Each week, a guest makes a series of recommendations of things which they think should be better known. Our recommendations include interesting people, places, objects, stories, experiences and ideas which our guest feels haven't had the exposure that they deserve.
Jean Findlay discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.
Jean Findlay is the author of Chasing Lost Time – the Life of CK Scott Moncrieff, Soldier, Spy and Translator published in 2014 by Chatto and Windus, London, and by FSG, New York. The Queen's Lender was awarded the Hawthornden Fellowship 2018 and Lavigny International Writer’s Fellowship 2019. Her new book is The Bohemian Queen: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bohemian-Queen-Queens-Europe-2026/dp/1910895849 (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bohemian-Queen-Queens-Europe-2026/dp/1910895849).
The origin of the term Bohemian https://villagepreservation.org/2013/04/16/how-bohemians-got-their-name/ (https://villagepreservation.org/2013/04/16/how-bohemians-got-their-name/)
That Europe had a war that lasted Thirty years https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/30-years-war-1618-48-and-second-defenestration-prague (https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/30-years-war-1618-48-and-second-defenestration-prague)
Sectarianism didn’t originate in Glasgow and Edinburgh https://fpc.org.uk/northern-ireland-still-a-deeply-divided-society/ (https://fpc.org.uk/northern-ireland-still-a-deeply-divided-society/)
There are 250 types of bumble bees www.bumblebeeconservation.org
People have been using fake news to slander and discredit public figures since the beginning of time https://theconversation.com/medieval-england-loved-rumours-conspiracies-and-fake-news-about-queens-227111 (https://theconversation.com/medieval-england-loved-rumours-conspiracies-and-fake-news-about-queens-227111)
That Gregorian Chant hits a sound level that heals your body https://www.tfp.org/how-gregorian-chant-benefits-the-health-of-the-bodyand-soul/ (https://www.tfp.org/how-gregorian-chant-benefits-the-health-of-the-bodyand-soul/)
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19 Oct 2026
Roie Oknin
Roie Oknin discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.
Roie Oknin is an author, multidisciplinary artist, and medical student. He is the author of Ramen, Existential Crises, his debut novel, which is available at https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Ramen-Existential-Crises-by-Oknin-Roie/9789655962765 (https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Ramen-Existential-Crises-by-Oknin-Roie/9789655962765). Alongside his literary and artistic practice, he works as an ophthalmology researcher and holds a B.A. in Psychology and a B.Sc. in Neuroscience.
Colour words: The order in which languages develop basic colour words.
Honey process coffee: Despite the name, it has nothing to do with honey.
How we see colour: How we perceive millions of colours using signals from only three types of cone cells in our retina.
The prosecutor’s fallacy: How easily we confuse two probabilities that sound almost identical but mean very different things.
Evolution: Why it is not really the ladder, as we often imagine, but a branching process with no intended endpoint.
The stockings experiment: A social psychology experiment involving identical pairs of stockings, showing how little access we may have to the reasons behind some of our own decisions.
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11 Oct 2026
Kevin McManus
Kevin McManus discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.
Kevin McManus is an Irish writer and poet from Co. Leitrim whose work is rooted in place, memory, and the quiet emotional currents of everyday life. He has published several works of fiction and poetry, often focusing on crime fiction and the rural Irish landscape.
The Light at Evening is semi-autobiographical as it reflects experiences of his own over recent years: he works as a secondary school teacher, his wife is a cancer survivor and his father passed away in 2024. It is available at https://kevinmcmanusbooks.com/books/the-light-at-evening-kevin-mcmanus/B0GHZV418J (https://kevinmcmanusbooks.com/books/the-light-at-evening-kevin-mcmanus/B0GHZV418J).
The Irish Bouzouki. A distinctive instrument that has become an important part of the sound of Irish folk and traditional music, but one that remains surprisingly unfamiliar outside that world.
The Opening and Closing Lines of Irish Conversations. All those phrases that aren't really questions and don't require answers: "What's the craic?" "What's the story?", "How are you?" "How are things?" And the elaborate ritual of leaving: "Right so", "Sure look", "Anyway", "I'll let you go", and "We'll talk to you."
"Martha" by Tom Waits. A beautiful song from his 1973 album Closing Time, in which a man contacts a woman he loved many years earlier.
The Slow Set at an Eighties Disco. That moment when the DJ put on a few slow songs and the whole atmosphere of the disco changed. A largely vanished social ritual from the days before mobile phones, social media and dating apps.
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973). A wonderfully understated crime film starring Robert Mitchum. Bleak, atmospheric and completely lacking in Hollywood glamour.
The Talk of the Town by Ardal O'Hanlon. Ardal O'Hanlon is known primarily as an actor and comedian, particularly from Father Ted, but his novel The Talk of the Town deserves considerably more attention.
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Inside a recent episode
Rupal Patel
Published 19 Jun 2022 · Transcript excerpt
[…] You've obviously done something relatively unusual in terms of change career quite significantly. How did your sense of curiosity help inform and give you the confidence to make that decision? I think it was exactly that. It's just being curious about not just what else I could do, but testing myself in a new way and being curious about, again, the world in general and saying, OK, well, you know, I've done the intelligence, foreign policy thing. Let me test myself in a new way. Let me see what I'm made of. Let me see what the world of the private sector and commerce and business and entrepreneurship is all about. […]
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