5x15
676 episodes - English - Latest episode: 29 days ago - ★★★★ - 7 ratings"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.
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
Mark Vanhoenacker On Imagine A City
July 09, 2023 08:00 - 14 minutes - 9.94 MBMark Vanhoenacker is a commercial airline pilot for British Airways and the author of the international bestseller Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot and How to Land a Plane. A columnist for the Financial Times and a regular contributor to The New York Times, he has also written for The Times, The Atlantic, Wired and the Los Angeles Times. Born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Mark trained as a historian and worked as a management consultant before starting his flight training in Britain in 2001....
Jennifer Robinson And Dr Keina Yoshida On How Many More Women?
July 07, 2023 08:00 - 15 minutes - 10.5 MBJennifer Robinson is a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London. She has acted in key human rights and media freedom cases in domestic and international courts. Jennifer has advised survivors, journalists, media organisations, advocacy and frontline services organisations on free speech and media law issues. Jennifer serves on the boards of the Bonavero Human Rights Institute, the Bureau for Investigative Journalism and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. Dr Keina Y...
Lewis Dartnell On Being Human
July 05, 2023 08:00 - 15 minutes - 10.4 MBLewis Dartnell is an astrobiology researcher and professor at the University of Westminster, and also an Honorary Research Associate at University College London (UCL). He is the author of the bestselling books The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch and Origins: How the Earth Shaped Human History, which has been translated into 26 languages. He writes for the Guardian, The Times and New Scientist. Copies of The Knowledge exist on the surface of the Moon, and in the Svalbard Glob...
Andrew Motion On Sleeping On Islands: A Life In Poetry
June 09, 2023 07:59 - 18 minutes - 12.9 MBAndrew Motion was UK Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2009, is co-founder of the online Poetry Archive, and has written acclaimed biographies of Philip Larkin and John Keats among others. His memoir of childhood, In the Blood, was published in 2006, and its sequel, Sleeping on Islands: A Life in Poetry, appeared alongside Selected Poems: 1977 – 2022 in 2023. He is Homewood Professor in the Arts at Johns Hopkins University, and lives in Baltimore. With thanks for your support for 5x15 online! Lear...
Angela Saini On The Patriarchs
June 06, 2023 08:00 - 13 minutes - 9.06 MBAngela Saini is an award-winning journalist and author. She presents radio, podcasts, and television programmes, and her writing has appeared across the world, including in The Financial Times, Wired, and National Geographic. Angela's 2019 book Superior: The Return of Race Science was published to enormous critical acclaim, and became a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, the Hughes Prize, and the Foyles Book of the Year. Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong was published in 2017, and has ...
Ariel Bruce On Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace
June 02, 2023 08:00 - 15 minutes - 10.7 MBDescribed as the Agatha Christie of the adoption world, Ariel Bruce works on ITV’s Long Lost Family and specialises in finding people affected by adoption, using her unique skills as a social worker and her background in care to reunite families all over the world. Born in London, Ariel’s parents were Jewish refugees and at the age of 12, she was placed into care and went on to have 6 different foster parents. Based in London, Ariel carries out extensive work in England, Scotland, Ireland and...
5x15 And Keystone Present: Six Ideas To Change The World: Food
May 31, 2023 08:00 - 59 minutes - 41.2 MBThe Six Ideas to Change the World series, in partnership with Keystone Positive Change Investment Trust, launches in May with Henry Dimbleby on Food. The co-founder of LEON restaurant chain and author of the National Food Strategy, Dimbleby is a leading voice on how the food we eat affects of our own health and the health of the planet. His new book Ravenous: How to Get Ourselves and Our Planet Into Shape (with Jemima Lewis), was named a Sunday Times best-seller upon its publication in Marc...
Dr Tom Moorhouse On Ghosts In The Hedgerow: A Hedgehog Whodunnit
May 30, 2023 08:00 - 13 minutes - 9.12 MBDr Tom Moorhouse is a conservation research scientist who has worked for twenty years at the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, part of Oxford University's Biology Department. His work has focussed on the conservation ecology of water voles, the management of signal crayfish, hedgehog conservation and the impacts of wildlife tourism. He is the author of Elegy for a River and also award-winning children's fiction. His latest book is Ghosts in the Hedgerow: A Hedgehog Whodunnit. He lives with...
Anne - Marie Imafidon On She’s In CTRL
May 28, 2023 08:00 - 10 minutes - 6.87 MBDr Anne-Marie Imafidon MBE is a prodigy in every sense of the word. Aged 11, she was the youngest girl ever to pass A-level computing, and was just 20 years old when she received her Master’s Degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Oxford. Since then, she has forged an enviable CV, including positions at Goldman Sachs, Hewlett-Packard and Deutsche Bank. Then there are the Honorary Doctorates from Open University, Glasgow Caledonian University, Kent University, Bristo...
5x15 And Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew: Foods Of The Future
May 11, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 43.2 MB5x15 is delighted to announce a new series of events in collaboration with Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. From spring into summer, we will host a range of expert writers, thinkers and scientists from Kew. They will reflect on what we must do to prevent biodiversity loss and protect life on Earth, and address some of the most important questions of our time. The series kicks off in April with a panel about Foods of the Future. From the benefits of no-dig gardening and new crop techniques, to th...
Blake Morrison On Two Sisters
April 03, 2023 08:00 - 13 minutes - 9.03 MBBlake Morrison is a poet, novelist and journalist. His non-fiction books include And When Did You Last See Your Father? (1993), which won the J. R. Ackerley Prize and the Esquire/Volvo/Waterstone's Non-Fiction Book Award, As If (1997), about the murder of the toddler James Bulger in Liverpool in 1993, and a memoir of his mother, Things My Mother Never Told Me (2002). His poetry includes the collections Dark Glasses (1984), winner of a Somerset Maugham Award, and Shingle Street (2015). He is a...
Julie McDowall On Attack Warning Red!
March 30, 2023 08:00 - 14 minutes - 9.9 MBJulie McDowall is a freelance journalist and book critic specialising in the nuclear threat. Her writing has appeared in The Times, Economist, Spectator, Guardian, TLS, Prospect and Independent, and she is also the host of the Atomic Hobo podcast in which she reveals findings in the nuclear archives and reports on her travels to nuclear bunkers and other Cold War sites. Her book Attack Warning Red! How Britain Prepared for Nuclear War, is the first book to tell the story of day-to-day life on...
Tania Branigan On Red Memory: Living, Remembering And Forgetting China's Culture Revolution
March 27, 2023 08:00 - 12 minutes - 8.89 MBTania Branigan is a Guardian foreign leader writer. Having spent seven years as the Guardian’s China correspondent, she has also written for the Washington Post and The Australian. Her first book, Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China's Culture Revolution, explores how the revolution has shaped China today, and uncovers forty years of silence through the rarely heard stories of individuals who lived through Mao's decade of madness. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individ...
Jeremy Denk On Every Good Boy Does Fine
March 23, 2023 09:00 - 16 minutes - 11.1 MBJeremy Denk is one of America's foremost pianists. Winner of a MacArthur 'Genius' Fellowship and the Avery Fisher Prize, Denk is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Denk returns frequently to Carnegie Hall and has appeared with renowned ensembles including the Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and Los Angeles Philharmonic. His recordings have received critical acclaim, including reaching No. 1 on the Billboard classical charts, and his writing has appeared in the New...
Katherine Rundell On Super-Infinite: The Transformations Of John Donne
March 20, 2023 09:00 - 12 minutes - 8.52 MBKatherine Rundell is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Her bestselling books for children have been translated into more than thirty languages and have won multiple awards. Rundell is also the author of a book for adults, Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise. She has written for, among others, the London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books and The New York Times: mostly about books, though sometimes about night...
Sarah Raven On A Year Full Of Veg
March 13, 2023 09:00 - 59 minutes - 40.9 MBSarah Raven On A Year Full Of Veg by Stories and inspiration from 5x15
Suzanne Wrack On A Woman's Game
March 09, 2023 09:00 - 15 minutes - 11 MBSuzanne Wrack is the Guardian and Observer’s women’s football correspondent - the first person to hold this role at a national newspaper. In A WOMAN’S GAME, she explores the history of women’s football from the Victorian era – when players wore high-heeled boots – to the present day. It is the story of a rise, fall, and rise again, from the game’s first appearance in England in the late nineteenth century, through to the height of its popularity in 1920, when crowds of 53,000 flocked to Goodi...
Thomas Halliday On Otherlands
March 06, 2023 09:00 - 14 minutes - 10.2 MBThomas Halliday is an Associate Research Fellow at the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Birmingham. His PhD won the Linnean Society Medal for the best thesis in the biological sciences in the UK, and he won the Hugh Miller Writing Competition in 2018. His book OTHERLANDS, a history of life on earth, was a Sunday Times bestseller, a Foyles Book of the Year 2022, and longlisted for Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. He was raised in Rannoch in the Scottish Highlands, and no...
Kirsty Sedgman On On Being Unreasonable
March 02, 2023 09:00 - 11 minutes - 7.9 MBKirsty Sedgman is an award-winning cultural studies scholar based at the University of Bristol. She publishes and speaks on art, media, participation, and cultural sociology. She is the author of numerous academic publications, including two monographs and an edited book on theatre fandom, and is Editor of the Routledge book series in Audience Research. Kirsty has also written for The Stage, Exeunt, and the BBC’s Expert Series, and her work has been featured in the Times Literary Supplement, ...
Patrick Radden Keefe And Rosie Boycott On The Snakehead
February 27, 2023 09:00 - 13 minutes - 9.49 MBPatrick Radden Keefe is an award-winning staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of the international bestsellers EMPIRE OF PAIN (winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction), SAY NOTHING (winner of the Orwell Prize) and, most recently, ROGUES: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks. First published in 2009, THE SNAKEHEAD is a sweeping history of the American dream, Manhattan’s Chinatown underbelly, and the mastermind behind one of the largest human-smuggling rings...
Dr. Dean Burnett On Emotional Ignorance
February 23, 2023 09:00 - 12 minutes - 8.7 MBDr Dean Burnett is a neuroscientist, blogger, sometime comedian and author. His previous books, THE IDIOT BRAIN and THE HAPPY BRAIN, were international bestsellers, while his Guardian articles have been read over sixteen million times. In EMOTIONAL IGNORANCE, he puts his own feelings under the microscope to ask where they come from, what purpose they serve, and why they make us feel the way they do. Addressing questions such as ‘Why can’t we think straight when hungry?’, ‘What’s the point of ...
Will Self | 5x15 & WritersMosaic
February 20, 2023 09:00 - 13 minutes - 9.4 MBWill Self is the author of many novels and books of nonfiction, including How the Dead Live, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year; The Butt, winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction; and Umbrella, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His latest work is Why Read: Selected Writings 2001-2021. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15...
Simon Liebesny | 5x15 & WritersMosaic
February 17, 2023 09:00 - 14 minutes - 9.69 MBSimon Liebesny is a freelance editor and publishing consultant. From shortly after September 11th until shortly before Covid-19, he was first mate at Pluto Press, radical publisher of authors including bell hooks, Augusto Boal, Sheila Rowbotham and Ariel Dorfman. In a previous incarnation he was an organiser, trustee and all round wrangler for International Jazz Day, in spite of having absolutely no musical talent whatsoever. He is working on amplifying the WritersMosaic guest edition on Jewi...
5x15 and The Moth: How To Tell A Story
February 03, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour - 66.2 MB5x15 and renowned nonprofit The Moth present a night of stories, inspired by the New York Times Bestselling book, How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth. Join us for an evening of true stories from two Moth speakers, storyteller interviews, and tips from some of the authors from the book, including Moth Directors Catherine Burns, Meg Bowles, and Kate Tellers. Hosted by poet, playwright, author, and Moth Storyteller Jon Goode. With thanks for your sup...
Pico Iyer And Katherine May On The Half Known Life: Finding Paradise In A Divided World
January 31, 2023 09:00 - 59 minutes - 54.7 MBIn January, the month of resolutions, join 5x15 to hear the acclaimed author Pico Iyer on how we might find paradise in the present. Paradise is a universal but elusive concept; a place we might spend our whole lives looking for. Moving between Iran, North Korea, the Dalai Lama’s Himalayas and the temples of Japan, Pico Iyer’s new book The Half Known Life: Finding Paradise in a Divided World reflects on ideas of utopia and ways of finding solace in these fractious times. Does religion lead u...
Philip Lymbery On Sixty Harvests Left
December 16, 2022 09:00 - 11 minutes - 10.3 MBPhilip Lymbery is Chief Executive of leading international farm animal welfare organisation Compassion in World Farming, as well as being a Visiting Professor at the University of Winchester, award-winning author and animal advocate. His new book, SIXTY HARVESTS LEFT, takes its title from a chilling warning made by the United Nations that the world’s soils could be gone within a lifetime. Uncovering how the food industry and ‘Big Ag’ threatens our world, it also spotlights the pioneers who ar...
Luke Harding And Gideon Rachman On The Ukraine War
December 13, 2022 09:00 - 59 minutes - 54.1 MB5x15 is thrilled to welcome best-selling writer and journalist Luke Harding to talk about his new book Invasion: Russia’s Bloody War and Ukraine’s Fight for Survival, a powerful and urgent account of the war in Ukraine. Reporting from Ukraine as foreign correspondent for the Guardian, Luke Harding has had unique insights into this conflict. Invasion, which is the first book of reportage from the front line, is a 'superb first draft of history' (Anne Applebaum) that examines the personal, rel...
Raynor Winn On Landlines
December 01, 2022 09:00 - 15 minutes - 13.8 MBRaynor Winn’s new memoir Landlines is a story that begins in fear but ends in hope. As the health of Moth, Raynor’s husband, declines, the couple set out to walk the gruelling, remote and stunningly beautiful terrain of Scotland’s Cape Wrath Trail, reflecting on community and the environment along the way. Raynor is the bestselling author of the astonishing, multi-award-winning The Salt Path (2019) which told the story of another remarkable journey, when nature first saved the couple. Just da...
Colm Tóibín On A Guest At The Feast
November 28, 2022 09:00 - 14 minutes - 13.6 MBColm Tóibín's new book, A Guest at the Feast, is a celebration of writing and brings together essays about growing up in Ireland during radical change; about cancer, priests, popes, homosexuality, and literature. He was born in Enniscorthy in 1955. He is the author of ten novels, and his work has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, as well as the Folio Prize in 2015; and has won the Costa Novel Award, the Impac Award and the David Cohen Prize for Literature, amongst others. 5...
Gail Whiteman On Arctic Change
November 25, 2022 09:00 - 13 minutes - 12.5 MBGail Whiteman is an expert on global risk arising from the systemic changes occurring in the natural environment. She is Professor of Sustainability at the University of Exeter’s Business School and founder of Arctic Basecamp, a team of Arctic experts and scientists who, for the last five years, have brought their Arctic-based research to the World Economic Forum annual meeting at Davos. In so doing, their aim is to call for action from global leaders to apply responsive and responsible leade...
Abi Morgan And David Nicholls On This Is Not A Pity Memoir
November 08, 2022 09:00 - 59 minutes - 54.8 MBJoin 5x15 online in November to hear acclaimed playwright and screenwriter Abi Morgan in conversation with beloved One Day author and screenwriter David Nicholls. THIS IS NOT A PITY MEMOIR is BAFTA and Emmy-award winner Abi Morgan’s extraordinary story, written in the wake of her partner’s devastating illness. When she found the man she had loved for nearly twenty years lying on the bathroom floor, it was clear that life for both of them would never be the same again. But this is not a pity...
Sam Knight on The Premonitions Bureau
November 03, 2022 09:00 - 13 minutes - 12 MBSam Knight is a staff writer for the New Yorker, has won two Foreign Press Association awards and was shortlisted for the 2018 Orwell Prize for political writing. His 2017 Guardian Long Read on the events that will follow the death of the Queen, ‘London Bridge is Down’, was viewed four million times. In THE PREMONITIONS BUREAU, his first book, he reveals the strange, true and unsettling tale of a 1960s psychiatrist obsessed with investigating why some people seemed able to predict disaster. A...
Lucy Siegle On The Ultimate Friend Of The Earth
October 31, 2022 09:00 - 14 minutes - 13.1 MBLucy Siegle is a journalist, broadcaster and eco expert. She is the Observer and Guardian’s Ethical Living columnist, the BBC’s The One Show’s resident environmental expert, and set up the Observer Ethical Awards in 2005. In BE THE ULTIMATE FRIEND OF THE EARTH, she tackles ten big topics involved in our quest to reach net zero. She explores how every one of us can be an ally to the planet; how we can discover how our consumer habits and lifestyles really impact the environment – and how we ca...
Katy Hessel On The Story Of Art Without Men
October 28, 2022 08:00 - 16 minutes - 15.1 MBKaty Hessel is an art historian, broadcaster and curator dedicated to celebrating women artists from all over the world. How many women artists do you know? Who makes art history? In her new book, THE STORY OF ART WITHOUT MEN, Katy Hessel challenges the canon as we know it and showcases the female and gender non-conformist artists who are so often excluded from the history books. Discover the glittering Sofonisba Anguissola of the Renaissance, the radical work of Harriet Powers in the ninetee...
Tom Mustill and Lucy Jones on How to Speak Whale
October 25, 2022 08:00 - 1 hour - 55.9 MBJoin 5x15 for a thrilling investigation into whale science and animal communication with Tom Mustill, author of the ground-breaking new book How to Speak Whale and Lucy Jones author of Losing Eden. How could breakthroughs in science change our relationship with animals forever? In 2015, wildlife filmmaker Tom Mustill was whale watching when a humpback breached onto his kayak and nearly killed him. After a VIDEO CLIP of the event went viral, Tom found himself inundated with theories about wha...
Jack Parlett on Fire Island
October 21, 2022 08:00 - 14 minutes - 13.2 MBJack Parlett is a writer, poet and scholar specialising in queer studies and American literature. In FIRE ISLAND, he tells the story of a slim strip of land off the coast of New York that has become iconic as a place of hedonism, reinvention and liberation. A book full of literary intrigue – from the halcyon scenes of Frank O’Hara’s poetry to the bars where Patricia Highsmith got drunk – it moves from the island’s early life as a discreet home for same-sex love, via the post-Stonewall disco e...
For The Love Of Plants: Jonathan Drori And Nicola Spence
October 17, 2022 08:00 - 1 hour - 56.7 MBThe hugely popular Jonathan Drori – writer and plant-lover – returns to 5x15 for a very special conversation with Professor Nicola Spence CBE, Defra’s Chief Plant Health Officer and the Head of the UK National Plant Protection Organisation. Both Jonathan and Nicola have been inspired in their love of plants by visits to Kew Gardens from a young age. In this event, they will explore how those early experiences led them both on journeys of discovery to the far reaches of the botanical universe...
Carlo Rovelli And Oliver Burkeman In Conversation
September 23, 2022 08:00 - 1 hour - 55.9 MBJoin two of 5x15’s favourite guests, Carlo Rovelli and Oliver Burkeman, to discuss time, the universe and our place in it. Carlo Rovelli’s HELOGLAND was an instant bestseller when it was published in 2021, and was chosen as a book of the year by The Times, Financial Times, Sunday Times, Guardian and Prospect. To celebrate its paperback publication, we are delighted to welcome Carlo back to 5x15 to revisit this beautiful, thrilling and mind-bending journey into the world of quantum physics. ...
Robert Harris On Act Of Oblivion
September 19, 2022 08:00 - 59 minutes - 54 MB5x15 is thrilled to welcome Robert Harris to our virtual stage for a conversation with 5x15 co-founder Rosie Boycott. Robert Harris is the author of fourteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy - Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator - Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich, The Second Sleep and V2. Now he returns with a thrilling new novel, Act of Ob...
Andrea Wulf And Kirsty Lang On Magnificent Rebels
September 06, 2022 08:00 - 59 minutes - 54.8 MBJoin 5x15 in September to hear about acclaimed biographer Andrea Wulf’s thrilling, and timely, story of a group of friends who changed the world in conversation with broadcaster Kirsty Lang. In the 1790s an extraordinary group of friends from the small German town of Jena changed the world. They were the first Romantics, and their ideas transformed society and shaped the way we lead our lives today. In Magnificent Rebels, Andrea Wulf, the Costa Prize-winning author of The Invention of Natur...
Hannah Critchlow And Rowan Williams On Joined Up Thinking
September 02, 2022 08:00 - 1 hour - 56.1 MBAt a time of existential global challenges, we need our best brainpower. How do we create genius environments, help our brains flourish and boost group thinking? Neuroscientist and bestselling author of The Science of Fate Hannah Critchlow shows how two heads can be better than one in her ground-breaking new book Joined up Thinking. She joins 5x15 for a very special online event with Dr Rowan Williams, Honorary Professor of Contemporary Christian Thought in the University of Cambridge and fo...
Chris Blackhurst & Oliver Bullough on Too Big to Jail
August 02, 2022 08:00 - 1 hour - 57.1 MBA special 5x15 event with Chris Blackhurst- an acclaimed writer, commentator, former editor of The Independent and author of Too Big To Jail (Macmillan)- in conversation with investigative reporter Oliver Bullough, author of Butler to the World and Moneyland. El Chapo, the world’s number one drug baron, had a problem: he needed to launder the billions of dollars he netted from peddling drugs across the United States. Step forward, HSBC... Too Big to Jail : Inside HSBC, the Mexican drug cart...
Karen Armstrong On Sacred Nature
July 29, 2022 08:00 - 1 hour - 56.1 MBJoin 5x15 to hear Karen Armstrong on her powerful new book Sacred Nature - an urgent manifesto and a practical guide on how to rekindle our spiritual bond with nature, drawing on the wisdom of the world's religious traditions. She’ll be in conversation with 5x15 co-founder Rosie Boycott. Armstrong is one of the world’s leading commentators on religious affairs. She spent seven years as a Roman Catholic nun before going on to become an acclaimed writer and broadcaster. In Sacred Nature, Arms...
Sarah Churchwell and Justin Webb on The Wrath To Come
July 22, 2022 08:00 - 1 hour - 58 MBJoin 5x15 for an online event with the acclaimed historian Sarah Churchwell in conversation with Today presenter Justin Webb to delve into American myth-making and denialism past and present. In THE WRATH TO COME: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells, historian Sarah Churchwell uses one of the most enduringly popular stories of all time as a lens through which to examine the divisions ripping apart the United States today. Sarah will be joined in conversation by Justin Webb, the lon...
Geoff Dyer on The Last Days Of Roger Federer
July 04, 2022 08:00 - 14 minutes - 19.5 MBGeoff Dyer is a ‘national treasure’ (Zadie Smith): the award-winning author of ten non-fiction books and four novels, including Out of Sheer Rage and Yoga for People Who Can’t be Bothered to Do It, which have been translated into 24 languages worldwide. He is currently Writer in Residence at the University of Southern California. In THE LAST DAYS OF ROGER FEDERER, he turns his attention to last things - the last days and last achievements of writers, painters, athletes and musicians from J.W ...
Jackie Morris on Feather, Leaf, Bark & Stone
July 01, 2022 08:00 - 14 minutes - 19.5 MBJackie Morris is an author and illustrator. The Lost Words, which she wrote with Robert Macfarlane, won the 2019 Kate Greenaway Medal for distinguished illustration, and she was nominated for the same award in 2021 for The Unwinding, her ‘book for dreamers’. FEATHER, LEAF, BARK & STONE is a pillow book of more than 100 short poems and meditations, typed onto gold leaf, leaves, bark and feathers. Written in the wake of Morris’s father’s death, it grew out of her grief, and was guided by her de...
Jonathan Freedland on The Escape Artist
June 27, 2022 08:00 - 14 minutes - 19.5 MBJonathan Freedland is an award-winning Guardian columnist, presenter of BBC Radio Four’s The Long View, and a multi-million selling thriller author under the name Sam Bourne. His new book, THE ESCAPE ARTIST, marks a return to non-fiction, telling the story of Rudolf Vrba, ‘the man who broke out of Auschwitz to warn the world’. Vrba’s testimony would reach Roosevelt, Churchill and the pope, and eventually save over 200,000 lives, but the escape from Auschwitz was not his last. After the war, h...
Leila Mottley on Nightcrawling
June 24, 2022 08:00 - 14 minutes - 19.5 MBLeila Mottley has been hailed as ‘the voice of a generation’. An acclaimed youth poet, her first novel, NIGHTCRAWLING, was bought in a thirteen-way auction in the States, a nine-way auction in the UK and has already sold into eight languages. Inspired by a true scandal underpinning the police department in Oakland, California, Mottley’s home town, it is an unforgettable novel about young people navigating the darkest corners of an adult world, told with a humanity that is at once agonising an...
Amia Srinivasan And Lisa Taddeo On The Right To Sex
June 20, 2022 08:00 - 59 minutes - 82.1 MBPhilosopher Amia Srinivasan, bestselling author of The Right to Sex, in conversation with the author of Three Women, Lisa Taddeo. '[This] ambitious, magisterial work stands out in the ongoing tide of dull, girl boss feminism arguing for personal empowerment over collective liberation . . . In a world of easy, one-dimensional answers, [Srinivasan] is unquestionably the real deal' – Vogue Amia Srinivasan is the author of one of the most talked about books in recent times, The Right to Sex, w...
William Atkins On Exiles
June 17, 2022 08:00 - 14 minutes - 33.2 MBWilliam Atkins’s third book, EXILES, tells the story of three nineteenth-century dissidents whose lives were profoundly shaped by the winds of empire, nationalism and autocracy that continue to blow today. A masterpiece of storytelling, travel writing and imaginative empathy, it is a book about displacement, colonialism and what it means to have a home. The Moor, William’s first book, was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize; his second, The Immeasurable World, won the Stanford Dolman Travel ...