

5x15
Stories and inspiration from 5x15
"A pleasingly simple concept... one of the best things I've come upon in the last six months" (The Telegraph - 'Best Podcasts')
5 speakers, 15 minutes each. Script free and against a less-than-precise clock, some of the world's leading figures in the arts and sciences deliver talks about their enduring achievements, wildest moments or deepest passions. It's inspiring, informative, provoking, and above all, entertaining. Based in London but making forays to Sydney, New York and Milan, 5x15 has featured Joanna Lumley, Brian Eno, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jung Chang, Ruby Wax and Alain de Botton.
5 speakers, 15 minutes each. Script free and against a less-than-precise clock, some of the world's leading figures in the arts and sciences deliver talks about their enduring achievements, wildest moments or deepest passions. It's inspiring, informative, provoking, and above all, entertaining. Based in London but making forays to Sydney, New York and Milan, 5x15 has featured Joanna Lumley, Brian Eno, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jung Chang, Ruby Wax and Alain de Botton.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Nov 23, 2021 • 12min
Hannah Rothschild on The House of Trelawney
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

Nov 22, 2021 • 14min
Aja Barber on Consumed: the need for collective action and change
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

Nov 19, 2021 • 11min
Lucy Kellaway on Re-educated: How I changed my job, my home, my husband and my hair
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
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Nov 15, 2021 • 14min
Oliver Burkeman on Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It
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

Nov 13, 2021 • 15min
Lara Maiklem on a Mudlarker's Guide to London
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

Nov 12, 2021 • 19min
Justine Picardie on the incredible story of Miss Dior
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

Nov 8, 2021 • 15min
Sarfraz Manzoor on They: A Story of Modern Britain
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

Nov 2, 2021 • 45min
Richard Powers on Bewilderment in conversation with Rosie Boycott
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

Nov 1, 2021 • 1h 2min
Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh in conversation with Francince Stock
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

Oct 30, 2021 • 46min
Jared Diamond and Rosie Boycott - The Last Tree on Easter Island
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