Philosopher Andy West discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Andy West is philosopher in residence at HMP Pentonville, London. His writing has been published in The Guardian, Aeon, The Big Issue, 3AM Magazine and Lito. He is the author of The Life Inside: A Memoir of Prison, Family and Philosophy.

1. Rectify https://www.vulture.com/2016/12/rectify-review-there-may-never-be-a-show-like-it-again.html

2. Little Bad Thing https://ethics.org.au/littlebadthing/

3. Nietzsche’s idea of The Festival of Punishment https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft4q2nb3dn&chunk.id=d0e604&toc.depth=100&toc.id=d0e595&brand=ucpress 

4. Kafka’s short story Prometheus https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/29/the-rescue-will-begin-in-its-own-time

5. Nostalgia for the Light https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/jul/12/nostalgia-for-the-light-review

6. The Graybar Hotel https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/08/the-graybar-hotel-curtis-dawkins-review

Katja Hoyer discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Katja Hoyer is an Anglo-German historian and journalist. She is a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She writes about German politics as a Washington Post columnist as well as for several British newspapers like The Spectator and The Telegraph. Katja’s debut book Blood and Iron – The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1971-1918 became a bestseller in the UK. She is currently working on a new history of East Germany from 1949 to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

1. The Baltic coast https://www.travelstride.com/attractions/things-to-do-in-baltic-sea-attractions

2. Shrewsbury Prison https://guide2.co.uk/shropshire/listings/shrewsbury-prison/

3. Louise of Prussia https://departments.kings.edu/womens_history/luise.html

4. German cakes https://theculturetrip.com/europe/germany/articles/the-best-german-traditional-cakes-you-need-to-try/

5. Octopuses https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n17/amia-srinivasan/the-sucker-the-sucker

6. Cultural output from behind the Iron Curtain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_East_Germany

Jenny Kleeman discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Jenny Kleeman is a journalist, broadcaster and documentary-maker. She hosts the weekend Breakfast show on Times Radio and writes for the Guardian, the Sunday Times and The New Statesman. She has reported for BBC One’s Panorama, Channel 4’s Dispatches and VICE News Tonight on HBO, as well as making 13 films from across the globe for Channel 4’s Unreported World. Her first book, Sex Robots & Vegan Meat, was published in 2020. She’s currently working on her second book, The Price of Life, which will be published by Picador.

1. The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm  https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/03/01/the-morality-of-journalism/

2. The art of Oron Katz and Ionat Zurr https://www.rca.ac.uk/news-and-events/rca-stories/oron-catts-and-ionat-zurr-working-life/

3. King of Kong https://ew.com/article/2007/08/15/king-kong-fistful-quarters/

4. Here My Dear by Marvin Gaye https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/marvin-gaye-here-my-dear/

5. John Frusciante https://www.loudersound.com/features/drugs-ghosts-and-the-radical-re-birth-of-john-frusciante

6. Redwood trees in Kew Gardens https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/redwoods-tallest-trees-on-earth

Nicola Horlick discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Nicola Horlick is CEO of Money&Co. She has been a leading fund manager in the City of London for over thirty years. During that time, she has set up and managed several investment businesses. She now chairs a private equity business, is CEO of a film-development company, and is a director of an NHS Foundation Trust.

1. Black Comedy by Peter Shaffer https://chicagocritic.com/black-comedy/

2. Joseph II of Austria https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v10/n10/william-doyle/despots

3. Many Lives, Many Masters by Dr Brian Weiss https://www.compulsivereaders.com/reviews/many-lives-many-masters-brian-l-weiss/

4. Pictures at an Exhibition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq7Qd9PSmR0

5. Orlanda Broom https://orlandabroomartist.com/

6. La Perriere https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Tourism-g1189181-La_Perriere_Orne_Basse_Normandie_Normandy-Vacations.html

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

James Runcie is an award-winning film-maker, playwright and literary curator. He is the author of twelve novels that have been translated into twelve languages, including the seven books in the Grantchester Mysteries series. He has been Artistic Director of the Bath Literature Festival, Head of Literature and Spoken Word at the Southbank Centre, London, and Commissioning Editor for Arts on BBC Radio 4. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in Scotland and London. His latest novel is The Great Passion.

1. Bach’s Cantata 22 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcflikYLk1w

2. Ladi Kwali ceramics https://www.oxfordceramics.com/artists/107-ladi-kwali/overview/

3. Lydia Davis’ short stories https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2010/04/29/horse-sense-heartache/

4. The Lacemaker https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-lacemaker-1978

5. The Photos by The Photos https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-photos-mw0000495183

6. Fernet Branca https://spiritsreview.com/reviews/fernet-branca/

Musician Lias Saoudi discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Lias Kaci Saoudi is a writer, artist and musician, and the front man of genre-bending iconoclasts Fat White Family. Born to a British mother and Algerian father, he grew up in the Republic of Ireland, Scotland and Northern Ireland, before moving to London and gaining a Fine Art degree from Slade School of Art. 

During the first UK lockdown, Lias began contributing a series of unflinching autobiographical pieces entitled Life Beyond the Neutral Zone to the online cultural hub, The Social Gathering. He is published in The New Frontier: Reflections From the Irish Border(New Island Books, 2021) – an anthology of new writing from some of Ireland’s greatest contemporary authors marking the centenary of partition. He is also the debut guest editor of Ambit Pop, a new annual issue of the venerable quarterly arts magazine.

His first book, Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family and the Miracle of Failure, co-written with Adelle Stripe (Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile, Bloomsbury, 2019), is described by Miranda Sawyer in The Observer as “the story of a band that’s always on the brink: of stardom, of madness, of brilliance, of disgrace”.

1. It’s me, Eddie by Eddie Limonov https://literaryreview.co.uk/its-me-eddie

2. Limits to Medicine by Ivan Illich https://joannamoncrieff.com/2016/04/18/limits-to-medicine-re-visiting-ivan-illich/

3. Macho Music by Peter Gordon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbeJKaAKLos

4. The Grass Arena by John Healy https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/aug/05/biography

5. A feast of snakes by Harry Crews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Feast_of_Snakes

6. Ratfucker by Armand Schaubroek https://trouserpress.com/reviews/armand-schaubroeck-steals/

Justine Waddell is a writer, producer and actor.  Through her production company, Asterisk Films, she has just picked up the 2021 Golden Prague Czech Television Award for her documentary feature film Janine Jansen: Falling for Stradivari. She has also produced Force of Nature Natalia, directed by BAFTA and Grierson-winning filmmaker, Gerry Fox, about prima ballerina, Natalia Osipova.  

Virginia Woolf’s Night & Day, which Justine has developed with the British Film Institute and Piccadilly Pictures, is Justine’s debut screenplay. 

After graduating from Cambridge University, Justine’s film work as an actress includes lead roles in Alexander Zeldovich’s Target (Telluride Film Festival, 2011), where she learnt from Russian from scratch. She has also played leading roles in period dramas Wives and Daughters, Great Expectations and Tess of the D’urbevilles. 

Justine is also the founder and CEO of Klassiki.online. Launched in 2021, Klassiki is the world’s first streaming platform to deliver classic and contemporary film content from Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

1. Naoshima Art Island https://boutiquejapan.com/naoshima/

2. Abbotsford https://www.scottsabbotsford.com/

3. Russian language female filmmaking tradition https://www.calvertjournal.com/features/show/11768/women-directors-soviet-unions-silent-movie-era

4. Cecilia Payne Gaspochkin https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00509-3

5. African craft www.madwa.com

6. Constance Spry https://lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n17/rosemary-hill/at-the-garden-museum

Roisin Kiberd discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Roisin Kiberd’s essays have been published in the Dublin Review, the White Review, the Stinging Fly and Winter Papers. She has written features on technology and culture for publications including the New York Times, the Guardian, Vice and Motherboard, where she wrote a column about internet subcultures. Having spent some time in London as the online voice of a cheese brand, she now lives between Dublin and Berlin. Her first book is The Disconnect.

1. Ologies www.alieward.com/ologies

2. The Surgeon’s Hall Museums, Edinburgh https://museum.rcsed.ac.uk/

3. VALIS by Philip K Dick http://www.conceptualfiction.com/valis.html

4. The OA https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/oa-review-1196307/

5. This tweet: https://ifunny.co/picture/donald-j-trump-o-the-coca-cola-company-is-not-z7uZLjBg4 (also as a bizarre, unintentional riff on this even more iconic tweet).

6. The Conservatism of Emoji https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305115604853

Science journalist Angela Saini discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Angela Saini is an award-winning British science journalist and broadcaster. She presents science programmes on the BBC, and her writing has appeared in New Scientist, The Sunday Times, National Geographic and Wired. Her latest book, Superior: The Return of Race Science, was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and named a book of the year by The Telegraph, Nature and Financial Times. Her previous book, Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong, has been translated into fourteen languages. Angela has a Masters in Engineering from the University of Oxford and was a Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2020 she was named one of the world’s top 50 thinkers by Prospect magazine.

1. GenderSci Lab at Harvard University https://www.genderscilab.org/

2. Lux Magazine https://lux-magazine.com

3. Retraction Watch website https://retractionwatch.com/

4. Nirmal Purja https://www.nimsdai.com/

5. How to repair things https://www.ifixit.com/

6. Too Good to Go app https://toogoodtogo.co.uk/en-gb

Jesse Norman discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Jesse Norman has been Conservative MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire since 2010. He was Financial Secretary to the Treasury from 2019 to 2021. Before entering politics Jesse was a Director at Barclays, researched and taught philosophy at University College London, and ran a charitable project in Communist Eastern Europe. His book Edmund Burke: politician, philosopher, prophet was listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Political Book Awards and the George Orwell Prize. His book Adam Smith: What he thought, and why it matters was published in 2018.

1. My Life in New Orleans by Louis Armstrong https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/book-of-a-lifetime-satchmo-my-life-in-new-orleans-by-louis-armstrong-8609967.html

2. Wild swimming https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/uk/wild-swim-wye-river-a8499001.html

3. Heroes https://www.herefordtimes.com/news/18451446.heroes-now-jesse-norman/

4. “I don’t understand” https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/how-to-say-i-dont-know

5. The Burgers of Hereford https://aruleoftum.com/burgershophfd

6. The perils of diminishing marginal utility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility