Better Known

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...

Five years after the first episode of Better Known, Ivan Wise talks again to previous guests Richard Elwes, Wasfi Kani and Kerry Shale. They discuss previous choices that they agree (and disagree with) and new choices which they think should be better known. Richard Elwes is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Leeds, where he has taught courses on Geometry, Number Theory, Algebraic Topol...

Anna Ploszajski discusses with Ivan six things which she thinks should be better known. Dr Anna Ploszajski is an award-winning materials scientist, comedian and storyteller based in London. She’s a materials generalist, equally fascinated by metals, plastics, ceramics, glasses and substances from the natural world. Anna channels her passion for storytelling about materials through writing, podcast...

Helen Gordon discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Helen Gordon’s books include Notes from Deep Time (Profile), Landfall (Penguin) and, with Travis Elborough, Being a Writer (Frances Lincoln). She has written about nature, science, art and books for various newspapers and magazines including the Economist’s 1843 magazine, the Guardian, the TLS, Apollo and Wired UK. A former...

Novelist John King discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. John King is the author of nine novels with a tenth (London Country) to be published in 2023. His debut The Football Factory was turned into a film starring Danny Dyer and Dudley Sutton, while his most recent (Slaughterhouse Prayer) is being developed for television. His first novella The Beasts Of Brussels appeared as...

Economist Anton Muscatelli discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli has been Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Glasgow since 2009. An economist, his research interests are monetary economics, central bank independence, fiscal policy, international finance and macroeconomics. Sir Anton was Chair (2016-21) of the First Minister’s St...

Novelist Kamila Shamsie discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Kamila Shamsie was born and grew up in Karachi, Pakistan. Her novel, Home Fire, won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2018. It was also longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017, shortlisted for the Costa Best Novel Award, and won the London Hellenic Prize. She is the author of six previous novels including Burnt Sh...

Philip Ball discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Philip Ball is a freelance writer and broadcaster and worked previously for over 20 years as an editor for Nature. He writes regularly in the scientific and popular media and has authored many books on the interactions of the sciences, the arts, and the wider culture, including H2O: A Biography of Water, Bright Earth: The Inv...

Travel writer Tharik Hussain discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Tharik Hussain in an author and travel writer whose work often serves to counter popular and authorised narratives. His debut book, Minarets in the Mountains: A Journey into Muslim Europe, was nominated for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year award and the Baillie Gifford Prize in Non Fiction, and nam...

Rebecca Struthers discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Dr Rebecca Struthers is an independent watchmaker and time historian. The co-founder of multi-award-winning workshop Struthers Watchmakers, in her practice, she specialises in the continuation of historic watchmaking techniques to restore old and craft new artisan timepieces. A real time doctor, Rebecca is the first wat...

Rebeca Ramos discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Rebeca Ramos is a Venezuela-born architect and designer. Her international body of work includes of multi-disciplinary projects recognised for their design quality, cultural relevance and technological innovation. She led the design and delivery of the multi-award winning Maggie's Leeds; as well as the strategic definition o...

Subhadra Das discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Subhadra Das is a researcher and storyteller who looks at the relationship between science and society. She specialises in the history and philosophy of science, particularly the history of scientific racism and eugenics, and what those histories mean for our lives today. For nine years, she was Curator of the Science Collec...

Historian David O Stewart discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. A recovering lawyer and proud graduate of Curtis High School on Staten Island, David Stewart has published five books of history and four historical novels. His most recent nonfiction work, George Washington: The Political Rise of America's Founding Father, has won several awards and was a finalist for Mount Ver...

Novelist Lavie Tidhar discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Lavie Tidhar was born just ten miles from Armageddon and grew up on a kibbutz in northern Israel. He has since made his home in London, where he is currently a Visiting Professor and Writer in Residence at Richmond University. He won the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize for Best British Fiction, was twice longlisted...

Roma Agrawal discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Roma Agrawal MBE is a structural engineer and author with a physics degree. She has designed bridges, skyscrapers and sculptures with signature architects. She spent six years working on The Shard, the tallest building in Western Europe, and designed the foundations and the ‘Spire’. In addition to winning industry awards, sh...