Ana Schnabl discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Ana Schnabl is a Slovenian writer and editor. She writes for several Slovenian media outlets and is a monthly columnist for the Guardian. Her collection of short stories Razvezani (Beletrina, 2017) met with critical acclaim. Three years later Schnabl published her first novel Masterpiece (Mojstrovina, Beletrina, 2020). Her second novel Flood Tide (Plima, Beletrina, 2022) was nominated for the Slovenian Kresnik Award. Her third novel September (Beletrina, 2024) won the Kresnik Award in 2025.

1. Dog Behaviour: I’ve got two dogs, and it took me longer than I’d like to admit to figure out what they were actually saying.

2. The Concept of Universal Basic Income: I suspect that for a lot of people, Universal Basic Income sounds like a fantasy dreamt up by the lazy and the work-shy—a clever way to dodge the nine-to-five. In reality, it’s nothing of the sort.

3. Mina Mazzini: Known simply as Mina, she was nothing short of a force of nature—Italy’s greatest voice and legend. Her vocal range was outrageous and her stage presence magnetic.

4. Jellyfish: I grew up spending summers on the Slovene coast, where most beach conversations about jellyfish revolved around how nasty they are. I think it’s time to give them a bit of a rebrand.

5. Lojze Kovačič's The Newcomers: I know I sound like a total boomer saying this, but The Newcomers really is a masterpiece—a towering work of autofiction, written decades before “autofiction” was even a buzzword on Goodreads.

6. Yugoslavia: I’m not yugonostalgic—I was simply born too late to have any real experience of living there. But I am a defender of some of the genuinely progressive ideas and policies that Yugoslavia introduced and managed to sustain.

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Adam Lind discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Through living on a narrowboat on the British waterways, Adam Lind has unexpectedly built a large online community of over 900,000 loyal and engaged like-minded souls who enjoy soaking up his passion to live a life of meaning. Adam has appeared on Channel 4’s Narrow Escapes and has been featured in publications including The New York Post, Business Insider, The Sun, and others. His new book is Floating Home: Lessons from a life less ordinary, which is available at https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/floating-home-9781526683526/.

1. The importance of human connection
2. The fear mongering and segregation of the news
3. You can have control over your thoughts
4. You don’t need a lot of money to travel
5. Adversity can be a gift
6. Comparison is the thief of joy

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Food critic Andrew Turvil discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Described by The Independent as one of the UK’s ‘arbiters of taste’, Andrew Turvil is the former editor of The Good Food Guide, AA Restaurant Guide and Which? Pub Guide. As a freelance restaurant critic, writer, and editor, he has spent his career writing about pubs and restaurants, and, undeterred, bought a pub in 2015 and ran it for 10 years. Blood, Sweat & Asparagus Spears is his first book and is available at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blood-Sweat-Asparagus-Spears-Restaurant/dp/1783969113.

1. Prior to the 1990s, very few chefs were household names. Very few people could reel off a list of chefs, but by the end of the decade many were TV stars and known to millions – Gary Rhodes, Jamie Oliver et al.
2. There was less emphasis on the ingredients used in restaurants prior to the 1990s and the consumption of organic food in the UK had barely got going.
3. Fashionable restaurants of the past were revived in the 1990s and gained new leases of life
4. During the 1990s the English language finally started to gain ground in the fine dining sector. Prior to the 1990s ‘posh’ food meant French food
5. Asian food in the UK took a great leap forward during the 1990s
6. The 1990s saw a proliferation of new foodie terms: nose to tail, fusion, Pacific rim and molecular gastronomy.

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