Better Known

Joanna Jensen discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Joanna Jensen is the founder of the British multi-award-winning baby and child personal care brand, Childs Farm which she created in 2010 as a result of her own daughters’ sensitive and eczema prone skin. A former Investment Banker in both London and Hong Kong, Jensen transformed an emotional need into a commercial brand fr...

Alexandra Tolstoy returns to the podcast with a special live episode, recorded at a school. She discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Kyrgyzstan https://alexandratolstoytravel.com/ Female Explorers (Lady Jane Digby, Isabel Burton and the Decembrist Wives) https://www1.essex.ac.uk/history/documents/conferences/hero-soroka.pdf Sailor’s Valentines https://www.worldofinteriors.c...

Natalie Kyriacou discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Natalie Kyriacou OAM is an award-winning environmentalist, writer, professional public speaker and charity director with a passion to spark curiosity about the natural world. She was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia and the Forbes 30 Under 30 honour for her services to wildlife and environmental conservation i...

Danny Bate discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Danny Bate is a linguist, writer, broadcaster and podcaster who is fascinated by the study of historical languages and etymology. He took his BA and MPhil degrees from the University of York and the University of Cambridge respectively, and his PhD in linguistics from the University of Edinburgh. He can be found at dannybate.c...

Deepa Anappara discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Deepa Anappara’s debut novel, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, was named as one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Guardian and NPR. It won the Edgar Award for Best Novel, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and shortlisted for the JCB Prize for Indian literature. It h...

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...

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 h...

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...

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...

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 ot...

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 Jazeer...

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 R...

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: B...

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...

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 th...

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 Mornin...

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 t...

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 ad...

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 inventio...

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. This podcast is powered by ZenCast.fm

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 te...

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 Britis...

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 i...

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 wit...

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’Ajac...