Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen discuss with Ivan six things which they think should be better known.
Emer McLysaght & Sarah Breen are co-authors of the Aisling series. Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling was the bestselling fiction title of 2017 in Ireland and its sequel, The Importance of Being Aisling, won the award for best popular fiction book at the 2018 Irish Book Awards. The third book in the series, Once, Twice, Three Times an Aisling, won the same award the following year and the fourth book in the series, Aisling and the City, won again in 2021. The final book in the series, Aisling Ever After, was published in Autumn 2023 and was an instant number one bestseller. Combined, the Aisling books have sold more than 400,000 copies to date. Their new novel is Our Deadly Summer.
1. In 2015 Ireland legalised a number of Class A drugs for 24 hours because of a loophole in legislation.
2. An Irishman invented cheese and onion crisps at his kitchen table in 1954
3. The Irish language
4. Nearly all the world’s Viagra is made in a small Irish town
5. Ireland is the only country in the world to have had a female, democratically elected head of state be succeeded by another female, democratically elected head of state, and both were called Mary
Charles Moore discusses with Ivan six things which he thinks should be better known.
Charles Moore was editor of the Daily Telegraph from 1995 to 2003, editor of the Sunday Telegraph from 1992 to 1995 and editor of the Spectator magazine from 1984 to 1990. He is now the Chairman of The Spectator. He became a non-affiliated peer in July 2020. He wrote the authorised biography of Margaret Thatcher.
Sean Murphy discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.
Sean Murphy is founder of the non-profit 1455 Lit Arts and directs the Center for Story at Shenandoah University. He has been publishing fiction, poetry, reviews (of music, movie, book, food), and essays on the technology industry for over twenty years. His latest book is red, white, and blues, his fourth poetry collection. His Substack and podcast are Some Things Considered.
America learned all the wrong lessons from popular 80s movies
America is a myth-making machine
Atlantic City’s disintegration tells us everything we need to know about Trump
Howard Dean’s scream
The Assault on the Arts & Humanities Explain the Deeper Motivation of Late-Stage Capitalism
Steven Seidenberg discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.
Steven Seidenberg is the author of Coda, Anon (Omnidawn, 2022), plain sight (Roof Books, 2020), Situ (Black Sun Lit, 2018), Null Set (Spooky Action Books) and Itch (RAW ArT Press, 2015). His books have been published in Italian, Portuguese and Swedish translation, and his collections of photographs include The Architecture of Silence: Abandoned Lives of the Italian South (Contrasto, 2023) and Pipevalve: Berlin (Lodima Press, 2017).
Steven lives in Boston, America, and frequently travels with his work, particularly in Europe.
Daniel Hahn discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.
Daniel Hahn is an award-winning translator, author and editor of numerous fiction and non-fiction works. He is one of the editors of The Ultimate Book Guide, the first volume of which won the Blue Peter Book Award. Other titles include children’s works such as Happiness Is a Watermelon on Your Head (a picture-book for children) and a new edition of The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature. He has been a chair for prestigious international prizes including the International Booker Prize, the IMPAC Dublin Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. He was previously chair for the Society of Authors and currently serves on the board of trustees for English PEN. His new book is If This Be Magic.
Joanna Jensen discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.
Joanna Jensen is the founder of the British multi-award-winning baby and child personal care brand, Childs Farm which she created in 2010 as a result of her own daughters’ sensitive and eczema prone skin.
A former Investment Banker in both London and Hong Kong, Jensen transformed an emotional need into a commercial brand from day one. Her brand was launched into mainstream retailers Boots and Waitrose in 2014 and became the number one brand in the baby and child toiletries category in 2019 disrupting the more established legacy brands with its natural, sustainable and fruity formulas, and seeing Johnson Baby’s market share tumble from 32% to 13% in just 5 years.
In March 2022, Jensen sold 92% of Childs Farm for £36.8m to PZ Cussons Plc, the branded consumer goods business and owner of well-known brands such as St.Tropez, Imperial Leather, and Carex selling the final 8% in January 2025.
Jensen is an active keen supporter of female founded businesses. She is an Angel Investor in 11 female founded brands and a leading advocate in supporting female founded businesses. She sits on the Angel Investment Committee for the Invest in Women Task Force and the advisory board of leading consumer initiative Buy Women Built, both driving awareness of female founded brands to UK consumers and investors.
Jensen Chairs both the Enterprise Investment Scheme Association (EISA) – the Trade body for this excellent Government scheme from which she has benefitted from both as an entrepreneur and as an investor – and the philanthropic arm of Paralympics GB, The Parallel Club.
Jensen works directly with the Imperial Venture Mentoring Service (IVMS), Imperial College’s flagship entrepreneurial mentoring programme. Its mission is to support the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs with an elite group of industry mentors.
Jensen is a regular contributor to The Sunday Times, The Times and City AM, a regular guest on Channel 5 morning shows Jeremy Vine, Storm Huntley and Vanessa, and a voice of business on Radio 5 Live’s Wake up to Money Show.
Jensen’s first book Making Business Child’s Play: How to build a winning brand was published in September 2025. From idea to launch, she details everything entrepreneurs don’t know they don’t know to endeavour to learn what took her six months to learn in 6 minutes.
Alexandra Tolstoy returns to the podcast with a special live episode, recorded at a school. She discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.
Natalie Kyriacou discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.
Natalie Kyriacou OAM is an award-winning environmentalist, writer, professional public speaker and charity director with a passion to spark curiosity about the natural world. She was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia and the Forbes 30 Under 30 honour for her services to wildlife and environmental conservation in 2018 and was recognised as one of The Australian’s Top 100 Innovators in 2022. She is a Board Director at the Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife and CARE Australia, the Founder and Chair of My Green World, a UNESCO Green Citizens Pathfinder, and an Australian Delegate and Climate Justice Lead at the W20. She was the United Nations Environment Programme’s Young Champions of the Earth finalist for her innovation in wildlife and environmental conservation and is LinkedIn’s Top Green Voice. Her new book is Nature’s Last Dance.
Danny Bate discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.
Danny Bate is a linguist, writer, broadcaster and podcaster who is fascinated by the study of historical languages and etymology. He took his BA and MPhil degrees from the University of York and the University of Cambridge respectively, and his PhD in linguistics from the University of Edinburgh. His new book is Why Q Needs U.
The alphabet is a product of migration, born out of a meeting of different peoples and their languages
Our letters started out as depictions of things (body parts, animals, everyday objects)
English’s letters are connected via a big family tree to many other scripts, including many that seem ‘alien’ to its readers (e.g. Arabic, Hebrew)
There isn’t universal one way to create writing, you pick which aspects of language (words, syllables, consonants) as a primary base
English and related alphabets aren’t phonetically accurate (and that’s okay)
Even when spelling diverges from a strict letter-to-sound ratio, new principles and processes can emerge
Deepa Anappara discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.
Deepa Anappara’s debut novel, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, was named as one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Guardian and NPR. It won the Edgar Award for Best Novel, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and shortlisted for the JCB Prize for Indian literature. It has been translated into over twenty languages. Anappara is the co-editor of Letters to a Writer of Color, a collection of personal essays on fiction, race, and culture. The Last of Earth is her second novel.
Better Known 