5x15

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: ww

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 vocalisatio

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

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 a

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

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 th

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

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 solvi

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 Ca

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

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,

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

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.

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 Twi

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

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 Bahra

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

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