George Price is on a mission to prove that human kindness is real. He's seen the latest research suggesting any altruism is ultimately selfish and finds it deeply depressing. George decides to learn ...

Can we “nudge” our way to a higher rate of economic growth? In a recent speech, David Halpern argued that we should at least try. Halpern was the founder of the Behavioural Insight Team (BIT) that ...

A good columnist is never unintentionally tedious, but this week’s effort is about obsolete telephone directories, binary counter overflow, and the alternating current waveform. The boredom is the ...

Steven Spielberg thought his career was finished. He was behind schedule, his actors were fighting, the crew were mutinous and worst of all, his shark was broken. It looked like Jaws was destined for ...

The annual Le Mans 24 Hour race brings in hundreds of thousands of spectators to watch the giants of motor racing put their endurance to the ultimate test. Every year, technology improves and the cars ...

This episode is released exclusively on Pushkin+. Episodes are released on the main feed each Friday. The sewing machine was once thought to be an impossible invention. It was such a complicated ...

This week’s episode is a Cautionary Questions special with Nate Silver (On The Edge) and Maria Konnikova (The Biggest Bluff) of Risky Business. “Thanks to Tim Harford’s characteristic wit and magnetic ...

In 1978 the world is on the brink of declaring victory over smallpox. No cases have been seen for months, and it looks like the end for a deadly, painful disease. When a photographer in Birmingham ...

This episode is released exclusively on Pushkin+. Episodes are released on the main feed each Friday. In 1912, a fossil discovery shakes the scientific world. Piltdown Man is the elusive missing link ...

Of all the dubious claims uttered recently by Elon Musk, I have yet to see a more interesting one than his tweet asserting that “a more accurate measure of GDP would exclude government spending.

Two airplanes have just collided on the runway at Tenerife Airport. While no one on the Amsterdam-bound KLM plane survives the resulting fireball, 71 Pan-Am passengers and crew make it off their plane ...