James Marriott discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

James Marriott is a columnist at The Times, writing about society, culture and ideas.

1. The poetry of Geoffrey Hill https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v07/n06/tom-paulin/the-case-for-geoffrey-hill

2. CAT S22 Flip https://www.reddit.com/r/dumbphones/comments/16p2an2/cat_s22_flip_reviewjustwow/?rdt=55955

3. Uzbekistan https://www.wildfrontierstravel.com/en_GB/blog/places-to-visit-in-uzbekistan

4. The acronym WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WEIRDest_People_in_the_World

5. The War Against Cliche by Martin Amis https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/apr/14/fiction.martinamis

6. Rossini's opera L'Italiana in Algeri https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPodHwCbE5k&pp=ygUQI2l0YWxpYW5hZW5hcmdlbA%3D%3D

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Keetie Roelen discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Keetie Roelen is a leading thinker in poverty and social policy and a longstanding advocate for social justice. She currently works as a Senior Research Fellow and Co-Deputy Director at the Centre for the Study of Global Development at The Open University, the largest university in the UK. She is also founder and host of the podcast Poverty Unpacked, exploring the hidden sides of poverty in conversation with a broad range of experts.

Keetie has a PhD in Public Policy and has been working in the field of poverty, social policy, and international development for more than 15 years. Keetie has widely published in academic journals and books, and her work has featured in media such as the Guardian and BBC World Service. She has spoken about how to address poverty to multiple audiences, ranging from government ministers at the UN and MPs in UK parliament to students and activists. Keetie is passionate about contributing to a fairer world and creating more prosperous lives for all. Across her career, she has listened to personal accounts of hundreds of families and interviewed dozens of experts, building a deep appreciation of the complexities and opportunities for addressing adversity. Her new book is The Empathy Fix (https://atlantic-books.co.uk/book/the-empathy-fix/) which seeks to tell a new story about why hardship persists and how we can break the cycle.

1. European films https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/feb/10/european-film-must-see-25-movies

2. Transplant Games https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-66336861

3. Early paintings by Van Gogh https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/arts/artwork/early-paintings-by-vincent-van-gogh.htm

4. Assistance dogs https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/guidance/assistance-dogs-guide-businesses-and-service-providers

5. ATD Fourth World https://www.atd-fourthworld.org/who-we-are/

6. Dominicanen bookshop in Maastricht https://www.awellreadwanderer.com/boekhandel-dominicanen-unique-bookstore/

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

Matthew Kohut is the author of Speaking Out: The New Rules of Business Leadership Communication (2024). He is the coauthor of The Smart Mission: NASA's Lessons for Managing Knowledge, People, and Projects (2022), and Compelling People: The Hidden Qualities That Make Us Influential (2013), one of Amazon's Best Business Books of 2013. As the managing partner of KNP Communications, Matt has prepared CEOs, elected officials, and public figures for events from live television appearances to TED talks. Find out more at https://www.matthewkohut.com/.

1. The best way to get someone to agree with you is to start by agreeing with them. Reciprocity makes the world go round.

2. Machiavelli's dilemma–is it better to be loved than feared or feared than loved?––is a false choice. Few people remember this sentence that followed the question: “One should wish to be both, but…it is difficult to unite them in one person.”

3. Knowledge is profoundly social. What you know is deeply influenced by your context and culture. It comes from a combination of experiences and reflective learning, and it's often difficult to articulate.

4. If you want people to remember what you say, tell a story. As prophets and philosophers have known for millennia, stories stick with us.

5. Purpose leads to motivation; struggle leads to meaning. A shared purpose gives a group something to strive toward. A shared sense of meaning only comes when experience is followed by reflection and discussion.

6. Listening to understand another person's perspective takes different skills than listening to analyse a problem and make a decision. None of us really know what it's like to walk in another person's shoes.

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

Adam Higginbotham is the author of Midnight in Chernobyl, winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of 2019. His latest book, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, was published by Avid Reader Press in May this year. An immediate New York Times bestseller, Challenger is the winner of the 2024 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction.

1. William Friedkin’s Sorcerer https://rogersmovienation.com/2024/04/07/classic-film-review-reconsidering-sorcerer-1977/

2. Roger Boisjoly https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/02/06/146490064/remembering-roger-boisjoly-he-tried-to-stop-shuttle-challenger-launch

3. The Allen Room at the New York Public Library https://www.nypl.org/about/locations/schwarzman/research-study-rooms

4. Len Deighton https://www.deightondossier.net/

5. Strong Words magazine https://www.strong-words.co.uk/

6. Peter Nichols’ A Voyage For Madmen https://thetidesofhistory.com/2022/10/09/book-review-a-voyage-for-madmen-by-peter-nichols/

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To mark the 350th episode, comedian Al Murray discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Al Murray's alter ego, The Pub Landlord, is one of the most recognizable and successful comic creations of the past twenty years. He is also the author of many successful books including Watching War Films with My Dad and Command, a sharply entertaining analysis of the key allied military leaders in the Second World War. He is well known for co-hosting the hugely popular Second World War history podcast, We Have Ways of Making You Talk with fellow bestselling military author James Holland.

Arnhem: Black Tuesday is his first history book about a single campaign and is available at https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/305659/al-murray.

To view his tour dates visit: www.thepublandlord.com

“It remains one of the great joys in comedy to see the Pub Landlord befriend and belittle the front rows, blithely dishing out attributes to them, responding with superfast wit… So long as he has an audience with a pulse and an onstage pump that dispenses frothy lager for him to spill on them, Murray will always be a good night out.” - Dominic Maxwell, The Times

1. Bernard Law Montgomery https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v03/n12/john-keegan/the-mothering-of-montgomery

2. Zeno’s The Cauldron https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/468655/the-cauldron-by-zeno/9781804996621

3. Blood stem cell donation via DKMS https://www.dkms.org/get-involved/become-a-donor

4. Bill Bruford https://www.loudersound.com/features/ive-been-booted-out-of-king-crimson-about-three-times-bill-bruford-on-a-life-in-music

5. Scale modelling https://uk.airfix.com/community/blog-and-news/tips-and-tricks/new-case-study-explains-positive-benefits-scale-modelling

6. The culture of remembrance in Arnhem https://www.airbornearnhemwest.nl/en/welkom-bij-de-website-van-de-airborne-herdenking-in-arnhem-west-english/

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Jon Moynihan discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Jon Moynihan is a businessman and venture capitalist who started his career advising companies and banks in the Netherlands, the US and the UK as a specialist in mergers and turnarounds. He then ran the global firm PA Consulting Group for 21 years. He subsequently transitioned into venture startups, creating over 20 companies to date, most of them in the science and technology fields. Jon has worked as a volunteer in the charity sector all his life, including in Bangladeshi refugee camps and other developing countries, in educational think tanks, both managing and fundraising for charities, more recently in the arts sector where, among other activities, he was president of the Royal Albert Hall for a number of years. Jon sits in the House of Lords as Baron Moynihan of Chelsea. His new book is Return to Growth: How to Fix the Economy, available at https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/return-to-growth-jon-moynihan/7711930?ean=9781785909030.

1. Most of the economies of the world continue to grow: but not the Social Democracies, especially in Europe.
2. It’s incontrovertible that too-large government results in flattened growth.
3. People in the UK are on average earning some 5 per cent less than they were 17 years ago.
4. If you spend more than the OECD average on Education, as the UK does, the extra spend doesn’t improve educational outcomes.
5. The UK, compared with just about every other developed economy was far more incontinent on its spending during Covid.
6. The impact of China’s one-child policy is that by the year 2100, the threat of China will have receded. It will be dominated by its elderly, and its population will be half that of India’s.

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Delayed Gratification co-founders Rob Orchard and Marcus Webb discuss with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Rob Orchard and Marcus Webb are co-founders of Delayed Gratification, the world’s first Slow Journalism magazine, launched in 2011. Delayed Gratification revisits events after the dust has settled and makes a virtue of being “Last to Breaking News.”

Along with Delayed Gratification’s art director Christian, Rob and Marcus are co-authors of An Answer For Everything, the critically acclaimed book of infographics published by Bloomsbury. Their new book Misc., a compendium of delightfully random facts discovered in 13 years of research for the magazine, was published by Bloomsbury in October 2024 and is available at https://www.slow-journalism.com/misc.

1. Drowning people pulled from the Thames used to be treated with tobacco enemas https://bcmj.org/special-feature/special-feature-tobacco-smoke-enemas

2. Andre Agassi used Boris Becker’s tongue to win tennis matches https://www.businessinsider.com/andre-agassi-beat-boris-becker-watching-tongue-serves-2021-4

3. Life on Mars sounds horrible https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2845199/

4. Movie star Hedy Lamarr is the unsung heroine of Bluetooth https://www.forbes.com/sites/shivaunefield/2018/02/28/hedy-lamarr-the-incredible-mind-behind-secure-wi-fi-gps-bluetooth/

5. One hardy entomologist set himself the task of being bitten by as many insects as possible, and recorded the experiences in lyrical prose https://www.chemistryworld.com/careers/the-man-who-gets-stung-by-insects/2500173.article

6. Many of the very worst films ever released have made more than half a billion dollars at the box office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films

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Andrew Hindmoor discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Andrew Hindmoor grew up in Sheffield, left, went to Australia, and boomeranged back to Sheffield in 2013. He is a Professor of Politics and Co-Director of the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute. He recently published Haywire: A Political History of Britain Since 2000 with Penguin which was the Times' 'book of the week' when it was released. He has previously published 12 Days Which Made Modern Britain with Oxford and academic books on the financial crisis and the state. He makes a mean lemon meringue pie.

1. North Stradbroke Island, Queensland. https://stradbrokeisland.com/

2. The Americans boxset https://www.amazon.co.uk/Americans-Complete-Seasons-1-6-DVD/dp/B07FYBZMN5

3. Hitchhiking https://medium.com/@korkmazlarr/the-exhilarating-journey-unveiling-the-benefits-of-hitchhiking-27f996c6d2ca

4. The Office for National Statistics data on happiness and life satisfaction (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/bulletins/measuringnationalwellbeing/april2022tomarch2023 for the most recent release)

5. Philip Short’s biography of Vladimir Putin https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/430057/putin-by-short-philip/9781784700935

6. The alternative walk from Wasdale. Don’t go East from Wasdale up Scafell Pike. Go West and walk the horseshoe across Red Pike, Pillar and Great Gable.

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