5x15 February 2022
Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter FRS OBE is the closest thing the world of statistics has to a national treasure. His new book, The Art of Uncertainty: Living with Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck is an engaging and informative guide to living with uncertainty in a world that makes it inevitable. He is Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication in the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge. His bestselling book, The Art of Statistics, has been published in 11 languages. His current roles are as Non-Executive Director, UK Statistics Authority; Mathematical Futures expert board of the Royal Society; Member of the Statistics Expert Group for the Infected Blood Inquiry, 2019 – 2024; and Advisor; NHS Maternity and Neonatal Outcomes Group.
After serving as BBC North America Editor, Justin Webb joined the team of presenters on Radio 4's influential Today programme.
In the US he covered all the twists and turns of the Presidential election. As well as becoming a senior member of the White House press pack, he was the first British journalist to be granted a full television interview with President Obama.
Justin previously reported from Brussels as the BBC's European Correspondent. He has also covered elections in Australia, a coup in the Maldives and Mafia trials in Italy. And as well as various overseas postings, he has anchored Breakfast News and The World Tonight.
He is the author of Have A Nice Day and Notes on Them and Us.
Dr Adam Rutherford is a science writer and broadcaster. He studied genetics at University College London, and during his PhD on the developing eye, he was part of a team that identified the first genetic cause of a form of childhood blindness. He has written and presented many award-winning series and programmes for the BBC, including the flagship weekly BBC Radio 4 programme Inside Science and The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry with Dr Hannah Fry. He is the author of Creation, which was shortlisted for the Wellcome Trust Prize, A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived, The Book of Humans and How to Argue with a Racist.
After graduating from the University of Oxford, Edward Shawcross lived and worked in France, then South Korea and finally Colombia before returning to London where he completed a PhD at UCL. His research specialised on French imperialism in Latin America and the Mexican intellectual thought that underpinned the Second Mexican Empire.
Natasha Lunn is the features director at RED magazine and the creator of a popular and acclaimed email newsletter, Conversations on Love. She completed a course on psychodynamic couples’ therapy at the Tavistock Centre. In her fascinating and revealing compendium Conversations on Love Natasha reminds us that love is fragile, sturdy, mundane, beautiful; a thing always worth fighting for. Featuring … Philippa Perry on falling in love slowly; Alain de Botton on the psychology of being alone; Dolly Alderton on vulnerability; Candice Carty-Williams on friendship; Diana Evans on parenthood; Lisa Taddeo on grief; and Roxane Gay on soulmates.