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 received a CODE Burt Award for Caribbean Young Adult Literature, and both had been longlisted for th...
Feb 12, 2023•28 min
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-review Haggis https://www.historytoday.com/archive/historians-cookbook/history-haggis Visiting cathe...
Feb 05, 2023•28 min
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 been an internationally respected authority on corruption, money laundering, growth, and foreign po...
Jan 29, 2023•30 min
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 Dragons podcast, Chaotic Adequate. His website is drstevecross.com. NBA Basketball https://www.smallereart...
Jan 22, 2023•29 min
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 has also been selected for The Times Crime Club. Her latest novel is Those People Next Door. Kia has...
Jan 15, 2023•29 min
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.smithsonianmag.com/history/conquering-everest-22118304/ This podcast is powered by ZenCast.fm...
Jan 08, 2023•12 min
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 won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for biography, Saskatchewan Nonfiction Award, became a final...
Jan 01, 2023•29 min
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 other Christmas music is out there that we should be listening to instead? George Ratcliffe Woodward...
Dec 23, 2022•28 min
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 work was published in the same year. Born in 1963 and trained at The Ruskin School, Oxford Francis ...
Dec 18, 2022•28 min
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 the Covers, and was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize. Louise was selected for the Observer Top 1...
Dec 11, 2022•28 min
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 numerous awards, including the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service Journalism. The Guardian grew from a...
Dec 04, 2022•29 min
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 Victorian Era Serial Killer (Algonquin Books), won the inaugural CrimeCon Clue Award for True Crime Boo...
Nov 27, 2022•30 min
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 about fitness for Outside Magazine, Competitor Magazine, Runner’s World, ESPN, and Running Times. Fin...
Nov 20, 2022•29 min
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 Murder in the Hindu Kush, which was shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Prize, and Raffles and the ...
Nov 13, 2022•29 min
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 member of the 'QI Elves' and co-creator of the Rose d’Or award-winning BBC Radio 4 panel show The Mus...
Nov 06, 2022•30 min
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 Topology, Combinatorics, Logic, History of Maths and Computational Mathematics. Find out more at www.rich...
Oct 30, 2022•31 min
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, podcasting, presenting and training scientists and engineers in the art of storytelling. Her first book, Ha...
Oct 23, 2022•29 min
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 Granta magazine editor, she currently teaches creative writing at the University of Hertfordshire. D...
Oct 16, 2022•28 min
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 one-third of The Seal Club in 2020 along with work by Irvine Welsh and Alan Warner. The second of a...
Oct 09, 2022•28 min
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 Standing Council on Europe, a non-political group providing expert advice to Scottish ministers on Sco...
Oct 02, 2022•29 min
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 Shadows, shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and A God in Every Stone, shortlisted for the Women’s Baile...
Sep 25, 2022•29 min
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 Invention of Colour, The Music Instinct and Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything. His...
Sep 18, 2022•29 min
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 named a Book of the Year in the New Statesman, Prospect Magazine and the Times Literary Supplement. Hus...
Sep 11, 2022•28 min
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 watchmaker in British history to earn a PhD in horology. Rebecca is a Trustee of the Museum of Timekeep...
Sep 04, 2022•30 min
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 of Google's largest urban Campus based in California. Rebeca founded Studio RARE inn 2021 as the culm...
Aug 28, 2022•30 min
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 Collections at University College London, and also Researcher in Critical Eugenics at the Sarah Parker Rem...
Aug 21, 2022•29 min
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 Vernon’s George Washington Prize. His most recent novel, The New Land, was inspired by family stories h...
Aug 14, 2022•29 min
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 for the International Dublin Literary Award and was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger Award and the Rom...
Aug 07, 2022•29 min
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, she has been featured on BBC World News, BBC Daily Politics, TEDx, The Evening Standard, The Sunday Ti...
Jul 31, 2022•30 min
Tim Lott discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Tim Lott was born in Southall, West London in 1956. After a career in journalism, his first book, The Scent of Dried Roses, a memoir, was published in 1996 and won the PEN/JR Ackerley Prize for Autobiography. His first novel, White City Blue, (1999) a contemporary portrait of friendship and rivalry between a group of young single men, won the Whitbread First Novel Award. It was followed Rumours of Hurricane (2002), a portrait ...
Jul 24, 2022•29 min
