Rebecca Coulson

‘I don’t actually feel attracted to robots.’ Presidential candidates have to deny all kinds of things, but only Zoltan Istvan would be compelled to clarify that he’s not interested in sleeping with robots. As the Transhumanist Party’s contender, he’s unsurprisingly enthusiastic about some pretty far-out ideas involving the crossover between people and machines. He even recently injected a rice-sized microchip into his hand, which can literally open doors. That said, with the speed of tech, his chip is almost obsolete: he knows guys working on ones that will ‘allow you to pay at Starbucks’. But it’s useful for when he’s been out running, as he has when we meet at his red wooden house, in a suburb of San Francisco.

'We weren’t even at opposite ends of the table. Because he was in the eyes, and I was fighting over my own bit of space to keep the patient alive.' If you’re surprised to learn that Canon Andrew White used to work alongside Bashar al-Assad in the same London operating theatre, then you clearly haven’t met White – perhaps better known as the Vicar of Baghdad. Once you have, nothing about him will surprise you. A tall, bearish, immediately likeable man, his enthusiasm is contagious, whether it’s for vanilla ice cream, or intercession in war zones.