5x15

In his new book The Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread - And Why They Stop, epidemiologist Adam Kucharski reveals how mathematical approaches transform what we know about contagion.

Adam Kucharski is an associate professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. A mathematician by training, his work on global outbreaks such as the Ebola epidemic and the Zika virus has taken him from villages in the Pacific Islands to hospitals in Latin America. He is a TED fellow and winner of the 2016 Rosalind Franklin Award Lecture and the 2012 Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize, and also the author of The Perfect Bet: How Science and Maths Are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling. His writing has appeared in the Observer, Financial Times, Scientific American, and New Statesman.

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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Has music lost its vanguard role? Billy Bragg is here to talk about the role of music in shaping our world, past present and future.

Stephen William ‘Billy’ Bragg is an English singer-songwriter and left-wing activist. His music blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, with lyrics that span political or romantic themes. His music is heavily centred on bringing about change and getting the younger generation involved in grass-roots activist causes. His book Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World was shortlisted for the Penderyn Music Book Prize, and was a Rough Trade, Mojo, and FT Book of the Year 2018. His latest book is the political pamphlet The Three Dimensions of Freedom published in 2019.

Recorded at The Tabernacle on 20th Jan 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: 5x15stories.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories

Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories

Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Jeremy Irons talks about his method of approaching poetry.

Jeremy Irons won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Claus von Bülow in 1990’s Reversal of Fortune. He is also a Golden Globe, Emmy, Tony, and Screen Actors Guild award winner. His film highlights include The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), The Mission (1986), Dead Ringers (1988), Damage (1992), M. Butterfly (1993), and Lolita (1997). Jeremy Irons received a Tony for his performance in Tom Stoppard’s play The Real Thing (1983), and appeared on the London stage in the National Theatre’s Never So Good (2008) and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Gods Weep (2010). In 2016 he portrayed James Tyron in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night as part of the Bristol Old Vic’s 250th anniversary.

Recorded live in London at The Tabernacle on 20th Jan 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: 5x15stories.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories

Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories

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Jackie Kay was born and brought up in Scotland. The Adoption Papers (Bloodaxe) won the Forward Prize, a Saltire prize and a Scottish Arts Council Prize. Fiere was shortlisted for the Costa award and her novel Trumpet won the Guardian Fiction Award and was shortlisted for the IMPAC award. Red Dust Road (Picador) won the Scottish Book of the Year Award, and the London Book Award, and was shortlisted for the JR Ackerley prize. Her third collection of short stories, Reality, Reality, was praised by The Guardian as ‘rank[ing] among the best of the genre'. She was awarded an MBE in 2006, and made a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2002. Her book of stories Wish I Was Here won the Decibel British Book Award. Jackie Kay also writes for children and her book Red Cherry Red (Bloomsbury) won the Clype award. She has written extensively for stage and television. Her plays, Manchester Lines (produced by Manchester Library Theatre) and The New Maw Broon Monologues (produced by Glasgay), were a great success. Her most recent collection, Bantam, was published in 2017 to critical acclaim. She is Chancellor of the University of Salford and Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University. Jackie Kay was named Scots Makar—the National Poet for Scotland—in March 2016.

Recorded at The Tabernacle on 20th Jan 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: 5x15stories.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories

Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories

Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

New York Times best-selling author Dylan Jones has written twenty books on subjects as diverse as music and politics and fashion and photography. He has been an editor at The Observer, The Sunday Times, i-D, The Face and Arena, a columnist for The Guardian and The Independent, and is currently the Editor-In-Chief of GQ. He has won Magazine Editor of the Year eleven times.

Story recorded live at 5x15 at The Tabernacle in 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

“Play for me is trial and error without fear of failure" Michael Rosen talks at 5x15 about his new work: The Book of Play. Michael Rosen is one of the best-loved figures in the children’s book world, renowned for his work as a poet, performer, broadcaster and education campaigner. His bestselling books include We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, Michael Rosen’s Sad Book and Totally Wonderful Miss Plumberry. He is a poet, broadcaster, former Children’s Laureate and a recipient of one of France’s top honours: Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt has sold over 8,000,000 copies. He has presented Radio 4’s Word of Mouth since 1996. He is Professor of Children’s Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Stories from the 5x15 recorded live at The Tabernacle in London in 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

David Nott is a Welsh consultant surgeon, specializing in general and vascular surgery. He works mainly in London hospitals, but for more than twenty-five years he has also volunteered to work in disaster and war zones. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2012 Birthday Honours and in 2016 he received the Robert Burns Humanitarian Award and the Pride of Britain Award. Since 2015, the foundation he set up with his wife, Elly, has disseminated the knowledge he has gained, training other doctors in the art of saving lives threatened by bombs and bullets. He lives in London with his wife and two daughters. War Doctor: Surgery on the Front Line, his first book, was published to great critical acclaim. The Times called it: “one of the most brutally vivid evocations of modern warfare that you will read.” @NottFoundation

Recorded live at The Tabernacle in London on 7th November 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

From our archive: Recorded live in London in 2014 at 5x15 at Conway Hall.

James Lovelock, who was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974, is the author of more than 200 scientific papers and the originator of the Gaia Hypothesis (now Gaia Theory). His many books on the subject include Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (1979), The Revenge of Gaia (2006), and The Vanishing Face of Gaia (2009). In 2003 he was made a Companion of Honour by Her Majesty the Queen, in 2005 Prospect magazine named him one of the world's top 100 public intellectuals, and in 2006 he received the Wollaston Medal, the highest Award of the UK Geological Society.

John Gray is a writer and political philosopher. He has been Professor of Politics at Oxford University, Visiting Professor at Harvard and Yale and Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics. He now writes full time. His books include Straw Dogs (‘That rarest of things, a contemporary work of philosophy, wholly accessible and profoundly relevant to the rapidly evolving world’ Will Self), Al-Qaeda and What It Means To Be Modern (‘The most arresting account I have read of our current crisis’ Ian McEwan), Heresies (‘Swiftian contempt for our latter-day priestlings, the believers in progress’ John Banville) and The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths.

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

Michael Morpurgo is one of the UK’s best-loved authors and storytellers. He was appointed Children’s Laureate in May 2003, a post he helped to set up with his friend Ted Hughes in 1999. He was awarded an OBE for services to Literature in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2007. He has written over 130 books with world sales of over 34 million copies. Many of Michael’s books have been adapted for the stage. These include Private Peaceful, Kensuke’s Kingdom, I Believe in Unicorns and The Mozart Question, and most notably, the National Theatre’s multi award-winning production of War Horse. The film of War Horse by Steven Spielberg was released in January 2012. In 1976, Michael and his wife, Clare started the charity Farms for City Children. They help to run three farms around the country, in Gloucestershire, Pembrokeshire and North Devon. Each farm offers children and teachers from urban primary schools the chance to live and work in the countryside for a week, and gain hands-on experience. Michael has written about the suffering of war from the Somme to Syria as "the same madness.” His latest book is Boy Giant: Son of Gulliver.

Recorded live at The Tabernacle in London on 7th November 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

Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women is a world-wide sensation – forever changing how we think about women and desire. All Lina wanted was to be desired. How did she end up in a marriage with two children and a husband who wouldn’t touch her? All Maggie wanted was to be understood. How did she end up in a relationship with her teacher and then in court, a hated pariah in her small town? All Sloane wanted was to be admired. How did she end up a sexual object of men, including her husband, who liked to watch her have sex with other men and women?

Nearly a decade in the making, Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women is a global phenomenon. Hailed instantly as a feminist classic, this staggering work of nonfiction is the result of thousands of hours spent in the company of its subjects – three women whose lives reveal profound and previously unspoken truths about life and love, womanhood and desire.

Lisa joins 5x15 for an exclusive In Conversation with the Guardian’s Hadley Freeman.

Lisa Taddeo spent eight years and thousands of hours tracking the women whose stories comprise Three Women, moving to the towns they lived in to better understand their lives. She is a columnist for the Sunday Times Style magazine and has contributed to the Sunday Times, New York magazine, Esquire, Elle, Glamour and many other publications. She is one of a select few authors to have published both fiction and nonfiction in Playboy, alongside Margaret Atwood, Kingsley Amis and Norman Mailer. Her short stories have won two Pushcart Prizes. She lives with her husband and daughter in New England.

‘A non-fiction novel of such recurring darkness, truth and astonishment I will probably re-read it every year of my life.’ – Caitlin Moran

Recorded live at the Emmanuel Centre in London on 29th November 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