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. 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.

1. Colour words: The order in which languages develop basic colour words.
2. Honey process coffee: Despite the name, it has nothing to do with honey.
3. How we see colour: How we perceive millions of colours using signals from only three types of cone cells in our retina.
4. The prosecutor’s fallacy: How easily we confuse two probabilities that sound almost identical but mean very different things.
5. Evolution: Why it is not really the ladder, as we often imagine, but a branching process with no intended endpoint.
6. 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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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.

1. 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.
2. 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."
3. "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.
4. 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.
5. The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973). A wonderfully understated crime film starring Robert Mitchum. Bleak, atmospheric and completely lacking in Hollywood glamour.
6. 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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Norman Lamb discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Sir Norman Lamb is the former Liberal Democrat MP for North Norfolk and a former Minister of State for Care and Support. Knighted in 2019 for services to mental health, he also chaired South London and Maudsley Foundation Trust from 2020 to 2025. His new book is Be More Human, which is available at https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/norman-lamb/be-more-human/9781805017752/.

1. Doing something for somebody else https://www.kcl.ac.uk/helping-others-create-change-professor-sir-sam-everington
2. The healing power of nature https://www.gov.uk/government/case-studies/woodland-restoration-at-whitewoods-offers-a-natural-health-service-to-the-community
3. Alternatives to locking people up https://www.livingwellsystems.uk/trieste
4. Ibrahim Maalouf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrahim_Maalouf
5. Rosie Phillips https://www.rosiephillipsart.com/
6. Shrinking https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/oct/16/shrinking-season-two-review-harrison-ford-comedy-apple-tv

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