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 scien...
Jun 18, 2021•1 hr 3 min
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 i...
Jun 13, 2021•57 min
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 Lea...
Jun 07, 2021•1 hr 4 min
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 ...
May 23, 2021•13 min
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...
May 09, 2021•11 min
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...
May 07, 2021•16 min
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 di...
May 05, 2021•13 min
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 fo...
Apr 29, 2021•15 min
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 ...
Apr 26, 2021•14 min
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 ...
Apr 22, 2021•57 min
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 ...
Apr 13, 2021•14 min
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, a...
Mar 30, 2021•14 min
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 pict...
Mar 25, 2021•13 min
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 eco...
Mar 21, 2021•1 hr 4 min
Two incredible environmental writers and thinkers take part in this special event for 5x15 on Under A White Sky: The Nature of the Future. This is the first time David Wallace-Wells and Elizabeth Kolbert have spoken together at a public event. Elizabeth Kolbert is the author of Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future, The Sixth Extinction, and Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. She has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1999, and has been awarded the Bl...
Mar 08, 2021•56 min
Rachel Clarke is a palliative care doctor and former television journalist who cares deeply about standing up for her patients and the NHS. She retrained as a doctor in her late twenties, after making current affairs documentaries about subjects as diverse as the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Al Qaeda and the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Rachel believes that helping patients who are approaching the end of their lives experience the best quality life possible is priceless. She lives ...
Mar 01, 2021•20 min
Jason Hickel is an economic anthropologist, Fulbright Scholar, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is originally from Swaziland and spent a number of years living with migrant workers in South Africa, studying patterns of exploitation and political resistance in the wake of apartheid. He has authored three books, including most recently The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions. He writes regularly for the Guardian, Al Jazeera and Foreign Policy, serves as an advis...
Feb 25, 2021•12 min
This fourth session in the Earth Convention series explores the huge global impact of food production on the environment and climate change - and indeed on human health. Food production is responsible for a quarter of all the greenhouse gas emissions contributing to global warming, according to a recent study from Oxford University. However, the environmental impact of different foods varies hugely. One of the most powerful things that we, as individuals, can do to reduce our emissions is change...
Feb 21, 2021•1 hr 8 min
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is a writer, broadcaster and campaigner. His series for Channel 4 have earned him a huge popular following, while his River Cottage books have collected multiple awards including the Glenfiddich Trophy and the André Simon Food Book of the Year. Hugh’s additional broadcasting, like the hugely influential Fish Fight, has earned him a BAFTA as well as awards from Radio 4, Observer and the Guild of Food Writers. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.t...
Feb 12, 2021•1 hr 2 min
George Saunders has been teaching the Russian short story for over twenty years. In his new book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he explores seven iconic stories by authors including Chekhov and Tolstoy, showing us how they work, why we keep reading, and what they can tell us about the world today. Funny and frank, George Saunders shows how the best stories can spark our humanity as well as our imaginations, and why fiction is more important than ever in these turbulent times. George Saunders is ...
Feb 10, 2021•1 hr 2 min
Mariana Mazzucato is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL), where she is Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose (IIPP). She advises policy makers around the world on innovation-led inclusive and sustainable growth. She is author of The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths (2013), The Value of Everything: making and taking in the global economy (2018) and Mission Economy: a moons...
Feb 04, 2021•57 min
Morgan Housel is a partner at The Collaborative Fund and a former columnist at The Motley Fool and The Wall Street Journal. He is a two-time winner of the Best in Business Award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, winner of the New York Times Sidney Award, and a two-time finalist for the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives and inspirations. This talk was recorded at the o...
Jan 28, 2021•1 hr 1 min
Douglas Stuart was born and raised in Glasgow. After graduating from the Royal College of Art, he moved to New York, where he began a career in design. Shuggie Bain is his debut novel. It is shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the National Book Award for Fiction, the Kirkus Prize and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. His short stories have appeared in the New Yorker and his essay on ‘Gender, Anxiety and Class’ was published by Lit Hub. Shuggie Bain is to be published in over 25 territories...
Jan 21, 2021•14 min
Named by The Observer as “one of the world’s leading thinkers” and by Vogue as “one of the world’s most inspiring women,” economist Noreena Hertz is a bestselling author, broadcaster and keynote speaker. Her previous books The Silent Takeover, The Debt Threat and Eyes Wide Open are published in more than twenty countries. Her latest book, The Lonely Century – Coming Together in a World That’s Pulling Apart is out now in the UK. Noreena has a PhD from Cambridge University and an MBA from the Whar...
Jan 14, 2021•12 min
What lessons does the past hold for our future? Join Britain’s pre-eminent public historian to explore his thoughts on the pandemic, the Biden presidency, the future of populism and more. The events of 2020 have upturned the order of the world, and the medical, economic and political crises we face will not fade quietly as the new year begins. Though so much of the present moment feels strange and unprecedented, there is wisdom in heeding to George Santayana’s famous proverb that those who canno...
Jan 12, 2021•1 hr 4 min
Michael Sandel teaches political philosophy at Harvard University. Known to BBC listeners as ‘The Public Philosopher’, Sandel's books include Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? and What Money Can't Buy, which have been translated into twenty-eight languages and sold over two million copies worldwide. He has been a visiting professor at the Sorbonne; delivered the BBC Reith Lectures, and his speaking tours have spanned five continents. The Tyranny of Merit arrives at a hinge point in social a...
Jan 05, 2021•1 hr
Layla F. Saad is a globally respected writer, speaker and podcast host on the topics of race, identity, leadership, personal transformation and social change. Her work has been included on almost every essential anti-racism reading list and she was recently featured in British Vogue’s momentous ‘Activism Now’ issue. As an East African, Arab, British, Black Muslim woman who was born in the West and lives in the Middle East, Layla has always sat at a unique intersection of identities, allowing her...
Dec 17, 2020•58 min
How does literature nourish science? When does physics become poetry? A conversation of cosmic proportions, as two masterful storytellers- Neil Gaiman and Carlo Rovelli - discuss life, the universe and everything. Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist who has made significant contributions to the physics of space and time. He has worked in Italy and the US, and is currently directing the quantum gravity research group of the Centre de physique théorique in Marseille, France. His books Seven B...
Dec 15, 2020•1 hr 2 min
Maria Konnikova is the author of Mastermind and The Confidence Game. She is a regular contributor for the New Yorker, and has written for the Atlantic, New York Times, Slate, New Republic, Paris Review, Wall Street Journal, Salon, WIRED, among many other publications. Her writing has won numerous awards, including the 2019 Excellence in Science Journalism Award from the Society of Personality and Social Psychology. Maria’s latest book, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master My...
Dec 08, 2020•12 min
Anne Applebaum is the author of Gulag: A History, which won the Pulitzer Prize, of Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956, which won the Cundill Prize and Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine which won the Lionel Gelber and Duff Cooper prizes. She is a columnist for The Atlantic and a senior fellow of the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. From 1988-1991 she covered the collapse of communism as the Warsaw correspondent of the Economist magazine and the Independent newsp...
Dec 05, 2020•12 min
