Better Known

Peggy Orenstein discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Peggy Orenstein is the author of the national bestseller Unraveling: What I Learned While Shearing Sheep, Dyeing Wool, and Making the World's Ugliest Sweater. Her other books include the New York Times bestsellers Boys & Sex, Girls & Sex, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Waiting for Daisy and the classic Schoolgirls. H...

David Pickard discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. David Pickard studied Music at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, before starting his career as Company Manager of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Following this, David worked at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park and was the Assistant Director for the Japan Festival (1991) before becoming Sir John Drummond’s deput...

Simon Parkin discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Simon Parkin is a contributing writer for the New Yorker, and a critic for the Observer newspaper. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and the author of three books. His most recent, The Island of Extraordinary Captives, about the Hutchinson internment camp on the Isle of Man, is a New York Times recommended read...

Dale Salwak discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Dale Salwak is Professor of English and American literature at Southern California’s Citrus College. He was educated at Purdue University (B.A.) and the University of Southern California (M.A., Ph. D.) under a National Defense Education Act competitive fellowship program. His 28 books include Living with a Writer (2004), Teac...

Naoíse Mac Sweeney discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Naoíse Mac Sweeney is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Vienna. She previously held posts at Cambridge and Leicester Universities, and has won numerous academic awards for her work on classical antiquity and myths both in the UK and the EU. Her previous book was shortlisted for major awards, and s...

Amit Katwala discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Amit Katwala is a journalist and author, based in London. He is a writer and editor at WIRED magazine, and has written three books. The latest, Tremors in the Blood: Murder, Obsession and the Birth of the Lie Detector blends true crime, science and history in 1920s San Francisco and 1930s Chicago. He also co-hosts the All Co...

Dillie Keane discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Dillie Keane is a performer and songwriter best known as one third of the satirical trio, Fascinating Aïda. Of late, she has taken to blogging about ecological issues having been a doom-mongering greenie for many decades. Her ecoblog, shityoudontneed.blog, aims to persuade people to change their planet-damaging habits in an...

Tim Richardson discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Tim Richardson is an historian and critic specialising in landscape design and art. He is the author of more than 20 books on landscape and garden subjects including Arcadian Friends: The Invention of the English Landscape Garden, The New English Garden and Sissinghurst: The Dream Garden. He began his career at Country Lif...

Kate Mosse is the author of nine novels & short story collections, including the No 1 bestselling The Joubert Family Chronicles, The Burning Chambers and The City of Tears – as well as the multimillion selling Languedoc Trilogy – Labyrinth, Sepulchre and Citadel – and No 1 bestselling Gothic fiction including The Winter Ghosts and The Taxidermist’s Daughter, which she adapted for the stage for...

Devoney Looser discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Devoney Looser, Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University, is the author or editor of ten books, including Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters, Who Paved the Way for Austen and the Brontës, The Making of Jane Austen, and The Daily Jane Austen: A Year of Quotes. Looser, a Guggenheim Fellow and a...

Kevin Jared Hosein discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Kevin Jared Hosein is a Caribbean novelist. He has also worked as a secondary school Biology teacher for over a decade. He was named overall winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2018, and was the Caribbean regional winner in 2015. He has published two books: The Repenters and The Beast of Kukuyo. The latter...

Rosie Andrews discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Rosie Andrews was born and grew up in Liverpool, the third of twelve children. She studied history at Cambridge before becoming an English teacher. She lives in Hertfordshire with her husband and daughter. The Leviathan is her debut novel. The Mentalist https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/jan/09/mentalist-box-set-...

Raymond Baker discusses with Ivan six aspects of financial secrecy which should be better known. Raymond Baker is the Founding President of Global Financial Integrity and the author of Capitalism’s Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free-Market System, published by John Wiley & Sons and cited by the Financial Times as one of the “best business books of 2005.” He has for many years...

Steve Cross discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Dr Steve Cross helps experts to become the most fun, engaging and effective versions of themselves. He's a comedian and trainer and has previously failed at careers in science, museums, charities, education and universities. Steve runs Science Showoff events across the country and can be heard on his messy Dungeons and Dragon...

Kia Abdullah discusses with Ivan six things which she thinks should be better known. Kia Abdullah is a bestselling author and travel writer. Her novels include Take It Back, a Guardian and Telegraph thriller of the year; Truth Be Told, which was shortlisted for the Diverse Book Awards; and Next of Kin, which was longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award and won the Diverse Book Awards in 2022. Kia...

Do you ever have trouble remembering PIN numbers? Ivan Wise teaches you how: all you have to do is remember a hundred facts about the twentieth century and the exact year in which they happened. Dolly the sheep https://dolly.roslin.ed.ac.uk/facts/the-life-of-dolly/index.html Bob Beamon's long jump https://vault.si.com/vault/1968/10/28/the-long-long-jump The climbing of Mount Everest https://www.sm...

Alexandra Popoff is a former Moscow journalist and Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellow. She is an expert on Russian literature and cultural history and the author of five literary biographies, including the award-winning Sophia Tolstoy and Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century. Her book The Wives became a Wall Street Journal best non-fiction title for 2012. Popoff’s biography of Vasily Grossman...

Ivan Wise discusses Christmas music that should be better known. Christmas is our most sturdily conservative tradition, and this December you will hear once again the same music that you have heard every other Christmas. The usual suspects dominate playlists in shopping malls, on radio stations and at parties. But how did we end up with this apparently immovable canon of Christmas songs? And what...

Francis Hamel discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be better known. Francis Hamel is a British painter based in the UK with studios in Oxfordshire and Le Marche, Italy. He is known for landscapes and portraits as well as finely structured paintings of trees and flowers, paintings of the circus and theatre. In 2019 the V&A held an exhibition of his portraits, a monograph of his...

Louise Hare discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Louise Hare is a London-based writer and has an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck, University of London. Originally from Warrington, the capital is the inspiration for much of her work, including This Lovely City and Miss Aldridge Regrets. This Lovely City was featured on the inaugural BBC TWO TV book club show, Between th...

For the 250th episode, Alan Rusbridger discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Alan Rusbridger was Editor in Chief of the Guardian from 1995-2015. He is currently editor of Prospect Magazine and Chair of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Until 2021 he was Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. During his time at the Guardian, both he and the paper won numero...

True crime writer Dean Jobb discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Dean Jobb is award-winning true crime writer and a professor in the School of Journalism, Writing & Publishing at the University of King’s College in Halifax, where he teaches in the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program. His latest book, The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Vic...

Duncan Larkin discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Duncan Larkin has covered the sport of running for more than a decade. He’s a certified Army Master Fitness Trainer and was a top-300 American marathoner back in 2006. He has won the Himalayan 100-Mile Stage Race and the Mohawk-Hudson Marathon. His first books include Run Simple and The Thirty-Minute Runner. Duncan writes a...

Travel writer Tim Hannigan discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Tim Hannigan was born and brought up in the far west of Cornwall, but he now lives in Ireland. After leaving school he trained as a chef. He later studied journalism and began his writing career as a journalist and guidebook writer, based in Indonesia. He is the author of a number of nonfiction books, including...

Dan Schreiber discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Dan Schreiber is a writer, stand-up comedian, TV presenter, producer and podcaster. He is co-host of the UK’s most streamed podcast, No Such Thing As A Fish, which has had over 350 million downloads and has played to sell-out audiences in iconic venues such as the London Palladium and the Sydney Opera House. Dan is also a m...