Air traffic controllers are meant to stop aircraft flying into one another... and if they fail, computer systems are installed to warn pilots of a coming collision. But sometimes these humans and computers give conflicting and confusing advice. Who to believe? When a...
Elon Musk has given us someone to blame for the fact Twitter seems so terrible nowadays, but it’s far from being the only internet platform that seems terrible. Facebook is a mess. Young people tell me that Instagram has ruined itself in the quest to be like TikTok...
I’ve spent years trying to help people make sense of the world around them and particularly to make sense of the numbers that describe that world. But for the past few months, I’ve been wrestling with a new challenge: can I do the same thing for nine- to 13-year-olds?...
In the early 90s, cutting-edge advertising agency Chiat/Day announced a radical plan, aimed at giving the company a jolt of creative renewal. They would sweep away corner offices and cubicles and replace them with zany open spaces, as well as innovative portable...
Forty years ago, a kid from down the street told me about this cool new game, Tunnels & Trolls. Something about his explanation kept eluding my grasp. Was it a computer game, like Pac-Man or Chuckie Egg? A board game, like Risk or Monopoly? No. There was no...
Rukmani and her family were driving to a temple in Tamil Nadu, India, in May 2018, when they stopped to ask for directions from an elderly local lady. It seemed a safe enough thing to do. The family hadn’t realised that almost every local with access to WhatsApp had...
Galileo tried to teach us that when we add more and more layers to a system intended to avert disaster, those layers of complexity may eventually be what causes the catastrophe. His basic lesson has been ignored in nuclear power plants, financial markets and at the...
Much has changed since 1986, when the Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt published an essay in an obscure journal, Raritan, titled “On Bullshit”. Yet the essay, later republished as a slim bestseller, remains unnervingly relevant. Frankfurt’s brilliant insight was...
I'm giving some talks about my imminent book, The Truth Detective. Come along! Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford - 2pm on 1st April at the Oxford Literary Festival Oxford Maths Festival - 3pm on 14th May. Hay Festival - 26th May, 1pm. The Royal Institution - 23 September,...