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

This podcast is powered by ZenCast.fm

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.

This podcast is powered by ZenCast.fm

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/

This podcast is powered by ZenCast.fm