of many aspects of society are entirely possible. In what ways can we rethink our relationship to the environment? How can we effect change with our every action? Join us to hear from artists and thinkers delivering an urgent and innovative response to the climate emergency. Back to Earth, the Serpentine’s major environmental programme is a multi-year initiative which invites leading artists, architects, poets, filmmakers, scientists, thinkers and designers to devise campaigns, protocols and initiatives to respond to the environmental crisis. The first Back to Earth publication, 140 Artists’ Ideas for Planet Earth, edited by Serpentine Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist together with Kostas Stasinopoulos, represents the exhibition of these ideas in book form, a unique compendium of recipes, sketches, photographs, texts, actions and instructions from some of the most creative minds of our generation to Remember Nature and help us all build a fairer and more sustainable future. This unmissable event brings together artists and thinkers to share their ideas around ecological challenges and to talk about collaboration and interconnectedness across disciplines as we look ahead and imagine the future in the next 50 or 500 years. Brian Eno is a composer, producer and visual artist. He is widely identified with the appearance of 'Ambient Music' in the 1970s and of ‘Generative Music’ in the 1990s. He has worked extensively with David Bowie, U2, Coldplay, Laurie Anderson, Talking Heads and others. His visual and installation work has been presented in nearly 200 venues over the last 5 decades. Eno is a trustee of Client Earth, director of Earth Percent and co-founder of The Long Now Foundation- a society dedicated to the promotion of long-term thinking. Carolina Caycedo is a Colombian-American artist who is researching community-led alternative energy production across the Americas. The basis of her campaign for Back to Earth is her long-running investigation into human interaction with rivers, from access to clean water supplies to toxicity levels and the impact of dams. Kostas Stasinopoulos is a curator and art historian. He is Assistant Curator, Live Programmes at Serpentine Galleries, London, working across the institution's interdisciplinary programme, Back to Earth and the General Ecology project. Rob Hopkins is the co-founder of transition Town Totnes and the Transition Network; and is the author of the Transition Handbook and most recently From What Is to What If: unleashing the power of imagination to create the future we want. Rob presents the podcast called from What If To What Next in which he considers how to re-imagine our relationships with every day things such as flying. In 2012 he was voted one of the independent’s top 100 environmentalists and one of the observers top British radicals. He has spoken at TED global, and he is a keen gardener and the founder of the New Lion brewery. His spare time he creates extraordinarily beautiful lino prints. Rosie Boycott is a cross bench peer, food campaigner, co-founder of 5x15 and author of Our Farm: A year in the life of a small holding. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Human beings have relied on plants throughout our evolved history - to alter consciousness, to stimulate, to calm and to radically alter the way we see the world. For this unmissable 5x15 event, award-winning author, activist and journalist, Michael Pollan joins us to talk about his groundbreaking new book This Is Your Mind On Plants in conversation with gardener and broadcaster Monty Don who for years has been leading us down all kinds of garden paths to show us why our relationship to the natural world is vital to our wellbeing and culture. This Is Your Mind On Plants explores our deep relationship with three very different plants from which we derive opium, caffeine and mescaline, and what they can do for us. Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants, and the equally powerful taboos, in this personal journey of exploration and participation in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs. He finds there is much more to say about these plants than simply debating their regulation, for when we take them into our bodies and let them change our minds, we are engaging with nature in one of the most profound ways we can. To discuss this unique blend of history, science, memoir and reportage, Michael will be joined by the brilliant Monty Don, who has written candidly about depression and how gardening can help to restore a sense of wellbeing. Michael himself has experimented with psychedelic drugs and has written extensively about how they are being used in treatments for depression and addiction. Between them they will shine a fresh light on a subject that holds up a mirror to fundamental human needs, the operations of our minds and our entanglement with the natural world. Michael Pollan is an award-winning author, activist and journalist. His international bestselling books about the way we live today - including How to Change Your Mind, In Defence of Food and Food Rules - combine meticulous reporting with anthropology, philosophy, culture, health and natural history. Time magazine has named him one of the hundred most influential people in the world. He lives in the Bay Area of California with his wife. Monty Don OBE is a well-known gardening writer and broadcaster. He lives with his family, garden and dogs in Herefordshire. His books include the Sunday Times bestseller Nigel, The Jewel Garden, Paradise Gardens and Japanese Gardens with Derry Moore, which was shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Travel Awards. His most recent books are; My Garden World and American Gardens. Chaired by Rosie Boycott, food campaigner, co-founder of 5x15 and author of Our Farm. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Best selling author and Oscar nominated documentary film maker Sebastian Junger discusses his new book Freedom with Jon Lee Anderson at 5x15. Throughout history, humans have been driven by the quest for two cherished ideals: community and freedom. The two don’t coexist easily. We value individuality and self-reliance yet are utterly dependent on community for our most basic needs. In this 5x15 podcast Sebastian Junger examines the tension that lies at the heart of what it means to be human with American author and journalist Jon Lee Anderson. Sebastian Junger is the No.1 New York Times best selling author of The Perfect Storm, Fire, A Death in Belmont, War, Tribe, and Freedom. As an award-winning journalist, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a special correspondent at ABC News, he has covered major international news stories around the world, and has received both a National Magazine Award and a Peabody Award. Junger is also a documentary filmmaker whose debut film "Restrepo", a feature-length documentary (co-directed with Tim Hetherington), was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. Jon Lee Anderson is an American author and journalist who began his career in the early 1980s, reporting on Central America’s civil wars for TIME magazine and other journals. As a New Yorker staff writer since 1998, he has covered numerous international conflicts, including those in Syria, Ukraine, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, Angola, Mali, Liberia, and Central African Republic. He has reported extensively on Latin America as well. Anderson has profiled a number of international public figures such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Augusto Pinochet, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, King Juan Carlos of Spain, Hamid Karzai, Mahmoud Ahmadinajad and Charles Taylor, the Liberian war criminal. Anderson is also the author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life. Anderson has written several other books, including Guerrillas: Journeys In the Insurgent World; The Lion's Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan, and The Fall of Baghdad. He is also the co-author of Inside the League and War Zones: Voices from the World’s Killing Grounds with his brother Scott Anderson. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories

Lionel Shriver discusses the complexities of life and the politics of death in her darkly funny new novel Should We Stay or Should We Go? at 5x15. Lionel Shriver was christened ‘the Cassandra of American letters’ by the New York Times in recognition of her writing’s unerring prescience. Her first novel, The Female of the Species, was published in 1987, but it was with the Orange Prize-winning We Need to Talk About Kevin that she took up her position as one of our leading novelists and social commentators. She has written for the Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, The New York Times, The Economist and Harper's, and is a contributor to The Spectator. Her acclaimed new novel, Should We Stay or Should We Go, begins in pandemic-hit Britain but spins off into multiple futures as it provocatively and wittily explores what makes a good life – and a good death. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories

In this funny and poignant talk for 5x15, Jack Guinness takes us on a short journey through queer history. He speaks about his incredible project, The Queer Bible, and discusses the value of freeing oneself from the trappings of narrow identity. Jack Guinness is a model and fashion commentator, a contributing editor at British GQ, and has also contributed to Sunday Times Style, the Guardian, the Gentleman’s Journal and Tatler. In The Queer Bible – published this June to celebrate Pride Month – he has brought together a stellar line-up of today’s queer icons to write about the queer trailblazers who inspired them. Based on Jack’s popular website QueerBible.com, it continues his mission to create a space dedicated to the celebration of queer history, and features contributors including Elton John, Munroe Bergdorf, Graham Norton, Lady Phyll, Paris Lees, Russell Tovey, Tan France and Courtney Act, as well bespoke illustrations from LGBTQ+ and ally artists. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

In this 5x15 short talk, Nick Crane discusses his new book Latitude: The True Story of the World's First Scientific Expedition and shares a story of courage, collaboration, initiative and adversity. Nick Crane is an award-winning writer, journalist, geographer and explorer, as well as the presenter of the prime-time BAFTA-winning BBC TV series Coast, Great British Journeys, Map Man and Town. Born in Norfolk, his career has seen him travel extensively in Tibet, China, Afghanistan and Africa. He also identified and visited for the first time the geographical Pole of Inaccessibility, the point on the globe most distant from the open sea, located in the Gobi Desert. In Latitude, he tells the greatest true scientific adventure story yet to be heard: the story of the world’s first ever international scientific expedition, which aimed to discover the shape and magnitude of the earth. An epic tale of survival and science in the 18th century spanning ten years, oceans and continents, volcanoes and rainforests, mutiny and murder, it details the breakthroughs in scientific discovery that define the world we know today. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

In our latest 5x15 podcast, award winning poet Hollie McNish will take you on a whistle stop tour of her funny, frank and timely new poetry and prose collection Slug: And Other Things I’ve Been Told to Hate From Finnish saunas and soppy otters to grief, grandparents and Kellogg's anti-masturbation pants, Slug is a book which holds a mirror lovingly up to the world, past and present, through Hollie's driving, funny, hopeful poetry and prose. Slug is about the human condition: of birth and death and how we manage the possibilities in between. Hollie McNish is one of Britain’s best-loved poets, and numbers Matt Haig, Paapa Essiedu, Benjamin Zephaniah and Jo Brand among her fans. She won the Ted Hughes Award for Nobody Told Me, her verse memoir of parenthood, and in 2016 co-wrote Offside, a play about the history of British women in football. She was the first poet to record at Abbey Road Studios, releasing an album of poetry and music entitled Versus, and is also a patron of Breast Milk Action. In Slug and Other Things I’ve Been Told to Hate, her new, cross-genre collection of poetry, prose and memoir, she addresses everything from Finnish saunas to soppy otters, grandparents to grief. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Kate Mosse joins interviewer Rosie Boycott to discuss An Extra Pair of Hands: A story of caring, ageing and everyday acts of love. Kate Mosse is an international bestselling novelist, playwright and nonfiction author with sales of more than eight million copies in 38 languages. Renowned for bringing unheard and under-heard histories to life, she is a champion of women's creativity. Kate is the Founder Director of the Women's Prize for Fiction, sits on the Executive Committee of Women of the World and is a Visiting Professor of Contemporary Fiction and Creative Writing at the University of Chichester. Kate lives in West Sussex with her husband and mother-in-law. Rosie Boycott is a cross bench peer in the House of Lords. For ten years she was chair of The London food Board, responsible to the Mayor of London for food policy in the City. She is a well known food activist with particular interest in food poverty, health, environment and agricultural sustainability. She is a trustee of the Food Foundation and Feeding Britain and chair of Veg Power. She was the founder of the feminist magazine Spare Rib and the editor in chief of three national newspapers: The Independent on Sunday, the Independent and the Daily Express. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

In this special 5x15 podcast, Join George Monbiot, Franny Armstrong on their quest to restore our rivers to their rightful place - not only in the nation’s imagination - but also to make them clean, swimmable, a rich diverse home to fish, birds and animals. Franny and George will be discussing their innovative, "live documentary"- Rivercide- and from other leading experts and campaigners. To find out more about Rivercide and how you can watch the live documentary on 14th July at 7pm on rivercide.tv. Twitter (@rivercide_live), Insta (@rivercide_live) and Facebook (facebook.com/rivercideTV). Rivercide is the world's first live investigative documentary, presented by George Monbiot, directed by Franny Armstrong and with the livestream produced by Peter Armstrong. The 60 minute programme will be broadcast live online - free to view - on July 14th at 7pm via rivercide.tv. This 5x15 discussion features: Investigative journalist, author, campaigner and self-described "professional troublemaker," George Monbiot. Monbiot is author of many acclaimed books – including Feral, Heat and Out of the Wreckage – columnist for the Guardian and environmental campaigner. George has presented many films, including Apocalypse Cow: how meat killed the planet, How Wolves Change Rivers and Nature Now. His Double Down News videos have millions of views. George is working on a new book, to be published in 2022, about how to feed the world without devouring the planet. Former pop drummer Franny Armstrong has directed three feature documentaries – Age of Stupid, McLibel, and Drowned Out. She arguably invented crowd-funding when she raised £900,000 from 300+ investors for Age of Stupid five years before Kickstarter launched. In collaboration with the Guardian, Franny founded the 10:10 campaign in 2009 which aimed to cut carbon emissions by 10% in a year. Franny has written chapters for three books, won Sheffield Doc/Fest's "Inspiration Award", been named as one of the "World’s Top 100 Women" by the Guardian and one of “London's 1,000 most influential people” by The Evening Standard. Her latest projects are the climate comedy Pie Net Zero (2020), which trended at #9 on YouTube and What If (2019) starring Ed Miliband, Chris Packham and Caroline Lucas in a parallel universe where humans are tackling climate change. Peter Armstrong has been innovating new forms of progressive media for 50 years, including pioneering radio-link documentaries for Radio 4, the BBC’s Domesday Project, founding the BBC Interactive Television Unit and co-founding with Anuradha Vittachi OneWorld.net, OneClimate.org and Empathymedia.org. He has pioneered the use of live-streaming from climate actions, including the Paris, Copenhagen, Cancun, Bonn and Poznan COP meetings and most recently from Extinction Rebellion on the streets of London. In 2004, he received the BAFTA Lifetime Achievement for his contributions to interactive media - only the second person to win this award, after Tim Berners Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. Karen Shackleton is a founder member of Ilkley Clean River Group, who are now the proud owners of the first river in the UK to be awarded Bathing Water Designation by Defra. Having been always interested in wildlife from a young age, Karen joined the Wharfedale Naturalists Society and served as Vice President until recently standing down to concentrate on the Clean River Group. Nick Hayes is a trespasser and a campaigner for the right-to-roam. He is also an author, illustrator, printmaker and political cartoonist. He has published four graphic novels and has worked for, among others, Literary Review, the British Council, The New Statesman and The Guardian. The Book of Trespass is a trespasser's radical manifesto. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

What can the planet’s oldest plants teach us about our humanity and our place in the world? In this special 5x15 podcast, journalist Lucy Jones, author of the best-selling book Losing Eden, is joined by acclaimed thinker, writer and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment conversation Robin Wall Kimmerer, who explains the biology of mosses, while at the same time reflecting on what these fascinating organisms have to teach us. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants and Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. She lives in Syracuse, New York, where she is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. Lucy Jones is a writer and journalist based in Hampshire, England. She previously worked at NME and the Daily Telegraph, and her writing on culture, science and nature has been published in BBC Earth, BBC Wildlife, The Sunday Times, the Guardian and the New Statesman. Her first book, Foxes Unearthed, was celebrated for its 'brave, bold and honest' (Chris Packham) account of our relationship with the fox. Losing Eden took Jones from forest schools in East London to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault via primeval woodlands, Californian laboratories and ecotherapists' couches. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

In her frank and funny talk for 5x15, Jess Phillips MP discusses her new book Everything You Really Need to Know About Politics with Rosie Boycott and lifts the lid on what a career in politics is really like and why it matters – to all of us. From agonizing decisions on foreign air strikes to making headlines about orgasms, from sitting in on history-making moments at the UN to eating McCain’s potato smiles at a black-tie banquet in China, the life of a politician is never dull. And it’s also never been more important. But politics is far bigger than Westminster, and in her new book and in this event, Jess Phillips makes the compelling case for why now, more than ever, we all need to be a part of it. Jess Phillips was first elected as the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley in 2015 and was elected chair of the Women’s Parliamentary Labour Party in September 2016. Before becoming an MP, she worked with victims of domestic violence, sexual violence and human trafficking, and she continues to speak up on behalf of those who struggle to have their voice heard. Jess lives with her husband and two sons in Birmingham, where she was born and raised. Find her on twitter @jessphillips. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Step into the extraordinary and mysterious world of Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author Susanna Clarke as she discusses her spectacular novel, Piranesi, with the one and only Neil Gaiman live and online exclusively for 5x15. An unmissable conversation between two of our best loved, most powerfully imaginative writers. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Pioneering neuroscientist, Anil Seth, discusses Being You: A New Science of Consciousness in conversation with Adam Rutherford at 5x15. Join 5x15 for an electrifying discussion about consciousness that will turn what you thought you knew about yourself on its head. Anil Seth, will be in conversation with broadcaster Adam Rutherford to discuss a radical new theory of consciousness that challenges our understanding of perception and reality. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Drawing on her first-hand experience of the high-pressure, starkly white world of book publishing, novelist Zakiya Dalila Harris joins us from America to talk about The Other Black Girl. At once a gripping thriller and a witty and shrewd piece of social commentary, The Other Black Girl was an instant New York Times bestseller and is one of the most talked about debut novels of the year. 'The funniest, wildest, deepest, most thought-provoking ride of a book' Attica Locke. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Mathematics is full of better ways of thinking, and with over 2,000 years of knowledge to draw on, Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy interrogates his passion for shortcuts in this fresh and fascinating guide in conversation with Roger Highfield. After all, shortcuts have enabled so much of human progress, whether in constructing the first cities around the Euphrates 5,000 years ago, using calculus to determine the scale of the universe or in writing today’s algorithms that help us find a new life partner. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Award-winning journalist Dan Saladino discusses his new book and call to arms Eating to Extinction with Rosie Boycott. A captivating and urgent exploration of some of the world's most endangered foods, Eating to Extinction by Dan Saladino is essential reading for our times, an astonishing journey through the past, present and future of food, a love letter to the diversity of global food cultures, and a work of great urgency and hope. From a tiny crimson pear in the west of England to great chunks of fermented sheep meat in the Faroe Islands, from pistachios in Syria to flat oysters in Denmark, from a wild honey harvested with the help of birds to an exploding corn that might just hold the key to the future of food - these are just some of the thousands of foods around the world today that are at risk of being lost for ever. Each food tells a story - some of them moving and personal, some of them urgent and timely - and collectively they span the history of civilisation and touch on many of the biggest issues of our time, from climate change to global inequality. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

A 5x15 and Penguin Classics series of Green Ideas special event with Jared Diamond who discusses his short book The Last Tree on Easter Island. Life on earth has become irrevocably altered by humans. What can we do to acknowledge our impact on the earth and pave the way for a fairer, saner, greener world? The Last Tree on Easter Island is Jared Diamond's haunting account of visiting the mysterious stone statues of Easter Island. As the multi-award winning author and geographer proposes in his best-selling book, Collapse, Easter Island is the ‘clearest example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its own resources.’ Diamond’s new book hones in on this theme with powerful brevity. In his exploration of how a remote civilization dismantled itself by exploiting its own natural resources he urges us to recognise why we must heed this warning for our own era. Penguin Green Ideas: The Last Tree on Easter Island is in the Penguin Classics series of Green Ideas; twenty short books which bring you the ideas that have changed the way we think and talk about the living earth and together point the way to a fairer, saner, greener world. This Autumn 5x15 is working on a number of talks with the ground breaking authors from the Green Ideas series. Jared Diamond is a Professor of Geography at UCLA and a noted polymath whose books about human societies blend biology, geography, anthropology, linguistics and history. He is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the seminal million-copy-bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, which was named one of Time magazine's best non-fiction books of all time, Collapse, a No. 1 international bestseller, and Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change, among other books. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

The writer-director Mike Leigh is one of world cinema’s pre-eminent figures, a multi-award winning writer-director and one of Britain’s most internationally recognised and critically acclaimed filmmakers. He joins 5x15 to talk about his life and work in an unmissable online conversation with the long-time presenter of The Film Programme, Francine Stock. In Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh, the director reflects on films including his much-loved Mr Turner and recent epic Peterloo; classic films including Nuts In May and Abigail’s Party; his approach to universal themes; his inimitable working method of developing characters through improvisation; and the influences that have shaped his vision. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Sarfraz Manzoor is a British journalist, documentary maker, broadcaster, and screenwriter of Pakistani origin. Growing up in a working-class Muslim family in Luton, he was raised to believe that ‘they’ – white people – would never accept him. In today’s Britain, we are often told that ‘they’ – Muslims – will never accept this country. In his new book, They, Manzoor tells the story of modern Muslim Britain, and searches for a more positive future that bridges the chasm of mutual mistrust. 'Extraordinarily researched and courageously confronting, Sarfraz Manzoor writes with a rare blend of historical depth and personal authenticity.’ - David Lammy MP. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Lara Maiklem is the founder of The London Mudlark and author of Mudlarking: Lost and Found on the River Thames, which was the story of the river told through the objects she has found - a tale of obsession, tide-watching, mud-walking and endless hours of searching in all weathers. Mudlarking was a Sunday Times Bestseller, an Observer Book of the Year, Radio 4 Book of the Week and Winner of the 2020 Indie Book Award for Non Fiction. Her new book is A Field Guide to Larking - a practical, interactive and inspiring guide to exploring our environment with a fresh pair of eyes. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Justine Picardie is the author of six books, including her critically acclaimed memoir, If the Spirit Moves You: Life and Love After Death, and the international bestseller, Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life. Her most recent book is Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture, a biography of the sister of legendary fashion designer Christian Dior. She is a contributing editor to Harper’s Bazaar, having previously been its editor-in-chief. She was formerly an investigative journalist for the Sunday Times, a columnist for the Telegraph, editor of the Observer Magazine and features director of Vogue. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Four thousand weeks is the amount of time the average person can expect to spend on this planet. But what, exactly, should we do with our brief spell on earth? That’s the question that broadcaster and author Oliver Burkeman, author of the Guardian’s much-loved ‘This Column Will Change Your Life’, explores in Four Thousand Weeks. Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, he sets out to realign our relationship with time – and in so doing, liberate us from its tyranny. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

For years Lucy Kellaway’s life was the model of success- a columnist at the Financial Times, married to the same husband for decades, she appeared happy with an outwardly enviable life. But she began to realise that the life she had built for herself no longer suited her. Her book, Re-educated: How I changed my job, my home, my husband and my hair is a celebration of education's power to transform lives, an exploration of our schools today, and a reminder that there can be new beginnings at any age. 'Everyone over 50 needs to read this bracing and inspirational book' - Nigella Lawson. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Hannah Rothschild - award winning writer, documentary filmmaker and businesswoman - returns to 5x15 to discuss her latest acclaimed novel, House of Trelawney - about an eccentric, dysfunctional family of English aristocrats, and their crumbling stately home that reminds us how the lives and hopes of women can still be shaped by the ties of family and love. Her previous novel, The Improbability of Love, won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for best comic novel and was shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Why do we consume the way we do? Aja Barber is a writer and stylist with over 230,000 followers on Instagram, whose work explores the connections between contemporary consumerism, colonial oppression and climate change. Her new book is called Consumed. Through her own story, she explores the endemic injustices in our consumer industries and confronts the uncomfortable history of the textile industry- challenging us to become citizens not consumers and to recognise the need for collective action and change. Her new book is called Consumed. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Raynor Winn's first book, The Salt Path, charted her extraordinary and uplifting journey around the South West Coastal Path, as she battled homelessness, financial uncertainty and her husband Moth’s terminal illness. The book spent 80 weeks in the Sunday Times best seller charts and has inspired millions with its tale of the healing power of nature, resilience and human endurance. She comes to 5x15 to talk about her new book, The Wild Silence, one couple’s inextricable connection to the land, and the new challenge of rewilding a Cornish farm. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

With its soaring descriptions of the natural world, its tantalizing vision of life beyond, and its account of a father and son’s ferocious love, Bewilderment marks Richard Powers’s most intimate and moving novel. At its heart lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet? Richard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. His most recent book, The Overstory, won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. This exclusive interview was recorded for 5x15 in October 2021. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Jay Rayner is an award-winning writer, broadcaster, author and jazz pianist. However he is best known - and beloved - as the restaurant critic of the Observer. His new book, Chewing the Fat, is a hilariously rollicking collection of his funniest columns, in which he also attempts to answer such pressing questions as ‘Does bacon improve everything?’ and ‘Is gin really the devil’s work?’. Hailed by Nigella Lawson as ‘Rayner at his rambunctious best: upfront, full fat, and always deliciously written’, these are dispatches from decades spent at the very frontline of eating. Joining Jay in this celebration of gargantuan appetites, glorious wit and deliciousness in book form is Dr Annie Gray, author of the official companion book to The Kitchen Cabinet and one of Britain’s leading food historians. Dr Annie Gray is one of Britain’s leading food historians. She works as a broadcaster, author and consultant. You may have heard her on BBC Radio 4’s The Kitchen Cabinet, or seen her cooking up Victorian pies or Tudor stuffed boars’ heads on the BBC. Her books include The Greedy Queen: eating with Victoria, Victory in the Kitchen: the life of Churchill’s Cook, and the forthcoming At Christmas We Feast: Festive Food through the Ages. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Rationality matters. Steven Pinker discusses a user’s guide to rationality during an epidemic of unreason. Join 5x15 for an enlightening discussion between renowned experimental cognitive scientist Steven Pinker and behavioural economist, broadcaster and writer Tim Harford. In the twenty-first century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that discovered vaccines for Covid-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, quack cures and conspiracy theorizing? In his new book, Rationality, Steven Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are simply an irrational species - cavemen out of time fatally cursed with biases, fallacies and illusions. After all, we discovered the laws of nature, lengthened and enriched our lives and set the benchmarks for rationality itself. Instead, he explains, we think in ways that suit the low-tech contexts in which we spend most of our lives, but fail to take advantage of the powerful tools of reasoning we have built up over millennia: logic, critical thinking, probability, causal inference, and decision-making under uncertainty. Rationality leads to better choices in our lives and in the public sphere, and is the ultimate driver of social justice and moral progress. Brimming with insight and humour, this is a conversation that will enlighten, inspire and empower. Steven Pinker is an experimental cognitive scientist. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won many prizes for his research, teaching, and his eleven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, one of Foreign Policy's 'World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals' and Time's '100 Most Influential People in the World Today'. Tim Harford is a behavioural economist, BBC radio and TV presenter and award-winning Financial Times columnist. He offers a distinctive blend of storytelling, humour and intelligence. The presenter of the BBC’s More or Less and Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy, FT columnist, Oxford Fellow and million-selling business author is a compelling storyteller on economics, management, psychology and the unexpected bits in between. Books include The Undercover Economist and How to Make the World Add Up: Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers. With thanks for your support for 5x15 online.

Best-selling and ground-breaking authors Emma Dabiri – What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition – and Shon Faye - The Transgender Issue - discuss their work, our current divisions and how we can come together to tell a new story and unite seemingly disparate areas. In What White People Can Do Next, Emma Dabiri’s best-selling manifesto tackling our current discourse on race, she argues that we require “an understanding, not so much of an intersectionality of identities, but an intersectionality of issues. Linking our struggles together is the work of coalition-building, a vision wherein many people can see their interests identified and come together for a common good. We can start to tell new stories, rather than fall back along fault lines that were designed to divide us, to better exploit us.” Shon Faye’s debut book, The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice, is an urgent manifesto for change, calling for justice and solidarity between all marginalized people and minorities. Through coalition building, can we move from theory into practice and find a path to create a more just, free and joyful world for us all? Shon Faye was born in Bristol, and is now based in London. After training as a lawyer, she left the law to pursue writing and campaigning, working in the charity sector with Amnesty International and Stonewall. She was an editor-at-large at Dazed, and her writing has been published by the Guardian, the Independent and Vice, among others. Faye recently launched an acclaimed podcast series, Call Me Mother, interviewing trailblazing LGBTQ elders. Her debut book, The Transgender Issue, is an instant Sunday Times best-seller. Emma Dabiri is an Irish-Nigerian academic, activist, broadcaster and teaching fellow in the Africa department at SOAS and a Visual Sociology PhD researcher at Goldsmiths. Her 2019 debut Don’t Touch My Hair, (Penguin) was an Irish Times Bestseller and published to critical and commercial acclaim. The book also inspired a national conversation about race and hair and has led to changing regulations in schools and in the British army. A regular broadcaster on the BBC, Emma presented 'Back in Time Brixton' (BBC2), 'Britain's Lost Masterpieces' (BBC4), as well as the sociological experiment 'Is Love Racist?' (Ch4). Most recently, she hosted Radio 4's critically-acclaimed documentary 'Journeys into Afro-futurism’. Ellie Mae O'Hagan is the Director of CLASS. Prior to CLASS, she worked as a strategic communications consultant. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Join 5x15 to hear bestselling author James Rebanks as he reflects on his prize-winning new book, English Pastoral; the countryside we’ve inherited, and the legacy we want to leave. James Rebanks is a shepherd based in the Lake District, where his family have lived and worked for over six hundred years. His No.1 bestselling debut, The Shepherd's Life, won the Lake District Book of the Year, was shortlisted for the Wainwright and Ondaatje prizes, and has been translated into sixteen languages. His second book, English Pastoral, was also a Top Ten bestseller and was named the Sunday Times Nature Book of the Year. Heralded as a ‘masterpiece’ by the New Statesman, it was shortlisted for the Ondaatje prize and the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, and longlisted for the Rathbones Folio prize. With thanks for your generous support for 5x15 online. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Michael Ignatieff is a Canadian writer, philosopher, historian, professor and former politician. His award-winning books have been translated into twelve languages, and in 2016 he was named a Member of the Order of Canada. Arriving at one of the darkest moments in recent times, ON CONSOLATION is an uplifting and deeply moving portrait of men and women across history who have found the courage to face their fates and continue, unafraid. Asking how we console each other - and ourselves - in an age of unbelief, it draws on sources from the books of Job to the lives of Albert Camus and Primo Levi to show how, in extremity, we can recover hope and resilience. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Huma Abedin often made the headlines as a long-time aide to Hillary Clinton during her years as First Lady, US Senator, presidential candidate, Secretary of State and Democratic Presidential Nominee. In her memoir Both/And, Huma tells her inspiring story coming of age as an American Muslim, the daughter of Indian and Pakistani scholars who split their time between Saudi Arabia, the United States and the UK. She also writes candidly about family, legacy, identity, faith, motherhood and her marriage to former congressman Anthony Weiner. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers in conversation about her breath-taking debut novel, The Love Songs Of W.E.B Du Bois, which chronicles the journey of multiple generations of one American family, from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War to our own tumultuous era. Set to be one of the most talked about books of the year, it was an instant New York Times top 10 bestseller and Oprah Book Club Choice, and has drawn comparisons to the work of Toni Morrison. She is is a fiction writer, award-winning poet and essayist, and teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Oklahoma. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Emma Gannon is a Sunday Times bestselling author, speaker, novelist and host of the award-winning creative careers podcast in the UK, Ctrl Alt Delete, which has reached almost 10 million downloads. She has blogged since 2009; podcasted since 2016 and is the author of five books, including her award-winning debut novel OLIVE. Her new book Disconnected will be published in January 2022 in the UK and US. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Ben Rawlence has written for publications including the Guardian, London Review of Books, New York Times, New York Times Book Review and the New Yorker. While working for Human Rights Watch in the Horn of Africa he became fascinated by the Dadaab refugee camp, which became the subject of his acclaimed 2016 book, City of Thorns. His new book, THE TREELINE, is a powerful and beautifully written blend of reportage, nature, travel and science writing. Telling the story of our changing climate through six species of tree, it documents the devastating effects of human activity – and offers reasons for hope. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

5x15 presents: Isabel Allende - novelist, feminist & philanthropist - in conversation about her new novel Violeta with journalist Alex Clark Isabel Allende is one of the most widely-read authors in the world, having sold more than 75 million books which have been translated into 42 languages. Join 5x15 for this exclusive launch event for her unmissable new novel Violeta. Allende won worldwide acclaim in 1982 with the publication of her first novel, The House of the Spirits. Since then, she has authored more than twenty-five bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including Daughter of Fortune, Island Beneath the Sea, Paula, The Japanese Lover, A Long Petal of the Sea, and her most recent memoir, The Soul of a Woman. Allende’s works always entertain and educate readers interweaving imaginative stories with significant historical events. Her new novel is the epic story of Violeta del Valle, a woman whose life spans one hundred years and bears witness to the greatest upheavals of the twentieth century. Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920. Violeta recounts devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, times of both poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy, and a life shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women's rights, the rise and fall of tyrants and, ultimately, not one but two pandemics. Through the eyes of a woman whose unforgettable passion, determination, and sense of humour will carry her through a lifetime of upheaval, Isabel Allende once more brings us an epic that is both fiercely inspiring and deeply emotional. In addition to her work as a writer, Allende devotes much of her time to human rights causes. She has received fifteen honorary doctorates, including one from Harvard University, was inducted into the California Hall of Fame, received the PEN Center Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2014, President Barack Obama awarded Allende the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Alex Clark is a critic, journalist and broadcaster who lives in London, and has been Artistic Director for Words and Literature at the Bath Festival. She writes on a wide range of subjects for the Guardian, the Observer, the Spectator and the Times Literary Supplement. She has judged many literary awards, including the 2008 Man Booker prize. She regularly chairs live events, appears on radio and is the host of a monthly podcast for Vintage publishing. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Angela Saini is an independent British science journalist and the author of three books. She presents radio and television programmes on the BBC and her writing has appeared in The Sunday Times, Nature, New Scientist, National Geographic and Wired. She has won a number of national and international journalism awards. She has also been a judge for the Orwell Prize for non-fiction. Her latest book, Superior: The Return of Race Science, was published in 2019 to widespread critical acclaim and named a book of the year by the Financial Times, Guardian, The Telegraph and Sunday Times. Her previous book, Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong, has been translated into thirteen languages. Both are on university reading lists across the world. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Paul Mendez is a London-based novelist, essayist and screenwriter. Born in 1982 and raised in the Black Country, the eldest of four children by Jehovah’s Witness parents of second-generation Jamaican heritage, Mendez disassociated himself from the Witnesses while still a teenager, before moving to Kent to study automotive engineering, then London to study acting, leaving both courses before the end of the first year. After reading James Baldwin’s 1968 novel Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone in the summer of 2002, Mendez began keeping a journal, maintaining it while occupied variously as a sex worker, waiter and sometime journalist. Mendez has contributed to Glass, Esquire, The Face, British Vogue, the Times Literary Supplement and the Brixton Review of Books, and his work has been included in anthologies by Goldsboro Books and Daunt Books. In 2020, Dialogue Books published Mendez’s debut novel Rainbow Milk – examining queer, Black British lives from the Windrush generation to the aftermath of the Brexit vote – to critical acclaim, featuring in the Observer’s prestigious Top Ten Debut Novels list for 2020, before being shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Hannah Lowe's third full collection of poems, The Kids, won the 2021 Costa Poetry Award and went on to be named Costa Book of the Year, and was also shortlisted for the 2021 T.S. Eliot Prize. Hannah taught for a decade in an inner-city London sixth form. At the heart of her award-winning book of compassionate and energetic sonnets are fictionalised portraits of ‘The Kids’, the students she nurtured. But the poems go further, meeting her own child self as she comes of age in the riotous 80s and 90s, later bearing witness to her small son learning to negotiate contemporary London. Lowe interrogates the acts of teaching and learning with empathy and humour, exploring the universal experience of what it is to be taught, to learn and to teach. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Monica Ali’s new novel, Love Marriage, is her first in a decade. Funny and poignant, sharp and sympathetic, it is a tour de force of storytelling that has won rave reviews. Centring on two young, engaged-to-be-married medics, Yasmin Ghorami and Joe Sangster, it is a clash of cultures story that explores who we are, how we love and how we can come to understand one another in today’s Britain. Monica Ali is the author of four previous novels including the Booker Prize shortlisted Brick Lane, 'Written with a wisdom and skill that few authors attain in a lifetime' (Sunday Times). 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Clover Stroud is a journalist and the award-nominated author of books including the Sunday Times bestselling My Wild and Sleepless Nights. In The Red of My Blood, she recalls how her sister Nell Gifford, founder of Gifford’s circus, died of breast cancer at just 46. Days before, Nell had been given years to live. This raw, lyrical and ultimately hopeful memoir examines how death, once embraced, can exist alongside us, and even enrich our daily lives. It has already drawn acclaim from Elizabeth Gilbert, Lisa Taddeo and Juliet Nicholson among others. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Kate Humble joins us to talk about her debut cook book Home Cooked: Recipes From The Farm. After the huge success of the documentary series 'Escape To The Farm With Kate Humble', this is a celebration of simple, seasonal home cooking full of flavour, comfort and joy, with more than 100 recipes from the kitchen table, inspired by her rural life at home in Wales. Kate Humble is a writer, smallholder, campaigner and one of the UK’s best-known TV presenters. She started her television career as a researcher, later presenting programmes such as ‘Animal Park’, ‘Springwatch’ and ‘Autumnwatch’, ‘Lambing Live’, ‘Living with Nomads’, ‘Extreme Wives’, ‘Back to the Land’, ‘A Country Life for Half the Price’ and ‘Escape to the Farm’. Her other books include Friend for Life, Humble by Nature, A Year of Living Simply and Thinking on My Feet. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Osman Yousefzada is a celebrated multi-disciplinary artist whose global fashion label is worn by celebrities including Beyoncé, Lupita Nyong’o, Thandiwe Newton, Gwen Stefani, Emma Watson and Freida Pinto. In The Go-Between, his coming-of–age memoir, he describes his upbringing amidst a conservative Pakistani/Afghan Pashtun community. Living in the red-light district of central Birmingham, he had to balance Western school teachings with cultural traditions, weaving between worlds and struggling with the dual burdens of racism and community expectations. Osman has exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Design Museum London, Ringling Museum in Florida and Cincinnati Art Museum in Ohio. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Why have we lost our ability to focus? What are the causes? And, most importantly, how do we get it back? Join 5x15 to hear about Johann Hari's journey to the heart of this problem and the solutions he found along the way in conversation with the one and only Stephen Fry. Crucially, they will talk about how – as individuals, and as a society – we can get our focus back, if we are determined to fight for it. Stephen Fry has described Stolen Focus as "a beautifully researched and argued exploration of the breakdown of humankind's ability to pay attention." Johann Hari is the author of two New York Times best-selling books: Chasing the Scream: the First and Last Days of the War on Drugs and Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions. His books are being developed for film and television, have been translated into 28 languages and have received praise from a very broad range of people including Oprah, Hillary Clinton, Tucker Carlson, Elton John, Naomi Klein and Glenn Greenwald. Johann has had more than 44 million views of his two TED talks, ‘Everything You Think You Know About Addiction is Wrong’ and ‘This Could Be Why You Are Depressed or Anxious’. Johann is also an award-winning journalist and he has written over the past decade for some of the world’s leading newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, the Spectator, Le Monde Diplomatique, the Melbourne Age, and Politico. Stephen Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter, film director and all-round national treasure. Fry has written and presented several documentary series, contributed columns and articles for newspapers and magazines, appears frequently on radio, reads for voice-overs and has written four novels and three volumes of autobiography, Moab Is My Washpot, The Fry Chronicles and his latest, More Fool Me. Fry’s Ties, the tales behind Stephen’s collection of ties, was published in November 2021 for the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario Canada, during the summer of 2018 Stephen gave 13 presentations of his trilogy of one-man shows (39 performances in all) based on his book Mythos. In the summer of 2019 Stephen toured 7 UK theatres with the shows. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Justin Webb is the longest serving presenter of BBC Radio 4’s flagship news and current affairs programme ‘Today.’ In THE GIFT OF A RADIO, he describes coming of age in the 1970s, his troubled home life and his experiences at a Quaker boarding school overseen by gun-wielding masters. With its tumultuous backdrop of strikes and IRA bombings, his candid and moving memoir probes familial and national dysfunction, at a time when attitudes to mental illness and masculinty were worlds away from our ideas today. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

The Instant is the outstanding new book from Amy Liptrot, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Outrun. She joins us on the eve of publication for a very special event in conversation with Lucy Jones, author of Losing Eden. The Outrun is a book about living on the edge, about the pull between island and city, and about the ability of the sea, the land, the wind and the moon to restore life and renew hope. It won both the Wainwright Prize and the PEN Ackerley Prize, and was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan has just been confirmed in the leading role in the forthcoming film adaptation. The Instant picks up where The Outrun left off. Wishing to leave the quiet isolation of her life on Orkney, Amy books a one-way flight to Berlin, rents a shared flat and looks for work. Searching for new experiences, she explores the city’s streets, nightclubs and parks and seeks out the city's wildlife - goshawks, raccoons and hooded crows. And she looks for love through the screen of her laptop. The Instant is many things - luminous and intensely honest, powerful and poignant. Amy Liptrot is the author of The Outrun, a Sunday Times bestseller. She writes columns and reviews for various magazines and newspapers including the Guardian and the Spectator, and recently presented the BBC Radio 4 series The New Anatomy of Melancholy. Lucy Jones is a writer and journalist based in Hampshire, England. She previously worked at NME and the Daily Telegraph, and her writing on culture, science and nature has been published in BBC Earth, BBC Wildlife, The Sunday Times, the Guardian and the New Statesman. Her first book, Foxes Unearthed, was celebrated for its 'brave, bold and honest' (Chris Packham) account of our relationship with the fox. Losing Eden took Jones from forest schools in East London to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault via primeval woodlands, Californian laboratories and ecotherapists' couches. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

5x15 with Amitav Ghosh and Rosie Boycott as they discuss his ground breaking new book The Nutmeg's Curse. In 1621, Dutch East India Soldiers went on a genocidal rampage in The Banda islands, a tiny archipelago which produced the world’s entire supply of valuable nutmeg. In the fate of these islanders - massacred for a tree – Amitav Ghosh sees that moment when man began ‘muting and subduing the earth’. It was nothing less than the origin of our contemporary climate crisis. Tracing the current threats to our future to this moment, the best-selling author of The Ibis Trilogy and other novels, argues that the dynamics of climate change are rooted in a centuries-old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism. The story of the nutmeg becomes a parable revealing the ways human history has always been entangled with earthly materials – spices, tea, sugarcane, opium, and fossil fuels. Our crisis, Ghosh shows, is ultimately the result of a mechanistic view of the earth, where nature exists only as a resource for humans to use for our own ends, rather than a force of its own, full of agency and meaning. Writing against the backdrop of the global pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, Ghosh frames these historical stories in a way that connects our shared colonial past with the deep inequality we see around us today. By interweaving discussions on everything from the global history of the oil trade to the migrant crisis and the animist spirituality of indigenous communities around the world, The Nutmeg’s Curse offers a sharp critique of contemporary society and speaks to the profoundly remarkable ways in which human history is shaped by non-human forces. Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria and is the author of The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, and The Ibis Trilogy, consisting of Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke and Flood of Fire. The Great Derangement; Climate Change and the Unthinkable, a work of non-fiction, appeared in 2016. "What do you do when the subject matter of life on this planet seems to lack . . . life? You read The Nutmeg's Curse, which eschews the leaden language of climate expertise in favor of the re-animating powers of mythology, etymology, and cosmology. Ghosh challenges readers to reckon with war, empire, and genocide in order to fully grasp the world-devouring logics that underpin ecological collapse. We owe a great debt to his brilliant mind, avenging pen, and huge soul. Do not miss this book-and above all, do not tell yourself that you already know its contents, because you don't." Naomi Klein on The Nutmeg's Curse 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Patrick Radden Keefe discusses Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty in conversation with Rosie Boycott. Empire of Pain is a sweeping investigative chronicle of three generations of the Sackler family, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin. The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied institutions – Harvard; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Oxford; the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations in the arts and the sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing Oxycontin, a blockbuster painkiller that was a catalyst for the opioid crisis – an international epidemic of drug addiction which has killed nearly half a million people. In his masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, award-winning journalist and host of the Wind of Change podcast Patrick Radden Keefe exhaustively documents the jaw-dropping and ferociously compelling reality. Empire of Pain is the story of a dynasty: a parable of twenty-first-century greed. Empire of Pain was an instant New York Times bestseller, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize, shortlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year and a Barack Obama Favorite Book of the Year. Praise for Empire of Pain: “Explosive” — Washington Post “A tour de force” — Financial Times 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

5x15 welcomes 2021 Booker Prize-winning author Damon Galgut for a very special online event to celebrate the paperback launch of his sensational novel The Promise. A modern family saga that could only have come from South Africa, The Promise is a powerful story of a family in crisis. The judges of the Booker Prize heralded it as 'a strong, unambiguous commentary on the history of South Africa and of humanity itself' and 'a spectacular demonstration of how the novel can make us see and think afresh', likening Galgut’s writing to the work of William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf. The Promise is an epic drama that unfurls against the unrelenting march of national history. On a farm outside Pretoria, the Swarts are gathering for Ma’s funeral. The younger generation, Anton and Amor, detest everything the family stand for – not least their treatment of the Black woman who has worked for them her whole life. Salome was to be given her own house, her own land… yet somehow, that vow is carefully ignored. As each decade passes, and the family assemble again, one question hovers over them. Can you ever escape the repercussions of a broken promise? Reunited by four funerals over three decades, the dwindling family reflects the atmosphere of its country—an atmosphere of resentment, renewal, and, ultimately, hope. Damon Galgut is the author of nine novels. He won the Booker Prize 2021 for The Promise, having been shortlisted for the prize twice before (The Good Doctor and In A Strange Room). He lives and works in Cape Town. Chris Power's fiction has appeared in Granta, The Stinging Fly, The Dublin Review, and The White Review, and been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. He writes for various newspapers and magazines and can sometimes be heard presenting Radio 4’s Open Book. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Julia Samuel, MBE, is a leading British psychotherapist and the author of the bestsellers This Too Shall Pass and Grief Works. She is Founder Patron of Child Bereavement UK and a Vice President of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy; she has also presented the podcasts A Living Loss and Grief Works. In EVERY FAMILY HAS A STORY, she presents eight beautifully drawn case studies and analyses a range of common issues, from separation and step-relationships to leaving home and loss. A moving and reassuring meditation that shows how much is passed from one generation to the next - and how this inheritance can be faced together. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Howard Jacobson has written sixteen novels and five works of non-fiction. He has twice won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Award for comic fiction, and in 2010 he won the Man Booker Prize for The Finkler Question. Published in the year of his 80th birthday, his new memoir, MOTHER’S BOY, is an exploration of being an insider and outsider, both English and Jewish. It is also a record of a writer’s beginnings - a story of learning to understand who you are before you can become the writer you were meant to be. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Elif Shafak is an award winning Turkish British writer, and the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of nineteen books, which have been translated into 55 languages. Her novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and The Forty Rules of Love, was chosen by the BBC as one of '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'. Her latest novel is the bestselling THE ISLAND OF MISSING TREES, which was this month long-listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Set in Cyprus in 1974 it tells the story of two teenagers - one Turkish and Muslim, the other Greek and Christian - who become lovers, while exploring themes of belonging and identity, love and trauma, nature and renewal.

Delia Ephron is a bestselling author, screenwriter and playwright, whose movies include You’ve Got Mail, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Hanging Up and Michael. She collaborated with sister, Nora Ephron, on a play - Love, Loss and What I Wore - which ran for two years off-Broadway. In her new memoir, LEFT ON TENTH, she tells the story of how, in her seventies and recently widowed, she fell in love with a man she’d dated in college. But at the same time that she was embarking on a whirlwind romance, she discovered she was seriously ill. ‘Tender, witty and romantic’ - Emma Gannon. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

A special online event with musician and visual artist Brian Eno and writer and artist James Bridle on AI, non-human intelligence, ecology, biological computing, more-than-human relations, and much more. James Bridle's new ground-breaking book is Ways of Being, which considers the fascinating, uncanny and multiple ways of existing on earth. What can we learn from these other forms of intelligence and personhood, and how can we change our societies to live more equitably with one another and the non-human world? Recent years have seen rapid advances in 'artificial' intelligence, which increasingly appears to be something stranger than we ever imagined. At the same time, we are becoming more aware of the other intelligences which have been with us all along, unrecognised. These other beings are the animals, plants, and natural systems that surround us, and are slowly revealing their complexity and knowledge - just as the new technologies we've built are threatening to cause their extinction, and ours. From Greek oracles to octopuses, forests to satellites, Bridle tells a radical new story about ecology, technology and intelligence. How can we expand our definition of these terms to build a meaningful and free relationship with the non-human, one based on solidarity and cognitive diversity? We have so much to learn, and many worlds to gain. Praise for Ways of Being 'Iridescently original, deeply disorientating and yet somehow radically hopeful ... worth reading and rereading' Brian Eno 'Be prepared to re-evaluate your relationship with the amazing life forms with whom we share the planet. Fascinating, innovative and thought provoking: I thoroughly recommend Ways of Being' Dr Jane Goodall, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and UN Messenger of Peace 'Wonderful ... will make you feel and think the power of knowing how like all other lifeforms we are. There is nothing more important' Timothy Morton 'Brilliant ... Bridle shows the importance of listening to one another and our surroundings, and of creating new forms of community' Hans Ulrich Obrist James Bridle is author of the acclaimed New Dark Age, about technology, knowledge and the end of the future. They wrote and presented the BBC Radio 4 series New Ways of Seeing, about how technology is changing visual culture; their writing on art, politics, culture and technology has appeared in magazines and newspapers including the Guardian, Wired, New Statesman, Frieze and ICON. Their artworks have been commissioned by galleries and institutions, including the V&A, Whitechapel, Barbican, Hayward and Serpentine, and exhibited worldwide and on the internet. Brian Eno is a composer, producer and visual artist. He is widely identified with the appearance of 'Ambient Music' in the 1970s and of ‘Generative Music’ in the 1990s. He has worked extensively with David Bowie, U2, Coldplay, Laurie Anderson, Talking Heads and others. His visual and installation work has been presented in nearly 200 venues over the last 5 decades. Eno is a trustee of Client Earth, director of Earth Percent and co-founder of The Long Now Foundation- a society dedicated to the promotion of long-term thinking. With thanks for your support for 5x15 online! 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Join 5x15 for an unmissable live event back at The Tabernacle in London's Notting Hill with the wildly entertaining John Crace, parliamentary sketch writer and political satirist par excellence, in conversation with the one and only Viv Groskop. Throughout another year of bluster and bedlam in Westminster, John’s brilliantly acerbic political sketches have once more provided the nation with a much-needed injection of humour. In A Farewell to Calm: The New Normal Survival Guide, Crace introduces an infectiously funny selection of his finest pieces from 2020–21, taking in everything from a summer of unfathomable U-turns to Christmas Covid confusion, and from lockdown-lifting to Brexit blithering. Led by Boris’s poundshop Churchill tribute act, and featuring a cast of everyone’s least favourite pantomime villains, from Classic Dom Cummings to Door Matt Hancock, the end result is a brilliantly entertaining chronicle of another tumultuous year on these benighted islands. John Crace is the Guardian's parliamentary sketch writer, author of the Digested Read columns and a contributor to GQ. He is also the author of many books including Decline and Fail and I, Maybot. He is an ardent supporter of Tottenham Hotspur FC and has written several books about the club including Vertigo: One Football Fan's Fear of Success and Harry's Games: Inside the Mind of Harry Redknapp. Viv Groskop is a writer, critic, broadcaster and stand-up comedian. She is the author of How to Own the Room: Women and the Art of Brilliant Speaking, also a Top 10 iTunes podcast, now in its 15th series, featuring guests like Hillary Clinton, Margaret Atwood, Nigella Lawson and Julie Andrews. Her latest book is Lift As You Climb: Women, Ambition and How to Change the Story. She has presented Front Row and Saturday Review on BBC Radio 4 and is a regular on BBC1’s This Week.

William Atkins’s third book, EXILES, tells the story of three nineteenth-century dissidents whose lives were profoundly shaped by the winds of empire, nationalism and autocracy that continue to blow today. A masterpiece of storytelling, travel writing and imaginative empathy, it is a book about displacement, colonialism and what it means to have a home. The Moor, William’s first book, was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize; his second, The Immeasurable World, won the Stanford Dolman Travel Writing Award and the British Library Eccles Prize. He recently guest-edited a special travel-writing edition of Granta, and his journalism and reviews have appeared in Harper’s, the Guardian and the New York Times. With thanks for your support for 5x15 online5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

The Secret Barrister is a junior barrister specialising in criminal law. Their first book, The Secret Barrister, won a number of awards and has been in the top ten bestsellers for more than a year; their second, Fake Law, was also an instant bestseller. In NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH, the Secret Barrister reveals their personal story, charting their journey to the Bar and lifting the lid on life inside the Inns of Court. They also describe their transformation into a campaigner for reform, intent on exposing the lies, secrets, crises and failures of our creaking, ailing justice system. With thanks for your support for 5x15 online5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Lea Ypi’s memoir of growing up in communist Albania, FREE, is an unforgettable coming-of-age story exploring the meaning of freedom in all its forms. It was hailed by Phillipe Sands as ‘a lyrical memoir, of deep and affecting power, of the sweet smell of humanity mingled with flesh, blood and hope’ and was shortlisted for the 2021 Costa Biography Award and the 2021 Baille Gifford Prize. Lea Ypi is Professor of Political Theory at the London School of Economics, and Political Science and Adjunct Professor in Philosophy at the Australian National University. She speaks six languages and lives in London. With thanks for your support for 5x15 online5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Luke Harding returns to 5x15 to discuss Ukraine, Russia, Putin and what happens next. Luke is an award-winning foreign correspondent with the Guardian and a #1 New York Times bestselling author. Between 2007 and 2011 he was the Guardian's Moscow bureau chief; the Kremlin expelled him from the country in the first case of its kind since the cold war. He is the author of Collusion, A Very Expensive Poison, The Snowden Files, and Mafia State, as well as the co-author of WikiLeaks and The Liar (nominated for the Orwell Prize). Two of Harding's books – The Fifth Estate and Snowden – have been made into films. With thanks for your support for 5x15 online5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Philosopher Amia Srinivasan, bestselling author of The Right to Sex, in conversation with the author of Three Women, Lisa Taddeo. '[This] ambitious, magisterial work stands out in the ongoing tide of dull, girl boss feminism arguing for personal empowerment over collective liberation . . . In a world of easy, one-dimensional answers, [Srinivasan] is unquestionably the real deal' – Vogue Amia Srinivasan is the author of one of the most talked about books in recent times, The Right to Sex, which is published in paperback this May. A landmark collection of essays from one of the most exciting young philosophers at work today, it examines the politics and ethics of sex in the twenty-first century – from pornography to incels, rape culture to sex work. Lisa Taddeo is the New York Times-bestselling author of Three Women and Animal. For this special online event hosted by 5x15, two literary stars come together to discuss this groundbreaking book and the issues it raises. Amia Srinivasan was born in 1984 in Bahrain and raised in London, New York, Singapore and Taiwan. She is currently the Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at All Souls College, Oxford, and has held permanent or visiting academic posts at University College London, Yale, NYU and UCLA. The Right to Sex is her first book and was named Blackwell’s Book of the Year 2021. It was acclaimed by critics and authors ranging from Judith Butler and Katherine Rundell, to Pandora Sykes and Emily Ratajkowski. Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women (2019) became a world-wide sensation, forever changing how we think about women and desire. Nearly a decade in the making, Three Women was hailed instantly as a feminist classic – a staggering work of nonfiction that was the result of thousands of hours spent in the company of its subjects. Lisa has contributed to New York magazine, Esquire, Elle, Glamour and many other publications, and her short stories have won two Pushcart Prizes. Her debut novel, Animal, was published in 2021 and described by Marian Keyes as ‘like a series of grenades exploding'. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Leila Mottley has been hailed as ‘the voice of a generation’. An acclaimed youth poet, her first novel, NIGHTCRAWLING, was bought in a thirteen-way auction in the States, a nine-way auction in the UK and has already sold into eight languages. Inspired by a true scandal underpinning the police department in Oakland, California, Mottley’s home town, it is an unforgettable novel about young people navigating the darkest corners of an adult world, told with a humanity that is at once agonising and utterly mesmerising. With thanks for your support for 5x15. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Jonathan Freedland is an award-winning Guardian columnist, presenter of BBC Radio Four’s The Long View, and a multi-million selling thriller author under the name Sam Bourne. His new book, THE ESCAPE ARTIST, marks a return to non-fiction, telling the story of Rudolf Vrba, ‘the man who broke out of Auschwitz to warn the world’. Vrba’s testimony would reach Roosevelt, Churchill and the pope, and eventually save over 200,000 lives, but the escape from Auschwitz was not his last. After the war, he kept running - from his past, from his home country, from his adopted country, even from his own name. ‘A work of the highest quality about an astonishing man. It is gripping from start to finish, searingly, shocking, revelatory and deeply moving.’ – Jonathan Dimbleby With thanks for your support for 5x15. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Jackie Morris is an author and illustrator. The Lost Words, which she wrote with Robert Macfarlane, won the 2019 Kate Greenaway Medal for distinguished illustration, and she was nominated for the same award in 2021 for The Unwinding, her ‘book for dreamers’. FEATHER, LEAF, BARK & STONE is a pillow book of more than 100 short poems and meditations, typed onto gold leaf, leaves, bark and feathers. Written in the wake of Morris’s father’s death, it grew out of her grief, and was guided by her deep intimacy with the natural world. The result is an exquisite book full of the light and wind of the Pembrokeshire coast where it was crafted: poetry re-imagined by a visual artist. With thanks for your support for 5x15. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Geoff Dyer is a ‘national treasure’ (Zadie Smith): the award-winning author of ten non-fiction books and four novels, including Out of Sheer Rage and Yoga for People Who Can’t be Bothered to Do It, which have been translated into 24 languages worldwide. He is currently Writer in Residence at the University of Southern California. In THE LAST DAYS OF ROGER FEDERER, he turns his attention to last things - the last days and last achievements of writers, painters, athletes and musicians from J.W Turner to Bob Dylan to Roger Federer himself. Could it be that our deepest desire is for it all to be over? With thanks for your support for 5x15. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Join 5x15 for an online event with the acclaimed historian Sarah Churchwell in conversation with Today presenter Justin Webb to delve into American myth-making and denialism past and present. In THE WRATH TO COME: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells, historian Sarah Churchwell uses one of the most enduringly popular stories of all time as a lens through which to examine the divisions ripping apart the United States today. Sarah will be joined in conversation by Justin Webb, the longest serving presenter of BBC Radio 4's flagship news and current affairs programme Today. For eight years, Webb was the BBC’s chief correspondent in Washington DC, and he won the Political Journalist of the Year award for his coverage of the Obama presidential campaign. Gone with the Wind was an instant bestseller when it was published in 1936; its film version became the most successful Hollywood film of all time. Today the story's racism is again a subject of controversy, but it was just as controversial in the 1930s, foreshadowing today's debates over race and American fascism. Separating fact from fiction, Churchwell shows how histories of myth-making have informed America's racial and gender politics, the controversies over Confederate statues, the resurgence of white nationalism, the Black Lives Matter movement, the enduring power of the American Dream, and the violence of Trumpism. Charting an extraordinary journey through 160 years of American denialism, Churchwell shows what happens when we do violence to history, as collective denial turns fictions into lies, and lies into a vicious reality. Praise for The Wrath To Come: 'At times the narrative took my breath away' Philippe Sands 'Eye-opening and at times jaw-dropping' Peter Frankopan 'One of the must-reads of the year' Suzannah Lipscomb 'Brilliant and provocative' Gavin Esler Sarah Churchwell is Professorial Fellow in American Literature and Chair of Public Understanding of the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. She is the author of Behold, America: A History of America First and the American Dream and Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and The Invention of The Great Gatsby. She was co-winner of the 2015 Eccles British Library Writer's Award and long-listed for the 2021 Orwell Prize for Journalism. Justin Webb is the longest serving presenter of BBC Radio 4's flagship news and current affairs programme Today. He joined the BBC in 1984 as a trainee, and has reported from around the world, as a war correspondent in the Gulf and in Bosnia, on the break-up of the former Soviet Union and the first democratic elections in South Africa. He was Europe Correspondent when the Euro was introduced, and for eight years he was the chief correspondent in Washington DC. He's a regular columnist in The Times and for the Unherd website. His most recent book is The Gift of a Radio, a memoir of his 70s childhood. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Join 5x15 to hear Karen Armstrong on her powerful new book Sacred Nature - an urgent manifesto and a practical guide on how to rekindle our spiritual bond with nature, drawing on the wisdom of the world's religious traditions. She’ll be in conversation with 5x15 co-founder Rosie Boycott. Armstrong is one of the world’s leading commentators on religious affairs. She spent seven years as a Roman Catholic nun before going on to become an acclaimed writer and broadcaster. In Sacred Nature, Armstrong argues that if we want to avert environmental catastrophe, it is not enough to change our behaviour: we need to learn to think and feel differently about the natural world - to rekindle our spiritual bond with nature. For most of human history, and in almost all the world's cultures, nature was believed to be sacred, and our God or gods to be present everywhere in the natural world. When people in the West began to separate God and nature in modern times, it was not just a profound breach with thousands of years of accumulated wisdom: it also set in train the destruction of the natural world. Taking themes that have been central to the world's religious traditions - from gratitude and compassion to sacrifice and non-violence - Armstrong offers practical steps to help us develop a new mindset to reconnect with nature and rekindle our sense of the sacred. Sacred Nature reveals the most profound connections between humans and the natural world. It speaks to anyone interested in our relationship with nature, worried about the destruction of our environment, and searching for new ways of thinking to shape the action needed to save our planet. Karen Armstrong is one of the world's leading commentators on religious affairs. She spent seven years as a Roman Catholic nun but left her teaching order in 1969 to read English at St Anne's College, Oxford. In 1982, she became a full-time writer and broadcaster. She is the author of sixteen books and has been awarded with honours and prizes across the globe, including the British Academy's inaugural Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for improving transcultural understanding in 2013. Rosie Boycott is a member of the House of Lords and has a long and distinguished career as a journalist, publisher and author, including having been the editor of several national newspapers in the UK. In 2008 she was appointed as Chair of the London Food Board to advise the Mayor of London on sustainable food policy implementation in the capital. In October 2016, the new Mayor of London Sadiq Khan asked Rosie to lead the development of a new London Food Strategy to help the food system to work better to meet the needs of everyone who lives and works in London. In 2018 Rosie became a member of the House of Lords after leaving the London Food board and she continues to write regularly and speak all over the world about the role of cities, and the importance of food in combating hunger and food insecurity, improving health, tackling childhood obesity and helping to reduce carbon emissions contributing to climate change. Praise for Karen Armstrong: ‘Karen Armstrong is a genius’ A.N. Wilson 'One of our best living writers on religion' Financial Times ‘Karen Armstrong is one of the handful of wise and supremely intelligent commentators on religion' Alain de Botton With thanks for your generous support for 5x15 online.

A special 5x15 event with Chris Blackhurst- an acclaimed writer, commentator, former editor of The Independent and author of Too Big To Jail (Macmillan)- in conversation with investigative reporter Oliver Bullough, author of Butler to the World and Moneyland. El Chapo, the world’s number one drug baron, had a problem: he needed to launder the billions of dollars he netted from peddling drugs across the United States. Step forward, HSBC... Too Big to Jail : Inside HSBC, the Mexican drug cartels and the greatest banking scandal of the century by Chris Blackhurst tells the shocking story of how the bank that likes to call itself ‘the world’s local bank’ came to the aid of one of the world's biggest drug cartels. For years, HSBC via its Mexican subsidiary, acted as a giant laundromat for Chapo and his Sinaloa drugs cartel. In one visit, a Chapo henchman deposited $933,000, in cash; they also used specially made boxes that exactly fitted the cashiers’ windows; the gangsters routed their money via HSBC in the Cayman Islands - 60,000 accounts were opened, holding $1.2billion. Warnings to the bank were ignored. The Americans wanted to prosecute HSBC bankers but incredibly, the UK government, in the shape of the Chancellor George Osborne, intervened, arguing this risked bringing down the bank and the entire financial system. In the end, in late 2012, HSBC received a fine, the largest in US history, of $1.9billion. But this amounted to just five weeks’ profits. The result, as with the crisis of 2008, was that no banker went to jail. Too Big to Jail vividly and grippingly details this tale of appalling greed, hubris and utterly scandalous behaviour. Chris Blackhurst is an award-winning journalist and commentator. He worked on investigations for The Sunday Times, at Westminster, and was City Editor of the Evening Standard and Editor of The Independent. He was hailed in the Guardian as “the outstanding story-getter of his generation”. His writing has appeared in many of the world’s leading titles. He is an accomplished broadcaster. Oliver Bullough is a prize-winning journalist and author from Wales, who specialises in the former Soviet Union and corruption. His work appears in the Guardian, the New York Times, GQ magazine, Prospect and elsewhere, and he regularly appears on the BBC, Sky News, CNN and other media outlets. His books include Moneyland, about which John le Carré said: "If you want to know why international crooks and their eminently respectable financial advisors walk tall and only the little people pay taxes, this is the ideal book for you" and most recently Butler to the World. With thanks for your support for 5x15 online. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

At a time of existential global challenges, we need our best brainpower. How do we create genius environments, help our brains flourish and boost group thinking? Neuroscientist and bestselling author of The Science of Fate Hannah Critchlow shows how two heads can be better than one in her ground-breaking new book Joined up Thinking. She joins 5x15 for a very special online event with Dr Rowan Williams, Honorary Professor of Contemporary Christian Thought in the University of Cambridge and former Archbishop of Canterbury. Almost everything we've ever achieved has been done by groups working together, sometimes across time and space. Like a hive of bees, or a flock of birds, our naturally social, interconnected brains are designed to function best collectively. New technology is helping us share our wisdom and knowledge much more diversely across race, class, gender and borders. And AI is sparking a revolution in our approach to intelligent thinking - linking us into fast-working brain-nets for problem solving. Hannah Critchlow shows all the tricks to help us work best collectively - how to cope with wildly differing opinions, balance our biases, prevent a corrupting force, and exercise our intuitive ability for the most effective outcomes. She shares compelling examples of success, at work, in families, and all team situations, and shows us how to work, play and grow with intelligence. As Rowan Williams has said: “From startling futuristic speculation to practical exercises in getting in touch with your own routine mental processes, Hannah Critchlow steers us with a sure hand and an unfailingly clear and engaging voice. This is a treasure of a book, exploding some damaging myths and encouraging us to re-imagine the values of relationality and receptivity in our thinking.” Praise for Joined Up Thinking: "For tens of thousands of years we have tried to work out how we can best think. At last this genius work explains the past, the present and the future of our minds. Read - to be amazed." Bettany Hughes "Hannah Critchlow has written a timely and engaging book about human intelligence and the challenges our brains face in the twenty-first century. It will make you think. It might even change for the better the way you think." Ian Rankin "A powerful manifesto for the strength of "we" thinking" Marcus du Sautoy Dr Hannah Critchlow is an internationally-acclaimed neuroscientist with a background in neuropsychiatry. Best known for demystifying the human brain on regular radio, TV and festival platforms. She regularly appears on the BBC TV and Radio, most recently as Science Presenter in Family Brain Games with Dara Ó Briain. Her book on Consciousness: A Ladybird Expert Guide, was published with Penguin in 2018, whilst The Science of Fate, published with Hodder in May, 2019, made The Sunday Times Bestseller list. Dr Rowan Williams was the 35th Master of Magdalene College, and is an Honorary Professor of Contemporary Christian Thought in the University of Cambridge. From 1986-2001 was Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity for six years, before becoming Bishop of Monmouth, and, from 2000, Archbishop of Wales. In 2002, he became the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury. Dr Williams is a noted poet and translator of poetry, and, apart from Welsh, speaks or reads nine other languages. In 2013, he was made a life peer, becoming Lord Williams of Oystermouth, in the City and County of Swansea. With thanks for your support for 5x15 online. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Join 5x15 in September to hear about acclaimed biographer Andrea Wulf’s thrilling, and timely, story of a group of friends who changed the world in conversation with broadcaster Kirsty Lang. In the 1790s an extraordinary group of friends from the small German town of Jena changed the world. They were the first Romantics, and their ideas transformed society and shaped the way we lead our lives today. In Magnificent Rebels, Andrea Wulf, the Costa Prize-winning author of The Invention of Nature, tells the riveting story of this revolutionary band of poets, novelists and philosophers. Disappointed by the French Revolution's rapid collapse into tyranny, what they wanted was nothing less than a revolution of the mind. And through their epic quarrels, passionate love stories, heart-breaking grief and radical ideas, they launched Romanticism onto the world stage, inspiring some of the greatest thinkers of the time. The lives of these Magnificent Rebels are as relevant today as ever as we, like they, walk the same tightrope between meaningful self-fulfilment and destructive narcissism, between the rights of the individual and our role as a member of our community, and our responsibilities towards future generations who will inhabit this planet. Andrea Wulf was born in India, moved to Germany as a child, and now lives in London. She is the award-winning author of five books. Her previous book, The Invention of Nature, was an international bestseller and won more than 10 awards, including the Royal Society Science Book Award 2016, Costa Biography Award 2015, the Inaugural James Wright Award for Nature Writing 2016 and the LA Times Book Prize 2016. Andrea has written for many newspapers including the Guardian, LA Times and New York Times. She was the Eccles British Library Writer in Residence 2013 and a three-time fellow of the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello. She appears regularly on TV and radio. Kirsty Lang is a writer, broadcaster and former foreign correspondent. A familiar voice on BBC Radio 4 Kirsty has been a presenter on Front Row, The World Tonight and Last Word. This year she took over as the first female host of the fiendishly difficult Round Britain Quiz, the longest running game show in Europe. She is also Chair of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, Newcastle and a regular contributor to the Sunday Times Culture magazine. With thanks for your support for 5x15 online. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

5x15 is thrilled to welcome Robert Harris to our virtual stage for a conversation with 5x15 co-founder Rosie Boycott. Robert Harris is the author of fourteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy - Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator - Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich, The Second Sleep and V2. Now he returns with a thrilling new novel, Act of Oblivion, which takes the reader back to 1660. Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law, Colonel William Goffe, cross the Atlantic. They are on the run and wanted for the murder of Charles I. Under the provisions of the Act of Oblivion, they have been found guilty in absentia of high treason. In London, Richard Nayler, secretary of the regicide committee of the Privy Council, is tasked with tracking down the fugitives. He'll stop at nothing until the two men are brought to justice. A reward hangs over their heads - for their capture, dead or alive. Act of Oblivion is an epic journey across continents, and a chase like no other. Praise for Robert Harris 'A belter of a thriller' The Times 'A master storyteller' Observer 'The king of the page-turning thriller' i Paper 'Harris's cleverness, judgment and eye for detail are second to none' Sunday Times 'Harris writes with a skill and ingenuity that few other novelists can match' Financial Times 'Harris is a master of historical fiction, a compelling author who brings to life the recent and ancient past' TLS Robert Harris is the author of fourteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy - Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator - Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich, The Second Sleep and V2. His work has been translated into forty languages and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in West Berkshire with his wife, Gill Hornby. Rosie Boycott is a cross bench peer in the House of Lords. For ten years she was chair of The London food Board, responsible to the Mayor of London for food policy in the City. She is a well known food activist with particular interest in food poverty, health, environment and agricultural sustainability. She is a trustee of the Food Foundation and Feeding Britain and chair of Veg Power. She was the founder of the feminist magazine Spare Rib and the editor in chief of three national newspapers: The Independent on Sunday, the Independent and the Daily Express. With thanks for your support for 5x15 online! Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Join two of 5x15’s favourite guests, Carlo Rovelli and Oliver Burkeman, to discuss time, the universe and our place in it. Carlo Rovelli’s HELOGLAND was an instant bestseller when it was published in 2021, and was chosen as a book of the year by The Times, Financial Times, Sunday Times, Guardian and Prospect. To celebrate its paperback publication, we are delighted to welcome Carlo back to 5x15 to revisit this beautiful, thrilling and mind-bending journey into the world of quantum physics. In HELGOLAND, Carlo Rovelli tells the story of the birth of quantum physics and its bright young founders, who were to become some of the most famous Nobel winners in science. It is a celebration of youthful rebellion and intellectual revolution; an invitation to a magical place, and a dazzling work from one of our most celebrated scientists and master storytellers, reminding us of the many pleasures of the life of the mind. Carlo will be joined in conversation by Guardian writer Oliver Burkeman, whose best-selling book FOUR THOUSAND WEEKS was a smash hit and a Financial Times, Guardian and Observer book of the year in 2021. Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists and spiritual teachers, it is a book that sets out to realign our relationship with time - and in doing so, to liberate us from its tyranny. Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist who has made significant contributions to the physics of space and time. His books Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Reality is Not What it Seems and The Order of Time are international bestsellers which have been translated into 43 languages and have sold over 2 million copies worldwide in all formats. His many fans include Benedict Cumberbatch, Antony Gormley, Neil Gaiman, Es Devlin, Lily Cole, David Hockney, Philip Pullman, Nick Hornby and Morgan Freeman. Rovelli is currently working in Canada and also directing the quantum gravity research group of the Centre de Physique Théorique in Marseille, France. Oliver Burkeman is the author of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking, and for many years wrote a popular weekly column on psychology for the Guardian, 'This Column Will Change Your Life'. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Psychologies and New Philosopher. He has a devoted following for his writing on productivity, mortality, the power of limits, and building a meaningful life in an age of bewilderment. With thanks for your support for 5x15 online. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

The hugely popular Jonathan Drori – writer and plant-lover – returns to 5x15 for a very special conversation with Professor Nicola Spence CBE, Defra’s Chief Plant Health Officer and the Head of the UK National Plant Protection Organisation. Both Jonathan and Nicola have been inspired in their love of plants by visits to Kew Gardens from a young age. In this event, they will explore how those early experiences led them both on journeys of discovery to the far reaches of the botanical universe. Join us as Jonathan and Nicola share stories about their love of the natural world, the importance of plant health which we all too often take for granted, some surprising gardening tips and fascinating facts about the botanical world. Jonathan is the author of the runaway best sellers, Around the World In 80 Trees and Around the World in 80 Plants, revealing in awe-inspiring detail how the worlds of trees and plants are intricately entwined with our own history, culture and folklore. Using obscure historical sources and the most up-to-date academic papers, he uncovered wonderful and strange stories about plants and their relationships with us and with each other; from the familiar tomato, to the humble dandelion, the eerie mandrake to the Spanish ‘moss’ of Louisiana. As Chief Plant Health Officer, Nicola advises ministers, industry, UK Border Control and others about the risks of plant pests and diseases. Her mission is to stop alien pests and diseases of plants and trees from arriving in the UK and if they do arrive, deal with them as quickly as possible to prevent the economic, social and environmental impacts and losses they cause. Nicola is a plant scientist, who has worked on crop diseases UK and internationally for decades. But plant health threats can be found in the most unlikely places from football pitches, furniture and works of art, to plants with cultural or religious significance, so she has needed to be a tactful diplomat as well. Jonathan Drori is a trustee of The Eden Project and Cambridge University Botanic Garden, an Ambassador for the Woodland Trust and the WWF, and Honorary Professor at Birmingham University’s Institute of Forest Research. Previously, Jon was a Trustee of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and for BBC TV, he was responsible for more than fifty science documentaries and series. He is known for several botanical TED talks, which have been viewed millions of times. Nicola Spence is an expert in plant health and the international plant trade, and a keen gardener. She is the UK’s Chief Plant Health Officer and heads the National Plant Protection Organisation. She was previously Chief Scientist at the Food and Environment Research Agency and President of the British Society for Plant Pathology. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, Honorary Professor at the University of Birmingham, Visiting Professor at Harper Adams University, a member of Court at the University of York and a Trustee of The Yorkshire Arboretum. Nicola’s PhD was in Plant Virology at the University of Birmingham. With thanks for your support for 5x15 online. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Jack Parlett is a writer, poet and scholar specialising in queer studies and American literature. In FIRE ISLAND, he tells the story of a slim strip of land off the coast of New York that has become iconic as a place of hedonism, reinvention and liberation. A book full of literary intrigue – from the halcyon scenes of Frank O’Hara’s poetry to the bars where Patricia Highsmith got drunk – it moves from the island’s early life as a discreet home for same-sex love, via the post-Stonewall disco era and the AIDS epidemic, to consider the present challenges faced by its residents. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Join 5x15 for a thrilling investigation into whale science and animal communication with Tom Mustill, author of the ground-breaking new book How to Speak Whale and Lucy Jones author of Losing Eden. How could breakthroughs in science change our relationship with animals forever? In 2015, wildlife filmmaker Tom Mustill was whale watching when a humpback breached onto his kayak and nearly killed him. After a VIDEO CLIP of the event went viral, Tom found himself inundated with theories about what happened. He became obsessed with trying to find out what the whale had been thinking and sometimes wished he could just ask it. In the process of making a film about his experience, he discovered that might not be such a crazy idea. In this special event, Tom tell's the story of the pioneers in a new age of discovery, whose cutting-edge developments in natural science and technology are taking us to the brink of decoding animal communication – and whales, with their giant mammalian brains and sophisticated vocalisations, offer one of the most realistic opportunities for us to do so. Using ‘underwater ears,’ robotic fish, big data and machine intelligence, leading scientists and tech-entrepreneurs across the world are working to turn the fantasy of Dr Dolittle into a reality, upending much of what we know about these mysterious creatures. But what would it mean if we were to make contact? And with climate change threatening ever more species with extinction, would doing so alter our approach to the natural world? Enormously original and hugely entertaining, How to Speak Whale is an unforgettable look at how close we truly are to communicating with another species – and how doing so might change our world beyond recognition. Tom Mustill is a biologist turned filmmaker and writer, specializing in stories where people and nature meet. His film collaborations, many with Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough, have received numerous international awards, including two Webbys, a BAFTA, and an Emmy nomination. They have been played at the UN and COP 26, and been shared by heads of state, the World Health Organization, and Guns N’ Roses. He lives in London with his wife Annie, daughter Stella and the inhabitants of his small but surprisingly deep pond. Lucy Jones is a writer and journalist based in Hampshire, England. She previously worked at NME and the Daily Telegraph, and her writing on culture, science and nature has been published in BBC Earth, BBC Wildlife, The Sunday Times, the Guardian and the New Statesman. Her first book, Foxes Unearthed, was celebrated for its 'brave, bold and honest' (Chris Packham) account of our relationship with the fox. Losing Eden took Jones from forest schools in East London to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault via primeval woodlands, Californian laboratories and ecotherapists' couches. Praise for How To Speak Whale ‘We rarely pause to consider what animals think or feel, or question whether their inner lives resemble our own. Tom Mustill’s fascinating and deeply humane book shows us why we must do so – and what we, and the planet, could stand to gain by it’ Greta Thunberg ‘A rich, fascinating, brilliant book that opens our eyes and ears to worlds we can scarcely imagine’ George Monbiot, Sunday Times bestselling author of Regenesis 'Scary, important and brilliant' Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan 'Extraordinary' Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and co-author of The Future We Choose With thanks for your support for 5x15 online. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Sam Knight is a staff writer for the New Yorker, has won two Foreign Press Association awards and was shortlisted for the 2018 Orwell Prize for political writing. His 2017 Guardian Long Read on the events that will follow the death of the Queen, ‘London Bridge is Down’, was viewed four million times. In THE PREMONITIONS BUREAU, his first book, he reveals the strange, true and unsettling tale of a 1960s psychiatrist obsessed with investigating why some people seemed able to predict disaster. A story of madness and wonder, science and the supernatural, it is a journey to the outer edges of reason and the human mind. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Lucy Siegle is a journalist, broadcaster and eco expert. She is the Observer and Guardian’s Ethical Living columnist, the BBC’s The One Show’s resident environmental expert, and set up the Observer Ethical Awards in 2005. In BE THE ULTIMATE FRIEND OF THE EARTH, she tackles ten big topics involved in our quest to reach net zero. She explores how every one of us can be an ally to the planet; how we can discover how our consumer habits and lifestyles really impact the environment – and how we can all be engines for change. Along the way, she introduces the projects, the places and the people already living as if this planet was precious. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Katy Hessel is an art historian, broadcaster and curator dedicated to celebrating women artists from all over the world. How many women artists do you know? Who makes art history? In her new book, THE STORY OF ART WITHOUT MEN, Katy Hessel challenges the canon as we know it and showcases the female and gender non-conformist artists who are so often excluded from the history books. Discover the glittering Sofonisba Anguissola of the Renaissance, the radical work of Harriet Powers in the nineteenth-century USA, and the artist who really invented the Readymade. Explore the Dutch Golden Age, the astonishing work of post-War artists in Latin America, and the women artists defining art in the 2020s. This is the history of art as it's never been told before. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Join 5x15 online in November to hear acclaimed playwright and screenwriter Abi Morgan in conversation with beloved One Day author and screenwriter David Nicholls. THIS IS NOT A PITY MEMOIR is BAFTA and Emmy-award winner Abi Morgan’s extraordinary story, written in the wake of her partner’s devastating illness. When she found the man she had loved for nearly twenty years lying on the bathroom floor, it was clear that life for both of them would never be the same again. But this is not a pity memoir – this is a love story. This is a book about the things you wished you’d said to the person you love; about the silence of being lost in space, and the importance of family, and parties, and noise. It’s about not knowing and not being known. It’s about the difference between living and surviving, and about finding a way to carry on when life is turned upside down. Above all, it’s a reminder that, even in the worst times, there is light ahead. Praise for Abi Morgan ‘Breathtaking.. this book is a gift’ - MERYL STREEP ‘The kind of book you will find yourself saying urgently, over and over, to friends: 'Have you read it?' - CAITLIN MORAN ‘Truly breathtaking. Arrestingly honest, funny, profound and exquisitely written. I could not have loved it more’ - CAREY MULLIGAN ABI MORGAN is a BAFTA and Emmy-award winning playwright and screenwriter whose credits include The Iron Lady, Suffragette, Sex Traffic, The Hour, Brick Lane and Shame. She is the creator and writer of BBC drama, The Split. DAVID NICHOLLS is one of Britain's most successful writers with an incomparable talent for making us laugh, cry and wince with recognition. He is the author of five bestselling novels - Starter for Ten, The Understudy, One Day, Us and Sweet Sorrow – which have sold over 8 million copies worldwide and are published in forty languages. David is also a sought-after screenwriter- his first break came when he wrote for the third series of Cold Feet. Highlights since then have included adapting Far From the Madding Crowd and Great Expectations and his own first novels Starter for Ten and One Day into feature films. His most recent screenwork was Patrick Melrose, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, adapted from the novels by Edward St Aubyn. With thanks for your support for 5x15 online. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Gail Whiteman is an expert on global risk arising from the systemic changes occurring in the natural environment. She is Professor of Sustainability at the University of Exeter’s Business School and founder of Arctic Basecamp, a team of Arctic experts and scientists who, for the last five years, have brought their Arctic-based research to the World Economic Forum annual meeting at Davos. In so doing, their aim is to call for action from global leaders to apply responsive and responsible leadership to address global risks from Arctic change. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Colm Tóibín's new book, A Guest at the Feast, is a celebration of writing and brings together essays about growing up in Ireland during radical change; about cancer, priests, popes, homosexuality, and literature. He was born in Enniscorthy in 1955. He is the author of ten novels, and his work has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, as well as the Folio Prize in 2015; and has won the Costa Novel Award, the Impac Award and the David Cohen Prize for Literature, amongst others. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Raynor Winn’s new memoir Landlines is a story that begins in fear but ends in hope. As the health of Moth, Raynor’s husband, declines, the couple set out to walk the gruelling, remote and stunningly beautiful terrain of Scotland’s Cape Wrath Trail, reflecting on community and the environment along the way. Raynor is the bestselling author of the astonishing, multi-award-winning The Salt Path (2019) which told the story of another remarkable journey, when nature first saved the couple. Just days after Raynor learnt that Moth, her husband of thirty-two years, was terminally ill, their home was taken away and they lost their livelihood. With nothing left and little time, they made the impulsive, brave decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path. 'You feel the world is a better place because Raynor and Moth are in it' - The Times 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories