Michel-Yves Bolloré discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Michel-Yves Bolloré is an engineer and entrepreneur whose career spans industrial innovation and philanthropic investment in education. A graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Ingénieur de Toulouse and Paris-Dauphine University (Master of Science and Doctorate in Business Administration), he began his career in the family business, managing the Bolloré Group’s industrial division from 1981 to 1990. In 1990, he founded France Essor, an industrial group that led major ventures in mechanical engineering, and steel manufacturing.

Since relocating to London in 2011, he has focused on educational and cultural projects. He founded several schools, including The Laurels in London and Les Vignes in France. He is also a Knight of the Legion of Honor. His new book, co-written with Olivier Bonnassies, is God, Science, the Evidence, which is available at https://store.abramsbooks.com/products/god-the-science-the-evidence.

Sometimes major discoveries result from human errors, but in that case two errors are frequently better than one

Isabella of Spain’s decision to finance the Christopher Colombus project

The Middle Ages, incorrectly called “Dark Age”, has seen many crucial inventions which opened the door to a prosperous Renaissance Epoch: Example: invention of glasses, industrialization of paper manufacturing, creation of universities.

US scientists believe more frequently in the existence of God than people think.

Nature is more finely tuned than we think: an example with squirrels which luckily have a bad memory and a bad sight.

The origin of the word Palestine

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Simon Hall discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Simon Hall studied history at Sheffield and Cambridge, and held a Fox International Fellowship at Yale, before moving to the University of Leeds, where he is currently Professor of Modern History. His previous books include 1956: The World in Revolt and Ten Days in Harlem: Fidel Castro and the Making of the 1960s. His new book is Three Revolutions, which is available at https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571367153-three-revolutions/?srsltid=AfmBOooAoS0oqmPXfgrMioTKtanZ_z6HLyCOkcz7bM0J37S10CjiylGm

King Cnut and the tide https://www.historyextra.com/period/viking/facts-you-probably-didnt-know-about-king-cnut-canute-who-was-he/

Hungarian paprika https://www.timeout.com/budapest/restaurants/hungary-paprika-cuisine-history

Nixon's love of bowling https://www.messynessychic.com/2015/08/19/bowling-with-mr-president-beneath-the-white-house/

Simon of the Desert https://larsenonfilm.com/simon-of-the-desert

Bridlington south beach https://www.eastridingcoastandcountryside.co.uk/places-to-visit/find-a-place/place/?entry=bridlington_south_beach

Martin Luther King's sense of humour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZw6iT_gcL8

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Kasim Ali discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Kasim Ali was born and raised in Alum Rock, Birmingham, where he spent the first eighteen years of his life, at which point he left to study a degree in English. Over the years, he has lived in London, Nottingham, and Newcastle, but still thinks of Birmingham as the place he’s from. He has had a short story long-listed for the B4ME story, has written fiction for BBC Radio 4, and has a column at The Bookseller. Currently, he works as an editor in publishing. Good Intentions was his first novel, Who Will Remain his second. It is available at https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/who-will-remain-kasim-ali?variant=54869542830459

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Sally Smith discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Sally Smith spent all her working life as a barrister and later KC in the Inner Temple. After writing a biography of the Edwardian barrister Sir Edward Marshall Hall KC, she retired from the bar to write full time. A Case of Mice and Murder, her first novel, was inspired by the historic surroundings of the Inner Temple in which she still lives and works and was the first in a series starring the reluctant sleuth Sir Gabriel Ward KC. A Case of Mice and Murder was longlisted for the 2025 CWA Whodunnit and Historical Daggers. Her new novel A Case of Life and Limb is available at https://www.waterstones.com/book/a-case-of-life-and-limb/sally-smith/9781526668776.

The Temple (Inner and Middle) and its round church, off Fleet Street London. https://www.templechurch.com/royal-charter/the-inns

The mysterious ‘Roman ‘ Bath (built 1612) Strand Lane London, next to disused Aldwych Underground Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Baths,_Strand_Lane

By Grand Central Station I sat down and wept by Elizabeth Smart https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v13/n04/julian-symons/urgent

I capture the castle by Dodie Smith https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrGtmuTP_7k

The Hawstead Panels in Christchurch Mansion Museum, Ipswich. (Also called Lady Drury’s closet’) https://ipswich.cimuseums.org.uk/visit/christchurch-mansion/

The Glandford Shell Museum https://www.shellmuseum.org.uk/

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Hal LaCroix discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Hal LaCroix lives outside Boston with his wife, Elahna. He has worked as a journalist at newspapers in New England, a reporter and editor at Harvard Medical School, a conservation writer for non-profits and an instructor at Boston University. Here and Beyond is his first novel, which is available at https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/here-and-beyond-9781526678249/.

Senator Charles Sumner. Sumner was a mid-19th century senator with laser focus on one issue: slavery. He had a profound impact on Lincoln, pushing him to expand rights of African Americans after emancipation. Sumner became epic villain in Confederacy, where souvenir canes commemorated the beating were hot items.

Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mt. Fuji. Fuji is sacred, a symbol of Japan. The 36 mostly long-range views, all around the compass, provide a wraparound view of Japanese life in 1831.

Exoplanets. More than 5,000 have been confirmed so far, out of hundreds of billions of planets in the Milky Way galaxy. Until the 1990s no one even knew if there were any planets outside our solar system!

Wingspan. This is a board game about birds that my wife and I are a bit obsessed with. Each player has a board with forest, grassland and water habitats.

Boston Cream Pie and Boston Cream Donuts. My grandfather used to bring cakes and pies when he visited us on Cape Cod. He’d pull up in his Oldsmobile Cutlass with all these white boxes tied with string from Montilio’s bakery.

We Need a Global, Unifying Mission. We live on a planet with 8.2 billion people and the vast majority of us just know our neighborhood, our route back and forth to work. But on the spinning ark ship in Here and Beyond, the entire world is visible within the sphere. You look up and see buildings upside down, people upside down.

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Peter Lamont discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Peter Lamont is Professor of History and Theory of Psychology at the University of Edinburgh. He has written about a variety of curious topics such as magic, belief, wonder and critical thinking. He is also a former professional magician and an Associate of the Inner Magic Circle. His new book is Radical Thinking, which is available at https://swiftpress.com/book/radical-thinking/

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Sarah Stein Lubrano discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Dr Sarah Stein Lubrano holds a PhD from the University of Oxford and a Master’s degree from the University of Cambridge. Her thinking often reaches the public through the Sense and Solidarity Initiative and the Future Narratives Lab. She was previously the Head of Content at The School of Life, tutored in prisons and wrote obituaries. She regularly appears on public radio and a variety of podcasts. Her book Don't Talk About Politics is available at https://linktr.ee/donttalkaboutpolitics.

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Sarah Dunant discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Sarah Dunant studied history at Newnham College, Cambridge from where she went on to become a writer, broadcaster, teacher and critic. She has written twelve novels, four of which have been short-listed for awards, and edited two books of essays. She is an accredited lecturer with The Arts Society, lecturing on Italian history and renaissance art, has taught renaissance studies at Washington University, St Louis and creative writing at University of Oxford Brookes. Her new novel is The Marchesa, which is available at https://www.sarahdunant.com/the-marchesa.

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AE Gauntlett discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

AE Gauntlett completed an MA in English Literature at King’s College London in 2010. He then went on to find success as a literary agent with Peters Fraser and Dunlop, earning himself a prestigious Shooting Star nomination from The Bookseller in 2017. The Stranger at the Wedding, written secretly as he represented the work of his numerous bestselling authors, marks Gauntlett’s literary debut. It is available at https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/stranger-at-the-wedding-9781526659774/.

How the Dutch traded Manhattan for nutmeg https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/island-traded-for-manhattan

The Nightmovers: Japanese service to help people disappear https://www.bbc.co.uk/worklife/article/20200903-the-companies-that-help-people-vanish

The moment the Porsche 911 was almost killed off https://turo.com/blog/gearheads/how-the-porsche-911-almost-died/

Jean Purdy, British embryologist, pioneer of IVF with Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/history/blog/2025/reclaiming-jean-purdys-legacy/

The Lake Bodom Murders https://vocal.media/history/the-lake-bodom-murders-finland-s-unsolved-mystery

How to get published/ what literary agents really want to see in a submission letter https://literaryconsultancy.co.uk/2025/04/what-agents-are-really-looking-for/

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Simon Tolkien discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Simon Tolkien is the grandson of JRR Tolkien and a director of the Tolkien Estate. He is also series consultant for the Amazon series, The Rings of Power. Simon studied Modern History at Trinity College, Oxford and went on to become a barrister specializing in criminal defence. He left the law to become a writer in 2001 and has published five novels which mine the history of the first half of the last century to explore dark subjects – capital punishment, the Holocaust, the Blitz and the Battle of the Somme. The epic coming-of-age story of Theo Sterling, set in 1930s New York, England and Spain, is being published in two volumes, The Palace at the End of the Sea in June, which is available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Palace-End-Sea-Novel-Sterling/dp/1662528647 and The Room of Lost Steps, which will be available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Room-Lost-Steps-Novel-Sterling/dp/1662528663 on 16th September this year.

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