5x15

Gaia Vince on Transcendence - How Humans Evolved through Fire, Language, Beauty and Time. Vince is a science writer and broadcaster interested in the interplay between humans and the planetary environment. She has held senior editorial posts at Nature and New Scientist, and her writing has featured in newspapers and magazines including the Guardian, The Times and Scientific American. She also writes and presents science programmes for radio and television. Her research takes her across the world: she has visited more than 60 countries, lived in three and is currently based in London. In 2015, she became the first woman to win the Royal Society Science Book of the Year Prize solo for her debut, Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made. Transcendence is her new book, the follow up to the prize-winning Adventures in the Anthropocene. It tells the astonishing story of how culture enabled us to become the most successful species on Earth. Humans are the most successful species on Earth; a planet-altering force of nature. Meanwhile, our closest living relatives, the now-endangered chimpanzees, continue to live as they have for millions of years. Yet we evolved through the same process. What are we then? And now we have remade the world, what are we becoming? 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

Before going to medical school, Dr Rachel Clarke was a television journalist and documentary maker. She now specialises in palliative medicine, caring deeply about helping patients live the end of their lives as fully and richly as possible – and in the power of human stories to build empathy and inspire change.Her first book, the Sunday Times bestselling Your Life in My Hands, revealed what life is like for a junior doctor on the NHS frontline. Her new memoir, Dear Life is based on her work in a hospice and explores love, loss, grief, dying and what really matters at the end of life. 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

Hashi Mohamed arrived in Britain at the age of nine as a child refugee, and is now a barrister at No5 Chambers in London. He is also a broadcaster, having appeared on BBC Radio 4, and presented Adventures in Social Mobility (April 2017) and Macpherson: What Happened Next (2019). He is also a contributor to the Guardian, The Times and Prospect. He mentors many young people at various stages of their career and is also a trustee of Big Education, a trust which oversees three inspirational schools in London and the South East. Recorded on 10th Feb 2020 at EartH Hackney. 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

Sophie Walker is a feminist activist, founding leader of the Women’s Equality Party, and recently-appointed chief executive of Young Women’s Trust, the charity representing and supporting women aged 18-30 who are living on no or low pay. She is passionate about rebuilding society for and with (extra)ordinary women. 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

Robin Ince is many things. A comedian, an author, a broadcaster and a populariser of scientific ideas. The Guardian once declared him a ‘becardiganed polymath’ which seems about right. He is probably best known as the co-host of the Sony Gold Award winning BBC Radio 4 series The Infinite Monkey Cage with Professor Brian Cox. He also co-hosts the podcast Robin and Josie’s Book Shambles, which gains over 100,000 listeners a month, which is part of The Cosmic Shambles Network, which he also co-created. His most recent book, I’m a Joke and So Are You, was described by Chortle as ‘one of the best books ever written about what it means to be a comedian’. He also wrote the book, The Bad Book Club, and has edited and written short stories for two volumes of Dead Funny: Horror Stories by Comedians, as well as writing and presenting documentaries about the history of self-help, comedians and melancholy, Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds, Richard Feynman, General Relativity and Dr Seuss. As a stand up he has toured the world and won three Chortle Awards, the Time Out Outstanding Achievement Award and was nominated for the British Comedy Awards Best Live show. Recorded on 10th Feb 2020 at EartH Hackney. 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

James O’Brien is a Sunday Times Bestselling author and LBC Radio Presenter. He has presented BBC Two’s Newsnight and his own daytime talk show O’Brien on ITV. His daily current affairs phone-in show on LBC has 1.2 million weekly listeners and his new, award-winning podcast, Full Disclosure, has been downloaded four million times. How To Be Right is his first book. Recorded on 10th Feb 2020 at EartH Hackney. 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

Tracey Thorn is a singer-songwriter and writer, best known for her seventeen years in bestselling duo Everything But The Girl. She grew up as the youngest of three children in Brookmans Park, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, where she learned the piano, enjoyed underaged drinking, and started her first band while still at school. Since then, she has released four solo albums, one movie soundtrack, a large handful of singles. Her books, include the Sunday Times bestselling memoir, Bedsit Disco Queen, and most recently Another Planet. It tells the story of the time before she became an acclaimed musician and writer, when she was a typical teenager in suburbia. She lives in London, with her husband Ben Watt and their three children. Recorded on 10th Feb 2020 at EartH Hackney. 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

In his new book The Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread - And Why They Stop, epidemiologist Adam Kucharski reveals how mathematical approaches transform what we know about contagion. Adam Kucharski is an associate professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. A mathematician by training, his work on global outbreaks such as the Ebola epidemic and the Zika virus has taken him from villages in the Pacific Islands to hospitals in Latin America. He is a TED fellow and winner of the 2016 Rosalind Franklin Award Lecture and the 2012 Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize, and also the author of The Perfect Bet: How Science and Maths Are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling. His writing has appeared in the Observer, Financial Times, Scientific American, and New Statesman. 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

Has music lost its vanguard role? Billy Bragg is here to talk about the role of music in shaping our world, past present and future. Stephen William ‘Billy’ Bragg is an English singer-songwriter and left-wing activist. His music blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, with lyrics that span political or romantic themes. His music is heavily centred on bringing about change and getting the younger generation involved in grass-roots activist causes. His book Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World was shortlisted for the Penderyn Music Book Prize, and was a Rough Trade, Mojo, and FT Book of the Year 2018. His latest book is the political pamphlet The Three Dimensions of Freedom published in 2019. Recorded at The Tabernacle on 20th Jan 2020. 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

Jeremy Irons talks about his method of approaching poetry. Jeremy Irons won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Claus von Bülow in 1990’s Reversal of Fortune. He is also a Golden Globe, Emmy, Tony, and Screen Actors Guild award winner. His film highlights include The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), The Mission (1986), Dead Ringers (1988), Damage (1992), M. Butterfly (1993), and Lolita (1997). Jeremy Irons received a Tony for his performance in Tom Stoppard’s play The Real Thing (1983), and appeared on the London stage in the National Theatre’s Never So Good (2008) and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Gods Weep (2010). In 2016 he portrayed James Tyron in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night as part of the Bristol Old Vic’s 250th anniversary. Recorded live in London at The Tabernacle on 20th Jan 2020. 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