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 in Floodgate Press’ anthology, Night Time Economy (September 2024). The Marriage Contract is available at https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/the-marriage-contract-9781784633608

1. The decline of the skirret https://www.rhs.org.uk/plants/82232/sium-sisarum/details

2. The Great Comet of 1577 https://hgss.copernicus.org/articles/12/111/2021/

3. Levina Teerlinc https://artherstory.net/levina-teerlinc/

4. Handshakes have not always been used as a greeting gesture https://academic.oup.com/past/article/267/1/48/7716082

5. The fleet that set out with the Golden Hinde (formerly called The Pelican), the Elizabethan ship that circumnavigated the earth https://www.goldenhinde.co.uk/discover/the-circumnavigation-1577-1580

6. Baddesley Clinton https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/warwickshire/baddesley-clinton

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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 with Colleen Driggs and Erica Woolway, looks at how cognitive science can be better applied to the teaching of reading. Doug holds a BA in English from Hamilton College, an MA in English Literature from Indiana University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Read Doug’s latest on his blog (teachlikeachampion.org/blog) or follow him on X (@Doug_Lemov).

1. The difference between ingredients and cake. This is a reference to what the British education researcher Daisy Christodoulou says about understanding the difference between knowledge (or facts) and critical thinking.

2. How cognitive scientists define learning. As “a change in long term memory.” And further: If nothing has changed in long-term memory, nothing has been learned.” This is profoundly important because we forget (ie fail to learn) almost everything we come to understand in our lives unless we take specific actions to prevent this.

3. How fun and how important it is to teach vocabulary (the right way). https://vimeo.com/387487549

4. Lord of the Flies. Well I LOVE Lord of the Flies… but really it’s here as a proxy to speak to the importance of reading great books. And hard books. Which basically young people don’t do any more in school.

5. How powerful it is to read aloud with young people…and how to do it well

6. The benefits of very short writing exercises “American teachers assign a lot of writing but they don’t teach it well” write Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler. This is one reason why.

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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’Ajaccio and the Prix de la Fondation Napoléon for the first of these, a Prix d’Histoire du Sénat for the second, and the Grand Prix du Livre d’Idées for the third. In 2020, he became a Grand Commander of the Order of the Star and Key of the Indian Ocean (G.C.S.K.), the highest honour of the Republic of Mauritius.

His biography, Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture (Allen Lane, 2020) won the 2021 Wolfson History Prize, with the judges describing it as an ‘erudite and elegant biography of a courageous leader which tells a gripping story with a message that resonates strongly in our own time’. His latest book is Daring to Be Free, described in the New Statesman as “An absorbing and revelatory history of black resistance to the transatlantic trade … a marvel of historical analysis and research.” It is available now.

1. The resistance of the enslaved https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/book-of-the-day/2025/10/the-liberating-power-of-vodou
2. The American academic and film-maker Henry Louis Gates jr https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/10/henry-louis-gates-jr-black-box-writing-race-arrested-beers-with-obama
3. The Victor Hugo museum in Paris https://www.maisonsvictorhugo.paris.fr/en
4. Swimming in the river Seine in Paris in August https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gk7nk35l2o
5. The Sandhamn Murders https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/02/08/netflixs-best-new-crime-show-is-here-and-no-critics-have-seen-it-the-are-murders/
6. The Mauritian painter Vaco Baissac https://mauritiusarts.com/artist/vaco-baissac/

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Ana Schnabl discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Ana Schnabl is a Slovenian writer and editor. She writes for several Slovenian media outlets and is a monthly columnist for the Guardian. Her collection of short stories Razvezani (Beletrina, 2017) met with critical acclaim. Three years later Schnabl published her first novel Masterpiece (Mojstrovina, Beletrina, 2020). Her second novel Flood Tide (Plima, Beletrina, 2022) was nominated for the Slovenian Kresnik Award. Her third novel September (Beletrina, 2024) won the Kresnik Award in 2025.

1. Dog Behaviour: I’ve got two dogs, and it took me longer than I’d like to admit to figure out what they were actually saying.

2. The Concept of Universal Basic Income: I suspect that for a lot of people, Universal Basic Income sounds like a fantasy dreamt up by the lazy and the work-shy—a clever way to dodge the nine-to-five. In reality, it’s nothing of the sort.

3. Mina Mazzini: Known simply as Mina, she was nothing short of a force of nature—Italy’s greatest voice and legend. Her vocal range was outrageous and her stage presence magnetic.

4. Jellyfish: I grew up spending summers on the Slovene coast, where most beach conversations about jellyfish revolved around how nasty they are. I think it’s time to give them a bit of a rebrand.

5. Lojze Kovačič's The Newcomers: I know I sound like a total boomer saying this, but The Newcomers really is a masterpiece—a towering work of autofiction, written decades before “autofiction” was even a buzzword on Goodreads.

6. Yugoslavia: I’m not yugonostalgic—I was simply born too late to have any real experience of living there. But I am a defender of some of the genuinely progressive ideas and policies that Yugoslavia introduced and managed to sustain.

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Adam Lind discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Through living on a narrowboat on the British waterways, Adam Lind has unexpectedly built a large online community of over 900,000 loyal and engaged like-minded souls who enjoy soaking up his passion to live a life of meaning. Adam has appeared on Channel 4’s Narrow Escapes and has been featured in publications including The New York Post, Business Insider, The Sun, and others. His new book is Floating Home: Lessons from a life less ordinary, which is available at https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/floating-home-9781526683526/.

1. The importance of human connection
2. The fear mongering and segregation of the news
3. You can have control over your thoughts
4. You don’t need a lot of money to travel
5. Adversity can be a gift
6. Comparison is the thief of joy

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Food critic Andrew Turvil discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Described by The Independent as one of the UK’s ‘arbiters of taste’, Andrew Turvil is the former editor of The Good Food Guide, AA Restaurant Guide and Which? Pub Guide. As a freelance restaurant critic, writer, and editor, he has spent his career writing about pubs and restaurants, and, undeterred, bought a pub in 2015 and ran it for 10 years. Blood, Sweat & Asparagus Spears is his first book and is available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blood-Sweat-Asparagus-Spears-Restaurant/dp/1783969113.

1. Prior to the 1990s, very few chefs were household names. Very few people could reel off a list of chefs, but by the end of the decade many were TV stars and known to millions – Gary Rhodes, Jamie Oliver et al.
2. There was less emphasis on the ingredients used in restaurants prior to the 1990s and the consumption of organic food in the UK had barely got going.
3. Fashionable restaurants of the past were revived in the 1990s and gained new leases of life
4. During the 1990s the English language finally started to gain ground in the fine dining sector. Prior to the 1990s ‘posh’ food meant French food
5. Asian food in the UK took a great leap forward during the 1990s
6. The 1990s saw a proliferation of new foodie terms: nose to tail, fusion, Pacific rim and molecular gastronomy.

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Andy Reid discusses with Ivan six films chosen by previous guests which he thinks should not, after all, be better known. With apologies to Daria Lavelle, Steve Cross, Neil Brand, Tom Newman, Adam Higginbotham and Sam Sedgman.

Andy Reid is the founder of Buddy Up, a mentoring charity for young people across south London and Surrey. He has worked in the youth sector for over 20 years delivering programmes and training throughout the UK. You can find out more at https://buddyupcharity.org/.

1. What Dreams May Come https://www.cinemasight.com/resurfaced-what-dreams-may-come-1998/
2. Roadhouse https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/road-house-1989
3. Rango https://rachelsreviews.net/2015/01/12/rango-movie-review/
4. Multiplicity https://christiananswers.net/spotlight/movies/pre2000/rvu-mult.html
5. Sorcerer https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/again-why-sorcerer-failed/
6. The Peacemaker https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/review97/peacemakerhowe.htm

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Matt Greene discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Matt Greene is an author, teacher, former screenwriter, and stay-at-home dad. His first novel, Ostrich, won a Betty Trask Award and his memoir Jew(ish) was described by Booker-shortlisted author Nadifa Mohamed as ‘wonderful’ and ‘acerbically funny’. He teaches critical and creative writing in South London, where he lives with his partner and two sons. His new book is The Definitions, which is at https://evewhite.co.uk/books/the-definitions/.

1. Purple Mountains https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/review-purple-mountains-858339/
2. What killed the studio sitcom https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/oct/26/the-last-laugh-is-the-television-sitcom-really-dead
3. A Village After Dark https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/05/21/a-village-after-dark
4. Speech Act Theory https://www.thoughtco.com/speech-act-theory-1691986
5. Two Jews, Three Opinions https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/one-jew-two-opinions/
6. Wierzbicka vs Wittgenstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Wierzbicka

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