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 ...

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 ...

When the thugs arrive — the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan — who stands up to them? That’s a question raised by Rutger Bregman in his new book, Moral Ambition. Bregman, who is Dutch, was fascinated by ...

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 ...

Beneath all the tariff craziness — the taxes on islands inhabited only by penguins, the pseudo-profound mathematical definition of “reciprocal”, the idea that the settled trade policy of every other ...

20 years ago, a book called Freakonomics became an instant bestseller and worldwide sensation. Tim Harford got his hands on the first copy that Steve Levitt ever signed… and promptly sold it on eBay.

When Ernest Borgnine gets his big break in Hollywood, he can hardly believe his luck. But soon he discovers his supposed star vehicle, Marty, is not the dream gig he thought it was. In this episode of ...

In the bleak Russian winter of 1959, nine experienced hikers set out on an expedition. None of them made it back alive. When their campsite was finally discovered, it told a chilling story: tents ...