Better Known

Danny Scott discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Danny Scott grew up in an East Midlands mining village, serving his apprenticeship as an engineer on leaving school, before moving to London in the 1980s. After a job in counter (industrial) espionage, he became a private investigator, then a painter and decorator, then an engineer again, before becoming a journalist and interviewing people like Sir Paul McCartney, Mikhail Gorbachev, Usain Bolt and Dave Hill from Slade. He lives in Essex with his wife and their young son. His memoir, The Undisputed King of Selston (John Murray), was published in June 2025. It is available at https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-undisputed-king-of-selston-danny-scott/7836018?ean=9781399816793.

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Alan Green grew up on the north coast of Cornwall and now lives in south London. As an environmental science graduate, he remains passionate about protecting and preserving the natural world. Alan spent nearly three decades at a Magic Circle law firm in the City of London, where he led a copy-editing team. A committed daily runner for over 35 years, Alan combines his love of nature with a commitment to wellbeing in all aspects of life. Sound Advice is his debut book, available at https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/sound-advice-9781784633585.

Our Sun is only 20 galactic years old The band Midnight Oil once asked, “How can we dance when our earth is turning?” The literal answer takes us from the Earth spinning at jet speed, to the Sun circling the Milky Way, to our galaxy itself hurtling through an expanding cosmos.

Ivan Wise has blue eyes. I have blue eyes. We may be related… We both have blue eyes — and they may trace back to a single ancestor, 6,000–10,000 years ago. Unlike brown eyes, blue eyes aren’t due to pigment but to the scattering of light, as with a blue sky.

You may not be as old as you feel. Our bodies are in perpetual renewal. Some cells live days, others last a lifetime. On average, our cells are only 7–10 years old — meaning we are all, in a sense, younger than our birthday-cake candles may suggest.

Yews, and why you often find them in churchyards. Step into a churchyard and you may find a yew that’s older than the church itself. These trees have stood as markers of sacred ground since before Christianity.

Our world without fungi wouldn’t function. From decomposing matter to building vast underground “wood-wide webs”, fungi are indispensable recyclers and collaborators.

Morgans don’t have wooden chassis. There’s a persistent myth that Morgan sports cars have wooden chassis. Not true: their chassis are steel or aluminium.

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Laurence Bergreen discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Laurence Bergreen is an award-winning biographer, historian, and chronicler of exploration. His books have been translated into more than 25 languages. They include Columbus: The Four Voyages, a New York Times bestseller, published by Viking in 2011. In 2007, Knopf published his Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu. For this book he crossed China from east to west and camped out on the steppe with hospitable Mongolians in their yurts. His bestselling Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe, was published by William Morrow in 2003.  In its 40th printing, it was awarded the Medalla de Honor by the Asociación de Alcades de V Centenario (Spain). He has also published In Search of a Kingdom about Francis Drake's voyage of discovery (Simon & Schuster, 2021) and Voyage to Mars: NASA’s Search for Life Beyond Earth published by Riverhead in 2000.

His research for these books included extensive fieldwork.  He has sailed twice through the Strait of Magellan and is one of the few individuals to visit the volcanic island of Surtsey off the coast of Iceland, thanks to the agile helicopters of the Icelandic Coast Guard, among other remote destinations. At NASA’s request, he named numerous geographical features around the crater Victoria on Mars. Find out more at https://laurencebergreenauthor.com/.

Louis Armstrong's favourite instrument https://oztypewriter.blogspot.com/2020/09/what-wonderful-world-with-typewriters.html

The Well Dressed Man with a Beard by Wallace Stevens https://allpoetry.com/The-Well-Dressed-Man-With-A-Beard

Vladimir Zworykin https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/vladimir-zworykin

Surtsey https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1267/

The Strait of Magellan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOOKr8Y2xsM

The Rubin Observatory https://rubinobservatory.org/

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Sam Sedgman discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Sam Sedgman is a bestselling children's author, confirmed nerd and enthusiastic ferroequinologist. Co-creator of the award-winning 'Adventures on Trains' and 'Isaac Turner Investigates' series, he writes fact-based mystery and adventure stories for the young and young at heart.

Before writing stories for children, Sam worked as a digital producer at the National Theatre, which meant nosing around backstage with a camera and a microphone, cajoling theatre makers into explaining how stories get made. Forever interested in piecing things together, Sam is a lifelong fan of puzzles, games and detective fiction, and once founded a company making murder mystery treasure hunts for adventurous Londoners. His books have been translated into more than 20 languages.

When he isn’t writing, Sam can usually be found admiring a handsome timepiece, watching Alfred Hitchcock movies, or explaining some weird fact to you. He lives in London, on top of a railway station. You can find out more at https://samsedgman.com/.

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Jordan Prosser discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Jordan Prosser is a writer, filmmaker and performer from Victoria, Australia. He is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, and his short films and screenplays have won multiple international accolades. His short story Eleuterio Cabrera’s Beautiful Game won the Peter Carey Short Story Award in 2022 and was published in Meanjin. Big Time is his debut novel.

The Philippines. I had the privilege of traveling to and working in the Philippines a number of times throughout the 2010s. It’s one of my favourite places on earth.

Ivan Sen. Perhaps my favourite Australian filmmaker, helmer of Mystery Road and Goldstone and their multiple spin-off TV series, which are just as good and as specific to the Australian outback as Scand-noirs are to their cultures and landscapes.

Wikipedia’s ‘Timeline of the far future’ and ‘Ultimate fate of the universe’ pages. Every year has its own dedicated Wikipedia page, including years in the future.

Andy Shauf. For my money, one of the best singer-songwriters of our generation, and something of a folk genius in the lineage of the Donovans and Nick Drakes of the world. His 2015 album The Bearer of Bad News is a modern-day Nebraska.

How LLMs actually work. Which is to say: they are statistical models based on pattern recognition and predictability, powered by tremendous amounts of data and processing power. Big tech marketing has seduced so many into seeing them as quasi-mystical entities, when really, they’re glorified spreadsheets.

Eggnog. Probably the finest beverage on earth, but when you mention it, in Australia at least, people become mystified and their eyes immediately glaze over. I inherited my recipe from my (American) mother and make it every year at Christmas.

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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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