

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

Oct 27, 2021 • 1h 3min
Dan Saladino on Eating to Extinction
Award-winning journalist Dan Saladino discusses his new book and call to arms Eating to Extinction with Rosie Boycott.
A captivating and urgent exploration of some of the world's most endangered foods, Eating to Extinction by Dan Saladino is essential reading for our times, an astonishing journey through the past, present and future of food, a love letter to the diversity of global food cultures, and a work of great urgency and hope.
From a tiny crimson pear in the west of England to great chunks of fermented sheep meat in the Faroe Islands, from pistachios in Syria to flat oysters in Denmark, from a wild honey harvested with the help of birds to an exploding corn that might just hold the key to the future of food - these are just some of the thousands of foods around the world today that are at risk of being lost for ever.
Each food tells a story - some of them moving and personal, some of them urgent and timely - and collectively they span the history of civilisation and touch on many of the biggest issues of our time, from climate change to global inequality.
5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations.
Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com
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Oct 25, 2021 • 60min
Marcus du Sautoy and Roger Highfield on The Art of the Shortcut
Mathematics is full of better ways of thinking, and with over 2,000 years of knowledge to draw on, Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy interrogates his passion for shortcuts in this fresh and fascinating guide in conversation with Roger Highfield. After all, shortcuts have enabled so much of human progress, whether in constructing the first cities around the Euphrates 5,000 years ago, using calculus to determine the scale of the universe or in writing today’s algorithms that help us find a new life partner.
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 22, 2021 • 11min
Zakiya Dalila Harris on The Other Black Girl
Drawing on her first-hand experience of the high-pressure, starkly white world of book publishing, novelist Zakiya Dalila Harris joins us from America to talk about The Other Black Girl. At once a gripping thriller and a witty and shrewd piece of social commentary, The Other Black Girl was an instant New York Times bestseller and is one of the most talked about debut novels of the year. 'The funniest, wildest, deepest, most thought-provoking ride of a book' Attica Locke.
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5x15stories.com
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Oct 14, 2021 • 1h 5min
Anil Seth and Adam Rutherford on a new science of consciousness
Pioneering neuroscientist, Anil Seth, discusses Being You: A New Science of Consciousness in conversation with Adam Rutherford at 5x15.
Join 5x15 for an electrifying discussion about consciousness that will turn what you thought you knew about yourself on its head. Anil Seth, will be in conversation with broadcaster Adam Rutherford to discuss a radical new theory of consciousness that challenges our understanding of perception and reality.
Learn more about 5x15 events:
5x15stories.com
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Sep 13, 2021 • 1h 3min
Neil Gaiman and Susanna Clarke on Piranesi
Step into the extraordinary and mysterious world of Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author Susanna Clarke as she discusses her spectacular novel, Piranesi, with the one and only Neil Gaiman live and online exclusively for 5x15. An unmissable conversation between two of our best loved, most powerfully imaginative writers.
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Aug 19, 2021 • 1h 1min
Jess Phillips: Everything You Really Need to Know About Politics
In her frank and funny talk for 5x15, Jess Phillips MP discusses her new book Everything You Really Need to Know About Politics with Rosie Boycott and lifts the lid on what a career in politics is really like and why it matters – to all of us.
From agonizing decisions on foreign air strikes to making headlines about orgasms, from sitting in on history-making moments at the UN to eating McCain’s potato smiles at a black-tie banquet in China, the life of a politician is never dull.
And it’s also never been more important. But politics is far bigger than Westminster, and in her new book and in this event, Jess Phillips makes the compelling case for why now, more than ever, we all need to be a part of it.
Jess Phillips was first elected as the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley in 2015 and was elected chair of the Women’s Parliamentary Labour Party in September 2016. Before becoming an MP, she worked with victims of domestic violence, sexual violence and human trafficking, and she continues to speak up on behalf of those who struggle to have their voice heard. Jess lives with her husband and two sons in Birmingham, where she was born and raised. Find her on twitter @jessphillips.
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

Aug 16, 2021 • 17min
Nick Crane - Latitude: The True Story of the World's First Scientific Expedition
In this 5x15 short talk, Nick Crane discusses his new book Latitude: The True Story of the World's First Scientific Expedition and shares a story of courage, collaboration, initiative and adversity.
Nick Crane is an award-winning writer, journalist, geographer and explorer, as well as the presenter of the prime-time BAFTA-winning BBC TV series Coast, Great British Journeys, Map Man and Town. Born in Norfolk, his career has seen him travel extensively in Tibet, China, Afghanistan and Africa. He also identified and visited for the first time the geographical Pole of Inaccessibility, the point on the globe most distant from the open sea, located in the Gobi Desert. In Latitude, he tells the greatest true scientific adventure story yet to be heard: the story of the world’s first ever international scientific expedition, which aimed to discover the shape and magnitude of the earth. An epic tale of survival and science in the 18th century spanning ten years, oceans and continents, volcanoes and rainforests, mutiny and murder, it details the breakthroughs in scientific discovery that define the world we know today.
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

Aug 9, 2021 • 14min
Hollie McNish - Slug: and other things I've been told to hate
In our latest 5x15 podcast, award winning poet Hollie McNish will take you on a whistle stop tour of her funny, frank and timely new poetry and prose collection Slug: And Other Things I’ve Been Told to Hate
From Finnish saunas and soppy otters to grief, grandparents and Kellogg's anti-masturbation pants, Slug is a book which holds a mirror lovingly up to the world, past and present, through Hollie's driving, funny, hopeful poetry and prose. Slug is about the human condition: of birth and death and how we manage the possibilities in between.
Hollie McNish is one of Britain’s best-loved poets, and numbers Matt Haig, Paapa Essiedu, Benjamin Zephaniah and Jo Brand among her fans. She won the Ted Hughes Award for Nobody Told Me, her verse memoir of parenthood, and in 2016 co-wrote Offside, a play about the history of British women in football. She was the first poet to record at Abbey Road Studios, releasing an album of poetry and music entitled Versus, and is also a patron of Breast Milk Action. In Slug and Other Things I’ve Been Told to Hate, her new, cross-genre collection of poetry, prose and memoir, she addresses everything from Finnish saunas to soppy otters, grandparents to grief.
Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories
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Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Aug 5, 2021 • 13min
Lionel Shriver: Should We Stay or Should We Go?
Lionel Shriver discusses the complexities of life and the politics of death in her darkly funny new novel Should We Stay or Should We Go? at 5x15.
Lionel Shriver was christened ‘the Cassandra of American letters’ by the New York Times in recognition of her writing’s unerring prescience. Her first novel, The Female of the Species, was published in 1987, but it was with the Orange Prize-winning We Need to Talk About Kevin that she took up her position as one of our leading novelists and social commentators. She has written for the Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, The New York Times, The Economist and Harper's, and is a contributor to The Spectator. Her acclaimed new novel, Should We Stay or Should We Go, begins in pandemic-hit Britain but spins off into multiple futures as it provocatively and wittily explores what makes a good life – and a good death.
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

Aug 3, 2021 • 1h 2min
Robin Wall Kimmerer & Lucy Jones: Gathering Moss
What can the planet’s oldest plants teach us about our humanity and our place in the world?
In this special 5x15 podcast, journalist Lucy Jones, author of the best-selling book Losing Eden, is joined by acclaimed thinker, writer and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment conversation Robin Wall Kimmerer, who explains the biology of mosses, while at the same time reflecting on what these fascinating organisms have to teach us.
Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants and Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. She lives in Syracuse, New York, where she is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.
Lucy Jones is a writer and journalist based in Hampshire, England. She previously worked at NME and the Daily Telegraph, and her writing on culture, science and nature has been published in BBC Earth, BBC Wildlife, The Sunday Times, the Guardian and the New Statesman. Her first book, Foxes Unearthed, was celebrated for its 'brave, bold and honest' (Chris Packham) account of our relationship with the fox. Losing Eden took Jones from forest schools in East London to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault via primeval woodlands, Californian laboratories and ecotherapists' couches.
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