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Cautionary Tales – WW2: How Britain Ignored the Mother of All Secrets | Tim Harford
Cautionary Tales will be LIVE on stage in London 21 May 2024. Tickets are on sale now. Neatly dressed in his suit, Hans Ferdinand Mayer was every inch the unassuming corporate executive. So, when he asked to borrow a typewriter from his hotel in Oslo, nobody could have guessed he would use it for one…
Why, deep down, we’re all ultramarathoners | Tim Harford
Jasmin Paris is not built like ordinary mortals. Last month she won a moment of fame after completing the Barkley Marathons, a race so brutal that only 19 men have managed to finish in the past 35 years. Paris is the first woman to complete the race. It is not Paris’s first brush with greatness.…
Cautionary Tales – The Fraudster’s Guide to Magic Money | Tim Harford
Cautionary Tales will be LIVE on stage in London 21 May 2024. Tickets are on sale now. Sam Israel had a problem. The investors in his hedge fund, Bayou Capital, were expecting spectacular returns. Sam himself had spent years proclaiming the fund's brilliant results. In reality, Sam had been marking his own homework, publishing fraudulent…
Why the biscuit tax leaves a bad taste in the mouth | Tim Harford
Earlier this year, two distinguished gentlemen, Judge Hyde and his adviser Julian Stafford, sampled a mineral-enriched flapjack — alas, a year past its sell-by date — and pondered its qualities. (Flapjacks are slabs of oats stuck together with a glue made of butter, sugar and syrup.) The question: was this unconventional flapjack, designed as a…
Cautionary Tales – Blood and Gold (with Dan Snow) | Tim Harford
Bonus: When Spanish conquistadors arrived in Peru in 1526, it was the beginning of the end for the Inca. Their bloody pursuit of gold, fame and fortune was rife with treachery and deceit. Within a few short years, the once-thriving Incan empire had been decimated. Tim Harford is joined by Dan Snow for a special…
A TikTok ban won’t solve social media’s collective trap | Tim Harford
US legislators are eager to ban TikTok. They are missing a bigger question: should they also ban Instagram, Facebook and the network formerly known as Twitter? The obvious answer is “no”, because although everyone grumbles about social media, we still use these networks, which strongly suggests that deep down we still value them. But what…
Why Swifties, holidaymakers and the hygienic should cheer for surge pricing | Tim Harford
The “Wendy’s Dave’s Triple” is a fast-food offering that stacks two possessives and three hamburgers. I am not sure how easy it is to swallow in either regard, but what has really been sticking in people’s throats is the prospect of surge pricing at the Wendy’s fast-food chain. A few weeks ago, the new CEO…
Cautionary Tales – the Rise and Fall of a Megalomaniac | Tim Harford
Nicolae Ceaușescu was not beloved. His regime was vicious and he treated Romania as his personal wallet: while Ceaușescu emptied the coffers to construct a vast, ornate palace, his people starved. He imposed disastrous population control policies on his country too, which saw hundreds of thousands of unwanted children left to rot in squalid orphanages. Ceaușescu's rule…
The surprising public health benefit of unemployment | Tim Harford
Here’s a discovery to bring you up short: unemployment is good for you. Really? Well, no, not really. But a new research paper has found a correlation that points in that direction: more unemployment, fewer deaths. Underneath lies something real, shocking and yet somehow inspiring. First, let’s unpack the research, conducted by economists Amy Finkelstein,…
Cautionary Tales – Inside the Bizarre World of Dictators | Tim Harford
Why are so many autocrats germaphobes? Why was the truth so dangerous for Soviet engineers? And what can salami reveal to us about the mind of Vladimir Putin? Tim Harford, host of the Cautionary Tales podcast, examines the true stories behind the HBO series The Regime. In the first of two special episodes, Tim investigates…
The alternate universe in which Tottenham are top | Tim Harford
Back in October, the headteacher at my son’s school began each assembly by displaying the Premier League table, with Tottenham Hotspur at the top. (My son, a fan of Tottenham’s local rivals Arsenal, was outraged.) Those familiar with English football will know that Tottenham were top of the league for much of October, but only…
Why friends are always right – no matter their views | Tim Harford
My colleague John Burn-Murdoch recently presented striking evidence of a new trend: young men and young women are becoming politically segregated. Young men now sit substantially to the right of young women on the political spectrum. This is an international phenomenon and it’s new. Should we be surprised? Society seems to be polarising along every…
Cautionary Tales – Do Nothing, Then Do Less | Tim Harford
Chuck Yeager's plane pitched and rolled as it plummeted from the sky. He grappled with the controls inside the cockpit, but to no avail: he couldn't steady the aircraft. The test pilot was known for his nerves of steel but, as the barren Mojave Desert hurtled towards him, even he was afraid. What to do?…
The real quandary of AI isn’t what people think | Tim Harford
Do you think the leading large language model, GPT-4, could suggest a solution to Wordle after having four previous guesses described to it? Could it compose a biography-in-verse of Alan Turing, while also replacing “Turing” with “Church”? (Turing’s PhD supervisor was Alonzo Church, and the Church-Turing thesis is well known. That might befuddle the computer,…
What the birth of the spreadsheet teaches us about generative AI | Tim Harford
When the spreadsheet launched in 1979, it was a bewildering piece of software. People had no idea what they were looking at. A computer screen, filled with a grid of numbers? As Keith Houston explains in his new history of the pocket calculator, Empire of the Sum, they hadn’t realised that the rows and columns…
Of top-notch algorithms and zoned-out humans | Tim Harford
On June 1 2009, Air France Flight 447 vanished on a routine transatlantic flight. The circumstances were mysterious until the black box flight recorder was recovered nearly two years later, and the awful truth became apparent: three highly trained pilots had crashed a fully functional aircraft into the ocean, killing all 288 people on board,…
Cautionary Tales – Buried Evil: V2 Rocket (Part 3) | Tim Harford
As US troops approached a prison camp in Nazi Germany, they could hear agonized wailing. The stench of rotting flesh filled their nostrils. Moments later they discovered a pile of smoldering corpses, alongside emaciated survivors. Next to the concentration camp they found something else: tunnels filled with tools — and partially assembled rockets. The soldiers…
The secret to finding the best idea ever? First think about the absolute worst | Tim Harford
When he first heard the music, Brian Eno grabbed a copy of the single and ran to find David Bowie. “I’ve found the sound of the future,” he breathlessly announced. It was 1977, and the sound of the future was “I Feel Love”. Donna Summer’s ethereal vocals were backed by producer Giorgio Moroder’s pulsing, looping…
Fake: It’s only a matter of time until disinformation leads to calamity | Tim Harford
Not long after Eric Hebborn was murdered, an off-the-record conversation with the famed artist-turned-forger was published. On tape, Hebborn made explosive claims about his time as a student at the Royal Academy of Art in the 1950s, where he had been awarded a prestigious prize. Though a gifted draughtsman, he was a surprising choice, because…
Cautionary Tales: Into the Black Lair – V2 Rocket (Part 2) | Tim Harford
In the 1920s, Germany’s Society for Spaceship Travel boasted some of the sharpest scientific minds – like the incandescently brilliant young Wernher von Braun. But it had very little money, and progress was slow. Then, in 1932, the army made a proposal: it would fund more serious research if the enthusiasts at the Society would…
Are economists selfish? Not according to Monopoly | Tim Harford
Against my better judgment, I was recently prevailed upon to play a game of Monopoly with the family. It soon developed in a fashion that has become familiar: everyone tried to rip everyone else’s face off, except me. I proposed a mutually beneficial deal to each player, offering extra concessions myself to make sure those…
The planet’s got 99 problems, but exponential growth isn’t one | Tim Harford
If Christmas is (alas) a time for a materialist blowout, January is often a time for rueful reflection. Should we really have bought all that soon-to-be-landfill for each other? The answer, as I have written a dozen times, is . . . probably not. Thankfully, people have stopped sending me emails declaring that economists don’t understand Christmas. Now they…
Cautionary Tales – Supersonic Nazi Vengeance: V2 Rocket (Part 1) | Tim Harford
At the height of World War Two, British intelligence began receiving reports that the enemy was developing a rocket weapon. The idea seemed fantastical — resources in Nazi Germany were scarce and a rocket-building program defied economic logic. But one intelligence chief took the reports of a rocket weapon seriously and he managed to convince…
Cautionary Tales – Tenerife: The most deadly air disaster | Tim Harford
In 1977, two planes collided on the runway at Tenerife Airport. Why did the crash happen? And, given that it took place on the ground, why didn't more people escape? In this new two-parter, Tim Harford explores the most deadly aviation accident in history. Both episodes are available now, ad-free, exclusively for subscribers to Pushkin+.…
My favourite books for children | Tim Harford
An idiosyncratic list, although I am sure it contains few surprises... The good people at Bookshop UK, who provide a website to sell books online which supports local independent bookshops around the country, tell me, "Read It Forward February ... will launch Feb 1st. Simply put, any and all children's book sales during the whole of…
For resolutions, is it better to add or subtract? | Tim Harford
The New Year ritual of vowing to quit smoking, drinking or dessert is not for me. I’ve long preferred the idea that resolutions should be adding something positive rather than squeezing out bad habits. In a typical year, I might resolve to exercise more, to see more live music or to spend more time with…
More of your crazy economics questions, answered | Tim Harford
Last year, inspired by Randall Munroe’s delightful books What If? and What If? 2, I invited the good folk of Twitter to ask me absurd hypothetical questions about the economy, to which I would attempt some serious answers. This year, we’re going to do it all again. Alex asks: How big would an asteroid made…
Cautionary Tales – Martin Luther King Jr, the Jewelry Genius, and the art of public speaking (CLASSIC) | Tim Harford
One speechmaker inspired millions with his words, the other utterly destroyed his own multi-million-dollar business with just a few phrases. Civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr (played by Jeffrey Wright of Westworld, The Hunger Games, and the James Bond films) and jewelry store owner Gerald Ratner offer starkly contrasting stories on when you should stick to the script and when…
The rights and wrongs of copying | Tim Harford
Should we worry that Rachel Reeves, who is likely to become the UK’s first female chancellor of the exchequer, will be a “cut-and-paste chancellor”? When my colleague Soumaya Keynes reviewed Reeves’s book, The Women Who Made Modern Economics, she stumbled upon a sentence that copied an uncredited source almost verbatim. It wasn’t hard to find…
What makes a good prophecy? | Tim Harford
A couple of years ago, taking questions on stage in front of a live audience, I was asked to do my duty as an economist and make an economic forecast. But the questioner had a demanding benchmark for what made a good prediction, informing me that the previous keynote speaker at this conference had been…
Cautionary Tales – DANGER: Rocks Ahead! (Classic) | Tim Harford
Torrey Canyon was one of the biggest and best ships in the world - but its captain and crew still needlessly steered it towards a deadly reef known as The Seven Stones. This course seemed like madness. But the type of thinking that resulted in such a risky manœuvre is something we're all prone to... We…
Why the breakdown of the 9-5 job is making us lonelier | Tim Harford
Why does nobody have spontaneous fun any more? You can blame the economists for this one, if you like. Specifically, blame the Soviet economist Yuri Larin, who in May 1929 proposed the idea of nepreryvka, the “continuous work week”. At the time, most people in the Soviet Union lived according to the rhythm of a…
Cautionary Tales – When Stalin killed the weekend | Tim Harford
What if you could never have the same day off as your friends and family? Would you quit your job? What if it was the murderous dictator Joseph Stalin giving you the order? The Soviet Union wanted its factories to run every day, all year long. And so in 1929, Stalin killed the weekend: workers…
Have yourself an atelic little Christmas | Tim Harford
A strange thing happened to me one Christmas Day afternoon. I was a young adolescent, certainly not too old to enjoy sweets and gifts and the inevitable Bond movie on the telly. Yet after the presents had been unwrapped, and the turkey and pudding consumed, I found myself feeling deflated. I took to my bedroom…
What the data shows about the UK’s public services doom loop | Tim Harford
Everyone in the UK will have their own stories of crumbling public services, but indulge me for a moment while I share mine. A couple of years ago, I applied for power of attorney on behalf of my ageing father, in case it became necessary. The Office of the Public Guardian bungled the paperwork; months…
Cautionary Tales – How the Radium Girls Fought Back | Tim Harford
Mollie Maggia's dentist planned to remove a painful abscess from her mouth. But to his horror, her jawbone disintegrated at his touch, crumbling and splintering until it resembled ash. Like hundreds of her colleagues, Mollie had been slowly poisoned by her work with glowing radium dust. Eight months after her first toothache, she was dead. In our previous episode, Cautionary Tales…
The simple maths puzzle that shows us how to seperate fact from fiction | Tim Harford
For certain kinds of questions, there are answers that are simple, elegant and wrong. Take the most famous example of the genre, the “bat and ball” question: if a bat and a ball together cost $1.10, and the bat costs a dollar more than the ball, how much does the ball cost? This is known…
Cautionary Tales – Glowing Peril: the Magical Glitter That Poisoned a City | Tim Harford
In Goiânia, Brazil, a junk dealer acquires an old medical device from two scrap-metal scavengers. The device itself isn't useful, but it comes with precious lead which will fetch him good money. There's something else inside the device, too: a curious, crystal-like substance that glows bright blue in the dark. At first, the dealer is mesmerised by…
Policy Lessons from the Official Monster Raving Loony Party | Tim Harford
Not long ago, I heard a Tory grandee giving a speech in support of a political rookie. As the occasion demanded, he offered some advice. Life in politics would be hard, he warned, but success was possible: just look at Screaming Lord Sutch and the Official Monster Raving Loony party. You might think that the…
Why are some jobs so “greedy”? | Tim Harford
Why do women still tend to earn less than men? There is nobody better placed to answer that question than economic historian Claudia Goldin, the winner of the 2023 Nobel memorial prize in economics. Her answer tells us how to fight unfairness, but also how to create saner and more productive working lives for everybody.…