Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Better Known

Nigel Biggar discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Nigel Biggar is Emeritus Regius Professor in the University of Oxford and Fellow of Christ Church. He founded in Oxford the MacDonald Institute for the study of Ethics and Empire. He is now a Fellow of St Cross College Oxford, and an author, lecturer and broadcaster throughout the English-speaking world. After many acclaimed academic books, he wrote and published the bestselling Colonialism. His new book is The New Dark Age: Why Liberals Must Win The Culture Wars, which is available at https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=the-new-dark-age-why-liberals-must-win-the-culture-wars--9781509568321.

1. Terence Malick's 1998 film, The Thin Red Line https://www.theguardian.com/film/1999/feb/26/film-of-the-week-the-thin-red-line
2. Helmuth James von Moltke (1907-45), anti-Nazi martyr https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/19666775-last-letters-the-prison-correspondence-between-helmuth-and-freya-von-mo
3. Sir John Malcolm (1769-1833): exemplar of empire https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/sir-john-malcolm
4. 'Mass graves' discovery in grounds of an Indian Residential School at Kamloops, BC, Canada, May 2021: to this day, no body has been disinterred. https://www.fraserinstitute.org/commentary/no-evidence-of-mass-graves-or-genocide-in-residential-schools
5. The World Values Survey 2023: showing Britain to be one of the least racist countries on earth. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/research-analysis/uk-world-values-survey
6. Kathleen Stock, martyr in the cause of free and honest thinking on campus https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/mar/26/university-of-sussex-fined-freedom-of-speech-investigation-kathleen-stock

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Matt Kaplan discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Matt Kaplan is a science correspondent at the Economist. He is the author of The Science of Monsters and Science of the Magical, and co-author of David Attenborough’s First Life: A Journey Through Time. His new book is I Told You So! Scientists who were Ridiculed, Exiled and Imprisoned for Being Right, which is available at https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250372284/itoldyouso/.

1. The few doctors who worked out that handwashing was essential for preventing the spread of disease were attacked by their peers https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/ignaz-semmelweis-doctor-prescribed-hand-washing

2. George Washington disobeyed direct orders from the Continental Congress and inoculated his troops against smallpox during the Revolutionary War https://historyofvaccines.org/blog/washingtons-war-against-smallpox-revolutionary-inoculation-campaign/

3. Louis Pasteur was a vicious fellow who engaged in academic fraud. https://cms.viroliegy.com/2022/02/25/louis-pasteurs-unethical-rabies-fraud/

4. The mild mannered French physician Pierre Alexandre Louis worked out that the common practice of blood-letting was terrible for patients. https://www.grunge.com/812824/the-radical-history-of-bloodletting-explained/

5. Katalin Kariko https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/scientists-egos-key-barrier-to-progress-covid-vaccine-pioneer-katalin-kariko

6. Experiments exploring novel ideas are getting rarer as the effort needed to get research done steadily goes up https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20180338

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Jane Dougherty discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Jane Dougherty, of Irish origin, grew up in Yorkshire and now lives in France. She began writing by coming up with short stories and a YA series for her teenage children. Her first novel was published by an American publisher Musa in 2014. Since then, her poetry and short stories have been published online, in anthologies and magazines. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and has published three poetry pamphlets. Her most recent novel, The Darkest Tide was published by Northodox Press in 2025. Pasiphae is available at https://www.waterstones.com/book/9781917163293

1. Déjà s'envole la fleur maigre (Paul Meyer, 1960) https://www.artforum.com/columns/paul-meyers-deja-senvole-la-fleur-maigre-231206/
2. Beatrice Cenci https://www.througheternity.com/rome/beatrice-cenci-life-death-rome
3. The Lot-et-Garonne département https://www.guide-du-lot-et-garonne.com/en/tourism/discover/the-lot-et-garonne.html
4. The works of Natalia Ginzburg https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1985/11/07/the-force-of-habit/
5. The painter Franz Marc https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n12/michael-hofmann/at-the-orangerie
6. The Irish legend about Grainne and Diarmuid https://www.discoveringireland.com/the-legend-of-diarmuid-and-grainne/

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Adam Steiner discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Adam Steiner is a swim-teacher, freelance journalist and author. When not saving lives he sits dreaming about all the books he will never write. 

He has written several books of music criticism: Into The Never: Nine Inch Nails And The Creation Of The Downward Spiral, Silhouettes And Shadows: The Secret History of David Bowie’s Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) and Darker With The Dawn: Nick Cave's Songs Of Love And Death.

He runs the Disappear Here poetry film project – 27 x collaborative poetry-films about Coventry Ringroad – and now curates the Living With Buildings poetry film series, screening experimental films about people, poetry and place. For more information, go to https://adamsteiner.uk/.

1. Being There, Jerzy Kozinski: movie and book – so this is a great example of late/last great art - Peter Sellers was very attached to the story and was determined to make the movie, so he had do more pink panthers for the studio to back him.

2. Lifeguards / Swim Teachers - under-appreciated, under-sexed, underpaid its one of the hardest jobs out there - sitting in a chair dreaming, not doing anything, but people always take it for granted.

3. 40 - So we're always told that 40 is the new 30 etc - but it's a dangerous, difficult age.

4. When Biographies Become Biopics: Will Self said writers reading biographies of other writers is basically lit-porn – so we get caught up in a life narrative that often informs the work but steers us away from the original.

5. Real Dictators podcast - This is my go to 'easy' listening podcast, particularly when really ill I can just leave it on in the background and absorb.

6. Charity shops... the ultimate form of social progression. In London charity shops are a mecca for the undiscerning buyer.

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Erin Somers discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Erin Somers is a reporter and news editor at Publishers Lunch. Her first novel, Stay Up with Hugo Best was a Vogue Best Book of the Year in 2019. Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Paris Review, New York Times Book Review, New Republic, New York Magazine, Atlantic, Esquire, GQ, Best American Short Stories and many other publications. She has been the recipient of an Emerging Writer Fellowship from the NYC Centre for Fiction, a fellowship from the Millay Colony, and was a 2020 finalist for a National Magazine Award. She lives in New York's Hudson Valley with her family. Her new novel is The Ten Year Affair, which is available at https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-ten-year-affair-erin-somers/7940888?ean=9781837264568&next=t.

1. The record Entrance Music by Okonski https://okonski.bandcamp.com/album/entrance-music

2. The author Max Apple https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/books/review/Hodgman-t.html

3. The film 101 Reykjavik https://www.theguardian.com/film/News_Story/Critic_Review/Observer_review/0,,501343,00.html

4. This recording of October in the Railroad Earth by Jack Kerouac and Stephen Allen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hjPZpaXNsw

5. The Codex Seriphinianus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Seraphinianus

6. Colony Pizza in Fairfield County, Connecticut https://colonygrill.com/

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Tharik Hussain, who previously appeared on the podcast in 2022, discusses with Ivan six further things which should be better known.

Tharik Hussain is an award-winning author and journalist specialising in global Muslim heritage and culture. He has written for newspapers such as The Times, Guardian and Telegraph, magazines such as National Geographic Traveler, and broadcast media such as Al Jazeera and the BBC. For the latter, he produced award-winning radio program America’s Mosques. Tharik has written or contributed to travel books on areas including the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Europe, and his book on Islam in the Western Balkans, Minarets in the Mountains, was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize, shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year, and won the Adele Evans Award. His new book is Muslim Europe and is available at https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/458266/muslim-europe-by-hussain-tharik/9780241742822.

1. Ibn Jubayr https://muslimheritage.com/ibn-jubair-capturing-the-decline-of-islamic-power/

2. King Henry II’s relationship with Muslim culture https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/king-henry-ii-muslim-monarch-england-convert-islam/

3. The tomb of Hala Sultan https://www.cyprusalive.com/en/hala-sultan-tekke

4. King Charles III’s view of Europe’s Muslim history https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/king-charles-iii-five-things-islam-muslims

5 .The Nasrid ‘ruby’ in the Imperial State Crown of UK https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/crown-jewels/?id=6209

1. The synagogues of Toledo https://jguideeurope.org/en/region/spain/castilla-la-mancha/toledo/

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Richard Johnson and Lee Evans discuss with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Richard Johnson is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Queen Mary University of London. With Lee Evans, he is the co-host of the 'Since Attlee and Churchill' podcast. He is the author of several books on British and US politics, including The End of the Second Reconstruction: Obama, Trump, and the Crisis of Civil Rights and Keeping the Red Flag Flying: The Labour Party in Opposition since 1922 (with Gavin Hyman and Mark Garnett).

Lee David Evans is John Ramsden Fellow at the Mile End Institute, Queen Mary University of London.

You can buy their books at https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/books-by-richard-lee?&new-list-page=true and you can listen to their podcast at https://open.spotify.com/show/1ZZKNZvT1JLCTELwCoRtAc.

1. The Reconstruction era in the US https://www.amazon.co.uk/End-Second-Reconstruction-Richard-Johnson/dp/1509538348
2. Lord Timothy Dexter https://shahmm.medium.com/the-ridiculous-rise-of-lord-timothy-dexter-a-tale-of-lucky-blunders-and-accidental-brilliance-4b9037a62bdd
3. Anne Kerr MP https://tribunemag.co.uk/2021/11/anne-kerr-labour-party-mp-rochester-vietnam-apartheid-chicago-europe-france
4. Peter Walker https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v13/n23/hugo-young/rubbishing-the-revolution
5. Quiet Court https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/what-happened-to-the-grace-and-favour-house-for/id1785733887?i=1000683681568
6. Memory Hold the Door by John Buchan https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1966/02/17/the-sweet-smell-of-success/

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Historian Brooke Newman discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Dr. Brooke Newman is an Associate Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She specializes in the history of early modern Britain and the British Atlantic, with a focus on slavery and its legacies. She is the author of the award-winning book, A Dark Inheritance: Blood, Race, and Sex in Colonial Jamaica (Yale, 2018), and The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of Slavery and the British Monarchy (Mudlark, 2026), which is available at https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/the-crowns-silence-the-hidden-history-of-slavery-and-the-british-monarchy-brooke-newman?variant=55509554397563. Her writing and research have been featured in the Guardian, the Washington Post, Der Spiegel, and Smithsonian Magazine, and she has served as a historical expert for HBO's Last Week Tonight, Vox, the BBC, and NPR, among others.

1. The difference between historians and journalists https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/journalists-and-historians-april-2023/
2. What it’s like to work in an archive https://www.wessexarch.co.uk/news/day-life-ofan-archivist
3. The value and limitations of archives https://slimkm.com/blog/advantages-and-limitations-of-archival-research/
4. The Stuart monarchs launched England into the transatlantic slave trade https://www.historyanswers.co.uk/kings-queens/royal-african-company-how-the-stuarts-birthed-britains-slave-trade/
5. The South Sea Company was not just a Ponzi scheme https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/South-Sea-Bubble/
6. Formerly enslaved people appealed directly to the Royal Family to abolish the slave trade https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/06/british-monarchy-ties-slavery-historical-archives-slaves

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Dean Koontz discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Dean Koontz won an Atlantic Monthly fiction competition when he was a senior in college, and has been writing ever since. Fourteen of his novels have risen to number one on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list (One Door Away From Heaven, From the Corner of His Eye, Midnight, Cold Fire, The Bad Place, Hideaway, Dragon Tears, Intensity, Sole Survivor, The Husband, Odd Hours, Relentless, What the Night Knows, and 77 Shadow Street), making him one of only a dozen writers ever to have achieved that milestone. Sixteen of his books have risen to the number one position in paperback. His books have also been major bestsellers in countries as diverse as Japan and Sweden. Many of his books have been made into films.

Dean Koontz lives in Southern California with Gerda and their golden retriever, Elsa. Dean and Gerda share a deep love of dogs. His new book is The Friend of The Family, which is available at https://www.deankoontz.com/book/the-friend-of-the-family/.

1. What quantum mechanics tells us about the strangeness of the universe. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26635393-200-what-does-quantum-theory-really-tell-us-about-the-nature-of-reality/

2. What’s wrong with the dictum “Write what you know.” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/mar/02/dont-write-what-you-know-write-what-you-feel-bestselling-authors-offer-tips-on-world-book-day

3. The true nature of dogs. https://www.thedogwitchwholehealthandbehaviour.com/blogs/understanding-the-true-nature-of-dogs

4. Caymus Cabernet Sauvignon https://www.caymus.com/caymus-california-cab/

5. The music of Israel Kamakawiwo’ole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Kamakawiwo%CA%BBole

6. Creme Brulee is just a pudding. Yes it is. https://thecookful.com/creme-brulee-caramel/

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Ryan Gingeras discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Ryan Gingeras is a professor in the Institute of Regional and International Studies at the Naval Postgraduate School and is an expert in modern Eastern European and Middle East history. He is the author of seven books, including The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire and Sorrowful Shores: Violence, Ethnicity, and the End of the Ottoman Empire 1912–1923, which was shortlisted for numerous book prizes. He has published on a wide variety of topics related to history and politics in publications such as Foreign Affairs, New York Times, Washington Post, Times Literary Supplement and Foreign Policy . He currently lives with his wife and children in the Santa Cruz Mountains. His new book is Mafia: A Global History, which is available at https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Mafia-A-Global-History/Ryan-Gingeras/9781398531673.

1. Mafias should be seen as significant historical figures in the making of modern history.
2. Mafias are not as old as you think.
3. The laws that "made" mafias a global phenomenon are also not as old as you think.
4. Al Capone set the mold for the modern gangsters worldwide.
5. Coppola's The Godfather marked the critical moment in the making of modern mafias.
6. Mafias are more integrated into the workings of the modern world than ever before.

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Stuart Jeffries discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Stuart Jeffries was born in Wolverhampton in 1962. He was educated in Dudley, Oxford and London.

Stuart started his journalistic career as a cub reporter at the Birmingham Post and Mail in 1985. He used to edit the Walsall Observer's children's page under the pseudonym Uncle Tom. Later he was the jazz critic of the Morning Star under the pseudonym Lew Lewis. In 1987, he moved to the Hampstead and Highgate Express, where he had many duties, chief among which was interviewing Hampstead lady novelists, which he liked a lot. 

In 1990, he started work for the Guardian, working as subeditor, TV critic, Friday Review editor, Paris correspondent and feature writer. In 2010 he took voluntary redundancy and since then  has been a freelance journalist and author. His work has appeared in the Guardian, the Observer, The Spectator, the Financial Times, the Daily Telegraph, Prospect, the New Statesman. and the London Review of Books, among others. He is the author of Mrs Slocombe’s Pussy (2000), Grand Hotel Abyss (2016), and Everything, All the Time, Everywhere (2021) and A Short History of Stupidity (2025), which is available at https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=a-short-history-of-stupidity--9781509563494.

1. Several Nazis tried at Nuremberg were judged geniuses according to IQ tests.
2. IQ tests are terrible for establishing a person's stupidity or intelligence.
3. Until 1975 hysterectomies were performed on black women in certain US states to stop them breeding morons.
4. Stupidity has its uses - especially in the office.
5. Donald Trump is more stupid than he thinks he is.
6. What the prostate is.

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Pete Brown discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Pete Brown (https://petebrown.net/) is a British author, journalist, broadcaster and consultant specialising in food and drink. Since February 2025, he has been the Sunday Times Magazine’s weekly beer columnist – the only regular broadsheet newspaper or magazine beer columnist in the UK.

He is currently Chair of Judges for the World Beer Awards. He was named British Beer Writer of the Year in 2009, 2012, 2016 and 2021, has won three Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards, been shortlisted twice for the André Simon Awards, and in 2020 was named an “Industry Legend” at the Imbibe Hospitality Awards. His books include Tasting Notes and Clubland.

1. Burton-on-Trent (the most important beer town in world history) https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/food-drink/article/burton-upon-trent-beer-town-zctn9787n

2. Perry (what some people refer to as pear cider) https://cideruk.com/what-is-cider-and-perry/

3. How working men’s clubs shaped modern Britain https://www.petebrown.net/book/clubland-how-the-working-mens-club-shaped-britain/

4. Norwich https://www.number82theunthank.co.uk/10-surprising-facts-about-norwich/

5. How music changes your perception of flavour https://www.petebrown.net/book/tasting-notes-the-art-of-science-of-pairing-beer-with-music/

6. It’s possible to disagree with someone politically and still have a civil, enriching conversation https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/smarter-living/learn-to-argue-productively.html

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Sandy Pentland discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Alex Pentland is a Stanford HAI Fellow and MIT Toshiba Professor. Named one of the “100 People to Watch This Century” by Newsweek and “one of the seven most powerful data scientists in the world” by Forbes, he is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, an advisor to Abu Dhabi Investment Authority Lab, and an advisor to the UN Secretary General’s office. His work has helped manage privacy and security for the world’s digital networks by establishing authentication standards, protect personal privacy by contributing to the pioneering EU privacy law, and provide healthcare support for hundreds of millions of people worldwide through both for-profit and not-for-profit companies. His new book is Shared Wisdom, which is available at https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262050999/shared-wisdom/.

1. Casual conversation is typically what leads to wisdom and culture
2. Polarization comes from influencers and other loud voices
3. AI-aided search can really help weaken echo chambers
4. Given a conversation platform that is safe space and given participants with shared interests people naturally generate good decisions
5. Hierarchical organizations are inflexible and poor performing by design
6. Uniform rules are bad for the majority of people

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Jaime Davila discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Jaime Dávila earned an engineering degree in the United States. Choosing a career in the creative industries, he worked primarily in broadcasting and eventually led operations at Mexico’s largest media company. He became intrigued by the creation of the first mechanised sawmill by Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1593. This invention, whose significance has been overlooked, inspired his new book. Find out more at https://thebestpodcastguest.co.uk/jaime-davila/.

1. Mankind’s first industrial machine was Dutch.

2. The Dutch invented participatory capitalism.

3. The Dutch were early pioneers of liberal governance in a world of monarchies.

4. The Dutch laid the foundations of industrialization.

5. New Amsterdam’s influence on American identity is underappreciated.

6. The world we inhabit was not inevitable.

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To celebrate the 400th episode of Better Known, previous guest Richard Elwes discusses with Ivan Wise six aspects of the Better Known podcast which Ivan thinks should be better known.

Many thanks to Caroline Crampton and Laurence Bergreen for adding their choices of things which should be better known.

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Christopher Hill discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Christopher Hill was working in finance in London when, in 2002, he took a trip to South Africa which changed his life. He left his job, moved to Canada, and worked on the business plan for what became Hands Up Holidays. He spent the next two years traveling the world, building relationships with communities, formed a team of like-minded people, and launched the business in 2006. You can find out more at https://handsupholidays.com/.

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Eleanor Doughty discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Eleanor Doughty began her career in journalism at the Daily Telegraph, before going freelance to focus on writing. She has written the 'Great Estates' column in the Telegraph since 2017, and specialises in writing about the British moneyed and titles classes. Her first book Heirs and Graces, a history of the modern British aristocracy was published in September by Hutchinson Heinemann. Her writing appears in Country Life, The Times and Sunday Times, the Telegraph, the Spectator, the Financial Times, The Field and many other publications. When she is not writing, she can be found either on or near a horse, or out with her cocker spaniel.

The slow lane of the motorway https://moto-way.com/2019/09/a-beginners-guide-to-motorway-lanes-and-how-to-use-them/

The British aristocracy https://uk.bookshop.org/a/447/9781529153040

Venison https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/sep/28/venison-deer-meat-health-heart-benefits

The schedule send function on Gmail https://support.google.com/mail/answer/9214606?hl=en-GB&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop

Thank you letters and handwritten correspondence https://www.forbes.com/sites/jillgriffin/2018/08/07/the-value-of-a-well-written-thank-you-note/

Early 20th century/mid-century diaries and journals https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2002/11/21/out-of-the-mists/

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Sasha Butler discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Sasha Butler is a Birmingham based writer. Her first novel, The Marriage Contract (Salt, 2025), was shortlisted for the Cheshire Novel Prize 2022 and the Bath Novel Award 2022, under the former title As Soft as Dreams. In addition to novels, she occasionally writes short stories. Her short story ‘Map of an Affair’ features in Floodgate Press’ anthology, Night Time Economy (September 2024). The Marriage Contract is available at https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/the-marriage-contract-9781784633608

1. The decline of the skirret https://www.rhs.org.uk/plants/82232/sium-sisarum/details

2. The Great Comet of 1577 https://hgss.copernicus.org/articles/12/111/2021/

3. Levina Teerlinc https://artherstory.net/levina-teerlinc/

4. Handshakes have not always been used as a greeting gesture https://academic.oup.com/past/article/267/1/48/7716082

5. The fleet that set out with the Golden Hinde (formerly called The Pelican), the Elizabethan ship that circumnavigated the earth https://www.goldenhinde.co.uk/discover/the-circumnavigation-1577-1580

6. Baddesley Clinton https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/warwickshire/baddesley-clinton

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Doug Lemov discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Doug Lemov is a former teacher and school principal whose books describe the techniques of high-performing teachers. His best-known book, Teach Like a Champion (now in its 3.0 version) has been translated into more than a dozen languages. The Teach Like a Champion Guide to the Science of Reading, out in July and co-written with Colleen Driggs and Erica Woolway, looks at how cognitive science can be better applied to the teaching of reading. Doug holds a BA in English from Hamilton College, an MA in English Literature from Indiana University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Read Doug’s latest on his blog (teachlikeachampion.org/blog) or follow him on X (@Doug_Lemov).

1. The difference between ingredients and cake. This is a reference to what the British education researcher Daisy Christodoulou says about understanding the difference between knowledge (or facts) and critical thinking.

2. How cognitive scientists define learning. As “a change in long term memory.” And further: If nothing has changed in long-term memory, nothing has been learned.” This is profoundly important because we forget (ie fail to learn) almost everything we come to understand in our lives unless we take specific actions to prevent this.

3. How fun and how important it is to teach vocabulary (the right way). https://vimeo.com/387487549

4. Lord of the Flies. Well I LOVE Lord of the Flies… but really it’s here as a proxy to speak to the importance of reading great books. And hard books. Which basically young people don’t do any more in school.

5. How powerful it is to read aloud with young people…and how to do it well

6. The benefits of very short writing exercises “American teachers assign a lot of writing but they don’t teach it well” write Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler. This is one reason why.

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Sudhir Hazareesingh discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Professor Sudhir Hazareesingh was born in Mauritius. He is a Fellow of the British Academy a Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Balliol College, His books include The Legend of Napoleon (Granta, 2004), In the Shadow of the General (OUP, 2012) and How the French Think (Allen Lane, 2015). He won the Prix du Mémorial d’Ajaccio and the Prix de la Fondation Napoléon for the first of these, a Prix d’Histoire du Sénat for the second, and the Grand Prix du Livre d’Idées for the third. In 2020, he became a Grand Commander of the Order of the Star and Key of the Indian Ocean (G.C.S.K.), the highest honour of the Republic of Mauritius.

His biography, Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture (Allen Lane, 2020) won the 2021 Wolfson History Prize, with the judges describing it as an ‘erudite and elegant biography of a courageous leader which tells a gripping story with a message that resonates strongly in our own time’. His latest book is Daring to Be Free, described in the New Statesman as “An absorbing and revelatory history of black resistance to the transatlantic trade … a marvel of historical analysis and research.” It is available now.

1. The resistance of the enslaved https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/book-of-the-day/2025/10/the-liberating-power-of-vodou
2. The American academic and film-maker Henry Louis Gates jr https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/10/henry-louis-gates-jr-black-box-writing-race-arrested-beers-with-obama
3. The Victor Hugo museum in Paris https://www.maisonsvictorhugo.paris.fr/en
4. Swimming in the river Seine in Paris in August https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gk7nk35l2o
5. The Sandhamn Murders https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/02/08/netflixs-best-new-crime-show-is-here-and-no-critics-have-seen-it-the-are-murders/
6. The Mauritian painter Vaco Baissac https://mauritiusarts.com/artist/vaco-baissac/

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Ana Schnabl discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Ana Schnabl is a Slovenian writer and editor. She writes for several Slovenian media outlets and is a monthly columnist for the Guardian. Her collection of short stories Razvezani (Beletrina, 2017) met with critical acclaim. Three years later Schnabl published her first novel Masterpiece (Mojstrovina, Beletrina, 2020). Her second novel Flood Tide (Plima, Beletrina, 2022) was nominated for the Slovenian Kresnik Award. Her third novel September (Beletrina, 2024) won the Kresnik Award in 2025.

1. Dog Behaviour: I’ve got two dogs, and it took me longer than I’d like to admit to figure out what they were actually saying.

2. The Concept of Universal Basic Income: I suspect that for a lot of people, Universal Basic Income sounds like a fantasy dreamt up by the lazy and the work-shy—a clever way to dodge the nine-to-five. In reality, it’s nothing of the sort.

3. Mina Mazzini: Known simply as Mina, she was nothing short of a force of nature—Italy’s greatest voice and legend. Her vocal range was outrageous and her stage presence magnetic.

4. Jellyfish: I grew up spending summers on the Slovene coast, where most beach conversations about jellyfish revolved around how nasty they are. I think it’s time to give them a bit of a rebrand.

5. Lojze Kovačič's The Newcomers: I know I sound like a total boomer saying this, but The Newcomers really is a masterpiece—a towering work of autofiction, written decades before “autofiction” was even a buzzword on Goodreads.

6. Yugoslavia: I’m not yugonostalgic—I was simply born too late to have any real experience of living there. But I am a defender of some of the genuinely progressive ideas and policies that Yugoslavia introduced and managed to sustain.

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Adam Lind discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Through living on a narrowboat on the British waterways, Adam Lind has unexpectedly built a large online community of over 900,000 loyal and engaged like-minded souls who enjoy soaking up his passion to live a life of meaning. Adam has appeared on Channel 4’s Narrow Escapes and has been featured in publications including The New York Post, Business Insider, The Sun, and others. His new book is Floating Home: Lessons from a life less ordinary, which is available at https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/floating-home-9781526683526/.

1. The importance of human connection
2. The fear mongering and segregation of the news
3. You can have control over your thoughts
4. You don’t need a lot of money to travel
5. Adversity can be a gift
6. Comparison is the thief of joy

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Food critic Andrew Turvil discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Described by The Independent as one of the UK’s ‘arbiters of taste’, Andrew Turvil is the former editor of The Good Food Guide, AA Restaurant Guide and Which? Pub Guide. As a freelance restaurant critic, writer, and editor, he has spent his career writing about pubs and restaurants, and, undeterred, bought a pub in 2015 and ran it for 10 years. Blood, Sweat & Asparagus Spears is his first book and is available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blood-Sweat-Asparagus-Spears-Restaurant/dp/1783969113.

1. Prior to the 1990s, very few chefs were household names. Very few people could reel off a list of chefs, but by the end of the decade many were TV stars and known to millions – Gary Rhodes, Jamie Oliver et al.
2. There was less emphasis on the ingredients used in restaurants prior to the 1990s and the consumption of organic food in the UK had barely got going.
3. Fashionable restaurants of the past were revived in the 1990s and gained new leases of life
4. During the 1990s the English language finally started to gain ground in the fine dining sector. Prior to the 1990s ‘posh’ food meant French food
5. Asian food in the UK took a great leap forward during the 1990s
6. The 1990s saw a proliferation of new foodie terms: nose to tail, fusion, Pacific rim and molecular gastronomy.

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Andy Reid discusses with Ivan six films chosen by previous guests which he thinks should not, after all, be better known. With apologies to Daria Lavelle, Steve Cross, Neil Brand, Tom Newman, Adam Higginbotham and Sam Sedgman.

Andy Reid is the founder of Buddy Up, a mentoring charity for young people across south London and Surrey. He has worked in the youth sector for over 20 years delivering programmes and training throughout the UK. You can find out more at https://buddyupcharity.org/.

1. What Dreams May Come https://www.cinemasight.com/resurfaced-what-dreams-may-come-1998/
2. Roadhouse https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/road-house-1989
3. Rango https://rachelsreviews.net/2015/01/12/rango-movie-review/
4. Multiplicity https://christiananswers.net/spotlight/movies/pre2000/rvu-mult.html
5. Sorcerer https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/again-why-sorcerer-failed/
6. The Peacemaker https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/review97/peacemakerhowe.htm

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Matt Greene discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Matt Greene is an author, teacher, former screenwriter, and stay-at-home dad. His first novel, Ostrich, won a Betty Trask Award and his memoir Jew(ish) was described by Booker-shortlisted author Nadifa Mohamed as ‘wonderful’ and ‘acerbically funny’. He teaches critical and creative writing in South London, where he lives with his partner and two sons. His new book is The Definitions, which is at https://evewhite.co.uk/books/the-definitions/.

1. Purple Mountains https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/review-purple-mountains-858339/
2. What killed the studio sitcom https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/oct/26/the-last-laugh-is-the-television-sitcom-really-dead
3. A Village After Dark https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/05/21/a-village-after-dark
4. Speech Act Theory https://www.thoughtco.com/speech-act-theory-1691986
5. Two Jews, Three Opinions https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/one-jew-two-opinions/
6. Wierzbicka vs Wittgenstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Wierzbicka

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Danny Scott discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Danny Scott grew up in an East Midlands mining village, serving his apprenticeship as an engineer on leaving school, before moving to London in the 1980s. After a job in counter (industrial) espionage, he became a private investigator, then a painter and decorator, then an engineer again, before becoming a journalist and interviewing people like Sir Paul McCartney, Mikhail Gorbachev, Usain Bolt and Dave Hill from Slade. He lives in Essex with his wife and their young son. His memoir, The Undisputed King of Selston (John Murray), was published in June 2025. It is available at https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-undisputed-king-of-selston-danny-scott/7836018?ean=9781399816793.

1. How to hang a door https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tizE31oU4Co
2. Children of the Stones was the best kids’ telly show ever made https://thedeadpixels.squarespace.com/articles/2015/8/10/children-of-the-stones-cult-tv-series-review
3. Getting pregnant isn’t as easy as you think https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jun/06/young-infertile-four-years-forty-negative-tests-ivf
4. What the miners did for us https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20240703-coal-mining-created-community-and-culture-can-clean-energy-do-the-same
5. Skegness is beautiful https://www.lincolnshirelive.co.uk/news/local-news/skegness-things-to-do-which-4420027
6. These days, there’s no room for the working class. Except at the bottom. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/23/class-barriers-journalism-working-class-liverpudlian-journalist

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Alan Green grew up on the north coast of Cornwall and now lives in south London. As an environmental science graduate, he remains passionate about protecting and preserving the natural world. Alan spent nearly three decades at a Magic Circle law firm in the City of London, where he led a copy-editing team. A committed daily runner for over 35 years, Alan combines his love of nature with a commitment to wellbeing in all aspects of life. Sound Advice is his debut book, available at https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/sound-advice-9781784633585.

1. Our Sun is only 20 galactic years old The band Midnight Oil once asked, “How can we dance when our earth is turning?” The literal answer takes us from the Earth spinning at jet speed, to the Sun circling the Milky Way, to our galaxy itself hurtling through an expanding cosmos.

2. Ivan Wise has blue eyes. I have blue eyes. We may be related… We both have blue eyes — and they may trace back to a single ancestor, 6,000–10,000 years ago. Unlike brown eyes, blue eyes aren’t due to pigment but to the scattering of light, as with a blue sky.

3. You may not be as old as you feel. Our bodies are in perpetual renewal. Some cells live days, others last a lifetime. On average, our cells are only 7–10 years old — meaning we are all, in a sense, younger than our birthday-cake candles may suggest.

4. Yews, and why you often find them in churchyards. Step into a churchyard and you may find a yew that’s older than the church itself. These trees have stood as markers of sacred ground since before Christianity.

5. Our world without fungi wouldn’t function. From decomposing matter to building vast underground “wood-wide webs”, fungi are indispensable recyclers and collaborators.

6. Morgans don’t have wooden chassis. There’s a persistent myth that Morgan sports cars have wooden chassis. Not true: their chassis are steel or aluminium.

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Laurence Bergreen discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Laurence Bergreen is an award-winning biographer, historian, and chronicler of exploration. His books have been translated into more than 25 languages. They include Columbus: The Four Voyages, a New York Times bestseller, published by Viking in 2011. In 2007, Knopf published his Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu. For this book he crossed China from east to west and camped out on the steppe with hospitable Mongolians in their yurts. His bestselling Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe, was published by William Morrow in 2003.  In its 40th printing, it was awarded the Medalla de Honor by the Asociación de Alcades de V Centenario (Spain). He has also published In Search of a Kingdom about Francis Drake's voyage of discovery (Simon & Schuster, 2021) and Voyage to Mars: NASA’s Search for Life Beyond Earth published by Riverhead in 2000.

His research for these books included extensive fieldwork.  He has sailed twice through the Strait of Magellan and is one of the few individuals to visit the volcanic island of Surtsey off the coast of Iceland, thanks to the agile helicopters of the Icelandic Coast Guard, among other remote destinations. At NASA’s request, he named numerous geographical features around the crater Victoria on Mars. Find out more at https://laurencebergreenauthor.com/.

1. Louis Armstrong's favourite instrument https://oztypewriter.blogspot.com/2020/09/what-wonderful-world-with-typewriters.html

2. The Well Dressed Man with a Beard by Wallace Stevens https://allpoetry.com/The-Well-Dressed-Man-With-A-Beard

3. Vladimir Zworykin https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/vladimir-zworykin

4. Surtsey https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1267/

5. The Strait of Magellan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOOKr8Y2xsM

6. The Rubin Observatory https://rubinobservatory.org/

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Sam Sedgman discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Sam Sedgman is a bestselling children's author, confirmed nerd and enthusiastic ferroequinologist. Co-creator of the award-winning 'Adventures on Trains' and 'Isaac Turner Investigates' series, he writes fact-based mystery and adventure stories for the young and young at heart.

Before writing stories for children, Sam worked as a digital producer at the National Theatre, which meant nosing around backstage with a camera and a microphone, cajoling theatre makers into explaining how stories get made. Forever interested in piecing things together, Sam is a lifelong fan of puzzles, games and detective fiction, and once founded a company making murder mystery treasure hunts for adventurous Londoners. His books have been translated into more than 20 languages.

When he isn’t writing, Sam can usually be found admiring a handsome timepiece, watching Alfred Hitchcock movies, or explaining some weird fact to you. He lives in London, on top of a railway station. You can find out more at https://samsedgman.com/.

1. The decimalisation of time in the French Revolution https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/Decimal_time/
2. Italians having a twelfth cardinal colour, Azzurro https://www.thoughtco.com/azzurro-2011518
3. The 1997 action movie The Peacemaker https://them0vieblog.com/2012/07/03/non-review-review-the-peacemaker/
4. Why Australia has so many camels https://eu.desertsun.com/story/life/home-garden/james-cornett/2017/01/27/many-camels-australian-desert/96999820/
5. The surprising impermanence of burial plots https://bannocksmemorials.co.uk/8-facts-about-graves-memorials-you-didnt-know-before-today/
6. Montreal's snow management system https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/how-montreal-takes-300-000-truckloads-of-snow-off-the-street-every-winter-1.5023619

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Jordan Prosser discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Jordan Prosser is a writer, filmmaker and performer from Victoria, Australia. He is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, and his short films and screenplays have won multiple international accolades. His short story Eleuterio Cabrera’s Beautiful Game won the Peter Carey Short Story Award in 2022 and was published in Meanjin. Big Time is his debut novel.

1. The Philippines. I had the privilege of traveling to and working in the Philippines a number of times throughout the 2010s. It’s one of my favourite places on earth.

2. Ivan Sen. Perhaps my favourite Australian filmmaker, helmer of Mystery Road and Goldstone and their multiple spin-off TV series, which are just as good and as specific to the Australian outback as Scand-noirs are to their cultures and landscapes.

3. Wikipedia’s ‘Timeline of the far future’ and ‘Ultimate fate of the universe’ pages. Every year has its own dedicated Wikipedia page, including years in the future.

4. Andy Shauf. For my money, one of the best singer-songwriters of our generation, and something of a folk genius in the lineage of the Donovans and Nick Drakes of the world. His 2015 album The Bearer of Bad News is a modern-day Nebraska.

5. How LLMs actually work. Which is to say: they are statistical models based on pattern recognition and predictability, powered by tremendous amounts of data and processing power. Big tech marketing has seduced so many into seeing them as quasi-mystical entities, when really, they’re glorified spreadsheets.

6. Eggnog. Probably the finest beverage on earth, but when you mention it, in Australia at least, people become mystified and their eyes immediately glaze over. I inherited my recipe from my (American) mother and make it every year at Christmas.

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Michel-Yves Bolloré discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Michel-Yves Bolloré is an engineer and entrepreneur whose career spans industrial innovation and philanthropic investment in education. A graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Ingénieur de Toulouse and Paris-Dauphine University (Master of Science and Doctorate in Business Administration), he began his career in the family business, managing the Bolloré Group’s industrial division from 1981 to 1990. In 1990, he founded France Essor, an industrial group that led major ventures in mechanical engineering, and steel manufacturing.

Since relocating to London in 2011, he has focused on educational and cultural projects. He founded several schools, including The Laurels in London and Les Vignes in France. He is also a Knight of the Legion of Honor. His new book, co-written with Olivier Bonnassies, is God, Science, the Evidence, which is available at https://store.abramsbooks.com/products/god-the-science-the-evidence.

1. Sometimes major discoveries result from human errors, but in that case two errors are frequently better than one

2. Isabella of Spain’s decision to finance the Christopher Colombus project

3. The Middle Ages, incorrectly called “Dark Age”, has seen many crucial inventions which opened the door to a prosperous Renaissance Epoch: Example: invention of glasses, industrialization of paper manufacturing, creation of universities.

4. US scientists believe more frequently in the existence of God than people think.

5. Nature is more finely tuned than we think: an example with squirrels which luckily have a bad memory and a bad sight.

6. The origin of the word Palestine

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Simon Hall discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Simon Hall studied history at Sheffield and Cambridge, and held a Fox International Fellowship at Yale, before moving to the University of Leeds, where he is currently Professor of Modern History. His previous books include 1956: The World in Revolt and Ten Days in Harlem: Fidel Castro and the Making of the 1960s. His new book is Three Revolutions, which is available at https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571367153-three-revolutions/?srsltid=AfmBOooAoS0oqmPXfgrMioTKtanZ_z6HLyCOkcz7bM0J37S10CjiylGm

1. King Cnut and the tide https://www.historyextra.com/period/viking/facts-you-probably-didnt-know-about-king-cnut-canute-who-was-he/

2. Hungarian paprika https://www.timeout.com/budapest/restaurants/hungary-paprika-cuisine-history

3. Nixon's love of bowling https://www.messynessychic.com/2015/08/19/bowling-with-mr-president-beneath-the-white-house/

4. Simon of the Desert https://larsenonfilm.com/simon-of-the-desert

5. Bridlington south beach https://www.eastridingcoastandcountryside.co.uk/places-to-visit/find-a-place/place/?entry=bridlington_south_beach

6. Martin Luther King's sense of humour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZw6iT_gcL8

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Kasim Ali discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Kasim Ali was born and raised in Alum Rock, Birmingham, where he spent the first eighteen years of his life, at which point he left to study a degree in English. Over the years, he has lived in London, Nottingham, and Newcastle, but still thinks of Birmingham as the place he’s from. He has had a short story long-listed for the B4ME story, has written fiction for BBC Radio 4, and has a column at The Bookseller. Currently, he works as an editor in publishing. Good Intentions was his first novel, Who Will Remain his second. It is available at https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/who-will-remain-kasim-ali?variant=54869542830459

1. Tar directed and written by Todd Field https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jan/11/tar-review-cate-blanchett-is-perfect-lead-in-delirious-sensual-drama
2. The Incarnations by Susan Barker https://savidgereads.wordpress.com/2015/07/15/the-incarnations-susan-barker/
3. The Leftovers TV show, 2014-2017, Damon Lindelof creator, based on book by Tom Perrotta https://www.rogerebert.com/streaming/believe-in-the-power-of-hbos-the-leftovers
4. Scrambled eggs - simple version (plus ‘smoked bread’)
5. Ex.Re - album of Elena Tonra, lead singer of band Daughter https://hearingaidmagazine.com/exre-album-review
6. Disney Plus, Devil Wears Prada, trailer button is cerulean scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rDTRuCOs9g

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Sally Smith discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Sally Smith spent all her working life as a barrister and later KC in the Inner Temple. After writing a biography of the Edwardian barrister Sir Edward Marshall Hall KC, she retired from the bar to write full time. A Case of Mice and Murder, her first novel, was inspired by the historic surroundings of the Inner Temple in which she still lives and works and was the first in a series starring the reluctant sleuth Sir Gabriel Ward KC. A Case of Mice and Murder was longlisted for the 2025 CWA Whodunnit and Historical Daggers. Her new novel A Case of Life and Limb is available at https://www.waterstones.com/book/a-case-of-life-and-limb/sally-smith/9781526668776.

1. The Temple (Inner and Middle) and its round church, off Fleet Street London. https://www.templechurch.com/royal-charter/the-inns

2. The mysterious ‘Roman ‘ Bath (built 1612) Strand Lane London, next to disused Aldwych Underground Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Baths,_Strand_Lane

3. By Grand Central Station I sat down and wept by Elizabeth Smart https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v13/n04/julian-symons/urgent

4. I capture the castle by Dodie Smith https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrGtmuTP_7k

5. The Hawstead Panels in Christchurch Mansion Museum, Ipswich. (Also called Lady Drury’s closet’) https://ipswich.cimuseums.org.uk/visit/christchurch-mansion/

6. The Glandford Shell Museum https://www.shellmuseum.org.uk/

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Hal LaCroix discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Hal LaCroix lives outside Boston with his wife, Elahna. He has worked as a journalist at newspapers in New England, a reporter and editor at Harvard Medical School, a conservation writer for non-profits and an instructor at Boston University. Here and Beyond is his first novel, which is available at https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/here-and-beyond-9781526678249/.

1. Senator Charles Sumner. Sumner was a mid-19th century senator with laser focus on one issue: slavery. He had a profound impact on Lincoln, pushing him to expand rights of African Americans after emancipation. Sumner became epic villain in Confederacy, where souvenir canes commemorated the beating were hot items.

2. Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mt. Fuji. Fuji is sacred, a symbol of Japan. The 36 mostly long-range views, all around the compass, provide a wraparound view of Japanese life in 1831.

3. Exoplanets. More than 5,000 have been confirmed so far, out of hundreds of billions of planets in the Milky Way galaxy. Until the 1990s no one even knew if there were any planets outside our solar system!

4. Wingspan. This is a board game about birds that my wife and I are a bit obsessed with. Each player has a board with forest, grassland and water habitats.

5. Boston Cream Pie and Boston Cream Donuts. My grandfather used to bring cakes and pies when he visited us on Cape Cod. He’d pull up in his Oldsmobile Cutlass with all these white boxes tied with string from Montilio’s bakery.

6. We Need a Global, Unifying Mission. We live on a planet with 8.2 billion people and the vast majority of us just know our neighborhood, our route back and forth to work. But on the spinning ark ship in Here and Beyond, the entire world is visible within the sphere. You look up and see buildings upside down, people upside down.

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Peter Lamont discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Peter Lamont is Professor of History and Theory of Psychology at the University of Edinburgh. He has written about a variety of curious topics such as magic, belief, wonder and critical thinking. He is also a former professional magician and an Associate of the Inner Magic Circle. His new book is Radical Thinking, which is available at https://swiftpress.com/book/radical-thinking/

1. The Radical Road https://www.cockburnassociation.org.uk/history-blogs/edinburghs-radical-road-its-history-its-uncertain-future/
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica (2nd edition) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica_Second_Edition
3. Daniel Dunglas Home https://www.otislibrarynorwich.org/2024/01/04/daniel-dunglas-home/
4. The original Self-help book https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v26/n04/peter-mandler/gold-out-of-straw
5. Alternative points of view https://ajehrenberg.medium.com/the-importance-of-alternative-perspectives-cac0f447737b
6. The past https://www.mooc.org/blog/why-is-it-important-to-study-history

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Sarah Stein Lubrano discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Dr Sarah Stein Lubrano holds a PhD from the University of Oxford and a Master’s degree from the University of Cambridge. Her thinking often reaches the public through the Sense and Solidarity Initiative and the Future Narratives Lab. She was previously the Head of Content at The School of Life, tutored in prisons and wrote obituaries. She regularly appears on public radio and a variety of podcasts. Her book Don't Talk About Politics is available at https://linktr.ee/donttalkaboutpolitics.

1. Several People are Typing by Calvin Kasulke https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/reading-a-novel-set-entirely-in-slack
2. The game Billionaires and Guillotines https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745398808/billionaires-and-guillotines/
3. Looking at other people's algorithms https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-algorithms/
4. The play Sancho and Me by Paterson Joseph https://www.sanchoproductions.co.uk/
5. The band Japanese house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Japanese_House
6. Cooperation Town https://cooperation.town/

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Sarah Dunant discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Sarah Dunant studied history at Newnham College, Cambridge from where she went on to become a writer, broadcaster, teacher and critic. She has written twelve novels, four of which have been short-listed for awards, and edited two books of essays. She is an accredited lecturer with The Arts Society, lecturing on Italian history and renaissance art, has taught renaissance studies at Washington University, St Louis and creative writing at University of Oxford Brookes. Her new novel is The Marchesa, which is available at https://www.sarahdunant.com/the-marchesa.

1. The Discovery of the Laocoon, 1st century roman sculpture in Rome in 1506. One of those fluke stories history throws up that just gets richer and richer the more you dig (literally) into it.
2. Erich Maria Remarque. He was a 17-year-old soldier in World War One, who goes on to to write the most famous novel on war. He ends up in Switzerland with a Hollywood film star wife, Paulette Goddard.
3. The Last Supper by Plautilla Nelli. In the museum of Santa Maria Novella – a great church in Florence, there is a painting of the Last Supper done in the 1560s, by a nun who spent her whole life in a convent in Florence, who was entirely self-taught as a painter
4. Newark Park. It started as a Tudor hunting lodge. It was donated to the National Trust in 1949 and, in a state of decay, was then saved by an American, Bob Parsons.
5. Sailing to Philadelphia by Mark Knopfler. This is like listening to a short story by John Carver. American poet and master of realism and creating worlds within a couple of pages.
6. Machiavelli’s Farm House. This is the place where Machiavelli went after he lost his job as a diplomat in Florence and was sent into exile in 1512.

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AE Gauntlett discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

AE Gauntlett completed an MA in English Literature at King’s College London in 2010. He then went on to find success as a literary agent with Peters Fraser and Dunlop, earning himself a prestigious Shooting Star nomination from The Bookseller in 2017. The Stranger at the Wedding, written secretly as he represented the work of his numerous bestselling authors, marks Gauntlett’s literary debut. It is available at https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/stranger-at-the-wedding-9781526659774/.

1. How the Dutch traded Manhattan for nutmeg https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/island-traded-for-manhattan

2. The Nightmovers: Japanese service to help people disappear https://www.bbc.co.uk/worklife/article/20200903-the-companies-that-help-people-vanish

3. The moment the Porsche 911 was almost killed off https://turo.com/blog/gearheads/how-the-porsche-911-almost-died/

4. Jean Purdy, British embryologist, pioneer of IVF with Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/history/blog/2025/reclaiming-jean-purdys-legacy/

5. The Lake Bodom Murders https://vocal.media/history/the-lake-bodom-murders-finland-s-unsolved-mystery

6. How to get published/ what literary agents really want to see in a submission letter https://literaryconsultancy.co.uk/2025/04/what-agents-are-really-looking-for/

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Simon Tolkien discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Simon Tolkien is the grandson of JRR Tolkien and a director of the Tolkien Estate. He is also series consultant for the Amazon series, The Rings of Power. Simon studied Modern History at Trinity College, Oxford and went on to become a barrister specializing in criminal defence. He left the law to become a writer in 2001 and has published five novels which mine the history of the first half of the last century to explore dark subjects – capital punishment, the Holocaust, the Blitz and the Battle of the Somme. The epic coming-of-age story of Theo Sterling, set in 1930s New York, England and Spain, is being published in two volumes, The Palace at the End of the Sea in June, which is available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Palace-End-Sea-Novel-Sterling/dp/1662528647 and The Room of Lost Steps, which will be available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Room-Lost-Steps-Novel-Sterling/dp/1662528663 on 16th September this year.

1. The International Brigades https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/02/24/soldiers-of-solidarity-spanish-civil-war/
2. Gustave Caillebotte https://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/article/20150706-caillebotte-the-painter-who-captured-paris-in-flux
3. Port Meadow, Oxford https://www.oxford.gov.uk/directory-record/673/port-meadow
4. The Conversation https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/jul/04/the-conversation-review-gene-hackman-is-unforgettable-in-coppolas-paranoid-classic
5. Gerard Manley Hopkins https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n07/helen-vendler/i-have-not-lived-up-to-it
6. Santa Barbara, California https://www.lonelyplanet.com/articles/guide-to-santa-barbara

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Daria Lavelle discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Daria Lavelle was born in Kyiv, immigrated to the US with her family as a child and now lives in New Jersey with her husband and their three children. She holds a BA from Princeton University and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She writes fiction, with short stories published in a variety of US outlets. Aftertaste is her debut novel. It’s already sold into 13 territories with a major motion picture in development. It is available at https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/aftertaste-daria-lavelle/7752339

1. Putting Salt on Fruit - the easiest way to elevate and bring out the deepest flavors of your food (even out of season)! But one that most people don't think of combining with their fruit dishes.

2. Opera for Fantasy Lovers - Opera is woefully unfashionable among younger people, and most high-fantasy and speculative fiction lovers I know have no interest in this stuffy art form, and yet, some of the most formative and epic and compelling narratives ever presented are operatic in form.

3. The Hoboken, NJ food scene - New York (and Brooklyn, and Queens) get most of the love and accolades for their restaurant offerings, but Hoboken, NJ, is like the best kept secret of Italian-American cuisine and fabulous cocktails.

4. The film What Dreams May Come - this 1998 film is largely forgotten / unknown among anyone under the age of 30, but it's worth revisiting as one of the most interesting and beautiful explorations of death, grief, love, and the Afterlife.

5. Family Recipes - this is perhaps an imperative to listeners to take the time to learn their family recipes from their older generations.

6. Finding Your Tribe - I'd love to talk about several ways this has been true in my life, from writing cohorts to mom groups with my kids, to the debut groups I'm part of this year as I move toward publication.

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Michelle Young discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Michelle Young, a journalist and professor of architecture at Columbia University, spent four years researching The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland, which is available at https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-art-spy-michelle-young?variant=43046200836130. A veritable female Monuments Man, Valland has, until now, mostly been written out of the annals, despite bearing witness to history’s largest art theft. While Hitler was amassing stolen art for his future Führermuseum, Valland secretly worked to stop him.

Michelle Young is an award-winning journalist, author, and professor whose writing on looted and lost art has appeared in Hyperallergic, The Forward, and The Wilson Quarterly. She is a graduate of Harvard College in the History of Art and Architecture and holds a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she is a professor of architecture.

1. Rose Valland was one of the most medalled women from all of WWII

2. Hollywood optioned Rose's memoir and it became the Burt Lancaster caper The Train

3. Rose witnessed the Nazis burn approx 500 modern paintings of art and it really happened

1. Rose was lesbian and started living with Joyce Heer, her life partner, starting in the mid 1930s. 

2. Rose was spying in the field, as well as in the museum. She also worked directly with Resistance operatives, which is how she directly helped sabotage the last train of art intended to leave France, carrying 1000 paintings. 

3. One of the very first things the Nazis did when they occupied a country was to loot its art, in particular from Jewish families. There is a direct line between art looting and the extermination camps

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Róisín Lanigan discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Róisín Lanigan is an editor and writer based in London and Belfast. Her work has appeared in i-D, VICE, The Atlantic, New Statesman, The Fence and Prospect, amongst other publications. She was longlisted for the Curtis Brown First Novel Prize in 2019, and won the Blue Pencil Agency First Novel Award in 2020. I Want to Go Home But I'm Already There is her first novel and is available at https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/459281/i-want-to-go-home-but-im-already-there-by-lanigan-roisin/9780241668535

1. Dulse https://pacificharvest.co/blogs/learn/7-mindblowing-health-benefits-of-atlantic-dulse?srsltid=AfmBOoq6KFW9CJ2ZhY0K-LZcyK3zhku4Xe2I0CniSHs1noqs-VRI7Mq-
2. Pigeons https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/lx86p7/pigeons_are_underrated_animals/?rdt=55432
3. The Montreal Screwjob https://prowrestling.fandom.com/wiki/Montreal_Screwjob
4. Paris Is Burning https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/paris-is-burning-1991
5. Parkland Walk https://www.parkland-walk.org.uk/
6. The Ballymurphy Massacre https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/11/the-ballymurphy-shootings-36-hours-in-belfast-that-left-10-dead

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Laura Spinney discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Laura Spinney is a writer and science journalist. Her writing on science has appeared in The Guardian, The Economist, Nature and National Geographic, among others. She is the author of two novels, The Doctor (2001) and The Quick (2007), and a collection of oral history, Rue Centrale (2013). Her bestselling non-fiction account of the 1918 flu pandemic, Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World (2017), was translated into more than 20 languages. Her latest book, Proto: How Once Ancient Language Went Global, the story of the Indo-European languages, appeared in 2025. She lives in Paris.

1. Osmothèque – international perfume archive in Versailles. Conserves 4,000 perfumes, of which 800 have “disappeared”

2. Studs Terkel. Legendary American broadcaster, writer, actor and historian

3. Circus elephants, or rather their owner-handlers. A dying breed, as they should be, but they deserve our compassion and respect

4. Papuan languages. Nearly 900 of them, vast majority of which are undocumented

5. Gloria! 2024 Italian-Swiss film, directorial debut of Margherita Vicario

6. Marija Gimbutas. Lithuanian-born archaeologist who got it right on the word's largest language family, Indo-European

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Sara Leila Sherman and Mort Sherman discuss six things which should be better known.

Sara Leila Sherman is a distinguished classical musician and educator, renowned for her work in making music accessible to young audiences through her children's concert series, Mozart for Munchkins, and the non-profit Little Mozart Foundation.

Morton Sherman, PhD is the retired Senior Associate Executive Director of The School Superintendents Association, known for his visionary leadership during a 25-year career as a superintendent dedicated to elevating academic standards.

Their new book is Resonant Minds, which is available at https://www.amazon.com/Resonant-Minds-Transformative-Power-Music/dp/1475874960.

1. Audiences used to participate in classical music performances. During Mozart’s time, audiences didn’t sit silently—they clapped between movements, shouted requests, and sometimes even sang along.

2. Music has always been a deep part of our lives, socially, culturally, and politically. For example, the song “Amazing Grace” has been used as a tool for healing in nearly every American crisis.

3. Music affects the brain faster than conscious thought. Our nervous system begins responding to music—adjusting heart rate, releasing dopamine, and even triggering memory—before our brains fully process the sound.

4. The best leaders intentionally listen like musicians. Great conductors don’t just give cues—they respond to the ensemble.

5. Groove isn’t just a feeling—it’s your brainwaves syncing with sound. When we listen to music with a steady beat—especially music with a strong groove—our brainwaves begin to entrain to the rhythm. That’s not poetic language—it’s neuroscience.

6. Music builds memory—and memory builds culture. When students or communities sing the same song across generations, they’re not just repeating notes. They’re participating in a kind of living history.

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Jo Harkin discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Jo Harkin studied literature at university. She daydreamed her way through various jobs in her twenties before becoming a full-time writer. Her debut novel Tell Me an Ending was a New York Times book of the year. Her new novel is The Pretender, which is available at https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-pretender/jo-harkin/9781526678348. She lives in Berkshire, England.

1. The ruin of Minster Lovell. This was the estate of the Viscount Lovell, one of the main characters in The Pretender. It’s got enough standing walls and a beautiful vaulted entryway to allow you to imagine life there, but also the setting is stunning.

2. Alice Chaucer’s tomb, and the concept of the Memento Mori. An hour away from Minster Lovell, in Oxfordshire, are the former lands of the Earl of Lincoln, another main character in the novel. In the pretty village of Ewelme, St Mary’s church contains the tomb of Alice Chaucer – grand-daughter of the poet himself, and the grandmother of Lincoln.

3. The Fabliaux. A modern English verse translation of medieval French Fabliaux. These were stories told across all levels of medieval society. And they were absolutely filthy.

4. Food/drink suggestion. A recipe for an overlooked and delicious medieval dish – the pre-potato pea pottage.

5. Exhibition. The British Library Treasures room has a permanent display of original books, maps and manuscripts, including medieval and Tudor era items such as pages from Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, Beowulf, and the first printing of the Canterbury Tales.

6. Misericords. Westminster Abbey is on every London tourist's must see list, but often-overlooked feature are the misericords. In the magnificent Henry VII's chapel, where his and Elizabeth of York's tombs are located, the original 16th century hinged oak seats were not visible to the general public.

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Madeleine Gray discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Madeleine Gray is a writer and critic from Sydney. She was a 2021 Finalist for the Walkley Pascall Prize for Arts Criticism, and has written for publications including the Sydney Review of Books, Australian Book Review and the Times Literary Supplement. She has a MSt in English Literature from the University of Oxford and is a current doctoral candidate at the University of Manchester. Green Dot is her first book, which is available at https://www.waterstones.com/book/green-dot/madeleine-gray/9781399612784.

1. The fact that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are not recognised in the Australian constitution. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/14/australia-rejects-proposal-to-recognise-aboriginal-people-in-constitution

2. Who the 78ers are https://www.78ers.org.au/the-ongoing-role-of-the-78ers

3. The television show Deadloch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadloch

4. The song 'Scar’ by Missy Higgins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKn7XAMNV-g

5. Trade union membership in Australia is far too low https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/earnings-and-working-conditions/trade-union-membership/latest-release

6. Kim Cattrall scatting with an upright bass https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBmt2KN5tsY

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Alex Conner discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Alex Conner is an ADHD coach and brain scientist who combines his personal experience with ADHD to be a trusted voice in psychoeducation. He is co-founder and co-host of The ADHD Adults podcast, one of the UK’s most popular ADHD resources. Alongside James Brown, Alex co-founded ADHDadultUK, a registered charity, and Focusmag.uk, an evidence-based online magazine for adults with ADHD. Alex has published research and articles on ADHD and, as an honorary Professor at Aston University, he also delivers ADHD coaching and training to thousands of people. His new book, co-written with James Brown, is ADHD Unpacked, which is available at https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/adhd-unpacked-9781526679369/

1. ADHD is not new or over-diagnosed.
2. ADHD is not a superpower for everyone who has it.
3. ADHD is more than inattention and hyperactivity: the emotional side of ADHD.
4. Stigma: adding insult to injury.
5. ADHD doesn't come alone for most people: co-existing conditions/neurodivergences.
6. Nobody is neurodiverse, and nobody is neurotypical. Why the language of ADHD matters.

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Rebecca Lemov discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Rebecca Lemov is a historian of science at Harvard University and has been a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute. Her research explores data, technology, and the history of human and behavioural sciences. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her family. Her new book is The Instability of Truth, which is available at https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324075264.

1. Brainwashing is not about other people https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-of-mind/202412/so-youve-been-brainwashed-without-realizing-it-what-now
2. The rise and fall and rise of Barbara Pym https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/06/06/when-barbara-pym-couldnt-get-published
3. Kate Smith https://musicologynow.org/kate-smith-and-our-minstrel-past/
4. Nashville film https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jun/25/nashville-review-robert-altman
5. The story of the three frogs by Czeslaw Milosz https://bookhaven.stanford.edu/2016/06/happy-birthday-czeslaw-milosz-he-was-no-hero-and-he-knew-it/
6. Brainwashing and trauma are connected, but that was never, or rarely ever, recognized by the experts. https://www.randifine.com/post/brainwashing-the-cunning-psychological-tactic-used-in-narcissistic-abuse-domestic-violence-and-cults

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Kate Kemp discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Kate Kemp is an Australian writer living in the UK. She trained as an occupational therapist and then as a systemic psychotherapist, and has worked with families and individuals in mental health services in both Australia and the UK. In 2021, she won the Stylist Prize for Feminist Fiction and the Yeovil Literary Prize. The Grapevine is her first novel and is available at https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/kate-kemp/the-grapevine/9781399618977/.

1. It’s okay to change your mind https://medium.com/darius-foroux/its-okay-to-change-your-mind-c4a0166b0a6d

2. We don’t need sameness for belonging, we need acceptance https://medium.com/@ilana_73874/belonging-without-blending-in-a-story-of-self-acceptance-b5c9e90f661b

3. Caring for someone who is dying is one of the most intimate things you can do https://www.cancervic.org.au/get-support/facing-end-of-life/caring-for-someone-nearing-the-end-of-life

4. Primadonna Festival https://primadonnafestival.com/

5. The paintings of Vilhelm Hammershøi https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2008/jun/25/art.denmark

6. Monteverdi’s Madrigals https://www.grahamsmusic.net/post/monteverdi-s-madrigals

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