5x15

For more than thirty years, Michael Pollan has been writing books and articles about the places where nature and culture intersect: on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in our minds. He is the author of the multiple New York Times best sellers, including How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation (2013), Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual (2010); In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (2008); The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006) and The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World (2001). In his latest audiobook Caffeine: How caffeine created the modern world, Michal Pollan offers his provocative look into the profound ways that what we eat affects how we live. Caffeine, it turns out, has changed the course of human history: Pollan’s reporting explores how caffeine has won and lost wars, changed politics, and dominated economies. T

George Monbiot is an author, Guardian columnist and environmental campaigner. His best-selling books include Feral: Rewilding the land, sea and human life and Heat: how to stop the planet burning; his latest is Out of the Wreckage: a new politics for an age of crisis. George cowrote the concept album Breaking the Spell of Loneliness with musician Ewan McLennan; and has made a number of viral videos. One of them, adapted from his 2013 TED talk, How Wolves Change Rivers, has been viewed on YouTube over 40m times. Another, on Natural Climate Solutions, that he co-presented with Greta Thunberg, has been watched over 50m 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. This talk was recorded at the second online 5x15 in May 2020. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Recorded at the 5x15 zoom online event on 20th April, 2020. This wonderful talk by Jonathan Drori contained pictures of trees. We listed the names of the trees mentioned in his presentation slides below and we hope this would help you follow his talk better, enjoy! 00:44:00 Dieffenbachia/ Dumb Cane (US) 01:49:00 Opium Poppy 02:53:00 Wax Palm (Colombia), Quiver tree (Namibia), Banyan Tree, Dragon Tree (Socotra), Baobab tree (Madagascar) 03:31:00 Coastal Redwood, (other trees shown in slides: Swam Gump, Douglas Fir) 06:03:00 Pachypodium (Madagascar), Oak Trees 06:38:00 Cherry laurel, Manchineel, Caffeine 07:32:00 Kauri Tree (New Zealand) 09:43:00 (Example shown in slide: Delonix Regia) 11:54:00 Coconut 12:33:00 Coco De Mer 10:15:00 Durian flower Ravenala/ Traveller’s palm (Madagascar), Raffed Lemur (animal) 15:14:00 Cedar of Lebanon 16:09:00 Quiver tree (The national tree of Namibia) Jonathan Drori is a Trustee of The Eden Project and the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and on the Board of Cambridge Universi

Recorded from the first online 5x15 event on April 20th 2020. James Naughtie, special correspondent for BBC News, is one of the country's best-known broadcasters. He presented Today on Radio 4 for 21 years, and has reported for the BBC from around the world for more than three decades. Alongside his journalism he has wide cultural interests, and has written and produced many documentaries on music and books, and presented concerts from across Europe for radio and television. On Radio 4, he has hosted every edition of Bookclub since it began in 1998. James has been travelling in America since the 1970s - witnessing many of the important events that have shaped the country as it is today. On the Road is an account of his experiences, the places and people he has encountered, and the changes he has seen. 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.c

Recorded at the first online 5x15 event on April 20th 2020. Hadley Freeman grew up in New York City and London. She has been a staff writer at the Guardian since 2000 and has contributed to many other publications, including Vogue (US and UK.) House of Glass is her fourth book. She lives in London with her partner and their three children. 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

Recorded at the very first online 5x15 event on April 20th 2020. One Two Three Four is Craig Brown's latest brilliant book. It's a kaleidoscopic mixture of history, etymology, diaries, autobiography, fan letters, essays, parallel lives, party lists, charts, interviews, announcements and stories published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the break-up of the Beatles. Craig Brown is the author of 18 books, and a prolific journalist. He has been writing his parodic diary in Private Eye since 1989. He is the only person ever to have won three different Press Awards – for best humorist, columnist and critic – in the same year. He has been a columnist for, among others, The Guardian, The Times, The Spectator and The Daily Telegraph. He currently writes for The Daily Mail and the The Mail on Sunday. His book, Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret won an international bestseller and won the James Tait Black Memorial Award, the South Bank Sky Arts Literature Award. 5x15 brings together five outsta

Recorded at the very first online 5x15 event on April 20th 2020 Mark O'Connell is the author of To Be a Machine, which won the Wellcome Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize and the Royal Society Insight Investment Book Prize. He has written for the Guardian, the Sunday Times, Slate, the New York Times among others, and been interviewed on BBC Newsnight, BBC Radio 4 and NPR. He lives in Dublin with his family. 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

Recorded at the first online 5x15 event on April 20th 2020. Margaret Heffernan is one of the UK’s most highly regarded thought leaders. An entrepreneur, CEO and keynote speaker, she is the also author of five previous books: Beyond Measure, A Bigger Prize, Wilful Blindness, Women on Top and The Naked Truth. The best-selling Willful Blindness : Why We Ignore the Obvious at our Peril was named one of the most important business books of the decade by the Financial Times, and was shortlisted for the FT Business Book Award 2011. Her TED talks have been seen by over eleven million people and in 2015 TED published Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes. Born in Texas, raised in Holland and educated at Cambridge University, Margaret worked in BBC Radio for five years where she wrote, directed, produced and commissioned documentaries and dramas, and has herself written five plays. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules -

Gaia Vince on Transcendence - How Humans Evolved through Fire, Language, Beauty and Time. Vince is a science writer and broadcaster interested in the interplay between humans and the planetary environment. She has held senior editorial posts at Nature and New Scientist, and her writing has featured in newspapers and magazines including the Guardian, The Times and Scientific American. She also writes and presents science programmes for radio and television. Her research takes her across the world: she has visited more than 60 countries, lived in three and is currently based in London. In 2015, she became the first woman to win the Royal Society Science Book of the Year Prize solo for her debut, Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made. Transcendence is her new book, the follow up to the prize-winning Adventures in the Anthropocene. It tells the astonishing story of how culture enabled us to become the most successful species on Earth. Humans are the most successful species

Before going to medical school, Dr Rachel Clarke was a television journalist and documentary maker. She now specialises in palliative medicine, caring deeply about helping patients live the end of their lives as fully and richly as possible – and in the power of human stories to build empathy and inspire change.Her first book, the Sunday Times bestselling Your Life in My Hands, revealed what life is like for a junior doctor on the NHS frontline. Her new memoir, Dear Life is based on her work in a hospice and explores love, loss, grief, dying and what really matters at the end of life. 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

Hashi Mohamed arrived in Britain at the age of nine as a child refugee, and is now a barrister at No5 Chambers in London. He is also a broadcaster, having appeared on BBC Radio 4, and presented Adventures in Social Mobility (April 2017) and Macpherson: What Happened Next (2019). He is also a contributor to the Guardian, The Times and Prospect. He mentors many young people at various stages of their career and is also a trustee of Big Education, a trust which oversees three inspirational schools in London and the South East. Recorded on 10th Feb 2020 at EartH Hackney. 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

Sophie Walker is a feminist activist, founding leader of the Women’s Equality Party, and recently-appointed chief executive of Young Women’s Trust, the charity representing and supporting women aged 18-30 who are living on no or low pay. She is passionate about rebuilding society for and with (extra)ordinary women. 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

Robin Ince is many things. A comedian, an author, a broadcaster and a populariser of scientific ideas. The Guardian once declared him a ‘becardiganed polymath’ which seems about right. He is probably best known as the co-host of the Sony Gold Award winning BBC Radio 4 series The Infinite Monkey Cage with Professor Brian Cox. He also co-hosts the podcast Robin and Josie’s Book Shambles, which gains over 100,000 listeners a month, which is part of The Cosmic Shambles Network, which he also co-created. His most recent book, I’m a Joke and So Are You, was described by Chortle as ‘one of the best books ever written about what it means to be a comedian’. He also wrote the book, The Bad Book Club, and has edited and written short stories for two volumes of Dead Funny: Horror Stories by Comedians, as well as writing and presenting documentaries about the history of self-help, comedians and melancholy, Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds, Richard Feynman, General Relativity and Dr Seuss. As a stand up he has toured the wor

James O’Brien is a Sunday Times Bestselling author and LBC Radio Presenter. He has presented BBC Two’s Newsnight and his own daytime talk show O’Brien on ITV. His daily current affairs phone-in show on LBC has 1.2 million weekly listeners and his new, award-winning podcast, Full Disclosure, has been downloaded four million times. How To Be Right is his first book. Recorded on 10th Feb 2020 at EartH Hackney. 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

Tracey Thorn is a singer-songwriter and writer, best known for her seventeen years in bestselling duo Everything But The Girl. She grew up as the youngest of three children in Brookmans Park, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, where she learned the piano, enjoyed underaged drinking, and started her first band while still at school. Since then, she has released four solo albums, one movie soundtrack, a large handful of singles. Her books, include the Sunday Times bestselling memoir, Bedsit Disco Queen, and most recently Another Planet. It tells the story of the time before she became an acclaimed musician and writer, when she was a typical teenager in suburbia. She lives in London, with her husband Ben Watt and their three children. Recorded on 10th Feb 2020 at EartH Hackney. 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/5x15stori

In his new book The Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread - And Why They Stop, epidemiologist Adam Kucharski reveals how mathematical approaches transform what we know about contagion. Adam Kucharski is an associate professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. A mathematician by training, his work on global outbreaks such as the Ebola epidemic and the Zika virus has taken him from villages in the Pacific Islands to hospitals in Latin America. He is a TED fellow and winner of the 2016 Rosalind Franklin Award Lecture and the 2012 Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize, and also the author of The Perfect Bet: How Science and Maths Are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling. His writing has appeared in the Observer, Financial Times, Scientific American, and New Statesman. 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.

Has music lost its vanguard role? Billy Bragg is here to talk about the role of music in shaping our world, past present and future. Stephen William ‘Billy’ Bragg is an English singer-songwriter and left-wing activist. His music blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, with lyrics that span political or romantic themes. His music is heavily centred on bringing about change and getting the younger generation involved in grass-roots activist causes. His book Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World was shortlisted for the Penderyn Music Book Prize, and was a Rough Trade, Mojo, and FT Book of the Year 2018. His latest book is the political pamphlet The Three Dimensions of Freedom published in 2019. Recorded at The Tabernacle on 20th Jan 2020. 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.

Jeremy Irons talks about his method of approaching poetry. Jeremy Irons won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Claus von Bülow in 1990’s Reversal of Fortune. He is also a Golden Globe, Emmy, Tony, and Screen Actors Guild award winner. His film highlights include The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), The Mission (1986), Dead Ringers (1988), Damage (1992), M. Butterfly (1993), and Lolita (1997). Jeremy Irons received a Tony for his performance in Tom Stoppard’s play The Real Thing (1983), and appeared on the London stage in the National Theatre’s Never So Good (2008) and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Gods Weep (2010). In 2016 he portrayed James Tyron in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night as part of the Bristol Old Vic’s 250th anniversary. Recorded live in London at The Tabernacle on 20th Jan 2020. 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 mo

Jackie Kay was born and brought up in Scotland. The Adoption Papers (Bloodaxe) won the Forward Prize, a Saltire prize and a Scottish Arts Council Prize. Fiere was shortlisted for the Costa award and her novel Trumpet won the Guardian Fiction Award and was shortlisted for the IMPAC award. Red Dust Road (Picador) won the Scottish Book of the Year Award, and the London Book Award, and was shortlisted for the JR Ackerley prize. Her third collection of short stories, Reality, Reality, was praised by The Guardian as ‘rank[ing] among the best of the genre'. She was awarded an MBE in 2006, and made a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2002. Her book of stories Wish I Was Here won the Decibel British Book Award. Jackie Kay also writes for children and her book Red Cherry Red (Bloomsbury) won the Clype award. She has written extensively for stage and television. Her plays, Manchester Lines (produced by Manchester Library Theatre) and The New Maw Broon Monologues (produced by Glasgay), were a great success. He

New York Times best-selling author Dylan Jones has written twenty books on subjects as diverse as music and politics and fashion and photography. He has been an editor at The Observer, The Sunday Times, i-D, The Face and Arena, a columnist for The Guardian and The Independent, and is currently the Editor-In-Chief of GQ. He has won Magazine Editor of the Year eleven times. Story recorded live at 5x15 at The Tabernacle in October 2019. 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