Feb 2021 5x15 - 5 speakers, 15 minutes each

Ben Okri was born in Nigeria, and is an award-winning playwright, essayist, poet and Booker-prize-winner for his novel The Famished Road. His 1995 novel Astonishing the Gods was selected in 2019 as one of the BBC’s ‘100 Novels That Shaped Our World.’ He joins us to read poems from A Fire in My Head, a powerful new collection on subjects from the refugee crisis to racism, Grenfell Tower to Covid-19.

Peter Ettedgui is a BAFTA-nominated director whose films include the acclaimed McQueen and the 2020 Netflix film Rising Phoenix which tells the extraordinary story of the Paralympic Games, from its origins in the aftermath of World War II, to become one of the world’s largest sporting events.

Rachel Clarke is an Oxford-based palliative care doctor whose accounts of end of life care have propelled her onto the bestseller charts. Breathtaking is her urgent, deeply moving despatch from the front line of the coronavirus pandemic, and a meditation what matter most in times of crisis.

Justin Fenton is a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun, and part of the Pulitzer Prize finalist staff recognised for their coverage of the Baltimore riots that followed the death of Freddie Gray. In We Own This City, Fenton exposes the scandalous systemic police corruption that was a backdrop to the 2015 riots, and which culminated in one of the most shocking police corruption trials in a generation.

Jason Hickel is an economic anthropologist who researches global inequality, political economy, post-development, and ecological economics. Less is More turns received wisdom about growth and development on its head, arguing for an economy that reverses ecological breakdown, is more just, more caring – and more fun.