5x15

Jack Harries grew up in a family of filmmakers and storytellers. At the age eighteen he built up a successful YouTube channel and production company gaining over four million subscribers worldwide. Jack has used this platform consistently to raise awareness of mental health, forced migration and environmental issues. He has travelled all over the world to tell stories from the front lines of Climate Change. Recorded at 5x15 live in London at EartH Hackney on 8th October 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: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Nick Hornby is the author of the internationally bestselling novels many of which have been made into successful, and much-loved, films, including Fever Pitch starring Colin Firth, High Fidelity starring John Cusak and About a Boy with Hugh Grant. Nick has also scripted the adaptation of Lynn Barber’s memoir An Education as well as Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín. His book State of the Union is the companion novella to his new TV series directed by Stephen Frears on the BBC starring Chris O'Dowd and Rosamund Pike. It won three Emmy Awards in 2019. He’s tell us about it in conversation with 5x15 co-founder Rosie Boycott. Recorded at 5x15 live in London at EartH Hackney on 8th October 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: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

John Crace who joins with his own personal guide to surviving the ongoing political apocalypse. He is of course beloved by us all as the Guardian's legendary parliamentary sketch writer and author of the ‘Digested Read’ columns. His latest book is Decline and Fail. He is the author of the previous books: I Maybot: The Rise and Fall and I Never Promised you a Rose Garden: A short guide to modern politics, the coalition and the general election. Recorded live at EartH Hackney in London on 8th October 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

Tristan Gooley is an author and natural navigator. Tristan set up his natural navigation school in 2008 and is the author of the award-winning books, The Natural Navigator (2010), The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues & Signs (2014), How to Read Water (2016) and Wild Signs and Star Paths (2018), some of the world’s only books covering natural navigation. He has written for the Sunday Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC and many magazines. Tristan has led expeditions in five continents, climbed mountains in Europe, Africa and Asia, sailed small boats across oceans and piloted small aircraft to Africa and the Arctic. He has walked with and studied the methods of the Tuareg, Bedouin and Dayak in some of the remotest regions on Earth. @NaturalNav Recorded live at the Tabernacle in London's Notting Hill on 23rd September 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.

Marc Randolph is a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur, advisor and investor. Marc was co-founder of Netflix, serving as their founding CEO, as the executive producer of their web site, and as a member of their board of directors. Although best known for starting Netflix, Marc’s career as an entrepreneur spans more than four decades. He’s founded or co-founded more than half a dozen other successful start-ups, mentored rising entrepreneurs including the co-founders of Looker Data which was recently sold to Google for $2.6B, and invested in numerous successful tech ventures. He is a frequent speaker at industry events, works extensively with young entrepreneur programs, sits on the board of the environmental advocacy group 1% for the Planet, and chairs the National Outdoor Leadership School’s Board of Trustees. His new book is That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea. Recorded live at the Tabernacle in London's Notting Hill on 23rd September 2019. 5x15 brings together five

In her only UK appearance of 2019, the #1 New York Times bestselling author Ann Patchett was in conversation with Mariella Frostrup at 5x15. One of the most powerful, wise and witty voices in literary fiction today. Only a select few writers alive today have achieved the critical acclaim and global renown of the American novelist Ann Patchett. Her rare insight into the human condition has made her a household name and earned her a place on Time magazine’s list of the world’s 100 Most Influential People. Ann Patchett talks about The Dutch House – the story of a brother and sister who are exiled from their childhood home, already hailed as ‘her best yet, which is saying something’ (John Boyne) in conversation with Mariella Frostrup. Star actor Tom Hanks has narrated the audiobook, and Sunday Times Literary Editor Andrew Holgate says ‘If there’s a better, more poignant or involving novel than The Dutch House published this year, I will be very, very surprised’. Recorded live at the Emmanuel Centre on 10th S

Nick is an author and broadcaster whose books and TV films explore geographical themes. In recent years, he has become best known for presenting the BBC2 TV series Coast, Map Man, Great British Journeys, Nicholas Crane’s Britannia and Town. His books include Clear Waters Rising, Two Degrees West and Mercator: The Man Who Mapped the Planet. Published in 2016, The Making of the British Landscape has been praised by the critics as ‘Ambitious, magnificent’ (Guardian); ‘Storytelling at its best’ (The Times); ‘A tour de force’ (Daily Mail); ‘simultaneously scholarly, lyrical and moving.’ (New Statesman); ‘A geographer’s love letter to the British and the land that formed them’ (Sunday Times). Nick’s most recent book, You Are Here, A Brief Guide to the World, argues that geographical knowledge is key to the future of human life on the planet. Between 2015 and 2018, Nick served a three-year fixed term as President of the Royal Geographical Society. Recorded live at Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire August 2019. 5x

Viv Groskop is a writer, critic, broadcaster and stand-up comedian. She has presented Front Row and Saturday Review on BBC Radio 4, is a regular on BBC1’s This Week and has hosted book tours for Graham Norton, Jo Brand and Jennifer Saunders. Groskop’s books include The Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons from Russian Literature, and How to Own the Room: Women and the Art of Brilliant Speaking. She is currently writing a self-help memoir titled Au Revoir, Tristesse: Lessons in Happiness from French Literature due out in 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: www.5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Steven Pinker in conversation with Amol Rajan on Enlightenment Now. Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist who conducts research in visual cognition, psycholinguistics, and social relations. He grew up in Montreal and earned his BA from McGill and his PhD from Harvard. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won numerous prizes for his research, his teaching, and his nine books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and The Sense of Style. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, and one of Foreign Policy’s “World’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals” and Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.” He is Chair of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, and writes frequently for The New York Times, The Guardian, and other publications. His

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 indivi

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 psychi

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/5x15sto

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: ww

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

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 someti

Revolution can’t take its poetry from the past – but only from the future. On 14th May, at EartH Hackney, philosopher and activist Srećko Horvat was in conversation with the experimentalist, activist and artist Brian Eno, to discuss Horvat's new book Poetry From the Future. Is a global liberation movement the only way to save humanity? Poetry From the Future draws on myriad sources from contemporary culture, historical archives and stories of resistance from Horvat's own island in Croatia, as well as the partisan liberation movements of Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia, refugee camps and political frontlines of 21st century Europe, to argue that we need to move beyond borders, national identities and the redundant narratives of the past. What is the role of the arts in how we understand politics or history? How can hidden narratives be brought to light? Are we as free as we like to think? How does film, documentary, art or music help us to see the world anew and how important is that now? Faced with our last chance,