5x15

Pico Iyer was born in Oxford, England in 1957, to parents from India, and educated at Eton, Oxford and Harvard. He is the author of eight works of nonfiction and two novels. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, and many other magazines and newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific. He splits his time between Nara, Japan, and the United States. Autumn Light, his latest book, is a far-reaching exploration of Japanese history and culture and a moving meditation on impermanence, mortality, and grief. 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: www.5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Today, in a world full of uncertainties, it’s hard to know whether to laugh, or cry. Both humour and despair are deeply human reactions to the age we live in, especially to the politics of our times. But why is it that we turn to jokes in our darkest moments or continue to seek refuge in stories when we feel at our loneliest? And how are the two seemingly contradictory emotions of humour and melancholy connected? A podcast of a 5x15 evening in London with two eminent voices exploring our human condition. Elif Shafak is a Turkish-British novelist, essayist, academic, public speaker and women's rights activist, who has sold millions of novels worldwide. David Baddiel is a legendary comedian, best-selling writer and a leading commentator. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: www.5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Johny Pitts is the founder of Afropean.com, an online user-generated journal which is part of the Guardian’s ‘Africa Network’. In October 2018, Pitts organised the Looking B(l)ack Symposium at the Bozar cultural centre in Brussels, which was a weekend of talks and performances dedicated to the notion of Black Travel. Pitts has received various awards for his work exploring African-European identity, including a Decibel Penguin Prize and an ENAR (European Network Against Racism) award. In 2012, Pitts collaborated with Caryl Phillips on a photographic essay about London’s immigrant communities for the BBC and Arts Council. His new book is Afropean: Notes on Black Europe. 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: www.5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Jonathan Freedland is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster, who also writes bestselling novels under the pseudonym, Sam Bourne. Jonathan writes for the Guardian, the New York Times and New York Review of Books, and has a monthly column in the Jewish Chronicle. He also presents BBC Radio 4's contemporary history series, The Long View. Jonathan was named Columnist of the Year in the annual What the Papers Say Awards of 2002 and in 2008 he was awarded the David Watt prize for journalism. He has also been awarded The Orwell Special Prize for his contribution to political journalism (2014). The Righteous Men, Sam Bourne's first novel, was an international bestseller and was selected as one of Richard and Judy's Summer Reads. He has continued this success with a series of bestselling thrillers and has sold over a million copies in the UK alone. His latest Sam Bourne book is To Kill The Truth. Recorded live at the Tabernacle in Notting Hill on the 17th June 2019. 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: www.5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Join 5x15 on a mind-altering adventure with the pioneering, genre-busting writer Michael Pollan in conversation with John Crace. Delving into states of consciousness, looking at the latest brain science and visiting the thriving underground community of psychedelic therapists, we’ll immerse ourselves in what is a major new field of therapeutic research. In his thrilling chronicle How to Change Your Mind, we meet the scientists, professionals, seekers and patients exploring the effects of LSD on the mind, creativity and personal experience and discover what the new science of psychedelics teaches us about consciousness, dying, addiction, depression, and transcendence. A profound shift in the public discussion around psychedelics and their positive, therapeutic affects is taking place across the US and UK. It has always been clear that psychedelics offer a paradigm shifting tool, and now with increased funding, psychedelic research is becoming mainstream. It is set to have a major impact on science and psychiatry, mental health, neuroscience and social science. Michael is in conversation with leading Guardian journalist John Crace. “a mind-altering book… full of transformations” Evening Standard “… deeply absorbing, wise and beautifully written” Literary Review More about Michael Pollan: For 25 years Michael has been writing pioneering books about how we live today. He is an award-winning author, activist and journalist, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defence of Food and Cooked (also a successful Netflix series). Time magazine has named him one of the hundred most influential people in the world. He lives in the Bay Area of California with his wife and son

Professor Dame Sue Black is a leading forensic anthropologist and Pro-Vice Chancellor for Engagement at Lancaster University. She confronts death every day. As a professor of anatomy and forensic anthropology, she focuses on mortal remains in her lab, at burial sites, at scenes of violence, murder and criminal dismemberment, and when investigating mass fatalities due to war, accident or natural disaster. In her best-selling book All That Remains she reveals the many faces of death she has come to know, using key cases to explore how forensic science has developed, and examining what her life and work has taught her. Part memoir, part science, part meditation on death, her book is compassionate, surprisingly funny, and it will make you think about death in a new light. 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

Raymond Antrobus was born in London to an English mother and Jamaican father, and is the author of To Sweeten Bitter (Out-Spoken Press) and The Perseverance (Penned In The Margins) which was awarded the UK Poetry Book Society’s Winter Choice in 2018 and was named a poetry book of the year by The Guardian and The Sunday Times as well as being awarded the Ted Hughes award in 2019 and Rathbones Folio award in 2019. He’s also the author of children’s picture book, Bears Can Ski, which will be published by Walker Books and illustrated by Polly Dunbar in April 2020. His poetry has previously been published in POETRY, The Poetry Review, Poets.org, The Deaf Poets Society, News Statesman, The Guardian among others. He is a founding member of Chill Pill and Keats House Poets Forum. @RaymondAntrobus 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

Johann Hari is an internationally bestselling author. His first book, Chasing the Scream, was a New York Times bestseller and is being adapted into a Hollywood feature film. His second book, Lost Connections, was a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller and it looks at the underlying causes of depression. He has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Le Monde and others, and he was twice named Newspaper Journalist of the Year by Amnesty International. His TED Talk, ‘Everything You Think You Know About Addiction Is Wrong’, and the animation based on it, have had more than twenty million views. His books have been translated into eighteen languages. @johannhari101 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

Gina Miller was the lead claimant in the 2016 constitutional legal case against the UK Government over triggering Article 50. Born and raised in Guyana, she went to boarding school in England at the age of eleven and went on to study Law at the University of East London, then Marketing at the University of North London. In 2009, she and her husband Alan Miller co-founded SCM Direct, a disruptive investment management company, and the True and Fair Foundation, the latter of which provides funding and support to smaller charities. She has three children. Gina counts herself as a conscious capitalist and believes we all have a duty to give back to the society that affords us success, including actively stepping up and defending what is right. @thatginamiller 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

Judith Kerr was born on 14 June 1923 in Berlin but escaped from Hitler's Germany with her parents and brother in 1933 when she was nine years old. Her father was a drama critic and a distinguished writer whose books were burned by the Nazis. The family passed through Switzerland and France before arriving finally in England in 1936. Judith went to eleven different schools, worked in the Red Cross during the war, and won a scholarship to the Central School of Arts and Crafts in 1945. Since then she has worked as an artist, a BBC television scriptwriter and, for the past thirty years, as author and illustrator of children's books. Her three autobiographical novels are based on her early wandering years (which against all the odds she greatly enjoyed), her adolescence in London during the war, and finally on a brief return to Berlin as a young married woman. The stories have been internationally acclaimed and, to the author's considerable satisfaction, have done particularly well in Germany where they are sometimes used as an easy introduction to a difficult period of Germany history. 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