5x15

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is a writer, broadcaster and campaigner. His series for Channel 4 have earned him a huge popular following, while his River Cottage books have collected multiple awards including the Glenfiddich Trophy and the André Simon Food Book of the Year. Hugh’s additional broadcasting, like the hugely influential Fish Fight, has earned him a BAFTA as well as awards from Radio 4, Observer and the Guild of Food Writers.

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George Saunders has been teaching the Russian short story for over twenty years. In his new book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he explores seven iconic stories by authors including Chekhov and Tolstoy, showing us how they work, why we keep reading, and what they can tell us about the world today. Funny and frank, George Saunders shows how the best stories can spark our humanity as well as our imaginations, and why fiction is more important than ever in these turbulent times.

George Saunders is the author of nine books including Lincoln in the Bardo, winner of the 2017 Man Booker Prize and the Premio Rezzori prize, which was also shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. Tenth of December won the inaugural Folio Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Saunders has received MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships and the PEN/Malamud Prize for excellence in the short story, and was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2013, he was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time magazine.

Max Porter is the author of Lanny, longlisted for the Booker Prize, and Grief is the Thing with Feathers, winner of the International Dylan Thomas Prize and shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Goldsmiths Prize. He is the recipient of the Sunday Times / Peters Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award. His new book, The Death of Francis Bacon, is published by Faber in January 2021.

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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Mariana Mazzucato is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL), where she is Founding Director of the UCL  Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose (IIPP).  She advises policy makers around the world on innovation-led inclusive and sustainable growth.

She is author of The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths (2013), The Value of Everything: making and taking in the global economy (2018) and Mission Economy: a moonshot guide to changing capitalism (2020). 

She is winner of international prizes including the 2020 John Von Neumann Award, the 2019 All European Academies Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values, and 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought.

Rana Foroohar is global business columnist and associate editor for the Financial Times, and CNN’s global economic analyst. Her first book, Makers and Takers, was shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year in 2016. Her second, Don’t Be Evil: the Case against Big Tech, was published in 2019 and was a Sunday Times Business Book of the Year and Observer Book of the Week.

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

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Morgan Housel is a partner at The Collaborative Fund and a former columnist at The Motley Fool and The Wall Street Journal. He is a two-time winner of the Best in Business Award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, winner of the New York Times Sidney Award, and a two-time finalist for the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism.

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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Douglas Stuart was born and raised in Glasgow. After graduating from the Royal College of Art, he moved to New York, where he began a career in design. Shuggie Bain is his debut novel. It is shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the National Book Award for Fiction, the Kirkus Prize and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. His short stories have appeared in the New Yorker and his essay on ‘Gender, Anxiety and Class’ was published by Lit Hub. Shuggie Bain is to be published in over 25 territories (so far) and tv adaptation rights have been acquired by A24 and Scott Rudin Productions.

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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Named by The Observer as “one of the world’s leading thinkers” and by Vogue as “one of the world’s most inspiring women,” economist Noreena Hertz is a bestselling author, broadcaster and keynote speaker.

Her previous books The Silent Takeover, The Debt Threat and Eyes Wide Open are published in more than twenty countries. Her latest book, The Lonely Century – Coming Together in a World That’s Pulling Apart is out now in the UK.

Noreena has a PhD from Cambridge University and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Having spent 10 years at the University of Cambridge, in 2014 she moved to University College London where she is an Honorary Professor at the Institute for Global Prosperity.

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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What lessons does the past hold for our future? Join Britain’s pre-eminent public historian to explore his thoughts on the pandemic, the Biden presidency, the future of populism and more.

The events of 2020 have upturned the order of the world, and the medical, economic and political crises we face will not fade quietly as the new year begins.

Though so much of the present moment feels strange and unprecedented, there is wisdom in heeding to George Santayana’s famous proverb that those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.

To help ensure that we do not fall foul of the prophecy, Simon Schama joins 5x15 to share his insights into the past and near future.

A natural storyteller with a deep grasp of human psychology and the broader forces that shape our world, Schama will reflect upon the lessons history holds for the coming year in conversation with journalist and broadcaster Matthew Stadlen, exploring Trump’s resistance to the election result and its consequences for American democracy, the tragedy of the pandemic, the endgame of Brexit and more.

Recorded via zoom in December 2020.

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

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Michael Sandel teaches political philosophy at Harvard University. Known to BBC listeners as ‘The Public Philosopher’, Sandel's books include Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? and What Money Can't Buy, which have been translated into twenty-eight languages and sold over two million copies worldwide. He has been a visiting professor at the Sorbonne; delivered the BBC Reith Lectures, and his speaking tours have spanned five continents.

The Tyranny of Merit arrives at a hinge point in social and political history. As the pandemic exposes entrenched inequality and the true value of essential work, Michael challenges corrosive attitudes to success and failure and makes the case for an ethic of humility. Above all, he asks how we value our fellow human beings, so that no one is left behind.

Polly Toynbee is a columnist for the Guardian. She was formerly BBC social affairs editor, columnist and associate editor of the Independent, co-editor of the Washington Monthly and a reporter and feature writer for the Observer. She has won the Political Journalist of the Year Award 2003 and is one of the most ardent supporters of the secular cause.

She has written a number of social commentary books including, in 2003, Hard Work: Life in Low-Pay Britain about an experimental period voluntarily living on the minimum wage. Polly Toynbee and David Walker have co-authored Dogma and Disarray: Cameron at Half-Time, Unjust Rewards: Exposing Greed and Inequality in Britain Today, The Verdict: Did Labour Change Britain? and Better or Worse: Did Labour Deliver?

Recorded via zoom in November 2020.

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

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Layla F. Saad is a globally respected writer, speaker and podcast host on the topics of race, identity, leadership, personal transformation and social change. Her work has been included on almost every essential anti-racism reading list and she was recently featured in British Vogue’s momentous ‘Activism Now’ issue. As an East African, Arab, British, Black Muslim woman who was born in the West and lives in the Middle East, Layla has always sat at a unique intersection of identities, allowing her to draw on rich and intriguing perspectives. Elizabeth Gilbert hailed her as: ‘One of the most important and valuable teachers we have on the subject of white supremacy and racial injustice.’

Me and White Supremacy was published in January and became an instant phenomenon, spending six consecutive weeks on the Sunday Times bestseller charts and also becoming a New York Timesbestseller. It has now sold 115k copies. Encouraging readers with white privilege to examine the ways in which they benefit from it, it galvanised readers worldwide to take action - a process continued in Layla’s new book, Me and White Supremacy: A Guided Journal.

Angela Saini is an award-winning British science journalist and broadcaster. She presents science programmes on the BBC, and her writing has appeared in New Scientist, The Sunday Times, National Geographic and Wired. Her latest book, Superior: the Return of Race Science, was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and named a book of the year by The Telegraph, Nature and Financial Times. Her previous book, Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong, has been translated into thirteen languages. Angela has a Masters in Engineering from the University of Oxford and was a Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Recorded via zoom in December 2020.

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

Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com

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How does literature nourish science? When does physics become poetry? A conversation of cosmic proportions, as two masterful storytellers- Neil Gaiman and Carlo Rovelli - discuss life, the universe and everything.

Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist who has made significant contributions to the physics of space and time. He has worked in Italy and the US, and is currently directing the quantum gravity research group of the Centre de physique théorique in Marseille, France. His books Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Reality Is Not What It Seems and The Order of Time are international bestsellers which have been translated into forty-one languages. His most recent book is There are Places in the World Where Rules are Less Important than Kindness.

Neil Gaiman is the author of numerous New York Times bestsellers, including Neverwhere, American Gods, The Ocean at the End of the Lane and the Sandman series of graphic novels. Neil Gaiman is credited with being one of the creators of modern comics, as well as an author whose work crosses genres and reaches audiences of all ages. He is a prolific creator of works of prose, poetry, film, journalism, comics, song lyrics, and drama.

The event is chaired by Erica Wagner. Erica was born in New York City and is a widely-acclaimed author and critic. She is the author of Gravity: Stories, Ariel's Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and the Story of Birthday Letters and Seizure, a novel; she is the editor of First Light: A Celebration of Alan Garner. Twice a judge of the Man Booker Prize, she was literary editor of The Times for 17 years and is now contributing literary editor for Harper’s Bazaar as well as writing for the Financial Times, the Economist and the New York Times. She was the recipient of the Eccles British Library Writer’s Award in 2014, and Chief Engineer, her biography of Washington Roebling, builder of the Brooklyn Bridge, was published by Bloomsbury in 2017.

Recorded via zoom in December 2020.

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

Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com

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