5x15

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 inspiration

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

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

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 N

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, pas

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

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

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

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 toget

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 ou

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 inspirati

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 causi

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

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

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

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 Direct

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 Blake-Dodd Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with her husband and children. David Wallace-Wells is editor-at-large of New York magazine, where he writes frequently about climate change and the near future of science and technology. David’s first book, The Uninhabitable Earth, was selected as a Book of the Year 2019 by the Sunday Times, Spectator and New Statesman. It was a Waterstones Paperback of the Year and shortlisted for the Foyles Book of the Year 2019.

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 in Oxford with her husband and two children. Her new book, Breathtaking, is an unflinching insider’s account of medicine in the time of coronavirus. Drawing on testimony from nursing, acute and intensive care colleagues – as well as, crucially, her patients – Clarke argues that this age of contagion has inspired a profound attentiveness to – and gratitude for – what matters most in life. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives and inspirations. This talk was recorded at an online 5x15

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 advisor for the Green New Deal for Europe, and sits on the Lancet Commission for Reparations and Redistributive Justice. He lives in London. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives and inspirations. This talk was recorded at the online 5x15 event in February 2021. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

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 what we eat. And it is increasingly recognised that we cannot achieve our national and international climate targets without overhauling the food system. In this session we examine a range of issues with leading experts and innovators who are charting the way forward - from what has been exposed about the global food system by the coronavirus crisis to what constitutes "sustainable eating". How has the food industry evolved since the Second World War? Which part of the food supply chain is most carbon intensive and