5x15

As the news becomes ever more outlandish, how do we make sense of our current historical predicament and where are we heading? Cult American novelist Jarett Kobek has written a hilarious and provocative satire for our times: Only Americans Burn in Hell. Here at 5x15 he takes part in an unmissable conversation with acclaimed stand up comedian and writer Stewart Lee: an expert in satire this side of the Atlantic, and creator of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. The book is set in 2019 and America is ruled over by a billionaire reality TV star. The media is owned by a transnational class of the shameless and the depraved. And the people have been silently robbed of their wealth, their dignity and their democracy. In this brave new world, going to see a superhero movie counts as activism, and arguing with the other serfs on social media is political engagement. BUT EVERYTHING’S FINE - as long as you never, ever ask yourself who makes money from the ticket sales and the ratings, or who owns Twitter... "Jarett Kobek

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist and the most widely read female author in Turkey. She writes in both Turkish and English, and has published seventeen books, eleven of which are novels. Her work has been translated into fifty languages. Shafak holds a PhD in political science and she has taught at various universities in Turkey, the US and the UK, including St Anne's College, Oxford University, where she is an honorary fellow. She is a member of Weforum Global Agenda Council on Creative Economy and a founding member of ECFR (European Council on Foreign Relations). An advocate for women's rights, LGBT rights and freedom of speech, Shafak contributes to major publications around the world and she has been awarded the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. www.elifshafak.com Recorded live at the EartH in London's Hackney on 19th March 2019. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: www.5x15stories.

Farah Chamma is Dubai-born Palestinian performer. She mainly writes and performs poetry in Arabic, English and French. She is currently doing an MA in Performance and Culture at Goldsmiths University in London. Her current goal is to create Arabic content that mixes Modern Standard Arabic (fus-ha) and colloquial Arabic. Recorded live at the EartH in London's Hackney on 19th March 2019. 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

Philippe Sands QC is Professor of Law at University College London and a practising barrister at Matrix Chambers. Here he talks about his friend Ahmet Altan and his book: I Will Never See the World Again, written from inside a maximum security prison in Turkey. Philippe appears before many international courts and tribunals, including the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, and sits as an arbitrator at ICSID, the PCA and the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Philippe is the author of Lawless World (2005) and Torture Team (2008) and several academic books on international law, and has contributed to the New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, the Financial Times and The Guardian. East West Street: On the Origins of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide (Alfred Knopf/Weidenfeld & Nicolson) won the 2016 Baillie Gifford (formerly Samuel Johnson) Prize, the 2017 British Book Awards Non-Fiction Book of the Year, and the 2018 Prix Montaigne. The book is accompanied by a prizewinning B

Martin Rees is Astronomer Royal, and has been Master of Trinity College and Director of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University. As a member of the UK’s House of Lords and former President of the Royal Society, he is much involved in international science and issues of technological risk. His books include Our Cosmic Habitat (Princeton), Just Six Numbers, and Our Final Hour (published in the UK as Our Final Century). His latest book is a provocative and inspiring look at the future of humanity - On the Future: Prospects for Humanity (Princeton). Recorded live at the EartH in London's Hackney on 19th March 2019. 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

obert Elms is a broadcaster and writer, well-loved for his eponymous radio show on BBC Radio London. Elms started out as a journalist, writing for The Face and NME. He is a Londoner through and through, growing up in West London and living in the city for most of his life. Elms is the author of two previous works of non-fiction, The Way We Wore: A Life in Threads and Spain: A Portrait After the General, and a novel, In Search of the Crack. His new book is London Made Us: A Memoir of a Shapeshifting City. In the book Elms takes us back through time and place to myriad Londons. ‘London is a giant kaleidoscope, which is forever turning. Take your eye off it for more than a moment and you’re lost.’ Recorded live at the EartH in London's Hackney on 19th March 2019. 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

Philippa Perry has been a psychotherapist for the past twenty years. Her latest book is: The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will be Glad That You Did). A faculty member of The School of Life, she is also an agony aunt for Red Magazine, a freelance writer, and a TV and radio presenter she has presented several documentaries including The Truth about Children Who Lie for BBC Radio 4 and Being Bipolar for Channel 4. Philippa featured in the highly popular dating show, Celebs Go Dating, where she used her expertise to give the celebrities such much needed love advice. She has also written two other books: Couch Fiction, a Graphic Tale of Psychotherapy and How to Stay Sane. She lives in London with her husband, the artist and campaigner Grayson Perry, and her cat Kevin. They have one grown up daughter, Flo. Recorded live at the Tabernacle in London's Notting Hill on 11th March 2019. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn mo

James Harding is the Co-founder and Editor of Tortoise Media, and prior to this was Director of News and Current Affairs at the BBC, the world’s largest news organisation. He was the Editor of The Times from 2007-2012, winning the Newspaper of the Year in two of the five years he edited the paper. He was previously The Times Business Editor, having joined from The Financial Times, where he worked as Washington Bureau Chief, Media Editor and China correspondent opening the paper's bureau in Shanghai in 1996. He is the author of Alpha Dogs- How political spin became a global business and he presented On Background on the BBC World Service with Zanny Minton-Beddoes, editor of The Economist. Recorded live at the Tabernacle in London's Notting Hill on 25th February 2019. 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.instag

Baroness Helena Kennedy is one of Britain's most distinguished lawyers. She has spent her professional life giving voice to those who have least power within the system, championing civil liberties and promoting human rights. She has used many public platforms – including the House of Lords to argue with passion, wit and humanity for social justice. She has also written and broadcast on a wide range of issues, from medical negligence to terrorism to the rights of women and children. Her latest book is Eve Was Shamed: How British Justice is Failing Women. Recorded live at the Tabernacle in London's Notting Hill on 25th February 2019. 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

James O’Brien is a writer and LBC radio presenter. He has written for the Times Literary Supplement and is a regular columnist for the Daily Mirror. 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 a million weekly listeners and his Unfiltered podcast has been downloaded three million times. How To Be Right is his first book. Recorded live at the Tabernacle in London's Notting Hill on 25th February 2019. 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

Podcast from the sold out event hosted by 5x15 with Shoshana Zuboff, Misha Glenny and Profile books on 5th February 2019. Shoshana Zuboff joined the Harvard Business School faculty in 1981, as one of the institutions first tenured women, and in 2014 and 2015 she was a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. She is one of the world’s most provocative and prescient thinkers – and has devoted her career to studying the rise of the digital. Her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is a sensation. As Naomi Klein has said: “everyone needs to read this book as act of digital self-defence." Interviewing her is Misha Glenny, the author of McMafia about global criminal networks and DarkMarket: How Hackers Became the New Mafia. He is an expert on cyber security and a distinguished investigative journalist and historian. Recorded live at the Emmanuel Centre on 5th February 2019. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspira

The Poetry Pharmacy is William Sieghart's best-selling book bringing together tried-and-true prescriptions for the heart, mind and soul. He has taken his Poetry Pharmacy around the length and breadth of Britain, into the pages of the Guardian onto BBC Radio 4 and onto the television. His pocket-sized book presents the most essential poems in his dispensary: those which, again and again, have really shown themselves to work, whether you are suffering from loneliness, lack of courage, heartbreak, hopelessness, or even from an excess of ego. William Sieghart is a philanthropist and publisher. He is the founder of National Poetry Day, the Forward Poetry Prize, the Big Arts Week, Bedtime Reading Week and co-founded StreetSmart: Action for the Homeless in 1998. In 2012, he edited a collection of British poems called Winning Words: Inspiring Poems for Everyday Life, to tie in with the London Olympics. Recorded at The Tabernacle on 21st January 2019. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of th

Rosamund Pike is an Academy Award and BAFTA nominee who has earned international acclaim for both her stage and film roles. Here she discusses her latest role, playing the legendary war reporter Marie Colvin who was killed in Homs in 2012, in A Private War directed by Matt Heineman. Rosamund was nominated for a Golden Globe in the ‘Best Actress, Drama’ category for her performance in A Private War. She is in conversation with Rosie Boycott co-founder of 5x15. Rosamund Pike is perhaps best known for her lead role in the hugely successful Gone Girl, in which she played Amy Dunne, opposite Ben Affleck. Rosamund has most recently been seen in Scott Cooper’s Hostiles, José Padilha’s Entebbe and Brad Anderson’s Beirut opposite Jon Hamm. Last year, Rosamund starred in The Human Voice, an adaptation from the play by Jean Cocteau. As well as featuring in Watership Down as The Black Rabbit of Inlé, Rosamund recently wrapped Radioactive, playing Marie Curie, exploring the life of the iconic scientist, and will also soo

5x15 hosted a special discussion with Fintan O'Toole and Misha Glenny chaired by Jon Snow at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster to discuss Brexit and Fintan's new book Heroic Failure. It's a fierce, funny and smart book about the delusions of Brexit, the threat it poses to economic prosperity, peace in Ireland and the tradition of British democracy. England's favourite poem, Rudyard Kipling’s 'If', says that triumph and disaster are the same thing. It enjoins the English to “lose, and start again at your beginnings/ And never breathe a word about your loss.” Most modern English heroics are screw-ups, retreats or disasters: the charge of the Light Brigade, the doomed Franklin expedition to find the Northwest Passage, “Scott of the Antarctic”, Gordon of Khartoum, the flight from Dunkirk. The parallels with Brexit are obvious, but the problem is that the cult of heroic failure was developed precisely in an empire that could afford to play up its failures because it was so successful. Its pathos becomes batho

Judith Kerr was born in Berlin, but came to England with her family when she was twelve after escaping the Nazis and travelling through Switzerland and France as a young girl. She wrote about her early life in her autobiographical trilogy Out of the Hitler Time. Judith studied at the Central School of Art and later worked as a scriptwriter for the BBC. She married the celebrated screenwriter Nigel Kneale in 1954, and left the BBC to look after their two children Matthew and Tacy, who inspired her first picture book, The Tiger Who Came to Tea. She is also famous for the Mog series of picture books about the Thomas’ family cat and the strange things she gets up to. Judith books have sold over 10 million copies. Judith lives in South London with her latest cat, Katinka. She received an OBE for services to literature and Holocaust education in 2012, and celebrated her 90th birthday in June 2013 with the publication Judith Kerr’s Creatures published by Harper Collins. 5x15 brings together five outstanding indivi

Baroness Martha Lane Fox, founder of DotEveryone, talks about why we need to harness the full potential of technology to tackle climate change. Recorded at the Royal Institution in London on the 29th November at the Talanoa Dialogue. 5x15 brings together five 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

The singer song writer Ellie Goulding talks about her passion for tackling climate change at 5x15. Recorded at the Royal Institution in London on the 29th November at the Talanoa Dialogue. 5x15 brings together five 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

Dr Maria Neira, WHO Director, Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health, talks about the links between health and climate change at this special edition of the Talanoa talks organised by the COP23 and 5x15 at London at the Royal Institution. 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

At special event hosted with 5x15 and the Talanoa Dialogue- actor Ralph Fiennes reads poetry to inspire action on climate change. Recorded live at the Royal Institution on the 29th November 2018. 5x15 brings together five 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

Susie Orbach is the founder of the Women's Therapy Centre of London; a former columnist for The Guardian; a visiting professor at the London School of Economics; and the author of Fat is a Feminist Issue, which has sold over a million copies. She is probably the most famous psychotherapist to have set up couch in Britain since Sigmund Freud. She lives in London, near to Freud's last address. 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