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

Sarah Wilson is a multi-New York Times bestselling author, journalist, social philosopher, international keynote speaker and philanthropist. Sarah leads dynamic, global conversations about modern philosophy, creativity, existential risk, and climate change via her keynote speaking, Wild podcast, and her Substack and social communities. She lives nomadically, but is based between Paris and Sydney, and is a compulsive hiker and adventurer. Her new book is I Eat the Stars, which is available at https://www.waterstones.com/book/i-eat-the-stars/sarah-wilson/9781837827213.

1. Fractal flourishing https://accidentalgods.life/fractal-flourishing/
2. Maison de Balzac https://sarahwilson.substack.com/p/how-balzac-made-me-feel-joyous-about
3. Sufficiency https://sarahwilson.substack.com/p/sufficiency-as-a-way-of-living-a
4. Vanessa Andreotti https://decolonialfutures.net/hospicingmodernity/
5. Ikaria https://www.bluezones.com/explorations/ikaria-greece/
6. Mug cakes https://uk.pinterest.com/meganusafwife/muggin-recipes/

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Ian Proud discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Ian Proud is an expert in strategic thinking, politico-economic analysis and diplomatic tradecraft. He was a member of His Majesty's Diplomatic Service from 1999 to 2023. During that time, he was one of the Foreign Office's most accomplished crisis experts and was Chair of the Crisis Committee at the British Embassy in Moscow when the Salisbury nerve agent attack happened in March 2018. He posts international relations articles and podcasts from his Substack page, The Peacemonger. His first novel, Searching, is now available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Searching-love-story-Ian-Proud-ebook/dp/B0GFYC25YZ/

1. Curiosity –One reason we see so much racism and intolerance is a lack of curiosity in society.

2. Boat 813 – for me the most vivid symbol of the destructive power of the 2004 tsunami is the 60-ton Royal Thai Navy patrol boat that was dragged 2 kilometres inland. I saw it for the first time just a few days after that tragic event beside the road as I drove towards Takua Pa.

3. Stink beans – the first time you eat stink beans, or sataw as they are known in Thai, the taste is bitter and overpowering. The second time you eat them you might be addicted, like me.

4. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute’s 1950 book explores our human ability to endure terrible suffering and yet survive, potentially find true love and live happily ever after. This is a theme I explore in Searching.

5. King Charles Street – the façade of the Foreign Office, directly adjacent to Downing Street, is grand and intimidating, which doesn’t help the perception that British diplomats are out of touch elitists. And yet the vast majority are not.

6. Sleep – in a crisis, I can work for forty hours without sleep, although I wouldn’t recommend it. A healthy pattern of sleep is the foundation for our physical and mental wellbeing.

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Sahar Hashemi discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Sahar Hashemi OBE has enjoyed a successful career as an entrepreneur, bestselling author and business thought leader. Initially forging her success as the Co-Founder and former CEO of Coffee Republic, the UK’s first American-style coffee bar chain, Sahar has since built great authority as a business leader and earned an appointment of OBE for her services to the UK economy and charity. Now the Co-Founder of Buy Women Built and hired as a leading keynote speaker, Sahar is commended for her ability to build more creative, customer-centric and resilient workplaces in which a “can do” spirit is paramount.

1. The invisible economy of women-built brands www.buywomenbuilt.com

2. Cluelessness as a competitive advantage https://aicomo.com/advantages-of-being-clueless/

3. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl https://julias-books.com/2020/03/12/book-review-mans-search-for-meaning-by-viktor-e-frankl/

4. Why telling people to dream big is so misguided https://www.reddit.com/r/DecidingToBeBetter/comments/3fmaay/why_telling_kids_to_dream_big_is_a_big_con_our/

5. The benefit of ice cold showers every morning https://www.hollandandbarrett.com/the-health-hub/conditions/alternative-health/are-cold-showers-good-for-you/

6. Amichien bonding https://janfennellthedoglistener.com/about-jan/

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

Eleanor Anstruther was educated at Westminster School but dropped out of university to travel the world where she was lost and found for twelve years. When she inherited a farm in southern England she set up a commune and began to write. Her debut, A Perfect Explanation (Salt Books) was a finalist for the Desmond Eliot Prize & Not The Booker. She now lives not quietly at all between London, Surrey and the south of France. Her latest novel, Fallout (Empress Editions) is out now at https://www.eleanoranstruther.com/fallout. Find her on Substack at The Literary Obsessive at https://eleanoranstruther.substack.com/ and at https://www.eleanoranstruther.com/.

1. Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp https://phm.org.uk/blogposts/greenham-common-peace-camp/
2. The Tommy Tiernan Show https://www.judecollins.com/2021/01/tv-reviewthe-tommy-tiernan-show-rte/
3. Cold Baths https://www.bupa.co.uk/newsroom/ourviews/cold-water-therapy
4. Menopause is the best thing that can happen to you https://www.drcoppaobgyn.com/blog/its-not-all-bad-5-positive-parts-of-menopause
5. Nick Cave's The Red Hand Files https://www.theredhandfiles.com/
6. You can talk to trees https://jane-cobbald.medium.com/how-to-talk-to-trees-839f247df239

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Mark Leonard discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Mark Leonard is Co-Founder and Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the first pan-European think-tank. His new book is Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics When The Rules Fail, which is available at https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=surviving-chaos-geopolitics-when-the-rules-fail--9781509575220.

1. Xi Jinping’s “Great Changes Unseen in a Century”, an understanding that the next few years will be characterized by the need to survive chaos rather than preserving or building order.
2. Bicycling through big cities - London, New York, Paris, Berlin
3. Zaho de Sagazan - a brilliant singer-songwriter and performer who is bringing French chanson into the electronic age
4. George Soros’s philosophy - the billionaire investor and philanthropist is best known for making money but just as important is his understanding of how to live in a world that is out of balance
5. Drummond Street in North London, the home of the best South Indian restaurants in Europe
6. Neil Kinnock - the greatest political orator of my life-time who reinvented the Labour Party and is now campaigning for Britain to join the EU.

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Tahmima Anam discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Tahmima Anam is the author of the Bengal trilogy and a recipient of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book and the O. Henry Award. Her short story ‘Garments’ was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. She is a Granta Best of Young British Novelist and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, she trained as an anthropologist at Harvard University and now lives in London. Her new novel is Uprising, which is a Political Fiction Book Prize Finalist for the Orwell Prize and is available at https://www.waterstones.com/book/9781837265817.

1. The Dirty Protest in Ireland https://theconversation.com/dirty-protests-why-irish-republican-prisoners-smeared-their-cells-with-faeces-to-make-a-political-statement-during-the-troubles-160306
2. Lysistrata https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/aug/03/lysistrata-review-ancient-theatre-of-epidaurus-aristophanes-national-theatre-greece
3. South Korea's 4B movement https://afsee.atlanticfellows.lse.ac.uk/en-gb/blogs/how-the-4b-feminist-rebellion-is-taking-on-patriarchy
4. Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's Sultana's Dream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultana%27s_Dream
5. Coffee Ice cream https://thechalkboardmag.com/sugar-free-coffee-ice-cream-for-energy-euphoria/
6. How to be less useful by Priyanka Mattoo https://primattoo.substack.com/

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Séamas O'Reilly discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Séamas O'Reilly is a writer and author who has worked as a columnist for the Observer, the Irish Times and the Irish Examiner. He is Features Editor of London satirical magazine, The Fence and his writing has appeared in The Guardian, the New Statesman and the New York Times. His memoir Did Ye Hear Mammy Died topped the Irish Times Bestseller List for seven weeks, and won Best Biography at the 2021 Irish Book Awards. Séamas currently lives in Walthamstow, London with his family. His new novel is Prestige Drama, which is available at https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/seamas-oreilly/prestige-drama/9780349727899/.

1. The book "On Bloody Sunday" by Julieann Campbell https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jan/30/on-bloody-sunday-by-julieann-campbell-review-the-most-powerful-account-of-a-brutal-day
2. The writer Flann O'Brien/Myles na Gopaleen https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n07/clair-wills/anti-writer
3. The Dyatlov Pass Incident https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/17/has-an-old-soviet-mystery-at-last-been-solved
4. AI Is A Scam https://www.gardenofmemory.net/historian-vs-ai-the-technology-sucks-and-is-basically-a-scam/
5. Alan Moore's Top Ten comics series https://pagechewing.com/comic-commentary-top-10-by-alan-moore/
6. John Carpenter's The Thing Is Probably The Best Film Of All Time https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/thing-2-review/

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Ed Maklouf discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Ed Maklouf attended school in England before moving to the USA to study at Stanford University, where he conducted specialized research into group communication and how people make decisions together. After graduating, he went on to found several start-up companies in the emerging field of “democracy technology,” building tools designed to improve participation, representation, and large-scale deliberation.

His work eventually led him to Barcelona, where he began a sustained research project on voting systems. During this period, he came to know and collaborate with leaders of the Arhuaco tribe in Colombia, whose sophisticated traditions of consensus and guardianship of the Sierra Nevada deeply influenced his thinking. Maklouf now serves as ambassador for the Arhuaco Sen Foundation, helping to connect Indigenous perspectives on agreement with contemporary debates about democracy and governance.

The Majority Myth grows out of several years of research into Collective Agreement: a framework that combines formal voting theory and Indigenous knowledge systems to ask when a decision can truly claim to speak for ‘the people’. It is available at https://bit.ly/MajorityMyth.

1. The truth about Voting and its origins https://www.ft.com/content/4df5c927-00d1-43dc-9731-b1fac4980dca

2. The Arhuaco Indigenous Tribe https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20190329-the-ancient-guardians-of-the-earth

3. Friendship https://www.townandcountrymag.com/education-college/a38866811/boarding-school-friends-memoir-admissions-kendra-james/

1. My Mum's Paintings My dad is a well known sculptor, Raphael Maklouf, who sculpted the portrait of the Queen on UK coins, but my mum never shows her work.

2. Trees Roots https://www.trees.org.uk/Trees.org.uk/files/61/6181f2b7-e35d-4075-832f-5e230d16aa9e.pdf

3. Etymology https://www.youtube.com/RobWords

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