I'm Rory Stewart and I want to talk about ignorance. I will die without having read everything that was written in classical Latin.

Because ignorance isn't simply the opposite of

knowledge. It's part of what it means to be human. Just about every game I can

think of involves ignorance. There's no adventure without ignorance. There's no there's no narrative.

The long history of ignorance from Confucius to Kianon

with me Rory Stewart,

listen on BBC Sounds.

Hello, I've had the pleasure of speaking to some very accomplished and well-recognized

scientists on this program, some of whom or even household names.

Very few of them, however, have been so widely known that they've been given a nationally accepted nickname.

But that's the case for my guest today, who first came to widespread attention in his role as deputy Chief Medical Officer during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Professor Jonathan Van Tam, or JVT, as was popularised by then Prime Minister Boris Johnson,

and subsequently the nation's media

has built a career based on the long-held fascination with respiratory illness

and infectious diseases. He's worked across the public and private sectors contributing significantly to

improving our understanding of influenza and treatments to tackle the virus.

It's hard to believe that back in his teens, JVT, the man who advised the nation on pandemic precautions

and helped make the UK's vaccine rollout possible, nearly didn't get the grades he needed to go to

medical school. But early challenges aside Jonathan went on to

discover a love for both medical research and public speaking, making complex

public health messages easier to digest, not least by using analogies relating to his beloved football.

For his remarkable skills as a communicator, he received the Royal Society's David Attenborough

...