Contributors

Daniel Tammet is the subject of the award-winning television documentary, The Boy with the Incredible Brain, as well as a BBC Radio 4 documentary, Two Poets (with Les Murray) and the Kate Bush song, Pi. He is the author of nine books, including the memoir Born on a Blue Day, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults; two collections of essays, Thinking in Numbers, a New Yorker recommendation, and Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing, a Booklist Editors' Choice and Listener Magazine Book of the Year; a bilingual poetry collection in English and French, Portraits, and a novel written in French, Mishenka. His writing has appeared in Esquire, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, Aeon and Quadrant, and his books have been translated into thirty languages. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2012, and awarded an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, The Open University, in 2023. Daniel Tammet lives in Paris.

Vicki Tan is a digital product designer who has led teams at Pinterest, Spotify, Headspace, Lyft and Google. She draws from behavioural science to create meaningful, inspirational products that help people build healthy habits. Vicki lives in San Francisco.

Dr Lixing Sun first studied at East China Normal University in Shanghai before completing a PhD in ecology, behavior and evolution at the State University of New York and Syracuse University. He is currently a Distinguished Research Professor at Central Washington University. He has authored or coauthored over 60 research articles in scientific journals, and contributed extensively to a number of academic books, as well as authoring three non-trade books, the most recent of which was selected as a Book of the Week by the Wall Street Journal and the New Yorker. He was awarded a Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship in 2024.

Ruby Tandoh is an author and journalist who writes for, among others, the Guardian, Elle and Vice. A finalist on the 2013 Great British Bake Off, she has published Eat Up, a book about the pleasure of eating, as well as two cookery books, Crumb and Flavour. She lives in Brixton.

Paul Strohm is Professor Emeritus of the Humanities at Columbia University, and has previously been J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford.

The Poet's Tale: Chaucer and the year that made The Canterbury Tale sexplores a single year that made Chaucer into a poet, and sparked the creation of The Canterbury Tales.

Noah Keefer Strycker (born February 9, 1986) is an American birdwatcher. In 2015, he set a record for a worldwide Big Year of Birding, seeing 6,042 of the world's estimated 10,400 bird species in a continuous journey spanning all seven continents from January 1 to December 31, 2015.

Joe Studwell is a journalist and academic. He is the Senior Visiting Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute in London, and holds a PhD in global business and development from the University of Cambridge. Previous titles include How Asia Works and The China Dream.

Julie Summers is the author of Jambusters: the story of the Women's Institute in the Second World War, which inspired ITV's 2015 hugely successful drama Home Fires, now into a second series. She also wrote When the Children Came Home and Stranger in the House, among others. Fashion on the Ration appeared in March 2015. She lives in Oxford.

Jonathan Sumption is a British judge and historian, who served as a Supreme Court Justice from 2012 – 2018. He is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Trials of the State, Law in a Time of Crisis, and Divided Houses, which won the 2009 Wolfson History Prize.

John Sutherland is Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London and a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology. He has published twenty books (including Is Heathcliff a Murderer? Great Puzzles in 19th Century Fiction) and writes a weekly column for the Guardian. He was chairman of the 2005 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

Wendy Syfret is an award-winning, Melbourne-based journalist, writer and editor, contributing to publications all over the world, including Guardian, Vice and Man Repeller. Her previous roles include Managing Editor of Vice Asia, Head of Editorial for Vice Australia and Australia Editor for i-D Magazine.

Michel Syrett has combined a career as a journalist and writer on business and management in publications such as The Times, The Sunday Times, Management Today, Director, Asian Business and the South China Morning Post with academic research on management topics for business schools in Britain and Asia. He has authored twenty books and reports, including three Economist titles Successful Innovation, Successful Strategy Execution and Managing Uncertainty.

Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki was a Japanese author of books and essays on Buddhism, Zen and Shin that were instrumental in spreading interest in both Zen and Shin to the West.