Lawrence Wright has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. He is also an author, a screenwriter and a playwright. Wright has published twelve books, including The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda's Road to 9/11 (2006), which was translated into twenty-four languages and won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. In 2018, the book was adapted into a Hulu original drama starring Jeff Daniels, Alec Baldwin, and Tahar Rahim. In April, 2020, Wright published his second novel, The End of October about a pandemic, which eerily anticipated many of the events of the coronavirus pandemic. Wright lives in Austin, Texas, with his family, and plays the keyboard for the blues band WhoDo.

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.

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Lawrence Wright - The Plague Year

Gillian Tett is editor-at-large at the Financial Times and bestselling author of Fool’s Gold. Now she’s returning to her early training to explain how anthropology can help us understand the corporate world. Join Gillian in conversation with undercover economist Tim Harford, author of How To Make the World Add Up, as they discuss Anthro-Vision.

For over a century, anthropologists have immersed themselves in unfamiliar cultures, uncovering the hidden rituals that govern how people act. Now, a new generation of anthropologists are using these methods in a new context – to illuminate the behaviour of businesses and consumers around the globe. In Anthro-Vision, Gillian Tett – who holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Cambridge – reveals how anthropology can help make sense of how we buy, sell, work and live, and outlines how to identify the ‘webs of meaning’ that underpin consumers’ behaviour.

She explains how concealed systems of barter shape our relationship with Silicon Valley, reveals the subtle cultural shifts driving investment in new markets and green issues, and explores what anthropology can tell us about our own workplaces, too. The result is a revelatory way to make sense of human behaviour, in business and in life.

5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. 

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Gillian Tett and Tim Harford on Anthro-Vision

What can artists offer in response to climate change? The experience of the pandemic has shown us that a profound reimagining of many aspects of society are entirely possible. In what ways can we rethink our relationship to the environment? How can we effect change with our every action? Join us to hear from artists and thinkers delivering an urgent and innovative response to the climate emergency.

Back to Earth, the Serpentine’s major environmental programme is a multi-year initiative which invites leading artists, architects, poets, filmmakers, scientists, thinkers and designers to devise campaigns, protocols and initiatives to respond to the environmental crisis. The first Back to Earth publication, 140 Artists’ Ideas for Planet Earth, edited by Serpentine Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist together with Kostas Stasinopoulos, represents the exhibition of these ideas in book form, a unique compendium of recipes, sketches, photographs, texts, actions and instructions from some of the most creative minds of our generation to Remember Nature and help us all build a fairer and more sustainable future.

This unmissable event brings together artists and thinkers to share their ideas around ecological challenges and to talk about collaboration and interconnectedness across disciplines as we look ahead and imagine the future in the next 50 or 500 years.

Brian Eno is a composer, producer and visual artist. He is widely identified with the appearance of 'Ambient Music' in the 1970s and of ‘Generative Music’ in the 1990s. He has worked extensively with David Bowie, U2, Coldplay, Laurie Anderson, Talking Heads and others. His visual and installation work has been presented in nearly 200 venues over the last 5 decades. Eno is a trustee of Client Earth, director of Earth Percent and co-founder of The Long Now Foundation- a society dedicated to the promotion of long-term thinking.

Carolina Caycedo is a Colombian-American artist who is researching community-led alternative energy production across the Americas. The basis of her campaign for Back to Earth is her long-running investigation into human interaction with rivers, from access to clean water supplies to toxicity levels and the impact of dams.

Kostas Stasinopoulos is a curator and art historian. He is Assistant Curator, Live Programmes at Serpentine Galleries, London, working across the institution's interdisciplinary programme, Back to Earth and the General Ecology project.

Rob Hopkins is the co-founder of transition Town Totnes and the Transition Network; and is the author of the Transition Handbook and most recently From What Is to What If: unleashing the power of imagination to create the future we want. Rob presents the podcast called from What If To What Next in which he considers how to re-imagine our relationships with every day things such as flying. In 2012 he was voted one of the independent’s top 100 environmentalists and one of the observers top British radicals. He has spoken at TED global, and he is a keen gardener and the founder of the New Lion brewery. His spare time he creates extraordinarily beautiful lino prints.

Rosie Boycott is a cross bench peer, food campaigner, co-founder of 5x15 and author of Our Farm: A year in the life of a small holding.

5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. 

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Artists’ Ideas for Planet Earth: Brian Eno, Rob Hopkins & Carolina Caycedo

Human beings have relied on plants throughout our evolved history - to alter consciousness, to stimulate, to calm and to radically alter the way we see the world. For this unmissable 5x15 event, award-winning author, activist and journalist, Michael Pollan joins us to talk about his groundbreaking new book This Is Your Mind On Plants in conversation with gardener and broadcaster Monty Don who for years has been leading us down all kinds of garden paths to show us why our relationship to the natural world is vital to our wellbeing and culture.

This Is Your Mind On Plants explores our deep relationship with three very different plants from which we derive opium, caffeine and mescaline, and what they can do for us. Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants, and the equally powerful taboos, in this personal journey of exploration and participation in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs. He finds there is much more to say about these plants than simply debating their regulation, for when we take them into our bodies and let them change our minds, we are engaging with nature in one of the most profound ways we can.

To discuss this unique blend of history, science, memoir and reportage, Michael will be joined by the brilliant Monty Don, who has written candidly about depression and how gardening can help to restore a sense of wellbeing. Michael himself has experimented with psychedelic drugs and has written extensively about how they are being used in treatments for depression and addiction. Between them they will shine a fresh light on a subject that holds up a mirror to fundamental human needs, the operations of our minds and our entanglement with the natural world.

Michael Pollan is an award-winning author, activist and journalist. His international bestselling books about the way we live today - including How to Change Your Mind, In Defence of Food and Food Rules - combine meticulous reporting with anthropology, philosophy, culture, health and natural history. 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.

Monty Don OBE is a well-known gardening writer and broadcaster. He lives with his family, garden and dogs in Herefordshire. His books include the Sunday Times bestseller Nigel, The Jewel Garden, Paradise Gardens and Japanese Gardens with Derry Moore, which was shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Travel Awards. His most recent books are; My Garden World and American Gardens.

Chaired by Rosie Boycott, food campaigner, co-founder of 5x15 and author of Our Farm.

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This is Your Mind on Plants: A conversation with Monty Don and Michael Pollan

In this funny and poignant talk for 5x15, Jack Guinness takes us on a short journey through queer history. He speaks about his incredible project, The Queer Bible, and discusses the value of freeing oneself from the trappings of narrow identity. 

Jack Guinness is a model and fashion commentator, a contributing editor at British GQ, and has also contributed to Sunday Times Style, the Guardian, the Gentleman’s Journal and Tatler. In The Queer Bible – published this June to celebrate Pride Month – he has brought together a stellar line-up of today’s queer icons to write about the queer trailblazers who inspired them. Based on Jack’s popular website QueerBible.com, it continues his mission to create a space dedicated to the celebration of queer history, and features contributors including Elton John, Munroe Bergdorf, Graham Norton, Lady Phyll, Paris Lees, Russell Tovey, Tan France and Courtney Act, as well bespoke illustrations from LGBTQ+ and ally artists.

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.

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Jack Guinness-  The Queer Bible

Kate Mosse joins interviewer Rosie Boycott to discuss An Extra Pair of Hands: A story of caring, ageing and everyday acts of love.

Kate Mosse is an international bestselling novelist, playwright and nonfiction author with sales of more than eight million copies in 38 languages. Renowned for bringing unheard and under-heard histories to life, she is a champion of women's creativity. Kate is the Founder Director of the Women's Prize for Fiction, sits on the Executive Committee of Women of the World and is a Visiting Professor of Contemporary Fiction and Creative Writing at the University of Chichester. Kate lives in West Sussex with her husband and mother-in-law.

Rosie Boycott is a cross bench peer in the House of Lords. For ten years she was chair of The London food Board, responsible to the Mayor of London for food policy in the City. She is a well known food activist with particular interest in food poverty, health, environment and agricultural sustainability. She is a trustee of the Food Foundation and Feeding Britain and chair of Veg Power. She was the founder of the feminist magazine Spare Rib and the editor in chief of three national newspapers: The Independent on Sunday, the Independent and the Daily Express.

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.

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Kate Mosse - An Extra Pair of Hands

In this special 5x15 podcast, Join George Monbiot, Franny Armstrong on their quest to restore our rivers to their rightful place - not only in the nation’s imagination - but also to make them clean, swimmable, a rich diverse home to fish, birds and animals. 

Franny and George will be discussing their innovative, "live documentary"- Rivercide- and from other leading experts and campaigners.

To find out more about Rivercide and how you can watch the live documentary on 14th July at 7pm on rivercide.tv. Twitter (@rivercide_live), Insta (@rivercide_live) and Facebook (facebook.com/rivercideTV). Rivercide is the world's first live investigative documentary, presented by George Monbiot, directed by Franny Armstrong and with the livestream produced by Peter Armstrong. The 60 minute programme will be broadcast live online - free to view - on July 14th at 7pm via rivercide.tv.

This 5x15 discussion features:

Investigative journalist, author, campaigner and self-described "professional troublemaker," George Monbiot. Monbiot is author of many acclaimed books – including Feral, Heat and Out of the Wreckage – columnist for the Guardian and environmental campaigner. George has presented many films, including Apocalypse Cow: how meat killed the planet, How Wolves Change Rivers and Nature Now. His Double Down News videos have millions of views. George is working on a new book, to be published in 2022, about how to feed the world without devouring the planet.

Former pop drummer Franny Armstrong has directed three feature documentaries – Age of Stupid, McLibel, and Drowned Out. She arguably invented crowd-funding when she raised £900,000 from 300+ investors for Age of Stupid five years before Kickstarter launched. In collaboration with the Guardian, Franny founded the 10:10 campaign in 2009 which aimed to cut carbon emissions by 10% in a year. Franny has written chapters for three books, won Sheffield Doc/Fest's "Inspiration Award", been named as one of the "World’s Top 100 Women" by the Guardian and one of “London's 1,000 most influential people” by The Evening Standard. Her latest projects are the climate comedy Pie Net Zero (2020), which trended at #9 on YouTube and What If (2019) starring Ed Miliband, Chris Packham and Caroline Lucas in a parallel universe where humans are tackling climate change.

Peter Armstrong has been innovating new forms of progressive media for 50 years, including pioneering radio-link documentaries for Radio 4, the BBC’s Domesday Project, founding the BBC Interactive Television Unit and co-founding with Anuradha Vittachi OneWorld.net, OneClimate.org and Empathymedia.org. He has pioneered the use of live-streaming from climate actions, including the Paris, Copenhagen, Cancun, Bonn and Poznan COP meetings and most recently from Extinction Rebellion on the streets of London. In 2004, he received the BAFTA Lifetime Achievement for his contributions to interactive media - only the second person to win this award, after Tim Berners Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web.

Karen Shackleton is a founder member of Ilkley Clean River Group, who are now the proud owners of the first river in the UK to be awarded Bathing Water Designation by Defra. Having been always interested in wildlife from a young age, Karen joined the Wharfedale Naturalists Society and served as Vice President until recently standing down to concentrate on the Clean River Group.

Nick Hayes is a trespasser and a campaigner for the right-to-roam. He is also an author, illustrator, printmaker and political cartoonist. He has published four graphic novels and has worked for, among others, Literary Review, the British Council, The New Statesman and The Guardian. The Book of Trespass is a trespasser's radical manifesto.

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Rivercide with George Monbiot and Franny Armstrong

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. 

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Anil Seth and Adam Rutherford on a new science of consciousness

With its soaring descriptions of the natural world, its tantalizing vision of life beyond, and its account of a father and son’s ferocious love, Bewilderment marks Richard Powers’s most intimate and moving novel. At its heart lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet?

Richard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. His most recent book, The Overstory, won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. This exclusive interview was recorded for 5x15 in October 2021.

5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. 

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Richard Powers on Bewilderment in conversation with Rosie Boycott

Best selling novelist Matt Haig talks about depression. Warm, witty, honest and human, this is a manifesto for staying alive, whatever your demons.


Matt Haig writes books for both adults and children, often blending the worlds of domestic reality and outright fantasy, with a quirky twist. The Guardian has described his writing as 'delightfully weird' and the New York Times has called him 'a novelist of great talent' whose writing is 'funny, riveting and heartbreaking'. 
His novels for adults are The Last Family in England, narrated by a labrador and optioned for film by Brad Pitt; The Dead Fathers Club (2006), an update of Hamlet featuring an 11-year-old boy; The Possession of Mr Cave (2008), about a man obsessed with his daughter's safety, and The Radleys (2010) which won Channel 4's TV Book Club public vote and was shortlisted for a Galaxy National Book Award (UK). The film rights to all his adult novels have been sold. His next adult novel is The Humans (2013).
His multi-award winning popular first novel for children, Shadow Forest, was published in 2007 and its sequel, The Runaway Troll, in 2009. His most recent children's novel is To Be A Cat (2012).

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.

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Reasons to stay alive - Matt Haig

Sarah Churchwell is Professor of American Literature and Chair of Public Understanding of the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. She is the author of Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and The Invention of The Great Gatsby and The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe. Her literary journalism has appeared widely in newspapers and she comments regularly on arts, culture, and politics for television and radio. She lives in London.

5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives and inspirations.

This talk was recorded at the online 5x15 event on 5th Nov 2020.

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Nov 5th 2020 5x15

Sarah Churchwell- Behold, America! A history of America First and the American Dream

"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.

Reasons to stay alive - Matt Haig

5x15

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