Lise Meitner has fought for her entire life to be seen as a scientist, slowly building a career as a nuclear physicist in Berlin. When Adolf Hitler rises to power, the small gains she’s made ...

Twenty years ago, economics was cool. Thanks in part to the publication of Freakonomics, economists were regarded as dispensers of brilliant and unexpected solutions to everyday problems. Whether ...

This week’s episode is a Cautionary Questions special with Nate Silver (On The Edge) and Maria Konnikova (The Biggest Bluff) of Risky Business.

The quest for the elusive Giffen good has taken economists to the depths of the Irish potato famine, to the poorest parts of rural China and to the cages of lab rats at Texas A&M University.

Sixteen years have passed since Ferdinand De Lesseps’ catastrophic failure in Panama, and the dramatic collapse of the French Panama Canal company. Now, President Theodore Roosevelt has picked up ...

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 ...

“Thanks to Tim Harford’s characteristic wit and magnetic storytelling, you may not realize you’re getting an advanced course in how to understand the kinds of statistics we’re all faced with every day ...

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.

When Britain entered its first Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020, many found comfort in evoking the British wartime spirit. A timely hero emerged – Captain Tom Moore, a WWII veteran who walked up and ...

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 ...