5x15 - May - Free Online Event

The London-based architect, lecturer, BBC presenter and TED global speaker coined ‘Sitopia’ – now a widely-recognised way of seeing the world through the lens of food.

Drawing on insights from philosophy, history, architecture, literature, politics and science, as well as stories of the farmers, designers and economists who are remaking our relationship with food, Sitopia is a provocative and exhilarating vision for change, and how to thrive on our crowded, overheating planet. In her inspiring, timely and deeply thoughtful new book, Sitopia, Carolyn Steel, author points the way to a better future.

Acclaimed author and journalist Michael Pollan—whose number-one New York Times best sellers include The Omnivore’s Dilemma and How to Change Your Mind—offers his latest, provocative look into the profound ways that what we eat affects how we live. In Caffeine: How caffeine created the modern world, Pollan takes us on a journey through the history of the drug, which was first discovered in a small part of East Africa and within a century became an addiction affecting most of the human species. Caffeine, it turns out, has changed the course of human history.

Jennifer Ackerman is a New York Times bestselling author who has been writing about science, nature, and human biology for more than three decades. She is the author of eight books including the Genius of Birds. Her new book, The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think, is a radical investigation into the bird way of being, and the recent scientific research that is dramatically shifting our understanding of birds — how they live and how they think.

Patrick Barkham is the natural history writer for the Guardian. He is the author of the books The Butterfly Isles, Badgerlands, Coastlines, Islander and Wild Child. He has been interviewed on Radio 4 and Radio 2 and has written for a wide range of media outlets, as well as co-editing the ‘People’s Manifesto for Wildlife’ with Chris Packham and Robert Macfarlane. He lives in Norfolk with his family.

George Monbiot is an author, Guardian columnist and environmental campaigner. His best-selling books include Feral: Rewilding the land, sea and human life and Heat: how to stop the planet burning and Out of the Wreckage: a new politics for an age of crisis. George cowrote the concept album Breaking the Spell of Loneliness with musician Ewan McLennan; and has made a number of viral videos. One of them, adapted from his 2013 TED talk, How Wolves Change Rivers, has been viewed on YouTube over 40m times. Another, on Natural Climate Solutions, that he co-presented with Greta Thunberg, has been watched over 50m times. George is working on a new book, to be published in 2022, about how to feed the world without devouring the planet.